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Graft   Listen
verb
Graft  v. t.  (past & past part. grafted; pres. part. grafting)  
1.
To insert (a graft) in a branch or stem of another tree; to propagate by insertion in another stock; also, to insert a graft upon. (Formerly written graff)
2.
(Surg.) To implant a portion of (living flesh or akin) in a lesion so as to form an organic union.
3.
To join (one thing) to another as if by grafting, so as to bring about a close union. "And graft my love immortal on thy fame!"
4.
(Naut.) To cover, as a ring bolt, block strap, splicing, etc., with a weaving of small cord or rope-yarns.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Graft" Quotes from Famous Books



... clearly described, and the reader is informed how it fits into the parts which are most closely related to it, but no simultaneous grasp of the mechanism as a working whole is attained. When we graft upon the idea of a mechanism that character of continuous self-development which transforms it into an "organism," the synthesis of the changing phenomena is still more difficult to comprehend. These difficulties can only be overcome ...
— The Evolution of Modern Capitalism - A Study of Machine Production • John Atkinson Hobson

... its attainment. As natural religion differs in each individual according to his feelings and powers, without positive enactments there would be no unity and community in religious matters. Nevertheless the statutory and historical element is not a graft from without, but a shell organically grown around natural religion, indispensable for its development, and to be removed but gradually and by layers—when the inclosed kernel has become ripe and firm. The history of religions is an education of the human race through divine revelation; ...
— History Of Modern Philosophy - From Nicolas of Cusa to the Present Time • Richard Falckenberg

... that now it must be left behind, it would have been almost impossible to have persuaded her. Her father comforted her by telling her he could get quantities of the apples not very far from home, and she could plant more seeds as soon as she liked, or, far better than that, he would graft ...
— Happy Days for Boys and Girls • Various

... old Hall farm near our home, which also once possessed a luxuriant garden, wherein Phoebe might have found all the requisites for her Sunday posy. A "tea" for the workhouse children used to be Madam Liberality's annual birthday feast; and the spot where the gaffers sat and watched the "new graft" strolling home across the fields was so faithfully described by Julie from her favourite Schroggs Wood, that when Mr. Caldecott reproduced it in his beautiful illustration, some friends who were well acquainted ...
— Juliana Horatia Ewing And Her Books • Horatia K. F. Eden

... the plots failed to make any impression on the morale of American citizenry. In fact, America from the moment war was declared against Germany until the time an armistice was declared, seemed to care for nothing but results. Charges of graft made with bitter invective in Congress created scarcely more than a ripple. The harder the pro-German plotters worked for the destruction of property and the incitement to labor disturbances, the closer ...
— History of the World War - An Authentic Narrative of the World's Greatest War • Francis A. March and Richard J. Beamish

... left the room and stepped into the elevator. "They've been working on their job since before the war, and there isn't a harbour on the east or west coast that they haven't got sized up. They've spent a million dollars in graft since January, and there's a rumour that the new Navy Department scheme for dealing with submarines, which was only adopted last month, is there among ...
— The Box with Broken Seals • E. Phillips Oppenheim

... in consultation. The Governor explained to me that there were stories of needless waste of time, that the Indians had not been attacked, though there were 450 men within a few miles of their camp, that hints of graft were afloat. Would I go in company with General Miller and when could I start? I replied that I would go and by the eleven o'clock train ...
— Reminiscences of a Pioneer • Colonel William Thompson

... our friend retorted, undauntedly. "When graft subtly crept among the nobler motives which created the park system of Boston the city could turn for help to the State and get it; but could our city get help from our State? Our city is too big to ...
— Imaginary Interviews • W. D. Howells

... their eyes. The evil grows greater as we near the centers of population. But there is scarcely a village or hamlet where graft does not grow like weeds, the voters as gullible and helpless as the infatuated victims of bunko tricks, ingeniously contrived by professional crooks to separate the fool and his money. ...
— Marse Henry, Complete - An Autobiography • Henry Watterson

... elections, they count all these abuses as but spots upon a brilliant sun. A knowledge of his country's political dishonesty does not depress the true patriot. He is content to think that his ideals are as lofty as their realisation is remote, and that the triumph of graft is as nothing compared with a noble sentiment. The result is that the Americans refuse to weaken their national prestige by the advertised cannibalism which is so popular in England. They are for their country, right or wrong. They do not understand the anti-patriot ...
— American Sketches - 1908 • Charles Whibley

... drifted away from the subject we were both thinking about and got around to talking on old home matters—the day's doings and the state of the country; graft, buying and selling law, and what it all had to do with harming the government and the ...
— Cupid's Middleman • Edward B. Lent

... criminal, that Jim pleaded with Kansas Shorty to permit him to try unassisted to peddle needle cases. He was not accorded this privilege, but was sent out with a boy nicknamed "Snippy". This boy had a most repulsive looking sore upon his arm, reaching from the wrist four inches upward. His graft consisted of visiting offices located in the business district and showing to persons this noisome sore, and then handing them the begging letter his jocker had faked for him, he collected alms, while at the same time he contorted ...
— The Trail of the Tramp • A-No. 1 (AKA Leon Ray Livingston)

... South Florida land business. His bland self-possession, his impressive physique, his confidence-winning voice and bearing constituted a profitable stock in trade. In the slang of his craft—shall we say "graft"?—he "played the church game strong." Under the sway of his hypnotic personality God-fearing, bank-fearing old couples brought forth hidden wealth to place in his dexterous hands; school-teachers wrecked their savings to invest with Granger. And Granger turned ...
— The Plunderer • Henry Oyen

... things, to be made a play and a fable. It is also a work of very dangerous consequence, to mingle human inventions with things sacred; because the poet adds uncertainties of his own, sometimes falsities; which is not only to play with holy things, but also to graft in men's minds opinions, now and then false. These things have place, especially when we bring in God, or Christ speaking, or treating of the mysteries of religion. I will allow more where the history is taken out of the sacred scriptures; but yet in the nature of the argument is civil, ...
— The Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland (1753) - Volume II • Theophilus Cibber

... Plants," Edition II., Volume I. In the "Life and Letters of G.J. Romanes," 1896, an interesting correspondence is published with Mr. Darwin on this subject. The plan of the experiments suggested to Romanes was to raise seedlings from graft-hybrids: if the seminal offspring of plants hybridised by grafting should show the hybrid character, it would be striking evidence in favour of pangenesis. The experiment, however, did not succeed.) statement that he made a mottled mongrel by cutting eyes through and joining two kinds of potatoes. ...
— More Letters of Charles Darwin - Volume I (of II) • Charles Darwin

... to Washington with the idea, Mr. Reeves, of getting at me, of tempting me with some sort of share in the wealth you see in your streams. Other men have come to the Capitol with the same purpose. I have my temptations, Mr. Reeves, but they do not lie in the desire to graft. I think there are jobs more interesting in life than the job of getting rich. All the grafting in the world couldn't touch in interest the job of directing America's inland destiny. And I have a foolish notion that a man owes ...
— The Enchanted Canyon • Honore Willsie Morrow

... of Stainer fiction. The last-mentioned portion of Herr Ruf's labours is singularly instructive as to the manner in which romance is spliced on to what is intended to be sober history, and which results oftentimes in the graft being rendered invisible, or even unsuspected. He tells us that the first mention of Jacob Stainer is that made by Johann Primisser, about a century after the death of the Violin-maker, and that he merely states that there lived in Absam ...
— The Violin - Its Famous Makers and Their Imitators • George Hart

... not plant trees, make layers, or engraft them, on the eve of the Sabbatical year, less than thirty days before new year's day. And if one plant them, or make layers, or engraft them, they must be rooted out. Rabbi Judah said, "every graft which does not cohere in three days has no more cohesion." Rabbi Jose and R. Simon ...
— Hebrew Literature

... Vermont. Congress, Malone noted, was still acting up. Furbisher claimed that the moneys appropriated for a new Vermont dam were really being used for the dam. But Deeks had somehow come into possession of several letters written by a cousin of Furbisher's, detailing some of the graft that was going on in the senator's home state. Furbisher was busily denying everything, but his cousin was just as busy confessing all to anybody who would listen. It was building up into an extremely interesting fracas, and, ...
— Supermind • Gordon Randall Garrett

... how the price of grain pinches. I couldn't even get a mouthful of bread today, by Hercules, I couldn't. How the drought does hang on! We've had famine for a year. If the damned AEdiles would only get what's coming to them. They graft with the bakers, scratch-my-arse-and-I'll-scratch-yours! That's the way it always is, the poor devils are out of luck, but the jaws of the capitalists are always keeping the Saturnalia. If only we had such lion-hearted sports as we had when I first came from Asia! That was the life! If ...
— The Satyricon, Complete • Petronius Arbiter

... killing—killing! Tommy's dearest wish fulfilling. We are gaudy, savage, strong, And our loins so ripe we long First to kill, then procreate, Doubling so the laws of Fate. On their women we have sworn To graft our sons. And overborne They'll rear us younger soldiers, so Shall our race endure and grow, Waxing greater in the wombs Borrowed of them, while damp tombs Rot their men. O Glorious War! Goad us with your points, ...
— Men, Women and Ghosts • Amy Lowell

... and their needs. But though God is common, and though the sun shines on all trees, some trees remain without fruit, and others bear wild fruit useless to mankind. This is why we prune these trees and graft fertile branches upon them, that they may bear good fruit, sweet to taste and useful for men. The fertile branch which comes from the living paradise of the eternal kingdom, is the light of divine grace. No work can have savour, or be useful to man, ...
— Light, Life, and Love • W. R. Inge

... legitimate enough like the one he shared with me but there were also many that were not quite so above-board. But to Dan all was fair in business and politics. Yet I don't know a man I'd sooner trust upon his honor in a purely personal matter. He wouldn't graft from his friends however much he might from the city. In fact his whole code as far as I could see was based upon this unswerving loyalty to his friends and scrupulous honesty in dealing with them. It was ...
— One Way Out - A Middle-class New-Englander Emigrates to America • William Carleton

... our appetite for white flour we must see to it that the protein deficiency of the latter and its lack of vitamines is compensated for by supplementing the diet with the food-stuffs in which these are rich. We may in other words retain our bad habits in taste if we will graft on to them the attention to the eliminated factors and ...
— The Vitamine Manual • Walter H. Eddy

... What a thing to graft two French provinces to the living body of Germany for fifty years and then dispart, when the blood has learned to flow strongly from the new flesh to the heart! You feel the break, the interruption, when ...
— Europe—Whither Bound? - Being Letters of Travel from the Capitals of Europe in the Year 1921 • Stephen Graham

... free. Why, you'd think these magistrates had to apologize for there being a police force! The papers go on about the brutality of the police, and the socialists howl about Cossack methods, and the ministers preach about graft and vice, and the reformers sit in their mahogany chairs in the skyscraper offices and dictate poems about sin, and the cops have to walk around and get hell beat out of 'em by these wops and kikes every time they tries ...
— Traffic in Souls - A Novel of Crime and Its Cure • Eustace Hale Ball

... Russia's autocracy, France, graft-ridden in high places and struggling for rehabilitation after a century of war—and, underneath it all, bearing it on bent shoulders, men like this German prisoner, alone in his room and puzzling ...
— Kings, Queens And Pawns - An American Woman at the Front • Mary Roberts Rinehart

... observing what I could myself. Unfortunately few have observed like you have done. As you are so kind, I will mention one other point on which I am collecting facts; namely, the effect produced on the stock by the graft; thus, it is SAID, that the purple-leaved filbert affects the leaves of the common hazel on which it is grafted (I have just procured a plant to try), so variegated jessamine is SAID to affect its stock. ...
— The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin, Volume II • Francis Darwin

... letter has been published in Mr. C. Barber's note on "Graft-Hybrids of the Sugar-Cane," in ...
— More Letters of Charles Darwin - Volume I (of II) • Charles Darwin

... the emotion, analyse and enjoy it, still less express it in manners, in gesture, in epigram, in verse. And hence the kind of shudder produced in a cultivated European by the treatment of emotion in American fiction. The authors are trying to express something they have never experienced, and to graft the European tradition on to a civilization which has none of the elements necessary to ...
— A Modern Symposium • G. Lowes Dickinson

... (Vol. vii., p. 436.).—In order to insure the success of grafts, it is material that they be inserted on congenial stocks: delicate-growing fruits require dwarf-growing stocks; and free luxuriant-growing trees require strong stocks. To graft scions of delicate wooded trees on strong stocks, occasions an over-supply of sap to the grafts; and though at first they seem to flourish, yet they do not endure. A few examples of this sort may lead to an opinion, that "grafts, after some fifteen years, wear themselves out;" ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 187, May 28, 1853 • Various

... manufacturers of a valueless 'consumption cure' could continue to mislead the victims of the 'white plague'; Norton, who had uttered an epigram now celebrated in the tap-rooms of Washington, 'The paths of glory lead but to the graft.'" ...
— A Gentleman from Mississippi • Thomas A. Wise

... twenty books of husbandry. Lysander, when ambassadors came to see him, bragged of nothing more than of his orchard, hi sunt ordines mei. What shall I say of Cincinnatus, Cato, Tully, and many such? how they have been pleased with it, to prune, plant, inoculate and graft, to show so many several kinds of ...
— Flowers and Flower-Gardens • David Lester Richardson

... which he had learned from the mixed heritage of his two pasts, the real and the false graft. He could wait as he had waited many times before—quiet, and with outward ease—for the right moment to come. It came now with footsteps ringing sharply, halting ...
— The Time Traders • Andre Norton

... brought in, he weeded out, rejected, selected, tested, selected and tested again, until he made his final choice. He used the last of his chloroform and achieved the bone-graft—living bone to living bone, living man and living rabbit immovable and indissolubly bandaged and bound together, their mutual processes uniting and ...
— The Turtles of Tasman • Jack London

... heap to learn about this game, Mul; about the first thing is that you must trust Old Man Know-it-all, which is me. I've run more diamonds into the States, in one way or another, in my time, than you ever pinched out of the shirt-front of a toff on the Empire Prom., before they made the graft too hot for you and you came to take lessons from me in the gentle art ...
— The Black Bag • Louis Joseph Vance

... one of them and asked what this meant. The friend, who was named Tamoszius Kuszleika, was a sharp little man who folded hides on the killing beds, and he listened to what Jurgis had to say without seeming at all surprised. They were common enough, he said, such cases of petty graft. It was simply some boss who proposed to add a little to his income. After Jurgis had been there awhile he would know that the plants were simply honeycombed with rottenness of that sort—the bosses grafted off the men, and they grafted ...
— The Jungle • Upton Sinclair

... through her father and a firm of lawyers, had forced old Colonel Dough-face to fork over a big wad of greenbacks. Her share in the show, you understand. Brad heard of it in some way. So he concludes he'll get in his little graft. He goes to the Colonel's rooms in a hotel on Broadway, but misses him. Then he lays for him on the street. They have it hot and heavy, back and forth, and it all ends with the Colonel puttin' over a job on Brad that lands him in the cooler. Charge of highway robbery. Brad gets ...
— The Rose in the Ring • George Barr McCutcheon

... that justice be done to some of the biggest-hearted men who ever left the shores of Great Britain and Australasia, and that the stupendous difficulties confronting them may be properly appreciated. It is no tale of glamour and romance; it is a tale of sheer, hard graft, generally under terrible ...
— With Our Army in Palestine • Antony Bluett

... everything on the blink. Aw, hell, sez I, come on back to Parus an' look 'em over before we skiddoo home—meanin' the dames an' all like that. Say, we done what I said; we come back to Parus, an' we got in wrong! Listen, Doc; them dames had went crazy over this here war graft. Veeve France, sez they. An' by ...
— Barbarians • Robert W. Chambers

... had, therefore, when they chose to accept it, the delight of being instructed, without trouble or doubt, as fast as they could read or imitate; and brought forward to the point where their own northern instincts might wholesomely superimpose or graft some national ideas upon these sound instructions. Read over what I said on this subject in the third of my lectures last year (page 79), and simplify that already brief statement further, by fastening in your mind Carlyle's general symbol of the best attainments of northern religious ...
— The Pleasures of England - Lectures given in Oxford • John Ruskin

... previously lifting a piece of the bark of the plant upon which it is to be placed, to apply this fragment of Cuscuta thereto (as in grafting), place the bark over it, and bind a ligature round the whole. In a short time the graft will bud, and in a few months the host plant will be covered ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 430, March 29, 1884 • Various

... poetry, however, is not simply to instruct, but to "instruct by pleasing," is too obvious to need a proof. However the original object of measure and rhythm may have been to graft truth on the memory, and associate it with music; they are perpetuated by the universal conviction that they delight the ear. Like the armour which adorns the modern hall, they were contrived for use, ...
— Early Reviews of English Poets • John Louis Haney

... even the swine refused to devour it when it was thrown to them. I became tired of seeing this tree, and resolved to change its nature. I went to work, being a nurseryman, and procured cions of ten or a dozen different sorts of apple trees, and took the first favorable opportunity in the spring to graft my old and useless apple tree. When I had finished grafting, I found that I had inserted here and there on the different branches, fifty cions, all of which, with the exception of three, lived, grew, bore fruit, ...
— Your Plants - Plain and Practical Directions for the Treatment of Tender - and Hardy Plants in the House and in the Garden • James Sheehan

... holdings and listed them. And a long-drawn procession of formidable names it was! Starting with the Railway Systems, Steamer Lines, Standard Oil, Ocean Cables, Diluted Telegraph, and all the rest, and winding up with Klondike, De Beers, Tammany Graft, and Shady Privileges in the ...
— The $30,000 Bequest and Other Stories • Mark Twain

... and done for yet, Missy, never fear!" he said. "Give 'im time; give 'im time! 'E's cut above the graft—see! 'E'll grow and shoot and bear blossom and fruit same as ever 'e did, given time. See to the fine stock of 'im; firm as a rock in the good ground! And the roots, they be sound and fresh. 'E'll grow again, Missy; never ...
— Robinetta • Kate Douglas Wiggin

... son of "The Riverman." The young college hero goes into the lumber camp, is antagonized by "graft" and comes into ...
— The Free Range • Francis William Sullivan

... and as aggressive as his jaw. He had entered the force with the single idea of becoming rich, and had set about achieving his object with a strenuous vigor that was as irresistible as his mighty locust-stick. Some policemen are born grafters, some achieve graft, and some have graft thrust upon them. Mr. McEachern had begun by being the first, had risen to the second, and for some years now had been a prominent member of the small and hugely prosperous third class, the class that does not ...
— The Intrusion of Jimmy • P. G. Wodehouse

... sacred ideal into the region of operatic and dramatic realism seem to fall singularly short of expectation. To our minds, the strongest period in the history of oratorio was the time of Handel and Bach, and writers of to-day have yet to graft on to their work the more careful study, and the strengthening influence of these noble masterpieces in stronger cuttings, to make the struggling young plant a healthy and beautiful tree. Let us progress, by all means, but true progression is but the joining of all that is good ...
— The Girl's Own Paper, Vol. VIII, No. 357, October 30, 1886 • Various

... fairness, made him their target whenever they felt the great calling to save their country from disaster. Naturally the mob of law-abiding citizens must be assured from time to time that their masters have a sacred duty to perform, that they earn the right of graft. ...
— Mother Earth, Vol. 1 No. 2, April 1906 - Monthly Magazine Devoted to Social Science and Literature • Various

... ever drifting in alive. Hogan has gone back to Chicago to make a report to Hobart, and the rest have scattered like a covey of partridges. Not one of them has a thought but that we went down in the Seminole. Now they'll pull off their graft, and pull it quick." ...
— The Case and The Girl • Randall Parrish

... better say," chuckled Jack. "I never heard of this valentine graft. What should I think, please? Never mind; I'll undeceive the poor boy at the intermission. He'll be badly disappointed. You see, he said it was ...
— Betty Wales Freshman • Edith K. Dunton

... rustling stone, There venturous boyhood learned to climb,— How well the early graft was known Whose fruit was ...
— The Poetical Works of Oliver Wendell Holmes, Complete • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.

... [FN343] A graft upon an almond tree, which makes its kernel s..veet and gives it an especial delicacy of favour. See Russell's (excellent) Natural History of Aleppo, ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 6 • Richard F. Burton

... side he came of a hardy agricultural stock,[1] improved by a graft from that highly-cultured tree, Rose of Kilravock.[2] Through his mother, a somewhat prosaic person herself, he inherited strains from Huguenot and Highland ancestry. There were recognisable traces of all these elements in Henry Yule, and as was well said by one of his oldest friends: "He was one ...
— The Travels of Marco Polo Volume 1 • Marco Polo and Rustichello of Pisa

... she been pitted against a really formidable foe? Would she have won at all against any enemy fully prepared and of nearly equal strength? Many of us dismissed Roosevelt's warnings then as the outpourings of a jingo, of one who loved war for war's sake, and wished to graft onto the peaceful traditions and standards of our Republic the militarism of Europe. We ...
— Theodore Roosevelt; An Intimate Biography, • William Roscoe Thayer

... slightest serious attempt to interfere with their vested privileges, corruptly obtained and corruptly enhanced, and with the vast amount of increment and graft that these privileges bought them, they would have instantly raised the cry of revolutionary confiscation. But they were very willing to put an end to the petty graft which the politicians collected from saloons, brothels, peddlers, and the small ...
— History of the Great American Fortunes, Vol. I - Conditions in Settlement and Colonial Times • Myers Gustavus

... of "The Riverman." The young college hero goes into the lumber camp, is antagonized by "graft," and comes into the romance ...
— Odd Numbers - Being Further Chronicles of Shorty McCabe • Sewell Ford

... a Drunkard or a Reveller, yet going in that direction; having a liking for evil companions and Sunday pleasuring. Am I looking on some of the saplings which Satan means to graft before next year? Christmas and New Year will soon be here. The dance and the ball-room are ...
— Broken Bread - from an Evangelist's Wallet • Thomas Champness

... if it were my fault. Why didn't you plant them earlier? I don't believe you know any of the tricks of your profession, James. You never seem to graft anything or prune anything, and I'm sure you don't know how to cut a slip. James, why don't you prune more? Prune now—I should like to watch you. Where's your pruning-hook? You can't possibly do it ...
— The Holiday Round • A. A. Milne

... that the graft may survive and have a favourable chance of "taking," as it is called, the transplanted tissue must retain its vitality until it has formed an organic connection with the tissue in which it is placed, so that it may derive ...
— Manual of Surgery - Volume First: General Surgery. Sixth Edition. • Alexis Thomson and Alexander Miles

... merciful God! forgive us all our sins. Give us grace heartily to repent them, and to lead new lives. Graft in our hearts a true love and veneration for thy holy name and word. Make thy pastors burning and shining lights, able to convince gainsayers, and to save others and themselves. Bless this congregation here met together in thy name; grant ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, D. D., Volume IV: - Swift's Writings on Religion and the Church, Volume II • Jonathan Swift

... for the murder of one Paddy Kelly, a rival gangsman in his neighborhood, and had been acquitted on the ground of self-defense. But there had been a good deal of talk about evidence framed in his behalf. Later he had been arrested for graft, but the case somehow had never been acted upon by the district attorney's office. The whisper was that his pull had saved ...
— The Big-Town Round-Up • William MacLeod Raine

... Association of Nurserymen in Chicago, last July, one of our prominent horticulturists described leaf variegation as a disease. Incidentally this brought up the question: Does the graft affect the stock upon which it ...
— Scientific American, Volume XLIII., No. 25, December 18, 1880 • Various

... their followers, Edmund approached his friend and patron; he put one knee to the ground, he embraced his knees with the strongest emotions of grief and anxiety. He was dressed in complete armour, with his visor down; his device was a hawthorn, with a graft of the rose upon it, the motto—This is not my true parent; but Sir Philip bade him take these words—E ...
— The Old English Baron • Clara Reeve

... weeks to a pretty little girl, who would never stir a man's ambitions to anything more than a smart carriage and pair. He's turned idiotic about her, and let's hope he'll stay so. Just at present I don't believe all the boodle and graft in the world would turn a hair on him. Love and politics, my boy, are no more congenial than water and oil—especially if the ...
— Jewel Weed • Alice Ames Winter

... suavity, youth, sweet morning light. O Fantine, maid worthy of being called Marguerite or Pearl, you are a woman from the beauteous Orient. Ladies, a second piece of advice: do not marry; marriage is a graft; it takes well or ill; avoid that risk. But bah! what am I saying? I am wasting my words. Girls are incurable on the subject of marriage, and all that we wise men can say will not prevent the waistcoat-makers and the shoe-stitchers from dreaming ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo

... pursuits and adventures? Even quietly leave him to take guinea-and-a-half lodgings with mamma in Leghorn! O impotent and pacific measures!... I am certain that you must mix up some strong ingredients of distress to give a savour to your pottage. I still think that you may, and must, graft the story of Savage upon Defoe. Your hero must kill a man or do some thing. Can't you bring him to the gallows or some great mischief, out of which she must have recourse to an explanation with her husband to save him. Think on this. The husband, ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Vol. 5 • Edited by E. V. Lucas

... properly relaid. Chicago finds herself possessed of eight different tax levying bodies, while in New York City there are eighty different boards or individuals who have power to create debt. Is it any wonder that inefficiency and graft infest such a maze of boards, councils and committees? We see, then, that the present system of separation of powers produces inefficiency through a confusion of functions; it does away completely with the system of checks and balances and results in utter lack of responsibility ...
— Elements of Debating • Leverett S. Lyon

... "It's the easiest graft that's going," said Oliver. "It's some dodge or other by which they evade the banking laws, and the money comes rolling in in floods. You've noticed their ...
— The Moneychangers • Upton Sinclair

... in which a man of big ideas and fine ideals wars against graft and corruption. A most satisfactory love affair terminates ...
— The Highgrader • William MacLeod Raine

... twain, Lest the house of thy son's son perish And his name be barren on earth. Whose race wilt thou comfort rather If none to thy son remain? Whose seed wilt thou choose to cherish If his be cut off in the birth? For the first fair graft of his graffing [Ant. 4. Was rent from its maiden root 200 By the strong swift hand of a lover Who fills the night with his breath; On the lip of the stream low-laughing Her green soft virginal shoot Was plucked from the stream-side ...
— Erechtheus - A Tragedy (New Edition) • Algernon Charles Swinburne

... ancients," and so forth; wherefore the Duke came talking pleasantly with the Duchess about my doings. I rose at once and went to meet them. With his fine and truly princely manner he received me, lifting his right hand, in which he held as superb a pear-graft as could possibly be seen. "Take it, my Benvenuto!" he exclaimed; "plant this pear in your garden." To these words I replied with a delighted gesture: "O my lord, does your most illustrious Excellency really mean that I should plant it in the garden of ...
— The Autobiography of Benvenuto Cellini • Benvenuto Cellini

... "So he says, Graft. I think it's mighty mean, though. They let me have a room to myself all fall, and now, just when I'm getting used to it, what do they do? Why, they dump this chap in here. It isn't as though there ...
— The New Boy at Hilltop • Ralph Henry Barbour

... is asserted that the northern railway concession has been signed and Amundsen tells me that all negotiations were accomplished without the payment of a single cent of tea money, probably the first instance of the absence of graft in such negotiations in the history of Russia. He says that Trepov, through his agent Borisov, at Moscow, was the greatest opponent of the Norwegian interests. Trepov was formerly minister of ways and communications and is reported to have been refused a similar concession ...
— The Bullitt Mission to Russia • William C. Bullitt

... for the Mooleys the past eight months," Reetal said, "checking up on employees at Velladon's level for indications of graft. And it appears the commodore had been robbing them blind here ...
— Lion Loose • James H. Schmitz

... How it came about [p.283] that there should have been so deplorable a breakdown in respect to war material can only be a matter of conjecture; but we may hazard a pretty shrewd guess that the collapse which was to lead to such deplorable results in the early summer of 1915, was attributable to graft on a Homeric scale. For the Russian army budgets had for several years before the war been framed on lavish lines; that for 1914, for instance, mounted up to 725,000,000 roubles, which represented a higher figure than the corresponding budgets ...
— Experiences of a Dug-out, 1914-1918 • Charles Edward Callwell

... Johnny. "We've turned the option over to our wives to do with as they pleased. We're to have a swell yacht club out there now. I think that's a graft, too!" ...
— Five Thousand an Hour - How Johnny Gamble Won the Heiress • George Randolph Chester

... into the council. Every man there and all the thousands in camp knew that railroad ties cost several dollars each; that wages were abnormally high, often demanded in advance, and often paid twice; that parallel with the great spirit of the work ran a greedy and cunning graft. It seemed to be inevitable, considering the nature and proportions of the enterprise. An absurd law sent out the commissioners, the politicians appointed them, and both had fat pickings. The directors likewise played both ends against the middle; they received the money ...
— The U.P. Trail • Zane Grey

... nature of the stock with its roots and the rest of the tree. Several North American varieties of the plum and peach are well known to reproduce themselves truly by seed; but Downing asserts,[617] "that when a graft is taken from one of these trees and placed upon another stock, this grafted tree is found to lose its singular property of producing the same variety by seed, and becomes like all other worked trees;"—that is, its seedlings become highly variable. Another case is worth giving: the ...
— The Variation of Animals and Plants Under Domestication, Volume II (of 2) • Charles Darwin

... over. I was so busy thinking what would be my next move that I didn't notice much outside—and I didn't want to move, Tom, not a bit. Playing the Bishop's daughter in a trailing coat of red, trimmed with chinchilla, is just your Nancy's graft. But the dear little Bishop gave a jump that almost knocked the roof off the carriage, pulled his arm from behind me and dropped the ten-dollar bill he held as though it burned him. It fell in my lap. I jammed it into my coat pocket. Where is it now? Just ...
— In the Bishop's Carriage • Miriam Michelson

... was latest in religion, government or popular science. They were magazines telling of the municipal corruption of "New York, The Vile," "Philadelphia, Defiled but Happy," "Chicago, the Base," and "St. Louis, the Decayed." Doc Weaver had given them to Mayor Stitz to show him the evil of graft, and to keep his ...
— Kilo - Being the Love Story of Eliph' Hewlitt Book Agent • Ellis Parker Butler

... reign ended, and a new opposition government took on the formidable economic problems facing the nation. In 2003, progress was made in rooting out corruption and encouraging donor support. Since then, however, the KIBAKI government has been rocked by high-level graft scandals. The World Bank suspended aid for most of 2006, and the IMF has delayed loans pending further action by the government on corruption. The scandals have not seemed to affect growth, with GDP growing more than 5% ...
— The 2007 CIA World Factbook • United States

... inefficiency on one hand, and graft and cruelty on the other, and drink and human nature and poverty adding their complications, it seems rather a big job!" Susan said. "Now, look at these small kids out of bed at this hour of night, Bill! And ...
— Saturday's Child • Kathleen Norris

... and habits of self-defense, but there is a time when all systems of egotism and predominance fail. The boy is gone. I have sent him home. All is off. There was martyrs in old times," goes on Bill, "that suffered death rather than give up the particular graft they enjoyed. None of 'em ever was subjugated to such supernatural tortures as I have been. I tried to be faithful to our articles of depredation; but there ...
— The Boy Scouts Book of Stories • Various

... meditated as he went into town. She was the finest girl he had ever met. It was a hard graft, this playing one day in a live town where one could meet charming people, and being forced to take the train next morning for some uninteresting country place where they would have to lounge around a cheap hotel until concert time. Why couldn't the manager get up a schedule ...
— Stanford Stories - Tales of a Young University • Charles K. Field

... intercourse with men. In the little vacancies of time which occur to the busiest of mankind, he was frequently lifting up his soul to God. When he lectured on philosophy, history, anatomy, or other subjects not immediately theological, he would endeavor to graft some religious instructions upon them, that he might raise the minds of his pupils to devotion, as well as to knowledge; and, in his visits to his people, the Christian friend and ...
— The Book of Religions • John Hayward

... tree would be a low estimate for such plants. If this ever does occur, it will change the aspect of cultivation altogether, and I see no good reason why it should not, except that those possessing trees of the quality alluded to, would not very willingly permit others to graft from them, so it is only the already successful planter who can try ...
— The Commercial Products of the Vegetable Kingdom • P. L. Simmonds

... the fanatic, who had come possibly with an eye to business. He expressed disgust at the way the Doukhobors were in subjection to Veregen, "But they must be the people of God," he said, "or they would not be in such subservience. Veregen has a fine graft and I would like to run the spiritual side of the business for him." However, the redoubtable Peter wanted no partner, so Sharpe and his following crossed back to the States, informing Constable King, who saw them safely across, that "they would be back next spring." However, they came not. ...
— Policing the Plains - Being the Real-Life Record of the Famous North-West Mounted Police • R.G. MacBeth

... he is a writer of articles. He incubates articles; he does that all his life and nothing else. The most dogged industry would fail to graft a book on his prose. Felicien is incapable of conceiving a work on a large scale, of broad effects, of fitting characters harmoniously in a plot which develops till it reaches a climax. He has ideas, but he has no ...
— Lost Illusions • Honore De Balzac

... the complex mechanism, full of cranks and wires and wheels, Fed by graft and loot and patronage, as noiselessly it reels. Press the button, pull the lever, clickety-click, and set the vogue For the latest thing in statesmen or the newest kind of rogue. Who's the man behind the throttle? Who's the ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume VII. (of X.) • Various

... original organization. Cunow does not see in the consanguine family the most primitive of all social forms, until now discovered. He sees in it merely a middle form, that takes its origin in the generation groups; a transition stage toward the pure gentile organization, on which, as a graft, the division in age classes, belonging to the consanguine family system, still continues for a time in altered form, along with the division in totem-groups.[4] Cunow explains further: The division in ...
— Woman under socialism • August Bebel

... him safe; Thin diet will do well; 'twill starve him into reason, 'Till he exclude his brother of Navarre, And graft succession on a worthier choice. To favour this, five hundred men in arms Shall stand prepared, to enter at your call, And speed the work; St Martin's gate was named; But the sheriff Conty, who commands that ward, Refused ...
— The Works Of John Dryden, Vol. 7 (of 18) - The Duke of Guise; Albion and Albanius; Don Sebastian • John Dryden

... country. Our ideal of honesty is wrong. With us here at college the trouble is in little things; with the world of business and politics the evil is in great matters too. But the principle is the same. We are not honest. We condemn graft in public office. Is it not also graft when a student helps herself to examination foolscap and takes it for private use? Is the girl who carries away sugar from the table any better than the government employee ...
— Beatrice Leigh at College - A Story for Girls • Julia Augusta Schwartz

... administration of San Francisco had been a scandal for years. Few cared. It was a "corrupt and contented" city. The corruption grew worse. Lower and meaner grafters rose to take the place of the earlier and more robust good fellows who trafficked in the city o' shame. Graft lost class, and lost caste. It was ultimately exposed in all its shocking indecency. The light and licentious town developed a conscience. Public indignation arose and reached its height, when the grafters ventured too far in the shooting ...
— The Mirrors of Washington • Anonymous

... long before they experienced the disappointment and demoralization of camp life. The letters written by many of these soldiers show that they did not falter at active campaigning. The prospect, however, of remaining in camp with insufficient rations, and (to use a modern expressive word) graft on every hand, completely disheartened and disgusted many of them. Many having influence with members of Congress, contrived to get discharges; others lacking this influence deserted. To fill the constantly diminishing ranks caused by deaths, resignations and ...
— Great Fortunes from Railroads • Gustavus Myers

... spoil for strangers? Have I cause to grieve That Hungary quit us? O that I could find Some noble of our land might dare to mix His equal blood with our Castillian seed! Art thou more learned in our pedigrees? Hast thou no friend, no kinsman? Must this realm Fall to the spoiler, and a foreign graft Be nourished by ...
— Count Alarcos - A Tragedy • Benjamin Disraeli

... the school too often," he declared in a loud voice, turning and facing the kitchen stove, as though addressing an audience. "It is a scheme to graft on old soldiers who have children. ...
— Windy McPherson's Son • Sherwood Anderson

... opening eye-lids of the morn," and so forth. Early rising! What can be done with five or six o'clock in town? What may not be done at those hours in the country? With the hoe, the rake, the dibble, the spade, the watering-pot? To plant, prune, drill, transplant, graft, train, and sprinkle! Mrs. S. and I agreed to rise early ...
— Little Masterpieces of American Wit and Humor - Volume I • Various

... My father kept them and so did his father for his people. As long as they had those miles of pines, they had a place for the tribe to live. Father was going to Washington three years ago to tell the president about the graft when they shot him from ambush. If I put up a fight, they'll shoot me. My father wanted me to learn white ways so I could protect the tribe. And the more I learn of white ways the more I realize I'm helpless. Lydia, won't ...
— Lydia of the Pines • Honore Willsie Morrow

... control of lobbying, and the requirement of publicity for campaign expenses. In a few States the primary election system was put into operation. Public officers won popular approval in numerous States and cities by their activity in revealing "graft" and by their fearless enforcement of ...
— History of the United States, Volume 6 (of 6) • E. Benjamin Andrews

... Jimmie remarked grimly that anybody who was looking for easy money did not go into the business of Socialist agitation. If there was anything a Socialist could boast of, it was that their workers and elected officials never touched any graft. Mr. Coleman—that is, Jerry—would be handed a receipt for every ...
— Jimmie Higgins • Upton Sinclair

... to show you that it's more than cribbing. The prisoner gave me the shake on the Reindeer River in '88. Fall of '88 he was at St. Michael's on his way to Siberia. '89 and '90 he was, by his talk, cutting up antics in Siberia. '91 he come back to the world, working the conquering-hero graft in 'Frisco. Now let's see if the ...
— A Daughter of the Snows • Jack London



Words linked to "Graft" :   bribery, felony, introduce, insert, corneal graft, surgery, attachment, heterograft, homograft, barratry, ingraft, allograft, autoplasty, transplant, engraft, commercial bribery



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