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Pill   Listen
noun
Pill  n.  
1.
A medicine in the form of a little ball, or small round mass, to be swallowed whole.
2.
Figuratively, something offensive or nauseous which must be accepted or endured.
Pill beetle (Zool.), any small beetle of the genus Byrrhus, having a rounded body, with the head concealed beneath the thorax.
Pill bug (Zool.), any terrestrial isopod of the genus Armadillo, having the habit of rolling itself into a ball when disturbed. Called also pill wood louse.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Pill" Quotes from Famous Books



... understand that our arguments were wholly lacking in personal animus. When I told him of the Allies' growing superiority in aircraft Rhubarb would retort by showing me clippings about the German trench fortifications, the "pill boxes" made of solid cement. I would speak of the deadly curtain fire of the British; he would counter with mysterious allusions to Krupp. And his conclusions were always the same. "Just wait! Germany will win!" And he would stroke his ...
— Shandygaff • Christopher Morley

... bitter pill for them to swallow, to have an outsider come in to do the work they found ...
— The Bradys and the Girl Smuggler - or, Working for the Custom House • Francis W. Doughty

... turns to moisten the cloth she holds to a wounded trooper's burning, tossing head. Sergeant Wing is fevered indeed by this time, raging with misery at thought of his helplessness and the scant numbers of the defence. It is a bitter pill for the soldier to swallow, this of lying in hospital when every man is needed at the front. At nine o'clock this morning a veteran Indian fighter, crouching in his sheltered lookout above the ...
— Foes in Ambush • Charles King

... the block is cold, break off the metal L's; trim off the excess of paraffin from around the tissue with a knife, taking care to retain the rectangular shape, and store the block in a pill-box. ...
— The Elements of Bacteriological Technique • John William Henry Eyre

... "This is a pill I don't like to swallow," said he, opening his coat and looking down at himself. "I said I wouldn't take off my gray uniform until the South had gained her independence; but I didn't know at the time that I would find it necessary ...
— Rodney The Partisan • Harry Castlemon

... fur a nice little killin'. He's finished away back in two starts, but he runs both races without a pill. This hoss is a dope. He's been on it fur two seasons. He won't beat nothin' without his hop. But when he gets just the right mixture under his hide he figgers he can beat any kind of a hoss, 'n' he's about right at that. ...
— Blister Jones • John Taintor Foote

... hill, famous for its strength through four years of struggle between the French and Germans, dis-appeared completely as an enemy standpoint. Nothing remained but torn and broken barbed wire, bits of concrete pill-boxes, and trenches filled with debris, and a few scattered fragments ...
— by Victor LeFebure • J. Walker McSpadden

... explanation will hereafter be found, such as the dimorphism of either sex and the occasional production of winged males. I see that you are puzzled how ants of the same community recognize each other; I once placed two (F. rufa) in a pill-box smelling strongly of asafoetida and after a day returned them to their homes; they were threatened, but at last recognized. I made the trial thinking that they might know each other by their odour; but this cannot have ...
— The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin, Volume II • Francis Darwin

... bundles of accounts, most of which relate to his own private expenditure, and are labelled, "Expenses of [Brighton] Pavilion," of "Furniture," "Drinking expenses." "Aye, this comes," he exclaims, "of your cursed pill economy, which you forced me to take a month back; no one knows what I have suffered from this economical spasm. I am afraid we shall all be laid up together." On the table behind him lie the medicines which have been prescribed for ...
— English Caricaturists and Graphic Humourists of the Nineteenth Century. - How they Illustrated and Interpreted their Times. • Graham Everitt

... weeks in the country and in idleness, and gained much benefit from it. I spent much indoors time in learning to use water-colours, and got a nice pony to ride, and was a great deal in the air, and very early to go to bed; and took no medicines but tonics and a colocynth pill on occasion. Myself and wife both return much better. I believe I knocked myself up by excitement of mind over the Berber and working at my dictionary, At Prichard's advice I have lately written to Bunsen to ask his aid ...
— Memoir and Letters of Francis W. Newman • Giberne Sieveking

... labour-saving arts of modern pharmacy. It macerates its opium and percolates its own laudanum and paregoric. To this day pills are made behind its tall prescription desk—pills rolled out on its own pill-tile, divided with a spatula, rolled with the finger and thumb, dusted with calcined magnesia and delivered in little round pasteboard pill-boxes. The store is on a corner about which coveys of ragged-plumed, hilarious children play and become candidates for the cough drops ...
— The Four Million • O. Henry

... my boy," said Ned, one evening, advancing to the side of his companion's couch and sitting down beside him, while he held up the pill—"Open your mouth, and shut your eyes, as we used to say ...
— The Golden Dream - Adventures in the Far West • R.M. Ballantyne

... says of you is deserved. The least you can do now to repair matters is to swallow your pill noiselessly and give no further trouble until you are called upon to obstruct the way again in semblance of discharging responsibilities of which a cat ...
— Some Everyday Folk and Dawn • Miles Franklin

... branches took various directions, each being considerably twisted, and one actually curling round its neighbour. At the junction of the various branches lay the nest, resting on the flat surface, much as a large, shallow pill-box might rest in the half-closed palm of the hand of a man whose fingers were rugged and twisted ...
— Birds of the Indian Hills • Douglas Dewar

... Lockyer's Universal Pill, curing any Disease curable by Physick; it operates gently and safely, it being very amicable to Nature in purifying the whole Body throughout, and then subduing all Diseases, whether internal or external, as hath been experimented by persons of all sorts ...
— The Queen-like Closet or Rich Cabinet • Hannah Wolley

... possession of an unfortunate still in the flesh, and through this unhappy medium endeavors to work his will. Perhaps that is what is the matter with me. Pollok, perchance, who died in his flower, thinking that he had not given the world a big enough pill to swallow, wants to concoct another dose in my presumably vacant brain. I appreciate the compliment, but I disdain to be Pollok's mouthpiece: I will be original or nothing. Besides, it is deuced uncomfortable. And I should like to know if there is anything in life more ...
— What Dreams May Come • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton

... premise from which all discussion started with these men was that America was going to win the war; if you tried to hint that this matter could so much as be hesitated over, you met, first sharp mockery, and then angry looks, and advice to go and take a pill and get the Hun poison out ...
— Jimmie Higgins • Upton Sinclair

... a prospect, you make use of all the eloquent phrases to gild this pill. In short, you find the means of flattering ...
— Petty Troubles of Married Life, Part First • Honore de Balzac

... half sitting on the small parlour table, and there he remained for a few minutes, meditating on Daly's most unpleasant proposal. It was a hard pill for him to swallow, and he couldn't get it down without some convulsive grimaces. He bit his under lip, till the blood came through it, and at ...
— The Kellys and the O'Kellys • Anthony Trollope

... light in the head. I wondered what he could preach to ignorant men, his head ablaze with wild mysticism, till I met a man who had heard him talking near Covent Garden to some crowd in the street. 'My friends,' he was saying, 'you have the kingdom of heaven within you and it would take a pretty big pill ...
— Four Years • William Butler Yeats

... to give that surprise party a first-class surprise," chuckled Dick. "Shall I drop a pill or two down among them, just to let them know we're ...
— A Daughter of the Dons - A Story of New Mexico Today • William MacLeod Raine

... it, and there was a great, big, live $100 inside of it. It was over the limit; but I had turned, and there was no getting out of it. To tell the truth, I did not want to get out, for I was just getting in on my partner. I paid the $800 over to the pill-mixer and shut up shop, as I did not want to lose any more of my "little ...
— Forty Years a Gambler on the Mississippi • George H. Devol

... Captain O'Neill, and continued: "One element alone is uncertain; one only is to be ascertained. The force and disposition of the defending troops in shell holes, in their concrete 'pill-boxes,' in their flanking trenches all have been ascertained. They will be blasted out by our artillery. But they have additional forces below the ground, in great caverns too far down to be reached by ...
— The Boy Allies with Haig in Flanders • Clair W. Hayes

... What is my business? I can't convert them. I can't change their morals. I must just be a friend to them, cheer them up in their sorrows, give them a bit if they're starving, doctor them a little. I'm a first-rate hand at making an Arab take a pill or a powder!—when they are ill, and make them at home with the white marabout. That's what the sun has taught me, and every sand-rascal and sand-rascal's child in Amara is ...
— The Garden Of Allah • Robert Hichens

... to thy golden shore promiscuous come Quacks for the lame, the blind, the deaf, the dumb; Fools are their bankers—a prolific line, And every mortal malady's a mine. Each sly Sangrado, with his poisonous pill, Flies to the printer's devil with his bill, Whose Midas touch can gild his ass's ears, And load a knave with folly's rich arrears. And lo! a second miracle is thine, For sloe-juice water stands transformed to wine. Where Day and Martin's patent blacking roll'd, ...
— Rejected Addresses: or, The New Theatrum Poetarum • James and Horace Smith

... little, for this meant a good deal to Geoffrey. It meant a baronetcy and eight thousand a year, more or less. How delighted Honoria would be, he thought with a sad smile; the loss of that large income had always been a bitter pill to her, and one which she had made him swallow again and again. Well, there it was. Poor boy, he had always been ...
— Beatrice • H. Rider Haggard

... sorrow and joy, succeeds in attaining to the end of both.[1097] That foolish man who nourishes this tree by indulgence in the objects of the senses is destroyed by those very objects in which he indulges after the manner of a poisonous pill destroying the patient to whom it is administered.[1098] A dexterous person, however, by the aid of Yoga, forcibly teareth up and cutteth with the sword of samadhi, the far-reaching root of this tree.[1099] One who knows that ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 3 - Books 8, 9, 10, 11 and 12 • Unknown

... laughing grace of sympathy, and from time to time chastised, as if in play, with a parasol as heavy as a pole-axe. It requires a singular art, as well as the vantage-ground of age, to deal these stunning corrections among the coxcombs of the young. The pill is disguised in sugar of wit; it is administered as a compliment - if you had not pleased, you would not have been censured; it is a personal affair - a hyphen, A TRAIT D'UNION, between you and your censor; age's philandering, for her pleasure and your ...
— Memories and Portraits • Robert Louis Stevenson

... asked Fraser quickly of the young woman who had opened the door, and upon her affirmative reply he added: "Everybody alive and kicking? Nobody get a pill?" ...
— A Texas Ranger • William MacLeod Raine

... said I, "of all evil, that we're 'going to the devil' Has been the old croaker's gospel for a century, and more. Red-gilled Colonels this have chaunted in BRITTANIA's ears undaunted, By their ghosts you must he haunted. Take a Blue-pill, I implore! When our Army meets the foe it's bound to lick him as of yore!" ...
— Punch, or The London Charivari, Volume 101, October 31, 1891 • Various

... let her cop the whole show," answered Mr. Height with great generosity, for in reality Mr. Height had the very poor opinion of Mr. Vandeford that it is the custom of all actors to hold in regard to their respective managers. However, he was sugar-coating the pill he was determined to administer to Miss Adair without delay. "He ought to marry Hawtry and get a bit in her mouth and ...
— Blue-grass and Broadway • Maria Thompson Daviess

... said, as he crossed the hall, "I am knocked into fits. But all the same, that bit of commercial-traveller's waggery was rather novel, in the circumstances. To expect a pill and receive a cough-drop is by way of being a sort of disappointment. It left the old ...
— The Crystal Stopper • Maurice LeBlanc

... indistinctly, "travel and adventure. There is a class of men one meets frequently who do a little exploring and a great deal of talking. Faute de mieux, they do not hesitate to interest one in the special pill to which they resort when indisposed, and they are not above advertising a soap. You are not going to write ...
— With Edged Tools • Henry Seton Merriman

... says Mr. POCOCK, "were effected without difficulty." The rumour that the hippopotamus demanded a pailful of jam with its mangel-wurzels, in the belief that they were some kind of homoeopathic pill, appears ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 152, May 9, 1917 • Various

... had great designs beyond him and his service. The true conception of our work is that we sire only links in a chain, and that we can be done without. 'God removes the workers and carries on the work.' To anoint our successor is often a bitter pill; but self-importance needs to be taken down, and it is blessed to lose ourselves in gazing into the future of God's work, when we ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren

... commons hath he pill'd with grievous taxes, And quite lost their hearts: the nobles hath he fin'd For ancient quarrels ...
— The Tragedy of King Richard II • William Shakespeare [Craig, Oxford edition]

... makers. The gem of my collection is Ludwig's gloss for Luemmel, "a long lubber, a lazy lubber, a slouch, a lordant, a lordane, a looby, a booby, a tony, a fop, a dunce, a simpleton, a wise-acre, a sot, a logger-head, a block-head, a nickampoop, a lingerer, a drowsy or dreaming lusk, a pill-garlick, a slowback, a lathback, a pitiful sneaking fellow, a lungis, a tall slim fellow, a slim longback, a great he-fellow, a lubberly fellow, a ...
— The Romance of Words (4th ed.) • Ernest Weekley

... were constipated, and my prospects for recovery were not very flattering. I stated my case to another physician, and he advised me to take five to ten drops of Magende's solution of morphine, two or three times a day, for the weakness and distress in my stomach, and a blue pill every other night to relieve the constipation. The morphine produced such a deathly nausea that I could not take it, and the blue pill failed ...
— The Prairie Farmer, Vol. 56, No. 2, January 12, 1884 - A Weekly Journal for the Farm, Orchard and Fireside • Various

... could boast of his prowess in peace and in war, in duels and in love-making. The Count, however—and this notwithstanding the fact that he had been one of the most persistent suitors of Pepita—had received the sugar-coated pill of refusal that she was accustomed to bestow on those who paid their addresses to her and aspired to ...
— Pepita Ximenez • Juan Valera

... birthday, and the Regent had arranged that the marriage should also be celebrated at that time. Of course, the Boy had acquiesced. He saw no reason to put it off any longer. It was always best to swallow your bitterest pill first, he thought, and get the worst over and the taste out of your mouth ...
— One Day - A sequel to 'Three Weeks' • Anonymous

... they'll be time 'nough fer work—an' rest too, 'Meelia Ellen,' says she. Well, seems like she was just 'tendin' those meetin's herself, same es if she was there. She'd take her nap like it was a pill, er somethin', and then be wide awake an' ready fer her afternoon freshenin', an' then she'd watch fer the stage to bring the evenin' paper. John, he hed a whole cartload o' papers sent, an' the day he spoke they was so many I jes' couldn't ...
— The Man of the Desert • Grace Livingston Hill

... Eyes, Brain, and Stomach. And the greatest of these three is Stomach. You've too much conceited Brain, too little Stomach, and thoroughly unhealthy Eyes. Get your Stomach straight and the rest follows. And all that's French for a liver pill. I'll take sole medical charge of you from this hour! for you're too interesting a ...
— Indian Tales • Rudyard Kipling

... at once force the matter on Maroney, but waited until she reached the North, and then gradually unfolded to him the necessity of his marrying her. It was a bitter pill for him to swallow, but unless he chose to add murder to his other crimes, was his only ...
— The Expressman and the Detective • Allan Pinkerton

... pill, Tom, and slap it right into the thick of 'em this time; we mustn't let 'em surround us at no price," exclaimed old Mildmay. "Turn round on your thwarts, lads, and pull the boat gently up stream, starn first, so's to keep our bull-dog forward ...
— The Congo Rovers - A Story of the Slave Squadron • Harry Collingwood

... don't know about that pill-thrower back in Ohio," added Cal. "Any of you fellows going to take her bid? I'll ...
— Chip, of the Flying U • B. M. Bower

... thoughts turned to these happy occasions, and it strengthened his indignation against his son to realise that this year a cloud had arisen between himself and his dearest daughter. Margot had openly ranked herself against him, which was a bitter pill to swallow, and, so far from showing an inclination to repent as the prescribed time drew to a close, the conspirators appeared only to be the more determined. Long envelopes were continually being dispatched to the post, to appear with astonishing dispatch on ...
— Big Game - A Story for Girls • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey

... convinced that the First Consul would be extremely displeased that I constantly delayed the moment of speaking to him on the subject. It was therefore with extreme satisfaction I learned that M. de Talleyrand had anticipated me. No person was more capable than himself of gilding the pill, as one may say, to Bonaparte. Endowed with as much independence of character as of mind, he did him the service, at the risk of offending him, to tell him that a great number of creditors expressed their discontent in bitter complaints ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton

... next day was Sunday, and immediately after morning service, Mr. Joseph Russell, an intimate friend of the governor, called at our house, and told my father that his excellency had swallowed the bitter pill, and was then on his way to visit the president—to which step he had been urged by a report that the people generally condemned ...
— Washington and the American Republic, Vol. 3. • Benson J. Lossing

... Culhane, in spite of the young doctor's condescension and understanding, or perhaps better yet because of it, he thoroughly disliked, barely tolerated, him, and was never tired of commenting on little dancing medics with their "pill cases" and easily acquired book knowledge, boasting of their supposed learning "which somebody else had paid for," as he once said—their fathers, of course. And when they were sick, some of them at ...
— Twelve Men • Theodore Dreiser

... harm to yourself. I'd be like the awful kind o' pill which a fellow'll swaller to commit suicide." She rose, not without a dignity of her own. "Well, mister, if I'm your fourth, I guess you'll have to look ...
— The Dust Flower • Basil King

... much; he knew shame at the thought, perhaps keener shame than in anticipating the judgment, say, of Daniel Dabbs. No one of his acquaintances thought of him so highly as Emma did; to see himself dethroned, the object of her contempt, was a bitter pill to swallow. In all that concerned his own dignity Richard was keenly appreciative; he felt in advance every pricking of the blood that was in store for him if he became guilty of this treachery. Yes, from that point of view he feared ...
— Demos • George Gissing

... that's facts. Oh, we'll back up ther Hermit, an' thar won't be no trouble 'bout gittin' erway, 'less them varmints behind manages ter hit one o' us with a lead pill." ...
— Frank Merriwell's Bravery • Burt L. Standish

... nothing more is necessary than to send to some medical man for a pill and a draught, and a little bit of paper with aegrotat on it, and the doctor's signature. Some men let themselves down off their horses, and send for an aegrotat on the score of a fall.—Westminster Rev., Am. ...
— A Collection of College Words and Customs • Benjamin Homer Hall

... difference between a steep hill and a large pill? One is hard to get up, the other is ...
— Cole's Funny Picture Book No. 1 • Edward William Cole

... in Canada. Somehow, by hook or by crook, he had to get into the war. The Royal Flying Corps accepted him with the proviso that he must take out his British naturalisation papers. This changing of nationality was a most bitter pill for his family to swallow. The boy had done his best to be a soldier; he was the eldest son, and there they would willingly have had the matter rest. Moreover they could compel the matter to rest there, for, being under age, he could not change ...
— Out To Win - The Story of America in France • Coningsby Dawson

... hatreds and jealousies of democracy incomprehensible after this? Ambitious and continually thwarted, he could not reproach himself. He had once already tried his fortune by inventing a purgative pill, something like Morrison's, and intrusted the business operations to an old hospital chum, a house-student who afterwards took a retail drug business; but, unluckily, the druggist, smitten with the charms of ...
— Poor Relations • Honore de Balzac

... began to prepare for the tide. They put the fore topsail on her, and then signalled for their own vessel. With a last effort they got one anchor, but, when Joe proposed trying the other, poor Billy groaned, "That's a pill enough for me, Joe; I shall die if we stand to it any more. Slip the other cable, boy." Joe agreed; the anchor was lost, and the men prepared for the first creak that would show that the tide was coming. The sea seemed ...
— The Chequers - Being the Natural History of a Public-House, Set Forth in - a Loafer's Diary • James Runciman

... spending its first night on the Island of Luzon in these trenches. It is known as the "Charge of the Hospital Corps," and promises to be handed down in army tradition. The gallant leader of this daring advance was a young surgeon, recently appointed to the regular establishment as a battalion pill-dispenser. His command consisted of three privates and an acting steward of ...
— Bamboo Tales • Ira L. Reeves

... She would not have been received, and a cool "Not at home" would have been a bitter social pill to us if we had gone out of our way ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume III. (of X.) • Various

... I were you," was Lady Maria's spoken reflection upon what her young friend was able to tell her. "I should swallow him like a pill. You won't taste him much, and he'll do you worlds of good. The world? I'm not talking of the world. I never do. He'll put you right with yourself. That's much more to the point. He's in love with you, I believe. ...
— Rest Harrow - A Comedy of Resolution • Maurice Hewlett

... theories learned in dissecting room, laboratory, and lecture are connected up with actual relief of sick women and children. Here the students are divided into small groups and many kinds of clinical demonstrations are going on at once. In the compounding room you will see a lesson in pill-making. That smiling young person working away on the floor in front of the table is a West Coast Brahman, sent on a stipend from the Hindu state of Travancore. It is her first experience away from home and the zest and adventure of the new life ...
— Lighted to Lighten: The Hope of India • Alice B. Van Doren

... of learning and moneyed interests," cried a country delegate in the Boston Convention, "that talk so finely and gloss over matters so smoothly to make us poor illiterate people swallow down the pill, expect to get into Congress themselves; they expect to be the managers of this Constitution and get all the power and the money into their own hands; and they will swallow up all of us little folk like the great Leviathan, ...
— The United States of America Part I • Ediwn Erle Sparks

... later. But, without anticipating, the honeymoon involves a trip to the South Seas. A storm and a wreck throws them alone on an island, tropical, easy to live on, and rescue in the course of a few months certain. The man, to his horror, discovers that he has saved of his medicaments only a pill box containing half a dozen of thyroid tablets, his requirement being one a day. He sees them go day by day. Finally they are all gone. He feels his faculties slipping hour by hour. Shall he tell her? Indecision grips him, and he delays until ...
— The Glands Regulating Personality • Louis Berman, M.D.

... the pie" three times, supplementing it with "And in the pious He delights." Another bade his hearers "Stir up this stew," but he was only referring to "This stupid heart of mine." Yet another sang lustily "Take Thy pill," but when the line was completed it was heard to be ...
— The Parish Clerk (1907) • Peter Hampson Ditchfield

... the essence of good manners is to conceal a yawn. A yawn may be defined as a silent yell. The power which the young pessimist of that time showed in this direction would have astonished anyone but him. He yawned so wide as to swallow the world. He swallowed the world like an unpleasant pill before retiring to an eternal rest. Now the last and best glory of Shaw is that in the circles where this creature was found, he is not. He has not been killed (I don't know exactly why), but he has actually turned into a Shaw idealist. ...
— George Bernard Shaw • Gilbert K. Chesterton

... white oak bark, and drink freely during the day; or take half a pound of yellow dock root, boil in new milk, say one quart: drink one gill three times a day, and take one pill of ...
— Burroughs' Encyclopaedia of Astounding Facts and Useful Information, 1889 • Barkham Burroughs

... by some hunts to be given to pups who are off their feed, it is no easy task for a woman, or even man, to induce an animal to swallow one, and the struggles of the terrified youngster who objects to the pill, often make it do more harm than good. That safe old medicine, castor oil, is generally at hand, and a puppy will lap a spoonful or two in milk without making a fuss. My experience of dog doctoring has been ...
— The Horsewoman - A Practical Guide to Side-Saddle Riding, 2nd. Ed. • Alice M. Hayes

... charity. He kept a small floating fund always in circulation among his poorer acquaintances; and when one returned it to him he passed it to another, never considering it as his own but for the use of the unfortunate. He liked to disguise his charities as jokes,—as filling a pill-box with gold pieces and sending it to a needy friend, with the inscription, "To be taken one at a time, as needed;" and various devices of this kind. He was as generous of his praise as of his money, and always had a good word for his literary ...
— Home Life of Great Authors • Hattie Tyng Griswold

... these notes, though often suggested by something closely personal, branch off into more general considerations; or else begin with general considerations, and end with a case in point. Thus, for instance, a fragment of three pages begins: 'A compliment which is only made to gild the pill is a positive impertinence, and Monsieur Bailli is nothing but a charlatan; the monarch ought to have spit in his face, but the monarch trembled with fear.' A manuscript entitled Essai d'Egoisme, dated, ...
— Figures of Several Centuries • Arthur Symons

... leave, the profession, I suppose he'll take to writing. He's always told me that when he could afford to, he'd like to cut the traces and wollop the race with his pen. Many doctors would like to do that. A gag and a chain and ball are not what they're cracked up to be. The pen is mightier than the pill, sometimes, but it often eliminates ...
— The Place Beyond the Winds • Harriet T. Comstock

... notwithstanding all the affectionate interest I take in you, this is sometimes too much for me. In fact, I think I must be very fond of thee not to have grown positively to hate thee for all this fuss. There! In this last sentence, instead of saying you, I have said thee! That ought to gild the pill for you! ...
— Jacqueline, v2 • Th. Bentzon (Mme. Blanc)

... was Roy's answer. "I ain't one to be startled to death at sight of a sperit, like boys and women is. I had my pill in what I saw, I can tell ye. And my advice to ye all is, keep within your own ...
— Verner's Pride • Mrs. Henry Wood

... I'll prove medicine; and I'll give them a pill or two out of my rifle," said Malachi, with a grim smile. "Howsomever, I'll soon learn more about them, and will let you know when I do. Just keep your palisade gates fast at night and the dogs inside of them, and at any time I'll give you warning. If I am on their trail the Strawberry ...
— The Settlers in Canada • Frederick Marryat

... news. He glanced from her to Fenton, and from Fenton to her, with the expression of a school-boy who has been punished for something he hasn't done. Then he turned to me as though to ask a question; but shut his mouth tightly, as if gulping down a large pill, wheeled, and left me without a good-bye. I wondered, Cleopatra-fashion, what he had done in his last incarnation to deserve these heavy blows in the hour which should have seen his triumph. "What if he changes his mind and doesn't want Fenton and me after all?" I asked myself. To my surprise, I ...
— It Happened in Egypt • C. N. Williamson & A. M. Williamson

... shows that the milder type of the disease has penetrated the system, which will thus be enabled to out-Jenneral its more dangerous congener. Before long we shall have physicians of our ailing social system writing to the "Weekly Brandreth's Pill" somewhat on this wise:—"I have a very marked and hopeful case in Pequawgus Four Corners. Miss Hepzibah Tarbell, daughter of that arch-enemy of his kind, Deacon Joash T., attended only one of my lectures. In a day or two the symptoms of eruption were ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 6, No. 38, December, 1860 • Various

... potatoes, and some other sensible things, adoption of which at home would inevitably be shown to be fraught with ruin, somehow or other, to that rickety national blessing, the British farmer; and at last I was rattled, like a single pill in a box, over leagues of stones, until—madly cracking, plunging, and flourishing two grey tails about—I made ...
— The Uncommercial Traveller • Charles Dickens

... from top to base and thence out into the hold of a waiting ship.... And there was commerce; the shops and markets and storerooms full of nasturtium seed, thrift seed, lupin beans and such-like provender from the garden; such stuff one stored in match boxes and pill boxes or packed in sacks of old glove fingers tied up with thread and sent off by wagons along the great military road to the beleaguered fortress on the Indian frontier beyond the worn ...
— A Catalogue of Play Equipment • Jean Lee Hunt

... Parr continued, "I have little patience with clergymen who would make religion attractive. What does it amount to —luring people into the churches on one pretext or another, sugar-coating the pill? Salvation is a more serious matter. Let the churches stick to their own. We have at St. John's a God-fearing, conservative congregation, which does not believe in taking liberties with sound and established doctrine. And I may confess to you, Mr. Hodder, that we were naturally not a little ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill

... read or hear of the people of other lands, and the tactful teacher will wrap her information about the natural features of a country in the "sugared pill ...
— A Little Journey to Puerto Rico - For Intermediate and Upper Grades • Marian M. George

... enters into the war-consciousness of Britain and the Empire! As I stand looking over the black stretches of riddled earth, at the half-demolished pill-boxes in front, at the muddy pools in the shell-holes under a now darkening sky; at the flat stretches between us and Kemmel where lie Zillebeke and St. Eloi, and a score of other names which will be in the mouth of history hundreds of years hence, no less certainly ...
— Fields of Victory • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... is a large class of persons who believe that a certain pill is able to cure all diseases, however opposite their natures, and however different the constitutions of the patients. It is in vain the analytical chemist describes publicly the component parts and real qualities of the quack medicine—their faith is unshaken. In ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 437 - Volume 17, New Series, May 15, 1852 • Various

... Ghosts teach their dupes to break the ancestral tablets, and to worship the picture of a naked infant, which points one finger toward heaven, another toward earth.—To each man entering the False Religion, a pill is given which confuses and darkens the mind.—Why they dig out babies' eyes: from one hundred pounds of Chinese lead can be extracted seven pounds of silver, and the remaining ninety-three pounds can be sold at the original cost. This silver can be extracted only by the elixir of black ...
— Dragon's blood • Henry Milner Rideout

... the chafed and vanquished Colonel, after a moment for swallowing the pill, "that they'd have been in a pretty fix if you'd waited to let them make the ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells

... she was glad she had come up here to admire the view from the top of Market Street. Southwark, on the right, as black as Northwood, toppled into the valley in irregular lines, the jaded houses seeming in Kate's fancy like cart-loads of gigantic pill-boxes cast in a hurry from the counter along the floor. It amused her to stand gazing, contrasting the reality with her memories. It seemed to her that Southwark had never before been so plain to the eye. She ...
— A Mummer's Wife • George Moore

... assistance from without. And so Mr. Maurice Kirkwood was to play the leading part in that drama of nature's composing called a typhoid fever, with its regular bedchamber scenery, its properties of phials and pill-boxes, its little company of stock actors, its gradual evolution of a very simple plot, its familiar incidents, its emotional alternations, and its ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)

... fishing a pill-box from his pocket, and carefully imprisoning his captive. "Ah, my dear boys, what a pity it is that you do not take to collecting while you are young! What much better men ...
— Middy and Ensign • G. Manville Fenn

... all right, I guess, but Dreer's a pill." There was a wealth of contempt in the word "pill" as Amy pronounced it, and Clint asked innocently what ...
— Left Tackle Thayer • Ralph Henry Barbour

... maybe great, virtuous and happy in the depth of poverty," says Isaac Iselin, "but not a whole people." "Poverty" says Lucian, "persuades a man to do and suffer everything that he may escape from it." "It requires a great deal of poetry to gild the pill of poverty," says Madame Deluzy; "and then it will pass for a pleasant dose only in theory; the reality is a failure." "A generous and noble spirit" says Dionysius, "cannot be expected to dwell in the breast of men who are struggling for ...
— The Golden Censer - The duties of to-day, the hopes of the future • John McGovern

... tropics and sub-tropics, where it is already well under way, if not a fait accompli. That it must come in the United States, sooner or later, seems to be a foregone conclusion, as the result of natural law—lex dura, sed tamen lex—a hard pill, but one which must be swallowed. There can manifestly be no such thing as a peaceful and progressive civilization in a nation divided by two warring races, and homogeneity of type, at least in externals, is a necessary condition of ...
— The Wife of his Youth and Other Stories of the Color Line, and - Selected Essays • Charles Waddell Chesnutt

... he had not had a tithe of the Draughts and Mixtures that were set down to him,—and he had not indeed consumed them bodily, for the poor little Wretch would have assuredly Died had he swallowed a Twentieth Part of the Vile Messes that the Pill-blistering Gentleman sent in; but Draughts and Mixtures had all duly arrived, and we in our Discretion had uncorked them, and thrown the major part of their contents out of window. We were in league forsooth (so he said) with the Doctor to Eat and Ruin him, and 'twas not till the latter ...
— The Strange Adventures of Captain Dangerous, Vol. 2 of 3 • George Augustus Sala

... complected DISEASED one. You see, they think we whites and the occasional nigger are Injuns that have been bleached out or blackened by some leprous disease or other—for some peculiarly rascally SIN, mind you. It is a mighty sour pill for us all, my friend—even the modestest of us, let alone the other kind, that think they are going to be received like a long-lost government bond, and hug Abraham into the bargain. I haven't asked you any of the particulars, Captain, but I judge it goes without saying—if my experience ...
— Captain Stormfield's Visit to Heaven • Mark Twain

... know that. (Aloud.) Indeed, my dear sir, you are mistaken. Time passes very quick when we are fast asleep. I have been watching you and keeping the flies off. But you must now take your draught, my dear sir, and your pill first. ...
— Olla Podrida • Frederick Marryat (AKA Captain Marryat)

... rapid, definite, and without a trace of either slovenliness or fatigue. We are amazed as we think of the speed and prompt regularity with which they were produced; and the fertile ingenuity with which the pill of political economy is wrapped up in the confectionery of a tale, may stand as a marvel of true cleverness and inventive dexterity. Of course, of imagination or invention in a high sense there is not a trace. Such a quality was not in the gifts of the writer, nor could it in any case have ...
— Critical Miscellanies (Vol. 3 of 3) - Essay 6: Harriet Martineau • John Morley

... the effect of a dinner-pill," said the worthy provincial, while Gaillard and Bixiou were talking together in ...
— Unconscious Comedians • Honore de Balzac

... "Oh, the old pill's name is Thomas, like the schooner, but, you see, he married one of the pretty Carruthers gals, and a good match it was; for, I tell ye, them Carruthers gals hold their heads mighty high. Why, the ansomest of them married Dr. Carmichael that was member, ...
— Two Knapsacks - A Novel of Canadian Summer Life • John Campbell

... He had all manner of stories to tell about nice little country frolics, and would run over an endless list of his sweethearts. He was honest, acute, witty, full of mirth and good humour—a laughing philosopher. He was invaluable as a pill against the spleen; and, with the view of extending the advantages of his society to the saturnine Nord, I introduced them to each other; but Nord cut him dead the very same evening, when we sallied out from between the guns for a walk on ...
— White Jacket - or, the World on a Man-of-War • Herman Melville

... a bitter pill for Scottie to swallow, but he was not particularly formidable with his weapons, compared with straight-eyed Jeff Rankin, and he answered: "Maybe there's some I jolly along a bit, but, when I talk to old Jeff Rankin, I talk straight. Look at me now, Jeff. Do I look as if ...
— Way of the Lawless • Max Brand

... exclaimed Margray, in a terror. "What's possessed the girl? And I thinking to please her so! Whisht now, Ailie girl,—there, dear, be still,—there, now, wipe away the tears; you're weak and nervous, I believe,—you'd best take a blue-pill to-night. There's the boy awake, and none but you can hush him off. It's odd, though, what a liking he's taken to his ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 11, No. 63, January, 1863 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various

... lady's boudoir, library, breakfast-room, bed-room and dressing-room (with the great advantage of their combination in one circular room fourteen feet in diameter). The architecture was of an ancient style, from the original design of a pill-box surmounted ...
— The Nile Tributaries of Abyssinia • Samuel W. Baker

... former shock. However, she managed to restrain any dissuasion, knowing that it was the only right and proper step in his power, and that she could never have looked Robert in the face again had she prevented the confession; but it was a bitter pill; above all, that it should be made for her sake. She rushed away, as usual, to fly ...
— Hopes and Fears - scenes from the life of a spinster • Charlotte M. Yonge

... pill, but I think he will have to swallow it. He is between two fires. He cannot dismiss her from the school and be true to his Abolition principles; yet if he retains her he will lose his Southern customers, and I know he ...
— Iola Leroy - Shadows Uplifted • Frances E.W. Harper

... to hear him everlastingly smack his lips, and see him open his eyes and gloat like an anaconda before he takes down a bullock, horns, hair, and hoof, tank, shank, and flank, at one bolt, as if it was an opium pill ...
— Nature and Human Nature • Thomas Chandler Haliburton

... Shakespeare puts them all down; aye, and Ben Jonson, too. O! that Ben Jonson is a pestilent fellow. He brought up Horace, giving the poets a pill; but our fellow Shakespeare hath given him a purge that made him bewray his credit." Burbage continues, "He is a shrewd fellow indeed." This has, of course, been taken to mean that Shakespeare was actively against Jonson in the Dramatists' and Actors' ...
— Browning's England - A Study in English Influences in Browning • Helen Archibald Clarke

... cared, For not so common was his bountie shared: 1194 "Let God," said he, "if please, care for the manie, I for my selfe must care before els anie." So did he good to none, to manie ill, So did he all the kingdome rob and pill, [Pill, plunder.] Yet none durst speake, ne none durst of him plaine; So great he was in grace, and rich through game. Ne would he anie let to have accesse 1201 Unto the Prince, but by his owne addresse: For all ...
— The Poetical Works of Edmund Spenser, Volume 5 • Edmund Spenser

... you pillow us and pill us!"— Take care! You don't half know that blarmed bacillus. Beware! Beware! Brave it not, 'Twill be ...
— Punch, Or the London Charivari, Vol. 102, Feb. 13, 1892 • Various

... is within; its salvation within; its heaven and its oracle of God."[45] The whole strain of this school of writers and their disciples is one of depreciation of external revelation, and of exaltation of the inner light which every man is supposed to carry within him. Religion is "no Morrison's pill from without," but a "clearing of the inner light," a "reawakening of our own selves from within."[46] So Mr. Newman[47] abundantly argues that an authoritative book revelation of moral and spiritual truth is impossible, that God reveals himself ...
— Fables of Infidelity and Facts of Faith - Being an Examination of the Evidences of Infidelity • Robert Patterson

... not; they don't realise them. The great majority are incapable of abstract ideas, but fortunately they're emotional and sentimental; and the pill can be gilded with high falutin. It's for them that the Union Jack and the honour of Old England are dragged through every newspaper and brandished in every music hall. It's for them that all these atrocities are invented—most of them bunkum. Men are only savages with a thin veneer of civilisation, ...
— The Hero • William Somerset Maugham

... taking careful aim with my revolver I tumbled the Fritzie over. Looking then to the left I saw another kiltie in an argument with a Prussian; they were fencing with their bayonets, and a second Hun was coming up behind and again I took aim, but before I was able to get my pill started, my mate robbed me of the honor and sent his pill crashing through Fritzie's head. So I turned my attention to the immediate opponent, but before I could shoot, the kiltie's body interposed in my line of vision, and when I got a glimpse of the Prussian a second later, he was in the ...
— S.O.S. Stand to! • Reginald Grant

... came to him. Begging a cigaret from the native beauty, he lighted it and gave it three puffs. No, Johnny did not smoke. He was merely experimenting. He wanted to see if it would make him sick. Three puffs didn't, so having begged another "pill" and two matches ...
— Triple Spies • Roy J. Snell

... inherited by the monarch thus deposed from authority; while a comparatively small bequest went to the depository of power. In framing this curious instrument, Go-Saga doubtless designed to gild the pill of permanent exclusion from the seats of power, believing confidently that the Imperial succession would be secured to Kameyama and his direct descendants. This anticipation proved correct. The Bakufu had recourse to a Court lady to determine ...
— A History of the Japanese People - From the Earliest Times to the End of the Meiji Era • Frank Brinkley and Dairoku Kikuchi

... any seventh-son powers; but I only has to take one look at Toodle to guess that he's some sort of a phony article. No reg'lar pill distributor would wear around that mushy look that he has on. He's a good sized, wide shouldered duck, with a thick crop of long hair that just clears his coat collar, and one of these smooth, soft, sentimental ...
— Odd Numbers - Being Further Chronicles of Shorty McCabe • Sewell Ford

... see them leaving their cards at his door and driving hurriedly off. They must do that much. It was the bitter pill which the Deemster's doings made them swallow. Then he could see his wife sitting alone, a miserable woman, despised envied, isolated, shut off from her own class by her marriage with the Deemster, and from his class by the Deemster's marriage ...
— The Manxman - A Novel - 1895 • Hall Caine

... in his heart, and proceeded to form an administration in which there was not even the offer of a place for Rockingham. For Shelburne, on the other hand, he immediately sent, and offered him the seals of secretary of state. Such an appointment must have been a bitter pill indeed to George III., but Pitt stood firm, and the king had to swallow his dislike as best he might. What Choiseul, the French minister, thought of the new arrangement appears from an interesting letter from ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science Volume 15, No. 89, May, 1875 • Various

... Headquarters were in a captured pill box, where files of papers and maps dealing with defence schemes were collected. It appears that this pill box had been a last obstacle to our attacks in this part in 1917, but ...
— The Fifth Battalion Highland Light Infantry in the War 1914-1918 • F.L. Morrison

... which had occurred, and the plan which had been meditated, Fanny entered gaily into the scheme. Mrs Forster had long been her abhorrence; and an insult to Mr Ramsden, who had latterly been designated by Mrs Forster as a "Pill-gilding Puppy," was not to be forgotten. Her active and inventive mind immediately conceived a plan which would enable her to carry the joke much further than the original projectors had intended. Ramsden, who had been summoned to attend poor Mr ...
— Newton Forster • Frederick Marryat

... this microtome can be understood by reference to the illustration. A represents a revolving plane, by which the thickness of the section is regulated, in the center of which an insulated chamber is secured for freezing the tissue. It resembles a pill-box constructed of metal. A brass tube enters it on each side. The larger one is the supply tube, and communicates with the pail, a, situated on bracket, s, by means of the upper tube, t. To the smaller brass tube is attached the rubber tube, t b, which ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 358, November 11, 1882 • Various

... with an effort. It must indeed have been a bitter pill for him to swallow, reflected Mart as he watched the old quartermaster, while Bob stood at his elbow. Jerry had gone down leaving his gang in full possession of the yacht; he had evidently found the wreck untenanted by the Pirate Shark; and he had returned to the surface ...
— The Pirate Shark • Elliott Whitney

... be ashamed to expose your ignorance, for I don't suppose the whole South Kensington staff could give a name to it." He took a little bone the size of a bean out of a pill-box. "So far as I am a judge this human bone is the analogue of the one which you hold in your hand. That will give you some idea of the size of the creature. You will observe from the cartilage that this is no fossil specimen, but recent. What ...
— The Lost World • Arthur Conan Doyle

... my little sitting-room. "What a pill-box in the sky! I had no idea it was as tiny as this. I think I shall ...
— Simon the Jester • William J. Locke

... when the necessity for its use occurred, that I might test the correctness of my apprehension. To my surprise, not only was no desire for a second trial of its virtues awakened, but the very effort to swallow the pill was accompanied with a ...
— The Opium Habit • Horace B. Day

... clutched her own head. "The infant must have slipped up a dozen times too often. Did the horrid bad ice smite her at the base of the brain? Poor little darling! Is her intellect all mixedy-muddle-y? We will fix it right for her. We'll give her a pill." ...
— Beatrice Leigh at College - A Story for Girls • Julia Augusta Schwartz



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