"Tool" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... brought a large number of women to the trial, and when the prisoner appeared, there was a low hum of admiration and surprise. Fanfar's companion, the man of whom Fanfar had made, it was said, a tool, excited neither admiration nor sympathy. Fanfar looked at him once and turned ...
— The Son of Monte Cristo • Jules Lermina
... the covered way of the water gate, with guard-room and bailiff's office to the right and left, one found himself in the court-yard, some fifty yards in the square. On the right were the cow-barns, horse-stalls, granaries, tool-houses, and store-buildings, while the dwelling proper, known as the Great House, occupied the entire left of the square, the kitchens and other offices adjoining the retainers' quarters on the south. An enormous hall, running ...
— The Doomsman • Van Tassel Sutphen
... had delivered their country from the oppression of foreigners, encountered a more formidable enemy in the factious spirit of their own people. Alcimus, a tool of the Syrians, assumed the title of high-priest, and in virtue of his office claimed the obedience of all who acknowledged the institutions of Moses. In this emergency Judas courted the alliance of the Romans, who willingly extended their protection to confederates so likely ...
— Palestine or the Holy Land - From the Earliest Period to the Present Time • Michael Russell
... "Any practical politician could have told them that, but I'm glad to hear that a mathematical tool to work on the problem has been devised. Maybe one of these days we won't have ...
— Hail to the Chief • Gordon Randall Garrett
... thought of a "fence," in which he himself had possibly been impressed as a tool, by the cleverest intrigue. The entire attitude of the Robinsons might, he realized, have been but a part of the game. He had witnessed Dorothy's acting. It gave him a vivid sense of her powers, some others of which might well lie ...
— A Husband by Proxy • Jack Steele
... a shaggy fell, his choicest tool a flake of stone; His best of orn'aments tattoo'd skin and holes to hang ...
— The Kasidah of Haji Abdu El-Yezdi • Richard F. Burton
... firm, but I thought that perhaps he really did know something about the business. I went to the tool shed to see what I could find. When I came back he was sitting on the ground with the front wheel between his legs. He was playing with it, twiddling it round between his fingers; the remnant of the machine was lying on ...
— Three Men on the Bummel • Jerome K. Jerome
... should be set well inside the picturesque old wall. Stone gateposts and a rustic gate at the entrance on the {226} highway. A bungalow for the caretaker, wherein there shall be a room for the meetings of the Society's Executive Committee and Board. A tool and workshop of corresponding style. Several rustic ...
— The Bird Study Book • Thomas Gilbert Pearson
... The mighty tool in Satan's hands for the destroying of the hope of Christ's coming has been a simple one: zealous souls have been found who, ignoring the statements of Scripture, would attempt to fix the day of His coming. Then, as their prophecy ...
— Satan • Lewis Sperry Chafer
... In the year 1796, lord William Murray obtained a patent for manufacturing starch from horse-chesnuts. The method was to take the horse-chesnuts out of the outward green prickly husk, and either by hand, with a knife or tool, or else with a mill adapted for the purpose, the brown rind was carefully removed, leaving the chesnuts perfectly white, and without the smallest speck. In this state the nuts were rasped or ground to a pulp with water, and the pulp washed with water ...
— The Cook and Housekeeper's Complete and Universal Dictionary; Including a System of Modern Cookery, in all Its Various Branches, • Mary Eaton
... time, out of that order, and a choice that does honor to his memory. This was Lanfranc, a man of great learning for the times, and extraordinary piety. He owed his elevation to William; but though always inviolably faithful, he never was the tool or flatterer of the power which raised him; and the greater freedom he showed, the higher he rose in the confidence of his master. By mixing with the concerns of state he did not lose his religion and conscience, or make ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. VII. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... with me to my door, and there I met old Pettigrew coming down the steps. He looked dusty and tired, but his eye was brighter than it used to be, and he carried in a rather unaccustomed manner, a workman's tool basket. ...
— In the Days of the Comet • H. G. Wells
... position, who had favored the accused throughout the trial, delivered his opinion at length. He concluded for banishment. The next judge voted for decapitation, but with a recommendation to mercy. Next, one Pussort, a malignant tool of the Chancellor, inveighed against Fouquet for four hours, so violently that he injured his case. His voice was for the gallows,—but, in consideration of the criminal's rank, he would consent to commute the ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 13, No. 78, April, 1864 • Various
... was a dummy director and a tool of corporations that secretly robbed widows and orphans. This gentleman, who collected fine editions and was a patron of literature, paid blackmail to a heavy-jowled, black-browed boss of a municipal machine. This editor, ...
— The Iron Heel • Jack London
... close-grained; much valued for furniture, picture-frames, cabinet-work, fencing, bridges, etc., railway, and other carriages, boat-building, for tool-handles, gun-stocks, naves of wheels, crutches, parts of organs, pianofortes (sound-boards ...
— A Dictionary of Austral English • Edward Morris
... tactics of party or of war. The good husband finds method as efficient in the packing of fire-wood in a shed or in the harvesting of fruits in the cellar, as in Peninsular campaigns or the files of the Department of State. In the rainy day he builds a work-bench, or gets his tool-box set in the corner of the barn-chamber, and stored with nails, gimlet, pincers, screwdriver and chisel. Herein he tastes an old joy of youth and childhood, the cat-like love of garrets, presses and corn-chambers, ...
— Essays, First Series • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... a rake! a hoe! A pickaxe or a bill! A hook to reap, or a scythe to mow, A flail, or what ye will— And here's a ready hand To ply the needful tool, And skill'd enough, by lessons rough, In Labour's rugged ...
— North and South • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... of a lout like that being taken for the leader!" he exclaimed. "He is nothing but a tool, and a ...
— At the Time Appointed • A. Maynard Barbour
... human activity machine-like is a form of experience that increases the probability that the possessor will be discarded and his work accomplished by the introduction of some new tool or ...
— Increasing Efficiency In Business • Walter Dill Scott
... think I am committed to him, body and soul? Does he take it for granted that I am a tool and a fool? Burr should consider his own position and mine. I have had too much experience in the world to be caught by this shrewd contriver, or by ...
— A Dream of Empire - Or, The House of Blennerhassett • William Henry Venable
... the tool of Louis XL, and once the king's barber, was called Le Diable, because he was as much feared, was as fond of making mischief, and was far more disliked than the prince of evil. Olivier was executed ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama, Vol 1 - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook • The Rev. E. Cobham Brewer, LL.D.
... than a sense of either light or justice. But, on the other hand, let him meet a man of his own rank, who cared nothing about his authority as a magistrate, or his assumption as a man of large landed property, and he was nothing but a poor weak-minded tool in his hands. So far our description is correct; but when such a knave as Sir Robert Whitecraft came in his way—a knave at once calculating, deceitful, plausible, and cunning—why, our worthy old squire, who thought himself a ...
— Willy Reilly - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton
... hand. Even in the deepening twilight, I could see on the back of it a long, white scar that might have been made by a claw or a knife or some sharp-edged tool. ...
— Rolling Stones • O. Henry
... pure and ancient language; we all occasionally use terms taken from this remarkable tongue, and, when we speak of a "cad," or "making a mull," or "bosh," or "shindy," or "cadger" or "bamboozling," or "mug," or "duffer," or "tool," or "queer," or "maunder," or "loafer," or "bung," we are using pure gipsy. No distinct mental process, no process of corruption, is made manifest by the use of these terms; we simply have picked them up unconsciously, and we continue to utter ...
— The Ethics of Drink and Other Social Questions - Joints In Our Social Armour • James Runciman
... as a patriot; that he was a mere instrument in the hands of other persons seems now abundantly clear. No sooner had Mary Anne Clarke landed his Royal Highness, than she fixed her hook in the jaws of the luckless colonel, who, tool as he was, proved to be by no means a sharp one. It is obvious a woman of Mrs. Clarke's character would be the last person to open her lips, unless it was made clear to her that it would be worth her while to do so. Her go-between in the transaction was a certain "Major" Dodd. Wardle ...
— English Caricaturists and Graphic Humourists of the Nineteenth Century. - How they Illustrated and Interpreted their Times. • Graham Everitt
... because the Supreme Junta has been sending all the best troops to Venegas, instead of to him; and he knows, well enough, that that perpetual intriguer Frere is working underhand to get Albuquerque appointed to the supreme command. As to Venegas, he is a mere tool of the Supreme Junta and, as likely as not, they will order him to do nothing but keep his ...
— Under Wellington's Command - A Tale of the Peninsular War • G. A. Henty
... life's drama. He calls as his witness one Margari, who was formerly old Lapussa's reader before the girl was married, and since then has been compelled to act as secretary to Hatszegi, or rather as a spy upon him. This fellow, who is now the mere tool of Mr. John, is quite prepared to retail all sorts of horrors about the Hatszegis. As to the other grandchild, the boy Koloman I mean, his uncle has saddled him with a terrible charge. He has produced a bill for 40,000 florins which he accuses the lad of forging in ...
— The Poor Plutocrats • Maurus Jokai
... called yauhahu simaira or "the evil spirit's arrow."[11] It is these evil spirits whom wicked sorcerers employ to accomplish their fell purpose. Thus while the demon is the direct cause of sickness and death, the sorcerer who uses him as his tool is the indirect cause. The demon is thought to do his work by inserting some alien substance into the body of the sufferer, and a medicine-man is employed to extract it by chanting an invocation to the maleficent spirit, shaking ...
— The Belief in Immortality and the Worship of the Dead, Volume I (of 3) • Sir James George Frazer
... new tool or implement was put in the hand of a student, the rules governing its use were fully explained, and a constant effort was made to have the student do all work by rule; whether it was on the farm, in the kitchen, laundry or shop, as well as in the class room. The essential parts of the ...
— The Choctaw Freedmen - and The Story of Oak Hill Industrial Academy • Robert Elliott Flickinger
... angry he would mentally denounce her as a cold, prudent, calculating woman, who had entrapped him into a secret marriage, and having secured his hand, would now risk nothing for his love, and himself as a weak, fond fool, the tool of the beautiful, proud diplomat, whom it would be justifiable to circumvent, to defeat, and to humble ...
— The Missing Bride • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth
... general charge has since been preferred against him—that in the exercise of the duties of Provost Marshal, which he assumed without propriety, he showed himself a willing tool of governmental despotism and displayed indefensible harshness and arrogance. There is something of truth in this charge, beyond a question,—as the impossibility of "touching pitch" without being "defiled," applies ...
— Shoulder-Straps - A Novel of New York and the Army, 1862 • Henry Morford
... originally suggested were badly composed. The best men suggested were not good—Dr. Bellamy (President of St. John's, Oxford), for example, the wealthiest of all college officials, a precise, old-fashioned, kind-hearted nonentity, a simple tool of more intelligent Conservatives; and Henry Smith, an Irishman of the keenest order of intelligence, ready to give an intellectual assent to the abstract desirability of the best and highest in all things. On another of the names originally suggested I may quote Smith himself, for when ...
— The Life of the Rt. Hon. Sir Charles W. Dilke V1 • Stephen Gwynn
... the French mines to the utmost—indeed, they boast that they have installed improved machinery in them. They have, furthermore, been importing ore steadily from Sweden, some of the Swedish ore, such as Dannemora, being the best in the world for the manufacture of tool steel—so ...
— The Land of Deepening Shadow - Germany-at-War • D. Thomas Curtin
... however, proved to be a carpenter's tool-chest; and this, although Gaunt had a small tool-chest of his own among his effects, would be of such priceless value to the little band, that he determined to secure it then and there; and he accordingly dragged it on deck at once, in ...
— The Missing Merchantman • Harry Collingwood
... occupation for you just now," answered Auntie Alice, smiling down into the eager upturned faces beside her knee. "Would you not run away and have a romp with pussy? she is frolicking with her kittens in the garden, quite close to the tool-house." ...
— Two Little Travellers - A Story for Girls • Frances Browne Arthur
... found that it was only the incapable who could not get work. But it was the fault of the wealthy and educated that working people were not better trained; it was not the working-men's fault, at bottom. The modern architect used his workman as a mere tool; while the Gothic spirit set him free as an original designer, to gain—not more wages and higher social rank, but pleasure and instruction, the true happiness that lies in ...
— The Life of John Ruskin • W. G. Collingwood
... praise or blame. He was, as he himself expressed it, "a servant and worshipper of literature," and there is a wide gulf of difference between one who serves literature for its own sake and one who uses it basely as a tool ...
— Thelma • Marie Corelli
... have been called an act of deliberate wisdom," said L'Isle, "had it not been stamped with feebleness and cowardice in the execution. Resistance was hopeless against France united with Spain, its tool, and soon to be its victim. Yielding to the storm left the invaders without apology for the plunder and atrocities the French have since perpetrated on the people. Nor was it a sudden thought. As long ago as the beginning of the last century, a Portuguese Secretary of State, seeing the ...
— The Actress in High Life - An Episode in Winter Quarters • Sue Petigru Bowen
... used by an infamous scoundrel to protect himself. I don’t intend to give in. We can hold out here for three months, if necessary, and I advise you to keep away and not be made a tool for a ...
— The House of a Thousand Candles • Meredith Nicholson
... num. 282. tom. 2. cas. conscien.) The body works upon the mind, by obfuscating the spirits and corrupted instruments, which [6697]Perkins illustrates by simile of an artificer, that hath a bad tool, his skill is good, ability correspondent, by reason of ill tools his work must needs be lame and imperfect. But melancholy and despair, though often, do not always concur; there is much difference: melancholy ...
— The Anatomy of Melancholy • Democritus Junior
... the repair job's duration proved slightly inaccurate. He messed around with his tool bag and explored the carburetter again and again until two hours had elapsed without result. During this period only a few motor cars had passed, for the road was not a popular automobile thoroughfare. At length a large red car bore down on them, and as it came within a ...
— Potash & Perlmutter - Their Copartnership Ventures and Adventures • Montague Glass
... then young and giddy, and the impression made was but slight. In three days he returned to his tricks, and I was obliged to chastise him more severely. I tied a dead chicken round his neck, beat him, and shut him up all day in a tool-house, where I visited him several times, pointed to the chicken, and repeated how naughty he was. He was so ashamed that he could not look me in the face, and in the evening, when I released him, he could not eat. He recovered his gaiety in a day or two because he was entirely forgiven; ...
— Anecdotes of the Habits and Instinct of Animals • R. Lee
... who have proved to be treacherous autocrats in the past, and whose records show them as an incapable and degenerate family. As a political power Kaiser Karl is the same menace to his subject Slavs as his predecessors. Above all, however, he is of necessity a blind tool in the hands of Germany, and he cannot possibly extricate himself from her firm grip. The Habsburgs have had their chance, but they missed it. By systematic and continuous misgovernment they created a gulf between the Slavs and themselves ...
— Independent Bohemia • Vladimir Nosek
... fitted not only to be a frontier editor, but to be a frontier editor in Medora. His college education gave him a point of contact with the Marquis which most of the other citizens of the Bad Lands lacked; his independence of spirit, on the other hand, kept him from becoming the Frenchman's tool. He was altogether fearless, he was a crack shot and a good rider, and he was not without effectiveness with his fists. But he was also tactful and tolerant; and he shared, and the cowboys knew he shared, their love ...
— Roosevelt in the Bad Lands • Hermann Hagedorn
... Madame Vedrine, joining in the conversation from the place where she sat, 'if you only knew what a tool he makes of my husband! All the restorations at Mousseaux, the new gallery towards the river, the concert-room, the chapel, all were done by Vedrine. And the Rosen tomb too. He will only be paid for the statue; but the whole thing is really his—conception, ...
— The Immortal - Or, One Of The "Forty." (L'immortel) - 1877 • Alphonse Daudet
... to fill; and that he did not succeed in satisfying most of those who had been most prominent in elevating him was inevitable from the discrepancy between his views of his position and their views of it. They had intended him to be a tool, and he was determined to be master of all the land. There was a contest for power, which ended in the coup d'etat of 1851. Victory waited on the heir of her old favorite. The contest was marked by many deeds, on both sides, not defensible on strict moral grounds, but which ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 7, No. 44, June, 1861 • Various
... household, for she had brought from Germany the girl Hedwig, who had been the tool of her grandmother; this silly and superstitious girl had gone once to the witch to have her fortune told and had never shaken off the bonds; these Cesarine took up and drove her by them. She had led to the ...
— The Son of Clemenceau • Alexandre (fils) Dumas
... you had both got out at Pepinster Blythe slipped into the compartment, broke the lock of the bag with a special tool we call 'the snipper,' and had the papers in a moment. These he passed on to me, and travelled past Liege on ...
— The Count's Chauffeur • William Le Queux
... for the transport of all the tools and stores that might be required; and, further to provide against casualties and accidents, every man belonging to the companies of pontoniers was obliged to carry from Smolensko a tool or implement of some kind, and a proportion of nails: and fortunate was it for the army that he did so; for such was the difficulty in getting through the carriages containing stores, that only two forge-wagons and six caissons of tools and nails could be preserved. To these the general ...
— Elements of Military Art and Science • Henry Wager Halleck
... with the way in which justice errs," cried Mrs. Wilson, in the same spirited, sprightly way her daughter might have done. "We all know that Big Bill is not accountable. He has always been the tool of anyone who would make use of him. I doubt if he made any money by this work. There was a shrewder man back of him who planned this and took the money. And that man is the one who ...
— Elizabeth Hobart at Exeter Hall • Jean K. Baird
... long. It occurred to him that if this negro could come and go so handily to the outside of this underground prison, there must be a stairway somewhere near, and though he could not enlarge the slit to get at it that way, it might be possible to burrow a passage under the wall itself. For a tool, he had spied a broken crock lying on the floor, and with the idea once in his head, he was not long in putting it to practical effect. He squatted just underneath the slit, and began to quarry the earth at the foot of the wall with ...
— A Master of Fortune • Cutcliffe Hyne
... a daredevil way with the women, as have all men whose calling is a hazardous one. Chet was a crack workman. He could shinny up a pole, strap his emergency belt, open his tool kit, wield his pliers with expert deftness, and climb down again in record time. It was his pleasure—and seemingly the pleasure and privilege of all lineman's gangs the world over—to whistle blithely and to call impudently to any passing petticoat ...
— One Basket • Edna Ferber
... spectroscope by Bunsen and Kirchhoff in 1859 provided a new tool which could establish the purity of substances already known and lead to the discovery of others. Thus, helium was discovered in the sun's spectrum by Jansen and isolated from uranite by Ramsay ...
— A Brief History of Element Discovery, Synthesis, and Analysis • Glen W. Watson
... so effectually contributed as did the trial of Sacheverel, who was used as an instrument and tool to wind and turn the passions of the vulgar. Having been presented to a benefice in North Wales, he went in procession to that country with all the pomp and magnificence of a sovereign prince. He was sumptuously entertained by the university of Oxford, ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.II. - From William and Mary to George II. • Tobias Smollett
... he even took a romantic pleasure in the concealment. He liked to see me moving about in society, and to feel that there was a tie between us that none dreamed of but ourselves. Poor John! he deserved better of Fate than to be the tool of my revenge! ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, Issue 15, January, 1859 • Various
... Ireland in the reign of James II., during the viceroyalty of Lord Clarendon, 1686, when he was knighted. "He was," says Burnet, "a man of ready wit, and being poor was thought a person fit to be made a tool of. When Clarendon was recalled, Porter was also displaced, and Fitton was made chancellor, a man who knew no other law than the king's pleasure" ("Own Time"). Sir Charles Porter was again made Lord Chancellor of Ireland in 1690, and in this same ...
— Diary of Samuel Pepys, Complete • Samuel Pepys
... Americans thought seriously of studying the Negro in the sense of directing their efforts toward an acquisition of knowledge of the race as one of the human family; and this field was not more inviting to Europeans, for the reduction of the Negro to the status of a tool for exploitation began in Europe. The race did receive attention from pseudo-scientists, a few historians pointed out the possibilities of research in this field, and others brought forward certain interesting sketches of distinguished ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 4, 1919 • Various
... very sympathies and secret convictions on the other side—on the side of People, Parliament, Freedom? And here was he, engaged for a Prince that had scarce heard the word liberty; that priests and women, tyrants by nature, both made a tool of. The misanthrope was in no better humor after hearing that story, and his grim face more black ...
— The History of Henry Esmond, Esq. • W. M. Thackeray
... Acacius, author of all the evil in a schism of thirty-five years. The third, the fourth, and the fifth shrink from the deed of Acacius; and two of them are deposed by the emperor, while his people respect and cherish their memory. The sixth is a mere tool of the emperor. ...
— The Formation of Christendom, Volume VI - The Holy See and the Wandering of the Nations, from St. Leo I to St. Gregory I • Thomas W. (Thomas William) Allies
... over the Vouissa and the sunrise reflected on the gleaming mountain-wall of the Nemorica—I would not have to tell him all this about Bib Doda's money. He says that Marko Djoni is a discredited, disgruntled person who became a tool of the Serbs and fled to Serbia. But he forgets that Bib Doda was killed in March 1919, and that until May 1921 Marko Djoni remained in Albania, enjoying the friendship of Italy rather than that of Serbia. In fact it was not easy for him to abandon this friendship, owing ...
— The Birth of Yugoslavia, Volume 2 • Henry Baerlein
... formerly the top of the opening. The top of the filling block is still smooth and finished and shows across its entire width a series of prints probably of flat sticks about an inch and a half wide, though, possibly these are marks of some finishing tool. The marks ...
— Casa Grande Ruin • Cosmos Mindeleff
... round the shrubs that concealed the speakers from him, here lost their voices, but, as he emerged in front of the old tool-house, he heard a little scream from Mary, and, at the same moment, she darted back, and fell over a heap of cabbage-stumps in front of the old tool-house. It was no small surprise to her to be raised by him, and tenderly asked whether she were hurt. She was not ...
— The Daisy Chain, or Aspirations • Charlotte Yonge
... them have little boxes of dentistical-looking implements, specially intended for the skrimshandering business. But, in general, they toil with their jack-knives alone; and, with that almost omnipotent tool of the sailor, they will turn you out anything you please, in the way of a mariner's fancy. Long exile from Christendom and civilization inevitably restores a man to that condition in which God placed him, i. e. what is called savagery. Your true whale-hunter ...
— Moby-Dick • Melville
... animal and reshoeing all our horses, we got our outfit into shape for the long, hard drive which lay before us. Every ounce of superfluous weight, every tool, every article not absolutely essential, was discarded and its place filled with food. We stripped ourselves like men going into battle, and on the third day lined up for Teslin Lake, six ...
— The Trail of the Goldseekers - A Record of Travel in Prose and Verse • Hamlin Garland
... our enemy—thou and thy race. We have held counsel, and can not resolve to treat thee as an enemy. We know thy heart had no share in this treason, though thou wert its tool. We are not unjust; we will not punish thee, being innocent, and hating the crime as much as we do ourselves. But depart from among us; there are some who might seek thy blood; and when our young men sing ...
— The Conquest of Canada (Vol. 1 of 2) • George Warburton
... send you (wrongly, perhaps, when you are trying to rest) the shortest statement that I could make about the demonstration field-work of the Department of Agriculture. This is the best tool yet invented to shape country life. Other (and shorter) briefs will be ready ...
— The Life and Letters of Walter H. Page, Volume I • Burton J. Hendrick
... awls, a small Turkey-hone, and a whetstone. If a saw be taken, it should be of a sort intended for green wood. In addition to these, a small tin box full of tools, all of which fit into a single handle, is very valuable; many travellers have found them extremely convenient. There is a tool-shop near the bottom of the Haymarket and another in the Strand near the Lowthier Arcade, where they can be bought; probably also at Holtzapfel's in Trafalgar Square. The box that contains them is about six inches long by four broad and one deep; ...
— The Art of Travel - Shifts and Contrivances Available in Wild Countries • Francis Galton
... it is quite difficult to locate the exact point for a dowel, but with the tool illustrated placed between the joint to be made and the parts gently pressed together you have the exact point for the dowel in each piece. The tool is made from a piece of sheet steel about 1/2 in. square with a ...
— Mission Furniture - How to Make It, Part 2 • H. H. Windsor
... proportion that light, that it may not singe or burn the Paper. Instead of which Paper there may be made use of a small piece of Looking-glass plate, one of whose sides is made rough by being rubb'd on a flat Tool with very find sand, this will, if the heat be leisurely cast on it, indure a much greater degree of heat, and consequently very much augment a convenient light. By all which means the light of the Sun, or of a Window, may be so cast on an Object, ...
— Micrographia • Robert Hooke
... and bolted, and either to open or make an opening in it I should want a brace and bit and a saw, and several hours freedom from intrusion. It would be easier to cut the bars—if I possessed a file or a suitable saw. I had my knife, and with time and patience I might possibly fashion a tool that would ...
— Mr. Fortescue • William Westall
... essential, for want of which they are good for naught. Keep them for after-dinner chat; but for the novelist they are good to smell, not to eat. And yet—tell me your story. I have a use for it—a cabinet of true things that have never had and shall not have a literary tool lifted up against them; virgin shells from the beach of the sea of human events. It may be I shall find a place for it there." So he told me the true story which I have called "Attalie Brouillard," because, having forgotten the woman's real name, it pleased ...
— Strange True Stories of Louisiana • George Washington Cable
... temper of mind she looked on herself as the murderer of an innocent man, and, what to her was much worse, of the man she had loved, and still did love, with all the violence imaginable. She looked on James as the tool with which she had done this murder; and, as it is usual for people who have rashly or inadvertently made any animate or inanimate thing the instrument of mischief to hate the innocent means by which the mischief was effected (for this ...
— Amelia (Complete) • Henry Fielding
... state wherein the individual can direct suggestions to himself. It is a powerful tool in any therapeutic process, and highly motivated subjects can parallel the success of hetero-hypnosis through their own efforts. Self-hypnosis can be used as a palliative agent and can even afford lasting results in many areas of the organism. Self-hypnosis can alleviate distressing symptoms, ...
— A Practical Guide to Self-Hypnosis • Melvin Powers
... stage of his operations, Pratt had found that even the cleverest of schemers cannot work unaided. It had been absolutely necessary to have some tool close at hand to Normandale Grange and its inhabitants; to have some person there upon whom he could depend for news. He had found that person, that tool, in Esther Mawson, who, as Mrs. Mallathorpe's maid, had opportunities ...
— The Talleyrand Maxim • J. S. Fletcher
... should be tired with going far, or that he imagined distance was the reason why more did not come. This, however, was not so; the real reason was, that being inferior to others in agreeableness of conversation and the arts of political life, like a mere tool and implement of war, he was thrown aside in time of peace. Amongst all those whose brightness eclipsed his glory, he was most incensed against Sylla, who had owed his rise to the hatred which the nobility bore Marius; and had made his disagreement with him the one principle ...
— Plutarch's Lives • A.H. Clough
... been true, it must have lasted in an ever-improving state. If it be true, it is a truth, and a useful truth, which had experience and prejudice both in its favor, and yet lost ground as soon as astronomy, its working tool, ...
— A Budget of Paradoxes, Volume II (of II) • Augustus de Morgan
... remained but a superb wash-hand-stand containing a silver basin and water-jug of the same metal, in the lefthand corner." The object of Napoleon in sending for O'Meara on this occasion was to question him whether in their future intercourse he was to consider him in the light of a spy and a tool of the Governor or as his physician? The doctor gave a decided and ...
— Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte, Complete • Louis Antoine Fauvelet de Bourrienne
... beg that you will prepare yourself to be startled by another." Then he abruptly dropped his languor. "I should think twice, sir," he advised, "before signing that warrant, were I in your place, to do so would be to render yourself the tool of those who are plotting my ruin, and ready to bear false witness that they may accomplish it. I refer," and he waved a hand towards the countess and his brother, "to the late Lord Ostermore's mistress and his natural ...
— The Lion's Skin • Rafael Sabatini
... with a thick layer of soot from the ever-smouldering fires. These "gamals" are a kind of club-house, where the men spend the day and occasionally the night. In rainy weather they sit round the fire, smoking, gossiping and working on some tool,—a club or a fine basket. Each clan has its own gamal, which is strictly taboo for the women, and to each gamal belongs a dancing-ground like the one described. On Vao there are five, corresponding ...
— Two Years with the Natives in the Western Pacific • Felix Speiser
... remarkable for the vein of melancholy, subdued by irony, underlying a style which is formed for fine and clear exactness. The Duchesse du Maine's lady-in-waiting, daughter of a poor painter, but educated with care, drew delicately in her literary art with an etcher's tool, and her hand was controlled by a spirit which had in it something of the Stoic. The Souvenirs of Mme. de Caylus (1673-1729), niece of Mme. de Maintenon—"jamais de creature plus seduisante," says Saint-Simon—give pictures ...
— A History of French Literature - Short Histories of the Literatures of the World: II. • Edward Dowden
... signs on the wall, 'Gambling Positively Prohibited,' and underneath the games are running high, wide, and fancy. Refined humor, I call it.... There were nine killings one day, but that's above the average. The last time I was in town a couple of tool dressers got into a row with a laundryman—claimed they'd been overcharged six cents. It came to a shooting, and we buried all three of them. Two cents apiece! That was their closing price. The cost of living is high enough, but it isn't ...
— Flowing Gold • Rex Beach
... himself to let these men have their way with him. To have to confess that he had been their tool went so much against the grain with him that anything seemed to him to be preferable to that. The passage across his brain of all these thoughts had not required many seconds, and his guests seemed to acknowledge by their silence that some little space of time should be allowed to him. Mr. Pile ...
— Ralph the Heir • Anthony Trollope
... to the center of the room where it can be approached on all sides, as will often be necessary. The double top, drawers, and shelf should be a part of the larger table also. Usually the table is kept in front of the window with tool racks and shelves for small articles each side of the same where they can easily ...
— Home Taxidermy for Pleasure and Profit • Albert B. Farnham
... seek not to deny it, it is useless; for I hold here the proof, in your own writing. Look, here is your last letter; it arrived two days after Adele left New-Orleans. You acknowledge that—for you turn pale at your own treachery. I bribed the tool who acted as your go-between, so you see I attached some importance to securing proof. You spoke, I think, of being duped. Arthur, I am amazed at your effrontery; but I ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I, No. V, May, 1862 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... might serve as a substitute. Curtis and Dowlas were consulted, and after a short conversation, during which they kept throwing bits of rope and spars into the water in order to entice the sharks to remain by the raft, Dowlas went and fetched his carpenter's tool, which is at once a hatchet and a hammer. Of this he proposed to make the whirl of which they were in need, under the hope that either the sharp edge of the adze or the pointed extremity opposite ...
— The Survivors of the Chancellor • Jules Verne
... my shoes, and take advantage of this exit, my aunt and poor Mrs. Taylor entered the room, and I was ignominiously captured and taken home; I expiated my offence by a week of bread and water, and daily solitary confinement in a sort of tool-house in the garden, where my only occupation was meditation, the "clear-obscure" that reigned in my ...
— Records of a Girlhood • Frances Anne Kemble
... grin on his face, Pierre thrust his crowbar through and showed that a space not quite a yard wide intervened before the tool brought up against what was in reality the outer wall of the cellar. The partition itself was only a foot thick, but because it was of equal thickness throughout its length, Max had not been able to detect ...
— The Spanish Chest • Edna A. Brown
... who engage in them. You would not expect to find a man of sensitive honour acting as a professional spy; or one of earnest religious character keeping a public-house. You would not expect to find a very good Jew condescending to be the tool of the Roman Government. Zacchaeus was at the head of the revenue office in Jericho, a position of considerable importance, inasmuch as there was a large volume of trade through that city from its situation near the fords of the Jordan, and ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... out across the open. But in spite of this nothing could exceed the dash with which it was conducted. One man—and his case is typical of the spirit shown by the troops—who had had his rifle smashed by a bullet, continued to fight with an intrenching tool. Even many of the wounded made their way out of the fight with some article of German ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 3, June, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... the wind fell off to a calm which lasted for several hours. I took the opportunity to set to work on the sledge, sawing it in halves with a pocket tool. A mast was made out of one of the rails of the discarded half of the sledge and a spar was cut from the other rail. The sledge-meter, very much battered, was still serviceable. Lastly, the load was cut down to a minimum by the elimination of ...
— The Home of the Blizzard • Douglas Mawson
... blood of Cola di Rienzo burns under the shame of an obligation!" cried Contini, with a heat hardly warranted by the circumstances. "It is humiliating, it is base, to submit to be the tool of a Del Ferice—we all know who and what Del Ferice was, and how he came by his title of count, and how he got his fortune—a spy, an intriguer! In a good cause? Perhaps. I was not born then, nor you either, ...
— Don Orsino • F. Marion Crawford
... Rue d'Enfer, and at No. 34 is the Hotel de Vendome, at present the royal School of Mines; this noble mansion was erected in 1707 by the Carthusian monks, but being purchased by the Duchess of Vendome was called after her. Every description of tool or instrument used in mining will here be found, and perhaps the extensive mineralogical collection is unrivalled anywhere in Europe, and arranged in the most scientific manner by M. Hauey, with a ...
— How to Enjoy Paris in 1842 • F. Herve
... the turnips for dinner. It was noon, and steaming dishes were hastily carried into the dining-room. I hated turnips, and their odor which came from the brown jar was offensive to me. With fire in my heart, I took the wooden tool that the paleface woman held out to me. I stood upon a step, and, grasping the handle with both hands, I bent in hot rage over the turnips. I worked my vengeance upon them. All were so busily occupied that ...
— American Indian stories • Zitkala-Sa
... ended, at last. Well, I have the satisfaction of knowing that I have been nobody's fool nor nobody's tool. Early perceiving that nine out of ten were only the stupid instruments of the tenth man, the world over, I resolved to go into the system, and did, and improved on it so as to make nineteen out of twenty tools ...
— Gaut Gurley • D. P. Thompson
... then, drawing from his pocket one of those wonderful knives which are really miniature tool-chests, he raised from a grove the screw-driver which formed part of its equipment, and with neatness and dispatch unscrewed the staple to which ...
— Tales of Chinatown • Sax Rohmer
... queen imagined none would be able to resist. Marguerite, however, instructed in the school of Catharine, succeeded in obtaining entire control over the mind of Pibrac himself, and he became a perfect tool in her hands. Catharine, thus foiled, was compelled to grant far more favorable terms to the Protestants ...
— Henry IV, Makers of History • John S. C. Abbott
... specimens. The 17c also exhibits a small peculiarity of engraving. A colored line projects upwards into the uncolored oval band above the space between OS of POSTAGE. This was evidently caused by an accidental touch of the engraver's tool on the die for it is quite distinct on ...
— The Stamps of Canada • Bertram Poole
... divine plan which is thus emphasized at this point we are to see singularly illustrated as we mark how stone after stone and timber after timber are brought to the building site, and all so mutually fitted that no sound of any human tool is to be heard while the ...
— George Muller of Bristol - His Witness to a Prayer-Hearing God • Arthur T. Pierson
... otherwise slow gait. The great toe is short and generally not opposable. The muscles of the leg are heavy and the knee-joint has a very broad articulating surface. But the great result of man's erect posture is that the hand is set free from the work of locomotion, and has become a delicate tactile and tool-using organ. The importance of this change we cannot over-estimate. The hand was the servant of the brain for trying all experiments. Had not our arboreal ancestors developed the hand for us we could never have ...
— The Whence and the Whither of Man • John Mason Tyler
... their pliant tool, ready to obey their least desire, to flatter them, to try and guess beforehand what would give them most pleasure. Huguenots were brought before her: she called them names. Confronted with Gauffridi, she told forth by heart her grievances against him, better than the ...
— La Sorciere: The Witch of the Middle Ages • Jules Michelet
... examples of virtue and piety. Our stables adjoined, and were separated only by a thin wall in which was a doorway closed up by some boards, as the two stables had formerly been one. One night I had occasion to go to our stable to search for a garden tool I had missed, and I heard a door open on the other side, and saw a light glimmer through the cracks of the boards. I looked through to ascertain who could be there at that late hour, and soon recognized the stately ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 5 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... essentials of a ranger's training is to learn to swing an ax," remarked McFarlane, "and you never want to be without a real tool. I won't stand ...
— The Forester's Daughter - A Romance of the Bear-Tooth Range • Hamlin Garland
... purely "fictional," or historical with fictitious possibilities, he does not seem (to me) to know how to deal with it. There is one—of the extremest melodramatic character and opportunities—where, in a hut perched on the side of a Pyrenean gorge or canon, Richelieu's villainous tool, the magistrate Laubardemont; his mad niece, the former Ursuline Abbess, who has helped to ruin Urbain Grandier; his outcast son Jacques, who has turned Spanish officer and general bravo; and a smuggler who has also figured in ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 2 - To the Close of the 19th Century • George Saintsbury
... Science is one thing, and wisdom is another. Science is an edged tool, with which men play like children, and cut their own fingers. If you look at the results which science has brought in its train, you will find them to consist almost wholly in elements of mischief. See how much belongs to the word Explosion alone, of which ...
— Gryll Grange • Thomas Love Peacock
... who would be favorable to them. They bought the Negro votes or put a Negro in some unimportant office to obtain the goodwill of the ex-slaves. They used the ignorant colored minister to further their plans, and he was their willing tool. The Negro's unwise use of his ballot plunged the South further and further into debt and as a result the South was ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States - From Interviews with Former Slaves - Florida Narratives • Works Projects Administration
... stuff on his bench with a hard look in which scorn and shame and perplexity were mingled. He sat there until he was all alone. Then he got up and tried to go on with his work. He was on the track of another invention,—a spring coil to prevent the jar to a tungsten lamp. But after picking up a tool and making one or two efforts to continue his task, he threw his material down on the bench and after a moment of indecision closed up the locker, put on ...
— The High Calling • Charles M. Sheldon
... a surface smartness, and he had proved himself an apt scholar. The Judge had found him a willing tool in many of his deep laid schemes to get money for less than money's worth. But within the last few months there had been a change. A spark of manhood had asserted itself, and in the presence of his minion the Judge found himself upon ...
— A Beautiful Possibility • Edith Ferguson Black
... no oil, no spare oil—" Alfred hunted vainly round the car, under the seats, in the tool box. There was no ...
— The Happy Foreigner • Enid Bagnold
... dark scheme was cleared up to Wilton's eyes in a moment; and the secret of his own fate was only given to him in conjunction with an insight into that black and base transaction, of which he had been made an unwitting tool. ...
— The King's Highway • G. P. R. James
... the supercharger on that plane. Every tool you need will be at hand, and if you need an assistant I will furnish you one who speaks English." Herr Domber was smiling as ...
— A Yankee Flier Over Berlin • Al Avery
... world is confined within the limits of Spain. On this principle he equally detests France and England, Germany and Russia, and is, therefore, not much liked by our Government, except for his imbecility, which makes him its tool and dupe. His disgrace would not be much regretted here, where we have it in our power to place or displace Ministers in certain States, whenever and as often as we like. On this occasion, however, we supported him, and helped to dissolve the cabal ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... Grenada, when the island belonged to France. He was a professed Christian belonging to the Roman Catholic faith. So that during the dawn of the incipient difficulties surrounding Texas, therefore, when becoming part of the United States, there figured a Negro the tool of his master, in common with Nolan and others, reputed horse thieves, the patriots whose depredations were as annoying to the Mexicans in 1804 as Villa's bandit incursions (during ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 6, 1921 • Various
... eyes fixed on the piece of gold. It lay on the table like a guilty thing. All Pyn's sin seemed to have passed into it. Men and women stood up to look at it where it lay—the wretched tool of a bad man. It was a relief when Jacob Trenager gave out a hymn, a greater relief that John Penelles went out while they were singing it. Brothers and sisters all wished to talk about John and John's trouble, but to talk to him in his grief and humiliation ...
— A Singer from the Sea • Amelia Edith Huddleston Barr
... for the realization of the social aim of education. A first grade class in beginning reading, in which the stronger children seek to help those who are less able, involves something more significant in education than merely the command of the tool we call reading. A teacher of a class in physics who suggested to his pupils that they find out which was the more economical way to heat their homes,—with hot air, with steam, or with hot water,—evidently hoped to have them use whatever power ...
— How to Teach • George Drayton Strayer and Naomi Norsworthy
... a hill and watch a laborer striking with his sledge upon the distant railway. I hear the sound of the blow while I see his tool raised above his head. I account for this by saying that it has taken some time for the sound-waves to reach my ear, and I regard my sensation as arising only ...
— An Introduction to Philosophy • George Stuart Fullerton
... while of the bluntness of his razor. "I would give my best quartet for a good razor," he exclaimed testily. The hint was enough for Bland, who immediately hurried off to his lodgings and fetched a more serviceable tool. Haydn was as good as his word: he presented Bland with his latest quartet, and the work is still familiarly known as the "Rasirmesser" (razor) Quartet. The incident was, no doubt, recalled when Haydn renewed his acquaintance with ...
— Haydn • J. Cuthbert Hadden
... terror, I could do nothing in prevention or warning. Suddenly the door of my mother's apartment was opened, noiselessly, and the two confronted each other, both apparently surprised. The lady, also, was in her night clothes, and she held in her right hand the tool of her trade, a ...
— The Collected Works of Ambrose Bierce, Volume 8 - Epigrams, On With the Dance, Negligible Tales • Ambrose Bierce
... Tom, imitating his sister's voice; "you girls are so common!" But the approach of the visitors made a truce a matter of necessity, and soon the project of the tree-house engrossed the entire attention. Boards were brought from the little tool-house, saws were in demand, and Gem was deputed to confiscate all the hammers and nails in the house for the use of the builders; the work went bravely on, and by noon the walls of the fortification ...
— The Old Stone House • Anne March
... blasting the fairest prospects of humanity; degrading man below the beast of the forest; sinking his intellectual faculties in the most savage barbarity; rendering him the vile instrument of lawless ambition; the wretched tool by which the fetters of his species were firmly rivetted; obliging him to moisten his harvest with the bitter tears of the most abject slavery. For the purpose of remedying so many crying evils, grown insupportable, recourse was had to new superstitions. Notwithstanding this alone ...
— The System of Nature, Vol. 2 • Baron D'Holbach
... driven halfway home before he was his own man again. It had been a gruesome experience, but it served him right, he thought, for committing the heresy of going to a strange store. When he reached home he hid the rake in the tool-house, but the sugar he ...
— Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1907 to 1908 • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... not at all with the legislature, and as little as possible with my co-departments. The first and only instance of variance from the former part of my resolution I was duped into by the secretary of the treasury, and made a tool for forwarding his schemes, not then sufficiently understood by me; and of all the errors of my political life, this has occasioned me the deepest regret.... If it has been supposed that I have ever intrigued among the ...
— Washington and the American Republic, Vol. 3. • Benson J. Lossing
... the person to whom they would be married was ascertained from the form which the fallen skin presented; this form might assume the shape of a letter, in that case it was the initial letter of the unknown parties name, or it might assume the form of some trade tool, &c. Imagination had free scope here. The apple tree itself was considered a lucky tree to have near a house, but its principal virtue ...
— Folk Lore - Superstitious Beliefs in the West of Scotland within This Century • James Napier
... Paris, Monsieur de Beaufort, who was a very popular, though a very weak man, was the Cardinal's tool with the populace. ...
— The PG Edition of Chesterfield's Letters to His Son • The Earl of Chesterfield
... Maxwell. "Use Pinney all you please, and all you can; but I warn you he is a dangerous tool. He doesn't mean any harm till he's tempted, and when it's done he doesn't think it's any harm. He isn't to be trusted an instant beyond his self-interest; and yet he has flashes of unselfishness that would deceive the very ...
— The Quality of Mercy • W. D. Howells
... THE INTRENCHING TOOL CARRIER TO THE HAVERSACK.—Fold the outer flap of the haversack over so that the meat-can pouch is uppermost; pass the intrenching tool carrier underneath the meat-can pouch and engage the double-hook attachment in the eyelets in the flap provided, inserting the hooks from the underside. ...
— Military Instructors Manual • James P. Cole and Oliver Schoonmaker
... chest, sir. He knew that I was on deck and you were asleep. He knelt down in front of it, and he pushed the lock back with that tool. Then something happened to him, and he cried out so ...
— The Green Flag • Arthur Conan Doyle
... but with brutes who lusted for broken heads. Some of the faces he knew—he had seen them hanging about saloons. And he saw, too, in that swift scrutiny, that many of the men had weapons; some had seized crowbars and sledges from a near-by street tool-chest which was being used by laborers; others had sticks; some had stones. An ominous sound came from the mob, something winged with doom and death, like the rattling of a venomous snake, with head raised to strike, ready fangs and glittering eyes. He could catch in that paralyzing hum ...
— The Nine-Tenths • James Oppenheim
... immense ability, and to a style carefully modeled on the conversation of business men with each other, but to his cool moderation and evident aloofness from party as party. He dissected each like a man of science: party was to him a tool and not a religion. He gibed at the Tories; but the Tories forgave him because he was half a Tory at heart,—he utterly distrusted popular instincts and was afraid of popular ignorance. He was rarely warm for the actual ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 3 • Various
... tool-house where I keep my spade and hoe and rake. There is a little spade which I used to use, it will just suit you, and we will go and arrange the garden you are to have," she ...
— Norman Vallery - How to Overcome Evil with Good • W.H.G. Kingston
... preceding; renter of seats in Saint-Francois. Last nurse of Sylvain Pons, and a tool to the interests of Fraisier and ...
— Repertory Of The Comedie Humaine, Complete, A — Z • Anatole Cerfberr and Jules Franois Christophe
... school of difficulty. Some of the very best workmen have had the most indifferent tools to work with. But it is not tools that make the workman, but the trained skill and perseverance of the man himself. Indeed it is proverbial that the bad workman never yet had a good tool. Some one asked Opie by that wonderful process he mixed his colors. "I mix them with my brains, sir," was his reply. It is the same with every workman who would excel. Ferguson made marvelous things—such as his ...
— How to Get on in the World - A Ladder to Practical Success • Major A.R. Calhoon
... clinging tunic, which wraps Hercules in its folds of torture. Writhing in agony, he flings himself upon the burning pyramid, followed by Dejanira, who, in despair, sees too late that she has been but a tool ...
— The Ways of Men • Eliot Gregory
... New Town and Assini these implements become very plentiful. Mr. S. Cheetham informs me that the thinner hatchets, somewhat finger-shaped, are copied in iron by the peoples of the Benin River. These expert smiths buy poor European metal and, like other West Africans, turn out a first-rate tool. ...
— To The Gold Coast for Gold, Vol. II - A Personal Narrative • Richard Francis Burton and Verney Lovett Cameron
... those most active in his support only desired his election to further their own views, and not for the country's benefit. It was supposed he was so entirely unacquainted with state-craft, that he would be a pliant tool—an automaton, to dance to their wire-pulling. How little they understood him, and how well he understood them! At once he let them know he was President, and was determined to take the responsibility of administering the Government in the true spirit of its institutions. ...
— The Memories of Fifty Years • William H. Sparks |
