"Whittle" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... inches of the elderberry wood and have it clear of knots; cut a flat ended ramrod so as just to fit the bore, and force out the pith with one clean sharp push: or else whittle away the surrounding wood. The latter way gives a ...
— Woodland Tales • Ernest Seton-Thompson
... appeared, so it could not be challenged in the House of Commons; but it raised a storm of indignation out of doors which astonished its authors. Disraeli wrote "The incident is grave;" and, though in the subsequent session the Government tried to whittle down the enormity, the "incident" proved to be graver than even the Premier had imagined; for it showed the Liberals once again that Toryism is by ...
— Fifteen Chapters of Autobiography • George William Erskine Russell
... Maludu, on the north of Borneo, is thirty miles in length, and from four to six in breadth, with numberless rivers flowing into it. There is no danger on the right-hand shore going up, but what is seen; on the larboard shore considerable coral-reefs are met with. Laurie and Whittle's chart of it is tolerably correct. The principal towns are, Sungy Bassar, nearly at the head of the bay, and Bankaka, on the left; the former, under Sheriff Mahomed, sends its produce to Sulo; the latter, under Orang Kayas, ...
— The Expedition to Borneo of H.M.S. Dido - For the Suppression of Piracy • Henry Keppel
... also believed that the church and state should not be united, but that the state should protect the church and that neither should undertake to boss the other. It was also held that religious qualifications should not be required of political aspirants, also that no man should be required to whittle his soul into a shape to fit the ...
— Comic History of the United States • Bill Nye
... a branch—a brook—in the Kentucky hills. Their house was log, said Cissy, with a fireplace where Maw had her kettles and where the whole lot of them could sit when winter nights were cold, and Paw could whittle and Maw weave ...
— Across the Fruited Plain • Florence Crannell Means
... every Sunday to whittle sticks, swap jack-knives and horses, and to listen to the white-haired parson who led them by the resistless rhetoric of a blameless life, as well as by his heartfelt prayers and exhortations in those "ways which are ...
— The Gentleman from Everywhere • James Henry Foss
... and you spit out your teeth like stones. And sometimes it leads to a coral reef in the wash of a weedy sea, And you sit and stare at the empty glare where the gulls wait greedily. And sometimes it leads to an Arctic trail, and the snows where your torn feet freeze, And you whittle away the useless clay, and crawl on your hands and knees. Often it leads to the dead-pit; always it leads to pain; By the bones of your brothers ye know it, but oh, to follow you're fain. By your ...
— Songs of a Sourdough • Robert W. Service
... queens in or out of Christendom, and whose sway remains supreme through all the changing suits of time and fortune? He does not sport the garb of those elder knaves, it is true, though he is knavish enough when occasion offers,—he is at this moment inspecting a new jack-knife, and will, I fear, whittle off one of his dear, chubby fingers,—but he outranks all the crowned monarchs in the world. Whom do I mean? Whom, but Thomas the First, Thomas the Only, my first-born, royal son? When that king of your own heart was taken from you,—when the little frocks, richer ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 100, February, 1866 • Various
... it torn up. No doubt the scamps who did the shabby job fancied that there would be no more travel that way until strawberry-time. They fancied the Yankees would sit down on the fences and begin to whittle white-oak toothpicks, darning the ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 7, No. 44, June, 1861 • Various
... good friends Mrs. McLaren and Mrs. Lucas had determined to see us safely on board the Servia, they escorted us to Liverpool, where we met Mrs. Margaret Parker and Mrs. Scatcherd. Another reception was given us at the residence of Dr. Ewing Whittle. Several short speeches were made, and all present cheered the parting guests with words of hope and encouragement for the good cause. Here the wisdom of forming an international association was first considered. The proposition met with such favor from those present that a committee was ...
— Eighty Years And More; Reminiscences 1815-1897 • Elizabeth Cady Stanton
... haunted him of something which might possibly happen. Partly this distressing weakness is due to the absence of a clear conviction that we are right; it is an intellectual difficulty; but frequently it is simple mushiness of character, the same defect which tempts us, when we know a thing is true, to whittle it down if we meet with opposition, and to refrain from presenting it in all its sharpness. Cowardice of this kind is not only injustice to ourselves, but to our friends. We inflict a grievous wrong by compromise. We are responsible for ...
— Catharine Furze • Mark Rutherford
... [61] Daniel Whittle Harvey was an eloquent member of parliament whom the benchers of his inn refused to call to the bar, on the ground of certain charges against his probity. The House appointed a committee of which Mr. ...
— The Life of William Ewart Gladstone, Vol. 1 (of 3) - 1809-1859 • John Morley
... recollect the boy who sat in front of you, who was the envy of all the boys in the school by being the possessor of a fine, new five-bladed jackknife, with which he used to whittle kites and whistles during recess. Ah! I see you do remember," said Halloran grimly, "and you also remember the day the ragged boy, sitting at the right of you, believing no one was looking, reached over and quietly, ...
— Mischievous Maid Faynie • Laura Jean Libbey
... house and placed it in a small basket. The basket was one they used to carry their dinners to school in, and, of course, this could not be used to keep it in all the time. John said, "It will be best to make a cage for it. We can, with our knives, soon whittle out sticks for bars and with the saw and some boards make a cage." They labored on this for two days, and then, with Uncle Ben's help, for he could drive nails better than they, the cage was completed. Some cotton was shaped into a nest and the bird was placed ...
— Our Young Folks at Home and Abroad • Various
... his old crony, Joe Hume, were talking lately of the wonders which the latter had seen in his travels—"You have been on Mont Blanc," said Whittle. "Certainly," replied the other. "And what did you see there?" "Why really," said Joe, "it is always so wrapped up in a double-milled fog, that there is nothing to be seen from it." "Nothing!" echoed he of the Blues; "I never ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 1, Complete • Various
... pocket volume, lay it down to think, rubbing all the time the fleshy calf of his leg with dull gravity and intense and stolid self-complacency, and start out of his reveries when addressed with the same inimitable vapid exclamation of 'Eh!' Dr. Whittle, a large, plain-faced Moravian preacher, who had turned physician, was another of his chosen impersonations. Roger represented the honest, vain, empty man purchasing an ounce of tea by stratagem to astonish a favoured guest; he portrayed ...
— Old and New London - Volume I • Walter Thornbury
... close and reserved. On this very day, when the momentous project was ripening, she had said he was lazy, that "a rolling stone gathered no moss," that the "boy was father to the man," and that if all he could do was to whistle and whittle, he had better go over to Squire Green's and ...
— Harper's Young People, January 13, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... method of violence for removing tyranny or securing reform by the method of non-resistance to evil. He would meet hatred expressed in violence by love expressed in self-suffering. He admits of no exception to whittle down this great and divine law of love. He applies it to all the problems ...
— A Letter to a Hindu • Leo Tolstoy
... Well, as I tell you, I don't care to be critical. I don't want to whittle away the few pleasures that this dull life can provide me with by this perpetual discontent with what's set before one. Why can't you eat and be thankful? To look at that girl is a liberal education; she has a fine voice ...
— Miss Bretherton • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... saw Martha and Jake go down the road together, Martha shy and conscious and Jake the conquering daredevil that he was known to be among women. Lum went back to his cabin, cooked his dinner, and sat down in his doorway to whittle and dream. ...
— In Happy Valley • John Fox
... to do that I must think. Let me see. The gun is of no use now, but there are other ways of getting game besides shooting it. We must set some traps. This spoiled meat will do for bait. Get me a good piece of poplar wood, Tom, or cypress, or some other sort, that I can whittle easily, and I'll make some figure-four triggers. Then I'll tell you how to make dead-falls, and you must set as many of them as you can to make sure of getting something ...
— The Big Brother - A Story of Indian War • George Cary Eggleston
... contrast to you, the profound philologist, he stands not much higher than the Silesian countryman. And to complete the contrast, he adds, that he has long been a severe sufferer. So that instead of guiding the plough on the field of science with a strong hand, he must remain idly at home, and modestly whittle pine shavings for the enlightenment ...
— The Silesian Horseherd - Questions of the Hour • Friedrich Max Mueller
... Reverend Thomas Spurgeon, is so successfully carrying forward the great work of his sainted father. If my readers would like a sample taste of the pure Spurgeonic it is to be found in this passage which he delivered to his theological students: "Some modern divines whittle away the Gospel to the small end of nothing; they make our Divine Lord to be a sort of blessed nobody; they bring down salvation to mere possibility; they make certainties into probabilities and treat verities as mere opinions. When you see a preacher making ...
— Recollections of a Long Life - An Autobiography • Theodore Ledyard Cuyler
... windfalls. I am convinced that many healthy children are injured morally by being forced to read too much about these little meek sufferers and their spiritual exercises. Here is a boy that loves to run, swim, kick football, turn somersets, make faces, whittle, fish, tear his clothes, coast, skate, fire crackers, blow squash "tooters," cut his name on fences, read about Robinson Crusoe and Sinbad the Sailor, eat the widest-angled slices of pie and untold cakes and ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 22, Aug., 1859 • Various
... the first week in April—when the men left in the stores of Common, Gravier, Poydras, or Tchoupitoulas street could do nothing but buy the same goods back and forth in speculation; loathed by all who did not do it, or whittle their chairs on the shedded sidewalks and swap and swallow flaming rumors and imprecate the universal inaction ...
— Kincaid's Battery • George W. Cable
... Pensions the other night Whittle Harvey outdid himself; by all accounts it was inimitable, dramatic to the greatest degree, and acted to perfection. Peel was heavy, Stanley very smart, the Ministers were beaten hollow in the argument, but got a respectable division, of which they make the most; but it proves nothing as to their ...
— The Greville Memoirs (Second Part) - A Journal of the Reign of Queen Victoria from 1837 to 1852 - (Volume 1 of 3) • Charles C. F. Greville
... the honest nappy. * * * * * I've seen me daist upon a time I scarce could wink or see a styme; Just ae half mutchkin does me prime; Aught less is little, Then back I rattle with the rhyme As gleg's a whittle. [Footnote: The First ...
— The Poet's Poet • Elizabeth Atkins
... to Commodore Whittle, commanding the naval station at New Orleans, for duty afloat. A powerful fleet of ships of war and bomb vessels, under the command of Commodore (afterwards Admiral) Farragut, was then assembling at the mouth of the Mississippi, for an attack upon New Orleans, ...
— The Narrative of a Blockade-Runner • John Wilkinson
... Sadie and Pinckney had got over their merry fit and skipped off to wake up another crowd of time assassinators, at Rockywold, or some such place as that, I says to myself, "Shorty," says I, "you stick to the physical-culture game and whittle ...
— Shorty McCabe • Sewell Ford
... saints and sinners alike—are all to be put together, and made into one great celestial eternal human being. He does not seem to have known how nearly this approaches to Swedenborg's fancy. I do not like the scheme. I don't like the notion of being mixed up with Hume, and Hunt, and Whittle Harvey, and Philpotts, and Lord Althorpe, and the Huns, and the Hottentots, and the Jews, and the Philistines, and the Scotch, and the Irish. God forbid! I hope to be I myself; I, in an English heaven, with you yourself—you, ...
— Selected English Letters (XV - XIX Centuries) • Various
... Bill and he had come to the Land of Oz with Trot, and had been made welcome on account of his cleverness, honesty and good nature. He wore a wooden leg to replace the one he had lost and was a great friend of all the children in Oz because he could whittle all sorts of toys out of wood with his ...
— Glinda of Oz • L. Frank Baum
... they fished the free water of the Whittle, the little trout-stream that runs through the estate of the Morgans of Muttle Deeping Grange. The free water runs for rather more than half a mile on the Little Deeping side of Muttle Deeping; and the Twins fished it with an assiduity and a skill which set the villagers grumbling that ...
— The Terrible Twins • Edgar Jepson
... way. My sole idea in gathering up this evidence against you and your accomplices was to whittle out a club that would make you let go of the Trans-Western. For two weeks I have been debating with myself as to whether I should buy you or break you; and half an hour before you came, I went to the bank and took these papers out, meaning to go and ...
— The Grafters • Francis Lynde
... time. Ten dollars a week don't go far. Sometimes Nancy hunts roots in the marshes, or picks up a few turkles that sells for a dollar or two each. To-morrow yuh bring over the mail. I've got a boat as is fair, if it only had a new pair o' oars. P'raps as a sailor lad yuh could whittle out a pair to answer. Well, good-bye, Darry, my boy, and good luck. Keep an eye out to windward for squalls if so be that ...
— Darry the Life Saver - The Heroes of the Coast • Frank V. Webster |
