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Gist   Listen
noun
Gist  n.  
1.
A resting place. (Obs.) "These quails have their set gists; to wit, ordinary resting and baiting places."
2.
The main point, as of a question; the point on which an action rests; the pith of a matter; as, the gist of a question.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Gist" Quotes from Famous Books



... in the purpose? He sifted rapidly for the gist of the conversation; reviewed the manner of it, the words, the sound they had, the feelings they touched; then owned that the question could not be answered. Owning, further, that the recurrence of these idiotic speculations, feelings, questions, wrote him down as both dull fellow ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith

... of the night of the gist, Crook was brought across Cedar Creek and hidden in a clump of timber behind Hupp's Hill till daylight of the 22d, when, under cover of the intervening woods and ravines, he was marched beyond the right of the Sixth Corps ...
— Memoirs of Three Civil War Generals, Complete • U. S. Grant, W. T. Sherman, P. H. Sheridan

... is his name for me; you know how lively he is. He has always said to me, then, "My dear little chicken, I am not a man to do violence to your opinions, but in return give way to me as regards some of your pious practices." I only give you the mere gist of it; it was said with a thousand delicacies, which I suppress. And I have agreed by degrees,... so that, while only paying very little attention to the outward observances of religion, I have remained, as I told ...
— Monsieur, Madame and Bebe, Complete • Gustave Droz

... is carriage of contraband any offence against the law of England; as may be learnt, by any one who is in doubt as to the statement, from the lucid language of Lord Westbury in Ex parte Chavasse (34 L.J., Bkry., 17). And this brings me to the gist of this letter. I have long thought that the form of the Proclamation of Neutrality now in use in this country much needs reconsideration and redrafting. The clauses of the Proclamation which are set out by Mr. Gibson Bowles in your issue of this morning rightly announce that every ...
— Letters To "The Times" Upon War And Neutrality (1881-1920) • Thomas Erskine Holland

... at which they will come to a final agreement, is to be followed this evening by a walk along the cliffs, when the third person will bring with him or her the man or woman, I can't definitely say which, whom they want to get rid of. That is the gist of the whole thing. Now, as I know a spot called the Trois Mathildes some way above Etretat and as this is not an everyday name, we came down yesterday to thwart the ...
— The Eight Strokes of the Clock • Maurice Leblanc

... the two kings is an Oriental conception (very likely based on actual early custom) is further borne out by its appearance in a remarkable group of Eastern stories of the "Clever Lass" type (see Child, English and Scottish Ballads, 1 : 11). "The gist of these narratives," writes Professor Child, "is that one king propounds tasks to another; in the earlier ones, with the intent to discover whether his brother-monarch enjoys the aid of such counsellors as will make an attack on him dangerous; ...
— Filipino Popular Tales • Dean S. Fansler

... nothing of Nirvana but dwells on morality as necessary to happiness in this life and others. This is not the whole of Gotama's teaching but two centuries after his death a powerful and enlightened Buddhist gives it as the gist of Buddhism for laymen. ...
— Hinduism and Buddhism, Vol I. (of 3) - An Historical Sketch • Charles Eliot

... say, the gist of it all being an evident desire to soothe her companion's feelings. Gammon found himself in an unexpected and awkward position. He had taken for granted an outbreak of violence, he had counted upon the opportunity of mutual invective, he wished to tell ...
— The Town Traveller • George Gissing

... year 1768 a German peddler, named George Gist, left the settlement of Ebenezer, on the lower Savannah, and entered the Cherokee Nation by the northern mountains of Georgia. He had two pack-horses laden with the petty merchandise known to the Indian trade. At that time Captain Stewart was the British Superintendent ...
— Se-Quo-Yah; from Harper's New Monthly, V. 41, 1870 • Unknown

... Congress; so had L.M. Keitt, who fell at Cold Harbor at the head of our brigade, while Colonel of the Twentieth Regiment. James L. Orr, one of the original Secessionists and a member of Congress, raised the first regiment of rifles. The son of Governor Gist, the last Executive of South Carolina just previous to Secession, fell while leading his regiment, the Fifteenth, of our brigade, in the assault at Fort Loudon, at Knoxville. Scarcely was there a member of the convention ...
— History of Kershaw's Brigade • D. Augustus Dickert

... Tarzan repeated the gist of the conversation to his wife. She begged to be allowed to accompany him, but he insisted that it might result in the man's carrying out his threat of refusing to aid them if Tarzan did not come alone, and so they ...
— The Beasts of Tarzan • Edgar Rice Burroughs

... government secluded her in later years for its own peace as it thought, but for her own recuperation as it happened. She told me many other things besides that have some little bearing on this story but that, if all related, would crowd the book too full. The real gist of them is that she grew to love India with all her heart and India repaid her for it after its own fashion, ...
— Guns of the Gods • Talbot Mundy

... of these places can be identified with certainty. The gist of the account leads us to gather that Bara was situated to the east of Dagara, and formed its frontier; we shall not be far wrong in looking for all these districts in the fastnesses of the Kara-dagh, in the caza of Suleimaniyeh. Mount Nishpi ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 7 (of 12) • G. Maspero

... have ever held a naval command, and he calls himself 'unexperienced.' We may take it therefore that his treatise was mainly inspired by Ralegh, to whom indeed a large part of it is sometimes attributed. This question, however, is of small importance. The gist of the matter is a set of fleet orders which he has appended as a precedent at the end of his treatise, and it is on these orders that Ralegh's are clearly based. They commence with fourteen articles, consisting mainly of sailing instructions, similar to those which occur later in Ralegh's set. ...
— Fighting Instructions, 1530-1816 - Publications Of The Navy Records Society Vol. XXIX. • Julian S. Corbett

... the cause of all modification—giving us an 'Origin of Species' with "the origin" cut out; but I do not think that any reader who has not been compelled to go somewhat deeply into the question would find out that this is the real gist of the objection which Mr. Darwin is appearing to combat. A general impression is left upon the reader that some very foolish objectors are being put to silence, that Mr. Darwin is the most candid literary opponent in the world, ...
— Evolution, Old & New - Or, the Theories of Buffon, Dr. Erasmus Darwin and Lamarck, - as compared with that of Charles Darwin • Samuel Butler

... up his right hand. "You're a notary public, Andrew. Administer an oath! Like that one you administered to me when I was sworn in as mayor of Marion. You can remember the gist of it." ...
— All-Wool Morrison • Holman Day

... conceived to affect the matter of another universe simultaneously with this may explain a future state." This proposition, quaintly couched in an anagram, like the discoveries of old astronomers, was published last year in "Nature," as containing the gist of the forthcoming book. On the negative-image hypothesis it is not hard to see how thought is conceived to affect the seen and the unseen worlds simultaneously. Every act of consciousness is accompanied by molecular ...
— The Unseen World and Other Essays • John Fiske

... autumn of 1860, had been carried by the Republicans, the election of Abraham Lincoln as President of the United States, in November, became a foregone conclusion. On the 5th day of October,—the initial day of the American Rebellion,—Governor Gist, of South Carolina, wrote a confidential circular-letter, which he despatched by special messenger to the governors of the so-called Cotton States. In this letter he requested an "interchange of ...
— The Bay State Monthly, Volume 3, No. 4 • Various

... anything he much cared about. True, he might have been happier than he was if he had cared about things which he did not care for, but the gist of this lies in the "if he had cared." We have all sinned and come short of the glory of making ourselves as comfortable as we easily might have done, but in this particular case Mr Pontifex did not care, and would not have ...
— The Way of All Flesh • Samuel Butler

... soul,—acknowledging, with an energy that went perhaps beyond the truth, the sin of her own conduct in producing the catastrophe which had occurred. "I knew that he had wronged her, and yet I bade him not to make her his wife." That was the gist of her confession and she declared that the young man's blood would be on her hands till she died. A small cottage was prepared for her on the estate, and there she lived in absolute seclusion till death relieved ...
— An Eye for an Eye • Anthony Trollope

... relates a curious tradition of the Eskimo, not quite quotable here, the gist of which is that a man who desired to make his sister his wife was transformed into the moon, while the woman became the sun. Something like the same legend has been traced as far south as Panama. Another notable thing about Eskimo traditions is that the moon is associated ...
— Storyology - Essays in Folk-Lore, Sea-Lore, and Plant-Lore • Benjamin Taylor

... the comon witt which lieth in the formest parte of the sens, est enuoiee au commun sens qui gist en la partie ...
— An Introductorie for to Lerne to Read, To Pronounce, and to Speke French Trewly • Anonymous

... are increased or diminished by this policy is a matter of comparative indifference, so that the people are employed at fair wages in making or producing all the articles that can be profitably produced in the United States. The gist of my opinions on the policy of protection is contained in the following paragraphs ...
— Recollections of Forty Years in the House, Senate and Cabinet - An Autobiography. • John Sherman

... in Continental service. Colonel Cabell was so kind as to send me a return of the Continental regiments, commanded by Lord Sterling, of the first and second Virginia State regiments, and of Colonel Gist's regiment. Besides these are the following, viz. Colonel Harrison's regiment of artillery, Colonel Bayler's horse, Colonel Eland's horse, General Scott's new levies, part of which are gone to Carolina, and part are here, Colonel Gibson's regiment stationed ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson

... where on the pier the French officers were gesticulating and talking loudly; the gist of their debate being, should they try to take the battery or put off, and the majority seemed to be in favour of the latter proceeding. For as they eagerly scanned the little battery they could ...
— Syd Belton - The Boy who would not go to Sea • George Manville Fenn

... different connections; for instance I remember two reported cases in one of which the word "Spanish" meant a certain sort of leather, and in the other a kind of material used in brewing; and in like manner particular texts are to be interpreted in accordance with the gist of the Bible ...
— The Law and the Word • Thomas Troward

... applicants point also to the fact that there is no evidence that any document of importance to the inquiry was destroyed in consequence of the instructions given by Mr Davis. The gist of the contrary argument presented by Mr Baragwanath was that Mr Davis was fully cross-examined about his instructions; and that 'it was open to the Royal Commissioner to find that there were in existence documents which never found their way to that file and that the procedures were ...
— Judgments of the Court of Appeal of New Zealand on Proceedings to Review Aspects of the Report of the Royal Commission of Inquiry into the Mount Erebus Aircraft Disaster • Sir Owen Woodhouse, R. B. Cooke, Ivor L. M. Richardson, Duncan

... already explained our plan to Croisette: and now as we waited he began to tell me a story, a long, confused story about Madame d'O. I thought he was talking for the sake of talking—to keep up our spirits—and I did not attend much to him; so that he had not reached the gist of it, or at least I had not grasped it, when a noise without stayed his tongue. It was the tramp of footsteps, apparently of a large party in the street. It forced him to break off, and promptly drove us ...
— The House of the Wolf - A Romance • Stanley Weyman

... his opinions an air of authority wholly unecclesiastical, purely personal, but immensely impressive. It came in part from his particular type of intellect. He had an assimilative mind, which enabled him, for example, to acquire rapidly the gist of a book, and to state succinctly and clearly a point which he was desirous of making. His was an intuitive knowledge rather than a scientific. It was not the kind of knowledge of which the dogmatists ...
— Frank H. Nelson of Cincinnati • Warren C. Herrick

... of the controversy, yet 'tis like I know the gist of it, as I have just conversed with a wounded soldier of mine, Barbeau, who repeated the story as he understood it. My hand to you, Sieur de Artigny, and it seems to me, Messieurs, that De Tonty hath the ...
— Beyond the Frontier • Randall Parrish

... The gist of the matter was that Maxwell had been married to the nicest girl in the world, and was looking forward to having Mrs. Burke meet her, and to have his wife know the woman who had been so supremely good to him in the parish. He closed by informing her that they were to return the next day at five ...
— Hepsey Burke • Frank Noyes Westcott

... listening to the talk between Bambo and her brother in somewhat of a puzzle as to their meaning. She had, however, gathered the gist of their remarks, and is that not about all that is ...
— Two Little Travellers - A Story for Girls • Frances Browne Arthur

... Frank had a long conversation; but, alas! the gist of his father's conversation was this, that it behoved him, Frank, to marry money. The father, however, did not put it to him in the cold, callous way in which his lady-aunt had done, and his lady-mother. He did not bid him go and sell ...
— Doctor Thorne • Anthony Trollope

... Lee. The invisible rays that destroyed every living thing from China to Australia—one-fifth of the human race—will fall upon the eastern seaboard of America when the moon is full again. That has been the gist of ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, August 1930 • Various

... over to Britain under Hengist and Horsa in the fifth century, were direct descendants of Abraham, their very name Sakkasuna, that is, sons of Isaac, vouching for the truth of the theory. The radical falseness of the etymology is patent. The gist of their argument is that the tribe of Dan settled near the source of the Jordan, becoming the maritime member of the Israelitish confederacy, and calling forth from Deborah the rebuke that the sons of Dan tarried in ships when ...
— Jewish Literature and Other Essays • Gustav Karpeles

... [A]e[a]r[a]nga S[u]tra, or book of usages for the Jain monk and nun. From the same work we extract a few rules to illustrate the practices of the Jains. This literature is the most tedious in the world, and to give the gist of the heretic law-maker's ...
— The Religions of India - Handbooks On The History Of Religions, Volume 1, Edited By Morris Jastrow • Edward Washburn Hopkins

... said Miss Thornton; "if we begin exchanging compliments, we shall talk all night, and never get to the gist of the matter after all. Here is what I want to say. It seems to me that your attentions to our poor Mary are somewhat more than cousinly, and it behoves me to remind you that she is still a married woman. Is that too blunt? Have ...
— The Recollections of Geoffrey Hamlyn • Henry Kingsley

... with conviviality. Following an interminable period of eating and drinking came a long speech by Baahaabaa which, like most after-dinner speeches, meant nothing to me. Captain Triplett replied. The gist of Triplett's remarks, memorized from the "Argus," were taken from the 1916 report of the New Bedford Board of Trade. When he proclaimed that "besides cotton goods, 100,000 pianos were turned out yearly and 8,500 derby hats every day," his ...
— The Cruise of the Kawa • Walter E. Traprock

... a telegram, and the man in the fur coat slapped it open, took in its gist at one glance, and began ...
— Blow The Man Down - A Romance Of The Coast - 1916 • Holman Day

... prompted by curiosity at first a very different emotion laid hold of him as he caught the gist of Gardiner's remarks. He had no delusions about the principles of either Gardiner or Riles. His relations with his present employer had been pleasant but by no means confidential, as he had never sought nor valued Gardiner's friendship. He was convinced ...
— The Homesteaders - A Novel of the Canadian West • Robert J. C. Stead

... Georgina kept part of her promise though not in writing, when she came running up the Green Stairs, excited and eager. Her news was so tremendously important that the words tumbled over each other in her haste to tell it. She could hardly make herself understood. The gist of it was that a long night letter had just arrived from her father, saying that he had landed in San Francisco and was taking the first homeward bound train. He would stop in Washington for a couple of days to attend to some business, and then was coming ...
— Georgina of the Rainbows • Annie Fellows Johnston

... Reverend Thomas Prince's litany, rhymed by a later bard, summed up the gist of all the supplications that ascended from ...
— The Great Fortress - A Chronicle of Louisbourg 1720-1760 • William Wood

... God might as well never have included them in the scheme of His days, so far as she was concerned. But this morning she had thought, had felt—it seemed impossible that she should feel so unusual and that nothing should happen. She was ready, but Fate was in bed and asleep. That was really the gist of the feeling that came over her. She thought of Dr. Levillier, the man who had set a torch at last to her nature and fired it with a new ardour. He was at his work in the morning, seeing, speaking to, that passing line of strangers, who walked ...
— Flames • Robert Smythe Hichens

... is built, each man stands in a certain relation. He takes life on a certain principle. He has a compass in his spirit which points in a certain direction. It is the attitude, the relation, the point of the compass, that is the whole body and gist of what he has to teach us; in this, the details are comprehended; out of this the specific precepts issue, and by this, and this only, can they be explained and applied. And thus, to learn aright from any teacher, we must first of all, ...
— Lay Morals • Robert Louis Stevenson

... conflicting directions confuse and mystify me, I confess. Come, let me write down your wishes, and the matter can be arranged formally, which is always best in any case. There, I think I have the gist of your idea," he said a few moments later, as he pushed over to me a slip of paper to read and sign, which done, I shook hands with him cordially, preparing to go. "But your receipt—you have forgotten to ...
— Sea and Shore - A Sequel to "Miriam's Memoirs" • Mrs. Catharine A. Warfield

... This is the gist of the story the clergyman told me, and, believing it as I undoubtedly do to be true, there is every reason to suppose that the inn, to which I have, of course, given a fictitious name, if still in ...
— Scottish Ghost Stories • Elliott O'Donnell

... and lungs and circulation, but a book on mental hygiene must begin at the beginning, and even before the beginning must clear away misconceptions and make clear certain fundamental principles. But the gist of the whole matter is this: in a neurosis, certain forces of the personality—instincts and their accompanying emotions—which ought to work harmoniously, having become tangled up with some erroneous ...
— Outwitting Our Nerves - A Primer of Psychotherapy • Josephine A. Jackson and Helen M. Salisbury

... none. He, however, poured out the vials of his wrath upon us, as he probably thought to some purpose. I was not linguist enough to be able to translate all he said; but I am sure my free interpretation of the gist of his remarks is correct, for he undoubtedly stigmatised us as a vile and useless set of lazy, crawling, white-faced wretches, who came sitting on hideous brutes of hippogryphs, being too lazy to walk like black men, and took upon ourselves the right to occupy any country or waters ...
— Australia Twice Traversed, The Romance of Exploration • Ernest Giles

... Signor Moretti's studio might not, while illustrating in a singular manner the value of much of the current talk of the present day about the great Umbrian painter, throw at the same time some light on the peculiarity which I have been mentioning. And I am the more tempted to give my readers the gist of the conversation alluded to in that it discloses certain interesting facts and anecdotes which are new to the world, and will not be made known to any other part of it save the readers of Lippincott's ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science Volume 15, No. 89, May, 1875 • Various

... hundred miles, through forests and over mountains, with rivers to cross and hostile Indians to beware of; and it was the middle of November when he set out, with the most inclement season of the year before him. Kit Gist, a hunter and trapper of the Natty Bumppo order, was his guide; they laid their course through the dense but naked forests as a mariner over a sullen sea. Four or five attendants, including an interpreter, made up the party. Day after day they rode, sleeping at night round ...
— The History of the United States from 1492 to 1910, Volume 1 • Julian Hawthorne

... love of God a voluntary poverty, and distributing her goods to the poor, she took upon her the rule of obedience in this celebrated convent of Santa Croce, the work of her own hands, in the year 1344, on the gist of January of the twelfth indiction, where, living a life of holiness under the rule of the blessed Francis, father of the poor, she ended her days religiously in the year of our Lord 1345, on the 28th of July of the thirteenth indiction. On the day ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - JOAN OF NAPLES—1343-1382 • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE

... truth might be, and to claim with yet more particular insistence the possession of living tradition and the right to be regarded as the centre of unity. No heresy pretended that the truth was vague and indefinite. The whole gist and meaning of a heresy was that it, the heresy, or he, the heresiarch, was prepared to make doctrine yet more sharp, and ...
— Europe and the Faith - "Sine auctoritate nulla vita" • Hilaire Belloc

... me to be a good witness," he said. "As for the gist of my evidence, that was between ...
— The Evil Shepherd • E. Phillips Oppenheim

... gist of my old patriarch's addendum as well as I could; and thereupon suspicion fled away and my late judges would vie with one another in hearty frontier hand-grasps and apologies, whilst the throng that ringed us in forgot caution and weariness and gave me a cheer ...
— The Master of Appleby • Francis Lynde

... Rod, and give us the gist of the business," said Hanky Panky appealingly; "of course there's a heap of trouble in the old city just now, but when a case pokes right out in front of you it's hard to pass by. If we could help the little French woman and her pretty child, why, we ought to wake up ...
— The Big Five Motorcycle Boys on the Battle Line - Or, With the Allies in France • Ralph Marlow

... there you have practical bricklaying in a nutshell. Of course there are lots of other points in the book and some dandy pictures and it would pay you to read it. But in case you haven't time, just skim over this resume again and you will have the gist ...
— Love Conquers All • Robert C. Benchley

... and made us a speech. I forget his words, but remember the gist of them. He was pleased to welcome us within his army, and trusted to our honor and loyalty. He made an allusion to the power of the press, and promised us facilities for seeing and writing, within the bounds of censorship. I noticed that he pronounced St.-Omer, St.-Omar, ...
— Now It Can Be Told • Philip Gibbs

... "Cy-dessous gist Jean le Machon De Chartres homme de facon Lequel fondit Georges d'Amboise Qui trente six mille livres poise Mil cinq cens un jour d'Aoust deuxieme Puis mourut ...
— Account of a Tour in Normandy, Vol. I. (of 2) • Dawson Turner

... p. 131 shows compactly the gist of the preceding discussion; it gives the view of social development upon which I ...
— An Englishman Looks at the World • H. G. Wells

... gist of the thing is—Be silent. Be calm. Be awake. Be on hand on the day. Be instant to heed the first note of ...
— Rung Ho! • Talbot Mundy

... diplomatist was heard to say that Italian gentlemen seemed to do nothing but smoke, spit, and criticise. Twenty years ago their manners might have been described less coarsely, but there was even more truth in the gist of the saying. Not only they did nothing. There was nothing for them to do. They floated about in a peaceful millpool, whose placid surface reflected nothing but their own idle selves, little guessing ...
— Sant' Ilario • F. Marion Crawford

... potatoes on the following morning. Before turning in for the night, however, Captain Brown gave Fritz to read a newspaper extract which he had posted into his logbook. This detailed the early history of the little colony, and the gist of it ...
— Fritz and Eric - The Brother Crusoes • John Conroy Hutcheson

... generation ago was young, we had adopted a certain lip salve, just one shade darker than the way lips come, explaining, to save our reputations, that we were keeping our lips from chapping. Rouge too had come coyly, back—but—and here's the gist of the whole matter—in polite society paint was put on to ...
— Nonsenseorship • G. G. Putnam

... get on no quicker than I be doin', and if you're tired of it, why take your hat and go. Events don't fly as quick as words and I'm taking you over the course at race-horse speed, skipping where I can, so as to give you just the gist of the story. ...
— The Argosy - Vol. 51, No. 2, February, 1891 • Various

... "C'y gist un povre menestrel, Occis par maint ennuict cruel— Ne plains pas trop sa destinee— N'est icy que son corps mortel: Son ame est toujours a Gillwell, Et ...
— The Works of Lord Byron: Letters and Journals, Volume 2. • Lord Byron

... the court of mystery, he narrated to Professor Maxon the gist of his conversation with Virginia, wishing to forestall anything which the girl might say to her father that would give him an impression that von Horn had been talking more than he should. Professor Maxon listened to the narration in silence. When von Horn had finished, he cautioned ...
— The Monster Men • Edgar Rice Burroughs

... The gist of Mr. Darwin's work is to show that such varieties are gradually diverged into species and genera through natural selection; that natural selection is the inevitable result of the struggle for existence which all living things are engaged in; and that this struggle is an unavoidable ...
— Darwiniana - Essays and Reviews Pertaining to Darwinism • Asa Gray

... beginning to realize interiorly. This is manifest in the daily press; in music and drama; and in all the avenues of the senses. That intangible, elusive but potential thing called "character" forms the gist of editorial advice. Everywhere we note a tendency to look below the appearance of things, and to fathom the depths of psychological analysis. For the first time in centuries the race-thought seeks the underlying cause for specific effects, instead of, as heretofore, being satisfied ...
— Sex=The Unknown Quantity - The Spiritual Function of Sex • Ali Nomad

... poor old monks were indignant. They, and some others of more modern days, had never caught the real gist of the "Judge not" of the New Testament; nor ...
— Giant Hours With Poet Preachers • William L. Stidger

... This was the gist of the Lanier letter as deciphered by William Dodge, though Pierre so thoroughly had hedged against possible miscarriage as to render intelligent interpretation impossible, except to one in possession of ...
— Oswald Langdon - or, Pierre and Paul Lanier. A Romance of 1894-1898 • Carson Jay Lee

... The gist of the little skipper's talk was a parental warning that, though we were well enough here in the 'Ost-See', it was time for little boats to be looking for winter quarters. That he himself was going by the Kiel Canal to Hamburg to spend a cosy winter as ...
— Riddle of the Sands • Erskine Childers

... moral systems from Hobbes downwards. His remarks (Lecture 76) on the province of Reason in Morality, with reference to the systems of Clarke and Wollaston, contain the gist of ...
— Moral Science; A Compendium of Ethics • Alexander Bain

... extraordinarily interesting summary, in Lord Acton's handwriting, of what should be the principles—the ethical principles—of the modern historian in dealing with the past. They were, I think, afterward embodied in an introduction to a new edition of Machiavelli. The gist of them, however, is given in a letter written to Bishop Creighton in 1887, and printed in the biography of the Bishop. Here we find a devout Catholic attacking an Anglican writer for applying the epithets "tolerant and enlightened" to ...
— A Writer's Recollections (In Two Volumes), Volume II • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... advantage in the past, of shortcoming in the present, I must own that, on a near examination, they look wondrous cloudy. The chief and far the most lamentable change is the absence of a certain lean, ugly, idle, unpopular student, whose presence was for me the gist and heart of the whole matter; whose changing humours, fine occasional purposes of good, flinching acceptance of evil, shiverings on wet, east- windy, morning journeys up to class, infinite yawnings during lecture and unquenchable gusto ...
— Memories and Portraits • Robert Louis Stevenson

... have been agreeable to see him weakened by the loss of some southern provinces. Mr. Pooley gives a good account of the actions of Japan during the Chinese Revolution, of which the following quotation gives the gist[62]:— ...
— The Problem of China • Bertrand Russell

... evangelism. It does not end there. The people must hear the good news of salvation. So we have spent much time 'to make the message plain.' It has taken years of labor to put the gist of the Gospel into several Indian languages having no literature, that the people might get the word of God. One had to work to get a clue to a word through a crude interpreter; or by making signs or motions where, as often, no interpreter ...
— Home Missions In Action • Edith H. Allen

... It is "the first mild day of March" (high time, I think, that it should be!), and by rights I ought to be out among the budding banks and hedges, outlining sprays of hawthorn and clusters of primrose. That is my right work; and it is not, in the inner gist and truth of it, right nor good, for you, or for anybody else, that Cruikshank with his great gift, and I with my weak, but yet thoroughly clear and definite one, should both of us be tormented by ...
— Time and Tide by Weare and Tyne - Twenty-five Letters to a Working Man of Sunderland on the Laws of Work • John Ruskin

... the boss to put in a 'lectric fan fer you," suggested the hollow-chested one, whose name was Mag Gist. ...
— Calvary Alley • Alice Hegan Rice

... accusations of uselessness cast at her dachshunds, Mrs. Kitty had always stoutly opposed the legend of "medium-size game." The dachshunds may look like bologna sausages on legs, ran the gist of her argument; and they may progress like rather lively measuring worms; and the usefulness of their structure may seem to limit itself to a facility for getting under furniture without stooping, but—Mrs. Kitty's eloquence always ended by convincing herself, ...
— The Killer • Stewart Edward White

... Their gist was plain. Blenham was to go the limit to accomplish two purposes: the minor one of making the world a dreary place for certain scoundrels, name of Temple; the major one of utterly breaking Steve Packard. When Blenham went out ...
— Man to Man • Jackson Gregory

... Equal?" That was the gist of the problem. Was her equality theoretical—or real? Now that she had the ballot and could no longer be legislated against, could she hold her own industrially on equal terms with man? Or, putting it as briefly as possible, ...
— Mary Minds Her Business • George Weston

... get at the gist of your argument. You mean, for example, that I would never have appreciated the delicate flavor of Maryland or Havanna, had I not been accustomed to smoke the cabbage-leaf manufactured ...
— Willis the Pilot • Paul Adrien

... The gist of all these reforms, actual and projected, was that the Bishops were enormously increasing their own power and patronage at the expense of the Deans and Chapters. Sydney Smith, as a member of a Chapter, protested, and then the ...
— Sydney Smith • George W. E. Russell

... operative contains 5-7/8 persons.[255] The total cost of living in the former is about $50 a year more than in the latter, and the wages of the man in the former are nearly $250 a year more than those of the latter."[256] Similar evidence is tendered from other trades, the gist of which is summed up in the Report of the Labour Bureau of Massachusetts in the following words:—"Thus it is seen that in neither of the cases where the man is assisted by his wife or children does he earn as much as other labourers. Also that in the case where he is assisted by both wife ...
— The Evolution of Modern Capitalism - A Study of Machine Production • John Atkinson Hobson

... had gone George Deaves hemmed and hawed, gazed at the ceiling, made scratches on his desk pad and beat all around the bush. The gist of it as finally extracted by Evan was something ...
— The Deaves Affair • Hulbert Footner

... with strained attention. His tale was somewhat muffled by lemon pie, and his vocabulary did not always coincide with her own, but she managed to get the gist of it. ...
— Just Patty • Jean Webster

... has stated the gist o' this business a whole lot better'n I could, but I'd like to make a few additional remarks. We've all been neighbors for some years, and in the natural course of things we've been pretty good friends. Until this feller, Moran, got to monkeyin' around here, there ...
— Hidden Gold • Wilder Anthony

... never in a country where the people were pale with miserable toil and deadly shade, and where the lips of youth, instead of being full with blood, were pinched by famine, or warped with poison. And now, therefore, note this well, the gist of all these long prefatory talks. I said that the two great moral instincts were those of Order and Kindness. Now, all the arts are founded on agriculture by the hand, and on the graces, and kindness ...
— Lectures on Art - Delivered before the University of Oxford in Hilary term, 1870 • John Ruskin

... Langham took it to heart perhaps more than either Elsmere or his mother. No one knew better than he what Elsmere's gifts were. It was absurd that he should not have made more of them in sight of the public. 'Le clericalisme, voila l'ennemi!' was about the gist of Langham's mood during the days that followed ...
— Robert Elsmere • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... he has been unceasing in his endeavours to get the Bannerworth family out of it; that he has offered them their own price to become its tenant, and that the whole gist of his quiet and placid interview with Flora in the garden, was to supply her with a new set of reasons for urging her mother and brother to leave Bannerworth Hall, because the old ones ...
— Varney the Vampire - Or the Feast of Blood • Thomas Preskett Prest

... of this contained the gist of the whole matter; the other things were put in just to prevent the notice from being conspicuously sensible. Next morning, when the Grand Vizier took up his newspaper, he could not help knowing he was the person addressed; ...
— Cobwebs From an Empty Skull • Ambrose Bierce (AKA: Dod Grile)

... All doctrines, all politics and civilisation, exsurge from you; All sculpture and monuments, and anything inscribed anywhere, are tallied in you; The gist of histories and statistics, as far back as the records reach, is in you this hour, and myths and tales the same; If you were not breathing and walking here, where would they all be? The most renowned poems would be ashes, orations and ...
— Poems By Walt Whitman • Walt Whitman

... am much wiser now than I was once, Joyce. I have learned wisdom beyond the hills. One learns there—in time—but sometimes the lesson is learned too late. Shall I tell you what I have learned, Joyce? The gist of the lesson is that I left happiness behind me in the old valley, when I went away from it, happiness and peace and the joy of living. I did not miss these things for a long while; I did not even know I had lost them. But I have discovered ...
— Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1905 to 1906 • Lucy Maud Montgomery

... fainting fit into another, Miss Beale had the rare good sense to go straight to the police station. One of our men has interviewed her this evening, and she is coming here tomorrow, but in the meantime the Oxford police telephoned the gist of the letter, which is headed 'Monday, 11:30 p. m.' The hour is not quite accurate, but near enough, since the context shows that a 'friend' had just called and given certain information which had determined the writer to leave London 'to-morrow'— ...
— Number Seventeen • Louis Tracy

... said Minty, with a brilliant laugh. "I clean forgot the hull gist of the thing. Well, we're rich folks now—over thar' on Barren Ledge! That onery brother of mine, Richelieu, hez taken some of his specimens over to Jim Bradley to be tested. And Bradley, just ...
— A Phyllis of the Sierras • Bret Harte

... garnered the gist of the world's treasures before commencing this last trek. Gold and precious stones were common objects to them, because for countless ages man had made them at will, but around those they had brought clustered sacred memories ...
— Omega, the Man • Lowell Howard Morrow

... it?" and in the same way she gave the day, date and year correctly. But she did not know the names of the physicians. At that time she could give many data about her family correctly, but was slow, even if correct, in calculation, and, though she got the gist of a test story, she ...
— Benign Stupors - A Study of a New Manic-Depressive Reaction Type • August Hoch

... most benefited by the express, the opening of the line was likewise awaited with the keenest anticipation. Of course there had been at the outset a few dissenting opinions, the gist of the opposing sentiment being that the Indians would make the operation of the route impossible. One newspaper went so far as to say that it was "Simply inviting slaughter upon all the foolhardy young men who had been engaged as riders". But the ...
— The Story of the Pony Express • Glenn D. Bradley

... any great haste to open the letter, being aware that the true gist of it could only be discovered in private, and her father was studying his own likewise in silence. It was from Sir Ralf Sadler to request that Mistress Cicely might be permitted to become a regular member of the household. There was now a vacancy since, though Mrs. Curll was nearly as much ...
— Unknown to History - A Story of the Captivity of Mary of Scotland • Charlotte M. Yonge

... personal rights by the state. He read the introduction to me last night. I didn't catch on to all the points—his daughter's an awfully pretty girl, and I was carrying that fact in my mind all the time, too, you know—but that's about the gist of it." ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells

... but he does credit us with a little intelligence. And he realises how many arguments we have had about questions like "Why does the sea look blue?" Personally I rushed at that chapter, though I must say that I was a little disappointed to find that the gist of his answer was "Because water is blue." You see, if you had a tooth-glass fifteen feet high and filled it with water—But you must find out for yourself. Then I went on to the chapter on Coal, and discovered that "it is fairly ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 159, November 3, 1920 • Various

... such singular results that thereafter I had little cause for complaint. He came to me and said, 'The Commissioner Sahib thinks I give Mem Sahib a great deal of trouble;' to which I replied in a cold tone, 'Take care you don't give me any more.' The gist of the Sahib's words was the very pertinent suggestion that it would eventually be more to his interest to serve me honestly and ...
— Among the Tibetans • Isabella L. Bird (Mrs Bishop)

... well understood the true meaning of Hamlet's words: [62]—'What should such fellows as I do crawling between earth and heaven?' [63] They easily seized the gist and point of the answer given to the King's question: [64]—'How fares our cousin Hamlet?' ...
— Shakspere And Montaigne • Jacob Feis

... the least attention to the sermon. As for me, the rhythm of it held me in fascination. Mr. Mason had written it out and that afternoon read over this part of it to Nick. The quotation I recall, having since read it many times, and the gist of it ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill

... gin gist gill gem gibe germ tinge edge urge huge serge judge singe ledge large barge fudge lodge dodge ridge cringe lunge budge hedge badge sledge nudge wedge fringe range bridge merge grudge trudge mange smudge charge ...
— The Beacon Second Reader • James H. Fassett

... assaulted the main rebel line, and for over an hour maintained a heavy contest, driving the enemy and at times being driven back, but still holding his crest as first secured. Here Corse, Loomis, and Morgan L. Smith fought the rebels under Hardee with Cleburne's, Gist's, Cheatham's, and Stevenson's divisions in a stubborn struggle all day up to three o'clock, holding their own, but making little headway. About two o'clock John E. Smith's two brigades, while moving to the support of ...
— The Army of the Cumberland • Henry M. Cist

... lectures and periodicals, as though a short account of anything must of necessity be a superficial one; but this is far from the truth. A quarto volume on one theme may be entirely superficial, while a lecture or review-article on the same theme may contain the whole gist of the matter. Prolixity is oftener superficial than brevity. Books are superficial if they relate only to the outside of a subject,—if they describe only its husk; and the reverse, if they give its kernel. Many an able review-article ...
— The Elements of Character • Mary G. Chandler

... the majestic structure that once lay here in unshaped stone. Some little children stood on the edge of the Pool, angling with pin-hooks; and the scene reminded me (though really to be quite fair with the reader, the gist of the analogy has now escaped me) of that mysterious lake in the Arabian Nights, which had once been a palace and a city, and where a fisherman used to pull out the former inhabitants in the guise of enchanted fishes. There is no need of fanciful ...
— Our Old Home - A Series of English Sketches • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... settlements of Pennsylvania." A brother, and later the successor of King Beaver, his camp was at the mouth of Beaver Creek, which empties into the Ohio twenty-six miles below "the forks" (site of Pittsburg). Christopher Gist visited him November 24, 1750. In 1759, when Fort Pitt was built, Shingiss moved up Beaver Creek to Kuskuskis on the Mahoning, and finally to the Muskingum. The land about the mouth of Beaver Creek is called "Shingis Old Town" ...
— Chronicles of Border Warfare • Alexander Scott Withers

... Church, and so forth—are already as questionable as they are confident, he puts them with a certain modesty, a certain [Greek: epieikeia], which was perhaps not always so obvious when he came to preach that quality itself later. About the gist of the book it is not necessary to say very much. He practically admits the obvious and unanswerable objection that his French Eton, whether we look for it at Toulouse or look for it at Soreze, is very French, but not at all ...
— Matthew Arnold • George Saintsbury

... much indefiniteness or breadth in the things required to be 'particularly described,' if also the inquiry is one the demanding agency is authorized by law to make and the materials specified are relevant. The gist of the protection is in the requirement, expressed in terms, that the disclosure sought shall not be unreasonable. * * * It is not necessary, as in the case of a warrant, that a specific charge or complaint of violation of law be pending or that the order be made pursuant ...
— The Constitution of the United States of America: Analysis and Interpretation • Edward Corwin

... give her on this occasion, in which the desire imputed to the caste to make money out of their daughters is satirised. They are no doubt libellous as being a gross exaggeration, but may contain some substratum of truth. The gist of them is as follows: "Girl, if you are my daughter, heed what I say. I will make you many sweetmeats and speak words of wisdom. Always treat your husband better than his parents. Increase your private money ...
— The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India - Volume IV of IV - Kumhar-Yemkala • R.V. Russell

... or Curteys (22), and against the wall of the aisle near the chapel of S. Catharine is a curious marble slab with some carving upon it. It represents two hands, with parts of the arms, supporting a heart, and the full inscription, now almost gone, was "ICY GIST LE COEUR DE MAUDDE" ("Here lies the heart of Maud"). It is evidently work of an early date, but nothing is accurately known of its history, though it has been assumed that it was made in the twelfth or thirteenth ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: Chichester (1901) - A Short History & Description Of Its Fabric With An Account Of The - Diocese And See • Hubert C. Corlette

... Ci gist maistre Alexandre de Berneval, maistre des Oeuvres de Machonnerie du Roy, notre Sire, du baillage de Rouen et de cette Eglise, qui trespassa l'an de grace mil CCCCXL le vo jour de janvier. Priez ...
— Rouen, It's History and Monuments - A Guide to Strangers • Theodore Licquet

... minimal pulses of experience, is realized that very inner complexity which the transcendentalists say only the absolute can genuinely possess. The gist of the matter is always the same—something ever goes indissolubly with something else. You cannot separate the same from its other, except by abandoning the real altogether and taking to the conceptual system. What is immediately ...
— A Pluralistic Universe - Hibbert Lectures at Manchester College on the - Present Situation in Philosophy • William James

... was burnt for its sentiments on Prerogative was one of which the King was believed personally to approve. This was probably the gist of its offence, for it appeared about the time that the King made his very supercilious speech to the Commons in answer to their complaints about the High Commission ...
— Books Condemned to be Burnt • James Anson Farrer

... gist of what you have already told me," said the commissioner. "Muller, Miss Graumann believes her nephew innocent, contrary to the opinion of the local authorities in G—. She has come to ask for some one ...
— The Case of the Registered Letter • Augusta Groner

... Bill Warfield yet—and git him right," was the gist of his musings. "He's bound to show his head, give him time enough. Him and his killers can't always keep under cover. Let 'em come at me about that fence! It's on my land—the Quirt's got a right to fence every foot of land ...
— Sawtooth Ranch • B. M. Bower

... city church probably I should have thrown propriety to the winds and had the gist of the story out of him at once, but in a country church there are always such listening spaces,—the very pew-backs and cushions seem attentive, the hymnals creak in their racks, and the little stools cry out nervously when one barely touches them. It was too much for me. I was coerced into ...
— More Jonathan Papers • Elisabeth Woodbridge



Words linked to "Gist" :   content, meaning, heart, inwardness, mental object, essence, cognitive content, substance, bare bones, marrow, kernel, import, effect, heart and soul, nub, sum, center, haecceity, significance, signification



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