"Toy" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... had been shopping since ten in the morning, and her carriage had stood before the dry-goods stores, and toy-shops, and candy stores, while bundle after bundle had been deposited on the cushions, and others ordered to be sent. But she was nearly through now, and just as it was beginning to grow dark in the streets she bade her ...
— Miss McDonald • Mary J. Holmes
... is he still living? I can see him yet, that terrible old man who wanted to cut out my eyes and tongue so that you could have a new toy." ...
— The Doomsman • Van Tassel Sutphen
... flowers, and its odor breathed by man or woman, causes a sudden swoon from which there is no awakening more in this world. People feel no pain, but die smiling as if angels had kissed away their breath. Is it not a precious toy, Mademoiselle?" ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby
... I should not have been able to bear my disgrace, had not the idea of the ever faithful and fond Narcissa come to my relief. I quitted the scene of my mortification, and, sauntering about the town, happened to wake from my contemplation, when I found myself just opposite to a toy-shop, which I entered, and purchased a ring set with a ruby in the form of a heart, surrounded by diamond sparks, for which I paid ten guineas, intending it for a present to the ...
— The Adventures of Roderick Random • Tobias Smollett
... tremendously natural; and all overhung with this strange white light, this far-away blue sky. There 's a big wooden house—a kind of three-story bungalow; it looks like a magnified Nuremberg toy. There was a gentleman there that made a speech to me about it and called it a 'venerable mansion;' but it looks as if it had been ...
— The Europeans • Henry James
... something against you, I can tell you," said the old gentleman, looking amused, and speaking as if Fleda were a curious little piece of human mechanism which could hear its performances talked of with all the insensibility of any other toy. "She gives it as her judgment that Mr. Carleton is the most of a gentleman, because he keeps ...
— Queechy • Susan Warner
... fond of her. I should not have thought it of him, but men are wicked and women are fools," she added, after a pause, "and I do think that I am one of the most foolish of them. I am like a child who throws away a toy one minute and cries for it the next. It is horrid, and I am ashamed of myself, downright ashamed. I hate myself to think that just because a man is nice to me, and leaves me two pictures if he is killed, that ...
— A Girl of the Commune • George Alfred Henty
... 'Twas well you kept your maiden zone, The noose to tie. Or if your choice be that rude pike, New barb'd with death, leap down and ask The wind to bear you. Would you like The bondmaid's task, You, child of kings, a master's toy, A mistress' slave?'" Beside her, lo! Stood Venus smiling, and her boy With unstrung bow. Then, when her laughter ceased, "Have done With fume and fret," she cried, "my fair; That odious bull will give you soon ...
— Odes and Carmen Saeculare of Horace • Horace
... of ruff,—"illusion," I think Allis called it,—which, of all contrivances that she could have chosen to encircle her sallow neck, was exactly the most unbecoming. She was always knitting blue stockings,—I never discovered for what or whom; and she wore her lifeless hair in the shape of a small toy cartwheel, on the back ...
— Men, Women, and Ghosts • Elizabeth Stuart Phelps
... slaughter-pen; Thumb-screws and bastinados work Both Devils' pomp and Soldans' joy; And tantrums coarse in cesspools teem As women sob for dying men: The wracks that djinnee fear and shirk, Are Torture's friend—A Monster's toy! ...
— Betelguese - A Trip Through Hell • Jean Louis de Esque
... to tell you all the things that happened that day. You see, I have made quite a long story of my first evening, so you must try and fancy all about the walk in the park with Jane, and the drive with Grandmamma to the town, and the toy-shop, ...
— My Young Days • Anonymous
... how soon customs will grow up, and it is also quite singular and a thing that always surprises the socialist and communist, that about the earliest concept at which they will arrive is that of private property! They will soon get a notion that one child owns a stick, or toy, or seat, and the others must respect that property. This I merely use as an illustration to show how simple the notion of law was among our ancestors in England fifteen hundred years ago, and how it had grown up with them, of course, from many centuries, ...
— Popular Law-making • Frederic Jesup Stimson
... to custom),—including "one cotton baby-dress"; and the values of the presents were fixed. On the occasion of the Boy's Festival, the presents to be given to the child by the whole family, including grandparents, were limited by law to "one paper-flag," and "two toy-spears." ... A farmer whose, property was assessed at 50 koku was forbidden to [166] build a house more than 45 feet long. At the wedding of his daughter the gift-girdle was not to exceed 50 sen in value; and it was ...
— Japan: An Attempt at Interpretation • Lafcadio Hearn
... joyous and natural, boy and woman, fun and frolic; but always the pride was there, vibrant, tense, intrinsic, the basic stuff of which she was builded. She was a woman, frank, outspoken, straight- looking, plastic, democratic; but toy she was not. At times, to him, she seemed to glint an impression of steel—thin, jewel-like steel. She seemed strength in its most delicate terms and fabrics. He fondled the impression of her as of silverspun wire, of fine leather, of twisted hair-sennit from the heads of ...
— The Little Lady of the Big House • Jack London
... set in motion down the mountain assumes a force that no power could stay; on it will go until it rests in the plain From the eminence of his boasted wealth the usurer found this turn come to whirl around on the wheel of fortune and yield to some other mortal, who is the toy of fortune, to grasp for a moment the golden key ...
— Alvira: the Heroine of Vesuvius • A. J. O'Reilly
... a merchant has given all for what seemed a goodly pearl, he has not another fortune in reserve wherewith to begin anew, if that for which he paid all his possessions turns out to be a worthless toy of glass. Our time, our life—this is our fortune, on which we trade for the better world: if these be spent,—be thrown away for what is not life, then life ...
— The Parables of Our Lord • William Arnot
... France are quoted in this connection, cut into the form of the phallus; and the same form occurs in some menhirs near Saphos, in the island of Cyprus,[147] and in others found amongst the ruins of Uxmal, in Yucatan. Herodotus relates that Sesostris caused toy be set up, in countries he conquered, monoliths bearing in relief representations of the female sexual organs. These are, however, but exceptions, isolated facts, and it would certainly never do to argue from them that menhirs were ...
— Manners and Monuments of Prehistoric Peoples • The Marquis de Nadaillac
... Hide small toy sheep all over the room in every nook and corner. As each child comes, give her a little stick fixed up like a crook, and tell the children to ...
— Games for Everybody • May C. Hofmann
... be so hard-hearted," said I to the aunt, "as to refuse your charming niece a toy which would make her happy? Allow me to make her a present ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... was kindly cared for by the servants, and appeared the next day without any shame, bringing "a toy for missy." All my lecture was quite thrown away—she "had only taken a glass of grog in the bazaar, and they had put bang into it, so of course it made her insensible; but it was no fault of hers." This curious ...
— Sketches of Our Life at Sarawak • Harriette McDougall
... a poor bit of a toy I'd bought him at the village shop; a toy gun it was. And out he came running, as I say, Crying out something in French like 'Bad man! bad man! don't hurt my Anglish or I shoot you'; and he pointed that gun at the German soldier. The German, he took his bayonet, and he drove it right through ...
— The Angels of Mons • Arthur Machen
... can be brought into harmonious order only by wit. If one does not jest and toy with the elements of passion, it forms thick ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. IV • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... curly hair, he exhibited a cast of honesty and openness in his aspect. The other seemed to be impatient at his lingering, and growled: "Don't hang glowering here; forwards, and warn me if any one approaches, that I may cover up this toy." And whilst the monster readjusted the cowl to the face of Amanda, his comrade again pricked the panting sides of his own horse, that being lightlier laden than its fellow, easily shot ahead. And thus they swept along the road, whilst the rising breeze still ...
— The Advocate • Charles Heavysege
... the high hopes and ambitions of his splendid youth to end, at length, behind the bars of a thief's cell? Ah, those happy, bygone days, when with unbounded hope and confidence he had promised all things to the lovely creature he had wooed and won and wed in that toy village far away in the Black Forest! What was their fruition! Unhappiness, disgrace and exile for her loveliness, and finally a child for whom she paid the supreme price of death. His promises, breathed at her bedside of unwavering ...
— The Old Flute-Player - A Romance of To-day • Edward Marshall and Charles T. Dazey
... appeared to have anticipated the Christmas holidays that Questions were run through at a great pace. Mr. HOGGE, however, was in his place all right to know how it was, after all the protestations of the Government, that an official motor-car containing an officer and a lady had been seen outside a toy-shop in Regent Street. "Mark how a plain tale shall set you down," said Mr. CHURCHILL in effect. The officer was on his way from an outlying branch of the War Office to an important conference in Whitehall; the lady was his private secretary; the natural route ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 159, December 22, 1920 • Various
... possessed by a new toy each day that she has no time to master its use—naive creature lost amid ...
— Quotations from the Works of John Galsworthy • David Widger
... 'Toy thou with no man when I am gone,' he said with sudden ferocity, so that his blue eyes appeared to start from ...
— The Fifth Queen • Ford Madox Ford
... into a dark little corridor, was Lesley conducted. She noticed that Mrs. Romaine and Ethel were quite accustomed to the place. "We have often been before, you know," Ethel explained. "It's your father's hobby, you know; his doll's house, or Noah's Ark, or whatever you like to call it—his pet toy. I always call it his Noah's Ark myself. The animals walk in two by two. The men may bring their wives on Sundays. Oh, by the bye, Lesley, I hope you don't mind smoke. The men have their ...
— Brooke's Daughter - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant
... I would that he should feel a little because he cannot have the toy that has pleased his eye. What was it that he saw in me, do you think?" As she asked the question ...
— Marion Fay • Anthony Trollope
... action. Others lay plans, either to attain profit or pleasure by their execution; but your Grace's delight is to counteract your own schemes, when in the very act of performance; like a child—forgive me—that breaks its favourite toy, or a man who should set fire to the ...
— Peveril of the Peak • Sir Walter Scott
... see why property has become such a powerful instrument in civilization. Anything which a person really owns, in a psychological sense, is a home for his soul. Really owning an object, a toy, a garment, a watch or a home, means infusing one's personality into it. A man who possesses significant things has a new body through which his soul can work; this body trains his powers; and it should give him life more abundantly. A landless man must become a soulless ...
— Woman in Modern Society • Earl Barnes
... did Austin, Brian, and Basil Edwards, in their attempt to get up a buffalo dance. Each had a mat over his shoulders, and a brown paper mask over his face; two wooden pegs on a string made a very respectable pair of horns; bows and arrows were in abundance; a toy rattle and drum, with the addition of an iron spoon and a wooden trencher, supplied them with music; and neither Mandan, Pawnee, Crow, Sioux, Blackfoot, nor Camanchee, could have reasonably complained of the want of ...
— History, Manners, and Customs of the North American Indians • George Mogridge
... back toward his bug. It lacked not only top and side-curtains, but even windshield and running-board. It was a toy—a card-board box on toothpick axles. Strapped to the bulging back was a wicker suitcase partly covered by tarpaulin. From the seat ...
— Free Air • Sinclair Lewis
... old people at the poor-house, too, were waiting to see the show. The keeper's young son, knowing that it was a day of festivity, and not understanding exactly why, had put his toy flag out of the gable window, and there it showed against the gray clapboards like a gay flower. It was the only bit of decoration along the veterans' way, and they stopped and saluted it before they broke ranks and went out to the field corner beyond the poor-farm ...
— A Country Doctor and Selected Stories and Sketches • Sarah Orne Jewett
... you require rest," said Nastasia Philipovna, with the melancholy face of a child whose toy is taken away. ...
— The Idiot • (AKA Feodor Dostoevsky) Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... possibly more cruel. That both could be unkind at least, was plain enough. There was trouble and signs of inward conflict in the eyes of the mistress. The maid gave no sign of any inside to her at all, but stood watching her mistress. A child's toy was lying in a corner of ...
— Annals of a Quiet Neighbourhood • George MacDonald
... acclamations. On all sides might be seen the little people, thronging, gazing, chattering, while anxious papas and mammas in the shops were gravely discussing tin trumpets, dolls, spades, wheelbarrows, and toy wagons. ...
— The May Flower, and Miscellaneous Writings • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... half dozen or so disconsolate-looking volumes, the remainder of the set either never having been bought, or else, if bought, thrown aside, or strewn around the attic, or abandoned as a child would discard a toy which afforded ...
— Book-Lovers, Bibliomaniacs and Book Clubs • Henry H. Harper
... blue ribbon!" says another of 'em. "Why, when I was a puppy I used to eat 'em, and if that judge could ever learn to know a toy from a mastiff, I'd ...
— The Boy Scout and Other Stories for Boys • Richard Harding Davis
... would start off towards the other place right at once; he was jest that mulish and contrairy. He met Sally Ann one day, and says he, 'Jest give you women rope enough and you'll turn the house o' the Lord into a reg'lar toy-shop.' And Sally Ann she says, 'You'd better go home, Silas, and read the book of Exodus. If the Lord told Moses how to build the Tabernicle with the goats' skins and rams' skins and blue and purple and scarlet and fine linen and candlesticks with six branches, I reckon he won't object ...
— Aunt Jane of Kentucky • Eliza Calvert Hall
... power does not imply any gift of prophecy on nature's part, nor is it proof of design, or beneficent intention. It is rather one of those blind reactions to certain stimuli, tending to restore the balance of the organism, much as that interesting, new scientific toy, the gyroscope car, will respond to pressure exerted or weight placed upon one side by rising on that side, instead of tipping over. Let the onslaught of disease be sufficiently violent and unexpected, and nature will fail to respond in ...
— Preventable Diseases • Woods Hutchinson
... With all those blessings be thou clad! Honour, Beauty, Faith and Duty, Delight and Truth, With Love and Youth, Crown all about thee! and whatever Fate Impose elsewhere, whether the graver state Or some toy else, may those loud, anxious cares For dead and dying things—the common wares And shows of Time—ne'er break thy peace, nor make Thy repos'd arms to a new war awake! But freedom, safety, joy and bliss, United in one loving kiss, Surround thee quite, ...
— Poems of Henry Vaughan, Silurist, Volume II • Henry Vaughan
... and accoutrements, gather round one's principal action. I will visit the grave of a saint or of a man whom I venerate privately for his virtues and deeds, but on my way I wish to do something a little difficult to show at what a price I hold communion with his resting-place, and also on toy way I will see all I can of men and things; for anything great and worthy is but an ordinary thing transfigured, and if I am about to venerate a humanity absorbed into the divine, so it behoves me on my journey to it to enter into and delight in the divine that is hidden in everything. ...
— Hills and the Sea • H. Belloc
... and popes, and orders of nobility, who, in the progress of civilization, have reached complete equality. And did we not also see the great changes in woman's condition, the marvelous transformation in her character, from a toy in the Turkish harem, or a drudge in the German fields, to a leader of thought in the literary circles of France, England, ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume I • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... her at the moment; but her period was not to be changed to comma or semicolon; she was satisfied with the punctuation and had, so to speak, run away with the pencil! She had tossed his political aims and strifes into the air with a bewildering dismissal, and he stood like a child whose toy balloon has slipped away, half-pleased at its ...
— A Hoosier Chronicle • Meredith Nicholson
... had a taste for mischief, and could be as active in it as so many boys. When a child on Maui, Laka was so loved by his father that he would travel many miles to buy a toy for him, and hearing of a strange new plaything in Hawaii, the father sailed to that island to get it. He never returned, for the natives killed him and hid his skeleton in a cave. When Laka had come to man's estate he ...
— Myths & Legends of our New Possessions & Protectorate • Charles M. Skinner
... she thought of George Cannon's vast enigmatic projects concerning grand hotels. In passing the immense pile of St. Pancras on the way from Euston to King's Cross, George Cannon had waved his hand and said: "Look at that! Look at that! It's something after that style that I want for a toy! And I'll have it!" Yes, the lofty turrets of St. Pancras had not intimidated him. He, fresh from little Turnhill and from defeats, could rise at once to the height of them, and by the force of imagination make them ...
— Hilda Lessways • Arnold Bennett
... 'Sheart, you'll have time enough to toy after you're married, or, if you will toy now, let us have a dance in the meantime; that we who are not lovers may have some ...
— The Way of the World • William Congreve
... inconstant: it was costly, too, because at any time the labourers might be obliged to sit at the pit's mouth for weeks together, whistling for a gale or waiting for the water to be got under again. But steam had already been used for pumping upon one or two estates in England—rather as a toy than in earnest—before the middle of the seventeenth century, and the attempt to employ it was so obvious as to be practically unavoidable.[3] The water trickling into the coal measures[4] acted, therefore, like water trickling upon chemicals that have long been mixed together dry ...
— Anticipations - Of the Reaction of Mechanical and Scientific Progress upon - Human life and Thought • Herbert George Wells
... the other makes it no idol—his toy only—what shall follow this desecration of the sacred thing! What but shame, remorse, humiliation, perhaps death!—alas! for Margaret Cooper, the love which had so suddenly grown into a precious divinity with her, was no divinity with him. He is no believer. He has no faith in such things, ...
— Charlemont • W. Gilmore Simms
... How refreshing was this ingenuous girl! And what a discovery for him! A new toy—one that would last a long time. But he must be careful ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking
... mere toy knife—not at all the sort of weapon a man would make use of who designed to commit a deliberate murder. The crime, if there WAS a crime (which we do not admit), must ...
— Hilda Wade - A Woman With Tenacity Of Purpose • Grant Allen
... unawares, and gripping him by the thigh, threw him to the ground, so that he fell on his back. She laughed at him and said, "Thou art surely an eater of bran; for thou art like a Bedouin bonnet, that falls at a touch, or a child's toy, that a puff of air overturns. Out on thee, thou poor creature! Go back to the army of the Muslims and send us other than thyself, for thou lackest thews, and cry us among the Arabs and Persians and Turks ...
— The Book Of The Thousand Nights And One Night, Volume II • Anonymous
... most," said Harold. "She wants that set of tea-things in the toy-shop window, with the red and blue flowers on 'em; she's wanted it for months, 'cos her dolls are getting big enough to have real afternoon tea; and she wants it so badly that she won't walk that side of the street when we go into the town. But ...
— The Golden Age • Kenneth Grahame
... here and there as if to give to Fates a chance to keep him if they would. Yes, Sheila Melrose was a little idiot. Why couldn't she realize that she was but one of the hundreds with whom he flirted day by day? She was nothing to him but a pastime—a toy to amuse his wayward mood. He had outgrown his earlier propensity to break his toys when he had done with them. The sight of a broken toy ...
— Charles Rex • Ethel M. Dell
... the road were leaving their homes as fast as they could. One little procession will always stand out in my mind. In front one small boy of about six years old was pulling a toy cart in which two younger children were packed. Behind followed the mother with a large bundle on her back. Then came the father with a still bigger one. There they were trudging along, leaving their home (p. 070) behind with its happy memories, to go forth ...
— The Great War As I Saw It • Frederick George Scott
... may be fewer than in the case of most kings, because he is more hard to please. Of such I cannot complain, as this is according to the customs of our country. I fear only one thing—namely that some woman, ceasing to be his toy, may take Seti's heart and make him altogether hers. In this matter, Scribe Ana, as in others I ask your help, since I would be queen of Egypt in all ways, not in ...
— Moon of Israel • H. Rider Haggard
... it, the wooden spoon ready in his hand, while the others, except the Banker, stood behind him. The figure of the Chemist, standing motionless near the edge of the handkerchief, seemed now like a little white wooden toy, hardly more than an ...
— The Girl in the Golden Atom • Raymond King Cummings
... that long to settle down in their new house and into some semblance of a routine—two days to the actual installation, and the evenings full of small matters to arrange. Nan was busy all day long playing with her new toy. The housekeeping was fascinating, and Wing Sam a mixture of delight and despair. Like most women who have led the sheltered life, she had not realized as yet that the customs of her own fraction of one per cent, were not immutable. Therefore, she ...
— The Gray Dawn • Stewart Edward White
... it now in earnest, Because I toy'd too freely with the thought! Accursed he who dallies with a devil! And must I—I must realize it now— Now, while I have the power, it must ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. III • Kuno Francke (Editor-in-Chief)
... who, with an innocent smile, greeted the approaching monster of destruction as if it were some great, pleasing toy. Ralph's heart was in ...
— Ralph on the Engine - The Young Fireman of the Limited Mail • Allen Chapman
... some marks of real or of pretended affection, unless she wished to make a show of a modesty which certainly did not belong to her, and, knowing that her modesty would only be all pretence, I was determined not to be a mere toy ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... good looks, you were born a lady; you have a foolish heart—the fond are foolish." She watched the girl keenly, the hand ceased to toy with the lace, and caught the arm ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... and I stepped upon solid ground close to the wall, which half way up seemed fifty feet away. The opening above now looked like a small pale moon, and the next man who came dangling down to join us looked no bigger than a toy soldier. Gradually our eyes became accustomed to the twilight, and by the time our party was increased to six men, I could see ...
— Cave Regions of the Ozarks and Black Hills • Luella Agnes Owen
... cover, and part of a tea-set. On another, that of a grown person, is a long pipe with a paper of tobacco, medicine boxes with powders. A little further away we find one on which is a tooth-brush, ten medicine bottles, two lamps, a basket filled with sand, vases, tumblers, a toy boat made out of bark, and pieces of glassware. Among other decorations we find a ball and bat, pitchers, bits of colored glass, pill boxes, teapots, etc. But it is already growing dark, and Maud is anxious ...
— American Missionary, Volume 44, No. 6, June, 1890 • Various
... March, petitions were offered to the house by the merchants of Birmingham in Warwickshire, and Sheffield in Yorkshire, specifying that the toy trade of these and many other towns consisted generally of articles in which gold and silver might be said to be manufactured, though in a small proportion, inasmuch as the sale of them depended upon slight ornaments of gold and silver: that by a clause passed ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.II. - From William and Mary to George II. • Tobias Smollett
... dupe, gull, delude, hoodwink, deceive, hoax, trick, beguile, victimize, cully; trifle, toy, dawdle. ...
— Putnam's Word Book • Louis A. Flemming
... I catch on, makes a grade, doesn't it? Just the thing to amuse a child, isn't it? I got Willy a toy aeroplane." ...
— Frenzied Fiction • Stephen Leacock
... fountain, children and white-capped nurses armed with bamboo poles were pushing toy boats, whose sails hung limp in the sunshine. A dark policeman, wearing red epaulettes and a dress sword, watched them for a while and then went away to remonstrate with a young man who had unchained his dog. The dog was pleasantly occupied in rubbing grass and dirt into his back while ...
— The King In Yellow • Robert W. Chambers
... did toy, Children, with you, when I was child, And in each other's eyes we smiled: Not yours, not yours the grievous-fair Apparelling With which you wet mine eyes; you wear, Ah me, the garment of the grace I wove you ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 3 (of 4) • Various
... masquerade, when he came forward with hideous grin, and made what he considered his bow,—which consisted in thrusting his head forward and bobbing it up and down several times, his body remaining perfectly upright and stiff, like a toy mandarin ...
— Reminiscences of Captain Gronow • Rees Howell Gronow
... prison, Kaspar, who asked to be taken home, adopted the role of 'a semi-unconscious animal,' playing with toy horses, 'blind though he saw,' yet, not long after, he wrote a minute account of all that he had then observed. He could only eat bread and water: meat made him shudder, and Lord Stanhope says that this peculiarity did ...
— Historical Mysteries • Andrew Lang
... the middle of the table, on which the chestnuts were spread, a small earthenware furnace—a delightful toy, commonly used by children in Paris to ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. 6 • Maria Edgeworth
... again. So close was the pursuit, however, that they were forced to leave the portmanteau in the cloak-room at Paddington Station, where it was discovered and opened. It contained a highly curious clock-work toy, and enough dynamite to raze St. Paul's to the ground. Even without exploding, it converted ...
— The Astonishing History of Troy Town • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... a toy for the dalliance of his idle hours, he employed several spies, and almost every day made a tour of the public places in person, with a view of procuring intelligence of Mr. Hornbeck, with whose wife he longed to have another interview. In this course of ...
— The Adventures of Peregrine Pickle, Volume I • Tobias Smollett
... out differently from what was anticipated. It is an infinitely higher and holier and nobler thing than our childhood fancied. The world that lay before us then was but a tinsel toy to the world which our firm feet tread. We have entered into the undiscovered land. We have explored its ways of pleasantness, its depths of dole, its mountains of difficulty, its valleys of delight, and, behold! it is very good. ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 11, No. 63, January, 1863 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... spindle of the sledge-meter. The mechanism of the latter had frozen during the previous day's halt, and, on being started, its spindle had broken off short. It was a long and tedious job tapping at the steed with a toy hammer, but the rivet held miraculously for the rest of ...
— The Home of the Blizzard • Douglas Mawson
... tassels and arm-supporters, on the window of which was pasted a poster with the word reserved in large, red letters. The guard inquired respectfully, as the porter put our new luggage in the racks, whether we had everything we wanted. The toy locomotive blew its toy whistle, and we were off for the north; past dingy, yellow tenements of the smoking factory towns, and stretches of orderly, hedge-spaced rain-swept country. The quaint cottages we glimpsed, the sight of distant, stately mansions ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... or "tangram" ordinarily means a toy or gimcrack, or trumpery article. Cf. Wycherley (Plain Dealer, iii. 1), "But go, thou trangram, and carry back those trangrams which thou hast stolen or purloined." Apparently "trangum" here ...
— The Journal to Stella • Jonathan Swift
... placed a present for the child before him. She had put it conveniently in her pocket, so that she could place her hand on it at once. It was a toy that had been Peterli's favorite before any other,—a pine-cone, with a thin wire introduced into each little opening between the hard scales, and a little figure, made of sole-leather, perched on the top of each bit ...
— Rico And Wiseli - Rico And Stineli, And How Wiseli Was Provided For • Johanna Spyri
... when the doorbell rings, The girl knocks at the door. "An' is the doctor in?" she sings, A dozen times or more. "Good-by, old man!" he says. "That bell Means business. Here's your toy!" And off he goes. I'll never tell He's ...
— A Jolly Jingle-Book • Various
... couldn't learn or hardly even speak was, that there was a great worm inside it eating out all its brains. But even they are no foolisher than some hundred score of papas and mammas, who fetch the rod when they ought to fetch a new toy, and send to the dark cupboard instead ...
— The Water-Babies - A Fairy Tale for a Land-Baby • Charles Kingsley
... pleasure that nothing in the wide world now prevented me from getting a whistle and seeing whether I had forgotten my early cunning. At the very first good-sized town I came to I was delighted to find at a little candy and toy shop just the sort of whistle I wanted, at the extravagant price of ten cents. I bought it and put it in the ...
— The Friendly Road - New Adventures in Contentment • (AKA David Grayson) Ray Stannard Baker
... and ready now to weigh, A spy was sent their summons to convey: An artist to my father's palace came, With gold and amber chains, elaborate frame: Each female eye the glittering links employ; They turn, review, and cheapen every toy. He took the occasion, as they stood intent, Gave her the sign, and to his vessel went. She straight pursued, and seized my willing arm; I follow'd, smiling, innocent of harm. Three golden goblets ...
— The Odyssey of Homer • Homer, translated by Alexander Pope
... austere, Who only in evil hath joy, Would scorn to take body and gear For my soul, that sweet beautiful toy. ...
— Marsk Stig's Daughters - and other Songs and Ballads - - - Translator: George Borrow • Thomas J. Wise
... critics who severally think that it rests with each one of them what shall be accounted good, and what bad. They all mistake their own toy-trumpets ...
— The Art of Literature • Arthur Schopenhauer
... too, to mark them all with one's name, so they may never be mistaken for any other little boy's property, and to make a place for a new toy or two, though if you are wise you will not buy many playthings now, but will save them to send later, one by one, by parcel post, to be received with a joy it is a pity you cannot be there to see, it will be so out of proportion to any other pleasure ...
— What the Mother of a Deaf Child Ought to Know • John Dutton Wright
... What we value most are his paintings of these festive scenes, and the vivid portraits which he has left of the Valois women, who were largely responsible for the luxuries and the crimes of the period: women who could step without a tremor from a court-masque to a massacre; who could toy with a gallant's ribbons and direct the blow of an assassin; and who could poison a rival with a delicately perfumed gift. Such a court Brantome calls the "true paradise of the world, school of all honesty and virtue, ornament of France." We like to hear about Catherine ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 6 • Various
... days I realise the greatness of Paragot's self-control. In his domestic habits he was less a human being than a mechanical toy. At half past eight every morning he entered the breakfast-room. At half past nine he went into the town to get shaved. Had he an appointment with Joanna, he was there to the minute. He clothed himself in what he considered were orthodox garments. He even folded up ...
— The Beloved Vagabond • William J. Locke
... velvet-soft slopes beyond. It was all very pretty, they said. It was a trifle common-place, perhaps; there were a good many hotels and little excursion steamers about; and perhaps here and there a suggestion of the toy-shop. But it was pretty. Indeed, towards sunset, it was very nearly becoming something more. Then the colours in the skies deepened; in the shadows below the villages were lost altogether; and the mountains, growing more and more sombre under the rich gold above ...
— The Beautiful Wretch; The Pupil of Aurelius; and The Four Macnicols • William Black
... not beat about the bush," said Donovan, smiling. "Would you at all care to have this small animal? I knew you were fond of dogs, and Gladys and I saw this little toy Esquimanx the other day and fell in love with him. I find though that another dog rather hurts Waif's feelings, so you will be doing a kindness to him as well ...
— We Two • Edna Lyall
... at the invaluable toy which the young girl had tantalisingly placed close to his hand: then he forced himself to look all round the coffee-room: at Polly, at the waitresses, at the piles of pallid buns upon the counter. But, involuntarily, his mild blue eyes wandered back lovingly to the long ...
— The Old Man in the Corner • Baroness Orczy
... had reckoned; but it was more than an hour. For soon the world was blotted out by a howling dervish of wind and driven snow that time and time again snatched the amphibian from Ken's control and hurled it high, or threw it down like a toy toward the inferno of sea and ice he knew lay beneath. He fought for altitude, for direction, pitched from side to side, tumbled forward and back, gaining a few hundred feet only to feel them plucked breathtakingly out from under him as the ...
— Under Arctic Ice • H.G. Winter
... the dugout cleverly around the grassy bends of the tiny stream and under the willows. It was like a toy boat on a fairy river. Sometimes the willows interlaced overhead, making a romantic green tunnel ...
— The Huntress • Hulbert Footner
... were three French officers en route to Brazzaville, the capital of the French Congo, and a dog, a sad mongrel, very dirty, very hungry. On each side of the tiny toy car were six revolving-chairs, so the four men, not to speak of the dog, quite filled it. And to our own bulk each added hand-bags, cases of beer, helmets, gun-cases, cameras, water-bottles, and, as the road does not supply food of any kind, ...
— The Congo and Coasts of Africa • Richard Harding Davis
... of the general laughter, Sydney silently placed a new toy (a pretty little imitation of a jeweler's casket) at Kitty's side, and drew back before the child could look at her. Mrs. Presty was the only person present who noticed her pale face and the trembling of her hands as she made the ...
— The Evil Genius • Wilkie Collins
... boisterous young striplings assume a quiet, prayerful calm. The children's play-pretties—the poppet, a make-believe corn-shuck doll—the banjo, and fiddle are put aside. In the corner of the room is placed a pine tree. It stands unadorned with tinsel or toy. On the night of January 6th, just before midnight, the family gathers about the hearth. Granny leads in singing the ancient Cherry Tree Carol, sometimes called Joseph and Mary, which celebrates January 6th as ...
— Blue Ridge Country • Jean Thomas
... being, like Blue-beard's wives, suspended by their hair. Every nationality and every degree of mutilation was there represented, and the effect was funny beyond description. On the broad mantel-shelf over the stone fireplace reposed drums, merry-go-rounds, trumpets and toy horses; while on the hearth was a tiny kitchen range bearing a complete assortment of pots and pans of a most diminutive size. In every available nook of the room stood doll-carriages, rocking-horses, go-carts and fire-engines, ...
— Blue Bonnet's Ranch Party • C. E. Jacobs
... of dinner, with its eagerly attendant Tony, rather stirred her, and the mirror had everything delightful to say. Like all women of forty, Isabelle liked the night, tempered lights and becoming settings, and the dignity of formal entertaining. Last but not least, she had a new toy to-night, a great black fan of uncurled wild ostrich plumes whose tumbled beauty she waved about her slowly as Harriet came in, watching the effect in the mirror with ...
— Harriet and the Piper - (Norris Volume XI) • Kathleen Norris
... excellence, and left behind him some enduring monument of his powers,' 'He lacked, however,' he tells us, 'one thing, the want of which is but too often fatal to the sons of genius, and without which genius is little more than a splendid toy in the hands of the possessor—perseverance, dogged perseverance.' It is when he is thus commenting on his brother's characteristics that Borrow gives his own fine if narrow eulogy of Old Crome. John Borrow seems to have continued ...
— George Borrow and His Circle - Wherein May Be Found Many Hitherto Unpublished Letters Of - Borrow And His Friends • Clement King Shorter
... that he who fancied himself a man of the world knew nothing of the world except its shams? Was she right in her statement that love was a bond between two spirits, a bond unbreakable by death? That old idea was not new to him, he had played with it as a toy of the mind constructed for the mind to ...
— The Beach of Dreams • H. De Vere Stacpoole
... Wonderful effects of light and shadow, picturesque masses, composed of detached buildings so far distant that they seemed huddled together; grim factories turned to beautiful palaces by the dazzling reflection of sunlight from their window-panes; great ships seeming in the distance to be toy-boats floating idly;—with no sign of life perceptible, the whole scene recalled the fairy stories, read in my youthful days, of enchanted cities, and the illusion was greatly strengthened by the dragon-like shape of the ...
— Helen's Babies • John Habberton
... have I to think that any woman will suit me? or what chance is there that any woman will make me happy? Is it not all leather and prunella? She is pretty and clever, soft and feminine. Where shall I find a nicer toy to play with? You forget, Arthur, that I have had my day-dreams, and been roused from them somewhat roughly. With you, the pleasure is still ...
— The Bertrams • Anthony Trollope
... one of his early reviews as the 'spurious style of tawdry and affected simplicity which trickles through the legendary ditties' of the eighteenth century. 'The hunt is up' in earnest; and we are chasing the tall deer in the open hills, not coursing rabbits with toy ...
— Sir Walter Scott - Famous Scots Series • George Saintsbury
... so? Did you think that your soul was a mere trinket which for a few pennies you could buy in a toy shop? Did you think that your soul, if once lost, might be found again if you went out with torches and lanterns? Did you think that your soul was short-lived, and that, panting, it would soon lie down for extinction? Or had ...
— New Tabernacle Sermons • Thomas De Witt Talmage
... Britons. As the worthy woman was a most indifferent French scholar, we were often hurried away quite unnecessarily from the most innocuous performances when our faithful watch-dog scented the approach of "something French." All the shops attracted us, but especially the delightful toy-shops. Here, again, we were seldom allowed to linger, our trusty guardian being obsessed with the idea that the toy-shops might include amongst their wares "something French." She was perfectly right; there WAS often something ...
— The Days Before Yesterday • Lord Frederick Hamilton
... whittled from a block of wood and trimmed with infinite pains,—sloops, schooners, brigs, and full-rigged ships, with their sails and string ropes properly adjusted and named for us by some old sailor. These precious toy craft with lead keels we learned to sail on a pond near the town. With the sails set at the proper angle to the wind, they made fast straight voyages across the pond to boys on the other side, who readjusted the sails and started them back on the return voyages. Oftentimes ...
— The Story of My Boyhood and Youth • John Muir
... small pressure tank of hydrogen inside—one of the little ones that are sometimes used to fill toy balloons. There was a small batch of electronic circuitry that looked as though it might be the insides of ...
— With No Strings Attached • Gordon Randall Garrett (AKA David Gordon)
... ward. You cannot imagine how pretty they were. Each patient began the day with a sock that was hung to the foot of his bed by the night nurses. In each was an orange, a small bag of sweets, nuts and raisins, a handkerchief, pencil, tooth brush, pocket comb and a small toy that pleased them almost more than anything else, and which they at once passed on to their children. They had a fine dinner—jam, stewed rabbit, peas, plum pudding, fruit, nuts, raisins and sweets. The plum puddings were ...
— 'My Beloved Poilus' • Anonymous
... toy wagon, sold it for six dollars, managed to gather four dollars more, invested the ten dollars in lottery tickets, and drew only blanks, of which experience he said many years later, "I consider it one of the best investments of my life; for I then learned that it was not my forte ...
— Peter Cooper - The Riverside Biographical Series, Number 4 • Rossiter W. Raymond
... down into his pocket. He drew out the big pocket knife he carried. It was more of a tool than a whittling toy, for he used it in tinkering ...
— Dave Dashaway and his Hydroplane • Roy Rockwood
... drama in India. In India, at the beginning of the Christian era, there was a development of drama of a high character. The one called the Clay-waggon (a child's toy) is described as of very great literary merit,—realistic, graphic, and Shakespearean in its artistic representation of life.[2078] Every drama which has that character must be in and of the mores. In the Clay-waggon the ...
— Folkways - A Study of the Sociological Importance of Usages, Manners, Customs, Mores, and Morals • William Graham Sumner
... over they had to learn a few things from the British. We had first to get rid of some childish ideas about depth charges. We brought over a toy size of 50 to 60 pounds. They showed us a man's size one—300 pounds of T N T, a contraption looking so much like a galvanized iron ash-barrel with flattened sides that they call ...
— The U-boat hunters • James B. Connolly
... bookstalls and stopped short and stared with unseeing eyes at the display of popular literature. He was wondering now whether after all he ought to have let her go. He experienced something of the blank amazement of a child who has burst its toy balloon. His golden globe of satisfaction in an instant had gone. An irrational sense of loss was flooding every other feeling about V.V. If she had loved him truly and altogether could she have left him like this? ...
— The Secret Places of the Heart • H. G. Wells
... was no toy, and he who owned it bought it with his life. Nay, Sir Walter, I am of your mind. Most charts are playthings from the devil. But this was in manner of speaking sent from God. Only we did not read it right. We were blind men ...
— The Path of the King • John Buchan
... hoped it would be soon, but she was content with her new toy, which was English bottled ale, and I left her eating daintily and sipping the foam from her toilette glass with satisfaction. I returned to the music-room and joined the company; and, after a little, silence ...
— Hurricane Island • H. B. Marriott Watson
... who it belonged to we never discovered. Probably some toy balloon let up by Christmas Eve revellers, who little thought it would alight on the roof of Jolliffe's, and after flopping about there for some minutes would finally tumble into the court below, and there act the part of Bubbles to a ...
— Boycotted - And Other Stories • Talbot Baines Reed
... Spiders feed in a similar way, bleeding their venison and drinking it instead of eating it. At last, however, in the comfortable post-prandial hours, they take up the drained morsel, chew it, rechew it and reduce it to a shapeless ball. It is a dessert for the teeth to toy with. The Labyrinth Spider knows nothing of the diversions of the table; she flings the drained remnants out of her web, without chewing them. Although it lasts long, the meal is eaten in perfect safety. From the first bite, the Locust ...
— The Life of the Spider • J. Henri Fabre
... is a very small and slight weapon, nickel-plated, with six chambers. It is so light as to resemble a toy." ...
— The Hand in the Dark • Arthur J. Rees
... and stopped to look in upon the windows of the toy-shops; but the toy-carts, and those wonderful witches, who would always stand on their heads, had no charm for her longer. Her heart was saddened, and when she tried to strike out gay tunes, they would not come—only ...
— The Angel Children - or, Stories from Cloud-Land • Charlotte M. Higgins
... overcome the innocent child? Come, be ready to perform for me the task I will tell thee of, and I will give thee Zeus' all-beauteous plaything—the one which his dear nurse Adrasteia made for him, while he still lived a child, with childish ways, in the Idaean cave—a well-rounded ball; no better toy wilt thou get from the hands of Hephaestus. All of gold are its zones, and round each double seams run in a circle; but the stitches are hidden, and a dark blue spiral overlays them all. But if thou shouldst cast it with ...
— The Argonautica • Apollonius Rhodius
... after she had taken the veil, though from time to time they assumed religious equivalents. The mere contact, indeed, of a priest's hand, the news of the presentation of an ecclesiastic she had known to a bishopric, the sight of an ape, the contemplation of the crucified Christ, the figure of a toy, the picture of a demon, the act of defecation in the children entrusted to her care (whom, on this account, and against the regulations, she would accompany to the closets), especially the sight and the mere recollection of flies in sexual connection—all ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 5 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... path during life, but I confess I rather fail to see what connection there is between this fish and such an energetic youth. On this day the boys have dolls representative of Japanese heroes and personages of the past as well as toy swords and toy armour. On the girls' festival—the Feast of Dolls—there is no outward and visible display. The fact of a girl having been born in the family is not considered a matter to be boasted of. On this feast there is a great display indoors of dolls. As a matter of fact dolls form ...
— The Empire of the East • H. B. Montgomery
... say he is! I wish he belonged to me." The black eyes grew very wistful and the brown face unusually sober as she examined this new toy, this live toy that could really play with its little mistress and understand, at least in a measure, whatever was said ...
— Tabitha at Ivy Hall • Ruth Alberta Brown
... and clear, the shadow of death has not yet dimmed their light. They turn slowly, very slowly, and, just glancing at the toy-strewn table, rest upon his brother's face. Oh! what is that look within them that chills the warm life-current, and makes him cold and shivering in the heat of that summer day, as ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol. 5, No. 6, June, 1864 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... palace windows; lengthening our necks a little, as we look up toward the Salute, we see all Venice, on the July afternoon, so serried as to move slowly, pour across the temporary footway. It is a flock of very good children, and the bridged Canal is their toy. All Venice on such occasions is gentle and friendly; not even all Venice pushes anyone into ...
— Italian Hours • Henry James
... my own for I had loaned him my three-barrel gun (12 gauge and .303 Savage) and he was as excited as a child with a new toy. He was a remarkably intelligent man and mastered the safety catches in a short time even though he had never before seen ...
— Camps and Trails in China - A Narrative of Exploration, Adventure, and Sport in Little-Known China • Roy Chapman Andrews and Yvette Borup Andrews
... savoyard amused a German populace; and the celebrated Sir Richard Arkwright is said to have conceived the idea of the spinning machines, which have so largely contributed to the prosperity of the cotton manufactories in this country, from a toy which he purchased for his child from an itinerant showman. These deceptions have, besides, acted as an agreeable and most powerful antidote to superstition, and to that popular belief in miracles, conjuration, sorcery, and witchcraft, which preyed upon the minds of our ancestors; ...
— Thaumaturgia • An Oxonian
... swelling, her stature seeming to grow taller every moment, as she clenched her weapons firmly in both her hands. Beautiful as she always was, she had never looked so beautiful before; and as Amyas spoke of parting with her, it was like throwing away a lovely toy; but it must be done, for her sake, for his, perhaps for ...
— Westward Ho! • Charles Kingsley
... some have great aversion to machinery. Let a dozen boys of ten years get together, and you will soon observe two or three are "whittling" out some ingenious device; working with locks or complicated machinery. When they were but five years old, their father could find no toy to please them like a puzzle. They are natural mechanics; but the other eight or nine boys have different aptitudes. I belong to the latter class; I never had the slightest love for mechanism; on the contrary, I have ...
— The Art of Money Getting - or, Golden Rules for Making Money • P. T. Barnum
... on, Dicky, at intervals of five minutes, calling everybody's attention to its beauties. There were favors at each plate, each a joke of some sort on the person who received it. Every one held up his toy for the rest to see and each provoked ...
— Ethel Morton's Holidays • Mabell S. C. Smith
... valiant faculty is hope, that in a mortal subject, and in a moment, makes nothing of usurping infinity, immensity, eternity, and of supplying its master's indigence, at its pleasure, with all things he can imagine or desire! Nature has given us this passion for a pretty toy to play withal. And this Peter or William, what is it but a sound, when all is done? or three or four dashes with a pen, so easy to be varied that I would fain know to whom is to be attributed the glory of ...
— The Essays of Montaigne, Complete • Michel de Montaigne
... stalls, established precisely opposite the Thenardiers' door, was a toy-shop all glittering with tinsel, glass, and magnificent objects of tin. In the first row, and far forwards, the merchant had placed on a background of white napkins, an immense doll, nearly two feet high, who was dressed ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo
... Master Varney," said Foster; "the living I fear not, but I trifle not nor toy with my dead neighbours of the churchyard. I promise you, it requires a good heart to live so near it. Worthy Master Holdforth, the afternoon's lecturer of Saint Antonlin's, had a sore fright there the last time he ...
— Kenilworth • Sir Walter Scott
... twenty-third month his joy at seeing again his playthings after an absence of eleven and a half weeks (with his parents) was very lively, great as was the child's forgetfulness in other respects at this period. A favorite toy could often be taken from him without its being noticed or once asked for. But when the child—in his eighteenth month—after having been accustomed to bring to his mother two towels which he would afterward carry back to their ...
— The Mind of the Child, Part II • W. Preyer
... Celluloid Doll, who was lying on the work bench next to the wax toy. "Some one must ...
— The Story of a Plush Bear • Laura Lee Hope |
