"Fillip" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... season, interval; catch, clasp; fillip, crack, smack, fico; (Collog.) energy, briskness, ...
— Putnam's Word Book • Louis A. Flemming
... of late years renders it far more hazardous to bid on the faith of the printed descriptions, and there is, in fact, greater danger for the novice in the elaborate rehearsal of the title and the accompanying fillip in the shape of a note (usually erroneous) than the good old-fashioned plan of setting out the particulars briefly—even illiterately; for in the latter case the burden of discovering the exact truth is thrown on the customer or acquirer. We must say that few things are less satisfactory ...
— The Book-Collector • William Carew Hazlitt
... skipped in and out in high feather,—occasionally pinching Sally's cheek, and asking if she were going as captain or mate upon the vessel after it was launched, for which he got in return a fillip of his sleeve or a sly twitch of his coat-tails, for Sally and her old father were on romping terms with each other from early childhood, a thing which drew frequent lectures from the always exhorting ...
— The Pearl of Orr's Island - A Story of the Coast of Maine • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... with a fillip, and gave himself tip to the lecture. But the tall stranger, half rising with ...
— Paul Clifford, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... assert itself. For a time the Irishman kept himself fully awake and alert by pushing the 956 to the ragged edge of hazard, scurrying over the short tangents and lifting her around the curves in breath-taking spurts. Later this expedient began to lose its fillip. Since the train was running wholly on the air-brakes there was nothing for the fireman to do, and Jackson, the loyalest understudy Gallagher had ever known, tumbled from his box in a doze, staggered ...
— Empire Builders • Francis Lynde
... manners and speech of white people, by living almost exclusively with them, and she was, by habit, as familiar with French as English, beside having a little smattering of Spanish. To have his ingenuity praised by her operated as a fillip upon his vanity, and he inwardly resolved to run the risk of a flogging, rather than fail to do her bidding. He was also most loyal in the service of Rosa, whose beauty and kindliness had won his heart, before his sympathy ...
— A Romance of the Republic • Lydia Maria Francis Child
... interference with the regular and legitimate working of its functions, may throw the whole machine out of gear, just as the sudden quickening of an engine's motions will, probably, cause it to break down or turn it off the line; while, on the other hand, a wholesome tonic, or fillip, judiciously administered when occasion seems to demand it, like our shower-bath, may often better enable it to discharge its duties and go all the more smoothly and easily—as a tiny touch of the oil-can will affect the movements of man's mammoth mechanical ...
— She and I, Volume 1 • John Conroy Hutcheson
... cyclopean proportions, deluging us with rain and overwhelming us with wind. Then there were treacherous squalls that went boldly astern and sneaked back upon us from a mile to leeward. Again, two squalls would tear along, one on each side of us, and we would get a fillip from each of them. Now a gale certainly grows tiresome after a few hours, but squalls never. The thousandth squall in one's experience is as interesting as the first one, and perhaps a bit more so. It is the tyro who has no apprehension of them. The man of a thousand squalls respects a squall. ...
— The Cruise of the Snark • Jack London
... fillip. It is disgraceful to try and make me eat more than I do already. I am getting hideously stout. I found my maid in tears to-night because I positively could not get into ...
— A Prince of Sinners • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... after characterizing all use of tobacco or snuff, in any form, as both vulgar and filthy, he adds: 'Besides, snuff-takers are generally very dull and shallow people, and have recourse to it merely as a fillip to the brain; by all means, therefore, avoid the filthy custom.' This censure, though rather severe, is equally applicable ...
— The Young Man's Guide • William A. Alcott
... teeth together, and gave him a fillip on the head. "You heartless fellow!" she cried. "You're like the dog, that bit L T'ung-pin. You have no idea of ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book II • Cao Xueqin
... to death, the monkey obeyed, and the tortoise trotted off to the sea, swam to the spot over the Queen's palace, and in a fillip of the finger was down in the ...
— Japanese Fairy World - Stories from the Wonder-Lore of Japan • William Elliot Griffis
... the fence. I have not been honored with any such intimate association with the German Emperor as would enable me to say whether he has a highly developed sense of humor or not. I can only say for myself, that if I had lived through his Majesty's last twenty-five years, I should need no other fillip to digestion than my chuckles over the ...
— Germany and the Germans - From an American Point of View (1913) • Price Collier
... It was not only Bob Evers who was misconstruing my little attentions to Mrs. Lascelles. I was more or less prepared for that. But here were outsiders talking about us—the three of us! So far from putting a stop to the talk, I had given it a regular fillip: here were Quinby and his friends as keen as possible to see what would happen next, if not betting on a row. The situation had taken a sudden turn for the worse. I forgot the pleasant hours that I had passed with Mrs. Lascelles, and began to wish myself well out of the ...
— No Hero • E.W. Hornung
... "The substance of the Criticisms on the Diversions of Purley was, with singular industry, gossipped by the present precious secretary of war, in Payne the bookseller's shop."—See Key. "Worship makes worshipped, worshipper, worshipping; gossip, gossipped, gossipper, gossipping; fillip, fillipped, fillipper, fillipping."—Nixon's Parser, p. 72. "I became as fidgetty as a fly in a milk-jug."—Blackwood's Mag., Vol. xl, p. 674. "That enormous error seems to be rivetted in popular opinion."—Webster's ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown
... escaping the trucks and wagons of the cobbles, dashed across at a veritable gallop, flung themselves panting into the entrance of the Board, were engulfed in the turmoil of the spot, and disappeared with a sudden fillip into the ...
— The Pit • Frank Norris
... something hidden, about him, and in a way this had added to her interest in him. It had seized hold of her imagination, kept him vividly before her mind as nothing else could have done, and now Olga Lermontof's strange hints and innuendos gave a fresh fillip to her desire to know in what way Max Errington ...
— The Splendid Folly • Margaret Pedler
... want? A princess of the blood? Apparently not! She wants instead a fortune-teller, a madcap like Ydo Carrothers. She spent the whole time this morning telling me how charming and fascinating Ydo was and what a fillip she gave to life. I told her frankly that I had been very thoroughly acquainted with Miss Ydo Carrothers from her youth up, and that she would be a handful for any one. I'd as lief undertake to chaperone a cyclone. ...
— The Silver Butterfly • Mrs. Wilson Woodrow
... be regretted, when rage caused him utterly to lose control of his wits. And, though he was startled and not exactly pleased, he was not in a rage now. The eyelashes and the figure gave an agreeable fillip to his humour. Howsoever she had come, she ...
— The Shuttle • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... of the rival houses were trembling in the balance. The first decisive, advantage to either would give a prestige and fillip to that cause which might be absolutely fatal to the hopes of the other. If it were true that some battle were being fought or about to be fought that very day, such a battle might be either the death blow to all their hopes or the earnest of a ...
— In the Wars of the Roses - A Story for the Young • Evelyn Everett-Green
... of you from Mr. Pulham this morning, and that gave a fillip to my laziness, which has been intolerable; but I am so taken up with pruning and gardening,—quite a new sort of occupation to me. I have gathered my jargonels; but my Windsor pears are backward. The former were ...
— The Best Letters of Charles Lamb • Charles Lamb
... "Nothing wins a woman of the world so quickly as the unexpected. The unexpected adds to the ancient lure of curiosity the touch of tartness that gives life to a jaded palate. Satiated women are the most grateful for such a fillip, and once a woman's grateful, she's generous. A generous man will give a beggar a copper, but a generous woman will give away all her coppers, and throw in herself for ...
— Through stained glass • George Agnew Chamberlain
... and the little irritation caused by the well-meant suggestion throws him back for the next six hours. Presently he tries Macaulay, whom some flatterer has fulsomely called 'as good as a novel,' but, though the trial of Warren Hastings gives him a fillip, the rout of Sedgemoor does away with the effect of it, and, happening upon the character of Halifax, he suffers a severe relapse. As a bedfellow, Macaulay is too declamatory, though, at the same time, strange to say, he does not always succeed in keeping one awake. To the ...
— Some Private Views • James Payn
... by Bella's declaration that she would not quarrel, or whether her spitefulness was evoked by Bella's return to the sphere of Mr George Sampson's courtship, or whether it was a necessary fillip to her spirits that she should come into collision with somebody on the present occasion,—anyhow she made a dash at her stately parent now, ...
— Our Mutual Friend • Charles Dickens
... Her words were a fillip to the Ranger. They sent a glow through his blood. He knew that at that moment she was not thinking of the ...
— Oh, You Tex! • William Macleod Raine
... contrary, it is said that they appeared more than ever exasperated. Nevertheless, my stray visits to Titbull's since the date of this occurrence, have confirmed me in an impression that it was a wholesome fillip. The nine ladies are smarter, both in mind and dress, than they used to be, though it must be admitted that they despise the six gentlemen to the last extent. They have a much greater interest in the external thoroughfare too, than they had when I first knew Titbull's. And whenever ...
— The Uncommercial Traveller • Charles Dickens
... of conversation the general gave an anecdote of himself in early life, when serving under Prince Eugene. Sitting at table once in company with a prince of Wurtemberg, the latter gave a fillip to a glass of wine, so as to make some of it fly in Oglethorpe's face. The manner in which it was done was somewhat equivocal. How was it to be taken by the stripling officer? If seriously, he must challenge the prince; but in so doing he might fix on himself the character of a drawcansir. ...
— Oliver Goldsmith • Washington Irving
... mode of life or rule, But nothing 'gainst the truth of that brief record. Why, those few lines contain the history Of all things human: hear—"Sardanapalus, The king, and son of Anacyndaraxes, 250 In one day built Anchialus and Tarsus. Eat, drink, and love; the rest's not worth a fillip."[10] ...
— The Works of Lord Byron - Poetry, Volume V. • Lord Byron
... Hospital; the 110th Indian Field Ambulance; "C" Section of No. 24 British Indian Hospital; ate a hearty lunch; inspected 1st Australian Stationary Hospital. Walking round a Hospital and seeing whether things are clean and bright is a treat but trying to cheer people up and give a fillip to all good works—that implies an expenditure of something vital and leaves a man, after a few hours, ...
— Gallipoli Diary, Volume 2 • Ian Hamilton
... family had taken their seals by a form of smoking cornbread, was the simple fare set forth. But the early rising, and two hours of work, brought hunger to the table which required nothing more elaborate as a fillip to ...
— Janice Meredith • Paul Leicester Ford
... FALSTAFF. If I do, fillip me with a three-man beetle. A man can no more separate age and covetousness than 'a can part young limbs and lechery: but the gout galls the one, and the pox pinches the other; and so both the ...
— King Henry IV, Second Part • William Shakespeare [Chiswick edition]
... the Chamber had grown thin, the candles had burned an inch shorter in the sconces. But though many who had been there had left, the more select remained, and the King's return to his seat had given the company a fillip. An air of feverish gaiety, common in the unhealthy life of the Court, prevailed. At a table abreast of the King, Montpensier and Marshal Cosse were dicing and disputing, with now a yell of glee, and now an oath, ...
— Count Hannibal - A Romance of the Court of France • Stanley J. Weyman
... story. Of course it is an accident that so small a proportion of Latin derivatives is found in these six lines, but the fact remains that Morris set himself to tell a Teutonic story in Teutonic idiom. That idiom is not very strange to present-day readers, indeed we may say it has but a fillip of strangeness. Archaisms are characteristic of poetic diction, and those found in this poem that are not common to other poetry are used to gain an Old Norse flavor. The following words taken from Book I of the poem are the only unfamiliar ones: benight, ...
— The Influence of Old Norse Literature on English Literature • Conrad Hjalmar Nordby
... speak. You would think I was some good, old, decent Christian, would you not? But no, not I; I never canted. Voltaire might have canted if he'd stood in my shoes; but the brains' - with a rattling fillip on his bald head - 'the brains were clear and active, and I ...
— Tales and Fantasies • Robert Louis Stevenson
... continued to beat high and fast as he rode through the green forest. Its strong, sweet odors gave a fillip to his blood, and he pressed his horse to new speed. He rode without interruption night and day, save a few hours now and then for sleep, and reached the army of Buell which deep in mud was toiling ...
— The Guns of Shiloh • Joseph A. Altsheler
... Louisville. And gone, too, with the song of Clichy, is the song from the heart of St. Michel, the song from the heart of St. Germain. "Tea rooms," operated by American old maids, have poked their noses into these once genuine boulevards ... and, as if giving a further fillip to the scenery, clothing shops with windows haughtily revealing the nobby art of Kuppenheimer, postcard shops laden to the sill's edge with lithographs disclosing erstwhile Saturday Evening Post cover heroines, and case upon case displaying in lordly enthusiasm ...
— Europe After 8:15 • H. L. Mencken, George Jean Nathan and Willard Huntington Wright
... introducing me to such of his guests as I had not met before, and relating over the dinner-table, with much gusto, the story of my abduction and escape. Then I produced Morillo's letter of defiance, which I took with me to show him, and which added a fillip to the conversation that lasted us until the cloth was drawn. We sat rather late over our wine, and when we rose to go the admiral invited me into his library for a ...
— A Pirate of the Caribbees • Harry Collingwood
... they could not have credited him even in imagination. Thus besides relieving him of a host of compliments which he did not enjoy, and enabling him the better to evade an ill-bred curiosity, the disguise no doubt was the same sort of fillip to the fancy which a mask and domino or a fancy dress are to that of their wearers. Even in a disguise a man cannot cease to be himself; but he can get rid of his improperly "imputed" righteousness—often the greatest burden he has ...
— Sir Walter Scott - (English Men of Letters Series) • Richard H. Hutton
... his moods like other men, and there were times when a rough passion marked his dealings with his wife; perhaps he had not been very felicitous in his role of lover, but the remembrance that there was such a side to his nature gave a fillip ...
— Ainslee's, Vol. 15, No. 5, June 1905 • Various
... also something more. Even in its playful moments there is delicate irony, a spiritual sporting with graver and more passionate emotions. Those broken octaves which usher in each time the second theme, with its fascinating, infectious, rhythmical lilt, what an ironically joyous fillip they give the imagination! ...
— Chopin: The Man and His Music • James Huneker
... on, noticed or unnoticed; it matters very little which it is. There is a fillip, no doubt—and we should not be men and women if we did not feel it—in the recognition of what we have tried to do. And sometimes it comes to us; but the absence of it is no reason for slackening our work. And this man, so patiently and persistently ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ephesians; Epistles of St. Peter and St. John • Alexander Maclaren
... of the footman who received Anthony's coat and hat gave a disconcerting fillip to the latter's uneasiness. As a respectful butler preceded the party upstairs, he felt as if he were being ...
— Anthony Lyveden • Dornford Yates
... the abolition of torture, the refined cruelty of the middle ages: quartering, the stake, the wheel. The guillotine acts so quickly that the condemned man has scarcely time to feel the cold steel cutting through his muscles; it is nothing more than a fillip on the neck. Through trying so much to mitigate the pain of death, it has now become little more than a joke, and ...
— The Widow Lerouge - The Lerouge Case • Emile Gaboriau
... me. I grazed upon it like a colt upon a mountain, taking what tasted good to me, and avoiding what displeased me, but having little or no conception of the purport of the work as a whole. I found passages and whole poems here and there that I never tired of reading, and that gave a strange fillip to my moral and intellectual nature, but nearly as many passages and poems puzzled or repelled me. My absorption of Emerson had prepared me in a measure for Whitman's philosophy of life, but not for the ideals of character and conduct which he held up ...
— Whitman - A Study • John Burroughs
... the Doctor; "over stimulation will always produce a corresponding degree of depression; when, therefore, the nervous system has been over-excited by alcoholic liquors, the usual amount of nervous energy which is necessary to give tone to the muscular system is wanting, and then a stimulus gives a fillip to the nervous centres, which restores the nervous powers to the extremities. When this state of things, however, has been permitted to go on, and the brain has been frequently brought under alcoholic ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 1, April, 1851 • Various
... and leveled it at Mademoiselle Lalage, who was singing some trivial couplets much better than they deserved. Catching sight of him presently, she greeted him with a flash of her dark eye that made him writhe as though his heart had received a fillip from a ponderable missile. She did not spare these roguish glances. They darted everywhere; and Conolly, looking about him to note their effect, saw rows of callow young faces with parted lips and an expression which seemed to have been caught and fixed at the climax of a blissful ...
— The Irrational Knot - Being the Second Novel of His Nonage • George Bernard Shaw
... begun to talk in a wild way about his estate in Ireland, and his owld grandmother; and either the influence of these thoughts, or Hardy's visit, had given him such a fillip that from that day he began to revive. Nevertheless he had received a very severe shake, and, not very long after, was invalided home. Meanwhile, as we have said, busy preparations were being made by General Graham—who had arrived and taken command ...
— Blue Lights - Hot Work in the Soudan • R.M. Ballantyne
... was lovely enough. The young men and young women she saw there were interesting, and she was not wanting for admirers. The most aggressive of these youths—the most forceful—recognized in this maiden a fillip to life, a sting to existence. She was as a honey-jar surrounded by too ...
— The Financier • Theodore Dreiser
... Sandy cheered faintly. They were the first words they had uttered for some hours. We now all found our tongues, a fillip had been given to our spirits, and we thought scarcely of our hunger or thirst. The dark blue line advanced, and grew wider and wider, till it spread itself over the ocean; and the white speck grew higher and higher, till the topsails of a vessel were seen rising out of the ...
— Salt Water - The Sea Life and Adventures of Neil D'Arcy the Midshipman • W. H. G. Kingston
... good. It gives a fillip to their jaded senses. 'Twas here that I made my start, Labret—here that I delivered my first speech as though for a joke; here it was that I first began to hate the dogs who sat amongst us with all their fine clothes and perfumes and rottenness ... and I ...
— The German Classics, v. 20 - Masterpieces of German Literature • Various
... gigg; fillip his nose. Grunter's gigg; a hog's snout. Gigg is also a high one-horse chaise, and a woman's privities. To gigg a Smithfield hank; to hamstring an over-drove ox, vulgarly ...
— 1811 Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue • Captain Grose et al.
... drawing to its close, and it was generally agreed at Dr. Parker's that it had been the jolliest ever known. The boating episode and that of the tea at Oak Farm had been events which had given a fillip to existence. The school had been successful in the greater part of its cricket matches, and generally every one was well satisfied with himself. On the Saturday preceding the breaking up Frank, with Ruthven, ...
— By Sheer Pluck - A Tale of the Ashanti War • G. A. Henty
... had had the effect of counteracting the uplifting effects of the Mumm's. The British Lion required a fresh fillip. He went to his room to administer it. By the time he emerged, he was feeling just right for the task in hand. A momentary doubt occurred to him as to whether it would not be a good thing to go down and pull Sir Thomas' nose as a preliminary to the proceedings; ...
— The Intrusion of Jimmy • P. G. Wodehouse
... A slight fillip was given to Robert's waning enthusiasm by the arrival of new furniture for his room. A large mahogany writing-table, full of drawers and pigeon-holes, gave him a pleasant sense of importance, and the revolving chair which went with it afforded a ...
— Salthaven • W. W. Jacobs
... nose: snitchell his gigg; fillip his nose: grunter's gigg; a hog's snout. Gigg is ...
— The Surprising Adventures of Bampfylde Moore Carew • Unknown
... recollect, they were actually fired to give the car a fillip when it reached the dead-point on its way ...
— A Trip to Venus • John Munro
... has occasion for some instruction, some detail, some figures, or some explanation, it presents itself, hat in hand, at the door of the departments to consult the ministers, the usher receives it in the antechamber, and with a roar of laughter, gives it a fillip on the nose. Such are the ...
— Napoleon the Little • Victor Hugo
... he wore the familiar threadbare frock uniform coat, bearing on the left breast four tarnished and lack-lustre stars. Then came the incident of the immortal signal. "We must give the fleet," said Nelson to Blackwood, "something by way of a fillip." After musing a while, he said, "Suppose we signal, 'Nelson confides that every man will do his duty'?" Some one suggested "England" instead of "Nelson," and Nelson at once caught at the improvement. The signal-officer explained that the word "confide" would have ...
— Deeds that Won the Empire - Historic Battle Scenes • W. H. Fitchett
... sure that neutrals should be allowed into this thing. An exception might be made in the case of Italy, but, apart from her, we should limit the exotic features in our programmes to the works of our allies in the field. It might give a needed fillip to the national music ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, September 2nd, 1914 • Various
... your ladyship for all these years," P'ing Erh pleaded, "and you've never so much as given me a single fillip; and yet, you beat me yesterday. But I don't bear you any grudge, my lady, for it was that wench, who was at the bottom of it all. Nor do I wonder that your ladyship lost control ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book II • Cao Xueqin
... rather broad joking, which offended and irritated her. She was not in the least attracted to Paul Abbey. He was a nice enough young man; for all she knew, he might be a concentration of all the manly virtues, but he gave no fillip to either her imagination or her emotions. He was too much like a certain type of young fellow she had known in other embodiments. Her instinct warned her that stripped of his worldly goods he would be wholly commonplace. She could be friends with the Paul Abbey kind of man, but when ...
— Big Timber - A Story of the Northwest • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... Virginia—later, New England. Weymouth had powerful backers, and with him sailed old adventurers who had been with Raleigh. Coming home to England with five Indians in his company, Weymouth and his voyage gave to public interest the needed fillip towards action. Here was the peace with Spain, and here was the new interest in Virginia. "Go to!" said Mother England. "It is time to place our children in ...
— Pioneers of the Old South - A Chronicle of English Colonial Beginnings, Volume 5 In - The Chronicles Of America Series • Mary Johnston
... of the great, were mostly dung stupid with not knowing what to think. A council meeting or two was held in the gloamings, to take such a serious business into consideration; some expressing their fears and inward down-sinking, while others cheered them up with a fillip of pleasant consolation. Scarcely a word of the matter, for which they were summoned together by the town-officer—and which was about the mending of the old bell-rope—was discussed by any of them. So after a sowd ...
— The Life of Mansie Wauch - tailor in Dalkeith • D. M. Moir
... drop of liqueur, chasse-cafe, which is the last thing the stomach has a right to expect. It warms, it comforts, it exhales its benediction on all that has gone before. So the trip to Europe may not do much in the way of instructing the wearied and overloaded intelligence, but it gives it a fillip which makes it feel young again for ...
— Our Hundred Days in Europe • Oliver Wendell Holmes
... said, without noticing that I had taken leave of her. "Mother Anastasia did not intend to leave here until to-morrow, and she went away early this morning. She has some pressing business on hand, and ten chances to one she has gone to fillip your young lady out of your sight and hearing. Don't you see that it would not look at all well for one of her sisters to marry, or even to receive the attentions of a gentleman, immediately after she had ...
— The House of Martha • Frank R. Stockton
... man in defence of property; so also in defence of one's person, which is a species of excusable homicide; because, although cases may happen where these also are commendable, yet most frequently they are done on too slight appearance of danger; as in return for a blow, kick, fillip, &c; or on a person's getting into a house, not anirno furandi, but perhaps veneris causa, &c. Bracton says, 'Si quis furem noctupnum occiderit, ita demum impune foret, si parcere ei sine periculo suo non potuit; si autem potuit, aliter erit.' 'Item erit si quis hamsokne qua; dicitur ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson
... young people a few pence to rattle in their trousers' pockets, a collar, cuffs, a sixpenny signet ring on the little finger, a nickel-silver mounted cane and a pair of gloves, and there they go, not caring a fillip whether their parents have toiled and struggled to rise to their present position, ignoring the necessity of thrift, a happy-go-lucky generation. And then, at the end of it all, a deep chasm, into which they will all fall headlong; an immense ...
— The Silver Lining - A Guernsey Story • John Roussel
... sweet, you know, primping herself that way. Her face was a little flat, but it was young, and the scar gave it just the fillip it needed. ...
— The Night of the Long Knives • Fritz Reuter Leiber
... cheap and tawdry, lionizing kind, but fame in an everlasting appreciation of those who think with their own minds. Almost any pen portraiture could but skim the surface of a nature so gifted and with which daily association is so delightful—an association which is a constant fillip to the mind in fascinating witticisms, in deft characterizations of men and things, and in deep drafts on memory's storehouse for odd incidents and unexpected illuminations. A long silence from "Allison's corner" ...
— The Dead Men's Song - Being the Story of a Poem and a Reminiscent Sketch of its - Author Young Ewing Allison • Champion Ingraham Hitchcock
... conjunction with a stubbornly-shaped black frock-coat and a pair of black trousers of uncompromising Derry cut. However it be, Mr. Lewis would stand no reflections upon his white waistcoat, and gave the new World an appreciable fillip on its career by haling it into court on a charge of libel, which Lord Coleridge dismissed without thinking it ...
— The Strand Magazine, Volume V, Issue 29, May 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... reproached, not altogether jestingly. He even looked across at the gap through the hills to which she was pointing. Then he saw the disdain in her blue eyes. He took the cigarette from his lips, eyed it regretfully, and flung it away with a petulant fillip. ...
— Out of the Depths - A Romance of Reclamation • Robert Ames Bennet
... of complete success and universal applause, new qualities came to view in Oscar. Praise gave him the fillip needed in order to make him surpass himself. His talk took on a sort of autumnal richness of colour, and assumed a new width of range; he now used pathos as well as humour and generally brought in a story or apologue to lend variety to the entertainment. His little weaknesses, too, ...
— Oscar Wilde, Volume 1 (of 2) - His Life and Confessions • Frank Harris
... was obvious. The order really bore in part the character of a manifesto; to the people of the North, whose confidence must be kept and their spirit sustained, it said that the administration meant action at once; to commanding officers it was a fillip, warning them to bestir themselves, obstacles to the contrary notwithstanding. It was a reveille. Further, in a general way it undoubtedly laid out a sound plan of campaign, substantially in accordance with that which McClellan also was evolving, viz.: to press ...
— Abraham Lincoln, Vol. I. • John T. Morse
... willows across the field, visible even at that distance; so great the change in a few days, the hand of spring grows firm and takes a strong grasp of the hedges. My prison bars are but a sixteenth of an inch thick; I could snap them with a fillip—only the window-pane, to me as impenetrable as the twenty-foot wall of the Tower of London. A cart has just gone past bearing a strange load among the carts of spring; they are talking of poling the hops. In it there sat an old man, with the ...
— Field and Hedgerow • Richard Jefferies
... forgive Descartes. In all his philosophy he would have been quite willing to dispense with God. But he had to make Him give a fillip to set the world in motion; beyond this, he has no further need ...
— Pascal's Pensees • Blaise Pascal
... last night, and I shall say something nice about you and your loneliness, and that he, as a kind of relation, may go and see you on Sunday, as long as he doesn't make love to you, and he can take you to the Zoo—don't see him in your sitting-room. That will give him just the extra fillip, and he will go, and you will be demure, and then by those stimulating lions' and tigers' cages you can plight your troth. It will be quite respectable. Wire to me at once on Monday to Sedgwick, and you must come back to Park ...
— Red Hair • Elinor Glyn
... granted, chevalier. While I was giving a lesson to little Ravanne, I saw, out of a corner of my eye, that you were a skillful swordsman, and I love brave men. Then, in return for a little service, only worth a fillip, you made me a present of a horse which was worth a hundred louis, and I love generous men. Thus you are twice my man, why should ...
— The Conspirators - The Chevalier d'Harmental • Alexandre Dumas (Pere)
... bowels at all, he won't mind a fillip or two from a poor lone woman; I'm sure no ...
— The Spy • James Fenimore Cooper
... of his manhood, almost as supernatural as his crimes; that he could with his outstretched finger bore a hole through a sound apple (integrum malum digito terebraret), and wound the head of a child or even a youth with a fillip, (caput pueri, vel etiam adolescentis, talitro vulneraret.) His excesses must, however, have enervated his frame long before his ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 62, No. 384, October 1847 • Various
... Seventh Book of Tom Jones, but, more particularly, the sermon delivered by Johnson on this subject a propos of General Oglethorpe's story of how he avoided a duel with Prince Eugene in 1716. "We were sitting in company at table, whence the Prince took up a glass of wine and by a fillip made some of it fly in Oglethorpe's face. Here was a nice dilemma. To have challenged him instantly might have fixed a quarrelsome character upon the young soldier: to have taken no notice of it might have been counted as cowardice. Oglethorpe, therefore, ...
— Travels Through France and Italy • Tobias Smollett
... fact, we all indulged rather too freely, if I may judge from the fact that, at least to Miss Frankland and myself, the rod had almost become a necessity, and occasionally even my sisters admitted it gave them a fillip. Under the able tutorship of Miss Frank-land we became the most perfect adepts in every voluptuous indulgence of lubricity. But I must also give her the credit of never neglecting our education. Indeed, I may say it ...
— The Romance of Lust - A classic Victorian erotic novel • Anonymous
... to give me an idea? I've racked my sensorium internally to no purpose. Let me look round the cabin for some external object to act as a fillip to an exhausted imagination. A little thing will do.—Well, here's an ant. That's quite ...
— The King's Own • Captain Frederick Marryat
... yet, why was he here? What was this sudden veil of mystery which hid him from her secret eyes? Victor knew, and yet his love for her was not so great that he could tell her another's secret. And the governor knew, D'Herouville, and the vicomte; and they were as silent as stone. Love? A fillip of her finger for love! Happy indeed was she to learn that neither the marquis nor the Chevalier would return to France on the Henri IV. Such a ...
— The Grey Cloak • Harold MacGrath
... have heard, this morning, from my Father, that you are to set out on Tuesday for Scotland: so I have determined to fillip away some spurt of ink in your direction, which may reach you before you move ...
— The Life of John Sterling • Thomas Carlyle
... to be paid for upon easy terms, and if, along with this, facilities for marketing, for terminals, for slaughter-houses, and for agencies for bringing the produce of the farms to the markets were provided, not only would agriculture be given a fillip which it badly needs but the congestion of our cities and the immigration problem would be open to easy solution. Then for many generations to come land would be available in abundance. For America could support many times its present population if the resources of the ...
— Modern American Prose Selections • Various
... pull at the door bell. Mr. Whedell answered it in person. Returning, he merely said, giving his double eyeglass a fillip, "The furniture man. Have fixed him for the 1st of May. So far, the ...
— Round the Block • John Bell Bouton
... Punch gave a new though temporary fillip to the entertainments of the evening. For after leading to some noisy proceedings, which were not intelligible, it ended in the unsteady departure of the two gentlemen of the world, and the slumber of Mr Jonas upon one ...
— Life And Adventures Of Martin Chuzzlewit • Charles Dickens
... helps by advertising to the consumer in magazines and newspapers, always featuring the name of his brands; and he supplies the grocer with educational pamphlets and booklets on the growing, preparation, and merits of coffee in general, with an added fillip about the desirability of his particular brand. Through his salesmen the packer shows the grocer how to display the coffee on the counter and in the window, and often supplies him with placards and cut-outs featuring his brand. He co-operates in staging special coffee demonstrations ...
— All About Coffee • William H. Ukers
... up, chasing the liner. Would he catch up with it? He strained his eyes. Exultation flooded through him as he realized that the distance was rapidly lessening between them. The added impetus of his leap over the Gorm had given him the required extra fillip of speed. By now, ...
— Pirates of the Gorm • Nat Schachner
... Radie,' said a sweet voice, which somehow made her shiver, close to her ear. 'This kind of thing will do you good; and you really wanted a little fillip. Shall I take you to ...
— Wylder's Hand • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... benefit of the invading armies; the latter, as a patriotic and successful demonstration of the hatred of the Belgians for their temporary masters and of their determination to hinder them by every means in their power. It gave the spirit of the people a fillip, and, despite the redoubled severity of the Germans, the Liegeois went about their businesses with a prouder air, as if conscious that, though temporarily overcome, they were very far ...
— Two Daring Young Patriots - or, Outwitting the Huns • W. P. Shervill
... horse a fillip, away they went, bowling along over the park amid high fern brakes, lofty ...
— The Fairchild Family • Mary Martha Sherwood
... upheavals of the earth high upon the mountain-side. Cannot you almost behold the scene? May we not, with the brush of fancy, paint for our mental vision many a strange, weird picture? Here we see, high on the mountain-front, a mass of crystal salt—many millions of tons—thrown, by a mere fillip of terrestrial power, thirty thousand feet above the ocean level, to rest and sparkle like a gem on the bosom of that old mountain-god, Olympus. Then, still higher, on the very summit—for even here, in the glare of this ...
— A Strange Discovery • Charles Romyn Dake
... receive a fillip of excitement when suffering from the dull routine of everyday life! The anthems and Te Deums were in themselves delightful, but they had been heard so often! Mr. Slope was certainly not delightful, but he was new, and, moreover, clever. They had long thought it slow, so said now many of ...
— Barchester Towers • Anthony Trollope
... means of subsistence, and to rely more than they had hitherto done upon the possibilities of stock-breeding. It was in particular the misfortunes of the later 'seventies that gave the needed fillip to that branch of stock-farming concerned with the production of milk, butter and cheese, and from this period may be said to date the revival of the dairying industry, which received a powerful impetus through the introduction of the centrifugal cream separator, and ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... had been knocked from the bedtime pipe that Blount left his chair and the secluded corner of the veranda to go down among the parked automobiles on the lawn. His one recreation—and it was the only one in which he found the precious fillip of enthusiasm—was motoring. There was a choice collection of fine cars in the grouping on the lawn, and Blount had just awakened a sleepy chauffeur to ask him to uncover and exhibit the engine of a freshly imported Italian machine, ...
— The Honorable Senator Sage-Brush • Francis Lynde
... days it was not considered proper in Germany for ladies to eat cheese, and no young lady would dream of taking one of the little glasses of Madeira offered on a tray. They were exclusively for die Herren, and always gave a fillip to the conversation, which was also more or less a masculine monopoly. Just before the end of the dinner it was the business of the Mamsell belonging to the house to light a little army of Vienna coffee machines standing ...
— Home Life in Germany • Mrs. Alfred Sidgwick
... admitted—with a fine proud smile—that she had not the faintest claim to a share in Mr. Touchett's relics. "There was never anything in the world between us," she would have said. "There was never that, poor man!"—with a fillip of her thumb and her third finger. I hasten to add, moreover, that if she couldn't at the present moment keep from quite perversely yearning she was careful not to betray herself. She had after all as much sympathy for Mrs. Touchett's ...
— The Portrait of a Lady - Volume 1 (of 2) • Henry James
... sure if this thing is a matter o' conscience to me, neither king nor kaiser can stop me. I'd snap my fingers in King George's face if he bid me 'stay,' when my conscience said 'go,'" and the dominie accompanied the threat with that sharp, resonant fillip of the fingers that is a Scotchman's natural expression of intense excitement of ...
— Scottish sketches • Amelia Edith Huddleston Barr
... freedoms taken by the Caesar beyond the bounds of an innocent gallantry," said Agelastes; "but the Countess, I must needs say, is dangerous. She killed this day the Scythian Toxartis, by what seemed a mere fillip ...
— Waverley Volume XII • Sir Walter Scott
... their calculations; something for them, mentally, to chew on. Mystification is a good thing sometimes. It gives the brain a fillip, stirs memory, puts the gears of imagination in mesh. One man, an old, tobacco-chewing fellow, began to stare harder at the face on the floor. Something moved in ...
— O. Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1920 • Various
... are good that way. I often envy you, for what with my health and every one's health to think about, doctoring one man for fever, putting all you fellows straight, and patching up squabbling savages, my appetite often feels as if it wants a fillip. A doctor's is an anxious life, my boy—more especially out here in a country like this, amongst a very uncertain people, when a man feels that he has a stake in ...
— Trapped by Malays - A Tale of Bayonet and Kris • George Manville Fenn
... Renfrew came home from town, he chanced to walk just behind the octoroon, and quite unconsciously the girl delivered an added fillip to the old ...
— Birthright - A Novel • T.S. Stribling
... man with a handle to your name. To me, living here in this out of the way parish, a lord doesn't matter that." And Father Marty gave a fillip with his fingers. "The only lord that matters me is me bishop. But with them women yonder, the title and the money and all the grandeur goes a long way. It has been so since the world began. In riding a race against you they carry weight from the very awe which the name of an English Earl brings ...
— An Eye for an Eye • Anthony Trollope
... A fillip was given to the conversation when Adam told of his seeing Lady Arabella, on her way to Castra Regis. They each had something to say of her, and of what her wishes or intentions were towards Edgar Caswall. Mimi spoke ...
— The Lair of the White Worm • Bram Stoker
... hard by the St. Denis Road, and the pleasantry touched him on the raw. As for Tabary, he laughed immoderately over the medlars; he had never heard anything more light-hearted; and he held his sides and crowed. Villon fetched him a fillip on the nose, which turned his mirth into ...
— Stories By English Authors: France • Various
... by this excessive labor of flight. They are pierced with holes, through which issue pipes which carry the air all over the body. You know what is said of spendthrifts?-that they burn the candle at both ends. It is so with the blood of birds. That fillip which in our case it receives in the lungs, and which sends it back full of vigor into the arteries, is repeated in the bird at the other end of the arteries as well. The capillaries, those delicate vessels at the end of the arteries, plunge from all sides into little ...
— The History of a Mouthful of Bread - And its effect on the organization of men and animals • Jean Mace
... Europe" he says very little about these historic cities. The men at Oxford asked, "Did he come in the 'One Hoss Shay'?" the name of his most familiar poem in the lighter vein. The whole visit to England pleased and wearied him. He likened it to the shass caffy of Mr. Henry Foker—the fillip at the end of the long banquet of life. He went to see the Derby, for he was fond of horses, of racing, and, in a sportsmanlike way, of boxing. He had the great boldness once, audax juventa, to write ...
— Adventures among Books • Andrew Lang
... force of devastation, a voracious animosity, a devourer of the happiness of others, to have been created (for there is a creator, whether God or devil), to have been created Barkilphedro all over, and to inflict perhaps after all but a fillip of the finger—could this be possible? could it be that Barkilphedro should miss his aim? To be a lever powerful enough to heave great masses of rock, and when sprung to the utmost power to succeed only in giving an affected woman a bump in the forehead—to be a catapult dealing ...
— The Man Who Laughs • Victor Hugo
... of summer, Nature proffers us this her virgin fruit; more rich and sumptuous are to follow, but the wild delicacy and fillip of the strawberry are never repeated,—that keen feathered edge greets the ...
— Locusts and Wild Honey • John Burroughs
... petty-larceny scoundrel; yes, all my inherent attributes compromised by my position. Oh, Hercules! when I remember my native Africa—when I reflect on the sweet intoxication of my former liberty—the excitement of the chase—the mad triumph of my spring, cracking the back of a bison with one fillip of my paw—when I think of these things—of my tawny wife with her smile sweetly ferocious, her breath balmy with new blood—of my playful little ones, with eyes of topaz and claws of pearl—when I think of all this, and feel that here ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 1, Complete • Various
... him of their tears, And pray'd him, "If they pay this tax, they starve". Whereat he stared, replying, half-amazed, "You would not let your little finger ache For such as these?"—"But I would die," said she. He laugh'd, and swore by Peter and by Paul; Then fillip'd at the diamond in her ear; "O ay, ay, ay, you talk!"—"Alas!" she said, "But prove me what it is I would not do." And from a heart as rough as Esau's hand, He answer'd, "Ride you naked thro' the town, And I ...
— The Early Poems of Alfred Lord Tennyson • Tennyson
... beside her to the door of the miserable log shack under the second cliff, still strangely shaken, but striving manfully to be himself again. The needed fillip came when the mountaineer staggered to the threshold to swear thickly at his daughter. In times past, Tom would quickly have put distance between himself and Tike Bryerson in the squirrel-eyed stage of intoxication. But now his promise to Nan was behind him, and the Gordon ...
— The Quickening • Francis Lynde
... discovered before the autumn was over the heart of Mr. Cyrus Worthington at her feet hardly deserves record in her history but for the fillip which it gave to her spirits. Tribute is tribute, and Mr. Worthington was a warrantable gentleman. The tarnish she had discerned upon her armour, the foxmarks upon her fair page, dispersed under his ardent breath; she realised ...
— Rest Harrow - A Comedy of Resolution • Maurice Hewlett
... sport during my ninth and tenth years was to play buttons. These we would fillip around on some patch of unpaved ground with a little pit for a billiard pocket. My own pockets were usually full of these buttons. As the game was restricted to brass ones from the uniforms of soldiers, my mother had plenty to ...
— The Rise of David Levinsky • Abraham Cahan
... drink,' replied she, still in the same wild excited tone. 'But what win ye have? There are days wi' you, as wi' other folk, I suppose, when yo' get up and go through th' hours, just longing for a bit of a change—a bit of a fillip, as it were. I know I ha' gone and bought a four-pounder out o' another baker's shop to common on such days, just because I sickened at the thought of going on for ever wi' the same sight in my eyes, and the same sound in my ears, and the same taste i' my mouth, and the same thought (or no thought, ...
— North and South • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... grazing, Charlie led him along a cattle track, through the bush up the slope, to the prairie level above. Here there were three big pastures running into a hundred acres or more, all well fenced, and the wire in perfect order. Bill's improving spirits received a further fillip. The grazing, Charlie told him, lay behind these limits upon the open plains, over which the newcomer had spent ...
— The Law-Breakers • Ridgwell Cullum
... critic could not detest and abhor a pun, or the insinuation of a pun, more cordially than my father;—he would grow testy upon it at any time;—but to be broke in upon by one, in a serious discourse, was as bad, he would say, as a fillip upon the ...
— The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman • Laurence Sterne
... to-morrow morning on our little trip, Polly," said the old gentleman, catching her infectious spirit, and giving the old horse a fillip with the whip. "Meantime, not a word, my dear, of ...
— Five Little Peppers Grown Up • Margaret Sidney
... formation of all things.” “I cannot forgive Descartes,” he said. “He would willingly in all his philosophy have done without God, if he could; but he could not get on without letting him give the world a fillip to set it agoing: after that, he has nothing more to do with God.” Whether he had studied Descartes or not, he evidently did not share the enthusiasm of Arnauld and others for his philosophy. He even spoke of it as “useless, uncertain, and ...
— Pascal • John Tulloch
... the blade between the first and second fingers of the right hand, and fillip it with a jerk so that the knife turns once around in the air and strikes the ...
— Boy Scouts Handbook - The First Edition, 1911 • Boy Scouts of America
... good digestion. Conscience! Hear me speak. You would think I was some good, old, decent Christian, would you not? But no, not I; I never canted. Voltaire might have canted if he'd stood in my shoes; but the brains"—with a rattling fillip on his bald head—"the brains were clear and active, and I saw and made ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 3 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... to fillip the ash forming upon the ignited end of his cigar, performing the operation with nicety, using the extreme tip of his middle-finger nail over the salver attached for the purpose to the ...
— At Last • Marion Harland
... want stirring up here," said Sir Humphrey abruptly. "It is high time to give you a fillip." ...
— The Thin Red Line; and Blue Blood • Arthur Griffiths
... the great comet of 1843 gave an additional fillip to the movement. To the excitement caused by it the Harvard College Observatory—called the "American Pulkowa"—directly owed its origin; and the example was not ineffective elsewhere. The United States Naval Observatory was ...
— A Popular History of Astronomy During the Nineteenth Century - Fourth Edition • Agnes M. (Agnes Mary) Clerke
... close. Roustan misunderstood me, though his hint Serves as a fillip to a flaccid brain.... —How gild the sunset sky of majesty Better than by the act esteemed of yore? Plutarchian heroes outstayed not their fame, And what nor Brutus nor Themistocles Nor Cato nor Mark Antony survived, Why, why should I? Sage ...
— The Dynasts - An Epic-Drama Of The War With Napoleon, In Three Parts, - Nineteen Acts, And One Hundred And Thirty Scenes • Thomas Hardy
... verily, God be thanked, I hear none harm of him now. And of all that ever came in my hands for heresy, as help me God, saving [as I said] the sure keeping of them, had never any of them stripe or stroke given them, so much as a fillip on ...
— Studies from Court and Cloister • J.M. Stone
... heard of you from Mr. Pulham this morning, and that gave a fillip to my Laziness, which has been intolerable. But I am so taken up with pruning and gardening, quite a new sort of occupation to me. I have gather'd my Jargonels, but my Windsor Pears are backward. The former were of exquisite raciness. I do now sit under my own vine, and ...
— Charles Lamb • Walter Jerrold
... accustomed to have crowns and half-crowns rained upon them by their admirers and flatterers, that they would look at a shilling, for which many an honest labourer was happy to toil for ten hours under a broiling sun, with the utmost contempt; would blow upon it derisively, or fillip it into the air before they pocketed it; but when nothing was given them, as would occasionally happen—for how could they receive from those who had nothing? and nobody was bound to give them anything, as they had certain wages from their employers—then ...
— The Romany Rye • George Borrow
... to his friends and continued his ride toward the rear. The column passed slowly on in silence. Now and then gusts of rain lashed across his face, but he liked the feeling. It was a fillip to his blood, and his nerves began to recover from the tremendous strain and excitement of ...
— The Shades of the Wilderness • Joseph A. Altsheler
... to pay for my entertainment by being brisk, lively, or sympathetic. The immediate consequence is, that I get as near to all three qualities as I ever get. We simply live our own lives quietly, in company. My presence gives a little fillip to the proceedings; and I myself get all the benefit of change of scene, together with ...
— The Upton Letters • Arthur Christopher Benson
... strong here, at the equator, in this sunny, balmy air. I have not yet come across a region in which men, weary in body or spirit, are not seeking to stimulate or stupefy themselves. The Malay men and women being prohibited by the Koran from using alcohol, find the needed fillip in this nut, but it needs preparation before ...
— The Golden Chersonese and the Way Thither • Isabella L. Bird (Mrs. Bishop)
... honestly own up to that sentiment which is the most human of all? Without affectation or apology, I confess that I was overjoyed—that my instincts, pregnant with original sin, received a most delightful fillip. I wallowed for the time being in the ...
— The Confessions of a Beachcomber • E J Banfield
... desired fish would 'wag her hands displayed sidelings in manner of a fish tail'; she who wanted milk would 'draw her left little finger in manner of milking'; for mustard one would 'hold her nose in the upper part of her right fist and rub it'; another for salt would 'fillip with her right thumb and forefinger over the left thumb'; another desirous of wine would 'move her forefinger up and down the end of her thumb afore her eye'; and the guilty sacristan, struck by the thought that she had not provided incense for the ...
— Medieval People • Eileen Edna Power
... "Where one fillip belongs to him, a great many belong to thee," answered the waiting-maid, affectionately. "It will be time enough to let him have more when I am sure all his ...
— The Knight of the Golden Melice - A Historical Romance • John Turvill Adams
... philandering, were it no worse, when we have now to see Bozzy at the end of his love affairs. When his great work was completed in 1791, its author contributed to the European Magazine for May and June a little sketch of himself, in order to give a fillip to its circulation. There he describes jauntily his Irish tour, and after what we know of his erratic course, it is delightful to come across this sage chronicler of his dead wife, circulating testimonials to her excellences, ...
— James Boswell - Famous Scots Series • William Keith Leask
... serious look (says Dr. Ker), I asked him if he was not mistaken, adding that I thought the Dee was in Kirkcudbright, and flowed into the Solway Firth. He was a bashful boy, and made no reply. To give the class a needed fillip, I appealed to them to settle whether I or the boy was right. To give a verdict against the inspector was, of course, not to be thought of, and there was silence for a time; but at last a boy put his hand to his mouth, and said to his neighbour ...
— Children's Rhymes, Children's Games, Children's Songs, Children's Stories - A Book for Bairns and Big Folk • Robert Ford
... a hand-to-hand contest, where every elector was worthy of consideration; and though women were debarred from entering the State Parliament, yet they were now beings worth fawning upon for a vote, and their addition to the ranks of the electors gave matters a decided fillip. ...
— Some Everyday Folk and Dawn • Miles Franklin
... This fillip had the desired effect. Everybody began to talk at once and in five minutes Esther's step-mother knew all about the new doctor and the broken motor. When they paused for breath, ...
— Up the Hill and Over • Isabel Ecclestone Mackay
... fillip of excitement. One evening, as I was leaning over the railings, more than forty yards from the nearest sentry, a short man with a red moustache walked quickly down the street, followed by two colley dogs. As he passed, but without altering his pace in the slightest, or even looking towards me, ...
— London to Ladysmith via Pretoria • Winston Spencer Churchill
... long in London before she appeared at dear old Praddy's studio, beautifully gowned and looking years younger than forty-three; and I shouldn't wonder but that her presence once more in his circle will give his frame a fillip so that he may cheat Death over a few more annual outbreaks of influenza. I am convinced that he has left all his money, after providing a handsome annuity for the parlour-maid, to Vivie, knowing that in her hands, far more—and far more quickly than in those that direct princely ...
— Mrs. Warren's Daughter - A Story of the Woman's Movement • Sir Harry Johnston
... appeared to be the only means of salvation to restore security, and to give a fillip to the brilliant prospects of the country, for the good of the burgher estate as well as for the ...
— Origin of the Anglo-Boer War Revealed (2nd ed.) - The Conspiracy of the 19th Century Unmasked • C. H. Thomas
... gown. The smile faded away. The hand that dangled the garment before his eyes suddenly became motionless, as if paralysed. In the next instant, she recovered herself, and, giving the lace a quick fillip that sent its odour of sachet leaping to his nostrils, responded ...
— The Hollow of Her Hand • George Barr McCutcheon
... of Osmonde returned to town he found but one topic of conversation, and this was of such interest and gave such a fillip to gossip and chatter that fierce Sarah of Marlborough's encounters with Mrs. Masham, and her quarrels with Majesty itself, were for the time actually neglected. Her Grace had engaged in battles royal for so long a time and with such activity that the Court and the ...
— His Grace of Osmonde • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... "small-and-early" in the vestibule before service and a "five o'clock" in the chapel afterward. Sunday morning church is a this-world function with a pietized gossip and a decorous sort of sociable with an intellectual fillip thrown in. Thus we try to make our services attractive to the secular instincts, the non-religious things, in man's nature. We try to get him into the church by saying, "You will find here what you ...
— Preaching and Paganism • Albert Parker Fitch
... the shortsighted measures which the authorities adopted and maintained as well as by the wanton waste promoted or tolerated by the incapacity of their representatives. In France the moratorium and immunity from taxation gave a fillip to recklessness. People who had hoarded their earnings before the war, now that they were dispensed from paying rent and relieved of fair taxes, paid out money ungrudgingly for luxuries and then struck for higher ...
— The Inside Story Of The Peace Conference • Emile Joseph Dillon
... moments of weak-backed policy, of a desire upon the part of the 'old-woman' element which sometimes prevails in English politics to keep friendly relations with other powers at any cost. Brush up your history, Mr. Narkom, and give your memory a fillip. Eight-and-thirty years ago Queen Karma of Mauravania had an English consort and bore him two daughters, and one son. You will perhaps recall the mad rebellion, the idiotic rising which disgraced that reign. That was the time ...
— Cleek: the Man of the Forty Faces • Thomas W. Hanshew
... went on, fiendishly, indicating the toothless, loathsome squaw, whose vindictive eyes never wavered from Burroughs' craven face. "Him both our father!" The common parent was given a fillip of a contemptuous thumb ...
— A Man of Two Countries • Alice Harriman
... on the Sea. In awesome quiet of unsoothing sounds we feel, over a dual elemental motion, a quick fillip as of sudden lapping wave, while a shadowy air rises slowly in hollow intervals. Midst trembling whispers descending (like the soughing wind), a strange note, as of distant trumpet, strikes in gentle insistence—out of the other ...
— Symphonies and Their Meaning; Third Series, Modern Symphonies • Philip H. Goepp
... curtain went up,—though not on the play, let me tell you! On slighter joys, a fillip to the taste. A juggler, "all complete" in black small-clothes and white kid gloves, stood there ready to burn up our handkerchiefs, change our watches into rabbits, and make omelets in our best go-to-meeting hats. I cannot ...
— Meadow Grass - Tales of New England Life • Alice Brown
... order, ruthlessly suppressed by Sanders, and practised by trembling men, each afraid of the other despite their oaths; and the fillip it received when the news went forth—"Sandi ...
— Bones - Being Further Adventures in Mr. Commissioner Sanders' Country • Edgar Wallace
... presented it, that Nicholas, who had charge of the schooner, had returned with an European prisoner; but that neither he nor Gustave would give her any further information, although she had requested it in the name of her mistress. This was quite an event, and gave a fillip to the inertness of Madame de Fontanges, whose ...
— Newton Forster • Frederick Marryat
... My sentiment as regards brotherly love is brief and terse, 'Let George do it!'" Mr. Horton was complacently consuming his breakfast with an excellent appetite, to which the prospect of six weeks among Bermuda lilies with Adrienne lent a fillip. ...
— The Call of the Cumberlands • Charles Neville Buck
... deed performed, a noble object accomplished, gives a fillip to the spirits, an exhilaration to the feelings, like that imparted by Champagne, only more permanent. It is, indeed, admirably well said by one wise to discern the truth of things, and able to give to his thought ...
— The Atlantic Monthly , Volume 2, No. 14, December 1858 • Various
... Legislature is not something a man may do with a fillip of his finger and thumb. However bold the operations, the convenances must be observed. When really large designs are entertained, the manipulator sets to before the preceding election and has his "lawyers" at work throughout the country interviewing ...
— Frenzied Finance - Vol. 1: The Crime of Amalgamated • Thomas W. Lawson
... have galloped. From the moment the new club was formed, however, the Airedale had a new lease of life. Mr. Holland Buckley and other keen enthusiasts seem to have recognised to a nicety exactly what was required to give a necessary fillip to the breed; they appear also to have founded their club at the right moment, and to have offered such an attractive bill of fare, that not only did everyone in the south who had anything to do with ...
— Dogs and All About Them • Robert Leighton
... inarticulate sounds of love. Once or twice she began, 'It is such a pleasure,' and there she stopped short. But the eloquence of these five words sank deep into Cynthia's heart. She had returned just at the right time, when Molly wanted the gentle fillip of the society of a fresh and yet a familiar person. Cynthia's tact made her talkative or silent, gay or grave, as the varying humour of Molly required. She listened, too, with the semblance, if not the reality, of unwearied interest, to Molly's continual recurrence to all the time ...
— Wives and Daughters • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... on with a contemptuous fillip of the forefinger and thumb. "Glass and paste, mon ami. Not worth five francs ...
— In the Days of My Youth • Amelia Ann Blandford Edwards
... Is not the popularity of the small full-length portrait-photographs owing to the predominance they give to this passive imprint of the mind's past action upon externals over its momentary and elusive presence? It is to the fillip received from the startling likeness of trivial details, exciting us to supply what is deficient in more important points, that is to be ascribed the leniency to the photograph on the part of near relatives and friends, who are usually hard to ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 77, March, 1864 • Various
... which of course I suppress in society; but which breaks out when alone, and in my writings, in spite of myself. It has been deepened, perhaps, by some long-past events (I do not allude to my marriage, &c.—on the contrary, that raised them by the persecution giving a fillip to my spirits); but I call it constitutional, as I have reason to think it. You know, or you do not know, that my maternal grandfather (a very clever man, and amiable, I am told) was strongly suspected of suicide (he was found drowned in the Avon at Bath), and that ...
— Life of Lord Byron, With His Letters And Journals, Vol. 5 (of 6) • (Lord Byron) George Gordon Byron
... nod he hurried off down a side street, and Milly went home with a new fillip to her ...
— One Woman's Life • Robert Herrick
... armour only to run away from the enemy in it. The street Arab impudence was not quite killed in her by the strange influence of this man. The mere fact of having her feet firmly planted upon the floor gave Cuckoo a certain fillip of courage, and she tossed her head with that old vulgar gesture of hers which suggested the harridan. She pointed to ...
— Flames • Robert Smythe Hichens
... caught him in the act, exclaiming, "Who are you?" The mob which gathered round applauded to the very echo, and thought it the most capital joke they had ever heard, the very acme of wit, the very essence of humour. Another circumstance of a similar kind gave an additional fillip to the phrase, and infused new life and vigour into it just as it was dying away. The scene occurred in the chief criminal court of the kingdom. A prisoner stood at the bar; the offence with which he ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds • Charles Mackay
... humbled at last. To be humbled meant, in Mr. Hopper's philosophy, to lose one's money. It was thus he gauged the importance of his acquaintances; it was thus he hoped some day to be gauged. And he trusted and believed that the time would come when he could give his fillip to the upper rim of fortune's wheel, and send it ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill |
