"Sharpen" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... film of tissue—the only thing between him and death. I thought of it a day or two later when I was reading a book about the Austrian army officer's life, written by an English lady, and came across the phrase: '"Sharpen sabres!' was the ...
— Antwerp to Gallipoli - A Year of the War on Many Fronts—and Behind Them • Arthur Ruhl
... and the smile had in it so much of the Madge of other days, that his bitterness forsook him, and admiration and love returned to sharpen his grief. ...
— Philip Winwood • Robert Neilson Stephens
... army law is only an extension of the military education of the German nation. Our ancestors of 1813 made greater sacrifices. It is our sacred duty to sharpen the sword that has been put into our hands and to hold it ready for defense as well as for offense. We must allow the idea to sink into the minds of our people that our armaments are an answer to the armaments and policy of the French. We must accustom ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume I (of 8) - Introductions; Special Articles; Causes of War; Diplomatic and State Papers • Various
... rascal, knew how to manage the Governor and to impose his own will upon the weaker man. Vaudreuil and his wife between them had a swarm of needy relatives in Canada, and these and other Canadians who sought favors from the Governor helped to sharpen his antagonism to the officers from France. Vaudreuil believed himself a military genius. It was he and not Montcalm who had the supreme military command, and he regarded as an unnecessary intruder this general officer sent ...
— The Conquest of New France - A Chronicle of the Colonial Wars, Volume 10 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • George M. Wrong
... Every man don' have his price! An' I hope de bro' will recant—like as de Psalmist goes out o' his way to say 'In my haste I said, All men are liars.' He was a very busy man, de Psalmist—writin' down hymns all day, sharpen'n' his lead-pencil, bossin' 'roun' de choir—callin' Selah! Well, bro'n an' sisters "—both arms going out, and his voice going up—" one day, seems like, he was in gre't haste—got to finish a psalm for a monthly ...
— Eli - First published in the "Century Magazine" • Heman White Chaplin
... us more nearly even than the tale of Pocahontas. Its telling by our most popular poet has brought it to the knowledge of a greater circle of readers than it could otherwise have reached; but the elaboration of his treatment could add nothing to the human charm of it, or sharpen our conception of the leading characters in the drama. Miles Standish had been a soldier in the Netherlands before joining the Pilgrims, and to him they gave the military guardianship of the colony, with ...
— The History of the United States from 1492 to 1910, Volume 1 • Julian Hawthorne
... you what you—-might do, Mr. Driggs," hinted Tom Reade. "You might lend us a grindstone, if you have one to spare. Then we can sharpen our knives right on the spot ...
— The High School Boys' Canoe Club • H. Irving Hancock
... gall and wormwood to the girl's unbroken spirit. Nevertheless she was conscious of a certain pleasure in the bitterness. The bitterness was her own, the pleasure some one else's, so to speak, who was looking on and laughing. She felt an unconquerable impulse to sharpen her wit on Mrs. Jupe's customers, and even to imitate them to their faces. They liked it, so she was good ...
— The Christian - A Story • Hall Caine
... departed by our own firesides, we dwell most fondly on those qualities which had won our personal affection, and which sharpen our individual regrets. But when impelled by a loftier and more meditative sorrow, we would raise a public monument to their memory, we praise them appropriately when we relate their actions faithfully; and thus preserving their example for the imitation ...
— Confessions of an Inquiring Spirit etc. • by Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... ambitious, and liked to enjoy a reputation for enlightenment, but no regard for civilization beyond the power it gave him to extend his dominions. His subjects were merely his instruments. All he learned in other countries was to sharpen them and keep them in order, that he might use them to the best advantage. His ambition was not of the highest or noblest kind. The page he has left in history is interesting and instructive, but there is nothing in it to warrant the belief that it will be selected ...
— The Land of Thor • J. Ross Browne
... "Here's something to sharpen your teeth on, Mr. Ricks," the general manager replied, and presented the cablegram he had been ...
— Cappy Ricks • Peter B. Kyne
... discover what gives their value to Mr. Belloc's studies in actuality. Particularly this is so in the accumulation of knowledge which he has acquired in his travels and in the use he makes of it. It seems as though this passion to see and to understand must sharpen his wits and his vision: it gives that life and energy to his writings on this matter without which poetic composition is worthless and ...
— Hilaire Belloc - The Man and His Work • C. Creighton Mandell
... that on board the "Startler" there was no little excitement. The grindstone was in full use to sharpen cutlasses, and in addition there was a great demand made on the armourer for files to give to the lethal weapons a keener edge, one which was tried over and over again, as various messmates consulted together as to the probability of taking off a Malay's ...
— Middy and Ensign • G. Manville Fenn
... to the stream, he splashed his face and neck in the clear cold water, and the brisk rubbing which followed seemed to clear his thought as well as sharpen his appetite. ...
— Cavanaugh: Forest Ranger - A Romance of the Mountain West • Hamlin Garland
... but because, according to the expression of the missionaries, the fat of ants (the white part of the abdomen) is a very substantial food. When the cakes of cassava were prepared, Father Zea, whose fever seemed rather to sharpen than to enfeeble his appetite, ordered a little bag to be brought to him filled with smoked vachacos. He mixed these bruised insects with flour of cassava, which he pressed us to taste. It somewhat resembled rancid butter mixed with crumb of bread. The cassava had not an acid taste, ...
— Equinoctial Regions of America V2 • Alexander von Humboldt
... thou whom reason, friendship, Whom scorn—e'en scorn—to move are all unable, Know that prophetic were thy words! Fate hastens! The Valkyrie prepares the spear already, Its deadly point already does she sharpen. Ah, see! the prince of battle holds it brandish'd; He strikes! he strikes! and all ...
— The Death of Balder • Johannes Ewald
... much cleverer if he has taken three lieutenant-generals and an hundred pieces of cannon? How much cleverer still, if he has left fifteen thousand Muscovites dead on the Spot?(939) Does the loss of only three thousand of his own men take off from or sharpen the sting of this joke? In short, all this is fact, as a courier arrived at Sion Hill this morning affirms. The city, I suppose, expect that his Majesty will now be"at leisure to step to Ticonderoga and repair our mishaps.(940) But I shall talk no ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole, Volume 2 • Horace Walpole
... are reduced in blackness and the surface of the paper becomes roughened, so that it will soil easier and be harder to clean. In order to produce fine pencil lines without requiring a very frequent sharpening of the pencil it is best to sharpen the pencil as in Figures 7 and 8, so that the edge shall be long in the direction in which it is moved, which is denoted by the arrow in Figure 7. But when very fine work is to be done, as in the case of Patent Office drawings, a long, round point is preferable, because the eye can see ...
— Mechanical Drawing Self-Taught • Joshua Rose
... instrument, made of the end of a gun-barrel, something like a carpenter's gouge, and this had a bone handle, with which she kept scraping off the inside of the skin of its fibres, so as to make it soft and pliable. She had a stone to sharpen the tool with, and as she leaned over, tugging away, the perspiration rolled off her face in streams. Poor old creature, I felt sorry for her, as the work might have been done by several big, lazy, half-grown Indian boys I saw romping ...
— Three Years on the Plains - Observations of Indians, 1867-1870 • Edmund B. Tuttle
... more valuable than many volumes, J.B. Say has already remarked that there are two ways of removing the disorder introduced by hypocrisy into an honorable family; to reform Tartuffe, or sharpen the wits of Orgon. Moliere, that great painter of human life, seems constantly to have had in view the second ...
— Sophisms of the Protectionists • Frederic Bastiat
... muttered; it was only thought, but the thought banished the smile of satisfaction from Ian's face. In a meditative mood he took up his gun, refreshed the priming and slightly chipped the flint, so as to sharpen its edge and make ...
— The Red Man's Revenge - A Tale of The Red River Flood • R.M. Ballantyne
... composition, and could not perhaps, in many instances, be done with any tolerable success. If a Latin poem is neat, elegant and musical, it is enough; but English readers are not so easily satisfied. To quote myself, you will find, in comparing the Jackdaw with the original, that I was obliged to sharpen a point which, though smart enough in the Latin, would in English have appeared as plain and as blunt as the tag of a lace." —Letter to Unwin, May 23, 1781 (Southey's Cowper, ed. 1836, vol. iv. p. 97).] All translation, ...
— The Satires, Epistles, and Art of Poetry • Horace
... against the regular clergy. "Religion," he says, "can still sharpen daggers. There is within the nation a people which has no dealings with honest folk, which does not belong to the age, which is inaccessible to the progress of reason, and over which the atrocity of fanaticism ...
— The Eve of the French Revolution • Edward J. Lowell
... fears will never be at rest. Our present state admits only of a kind of negative security; we must conclude ourselves safe when we see no danger, or none inadequate to our powers of opposition. Death, indeed, continually hovers about us, but hovers commonly unseen, unless we sharpen our sight ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, LL.D, In Nine Volumes - Volume the Third: The Rambler, Vol. II • Samuel Johnson
... of her lover be impartial? Yes, if her instincts be pure and harmonious, and her worldly knowledge that of a child. Her discrimination between right and wrong would be at once accurate and involuntary, like the test of poison. Love for the criminal would but sharpen her intuition. The sentence would not be spoken, but would be readable in eyes untainted alike ...
— Idolatry - A Romance • Julian Hawthorne
... peculiar degree the art of pleasing; and these qualities will give them creditable positions in the business interests of the country in a few years. But they must have time to collect their wits, to sharpen their intelligence, to train their moral sense and the feeling of social responsibility, to fully comprehend all that the change from chattel slavery to absolute freedom implies. Men cannot awaken from a Rip Van Winkle slumber of a hundred years and grasp ...
— Black and White - Land, Labor, and Politics in the South • Timothy Thomas Fortune
... away for six weeks and stopped. And now, after a similar splurge, they have as good as stopped once more. The correspondents just sent over by our "enterprising" newspapers, are hardly yet recovered from their sea-sickness. Just as they begin to sharpen their pencils, presto! the war is over, and the occupation of these hardy gentlemen ...
— Punchinello Vol. II., No. 30, October 22, 1870 • Various
... take and sharpen a good bread-knife', said Dapplegrim,' and do as if you were going to cut in two the third loaf on the left hand of those four loaves which are lying on the dresser in the king's kitchen, and ...
— Popular Tales from the Norse • Sir George Webbe Dasent
... sought thus to avenge the loss of her own colonies to Great Britain in 1763. We have here an example of the way in which non-violent resistance, when used merely on the basis of expediency, is apt to intensify and sharpen the conflict, until it finally leads to ...
— Introduction to Non-Violence • Theodore Paullin
... a dark moment of the war, the spring of 1917, the British and French, in order to sharpen Japanese support of the allied cause, made private agreements to sustain the claims of Japan at the Peace Conference to German rights in Shantung. It thus happened, in the Council of Three, for Orlando had then gone home, that two of the powers, Great ...
— Woodrow Wilson as I Know Him • Joseph P. Tumulty
... he receives a good salary, I'm told. Well, what should you get but disgrace and misery if you took a wife you hated into your family (for I know very well that you do hate me)? No, no! I believe now that a man like you would murder anyone for money—sharpen a razor and come up behind his best friend and cut his throat like a sheep—I've read of such people. Everyone seems money-mad nowadays. No, no! I may be shameless, but you are far worse. I don't say a ...
— The Idiot • (AKA Feodor Dostoevsky) Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... burros from the rim-rock. It had occurred to him that if they believed Barney dead, they might reveal something of their purpose in the attack. Concealment, he felt vaguely, would serve merely to sharpen their suspicion of him. It had seemed very important to Casey that these three should not know that Barney was probably well on his way to ...
— The Trail of the White Mule • B. M. Bower
... connection with the case was not revealed). Now, when I saw him and felt his hand once more in the grasp of comradeship, I was with him heart and soul, and scoundrel though he might be, a lineal descendant of old Bluebeard, perhaps, I stood ready to sharpen and pass his knives to him and assist in any humble way a willing and obliging servant could to make the ...
— Cupid's Middleman • Edward B. Lent
... his bride lay down with her kerchief in her hand, and he took a great fancy to it, and he begged and prayed her for it again and again, until at last she gave it to him. Now, when Wednesday thought that all the people were asleep, he went out into the courtyard to sharpen his sabre. Then the foal said, "Oh, my dear little master, come here, come here!" He came, and the foal said to him, "Take off the night-dresses of the forty sleeping bridegrooms and put them on the forty sleeping brides, and put the night-dresses ...
— Cossack Fairy Tales and Folk Tales • Anonymous
... be abundantly employed, and visits to other lands, together with intercourse with intelligent men everywhere, were to "sharpen our wits by rubbing ...
— History of Education • Levi Seeley
... Cretan king; High on a rising ground, above the ring, The monarch sat: from whence with sure survey He well observ'd the chief who led the way, And heard from far his animating cries, And saw the foremost steed with sharpen'd eyes. POPE, ...
— The Principles of English Versification • Paull Franklin Baum
... to him for terms, as formerly. For, indeed, many in Syracuse held secret correspondence with him, and urged him to stay, declaring that even now the people were quite worn out with the war, and weary of Gylippus. And if their necessities should the least sharpen upon them they would give ...
— Plutarch's Lives • A.H. Clough
... space of a few weeks, Victor Emmanuel lost his brother, his mother, and his wife. The King, who felt keenly when he did feel, was driven distraught with grief; no circumstance was wanting which could sharpen the edge of his sorrow. The two Queens, both Austrian princesses, had never interfered in foreign politics; what they suffered they suffered in silence. But they were greatly influenced by the ministers of the religion which had been a comfort of their not too happy lives, ...
— The Liberation of Italy • Countess Evelyn Martinengo-Cesaresco
... drank more deeply still than he did; but, by some idiosyncrasy of stomach or constitution, it had no more effect upon him than it had upon the cask from which it had been drawn, unless, indeed, to reduce him to greater sobriety and sharpen his prejudices. ...
— Willy Reilly - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton
... helped to sharpen my wits, for I began to see that I had gone the wrong way to work with my husband. Instead of trying to make myself fall in love with my husband, I should have tried to make my husband fall ...
— The Woman Thou Gavest Me - Being the Story of Mary O'Neill • Hall Caine
... in his own mind that there existed a creature, somewhat like a mouse, somewhat like a red flower-pot, which glided around during the night-watches to sharpen slate-pencils, smooth out dog-ears from school-books, erase lead-pencil marks, polish up marbles, straighten kite strings, put the "suck" into brick-suckers, and otherwise make itself useful. If there were not such a creature, there ...
— Harper's Young People, March 23, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... for the plain appearance of a volume of 'St. Augustine' which he was sending as a present. 'One must not,' said he, 'expect perfect manuscripts from scholars who are engaged on better things. A general does not sharpen the soldiers' swords. Apelles did not cut out his own boards, or Polycletus his sheets of ivory; some humble person always prepares the material on which a higher mind is to be engaged. So is it with books: some polish the parchment, and others copy or correct the text; others again do the illumination, ...
— The Great Book-Collectors • Charles Isaac Elton and Mary Augusta Elton
... "Splendid!" he cried. "Splendid! That will sharpen his temper if it don't his wits. The Squire's house was tried, you say?" He turned on the farmer again. "Hullo, my friend! I understood there were no law-breakers ...
— Two Sides of the Face - Midwinter Tales • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... looked on the illustrious prisoner as a defender of their rights, and sympathized with him. To sharpen this sympathy, the adepts of the Italian vente everywhere represented their chief as a martyr to his love of the people, and a victim of monarchy. Most injurious charges were everywhere circulated against Fernando IV. It was said that he had inherited ...
— The International Magazine, Volume 2, No. 2, January, 1851 • Various
... afther gettin' out in the air, I mind, to sharpen up the appetites; an' a-boardin' with a widdy, too, bad ...
— Burnham Breaker • Homer Greene
... dull gray nothing! Something must have gone wrong with their assembly work. Ross touched Ashe's shoulder. But now there were shadows gathering on the plate, thickening, to sharpen into a ...
— Key Out of Time • Andre Alice Norton
... Doe at the fire among the assailants at the memorable ruin, whose appearance had awakened the first suspicion that there was more in the attack than proceeded from ordinary causes. This was a discovery well fitted to increase the interest, and sharpen the curiosity, of the man of peace: who peering in upon the pair from the chink, gave all his faculties to the duty of listening and observing. The visage of Doe, dark and sullen at the best, was now peculiarly moody; and he sat gazing into the fire, apparently ...
— Nick of the Woods • Robert M. Bird
... B.C., but spent most of his life at Larissa, in Thessaly. He was educated as a physician by his father, and travelled extensively as an itinerant practitioner for several years. His travels in different climates and among many different people undoubtedly tended to sharpen his keen sense of observation. He was a practical physician as well as a theorist, and, withal, a clear and concise writer. "Life is short," he says, "opportunity fleeting, judgment difficult, treatment easy, but treatment after thought is proper ...
— A History of Science, Volume 1(of 5) • Henry Smith Williams
... could not but sharpen the discipline of the prison, but soon the natural humanity of the commandant, Col. Smith, now believed to be Chief Engineer of the Baltimore Bridge Company, asserted itself, and things went on as before. Two incidents may, however, be mentioned in ...
— The Black Phalanx - African American soldiers in the War of Independence, the - War of 1812, and the Civil War • Joseph T. Wilson
... seen of the warm, delicate blendings. There is always the look of a flowerbed at dawn, before Chanticleer's second call has brought the sun to sharpen outlines, before dreams and night-mist have altogether quitted the place. Plenty of warm wood colours are there, of lake blues, of smothered reds. Precious they are to the eye, these scenes, but hard to find now except in bits which some dealer has preserved ...
— The Tapestry Book • Helen Churchill Candee
... see," proceeded Dunroe, "how either the one or the other of the said commandments would sharpen a man for the world, as ...
— The Black Baronet; or, The Chronicles Of Ballytrain - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton
... tongue, an embittered disposition. I think of the imbecilities in which the repressed instinct has sought its pitiful baffled release, of the adulation lavished on a parrot, a cat, a lap-dog; or of the emotional "religion," the parson-worship, on which every fool is clever enough to sharpen his wit. And all these cramped and stultified lives have not availed to make the world understand that women have had to ...
— Sex And Common-Sense • A. Maude Royden
... in two of the other Evangelists, and the condensed account of it which we have in this Gospel, by its omission of Peter's walking on the water, and of some other smaller but graphic details that the other Evangelists give us, serves to sharpen the symbolical meaning of the whole story, and to bring that as its great purpose and signification ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. John Chapters I to XIV • Alexander Maclaren
... malignity of Dr. Johnson—who hated Milton without disguise as a republican, but secretly and under a mask would at any rate have hated him from jealousy of his scholarship—had not availed to sharpen these practised and these interested eyes into the detection of an oversight which argues a sudden Lethean forgetfulness on the part of Milton; and in many generations of readers, however alive and awake with malice, a corresponding ...
— The Notebook of an English Opium-Eater • Thomas de Quincey
... were from the American North Polar Expedition puppies. Borup was used in Dimitri's dog team which got right on to the Beardmore Glacier, but Peary was never any use except for the other dogs to sharpen their teeth on. ...
— South with Scott • Edward R. G. R. Evans
... "If you'd sharpen up your wits more, Murphy, hustling along here in reasonable hours, instead of insulting a work you're not big enough to understand, you'd get away sooner to a ...
— The Return of Blue Pete • Luke Allan
... tools indicate the character of the workman. In an experience of over forty years, I have never known a good workman to keep poorly sharpened tools. While it is true that the capacity to sharpen tools can be acquired only by practice, correct habits at the start will materially assist. In doing this part of the artisan's work, it should be understood that there is a right as well as ...
— Carpentry for Boys • J. S. Zerbe
... standpoint, whole generations and epochs, when they show themselves infected with any moral fanaticism, seem like those intercalated periods of restraint and fasting, during which an impulse learns to humble and submit itself—at the same time also to PURIFY and SHARPEN itself; certain philosophical sects likewise admit of a similar interpretation (for instance, the Stoa, in the midst of Hellenic culture, with the atmosphere rank and overcharged with Aphrodisiacal odours).—Here ...
— Beyond Good and Evil • Friedrich Nietzsche
... headed off any designs that might be had upon Pat, his mother went to sharpen her own wits for whatever the morrow might have in store ...
— The Widow O'Callaghan's Boys • Gulielma Zollinger
... attractive and made up to date," said Ned. "The man who owns these outfits is working up some good routes. If you have anything to sharpen, now, I'll show you the kind of work ...
— The Boys of Bellwood School • Frank V. Webster
... then pointing out what are taken for irreconcileable discrepancies, are beside the mark. Nor does the supposition that the one night in the den (of Dan. vi.) was increased to six, nor that the detail of withholding the lions' usual food to sharpen their appetites (in Θ only), were added for the purpose of heightening the effect, carry much weight. The omission of Daniel's speech, with the detail[71] of the angel closing the lions' mouths (vv. 21, 22), tells in the opposite direction. It is no more necessary to reckon ...
— The Three Additions to Daniel, A Study • William Heaford Daubney
... Irish housemaid, who has remained faithful, and helps Miss Bence Jones to milk the cows and to attend to the dairy. The road is slippery on the high ground hard by, and it is debated at Lisselan House whether the farrier of the Dragoon Guards shall not be asked to "sharpen" the shoes of the animals employed there, for no ...
— Disturbed Ireland - Being the Letters Written During the Winter of 1880-81. • Bernard H. Becker
... aim, and tries to imitate the absolute thinness of thin or slight things, as much modern wood carving does, I saw in Italy, a year or two ago, a marble sculpture of birds' nests.] On the other hand, we cast our iron into bars—brittle, though an inch thick—sharpen them at the ends, and consider fences, and other work, made of such materials, decorative! I do not believe it would be easy to calculate the amount of mischief done to our taste in England by that ...
— The Two Paths • John Ruskin
... never was a sharecropper. He knew nothing of rural work except the mechanical side of it. He could make or do anything that was needed in fixing up something to do farm work with. I have seen him make and sharpen plows. The first cotton stalk cutter that was made within ten miles of here was made by my father. The people 'round here were knocking off cotton stalks with sticks until my father began making the cutter. Then everybody began using ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States from Interviews with Former Slaves, Arkansas Narratives, Part 4 • Works Projects Administration
... said Deaves. "The little blade is missing, but the big blade is perfectly good if you sharpen it. Here," he said, suddenly thrusting it at Evan as if in fear of repenting ...
— The Deaves Affair • Hulbert Footner
... in life, and must travel along it, side by side, through good or evil fortune. Holbrook would naturally be jealous of any friendship between his wife and you; while such a friendship could not fail to keep alive bitter thoughts in your mind—could not fail to sharpen the regret which you fancy just now is to be life-long. I have no doubt I seem to speak ...
— Fenton's Quest • M. E. Braddon
... met young men of their own age and became intimately acquainted with them, morals were purer, marriages of affection were much more frequent, and the state of married life was much more congenial, than in any other century. Young men paid court to the older ladies, to refine their manners and sharpen their intellects, but not for any immoral purpose. To a certain extent women were more world-wise when they reached the marriageable age, and inspired respect and admiration rather than passion and desire ...
— Women of Modern France - Woman In All Ages And In All Countries • Hugo P. Thieme
... of the first bout, and stood to sharpen his scythe, he was startled to see, a little way off, gathering after one of the scythes, a form he could not mistake. SHE had known he would keep his troth! She did not look up, but he knew her figure and every motion of it too well to take ...
— Warlock o' Glenwarlock • George MacDonald
... to stay there for a time after that, to let the birds know that they couldn't frighten her away. She scared them almost out of their wits by threatening to climb up where their nests were. But she didn't do more than sharpen her claws against a tree-trunk. That alone was enough to throw them into ...
— The Tale of Miss Kitty Cat - Slumber-Town Tales • Arthur Scott Bailey
... resolved to cast down her earthly rival. One day, therefore, she called hither her son, Love (Cupid, some name him), and bade him sharpen his weapons. He is an archer more to be dreaded than Apollo, for Apollo's arrows take life, but Love's bring joy or sorrow ...
— Good Stories For Great Holidays - Arranged for Story-Telling and Reading Aloud and for the - Children's Own Reading • Frances Jenkins Olcott
... wildernesse, And fals freres forboden the fayre ladis chaumbres; 16 For knewe lordes her craft treuly I trowe They shulden nought haunten her house so ho[m]ly[64] on nyghtes, Ne bedden swich brothels in so brode shetes, 20 But sheten her heved in the stre to sharpen her wittes. ...
— Early English Meals and Manners • Various
... sexes, paired and unpaired!"—It was already evident from this address, how necessary it was that a preacher of repentance should arise, and sharpen the conscience of the company. "One part of my noble friends is paired, and they may find themselves quite happy; another unpaired, and these find themselves in the highest degree miserable, as I can assure you from my own experience: and although the loving ...
— Autobiography • Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
... who, overcome with fatigue, had sunk to sleep in a corner of the carriage. He compared, in spite of himself, the toilette of Louise and that of Emilie. Now on occasions of this kind the presence of a wife is singularly calculated to sharpen the unquenchable desires of a forbidden love. Moreover, the glances of the baron, directed alternately to his wife and to her friend, were easy to interpret, and ...
— Analytical Studies • Honore de Balzac
... the palefaces. Grey Wolf was a great chief. The village in the Blue Mountains mourned very much. Nicotee, his squaw, went wailing into the land of shadows. His son hath seen but seven moons of corn, but he dreams of the day when he shall sharpen the hatchet against the slayers of his father.... The Chickahominies have told Black Wolf that his brother was wounded and not slain by the palefaces. They brought him captive to their great board wigwams. There they tied him not to the torture stake; ...
— Prisoners of Hope - A Tale of Colonial Virginia • Mary Johnston
... all is yet to be done. Zeb hasn't heard the news; just think of it! You must write and tell him that I'll help you spin the children's clothes and work the farm; that we'll face everything in Opinquake as long as Old Put needs men. Where is the ink-horn? I'll sharpen a pen for you and one for me, and SUCH news as he'll get! Wish I could tell him, though, and see the great fellow tremble once more. Afraid of me! Ha! ha! ha! that's the funniest thing—Why, Mother ...
— Taken Alive • E. P. Roe
... her and joked with them, and led them into a beautiful room, where she gave them food to eat, and showed them a soft cushion on which they might sleep. Then she left them and went down into the palace kitchens, where she told the servants to sharpen the knives, and to make a great fire ready, and hang a large kettleful ...
— The Yellow Fairy Book • Leonora Blanche Alleyne Lang
... to sharpen reason and to develop the mind, but they failed for want of data. Indeed, this has been the common failure of man, for in the height of civilization men speculate without sufficient knowledge. Even in the beginning of scientific thought, for lack of facts, men spent much of ...
— History of Human Society • Frank W. Blackmar
... the cavern, he looked down And saw a gloomy place, dismal as hell; But not one cursed, impious sorcerer Was visible in that infernal depth. Awhile he stood—his falchion in his grasp, And rubbed his eyes to sharpen his dim sight, And then a mountain-form, covered with hair, Filling up all the space, rose into view. The monster was asleep, but presently The daring shouts of Rustem broke his rest, And brought him suddenly upon his feet, When seizing a huge mill-stone, forth ...
— Persian Literature, Volume 1,Comprising The Shah Nameh, The - Rubaiyat, The Divan, and The Gulistan • Anonymous
... In Brussels I have seen the Episcopalians, the Germans, the French Protestants, all assembling at different times in the same building. There was a time when a similar custom prevailed in Southwold, and that was when Master Sharpen, who had his abode at Sotterley, preached at Southwold once a month. There were Independents in the towns in those days, and 'his indulgence,' writes a local historian, 'favoured the Separatists with the liberty and free ...
— East Anglia - Personal Recollections and Historical Associations • J. Ewing Ritchie
... a friend here in the room, here at the window, here on your breast." And she threw herself on the Burgundian maiden's breast, weeping and laughing alternately. "Give me your needle—your fine beautiful needle; I will thread it. No! I will sharpen it on steel; no, I will dip it in my perfume-flask, my own special little perfume flask, and then together we will sew up the Tiger's mouth, so that ...
— Historical Miniatures • August Strindberg
... warned me that the fresh air might sharpen up some of our appetites," replied Thad; "and I ...
— The Boy Scouts' First Camp Fire - or, Scouting with the Silver Fox Patrol • Herbert Carter
... of the form will not only aid one in adopting a more becoming style of dress, but will sharpen the artistic perceptions, thus adding to the ...
— What Dress Makes of Us • Dorothy Quigley
... distance, on the leafless tree, All woe be gone, the lonely blackbird sits; The cold north wind ruffles his glossy feathers; Full oft' he looks, but dare not make approach; Then turns his yellow bill to peck his side, And claps his wings close to his sharpen'd breast. The wand'ring fowler, from behind the hedge, Fastens his eye upon him, points his gun, And firing wantonly as at a mark, E'en lays him low in that same cheerful spot Which oft' hath ...
— Poems, &c. (1790) • Joanna Baillie
... thighs into the water; and as soon as the Crabs have stuck to the long hair, betaking himself to shore, the crafty fellow shakes off his sea-spoil, and enjoys the food that he has collected in every quarter. Thus even in Fools does hunger sharpen the wits. ...
— The Fables of Phdrus - Literally translated into English prose with notes • Phaedrus
... innocent altogether," laughed the Pencil, rubbing its leaden head rapidly on a piece of paper, to sharpen its point. "A regular sitting! What do you think? No, sir, no, emphatically never. Such an operation would be fatal to the delicate constitution of a caricature, and the result would not be worth the paper upon which it is drawn. It is only in ordinary portraiture that a sitting is required, ...
— The Confessions of a Caricaturist, Vol. 1 (of 2) • Harry Furniss
... the 600,000,000 who have never heard the name of salvation by the blood of Jesus declare. Let the Agents of our Societies declare, who travel from one end of the land to the other, to gather a scanty pittance from half-reluctant Christians—nay, who are often led to sharpen their goads at the Philistines' grind-stones, to the dishonour of the cause of God. What then is the ground of evasion? Why, that those were apostolic times and apostolic men. Could there be a stronger reason urged for following ...
— Christian Devotedness • Anthony Norris Groves
... Greece, every free citizen was instructed, under the direction of the public magistrate, in gymnastic exercises and in music. By gymnastic exercises, it was intended to harden his body, to sharpen his courage, and to prepare him for the fatigues and dangers of war; and as the Greek militia was, by all accounts, one of the best that ever was in the world, this part of their public education must have answered ...
— An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations • Adam Smith
... make a mellow hour; Fill your pipe, and taste the wine— Warp your face, if it be sour, I can spare a smile from mine; If it sharpen up your wit, Let me feel the edge of it— I have eager ears to lend, Tom Van Arden, ...
— Riley Love-Lyrics • James Whitcomb Riley
... you cut it out with a sharp knife removing the bark to the wood. Blighted trees send up shoots from the base, below the blighted bark. So you take one of these shoots, sharpen it at the top and insert this sharpened tip under the healthy bark at the top of the blighted area. The shoot should be a little longer than the blighted area so that you can get a spring to the shoot as you push its tip in between ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Report of the Proceedings at the 44th Annual Meeting • Various
... some such decisive taste, there is no room for hesitation: follow your bent. And observe (lest I should too much discourage you) that the disposition does not usually burn so brightly at the first, or rather not so constantly. Habit and practice sharpen gifts; the necessity of toil grows less disgusting, grows even welcome, in the course of years; a small taste (if it be only genuine) waxes with indulgence into an exclusive passion. Enough, just now, if you can look back over a fair interval, and see that ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 16 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... exercises the Oyler boys are privileged to make anything which appeals to them and for which they can supply the material. The school machines are theirs, subject to their use at any time. Taking advantage of this, the boys sharpen the home knives and hatchets, make axe handles, umbrella racks, hall stands, stools, sleds, cane chairs, and repair or make any product which fancy ...
— The New Education - A Review of Progressive Educational Movements of the Day (1915) • Scott Nearing
... boy held his left forefinger as if it were a pencil and began to sharpen it derisively with his right forefinger. They came closer, and sang like a trained chorus, "A-fray-ed of ...
— The Monster and Other Stories - The Monster; The Blue Hotel; His New Mittens • Stephen Crane
... was wandering about the scrub in the neighborhood of Ballarat one day, sat down at the foot of a tree to rest. While sitting there he took out his knife to cut a stick, and finding the knife was dull, he proceeded to sharpen it by rubbing it upon a stone that lay almost completely imbedded in the ground. As he rubbed, he found that the surface of the stone became yellow. He was greatly surprised at this, and then he dug around ...
— The Land of the Kangaroo - Adventures of Two Youths in a Journey through the Great Island Continent • Thomas Wallace Knox
... on the Gussie took their machetes to a grindstone on the hurricane-deck. Our soldiers gathered around to see them sharpen their long knives, but only one could be induced to test the edge of these barbarous instruments with ...
— The Boys of '98 • James Otis
... bed while she prepared to follow me. I watched her undress with delight, but when she had finished she put out the candles. I complained of this act of hers, but she said she could not sleep with the light shining on her. I began to suspect that I might have some difficulties thrown in my way to sharpen the pleasure, but I determined to be resigned ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... of social electricity. The clubs in which Johnson delighted were excellently adapted to foster his peculiar talent. There a man could "fold his legs and have his talk out"—a pleasure hardly to be enjoyed now. And there a set of friends meeting regularly, and meeting to talk, learnt to sharpen each other's skill in all dialectic manoeuvres. Conversation may be pleasantest, as Johnson admitted, when two friends meet quietly to exchange their minds without any thought of display. But conversation considered as a game, as a bout of intellectual sword-play, has also ...
— Samuel Johnson • Leslie Stephen
... Cucumis; tho' very cold and moist, the most approved Sallet alone, or in Composition, of all the Vinaigrets, to sharpen the Appetite, and cool the Liver, [16]&c. if rightly prepar'd; that is, by rectifying the vulgar Mistake of altogether extracting the Juice, in which it should rather be soak'd: Nor ought it to be over Oyl'd, ...
— Acetaria: A Discourse of Sallets • John Evelyn
... was nothing to do but to dig away at the base of this mountain of ignorance and prejudice. You must keep at the poor fellow; you must hold your temper, and argue with him, and watch for your chance to stick an idea or two into his head. And the rest of the time you must sharpen up your weapons—you must think out new replies to his objections, and provide yourself with new facts to prove to him the folly of ...
— The Jungle • Upton Sinclair
... while he sat by and discoursed to her of all the things he had read, and surprised himself by the strength and activity of his memory. He attributed it partly to the air of the island. Nor were his fingers idle even at night. He had tools to sharpen for the morrow, glass to make and polish out of a laminated crystal he had found. And then the hurricane had blown away, among many properties, his map; so he had to make another with similar materials. He completed the map in due course, and gave ...
— Foul Play • Charles Reade
... offenders in regard to the abominable practice of killing fish by means of dynamite. It is very well to say that the law forbids it; but the administrators of the law are not always a terror to evil-doers, and perhaps the timely present of a dish of fine trout does not sharpen the energies of the officials. Another mode of destroying fish is practised by the Wallacks. There grows in this locality a poisonous plant, of which they make a decoction and throw it into the river, thereby killing great numbers of fish ...
— Round About the Carpathians • Andrew F. Crosse
... quarrel is envenomed by private injuries, a blow that is not mortal or decisive can be productive only of a short truce, which allows the unsuccessful combatant to sharpen his arms for a new encounter. The strength of Alboin had been found unequal to the gratification of his love, ambition, and revenge: he condescended to implore the formidable aid of the chagan; and the arguments that he employed are expressive of the art and ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 4 • Edward Gibbon
... answers to all these questions were not considered satisfactory, they next endeavoured to sharpen his wits by torturing a German coiner in his presence; and when this mode of persuasion failed, they tortured Augusta himself. They stripped him naked. They stretched him face downwards on a ladder. They smeared his hips with boiling pitch. They set the spluttering mess on fire, and ...
— History of the Moravian Church • J. E. Hutton
... seemed to flow, as from vessel to vessel, until it rose into such dominion as to declare the gracious presence of Him who is ever worthy to be honored and adored for thus condescending to own us on such important occasions. Iron is said to sharpen iron; and I thought it was a little the case with me at this season, feeling very desirous to enjoy that within myself which I so much ...
— Memoir and Diary of John Yeardley, Minister of the Gospel • John Yeardley
... most troublesome of all were the Philistines, who "were repulsed by Shamgar and harassed by Samson," but they continued their hostility, capturing the Ark of the Covenant in the days of Eli, and finally bringing Israel so completely under their power that they had to go to the Philistines to sharpen their tools. ...
— A Trip Abroad • Don Carlos Janes
... gathered from her familiar talk, which was crisp, with suggestions of thought in the liveliest and highest form. Somebody asking her how she and a certain acrid critic of her acquaintance got on together, she replied, "Oh, very well; we sharpen each other like two knives." Being congratulated on the restoration of cordiality between herself and a friend with whom she had had some difference, "Oh yes," said she, "the cracked cup is mended, but it will never hold water again." Both these ladies, mother and daughter, had a most extraordinary ...
— Records of a Girlhood • Frances Anne Kemble
... thing!" said the latter. "Here's in honor of the treat!—None but a sneak will refuse, for this stuff will sharpen the Wolves' teeth!" ...
— The Wandering Jew, Complete • Eugene Sue
... habits exercise so powerful an influence over the mind, that the value of precept is hardly felt. The good impressions which arc made by the teacher in the morning, are obliterated by the example of ignorant parents in the evening; so that the result of an education imparted in this way, is merely to sharpen the natural cunning of youth, and give them an increased power of evil, by the fragments of information they thus acquire. If we would have our efforts to improve their condition, really effective, we should deal with them as with foundlings. They should be removed ...
— A Voyage Round the World, Vol. I (of ?) • James Holman
... this plan to comment on a man, Whose merit I'm proud to rehearse; For a razor and knife he will sharpen for life, And deserves every ...
— The Works of Lord Byron: Letters and Journals, Volume 2. • Lord Byron
... rock and stopping their work at drilling that they might muck away the refuse. The stope began to take on the appearance of a vast chamber, as day after day, banging away at their drill holes, stopping only to sharpen the bits or to rest their aching muscles, they pursued into the entrails of the hills the vagrant vein which had escaped them. And day after day, each, without mentioning it to the other, was tortured by the thought of that offer of riches, that mysterious proffer of wealth for ...
— The Cross-Cut • Courtney Ryley Cooper
... up' since we retired to rest. The sky looks lowering, and the clouds are evidently surcharged with rain. In fine the weather, as my predecessor on watch informs me, bears every sign of an excellent fishday on the morrow. I accordingly grind some bait, sharpen up my hooks once more, see my lines clear, and my heaviest jigs (the technical term for hooks with pewter on them) on the rail ready for use, and at one o'clock return to my comfortable bunk. I am soon again ...
— American Merchant Ships and Sailors • Willis J. Abbot
... either side, when Mr. Meigs gradually increased his distance ahead, and leaping across a deep run that traversed the path, the Indian stopped on the brink, threw his tomahawk, and gave up the pursuit with one of those fierce yells which rage and disappointment both served to sharpen. It was distinctly heard at both the forts. About sixteen years since, an Indian tomahawk was ploughed up near this spot, and was most probably the one thrown at Mr. Meigs; as the rescue and pursuit from Fort Harmar was so immediate upon hearing the alarm, that he had no ...
— Heroes and Hunters of the West • Anonymous
... the porthole. The metal, he then saw, was a soft antique gold, wrought into a decoration of delicate spindles, with a border of filigree. The circlet was beautiful in itself, and astonishingly heavy. But what it chiefly did for Matthews was to sharpen the sense of strangeness, of remoteness, which this bizarre galley, come from unknown waters, had brought into the ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1917 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... location for the camp they were fortunate enough to find a big herd of buffalo. On their return, before they reached the camp they began to sing a crazy dog song, riding abreast. It means: 'A song to sharpen your knife, and patch up your stomach, for you are going to have something good to eat.' They made a circle, coming to camp from the sunrise, and moved toward the sunset, and then the leaders told the camp they had seen lots of buffalo. Then they dismounted ...
— The Vanishing Race • Dr. Joseph Kossuth Dixon
... cannot sharpen the faculties of mankind; if it cannot quicken the perceptions; if it has not the power to make the deaf hear, the blind see, the lame walk—at least, sufficient for its own success—then, indeed—! But it is possessed of all these virtues, and more. If necessity be the mother of invention, ...
— Heiress of Haddon • William E. Doubleday
... busy or sluggish, eager or unhappy, and our eyes are apt to get dulled to this eventfulness of form in those things which we are always looking at. Now it is one of the chief uses of decoration, the chief part of its alliance with nature, that it has to sharpen our dulled senses in this matter: for this end are those wonders of intricate patterns interwoven, those strange forms invented, which men have so long delighted in: forms and intricacies that do not necessarily imitate nature, but in which the hand of ...
— Hopes and Fears for Art • William Morris
... time it looked as if every one would die. But in the end this period of suffering proved a real blessing. It killed all the weaker people and forced the survivors to sharpen their wits lest they ...
— Ancient Man - The Beginning of Civilizations • Hendrik Willem Van Loon
... unchanged; only our ear has grown dull so far as comprehension of the tone-color of the string quartet is concerned. The same full orchestra, which in those works sounded so overpoweringly imposing seventy years ago, now sounds to us simply powerful. In such symphonies, in order to sharpen our ears, which have become dulled in this respect, we have arrived at the strange necessity of doubling the parts of the stringed instruments in a simple wind instrument ensemble, so as to attain the ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VIII • Various
... work in the field. He made wagons, plows, plowstocks, buzzard wings—they call them turning plows now. They used to make and put them on the stocks. He made anything-handles, baskets. He could fill wagon wheels. He could sharpen tools. Anything that come under the line of blacksmith, that is what he did. He used to fix wagons all the time I knowed him. In harvest time in the fall he would drive from Bienville where they were slaves to ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States - Volume II. Arkansas Narratives. Part I • Work Projects Administration
... with the ease he instantly felt. "I'm in no hurry." He took a note-book from his pocket, laid it on his knee, and began to sharpen a pencil. ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... his curly hair the right touch before the glass, get out his book on engineering, his boxes of instruments, his drawing paper, his profile paper, open the book of logarithms, mix his India ink, sharpen his pencils, light a cigar, and sit down at the table to "lay out a line," with the most grave notion that he was mastering the details of engineering. He would spend half a day in these preparations without ever working ...
— The Gilded Age, Complete • Mark Twain and Charles Dudley Warner
... battle for her private opinions as talkative people have, simply because she rarely if ever expressed an opinion; but her father stood ready always, a post of resistance to innovation, upon which she could sharpen the claws of her conclusion silently whenever they ...
— The Heavenly Twins • Madame Sarah Grand
... them. These pleasures he held to be inferior to those of the senses and less refined than those of the intellect. He looked upon imaginative pleasure as consisting in resemblances discovered between imitations and things imitated, between copies and originals, an exercise adapted to sharpen ...
— Aesthetic as Science of Expression and General Linguistic • Benedetto Croce
... stood watching her, querying how long those clear eyes would have nothing to hide, how long that bright purity could resist the corrosion of the world's breath; and half thinking that it would be better for the spirit to pass away, with its lustre upon it, than stay till self-interest should sharpen the eye, and the lines of diplomacy write themselves on that fair brow. "Better so, ...
— Queechy, Volume I • Elizabeth Wetherell
... visit, and vision, a dubbel depressive; in dhe real phyzzic, vizzit, and vizzion; but work equal wonders, in polysyllables ov anny extension; pretending, in dhe verry name, to' paint pollysyllabels. And dhus dhe trokees grow innumerabel, dhat shut and sharpen, shortening dhe former vowel; hwich dhey hav hiddherto' pretended to' exhibbit slowly and smoodhly open: so leving singuel dhe intermediate articulacion, hwich must be audibly dubbel, (must shut az wel az articculate,) ...
— A Minniature ov Inglish Orthoggraphy • James Elphinston
... with his worst and most inhuman acts, and the slightness of the occasions upon which he delighted to hang his most memorable atrocities, aggravated their impression at the time, and must have contributed greatly to sharpen the sword of vengeance. His palace happened to be contiguous to the circus. Some seats, it seems, were open indiscriminately to the public; consequently, the only way in which they could be appropriated, was by ...
— The Caesars • Thomas de Quincey
... Austria from Bourbon-Spanish Alliances, and brought her into the arms of the grateful Sea-Powers again. Imminent Downfall of the Universe was thus, glory to Robinson, arrested for that time. And now we have the same Robinson instructed to sharpen all his faculties to the cutting pitch, and do the impossible for this new and reverse face of matters. What a change from 1731 to 1741! Bugbear of dreadful Austrian-Spanish Alliance dissolves now into sunlit clouds, encircling a beautiful Austrian Andromeda, about ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XIII. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... division of the south have not been beaten—but they have been dispersed. To you it belongs to revenge this insult. You are valiant, and have known long ago the path to glory. Sharpen well your bayonets and your swords. The campaign of Peru shall finish in this year. Your old general assures it. ...
— Narrative of Services in the Liberation of Chili, Peru and Brazil, - from Spanish and Portuguese Domination, Volume 1 • Thomas Cochrane, Tenth Earl of Dundonald |
