"Foil" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... you will give him—something to reduce that fever." Mostyn knew that the remark was a mere tentative foil against the verdict stamped upon the bearded face. The doctor slowly wiped the tiny tube and restored it to ...
— The Desired Woman • Will N. Harben
... brightness always—except when I hold the package of tobacco in front of it at this spot," he said wonderingly, half to himself. "If I remember my science right, ultra-violet light would make the radium on the dial glow; and the lead in the tin-foil of the tobacco wrapping would screen it ...
— Astounding Stories, July, 1931 • Various
... foil these intents, and received the scant amount of encouragement which falls to well-meaning interference in real life; the Certified Poisonmonger presided over three tin pails of liquids, labelled respectively, ...
— A College Girl • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... to the attacks of the Consolidated about as long as a dove to a hawk. I meet fire with fire to avoid being wiped off the map of the mining world. I play the game. I can't afford to keep a button on my foil when my ...
— Ridgway of Montana - (Story of To-Day, in Which the Hero Is Also the Villain) • William MacLeod Raine
... purposes she was to carry out, of the officers' quiet contempt of scientific pursuits, which not even the captain's influence was able to subdue, of the illusory promises of help and advancement held out by the Admiralty to young investigators, makes a striking foil to the spirit in which the Government of thirty years later undertook a greater scientific expedition. Perhaps some vivid recollections of this voyage did something to better the conditions under which ...
— The Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley Volume 1 • Leonard Huxley
... blood, More kin than kind, from their sire's brother sprung. And on their track, astir with wild desire, Like falcons fierce closing on doves that flee, Shall speed the suitors, craving to achieve A prey forbidden, a reluctant bride. Yet power divine shall foil them, and forbid Possession of the maids, whom Argive land Shall hold protected, when unsleeping hate, Horror, and watchful ambush of the night, Have laid the suitors dead, by female hands. For every maid shall smite a man to death, Dyeing a dagger's edges in his throat— Such bed of love befall ...
— Suppliant Maidens and Other Plays • AEschylus
... but a moment later his smile died away, and he drew his lips inward with anxiety. He felt a new power in the foil slithering up and down his own. Suddenly a thousand needles stung his wrist: his foil lay rolling about the deck. The vicomte bowed jestingly, stepped forward and picked up the foil, presenting it to its owner. Again they resumed guard. Quick as light the vicomte's foil went almost ...
— The Grey Cloak • Harold MacGrath
... of it, that the plan of the blossom in all the kinds is the same; an irregular quatre-foil: and irregular quatrefoils are of extreme rarity in flower form. I don't myself know one, except the Veronica. The cruciform vegetables—the heaths, the olives, the lilacs, the little Tormentillas, and the poppies, are all perfectly symmetrical. Two of the petals, indeed, ...
— Proserpina, Volume 2 - Studies Of Wayside Flowers • John Ruskin
... in her obvious stupid way that Hans had been enabled to transmit the most useful information to his country, which had assisted to foil more than one Allied plan. Harietta saw numbers of old gentlemen who pulled strings in that time, and although they wearied her, she found them easier to extract news from than the younger men. Her method was so irresistible: a direct appeal to the senses, and it hardly ...
— The Price of Things • Elinor Glyn
... wife couldn't have asked a better foil; yet I'm sure she never consciously used his dullness to relieve her brilliancy. She may have felt that the case spoke for itself. But I believe her reserve was rather due to a lively sense of justice, and to the rare habit (you said she was rare) of looking at facts as they ...
— The Long Run - 1916 • Edith Wharton
... I could, it was not long before Yvon sent my foil flying from my hand; but still he professed amazement at my ready mastering of the art, and I felt truly that it was natural to me, and that with a few trials I might do as well ...
— Rosin the Beau • Laura Elizabeth Howe Richards
... giving the ladies of Brookfield further opportunity for studying one of the levels from which they had risen. Arabella did almost all the fencing with Laura Tinley, contemptuously as a youth of station returned from college will turn and foil an ill-conditioned villager, whom formerly he has ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... is dark and massive—a splendid foil for his wife's slenderness and fairness. They are much in love with each other. He always sits beside her if he can, and she looks up at him and smiles, and last night I saw him take her hand where it hung among the folds of her gown, and he held it after that—and it made me ...
— Mistress Anne • Temple Bailey
... "inclines the Court today to favor chaos."[59] In the second, the Court upset the conviction of a group of Jehovah's Witnesses in Maryland for using a public park without first obtaining a permit.[60] The third case,[61] which had nothing to do with religion, affords an interesting foil to the other two. It is ...
— The Constitution of the United States of America: Analysis and Interpretation • Edward Corwin
... A ready remedy, and is Himself Their great physician. Now grown stiff with age, And many a painful chase, the wise old hound Regardless of the frolic pack, attends His master's side, or slumbers at his ease Beneath the bending shade; there many a ring 220 Runs o'er in dreams; now on the doubtful foil Puzzles perplexed, or doubles intricate Cautious unfolds, then winged with all his speed, Bounds o'er the lawn to seize his panting prey: And in imperfect whimperings speaks his joy. A different hound for every different chase Select with judgment; nor the timorous ...
— The Poetical Works of Addison; Gay's Fables; and Somerville's Chase • Joseph Addison, John Gay, William Sommerville
... Horace; he determined it should be so, and though it was again a wet day, he now showed that he could rule the weather of his own humour, when intensity of will was wakened by rivalry. He made himself most agreeable, and the man of yesterday was forgotten or remembered only as a foil to the man of to-day. The words he so much loved to hear, and to which he had so often surreptitiously listened, were now repeated, 'No one can be so agreeable as Horace Churchill ...
— Helen • Maria Edgeworth
... the Screech-Owl, Hoppy, and the other wretches whose misdeeds blacken these pages, form the foil; while Fleur-de-Marie, Clemence d'Harville, Miss Dimpleton, and Mrs. George are the gems which will be seen to shed their luster and charm over the no less interesting pages of the Second Division of this work, entitled, "Part ...
— The Mysteries of Paris V2 • Eugene Sue
... Hell-gates till now; thou us impowered To fortify thus far, and overlay, With this portentous bridge, the dark abyss. Thine now is all this world; thy virtue hath won What thy hands builded not; thy wisdom gained With odds what war hath lost, and fully avenged Our foil in Heaven; here thou shalt monarch reign, There didst not; there let him still victor sway, As battle hath adjudged; from this new world Retiring, by his own doom alienated; And henceforth monarchy with thee divide Of all ...
— Paradise Lost • John Milton
... sigh on, Till made by my losses as bold as a lion, I venture at all, — while my avarice regards The whole pool as my own — 'Come, give me five cards.' 'Well done!' cry the ladies; 'Ah, Doctor, that's good! 25 The pool's very rich — ah! the Doctor is loo'd!' Thus foil'd in my courage, on all sides perplex'd, I ask for advice from the lady that's next: 'Pray, Ma'am, be so good as to give your advice; Don't you think the best way is to venture for 't twice?' 30 'I advise,' cries the lady, ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Oliver Goldsmith • Oliver Goldsmith
... Lady Kirkbank in her cotton frock was a spectacle at which youth laughed and age blushed. But after all it did not matter to Lesbia. She would have liked a less rowdy chaperon; but as a foil to her own fresh young beauty Lady ...
— Phantom Fortune, A Novel • M. E. Braddon
... Shah Jehan's architects seems inexhaustible. All the exquisite white marble pavilions of Agra palace differ absolutely both in design and decoration, and Akbar's massive red sandstone buildings make the most perfect foil to them that ...
— The Days Before Yesterday • Lord Frederick Hamilton
... furious, for he had felt on his breast the point of his adversary's sword, but so lightly that he might have taken it for the button of a foil. His anger redoubled at the conviction that he owed his life to the captain, and his attacks became more numerous and more furious ...
— The Conspirators - The Chevalier d'Harmental • Alexandre Dumas (Pere)
... presence every passing hour; What but Thy grace can foil the tempter's power? Who like Thyself my guide and stay can be? Through cloud and sunshine, ...
— Gipsy Life - being an account of our Gipsies and their children • George Smith
... a trap. During the ensuing autumn months there went on between the opposing generals an unceasing game of strategy, a succession of moves and counter-moves in which the opposing commanders handled their great armies with the same consumate skill with which the expert fencing-master uses his foil, but in which neither could break through the other's guard. Repeated minor encounters took place which, in other wars, would have rated as heavy battles; but the weeks lengthened into months without decisive results, and when the opposing armies finally went into ...
— A Short Life of Abraham Lincoln - Condensed from Nicolay & Hay's Abraham Lincoln: A History • John G. Nicolay
... and cordial reception which greeted the author's "Letters to the Young," and his more recent series of essays entitled "Gold Foil," and the constant and substantial friendship which has been maintained by the public toward those productions, must stand as his apology for this third venture in a kindred field of effort. It should be—and probably is—unnecessary for the author to say that in this book, as in its ...
— Lessons in Life - A Series of Familiar Essays • Timothy Titcomb
... house, the front windows of which were all removed and it was used for the accommodation of the lady guests. On the walls of the temporary structure hung red satin and silk banners on which were pinned ideographs cut out of gold foil or black velvet, expressive of beautiful sentiments and good wishes for many happy returns of the day. The Emperor, wishing to do this official honour, has informed him that on his mother's birthday an imperial present will be sent her which is a greater compliment ...
— Court Life in China • Isaac Taylor Headland
... then a shrine to him above They built, with worship sin to foil, On threshold and on corner-stone They poured out ...
— Masonic Monitor of the Degrees of Entered Apprentice, Fellow Craft and Master Mason • George Thornburgh
... the electric current was as follows. The positive pole of the battery was connected by a wire with the platina plate in the ice; the plate was in contact with the ice, the ice with the tin jacket, the jacket with a wire, which communicated with a piece of tin foil, on which rested one end of a bent platina wire (312.), the other or decomposing end being supported on paper moistened with solution of iodide of potassium (316.): the paper was laid flat on a platina spatula connected with the negative end of the battery. All that part of the arrangement between ...
— Experimental Researches in Electricity, Volume 1 • Michael Faraday
... picked up his speech, which was made by spreading the beam from an eighty-foot diameter parabolic reflector and aiming it at Earth from a hundred thousand miles out. It was a collapsible reflector, made of thin foil, like the ones ...
— By Proxy • Gordon Randall Garrett
... in the church. To him as to innumerable other honest, middle-aged and comfortable men, Darwinism came as a dreadful invitation to go out into the wilderness. Over my head and just out of range of my ears he was debating that issue with Siddons as a foil and my cousin as a horrified antagonist. Slowly he was developing his conception of compromise. And meanwhile he wasn't going out into the wilderness at all, but punctually to and fro, along the edge of the lawn by the bed of hollyhocks and through ...
— The Passionate Friends • Herbert George Wells
... to be derived from the same root as Paup-puk-ke-nay, a grasshopper, the inflection iss making it personal. The Indian idea is that of harum scarum. He is regarded as a foil to Manabozho, with whom he is frequently brought in ...
— The Myth of Hiawatha, and Other Oral Legends, Mythologic and Allegoric, of the North American Indians • Henry R. Schoolcraft
... the crown itself was immersed, and of course—for the story must not lack its dramatic sequel—was found bulkier than its weight of pure gold. Thus the genius that could balk warriors and armies could also foil ...
— A History of Science, Volume 1(of 5) • Henry Smith Williams
... His Cousin Adair, by GORDON ROY. The book has all the requisites of a good novel, including the perhaps rarest one of literary style. Cousin Adair is well worth knowing, and her character is skilfully portrayed. As a foil against this high-minded, pure-souled unselfish girl, there are sketched in two or three of the sort of people, men and women, more frequently met with in this wicked world. But Cousin Adair is good ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 101, September 26, 1891 • Various
... determined to hear the first movement that the kneeling figure made behind him. So he sat minute after minute. The Cathedral was full of echoes—murmurous rebounds of the noises of the streets, drawn out and mellowed into long, soft, rolling tones, against which, as against a foil, there stood out detached, now and then, the sudden footsteps of someone leaving or entering a confessional, the short scream of a slipping chair—once the sudden noise of a confessional-door being opened ...
— None Other Gods • Robert Hugh Benson
... blood, and pictured them as a kind of beneficent aristocracy seven feet high, with minds and manners to match their physique, and set above the rest of the world for its good; for I found it necessary (so that my dream should have a point) to provide them with a foil in the shape of millions of such people as we meet every day. I was egotistic and self-seeking enough, it is true, to enroll myself among the former, and had chosen for my particular use and wear just such a frame as that of the Theseus, with, of course, the nose and hands and feet (of which ...
— Peter Ibbetson • George du Marier et al
... metallic Propionic acid in small silver formic acid. quantities cannot be distinguished from butyric (c) Evaporate to dryness; mix acid by tests within the with equal quantity of scope of the bacteriological arsenious oxide and heat laboratory. on platinum foil. ...
— The Elements of Bacteriological Technique • John William Henry Eyre
... and receive those speechless lip-messages that are out of the reach of words, and Mrs. Rossitur's half-spoken last charge, to take care of herself; and with these seals upon her mission Fleda set forth and joined the doctor; thankful for one foil to curiosity in the shape of a veil and only wishing that there were any invented screen that she could ...
— Queechy • Susan Warner
... generals, partly to wounds received in the last Austrian campaign, which unfitted him for the time for active service. In sending him to this Royalist province of the West, Napoleon might have aimed at providing the Prefect with an effective foil to his own character and connections. The great Emperor by no means despised the trick of setting his servants to ...
— Angelot - A Story of the First Empire • Eleanor Price
... soul, with Christ join thou in fight; Stick to the tents that He hath pight; Within His crib is surest ward, This little Babe will be thy guard; If thou wilt foil thy foes with joy, Then flit ...
— In The Yule-Log Glow, Vol. IV (of IV) • Harrison S. Morris
... he, "I thee forgot, And see thy cause of foil; An hog came since into my house, And broke thy pot ...
— The Tatler, Volume 1, 1899 • George A. Aitken
... but haply beautiful as these, Which now I gaze on; but which, wanting thee, Want half their charms, for, to thy poet's thought, More deeply glow'd the heaven, when thy fine eye, Surveying its grand arch, all kindling glow'd; The white cloud to thy white brow was a foil; And, by the soft tints of thy cheek outvied, ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 12, - Issue 322, July 12, 1828 • Various
... "Look ye, Squire, I am hot and weary, and ill-content; but presently it will be better with me; for my knees have been telling my shoulders that the cold water of this little lake will be sweet and pleasant this summer noonday, and that I shall forget my foil when I have taken my pleasure therein. Wherefore, go thou with thine hounds without the thicket and there abide my coming. And I bid thee look not aback as thou goest, for therein were peril to thee: I shall not ...
— The Wood Beyond the World • William Morris
... Blaise were glad, Richard was twice glad, and quoth he: "Said I not, Lord Blaise, that this chick would be the hardest of all to keep under the coop? Welcome to the Highways, Lord Ralph! But where is thine horse? and whence and whither is it now? Hast thou met with some foil and been ...
— The Well at the World's End • William Morris
... to foil his good intentions towards us: sooner or later we must fight him, and why not now? Haga, my father, thou art the oldest and wisest here present; speak, and we will be ...
— The Rival Heirs being the Third and Last Chronicle of Aescendune • A. D. Crake
... Francis Drake came near involving him in serious trouble, but ultimately ended by procuring him the commission he had so long desired. Tired of a life of inactivity, anxious to foil the Spanish in the New World, and sick to death of the busy idleness of the court, Sidney at length determined to go with Drake to a new world and a new career. Accordingly, he made ready, and actually went as far ...
— With Spurs of Gold - Heroes of Chivalry and their Deeds • Frances Nimmo Greene
... her she happened to say to the director that she would have preferred a woman of a different type, dark, taller, so as to provide a more effective foil to her own type of beauty. As a result, the girl did not ...
— The Film of Fear • Arnold Fredericks
... much softer. So quiet, so like a wraith, and yet with a fascinating loveliness in her eyes, in her tender, blossom-like face, in her fresh young voice. She makes no blunders, she is not awkward, she is not loud. Cecil is her foil,—Cecil, in lace over infantile blue, with a knot of streamers on one shoulder in narrow blue satin ribbon and a blue sash. Floyd is host, of course, so Cecil would be left exclusively with her pretty mamma, if it was not her own choice. Madame watches them. How did this girl charm ...
— Floyd Grandon's Honor • Amanda Minnie Douglas
... fencing match, and all the Court were present. Hamlet had the blunt foil always used in fencing, but Laertes had prepared for himself a sword, sharp, and tipped with poison. And the wicked King had made ready a bowl of poisoned wine, which he meant to give poor Hamlet when he should grow warm with the sword play, and should ...
— Beautiful Stories from Shakespeare • E. Nesbit
... without molestation, but there the former died on the 2nd November, worn out by the fatigue and privations of the journey across the desert. Lyon, who was ill for some time from the same causes, recovered soon enough to foil the designs of the sultan, who counting on his death, had already begun to take possession of his property, and also of Ritchie's. The captain could not penetrate beyond the southern boundaries of Fezzan, but he had time to collect a good deal of valuable information about the chief ...
— Celebrated Travels and Travellers - Part III. The Great Explorers of the Nineteenth Century • Jules Verne
... successful combination. Bakkus sang his ballads and an occasional humorous song of the moment to Andrew's accompaniment on mandolin or one-stringed violin, and Andrew conjured and juggled comically, using Bakkus as his dull-witted foil. A complete little performance, the patter and business artistically thought out and perfectly rehearsed. They wore the conventional Pierrot costume with whited faces and black ...
— The Mountebank • William J. Locke
... with undaunted hearts, immortal mitred Few! For Truth's dear sake, the Tyrant foil'd to whom ye still were true—[37] Rejoice! Who knows what scatter'd thoughts of yours were buried seeds, Slow-springing for th' oppress'd and poor, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 349, November, 1844 • Various
... that overrul'd I oversway'd, Leading him prisoner in a red-rose chain: Strong-temper'd steel his stronger strength obey'd, Yet was he servile to my coy disdain. 112 O! be not proud, nor brag not of thy might, For mastering her that foil'd ...
— Venus and Adonis • William Shakespeare
... said Hugh. "I began to learn two years ago, and I have outgrown my first foil, and the Colonel has given me a new ...
— Hildegarde's Neighbors • Laura E. Richards
... go to Philadelphia as soon as possible and get the steam yacht ready for the trip. The best way to foil Merrick and his crowd is to find the isle, get possession of the treasure, and get away before they know what we ...
— The Rover Boys on Treasure Isle - The Strange Cruise of the Steam Yacht • Edward Stratemeyer
... think-tank. This will enable a brainy man to sit at home, and, with an electric motor and a perfected phonograph, he can think into a tin dipper or funnel, which will, by the aid of electricity and a new style of foil, record and preserve his ideas on a sheet of soft metal, so that when any one says to him, "A penny for your thoughts," he can go to his valise and give him a piece of his mind. Thus the man who has such wild ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume VII. (of X.) • Various
... told him what I wished to do, and after a little persuasion he agreed to carry a letter to her on his next marketing trip. My message was prepared by writing it on tissue paper, which was then compressed into a small pellet, and protected by wrapping it in tin-foil so that it could be safely carried in the man's mouth. The probability, of his being searched when he came to the Confederate picketline was not remote, and in such event he was to swallow the pellet. The letter appealed to ...
— The Memoirs of General P. H. Sheridan, Complete • General Philip Henry Sheridan
... Against such foil the mistress stood— A pearl upon a cross of gold— White with consistent womanhood, And fixed with unrelaxing hold Upon the centre of ...
— The Mistress of the Manse • J. G. Holland
... nourishment his stomach will retain, he is driven to the conviction that there is something wrong, and that he had better see the doctor. The result of the young athlete's visit to the doctor was that he mournfully laid down the dumb-bells and the foil, eschewed gymnastics, and ...
— Faces and Places • Henry William Lucy
... Shelleyan[15] democrat, pleading the Guelph cause before the great Ghibelline soldier Salinguerra,—as he had once pitted the young might of native song against the accomplished Troubadour Eglamor. Salinguerra is the foil of the political, as Eglamor of the literary, Sordello, and the dramatic interest of the whole poem focusses in those two scenes. He had enough of the lonely inspiration of genius to vanquish the craftsman, but too little of its large humanity to cope with the ...
— Robert Browning • C. H. Herford
... inverted. At present we may illustrate and expand the subject thus: In front of our camera is a large opening (L, fig. 2), from which the lens has been removed, and which is closed at present by a sheet of tin-foil. Pricking by means of a common sewing-needle a small aperture in the tin-foil, an inverted image of the carbon-points starts forth upon the screen. A dozen apertures will give a dozen images, a hundred a hundred, a thousand a thousand. But, as the apertures come closer to each other, that is ...
— Six Lectures on Light - Delivered In The United States In 1872-1873 • John Tyndall
... always to take with him two or three Bhainas, who are considered as his retainers, though not being so in fact. This enhances his importance, and it is also said that the stupidity of the Bhainas acts as a foil, through which the superior intelligence of the Kawar is made more apparent. All these details point to the same conclusion that the primitive Bhainas first held the country and were supplanted by the more civilised ...
— The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India - Volume II • R. V. Russell
... impertinent slave provides the foil. When the lovers succeed in meeting, they are interlocked in embrace from 172 to 192, probably invested with no small amount of suggestive "business." This would doubtless hardly be tolerated by the "censor" today. Another variety of lover's extravagance ...
— The Dramatic Values in Plautus • William Wallace Blancke
... if my Lord Mohun were a commoner, I would say, 'twas a pity he was not hanged. He was familiar with dice and women at a time other boys are at school being birched; he was as wicked as the oldest rake, years ere he had done growing; and handled a sword and a foil, and a bloody one, too, before he ever used a razor. He held poor Will Mountford in talk that night, when bloody Dick Hill ran him through. He will come to a bad end, will that young lord; and no end is bad enough for him," says honest Mr. Westbury: whose ...
— The History of Henry Esmond, Esq. • W. M. Thackeray
... also carry a handjar, which used to be their national weapon. It is a sort of heavy, straight cutlass, and they are so expert with it as well as so strong that it is as facile in the hands of a Blue Mountaineer as is a foil in the hands of a Persian maitre d'armes. They are so proud and reserved that they make one feel quite small, and an "outsider" as well. I can see quite well that they rather resent my being here at all. ...
— The Lady of the Shroud • Bram Stoker
... what Mr. OWEN NARES was doing in this galley; and I cannot tell you. I can only say that he was very brave about it all. In a sense it was a serious performance, the only one of its kind in the play; yet not serious enough to serve as a foil for the general frivolity, for he was constantly bringing his own high sentiments into ridicule, and so burlesquing the OWEN NARES that we love to ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 159, September 8th, 1920 • Various
... and it could not return to its hole. It was a harvest mouse, rejoicing in the enormous weight of 4.7 grains and a length of 57 mm., but with as much love of life and fear of death as an elephant. Heaven knows what had smitten it! Perhaps it was one of the very few who just escape the owl, or who foil that scientific death, the weasel, at the last moment—but no matter. The result was the ...
— The Way of the Wild • F. St. Mars
... of humour, and (ii.) that occasional dulness is the inalienable privilege of every free-born Briton. Many a spry wight thinks it his duty to be continuously funny and monotonously merry. Let a quiet and demure dulness be the foil of your side-splitting sallies. Learn to keep the peace, yea for hours at a time. If you are in a mixed company, cultivate the dictum of "give and take." Be not for ever doling out your scraps of mirth to the dyspeptic stomachs of your associates. A wise reciprocity and interplay ...
— Literary Tours in The Highlands and Islands of Scotland • Daniel Turner Holmes
... compact. After the bits of cabbage and onion had been removed, I looked beneath them to see whether the worms had accidentally come up from below, but there was no sign of a burrow; and twice the buried objects were laid on pieces of tin-foil which were not in the least displaced. It is of course possible that the worms whilst moving about on the surface of the ground, with their tails affixed within their burrows, may have poked their ...
— The Formation of Vegetable Mould through the action of worms with • Charles Darwin
... degraded scolding of enemies that does not emanate from passion but out of greedy hankering for the applause of the masses, and which continually nauseates us amid the piety of this hour! Because our statemen failed to discover and foil shrewd plans of deception is no reason why we may hoist the flag of most pious morality. Not as weak-willed blunderers have we undertaken the fearful risk of this war. We wanted it. Because we had to wish it and could wish it. May the Teuton devil throttle those whiners whose pleas for excuses ...
— New York Times Current History: The European War, Vol 2, No. 1, April, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... which was packed by the Regent, and by the actual conclusion of a marriage-treaty. But if Francis could spare neither horse nor man for action in Scotland his influence in the northern kingdom was strong enough to foil Henry's plans. The Churchmen were as bitterly opposed to such a marriage as the partizans of France; and their head, Cardinal Beaton, who had held aloof from the Regent's Parliament, suddenly seized the Queen-mother and ...
— History of the English People - Volume 4 (of 8) • John Richard Green
... no milder way but the small-pox; The very filthiness of Pandora's box? So many spots, like naeves, our Venus soil? One jewel set off with so many a foil? Blisters with pride swelled, which through 's flesh did sprout, Like rose-buds, stuck i'the lily-skin about. Each little pimple had a tear in it, To wail the fault its rising did commit, Which, rebel-like, ...
— The Dramatic Works of John Dryden Vol. I. - With a Life of the Author • Sir Walter Scott
... would come to some bad ind. It wur thot spalpane thot troied to run Frank through with a sharpened foil wan toime whin they wur fencing. He had black murder in his hearrut thin, an' it's not loikely th' whilp has ...
— Frank Merriwell Down South • Burt L. Standish
... of the nacre of any mussel or oyster-shell you might cut, at your pleasure, any quantity of small flat circular discs of the prettiest colour and lustre. To some extent, such tinsel or foil of shell is used pleasantly for decoration. But the mussel or oyster becoming itself an unwilling modeller, agglutinates its juice into three dimensions, and the fact of the surface being now geometrically gradated, ...
— The Crown of Wild Olive • John Ruskin
... payment by results. A certain number of teachers made it their chief effort to secure the largest possible number of grants. Huxley regarded these as poachers of the worst kind, and did all he could to foil them. He did all he could to promote systematic practical instruction in the classes, and to aid teachers who desired to learn their business more thoroughly. He insisted again and again upon the popular nature of the classes; their great advantage was that they were accessible ...
— Thomas Henry Huxley; A Sketch Of His Life And Work • P. Chalmers Mitchell
... bright in her hair, and in the soft garnish of health on her cheeks, and the vigorous play of young life in her eyes; while the silvery glance of the sloping shore, and breezy ruffle of the darkening sea, did nothing but offer a foil for the form of the shell-colored frock and the ...
— Springhaven - A Tale of the Great War • R. D. Blackmore
... dissolving gold in aqua regia, a composition of one part of nitric to two parts of muriatic acid. Gold foil is the best for our purposes; coin, however, answers, in most cases, for the daguerreotype operator, as the alloy, being so slight is not noticed in the gilding process. When the latter is used, it will facilitate the operation to beat it out, forming ...
— American Handbook of the Daguerrotype • Samuel D. Humphrey
... Derwentwater, and the disinterested Nithisdale. When we contrast the petty and selfish policy of the Earl of Mar with the integrity and fidelity of those who fought in the same cause, and over whom he was commander, his character sinks low in the estimate, and acts like a foil to the purity and brightness of his ...
— Memoirs of the Jacobites of 1715 and 1745. - Volume I. • Mrs. Thomson
... spread; the raw crew set at spar and coil. Now round the prow Charybdean waters boil And ever higher surges war's red tide. The mate who should the captain's care divide Has strengthless proved. Where shall, the foe to foil, A man be found able to bear the toil And stand, to steer the ship, ...
— The Poets' Lincoln - Tributes in Verse to the Martyred President • Various
... he had been covering whole sheets of paper with careful copying out of passages taken at random from the volumes beside him. A Latin grammar was ordinarily on the table—a book which the young gentleman had brought back from school free from thumb-marks. Occasionally a fencing-foil lay among these evidences of study, while the small aquaria, the cases of stuffed animals with fancy backgrounds and the numerous bird-cages had been thrust ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science Vol. XV., No. 85. January, 1875. • Various
... Against the foil of the butcher-bird's stolidity we may set the inquisitive, garrulous temperament of the white-eyed vireo and the yellow-breasted chat. The vireo is hardly larger than the goldfinch, but let him be in one of his conversational moods, ...
— Birds in the Bush • Bradford Torrey
... yourself about Mr. Merwyn, Arthur. I have my own personal score to settle with him. He has made a good foil for you and my other friends, and I have learned to appreciate you the more. YOU have won my entire esteem and respect, and have taught me how quickly a noble, self-sacrificing purpose can develop manhood. O Arthur, Heaven grant that we may all meet again! How proud I shall then be of my veteran ...
— An Original Belle • E. P. Roe
... revelations. Fuller adds that they "grieved the Comforter, charging all their sins on God's Spirit, for not effectually assisting them against the same . . . sinning on design that their wickedness might be a foil to God's mercy, to set it off the brighter." But that they were Communists, Anarchists, or Libertines, there is no evidence; and the Queen's menial servant who wrote and presented to Parliament an apology for the Service of Love ...
— Books Condemned to be Burnt • James Anson Farrer
... the shape of the insect. Cut this out of a piece of cork about three inches long, and make the legs of thin wire (after the manner of the spider we described in a previous number); then get some strips of thin tin-foil, and gum them on the back of the cucuius; then paint over the whole with transparent green color (oil paints if possible). Now gouge out two holes about the size of the head of a common match, ...
— Harper's Young People, September 14, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... in robustuously, and put for it with a great deal of violence, are received for the braver fellows: when many times their own rudeness is the cause of their disgrace, and a little touch of their adversary gives all that boisterous force the foil. I deny not, but that these men, who always seek to do more than enough, may some time happen on some thing that is good, and great; but very seldom; and when it comes it doth not recompense the rest of their ill. It sticks out, perhaps, ...
— The Alchemist • Ben Jonson
... despite many daring and dubious adventures in new territories, there has yet been an avoidance of material in itself ugly and repulsive. We have been asked to contemplate the libertinism of Don Juan, but at its worst it has served only as a foil to the virtue of his victims, which in the end emerged triumphant. We have seen exposed the monstrous double nature of Rigoletto, but only that the pathos of paternal love should thereby be thrown into brighter relief. We have seen convention sanctified ...
— Chapters of Opera • Henry Edward Krehbiel
... understand, Is but thy interest, pleasure, or caprice:— Pronounce my sentence on such laws as these. But give me leave to tell thee, while I can, The type of all ingratitude is man.' By such a lecture somewhat foil'd, The other back a step recoil'd, And finally replied,— 'Thy reasons are abusive, And wholly inconclusive. I might the case decide Because to me such right belongs; But let's refer the case of wrongs.' The snake agreed; they to a cow referr'd it. Who, being called, came graciously and heard ...
— The Fables of La Fontaine - A New Edition, With Notes • Jean de La Fontaine
... to eat not of that bread," the whole company, when they saw the champagne bottles, with their necks covered with gold foil appear, burst out singing, as if ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Vol. 1 (of 8) - Boule de Suif and Other Stories • Guy de Maupassant
... He was his old self again, simple, friendly, contented. Theobald was in one of his self-satisfied moods. Perhaps he enjoyed the triumph of his position in regard to Hadria. At any rate, he seemed to pounce on the new-comer as a foil to his own brilliancy. Joseph had no talent to oppose to it, but he had a simple dignity, the offspring of a kind and generous nature, which made Professor Theobald's conduct towards him appear contemptible. Professor Fortescue shifted uncomfortably in his chair. Hadria tried to change ...
— The Daughters of Danaus • Mona Caird
... may have a notion of the great power that platinum has of combining with other metals, I will refer you to a little of the chemist's experience—his bad experience. He knows very well that if he takes a piece of platinum-foil, and heats a piece of lead upon it, or if he takes a piece of platinum-foil, such as we have here, and heats things upon it that have lead in them, his platinum is destroyed. I have here a piece of platinum, and ...
— The Chemical History Of A Candle • Michael Faraday
... yonder sat, a kind of day Lit up what seems so gloomy now. These grim oak walls even then were grim; That old carved chair was then antique; But what around looked dusk and dim Served as a foil to her fresh cheek; Her neck and arms, of hue so fair, Eyes of unclouded, smiling light; Her soft, and curled, and floating hair, Gems and attire, as ...
— Poems • (AKA Charlotte, Emily and Anne Bronte) Currer, Ellis, and Acton Bell
... beholder can be content to be such a one. Now, as in geometry, the oblique must be known as well as the right, and in arithmetic, the odd as well as the even; so in the actions of our life, who seeth not the filthiness of evil, wanteth a great foil to perceive the beauty of virtue. This doth the comedy handle so, in our private and domestical matters, as, with hearing it, we get, as it were, an experience of what is to be looked for, of a niggardly Demea, ...
— A Defence of Poesie and Poems • Philip Sidney
... no, my lads. Infantry drill; clubs and dumb-bells; singlestick and foil; riding with a military seat; but—use of the gloves! Oh dear no! What do you think the ...
— Burr Junior • G. Manville Fenn
... crumpled tie with not too steady fingers, while Jim was applying to his brown crest a pomade sent to him by a girl in Cheyenne, while Babe was wondering anxiously whether green slippers could be considered a match or a foil to a dress of turquoise blue, while Girlie touched her cream-gold hair with cream-padded finger-tips, Sheila Arundel prowled about her room with hot anger and cold fear in ...
— Hidden Creek • Katharine Newlin Burt
... True, Joan was easily his master, but it made a good show for all that, for La Hire was a grand swordsman. What a swift creature Joan was! You would see her standing erect with her ankle-bones together and her foil arched over her head, the hilt in one hand and the button in the other—the old general opposite, bent forward, left hand reposing on his back, his foil advanced, slightly wiggling and squirming, his watching eye boring straight into hers—and all of a sudden she would give a spring forward, and ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... its own. Its main and lower portion is not divided into nave and transept, but seems like a system of huge semi-cylinders erected on their bases, and united with reentrant angles, their convex surfaces toward us, so that the ground-plan might be called a species of quatre-foil. In each of the convex faces is an admirably proportioned door-way, a Gothic arch with deep-carved and elaborately fretted mouldings, so wonderfully perfect in its imitation that you almost feel like ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 13, No. 78, April, 1864 • Various
... and receive those speechless lip-messages that are out of the reach of words, and Mrs. Rossitur's half-spoken last charge, to take care of herself; and with these seals upon her mission, Fleda set forth and joined the doctor, thankful for one foil to curiosity in the shape of a veil, and only wishing that there were any invented screen that she could place between ...
— Queechy, Volume II • Elizabeth Wetherell
... rode behind me; and poor Dad saying, '"'Pon my honour, Arthur, I can't account for it!" Oh, how my cheeks tingled when I reached my room! But Cissie had laid out my very best evening dress, the white satin one, vandyked at the bottom with spots of morone foil, and the pearl knots, you know, catching up the drapery from the left shoulder. I had poor mother's lace tucker ...
— Rewards and Fairies • Rudyard Kipling
... had read his character aright. He was instantly on the alert. Crane evidently was on a thief's errand, and was likely to steal not only Miles's money but Tom's. Our hero was alive to the emergency, and resolved to foil him. He had his revolver with him; for in the unsettled state of society, with no one to enforce the laws, and indeed no laws to enforce, it was the custom for all men ...
— The Young Miner - or Tom Nelson in California • Horatio Alger, Jr.
... that worked for Fern," explained Mr. Weil. "He got hold of some of these notes and checks, in Fern's office, and is coming to look us up to-day, for the purpose of having his employer arrested. A nice game, eh? But we will foil him, won't we? We'll show him a trick worth several of his! He's probably gone to the Hoffman House and he'll hang round till he finds me. I'll send word that I am to be home this afternoon at five. You will be there with me. We'll tackle him together. When he tells us that ...
— A Black Adonis • Linn Boyd Porter
... telephone vibrates when spoken to? Mr. Edison took away from the telephone all except the mouth-piece and the diaphragm, fastened a point of metal, which we will call a "style," to the center of the diaphragm, and then contrived a simple arrangement for making a sheet of tin-foil pass in front of the style. When the diaphragm is still, the style simply scratches a straight line along the foil. When a sound is made, however, and the diaphragm set to vibrating, the mark of the style is not a simple scratch, but an impression varying in depth according to the diaphragm's ...
— St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, Vol. 5, Nov 1877-Nov 1878 - Scribner's Illustrated • Various
... his hand on his sword and replied, "Your dogs would devour me, my good fellow, and I foil them. They would employ their teeth upon me as I would mine if I had before me a morsel of that appetizing boar, for I am lost in the forest since yesterday morning and have a ...
— A Romance of the West Indies • Eugene Sue
... back with a sigh of relief. A companion like Miss Martin makes a most excellent foil to solitude, and after she had departed, Lady Gore lay for a while in a state of pleasant quiescence. Why, she wondered, even supposing she herself did think too well of her husband, should Miss Martin object? Why ...
— The Arbiter - A Novel • Lady F. E. E. Bell
... consider the Society as out of date? You do not think, as is sometimes said, that the establishment of the Grosvenor took away the raison d'etre and original intention of the Society—that of being a foil ...
— The Gentle Art of Making Enemies • James McNeill Whistler
... the originality? There is nothing in what I am treating as this phase of our author's thought to separate it from the old-fashioned rationalism. There must be a reason for every fact; and so much reason, so fact. The reason is always the whole foil and background and negation of the fact, the whole remainder of reality. "A man may feel good only by feeling better. . . . Pleasure is ever in the company and contrast of pain; for instance, in thirsting and drinking, the pleasure of the one is the exact measure ...
— Memories and Studies • William James
... I said. "You remember that Roman emperor who used to descend into the arena fully armed, and pit himself against some poor wretch who had only a leaden foil which would double up at a thrust. According to your theory of your Master's life, you would have it that He faced the temptations of this world at such an advantage that they were only harmless leaden things, and not the sharp assailants which we find them. I confess, ...
— The Stark Munro Letters • J. Stark Munro
... really to be considered a forgery, this, instead of being a matter of surprise, ought to be just the thing to be expected; because a clever fabricator, foreseeing that he would be suspected, and eager to foil detection, would know that the curious inquirer into a research of the present description would thus become baffled at every turn from inability, if not to discover it himself, at least, to explain to the satisfaction and conviction of others, the incompatibility ...
— Tacitus and Bracciolini - The Annals Forged in the XVth Century • John Wilson Ross
... thunder-darkened highlands And lowlands hot with fruit, Sea-bays and shoals and islands, And cliffs that foil man's foot, And all the flower of large-limbed ...
— Songs before Sunrise • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... horse, stood Lassiter, his dark apparel and the great black gun-sheaths contrasting singularly with his gentle smile. Jane's active mind took up her interest in him and her half-determined desire to use what charm she had to foil his evident design in visiting Cottonwoods. If she could mitigate his hatred of Mormons, or at least keep him from killing more of them, not only would she be saving her people, but also be leading back this bloodspiller to ...
— Riders of the Purple Sage • Zane Grey |
