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More "Whet" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Me and my wife here, we whet away and stayed two months. Was 5 feet in this house, and if it ever gets in here agin, we're goin down in Kentucky and never comin' back ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States - From Interviews with Former Slaves: Indiana Narratives • Works Projects Administration
... sensation in excess, With the vespertinal rumour and the matutinal lie Which adorn the lucubrations of the Press), Then I turn me to the columns where there's nothing to attract, Or the interest to waken and to whet, And I revel in a banquet of unmitigated fact ...
— Lyra Frivola • A. D. Godley
... themselves into short, almost gasping asseverations. God is angry with the wicked; as angry with the living wicked as 'with many of those miserable creatures that He is now tormenting in hell.' The devil is waiting: the fire is ready; the furnace is hot; the 'glittering sword is whet and held over them, and the pit hath opened her mouth to receive them.' The unconverted are walking on a rotten covering, where there are innumerable weak places, and those places not distinguishable. The flames are 'gathering and lashing about' the sinner, ...
— Hours in a Library, Volume I. (of III.) • Leslie Stephen
... keep the whole work sacred to your credit. And if ever I go into print—which is most unlikely—I'll refer to this essay in such a way as to whet public curiosity to a feather edge. Again, if anything should happen to this copy, you'll have ...
— Such is Life • Joseph Furphy
... rushed Hammergray, Soon he stood by Vidrik knight: "Whet your spears, and sharp your swords, For the King is bent ...
— Ulf Van Yern - and Other Ballads • Thomas J. Wise
... away from worldly associations and topics into more abstract and untrodden ways of thought. As far as contrast, indeed, is an enlivening ingredient of such intercourse, it would be difficult to find two persons more formed to whet each other's faculties by discussion, as on few points of common interest between them did their opinions agree; and that this difference had its root deep in the conformation of their respective minds needs but a glance through the rich, glittering labyrinth ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 470 - Volume XVII, No. 470, Saturday, January 8, 1831 • Various
... assertions, and thus they very often obtain victory in minor matters of detail. They see and know with admirable penetration, when one of them presents to another a weapon which she herself is forbidden to whet. It is thus that they sometimes lose a husband without intending it. They apply the match and long afterwards are terror-stricken ...
— Analytical Studies • Honore de Balzac
... before light, we took out our gentleman, dragged by an immense string of oxen, to introduce him to his future victims and whet his appetite by a taste. The Boer position lies some six miles to the north of the river. The most conspicuous feature of it is a hill projecting towards us like a ship's ram and dipping sharply to the plain. Magersfontein, ...
— With Rimington • L. March Phillipps
... was greater, And around his hip 'twas doubled. 160 Then he sharpened keen the axe-blade, Brought the polished blade to sharpness; Six the stones on which he ground it, Seven the stones on which he whet it. ...
— Kalevala, Volume I (of 2) - The Land of the Heroes • Anonymous
... this spot had nothing but a misty and spectral outline. It was indefinite in the date, uncertain as to persons, mysterious as to the event,—just such a tradition as to whet the edge of one's curiosity and to leave it hopeless of gratification. I may relate ...
— Atlantic Monthly Vol. 6, No. 33, July, 1860 • Various
... women of all sorts here and at Nice do without such a choice temple of scandal to whet their teeth upon? Well, I suppose you and your precious daughter can take care of yourselves. There are the gardens, or you can tell Gregorio to ...
— Nuttie's Father • Charlotte M. Yonge
... us; and he sometimes expressed much regret at being unable to join us. I used to do my best to gratify him, poor fellow, by relating all the wonders that we saw; but this, instead of satisfying, seemed only to whet his curiosity the more, so one day we prevailed on him to try to go down with us. But although a brave boy in every other way, Peterkin was very nervous in the water, and it was with difficulty we got him to consent to be taken down, for he could never have managed to push himself down ...
— The Coral Island - A Tale Of The Pacific Ocean • R. M. Ballantyne
... end his Life, And with a keen-whet Chopping-Knife In a Thousand pieces cleave him, Let the Parliament first him undertake, They'll make the Rascal stink at stake, And so, like a Knave, let's ...
— Quaint Gleanings from Ancient Poetry • Edmund Goldsmid
... (lemonade) and a distressing sickly drink called "champagne cider" and all manner of vanities. In one corner of the square a theatre was in full swing, the actors making up in public on a balcony above the crowd, so as to whet their curiosity and attract their custom. Beyond was a cinematograph, advertised by lurid paintings of murders and apparitions; and farther on there was a circus ...
— Kimono • John Paris
... the summarizing lead is the informal, or suspense, lead. This type begins with a question, a bit of verse, a startling quotation, or one or two manifestly unimportant details that tell little and yet whet the appetite of the reader, luring him to the real point of interest later in the story. Such leads, sometimes known as "human interest" leads, are admittedly more difficult than those of the summarizing type, their difficulty being but one effect of the ...
— News Writing - The Gathering , Handling and Writing of News Stories • M. Lyle Spencer
... sole fault is, that he was too indulgent to his wife. Well, he married for love, and nothing good ever comes of those love-marriages,"—added the old woman, casting a sidelong glance at Marya Dmitrievna, and rising.—"And now, dear little father, thou mayest whet thy teeth on whomsoever thou wilt, only not on me; I'm going away, I won't interfere."—And ...
— A Nobleman's Nest • Ivan Turgenieff
... in which they dress their food is this: They kindle a fire by rubbing the end of one piece of dry wood, upon the side of another, in the same manner as our carpenters whet a chissel; then they dig a pit about half a foot deep, and two or three yards in circumference: They pave the bottom with large pebble stones, which they lay down very smooth and even, and then kindle a fire in it with dry wood, leaves, and the ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 12 • Robert Kerr
... a woman's beauty did not depend for its existence upon the eyes that look upon it, I should want to give more to my hero than love and beauty. I should want to give him help in the battle of life, Henry. I should want to buckle on his armour, and sharpen the point of his lance, and whet the edge of his sword; a rich man's armour is bank-notes, and Winnie knows nothing of such paper. His spear, I am told, is a bullion bar, and Winnie's fingers scarcely know the ...
— Aylwin • Theodore Watts-Dunton
... threescore and ten, let not an old penitent despair. Only take axe in hand and see if the sun does not stand still upon Gibeon, and the moon in the valley of Ajalon till you have avenged yourself on your enemies. And always when you stop to wipe your brow, and to whet the edge of your axe, and to wet your lips with water, keep on saying things like those of another great sinner deep in his thicket of vice, say this: O God, he said, Thou hast not cut off as a weaver my life, nor from day even to night hast ...
— Bunyan Characters - Third Series - The Holy War • Alexander Whyte
... of religion are all moulded upon this familiar and sensible relation of father and child: and to understand whet the human heart is capable to conceive on this subject, we have only to refer to the many eloquent and glowing treatises that have been written upon the love of God to his creatures, and the love that the creature in return owes to his God. I am not now considering religion ...
— Thoughts on Man - His Nature, Productions and Discoveries, Interspersed with - Some Particulars Respecting the Author • William Godwin
... handful of barley bestow On the child of Apollo, the sleek sable crow; Or a trifle of whet, O kind friends, give;— Or a wee loaf of bread ...
— A Day In Old Athens • William Stearns Davis
... King And Queene wassailing; And though, with ale, ye be whet here, Yet part ye from hence As free from offence As when ...
— A Righte Merrie Christmasse - The Story of Christ-Tide • John Ashton
... will get through most work with his tools, if he stops from time to time to sharpen them up. The son of Sirach says, speaking of a carpenter—"If the iron be blunt, and he do not whet the edge, then must he put to more strength; but wisdom is profitable to direct."—Ecclesiasticus. A small fine file is very effectual in giving an edge to tools of soft steel. It is a common error to suppose that the best ...
— The Art of Travel - Shifts and Contrivances Available in Wild Countries • Francis Galton
... sighed more deeply than ever, and the refrain then was that bread and porter were so dear that the poor people must starve to feed fat lords, stag-hounds, and priests, and that there was only one remedy. At these words he was wont to whet his razor, and as he drew it murderously up and down the strop, he murmured grimly to ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VI. • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... farm-house. Owing to causes which will hereafter be explained, they exhibited less than the usual plethoric satisfaction after the hospitality of the country, and were the first to welcome the appearance of a square black bottle, which went the rounds, with the observation: "Whet up for a start!" ...
— The Story Of Kennett • Bayard Taylor
... speaking quickly, and raising his gun with a gesture of menace, "pay 'tention to whet I'm 'beout to say. Look savagerous at me, an' make these yeer verming b'lieve you an' me's que'lling. Fo'most tell me, ef they've krippled ye 'beout the legs? I know ye can't speak; but shet yeer eyes, an' ...
— The Wild Huntress - Love in the Wilderness • Mayne Reid
... week without any word of love between them; and for all that time I believe Will was nearly as happy as a man can be. He rather stinted himself the pleasure of seeing her; and he would often walk half-way over to the parsonage, and then back again, as if to whet his appetite. Indeed, there was one corner of the road, whence he could see the church-spire wedged into a crevice of the valley between sloping fir-woods, with a triangular snatch of plain by way ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 6 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... appetite and gusto. Fee, faw, fum! Wife, where is that tender little Princekin? Have you trussed him, and did you stuff him nicely, and have you taken care to baste him and do him, not too brown, as I told you? Quick! I am hungry! I begin to whet my knife, to roll my eyes about, and roar and clap my huge chest like a gorilla; and then my poor Ogrina has to tell me that the little princes have all run away, whilst she was in the kitchen, making the ...
— Roundabout Papers • William Makepeace Thackeray
... families had also taken advantage of this privilege, and elected to pay tuition and place their children under his instruction, thus bringing together forty-nine energetic boys and girls to whet each other's ambition and incite class rivalry. Among the number were the five clever children of the Hon. Tod Robinson; three sons of Judge Robert Robinson; Colonel Zabriskie's pretty daughter Annie; Banker Swift's stately Margaret; General Redding's two sons; Dr. Oatman's ...
— The Expedition of the Donner Party and its Tragic Fate • Eliza Poor Donner Houghton
... Ausonia from her sleep. Forth swarm Footmen and horsemen, and in wild career Whirl up the dust. "Arm," cry the warriors, "arm!" With unctuous lard their polished shields they smear, And whet the axe, and scour the rusty spear. Their banners wave, their trumpets sound the fight. Five towns their anvils for the war uprear, Crustumium, Tibur, glorying in her might, Ardea, Atina strong, ...
— The Aeneid of Virgil - Translated into English Verse by E. Fairfax Taylor • Virgil
... experience and your years Would have proved patience rather to your soul, Then with this frantique and untamed passion To whet their skeens; and, but for that I hope their friendships are too well confirmd, And their minds temperd with more kindly heat, Then for their froward parents soars That they should break forth into publique brawles— How ere the rough hand of th' untoward world Hath moulded your ...
— The Merry Devil • William Shakespeare
... My sorrow shall make thee its god, and set Thy naked presence on the parapet That looks over the seas of future times. Some shall say all our love was vice and crimes. Others against our names, as stones, shall whet The knife of their glad hate of beauty, and make Our name a pillory, a scaffold and a stake Whereon to burn our brothers yet unborn. Yet shall our presence, like eternal morn, Ever return at Beauty's hour, and shine ...
— Antinous: A Poem • Fernando Antonio Nogueira Pessoa
... snow, tumbled about, Anon becomes a Mountaine. O noble Dolphine, Go with me to the King, 'tis wonderfull, What may be wrought out of their discontent, Now that their soules are topfull of offence, For England go; I will whet on ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare
... when there is no idea existing of bettering one's self, so here I'll roost until daylight, unless Doctor comes back to hunt me up!" I judged it was not far from 2 o'clock, A. M., and believed it possible that our venison might only whet a grizzly bear's appetite to follow up the pursuit and gormandize me!—A proper site for a roost was the next matter of importance, and a scrubby oak with a thick top, close by, offered an ...
— The Humors of Falconbridge - A Collection of Humorous and Every Day Scenes • Jonathan F. Kelley
... might at least claim to be worthy to exercise the intellect of superior men and to inspire the eloquence of orators. That a set of people on the other side was professing to do the same things, with totally different and utterly wrong notions of the results to be obtained, afforded the whet of antagonism, and let in dialectic and partisanship as a seasoning to relieve the high severity of the main topic. Quisante's personal relations with the Church had never been intimate; he was perhaps the ...
— Quisante • Anthony Hope
... that as certain forms of music tend to raise us above the sensuality of the animal, or the more degrading passion of material gain, and to transport us into the ether of higher thought, so other forms are directly calculated to awaken in us luxurious emotions, and to whet those sensual appetites which it is the business of a philosopher not indeed to annihilate or to be ashamed of, but to keep rigidly in check. This possibility of music to effect evil as well as good I have seen recognised, ...
— The Lost Stradivarius • John Meade Falkner
... white steel— ah no, it could not take within my reins its shelter; steel must seek steel, or hate make out of joy a whet-stone for a sword; sword against flint, Theseus sought Hippolyta; she yielded not nor broke, sword upon stone, from the clash leapt a ...
— Hymen • Hilda Doolittle
... into it. With one impulse we are carried to the cabin of the musk-rat, that earliest settler, and see him dart away under the transparent ice, like a furred fish, to his hole in the bank; and we glide rapidly over meadows where lately "the mower whet his scythe," through beds of frozen cranberries mixed with meadow grass. We skate near to where the blackbird, the pewee, and the kingbird hung their nests over the water, and the hornets builded from the maple in ...
— Excursions • Henry D. Thoreau
... the Hermitage. Governor Blount was absent from Nashville, but the eager commander went ahead raising troops on his own responsibility. Nothing was so certain to whet his appetite for action as the prospect of a war in Florida. Not only did his instructions authorize him to pursue the enemy, under certain conditions, into Spanish territory, but from the first he himself ...
— The Reign of Andrew Jackson • Frederic Austin Ogg
... thou of great intelligence, the Rishis and Brahmanas and the deities, led by the authority of the Vedas, all applaud that religion which has compassion for its indication. But, O king, whet I ask thee is this: how does a man, who has perpetrated acts of injury to others in word, thought and deed, succeed in cleansing ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 4 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... a grassy place, was a group of mushrooms which also I devoured, and then I came upon a brown sheet of flowing shallow water, where meadows used to be. These fragments of nourishment served only to whet my hunger. At first I was surprised at this flood in a hot, dry summer, but afterwards I discovered that it was caused by the tropical exuberance of the red weed. Directly this extraordinary growth encountered water it straightway became gigantic and of unparalleled ...
— The War of the Worlds • H. G. Wells
... the razor best is whet, So wit is by politeness sharpest set; Their want of edge from their offence is seen, Both pain the heart ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 4 (of 4) • Various
... going on, a seedy-looking old gentleman came in, and I noticed that some younger officers rose and offered him a place, which he rejected, till a vacancy occurred, and then he quietly sat down, swallowed his two dozen of green oysters as a whet, and proceeded to dine with an appetite. By this time, my vis-a-vis had resumed his seat, and, after what had passed, I felt myself at liberty to ask him the favour of informing me who he himself was! I was soon answered. He was a Mr Parish, ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 441 - Volume 17, New Series, June 12, 1852 • Various
... going out to-day. Well, I am content. But what to do for company? Mother is well enough, Aunt Susan is well enough; but these, like the poor, I have with me always. On so grim a day as this, one needs a new interest, a fresh element, to whet the dull edge of captivity. That was very neatly said, but it doesn't mean anything. One doesn't want the edge of captivity sharpened up, you know, but ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... independence rests, in large measure, on confidence in America's word and in America's protection. To yield to force in Vietnam would weaken that confidence, would undermine the independence of many lands, and would whet the appetite of aggression. We would have to fight in one land, and then we would have to fight in another—or abandon much of Asia to ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... to get, Wherefore, dear lord, be wise, take care that yet A like misfortune happen not to you. Still in their lair the cubs and she-bear,[Q] who Rough pasturage and sour in May have met, With mad rage gnash their teeth and talons whet, And vengeance of past loss on us pursue: While this new grief disheartens and appalls, Replace not in its sheath your honour'd sword, But, boldly following where your fortune calls, E'en to its goal be glory's path explored, Which fame and honour to ...
— The Sonnets, Triumphs, and Other Poems of Petrarch • Petrarch
... of approval it was plain the captain agreed with every interruption, and they seemed to whet his interest in the story he had undertaken to ...
— The Girl Scouts at Sea Crest - The Wig Wag Rescue • Lillian Garis
... but an expert can guard against. In fashioning the nodules of amber, whether genuine or fictitious, into pipe mouth-pieces, they are split on a leaden plate in a turning lathe, smoothed into shape by whet-stones, rubbed with chalk and water, and polished with a piece of flannel. It is an especially difficult kind of work; for unless the amber is allowed frequent intervals for cooling, it becomes electrically excited by the friction and shivers into fragments; the men, ...
— Tobacco; Its History, Varieties, Culture, Manufacture and Commerce • E. R. Billings
... It comes from the powerful attraction for us of that world which is opened to us through introversion. We descend there to whet our arms for fresh battles, but we lay them down; for we feel ourselves embraced by soft caressing arms that invite us to linger, to dream enchanting dreams. This fact coincides in large part with the previously mentioned tendency toward comfort, which is unwilling to forego childhood ...
— Hidden Symbolism of Alchemy and the Occult Arts • Herbert Silberer
... greatly lacking in foresight. Hence the servants and stewards do not advise their master to procure any article until it is completely gone. Therefore when they say that there is no more sugar or no more oil, it is when there is not [oil] enough to whet a knife. [207] Consequently, great deficiencies and annoyances are ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898 - Volume 40 of 55 • Francisco Colin
... is not endless discussions of Beethoven's works which the public—at all events, our public—demands. We wish his biography,—the history of his life. What has been given us does but whet the appetite. We wish to have the many original sources, still sealed to us, explored, and the results of this labor honestly given us. None of the writers above-mentioned have been in a position to do this, and their publications are but materials ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume V, Number 29, March, 1860 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... Green, would be pointed out by the knowing ones as a fellow that was going to ride in the contest and that stood a good chance of winning. For Andy was but human, that he dreamed of these things; besides, does not the jumping through blazing hoops and over sagging bunting while one rides, whet insiduously one's appetite for the plaudits of ...
— The Happy Family • Bertha Muzzy Bower
... frame of body as of mind he strays on along the street. There is no lack of food before his eyes, almost within reach of his hand; but only to tantalise, and still further whet the edge of his appetite. Eating-houses are open all around him; and under their blazing gas-jets he can see steaming dishes, and savoury joints, in the act of being set upon tables surrounded by guests seeming hungry as himself, but otherwise better off. He, too, might ...
— The Flag of Distress - A Story of the South Sea • Mayne Reid
... in choosing your characters: the wilder and uglier the better. Try every combination of shaggy mane, and squinting eye, and mouth like a gaping volcano; build mountains upon your shoulders, or fatten yourselves into Falstaffs; and as a whet to your inventions, I hereby promise a kiss from the bride to the figure that would be the likeliest to make her miscarry. A wedding is such a strange event in one's life; the bride and bridegroom are so suddenly plunged, as it were by magic, head ...
— The Uncollected Writings of Thomas de Quincey, Vol. 2 - With a Preface and Annotations by James Hogg • Thomas de Quincey
... lambasted me to his heart's content. In spite of all this discipline, which one would have thought effective enough to take me out of the lists of Parnassus forever, it on the contrary served only to whet my thirst for writing, and from that time until now I have never gotten over my desire to chisel out sonnets, triolets, rondeaux and lyrics of one ...
— The Autobiography of Methuselah • John Kendrick Bangs
... in a literary sense,—even in the Boston Public Library, which is admitted to be a model of good sense and wide liberality,—all books are not bought or issued indiscriminately to all readers, irrespective of age and so forth. The necessity for making special application may, in some cases, whet curiosity, but it also, undoubtedly, acts as a check upon unhealthy tastes, even when the book may be publicly purchased. I have heard Russians who did not wholly agree with their own censorship assert, nevertheless, that a strict censure was better than the ...
— Russian Rambles • Isabel F. Hapgood
... struggle between Will and Power. The former faculty exacted approbation of that which it was considered orthodox to admire; the latter groaned forth its utter inability to pay the tax; it was then self-sneered at, spurred up, goaded on to refine its taste, and whet its zest. The more it was chidden, however, the more it wouldn't praise. Discovering gradually that a wonderful sense of fatigue resulted from these conscientious efforts, I began to reflect whether I might not dispense with that great labour, and concluded ...
— Villette • Charlotte Bronte
... walked the old Woman, giving the Cat a piece of her mind; and last of all, out walked the Parrot, with a cake in each claw. Then they all went about their business, as if nothing had happened; and the Parrot flew back to whet his beak on ...
— The Talking Thrush - and Other Tales from India • William Crooke
... of Goulding, Collis, Ward led Bloom by ryebloom flowered tables. Aimless he chose with agitated aim, bald Pat attending, a table near the door. Be near. At four. Has he forgotten? Perhaps a trick. Not come: whet appetite. I couldn't do. ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce
... Irish Footmen. Nor can the vigorousest course Prevail, unless to make us worse; Who still, the harsher we are us'd, 335 Are further off from b'ing reduc'd; And scorn t' abate, for any ills, The least punctilios of our wills. Force does but whet our wits t' apply Arts, born with us, for remedy; 340 Which all your politicks, as yet, Have ne'er been able to defeat: For when y' have try'd all sorts of ways, What fools d' we make of you in plays! While all the favours we afford, 345 Are but to girt you with the ...
— Hudibras • Samuel Butler
... a reaper, Death his name; His might from God the highest came. Today his knife he'll whet, 'Twill cut far better yet; Soon he will come and mow, And we must bear the woe— ...
— The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries: - Masterpieces of German Literature Translated into English, Volume 5. • Various
... and the dollars are being scooped in, they'll send you back fast enough—that is, if you still want to go," he remarked. "I tell you, Leonard Tavernake, our city men here are out for the dollars. Over on your side, a man makes a million or so and he's had enough. One fortune here only seems to whet the appetite of a New Yorker. By the way," he added, after a moment's hesitation, "does it interest you to know that an old friend of ...
— The Tempting of Tavernake • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... surprise came; the table was cleared and covered with various sorts of prepared dishes—in short, a substantial and sumptuous dinner was served. The collation which had been taken at the commencement, called in the language of the country "Refresco," had been intended only to whet the appetites of the guests for ...
— Celebrated Travels and Travellers - Part III. The Great Explorers of the Nineteenth Century • Jules Verne
... this is sure, you also look your last upon the moon. I am avenged already. The bait that hooked me is a meal for yonder pike, and he will kill you both before her eyes to whet his appetite." ...
— The Brethren • H. Rider Haggard
... The sight! A burning world! And to be dead and miss it! There's an end Of all satiety: such fire imagine! Born in some obscure alley of the poor, Then leaping to embrace a splendid street, Palaces, temples, morsels that but whet Her appetite: the eating of huge forests: Then with redoubled fury rushing high, Smacking her lips over a continent, And licking old civilisations up! Then in tremendous battle fire and sea Joined: and the ending of the mighty sea: Then heaven ...
— Nero • Stephen Phillips
... us who read With the Persian Expedition know something about the Hush-Hush Army; enough, at any rate, to whet our appetites for more. Let me then recommend The Adventures of Dunsterforce (ARNOLD) to your notice, and assure you that it is a most lively account of as strange an enterprise as any that the War brought forth. Briefly, ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 158, May 26, 1920 • Various
... was saved. The conquerors either hacked his ships with their swords or sunk them in the sea; not content to have defeated gods, they pursued the wrecks of the fleet with such rage, as if they would destroy them to satiate their deadly passion for war. Thus doth prosperity commonly whet the edge of licence. The haven, recalling by its name Balder's flight, bears witness to the war. Gelder, the King of Saxony, who met his end in the same war, was set by Hother upon the corpses of his oarsmen, and then laid on a pyre built of vessels, and magnificently honoured in his funeral ...
— The Danish History, Books I-IX • Saxo Grammaticus ("Saxo the Learned")
... first point, it may be conceded, without deducting much from his sincere zeal in the cause, that the gratification of his thirst of fame, and, above all, perhaps, that supply of excitement so necessary to him, to whet, as it were, the edge of his self-wearing spirit, were not the least of the attractions and incitements which a struggle under the banners of Freedom presented to him. It is also but too certain that, destined as he was to endless disenchantment, ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. 6 (of 6) - With his Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore
... any pity on them, had already devoured them with his eyes; he told his wife they would be delicate eating, when tossed up with good savoury sauce. He then took a great knife, and coming up to these poor children, whetted it upon a great whet-stone which he held in his left hand. He had already taken hold of one of them, when his ...
— The Fairy Tales of Charles Perrault • Charles Perrault
... as to an "austere regimen in scenery"; and such a discipline was then recommended as "healthful and strengthening to the taste." That is the test, so to speak, of the present essay. This discipline in scenery, it must be understood, is something more than a mere walk before breakfast to whet the appetite. For when we are put down in some unsightly neighbourhood, and especially if we have come to be more or less dependent on what we see, we must set ourselves to hunt out beautiful things with all the ardour and ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. XXII (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... perhaps old friends are rather like old wine, and can never be too old. Yet who does not mark in the calendar those days wherein he has met a new rich soul, that has a physiognomy, a grace and expression, peculiarly its own? Even decided repulsions have also a use. We whet our conscience on our neighbors' faults, as sober Spartans were made by the spectacle of drunken Helots;—though he who makes habitual talk about his neighbors' faults whets his conscience across the edge. If there ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 12, October, 1858 • Various
... and a year's imprisonment; while to join the Romish Church was to become a traitor, and to be subject to a like penalty. Churchwardens were to make a monthly report of persons absent from church, and to whet the zeal of wardens and constables, for each conviction of offending parties, they were to have a reward of forty shillings, to be levied out of the recusant's estate and goods. Catholics might escape these penalties by quitting the country, and taking the oath ...
— The Land-War In Ireland (1870) - A History For The Times • James Godkin
... is necessary to whet the chisel and other edged tools. (See also under oilstones, p. 121.) First see that there is plenty of oil on the stone. If an iron box be used, Fig. 77, the oil is obtained simply by turning the stone over, for it rests on a pad of felt which ...
— Handwork in Wood • William Noyes
... are epithets That suit with any word— As well as Harvey's Reading Sauce With fish, or flesh, or bird. Such epithets, like pepper, Give zest to what you write; And, if you strew them sparely, They whet the appetite; But if you lay them on too thick, ...
— A Nonsense Anthology • Collected by Carolyn Wells
... 1877. It was arranged that he should pass as a nephew of Madame Boyer, the cousin of Marie. He arrived at Marseilles on January 1, and received a cordial welcome. Of the domestic arrangements that ensued, it is sufficient to say that they were calculated to whet the jealousy and inflame the hatred that Marie felt towards her mother, who now persisted as before in parading before her daughter the intimacy of her relations ...
— A Book of Remarkable Criminals • H. B. Irving
... at it as though he regretted it had been seen, then added carelessly, apparently to appease but really to whet the Duchess's curiosity: ...
— Mistress Nell - A Merry Tale of a Merry Time • George C. Hazelton, Jr.
... have a buzz on, lush*, bib, swig, carouse; sacrifice at the shrine of Bacchus[obs3]; take to drinking; drink hard, drink deep, drink like a fish; have one's swill*, drain the cup, splice the main brace, take a hair of the dog that bit you. liquor, liquor up; wet one's whistle, take a whet; crack a bottle, pass the bottle; toss off &c. (drink up) 2198; go to the alehouse, go to the public house. make one drunk &c. adj.; inebriate, fuddle, befuddle, fuzzle[obs3], get into one's head. Adj. drunk, tipsy; intoxicated; inebrious[obs3], inebriate, inebriated; in one's ...
— Roget's Thesaurus • Peter Mark Roget
... persistent effort along the lines of experimental work has been generously rewarded by a steady improvement in the general results now attained. Nor is the situation injured by a slight tinge of friendly rivalry among clubs, to lend an additional zest to their labors, and to whet the praiseworthy ambition of each to make every succeeding issue a little better than the last. There are many zealous bibliophiles who belong to two or three book clubs at once, finding it interesting to collect and compare the works produced by ...
— Book-Lovers, Bibliomaniacs and Book Clubs • Henry H. Harper
... Presle Twirl her light limbs, that spurn the needless veil; Let Angiolini bare her breast of snow, Wave the white arm, and point the pliant toe; Collini trill her love-inspiring song, 630 Strain her fair neck, and charm the listening throng! Whet [97] not your scythe, Suppressors of our Vice! Reforming Saints! too delicately nice! By whose decrees, our sinful souls to save, No Sunday tankards foam, no barbers shave; And beer undrawn, and beards unmown, display Your ...
— Byron's Poetical Works, Vol. 1 • Byron
... fickle fiddle-sticks!" he interrupted. "That's only a tag. The people whose business it is to decide these things—DIE HERREN DICHTER—are not agreed to this day whet it's man who's fickle or woman. In this mood it's one, in that, the other; and the silly world bleats it after them, ...
— Maurice Guest • Henry Handel Richardson
... flew (upon a day when as it Snew;) Which to my Brains the Vapors drew And there began to work and brew, 'Till in my Pericranium grew Conundrums, how some Peal that's New Might be compos'd? and to pursue These thoughts (which did so whet and hew My flat Invention) and to shew What might be done, I strait withdrew Myself to ponder—whence did accrue This Grandsire Bob, which unto you I Dedicate, as being due Most properly; for there's but few Besides, so ready at their Q—— (Especially at the first View) To apprehend a thing ...
— Tintinnalogia, or, the Art of Ringing - Wherein is laid down plain and easie Rules for Ringing all - sorts of Plain Changes • Richard Duckworth and Fabian Stedman
... the way of slaveholders? Darkness they court—they will have darkness. Doubtless "because their deeds are evil." Can we confide in methods for the benefit of our enslaved brethren, which it is death for us to examine? Whet good ever came, what good can we ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society
... launce haue an hooke, wherewithall they attempt to pull men out of their saddles. The heads of their arrowes are exceedingly sharpe cutting both wayes like a two edged sworde, and they alwaies carie a file in their quiuers to whet their arrowheads. They haue targets made of wickers, or of small reddes. Howbeit they doe not (as we suppose) accustome to carrie them, but onely about the tents or in the Emperours or dukes guards, and that only in the night season. [Sidenote: Their experience and cunning in warres.] ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques, and Discoveries - Vol. II • Richard Hakluyt
... heard a great noise of voices and laughter in the drawing-room, and when he went in he found Captain Beausire and Mme. Rosemilly, whom his father had brought home and engaged to dine with them in honor of the good news. Vermouth and absinthe had been served to whet their appetites, and every one had been at once put into good spirits. Captain Beausire, a funny little man who had become quite round by dint of being rolled about at sea, and whose ideas also seemed ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume VIII. • Guy de Maupassant
... very effectual as regarded the cony, but it was not much to gurr about in the way of breakfast. It was a mere whet to the appetite, which ...
— The Settler and the Savage • R.M. Ballantyne
... to business and not to our absorbing more than enough to whet our descriptive powers quickly conducted us into a large room where, on single bamboo couches or bunks, rather tastefully made, perhaps half a dozen habitues lay stretched at full length smoking their pipes in peace, or preparing them in great expectation from the ...
— The Dream Doctor • Arthur B. Reeve
... behind.) O lud! he'll murder my poor boy, my darling! Here, good gentleman, whet your rage upon me. Take my money, my life, but spare that young gentleman; spare my child, if you ...
— She Stoops to Conquer - or, The Mistakes of a Night. A Comedy. • Oliver Goldsmith
... concert was Saturday—a day on which I rarely saw her, as it was my habit to spend all Sunday with her. I was always somewhat an epicure in my moral nature. I liked to pet my inclinations, as I have seen good livers whet their ...
— Told in a French Garden - August, 1914 • Mildred Aldrich
... Fought for it. Fought every boy who wouldn't acknowledge it.... When I went to sea as cabin-boy on the "Mary R." of Gloucester, the men on the trawler tried to "lick me into shape," as they called it. They didn't know what they were up against. I used those men as whet-stones—used them to kick fear out of myself. You notice that I limp a little? That's a legacy from the days of ...
— Swirling Waters • Max Rittenberg
... but the guests. The breakfast was by no means a matter of form. People had evidently come with more serious intentions, than merely to display new bonnets, and trifle with grapes and peaches. Sea-air gives a whet to even a lady's appetite, and if the performances that morning were any criterion of the effects of that of Glyndewi, the new Poor Law Commissioners, in forming their scale of allowances, must really have reported it a "special case." The fair Cambrians, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 54, No. 334, August 1843 • Various
... the state of the national finances is now sufficiently matured to enable you to enter upon a systematic and effectual arrangement for the regular redemption and discharge of the public debt, according to the right which has been reserved to the Government. No measure can be more desirable, whet her viewed with an eye to its intrinsic importance or to the general sentiment ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 1 (of 4) of Volume 1: George Washington • James D. Richardson
... Jim, "but they didn't seem so lively. I don't give them any more than just enough to whet their appetites. At first they sat round the door begging for more, half the morning, and I had to stone them away; now they understand it. In a few minutes, they'll all be off; and you won't see much of any of them till to-morrow morning. They are all on hand then, as ...
— The Hunter Cats of Connorloa • Helen Jackson
... tie combat; and the frequent visits of the whisky bottle to the ugly mouth of their dam I hoped would soon reduce her to a like state. Judge of my astonishment, reader, when I saw this incarnate fiend take a large carving-knife and go to the grindstone to whet its edge. I saw her pour the water on the turning machine, and watched her working away with the dangerous instrument, until the cold sweat covered every part of my body, in spite of my determination to defend myself to the last. Her task finished, ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol. 2 • Charles Dudley Warner
... his favour should flit thee; He quoth that first had it King Heorogar of old, The king of the Scyldings, a long while of time; But no sooner would he give it unto his son, 2160 Heoroward the well-whet, though kind to him were he, This weed of the breast. Do thou brook it full well. On these fretworks, so heard I, four horses therewith, All alike, close followed after the track, Steeds apple-fallow. Fair grace he gave him ...
— The Tale of Beowulf - Sometime King of the Folk of the Weder Geats • Anonymous
... toils are pitched, and the stakes are set,— Ever sing merrily, merrily; The bows they bend, and the knives they whet, ...
— The Lady of the Lake • Sir Walter Scott
... should perceive it else, and sent him home to buy him a nightcap. If I wist there were any such knavery, or Peter Bales's brachygraphy,[58] under Sol's bushy hair, I would have a barber, my host of the Murrion's Head, to be his interpreter, who would whet his razor on his Richmond cap, and give him the terrible cut like himself, but he would come as near as a quart pot to the construction of it. To be sententious, not superfluous, Sol should have been beholding to the barber, and not to the beard-master.[59] Is it pride that is shadowed under ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. VIII (4th edition) • Various
... piles. I have found it after we have had considerable freezing weather. The plants in the figure were frozen when I found them, the 27th of November. Dr. McIlvaine says in his book, "If the collector gets puzzled, as he will, over one or all of these species, because no description fits, he can whet his patience and his appetite by calling it H. perplexum ...
— The Mushroom, Edible and Otherwise - Its Habitat and its Time of Growth • M. E. Hard
... his cloud-hued cloak, and journeyed off to Joetun-heim. On his way to the giant's dwelling he passed by a field where nine ugly thralls were busy making hay. Odin paused for a moment, watching them at their work, and noticing that their scythes seemed very dull indeed, he proposed to whet them, an offer which the thralls ...
— Myths of the Norsemen - From the Eddas and Sagas • H. A. Guerber
... interest the attention of Lord Byron, and to turn him away from worldly associations and topics into more abstract and untrodden ways of thought. As far as contrast, indeed, is an enlivening ingredient of such intercourse, it would be difficult to find two persons more formed to whet each other's faculties by discussion, as on few points of common interest between them did their opinions agree; and that this difference had its root deep in the conformation of their respective minds needs but a glance ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. III - With His Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore
... bright steel, Sons of the White Dragon! Kindle the torch, Daughter of Hengist! The steel glimmers not for the carving of the banquet, It is hard, broad, and sharply pointed; The torch goeth not to the bridal chamber, It steams and glitters blue with sulphur. Whet the steel, the raven croaks! Light the torch, Zernebock is yelling! Whet the steel, sons of the Dragon! Kindle the ...
— Ivanhoe - A Romance • Walter Scott
... story,[72] I have perfect faith in such a master-hand as yours; and I know that what such an artist feels to be terrible and original, is unquestionably so. You whet my interest by what you write of it to the ...
— The Letters of Charles Dickens - Vol. 3 (of 3), 1836-1870 • Charles Dickens
... "You whet my curiosity, monsieur; and, of course, I am a dutiful niece. It follows that I shall be honoured to ...
— Scaramouche - A Romance of the French Revolution • Rafael Sabatini
... that aim at universe-embracing, God-explaining, nature-elucidating, man-illuminating, comprehensiveness, have justly, therefore, become objects of suspicion. The utmost that man can do, placed as he is at obvious disadvantages for obtaining a complete survey of the whole, is to whet his intelligence upon confessedly insoluble problems, to extend the sphere of his practical experience, to improve his dominion over matter, to study the elevation of his moral nature, and to encourage himself for positive ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volumes 1 and 2 - The Catholic Reaction • John Addington Symonds
... going to make it a great affair, a real reunion for all of us. Caterina, helped by two stout colored women, has been cooking all the afternoon, and I hope that you two boys have had enough exercise and excitement to whet ...
— The Sun Of Quebec - A Story of a Great Crisis • Joseph A. Altsheler
... circumstances are made public, it will be generally conceded that few well-authenticated occurrences have ever at first sight seemed less probable. This has actually been advanced as an argument for their suppression; but since enough has already leaked out to whet the public curiosity, and indeed to lead to damaging misconceptions in a city so unused to phenomena other than meteorological, it is considered wisest that the unvarnished facts should be placed in the hands of a scrupulous editor and ...
— The Prodigal Father • J. Storer Clouston
... wanted so much or asked so little. It was the very boundlessness of his desires which reined him in. The appetite of the Caesars would not have represented his, all the gratification they could have commanded would have been for him but a whet. If he had a weak side it was his own astuteness: he could not always see how unutterably foolish a man might be if he were let alone. Another foible he had—intellectual appreciation of beauty pushed to fainting-point. His senses ...
— Little Novels of Italy • Maurice Henry Hewlett
... words did indeed whet his curiosity to the utmost; but the shame of acting the part of an "eavesdropper" was so great that, by a strong effort of will, he drew back, and pondered for a moment what he ought to do. The unexpected tone ...
— Gascoyne, The Sandal Wood Trader - A Tale of the Pacific • R. M. Ballantyne
... manhood even; though now in childhood, she anticipates her youth, and lusts for empire like any czar. Yoomy! judge not yet. Time hath tales to tell. Many books, and many long, long chapters, are wanting to Vivenza's history; and whet history but ...
— Mardi: and A Voyage Thither, Vol. II (of 2) • Herman Melville
... what he had gathered, and so, in order that Boadicea and his daughters should enjoy in peace a portion of his stores, he has left half to Nero. The man was a fool as well as a traitor. The peasant who throws a child out of the door to the wolves knows that it does but whet their appetite for blood, and so it will be in this case. I hear Prasutagus died a week since, though the news has come but slowly, and already a horde of Roman officials have arrived in Norfolk, and are proceeding to make inventories ...
— Beric the Briton - A Story of the Roman Invasion • G. A. Henty
... literary sense,—even in the Boston Public Library, which is admitted to be a model of good sense and wide liberality,—all books are not bought or issued indiscriminately to all readers, irrespective of age and so forth. The necessity for making special application may, in some cases, whet curiosity, but it also, undoubtedly, acts as a check upon unhealthy tastes, even when the book may be publicly purchased. I have heard Russians who did not wholly agree with their own censorship assert, nevertheless, that a strict censure ...
— Russian Rambles • Isabel F. Hapgood
... brings him to a stand still, and as, in such cases, it is not allowed for one to sharpen without the other, he turns to his antagonist, now far ahead, and inquires, in a tone of despair, "When d'ye wiffle-waffle (whet), mate?" "Waffle!" said the farmer, with a well-feigned stare of amazement, "O, about noon mebby." "Then," said the despairing spirit, "That thief of a Christian has done me;" and so saying, he disappeared and was never heard ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 196, July 30, 1853 • Various
... shall not, or thou shall not Kagebahdezid, n. a fool Kenebood, pt. died Kategang, v. to sow or plant Keskahkezhegang, v. to reap Kahgega, adj. eternal Kazhedin, adv. immediately Keahgoonwatum, v. he denied Ketezeh, } adj. old Kekahe, } Kegaung, n. a virgin Kegowh, n. a fish Keskemon, n. a whet-stone Keskeboojegun, n. a saw Kechepezoon, n. a girdle, a sash, a belt Kebeshang, adj. deaf Kepahgah, adj. thick Kebesquang, adj. hoarse Kesahgehenah? Do you love me? Kenahweskewin, n. falsehood Kashahweahyah, adj. ...
— Sketch of Grammar of the Chippeway Languages - To Which is Added a Vocabulary of some of the Most Common Words • John Summerfield
... modest dinner, to which he, a poet, invites his friend Turanius: "If you are suffering from dread of a melancholy dinner at home, or would take a preparatory whet, come and feast with me. You will find no want of Cappadocian lettuces and strong leeks. The tunny will lurk under slices of egg; a cauliflower hot enough to burn your fingers, and which has just left the garden, will be served fresh on a black platter; ...
— The Old Roman World • John Lord
... news to me. I know Mormons. I've seen their women's strange love en' patience en' sacrifice an' silence en' whet I call madness for their idea of God. An' over against that I've seen the tricks of men. They work hand in hand, all together, an' in the dark. No man can hold out against them, unless he takes to packin' guns. ...
— Riders of the Purple Sage • Zane Grey
... said Johannes, pausing to whet his curious knife; "but that's how things are. One lives upon another. Birds, beasts, and fishes, they're all alike. But this will make a noble head when the skin's dressed, and a pair of glass eyes put in, and the whole stuffed out a little. It will ...
— Steve Young • George Manville Fenn
... "Dost thou think King Richard is in that bush?" [73] His cruelty to the Mahometans was the effect of temper and zeal; but I cannot believe that a soldier, so free and fearless in the use of his lance, would have descended to whet a dagger against his valiant brother Conrad of Montferrat, who was slain at Tyre by some secret assassins. [74] After the surrender of Acre, and the departure of Philip, the king of England led the crusaders to the recovery ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 6 • Edward Gibbon
... two lines which are NOT TO BE ANSWERED, just as to say how delighted I am at the result of the doings of the Council of the Royal Society yesterday. Many of us were somewhat doubtful of the result, and the more ferocious sort had begun to whet their beaks and sharpen their claws in preparation for taking a very decided course of action had there been any failure of justice this time. But the affair was settled by a splendid majority, and our ruffled feathers are ...
— The Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley Volume 1 • Leonard Huxley
... when he met us. Sober, aye! But what a light there was in his eyes! He was eager to be at the Huns. Tales of their doings were coming back to us now, faster and faster. They were tales to shock me. But they were tales, too, to whet the courage and sharpen the steel of every man who could fight and ...
— A Minstrel In France • Harry Lauder
... custom which almost universally prevails in the northern parts of Europe, to present a dram or glass of liqueur, before sitting down to dinner: this answers the double purpose of a whet to the appetite, and an announcement that dinner is on the point of being served up. Along with the dram, are presented on a waiter, little square pieces of cheese, slices of cold tongue, dried tongue, and dried toast, accompanied with ...
— The Cook's Oracle; and Housekeeper's Manual • William Kitchiner
... Collis, Ward led Bloom by ryebloom flowered tables. Aimless he chose with agitated aim, bald Pat attending, a table near the door. Be near. At four. Has he forgotten? Perhaps a trick. Not come: whet appetite. I couldn't do. Wait, ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce
... came to the "poor people" he always sighed more deeply than ever, and the refrain then was that bread and porter were so dear that the poor people must starve to feed fat lords, stag-hounds, and priests, and that there was only one remedy. At these words he was wont to whet his razor, and as he drew it murderously up and down the strop, he murmured grimly to himself, ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VI. • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... the sad occurrence it has just been my lot to chronicle—while the general was having his wounds dressed, slight ones, happily, but still he was not safe, as inflammation might ensue—while Mrs. Tracy was indulging in her third tumbler, mixed to whet her appetite for shrimps—and while Emily was deciphering, for the forty thousandth time, Charles's sanguine billet-doux—lo! a dusty chaise and smoking posters, and a sun-burnt young fellow springing out, and just upon the stairs—they were ...
— The Complete Prose Works of Martin Farquhar Tupper • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... killed in the celebration of war expeditions — and the old men got the greater part of the meat. The Igorot is a natural head-hunter, and his training for the last sixty years seems to have done little more for him than whet this appetite. ...
— The Bontoc Igorot • Albert Ernest Jenks
... discussions of Beethoven's works which the public—at all events, our public—demands. We wish his biography,—the history of his life. What has been given us does but whet the appetite. We wish to have the many original sources, still sealed to us, explored, and the results of this labor honestly given us. None of the writers above-mentioned have been in a position to do this, and their publications are but materials for the use of the ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume V, Number 29, March, 1860 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... The picture of yourself, but so defaced, And mangled by proud Spaniards, it would whet A sword to arm the poorest Florentine In your ...
— The Noble Spanish Soldier • Thomas Dekker
... and the stakes are set,— Ever sing merrily, merrily; The bows they bend, and the knives they whet, Hunters live so cheerily. ...
— The Lady of the Lake • Sir Walter Scott
... make thee its god, and set Thy naked presence on the parapet That looks over the seas of future times. Some shall say all our love was vice and crimes. Others against our names, as stones, shall whet The knife of their glad hate of beauty, and make Our name a pillory, a scaffold and a stake Whereon to burn our brothers yet unborn. Yet shall our presence, like eternal morn, Ever return at Beauty's hour, and shine Out of the East of Love, and be the shrine Of future gods that ...
— Antinous: A Poem • Fernando Antonio Nogueira Pessoa
... escaped the attentive eye, that I have, on the title-page, omitted those honorary appendages to the editorial name which not only add greatly to the value of every book, but whet and exacerbate the appetite of the reader. For not only does he surmise that an honorary membership of literary and scientific societies implies a certain amount of necessary distinction on the ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell • James Lowell
... and my next heire: Valoyses lyne ends in my tragedie. Now let the house of Bourbon weare the crowne, And may it never end in bloud as mine hath done. Weep not sweet Navarre, but revenge my death. Ah Epernoune, is this thy love to me? Henry thy King wipes of these childish teares, And bids thee whet thy sword on Sextus bones, That it may keenly slice the Catholicks. He loves me not the best that sheds most teares, But he that makes most lavish of his bloud. Fire Paris where these trecherous rebels lurke. I dye Navarre, come beare ...
— Massacre at Paris • Christopher Marlowe
... with every secondary merit which such a work could possess this is replete; while its faults are only such as were inseparable from the conjunction of such ambitions with such powers. He may whet and wield his blade; but he puts no poison on its edge. He may disparage reverence; but he is not himself irreverent. He may impugn the convictions that most men love; but, while withholding no syllable of dissent and reprehension, he utters not a syllable that ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 11, No. 63, January, 1863 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... pass the afternoon with them, for the heart of me. There was enough in the persons and faces of the two young ladies to set me upon comparisons. Particular features held my attention for a few moments: but these served but to whet my impatience to find the charmer of my soul; who, for person, for air, for mind, never had any equal. My heart recoiled and sickened upon comparing minds and conversation. Pert wit, a too-studied desire to please; each in high good humour with herself; ...
— Clarissa, Volume 7 • Samuel Richardson
... been enraged for any strenuous cause, this incident would have operated merely as a preliminary whet to stimulate them to further bloodshed. But, as they were mostly actuated only by a natural desire for mischief, they were about as well satisfied with what had been done as if the Doctor himself were the victim. And besides, the fathers and ...
— Doctor Grimshawe's Secret - A Romance • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... Asia and around the world are countries whose independence rests, in large measure, on confidence in America's word and in America's protection. To yield to force in Vietnam would weaken that confidence, would undermine the independence of many lands, and would whet the appetite of aggression. We would have to fight in one land, and then we would have to fight in another—or abandon much of Asia to the ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... two days that was all that could be ascertained—just enough to whet curiosity to burning-point. Then in the solitude and seclusion of the ladies' cabin the maid servant became confidential with one of the stewardesses, and narrated, after the manner of maids, her mistress's history as far as she ...
— A Terrible Secret • May Agnes Fleming
... altogether satisfied, (perhaps he is jealous,) and winds up by saying: "For the English language to have been enriched with a national poetry which was not English but American, would have been a treasure beyond price." With which, as whet and foil, we shall proceed to ventilate more definitely certain no ...
— Complete Prose Works - Specimen Days and Collect, November Boughs and Goodbye My Fancy • Walt Whitman
... separate and distinct ancestor had turned me over his knee and lambasted me to his heart's content. In spite of all this discipline, which one would have thought effective enough to take me out of the lists of Parnassus forever, it on the contrary served only to whet my thirst for writing, and from that time until now I have never gotten over my desire to chisel out sonnets, triolets, rondeaux and lyrics of ...
— The Autobiography of Methuselah • John Kendrick Bangs
... word of love between them; and for all that time I believe Will was nearly as happy as a man can be. He rather stinted himself the pleasure of seeing her; and he would often walk half-way over to the parsonage, and then back again, as if to whet his appetite. Indeed, there was one corner of the road, whence he could see the church-spire wedged into a crevice of the valley between sloping fir-woods, with a triangular snatch of plain by way of background, which he greatly affected as a place to sit and moralise in before returning homewards; ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 6 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... most cruel Ogres in the world, who, far from having any pity on them, had already devoured them with his eyes; he told his wife they would be delicate eating, when tossed up with good savoury sauce. He then took a great knife, and coming up to these poor children, whetted it upon a great whet-stone which he held in his left hand. He had already taken hold of one of them, when his wife ...
— The Fairy Tales of Charles Perrault • Charles Perrault
... (Running forward from behind.) O lud! he'll murder my poor boy, my darling! Here, good gentleman, whet your rage upon me. Take my money, my life, but spare that young gentleman; spare my child, if you have ...
— She Stoops to Conquer - or, The Mistakes of a Night. A Comedy. • Oliver Goldsmith
... said Jim, "but they didn't seem so lively. I don't give them any more than just enough to whet their appetites. At first they sat round the door begging for more, half the morning, and I had to stone them away; now they understand it. In a few minutes, they'll all be off; and you won't see much of any of them till ...
— The Hunter Cats of Connorloa • Helen Jackson
... exaggerations. And yet more idle and, if possible, more unintelligent has been the attitude of his express detractors; those who are very fond of dogs, "but in their proper place"; who say "poo' fellow, poo' fellow," and are themselves far poorer; who whet the knife of the vivisectionist or heat his oven; who are not ashamed to admire "the creature's instinct"; and flying far beyond folly, have dared to resuscitate the theory of animal machines. The "dog's instinct" and the "automaton-dog," in this age of psychology ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson, Volume 9 • Robert Louis Stevenson
... the gap Conspicuous by his yellow cap; 550 The rest in lengthening line the while Wind slowly through the long defile: Above, the mountain rears a peak, Where vultures whet the thirsty beak, And theirs may be a feast to-night, Shall tempt them down ere morrow's light; Beneath, a river's wintry stream Has shrunk before the summer beam, And left a channel bleak and bare, Save shrubs ...
— The Works Of Lord Byron, Vol. 3 (of 7) • Lord Byron
... voices and laughter in the drawing-room, and when he went in he found Captain Beausire and Mme. Rosemilly, whom his father had brought home and engaged to dine with them in honor of the good news. Vermouth and absinthe had been served to whet their appetites, and every one had been at once put into good spirits. Captain Beausire, a funny little man who had become quite round by dint of being rolled about at sea, and whose ideas also seemed to have been worn round, like the pebbles of a beach, while he laughed ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume VIII. • Guy de Maupassant
... no theft was this, yours was the sin, I brought again what you unjustly took." This heard, the tyrant did for rage begin To whet his teeth, and bend his frowning look, No pity, youth; fairness, no grace could win; Joy, comfort, hope, the virgin all forsook; Wrath killed remorse, vengeance stopped mercy's breath Love's thrall to hate, and ...
— Jerusalem Delivered • Torquato Tasso
... live! The sight! A burning world! And to be dead and miss it! There's an end Of all satiety: such fire imagine! Born in some obscure alley of the poor, Then leaping to embrace a splendid street, Palaces, temples, morsels that but whet Her appetite: the eating of huge forests: Then with redoubled fury rushing high, Smacking her lips over a continent, And licking old civilisations up! Then in tremendous battle fire and sea Joined: and the ending of the mighty sea: Then heaven in conflagration, stars like cinders ...
— Nero • Stephen Phillips
... cannot leave her love that holds me hateful; Her eyes exact it, though her heart disdains me. See what reward he hath that serves th'ungrateful? So true and loyal love no favour gains me. Still must I whet my young desires abated, Upon the flint of such a heart rebelling; And all in vain; her pride is so innated, She yields no place at all for pity's dwelling. Oft have I told her that my soul did love her, And that with tears; yet all this will ...
— Elizabethan Sonnet-Cycles - Delia - Diana • Samuel Daniel and Henry Constable
... consequent struggle between Will and Power. The former faculty exacted approbation of that which it was considered orthodox to admire; the latter groaned forth its utter inability to pay the tax; it was then self-sneered at, spurred up, goaded on to refine its taste, and whet its zest. The more it was chidden, however, the more it wouldn't praise. Discovering gradually that a wonderful sense of fatigue resulted from these conscientious efforts, I began to reflect whether ...
— Villette • Charlotte Bronte
... their interest in the father, it had only served to whet their keen curiosity over the girl, who, in the intervening eighteen years, had changed from a half-starved, half-clad child that flashed through the thickets like a wild thing, into a long slender-limbed ...
— Once to Every Man • Larry Evans
... generously rewarded by a steady improvement in the general results now attained. Nor is the situation injured by a slight tinge of friendly rivalry among clubs, to lend an additional zest to their labors, and to whet the praiseworthy ambition of each to make every succeeding issue a little better than the last. There are many zealous bibliophiles who belong to two or three book clubs at once, finding it interesting to collect ...
— Book-Lovers, Bibliomaniacs and Book Clubs • Henry H. Harper
... face, a pale green gown and a pair of tan-colored shoes were beginning to whet his curiosity. He wanted to see what the stranger was ...
— Teddy: Her Book - A Story of Sweet Sixteen • Anna Chapin Ray
... Liberty; any thing which can more powerfully excite and awaken in us that Sentiment of Nature which provokes us to Emulation, and the glorious desire of seeing our selves advanc'd above others? Add to this, that the Rewards propos'd in such Governments, whet and perfectly Polish the Orators Wit and make 'em cultivate the Talents Nature has given them; insomuch, that we see the Liberty of their Country shine in their Orations. He goes on, but as for us, who were early taught to endure the Yoke of Domination, and have been, as ...
— Reflections on Dr. Swift's Letter to Harley (1712) and The British Academy (1712) • John Oldmixon
... out, pickets detailed and posted, and the men, too tired even to swear, dropped where they were, and rapidly cooled down in the chilly dew. It was now nearly eleven o'clock, and a half bottle of water was issued, enough merely to whet the consuming thirst which gripped everybody. Tunics were disentangled from the damp congeries on our backs and we had a ...
— The Fifth Battalion Highland Light Infantry in the War 1914-1918 • F.L. Morrison
... the first point, it may be conceded, without deducting much from his sincere zeal in the cause, that the gratification of his thirst of fame, and, above all, perhaps, that supply of excitement so necessary to him, to whet, as it were, the edge of his self-wearing spirit, were not the least of the attractions and incitements which a struggle under the banners of Freedom presented to him. It is also but too certain that, destined as he was to endless disenchantment, from that singular ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. 6 (of 6) - With his Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore
... dinner was near ready, and the four gentlemen took each a large bumper of old hock for another whet. ...
— Pamela (Vol. II.) • Samuel Richardson
... Hamlet has gained some assurance, yet the one chance presented of killing the king—at his prayers—he has refused. He is now in his mother's closet, whose eyes he has turned into her very soul. There, and then, the ghost once more appears—come, he says, to whet his son's almost blunted purpose. But, as I have said, he does not know all the disadvantages of one who, having forsaken the world, has yet business therein to which he would persuade; he does not know how hard it is for a man to give credence to a ghost; how thoroughly ...
— A Dish Of Orts • George MacDonald
... spokesmen of the State in national affairs. This position and these advantages were legacies of the constitution of 1776. The fact that they were in the minority in point of population served only to whet their appetites for more power. On the other hand, the leaders of the western section of the State had fought for twenty-five years to reform the constitution and the laws, to create new counties in order to secure proportionate representation, and to expand ...
— Expansion and Conflict • William E. Dodd
... mild, questioning look upon his face whenever anyone surprised him in the daytime, Solomon Owl was the noisiest of all the different families of owls in Pleasant Valley. There were the barn owls, the long-eared owls, the short-eared owls, the saw-whet owls, the screech owls—but there! there's no use of naming them all. There wasn't one of them that could equal Solomon Owl's laughing and hooting and shrieking and ...
— The Tale of Solomon Owl • Arthur Scott Bailey
... Distinguishable even from Flossy—from Flossy, who had slighted and then reviled her! Why had she ever faltered in her distrust of these enemies of true American society? Yet this lingering sense of torture served to whet her new-found purpose to have done with them forever, and to obtain the recognition and power to which she was entitled, in spite of their impertinence ...
— Unleavened Bread • Robert Grant
... Spain or Portugal, Nay, any where that not adheres to England,— Why, you must needs be strangers: would you be pleased To find a nation of such barbarous temper, That, breaking out in hideous violence, Would not afford you an abode on earth, Whet their detested knives against your throats, Spurn you like dogs, and like as if that God Owed not nor made not you, nor that the claimants Were not all appropriate to your comforts, But chartered unto them, what would you think To be thus used? this is the strangers case; ...
— Sir Thomas More • William Shakespeare [Apocrypha]
... mechanical subjects, or in modelling experimental machines. Amongst his various speculations while at Willington, he tried to discover a means of Perpetual Motion. Although he failed, as so many others had done before him, the very efforts he made tended to whet his inventive faculties, and to call forth his dormant powers. He went so far as to construct the model of a machine for the purpose. It consisted of a wooden wheel, the periphery of which was furnished with glass tubes filled ...
— Lives of the Engineers - The Locomotive. George and Robert Stephenson • Samuel Smiles
... villain's clutches; but both Americans refused to apply to their friends for ransom. Indeed, they did not trust to Raphele's protestations, believing that if any money at all for their release was forthcoming, it would only whet the villain's cupidity and cause Raphele to ...
— Janice Day at Poketown • Helen Beecher Long
... labours, I am learning the language with a native moonshee.) Kalakaua is a terrible companion; a bottle of fizz is like a glass of sherry to him, he thinks nothing of five or six in an afternoon as a whet for dinner. You should see a photograph of our party after an afternoon with H. H. M.: my! what a ...
— Letters of Robert Louis Stevenson - Volume 2 • Robert Louis Stevenson
... are obvious, but what I would infer is this— that in such an age it is possible some great genius may arise to equal any of the ancients, abating only for the language; for great contemporaries whet and cultivate each other, and mutual borrowing and commerce makes the common riches of learning, as it does ...
— Discourses on Satire and Epic Poetry • John Dryden
... marvelous men and women,—some amiable, and some detestable, but every one of them very interesting. And now I miss the wonder of it all. You will presently discover, my dear, that youth is only an ingenious prologue to whet one's appetite for a rather dull play. Eh, I am no pessimist,—one may still find satisfaction in the exercise of mind and body, in the pleasures of thought and taste and in other titillations of one's faculties. Dinner is good and sleep, too, ...
— Gallantry - Dizain des Fetes Galantes • James Branch Cabell
... barley bestow On the child of Apollo, the sleek sable crow; Or a trifle of whet, O kind friends, give;— Or a wee loaf of bread ...
— A Day In Old Athens • William Stearns Davis
... came; the table was cleared and covered with various sorts of prepared dishes—in short, a substantial and sumptuous dinner was served. The collation which had been taken at the commencement, called in the language of the country "Refresco," had been intended only to whet the appetites of the guests ...
— Celebrated Travels and Travellers - Part III. The Great Explorers of the Nineteenth Century • Jules Verne
... to the banquet with this torch in my hand according to custom. But why do you tarry, Blepyrus? Take these young girls with you and, while you are away a while, I will whet my appetite with some dining-song. I have but a few words to say: let the wise judge me because of whatever is wise in this piece, and those who like a laugh by whatever has made them laugh. In this way I address pretty well everyone. If the lot has assigned ...
— The Eleven Comedies - Vol. I • Aristophanes et al
... metal, which is so molten that a stream of it is pouring out of the furnace. Another example of this literal interpretation, is in the Psalter of Edwin, where two men are engaged in sharpening a sword upon a grindstone, in illustration of the text about the wicked, "who whet ...
— Arts and Crafts in the Middle Ages • Julia De Wolf Addison
... behold his face in them. Some of them vpon the necke of their launce haue an hooke, wherewithall they attempt to pull men out of their saddles. The heads of their arrowes are exceedingly sharpe cutting both wayes like a two edged sworde, and they alwaies carie a file in their quiuers to whet their arrowheads. They haue targets made of wickers, or of small reddes. Howbeit they doe not (as we suppose) accustome to carrie them, but onely about the tents or in the Emperours or dukes guards, and that ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques, and Discoveries - Vol. II • Richard Hakluyt
... to this spot had nothing but a misty and spectral outline. It was indefinite in the date, uncertain as to persons, mysterious as to the event,—just such a tradition as to whet the edge of one's curiosity and to leave it hopeless of gratification. I may relate it ...
— Atlantic Monthly Vol. 6, No. 33, July, 1860 • Various
... or no irregular forms. (1.) The following twenty-nine are omitted by this author, as if they were always regular; belay, bet, betide, blend, bless, curse, dive, dress, geld, lean, leap, learn, mulet, pass, pen, plead, prove, rap, reave, roast, seethe, smell, spoil, stave, stay, wake, wed, whet, wont. (2.) The following thirty-four are given by him as being always irregular; abide, bend, beseech, blow, burst, catch, chide, creep, deal, freeze, grind, hang, knit, lade, lay, mean, pay, shake, sleep, ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown
... the deeds that set Old fighters' hearts afire; The edge of every spirit whet, And every arm inspire. Yet I have seen upon his face The tears that, as they roll, Show what a light of saintly grace May clothe a ...
— Successful Recitations • Various
... already done that kindly act for you," I put in, as he paused to take a long breath with which to whet his wrath. ...
— Seek and Find - or The Adventures of a Smart Boy • Oliver Optic
... what's the consequence to me? I've ceased to try and keep track of her. King Mena, too, is lost to me forever, through the over-conscientiousness of our late conductor, who says there never was a Mena, only several kings they've mixed into one. I seem to be the one who's most mixed up! To whet my appetite for Egypt now, I have to have something tasty. Where's the good of stuffing my mind with a string of names which I couldn't mention to any one at home, because I can't pronounce them? The word Dynasty (he pronounced it Die-nasty) makes me sick! Luckily I feel that nobody else will ...
— It Happened in Egypt • C. N. Williamson & A. M. Williamson
... chief passages in Goethe's Faust were exceedingly helpful to me, was very well received, not only on that occasion in Dresden, but later on in other places. Besides this, I made use of the Dresden Anzeiger, by writing all kinds of short and enthusiastic anonymous paragraphs, in order to whet the public taste for a work which hitherto had ...
— My Life, Volume I • Richard Wagner
... bogus firms were indeed forwarded from the offices of delivery to the department as "fictitious" and "undeliverable," and many colluding postmasters were decapitated. Such petty measures of warfare served merely to annoy the vampires and to whet their diabolical ingenuity for the contrivance of new devices. Since the law of 1872 went into effect, however, the scoundrels have been compelled to travel a thorny road. Scores of arrests have been ...
— The Lock and Key Library/Real Life #2 • Julian Hawthorne
... selection serves as a sort of preface to the novel "Vanity Fair." It is quite as remarkable for the things it leaves unsaid as for the things it says. Of course its object is to whet the reader's appetite for the story that is to follow; but throughout the author seems to be laughing at himself. In the last paragraph we see one of the few superlatives to be found In Thackeray—-he says the show has been "most favorably noticed" by the "conductors of the ...
— The Art Of Writing & Speaking The English Language - Word-Study and Composition & Rhetoric • Sherwin Cody
... Why grass is all so glad a green, And leaves—and what their lispings mean;— Why buds grow on the boughs, and why They burst in blossom by and by— As though the orchard in the breeze Had shook and popped its popcorn-trees, To lure and whet, as well they ...
— Green Fields and Running Brooks, and Other Poems • James Whitcomb Riley
... I met oncest at Bent's Fort on the Arkinsaw— a odd sort o' a critter he wur, an no mistake; he us't to go pokin about, gatherin' weeds an' all sorts o' green garbitch, an' spreadin' 'em out atween sheets o' paper—whet he called button-eyesin—jest like thet ur Dutch doctur as wur rubbed out when we went into the Navagh country, ...
— The War Trail - The Hunt of the Wild Horse • Mayne Reid
... needless veil; Let Angiolini bare her breast of snow, Wave the white arm, and point the pliant toe; Collini trill her love-inspiring song, 630 Strain her fair neck, and charm the listening throng! Whet [97] not your scythe, Suppressors of our Vice! Reforming Saints! too delicately nice! By whose decrees, our sinful souls to save, No Sunday tankards foam, no barbers shave; And beer undrawn, and beards unmown, display Your holy reverence for ...
— Byron's Poetical Works, Vol. 1 • Byron
... "austere regimen in scenery"; and such a discipline was then recommended as "healthful and strengthening to the taste." That is the test, so to speak, of the present essay. This discipline in scenery, it must be understood, is something more than a mere walk before breakfast to whet the appetite. For when we are put down in some unsightly neighbourhood, and especially if we have come to be more or less dependent on what we see, we must set ourselves to hunt out beautiful things ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. XXII (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... you; you wish to be revenged. You hope to rise high, and I am to whet your knife, and hold the ladder for you. Poor little man! there, sit down-drink a gulp of milk to cool you, and listen to my advice. Katuti wants a great deal of money to escape dishonor. She need only ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... platters, little casks and vessels; especially to preserve verjuices in, the best of any: Pales are also made of cleft willow, dorsers, fruitbaskets, canns, hives for bees, trenchers, trays, and for polishing and whetting table-knives, the butler will find it above any wood or whet-stone; also for coals, bavin, and excellent firing, not forgetting the fresh boughs, which of all the trees in nature, yield the most chast and coolest shade in the hottest season of the day; and this umbrage so wholsome, that ...
— Sylva, Vol. 1 (of 2) - Or A Discourse of Forest Trees • John Evelyn
... The material iron embraces the metal contained in them all; but we may say, "The cook made the irons hot," referring to flat-irons; or, "The sailor was put in irons" meaning chains of iron. So also we may speak of a glass to drink from or to look into; a steel to whet a knife on; a rubber for erasing marks; ...
— An English Grammar • W. M. Baskervill and J. W. Sewell
... praises of the farmer's life as sound like a lawyer's address before a county-society on a fair-day. Cincinnatus and his plough come in for it; and Fabricius and Curius Dentatus; with which names, luckily, our orators cannot whet their periods, since Columella's mention of them is about all ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XI., April, 1863, No. LXVI. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics. • Various
... bought flowers in common glasses; and the consequent sense of selection, deliberateness, and personality. Good heavens, I reflected, are we mortals so cross-grained that we can thoroughly enjoy things only by contrast, and that a sort of mild starvation is needed to whet our aesthetic appetite? ...
— Hortus Vitae - Essays on the Gardening of Life • Violet Paget, AKA Vernon Lee
... them; for the Lord Jesus will now begin to shew his jealousy, and to make known his indignation towards those that have thus cruelly slain his prophets, digged down his altars, and made such havoc of the afflicted church of God (Isa 66:14). Now will he whet his glittering sword, and his hand shall take hold on vengeance, that he may render a recompence to his enemies, and repay them that hate him ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... upon him; he went on to indite, stroke by stroke, the promised terrible article on Chatelet and Mme. de Bargeton. That morning he experienced one of the keenest personal pleasures of journalism; he knew what it was to forge the epigram, to whet and polish the cold blade to be sheathed in a victim's heart, to make of the hilt a cunning piece of workmanship for the reader to admire. For the public admires the handle, the delicate work of the brain, ...
— Lost Illusions • Honore De Balzac
... heard the note of the whippoorwill, the nocturnal songster that mourns unseen. It was succeeded by the sharp tones of a saw-whet and the distinct mew of a cat-bird. A wild pigeon began to coo softly in another direction and was answered by a thrush. The listener vaguely realized that all this unexpected melody came from the Indians, who had by this time surrounded the house and ...
— The Strollers • Frederic S. Isham
... smell from the simmering syrup. There were long tables down the hall, on which were placed, in a row, first a bowl of snow, then a pile of saucers and spoons, then a plate of pickles, intended to whet the appetite for more syrup; another of bread, then another bowl of snow, and so on. Hot syrup was to be poured on the snow and eaten ...
— The Last of the Peterkins - With Others of Their Kin • Lucretia P. Hale
... resumed the theme, Tim relapsed into a state of most provoking taciturnity, and from answering in monosyllables, came to returning no answers at all, save such as were to be inferred from several grave nods and shrugs, which only served to whet that appetite for intelligence in Nicholas, which had already ...
— The Life And Adventures Of Nicholas Nickleby • Charles Dickens
... "Story of the Steam Engine," "A Brief History of Science," an "Essay on Early Man," "Great Artists," "Secrets of Success," etc. Each little book contained the evening's programme, the words and music of at least two national hymns, and "Owl Talks," a single page of crisp thoughts, to whet one's wits. At the close of each season the twenty pamphlets, continuously paged, were bound for fifty cents in two volumes with covers of red cloth. Thus the people got much for little, and they were benefited and pleased with their ...
— The Harris-Ingram Experiment • Charles E. Bolton
... aged and ailing ones, Elsie inquiring tenderly concerning their "miseries," speaking words of sympathy and consolation and giving additional advice; remedies too, and some little delicacies to whet the sickly appetites (these last being contained in a ...
— Elsie's Motherhood • Martha Finley
... you that ye Take hede vnto the norture that men vse, Newe founden or Auncient whet[h]er hit be, 437 So shall no man youre curteyse refuse; The guise and custome shall you, my childe, excuse; Mennys werkys haue often entirchaunge, That nowe is norture, sumtyme had ben ...
— Caxton's Book of Curtesye • Frederick J. Furnivall
... army is as great as his, That, from the bounds of Phrygia to the sea Which washeth Cyprus with his brinish waves, Covers the hills, the valleys, and the plains. Viceroys and peers of Turkey, play the men; Whet all your [158] swords to mangle Tamburlaine, His sons, his captains, and his followers: By Mahomet, not one of them shall live! The field wherein this battle shall be fought For ever term'd [159] the Persians' sepulchre, In memory ...
— Tamburlaine the Great, Part II. • Christopher Marlowe
... the intellect of superior men and to inspire the eloquence of orators. That a set of people on the other side was professing to do the same things, with totally different and utterly wrong notions of the results to be obtained, afforded the whet of antagonism, and let in dialectic and partisanship as a seasoning to relieve the high severity of the main topic. Quisante's personal relations with the Church had never been intimate; he was perhaps the better able to lay hold ...
— Quisante • Anthony Hope
... like to tell you, but perhaps I had better. I have only just found out that a sewer-trap quite close to his shop gives out a most offensive affluvia, especially in this hot weather. The air must be full of germs. I hardly know whet her we ought to eat even this loaf. What do ...
— The Town Traveller • George Gissing
... faithfully promise to keep the whole work sacred to your credit. And if ever I go into print—which is most unlikely—I'll refer to this essay in such a way as to whet public curiosity to a feather edge. Again, if anything should happen to this copy, you'll have ...
— Such is Life • Joseph Furphy
... Frank had to go over the whole story again for the benefit of Janet, who had heard enough about it from the doctor before her brother came down to whet ...
— The Aeroplane Boys on the Wing - Aeroplane Chums in the Tropics • John Luther Langworthy
... charge, with many injunctions as to their safe-keeping, he went off to forage for the coffee, and presently returned, having been moderately successful. One egg apiece was hardly enough, however, to appease the craving of two strong men ravenous from long fasting. Indeed, it seemed only to whet the appetite, and we both set out on an eager expedition for more food. Before going far I had the good luck to meet a sutler's wagon, and though its stock was about all sold, there were still left four large ...
— Memoirs of Three Civil War Generals, Complete • U. S. Grant, W. T. Sherman, P. H. Sheridan
... his time waiting for the leisurely distribution of the mails to be completed. She usually wore a grey bicycle suit, and she was invariably attended by a small grey dog who took unwarrantable liberties, in the post office, with people's trouser legs and even had been known to whet his teeth on the softer portions of umbrellas. To tell the truth, he paid more attention to the dog than he did to the girl; and he was utterly unconscious of the expression of glee that crossed Cicely's face, one day, when ...
— Phebe, Her Profession - A Sequel to Teddy: Her Book • Anna Chapin Ray
... banished the kingdom, within fourteen days, unless such Tories were killed, or surrendered, within that time. Where this device failed to reach the destined victims—as in the celebrated case of Count Redmond O'Hanlon—it is to be feared that he did not hesitate to whet the dagger of the assassin, which was still sometimes employed, even in the British Islands, to remove a dangerous antagonist. Count O'Hanlon, a gentleman of ancient lineage, as accomplished as Orrery, or Ossory, was indeed an outlaw to the code then in force; but the ...
— A Popular History of Ireland - From the earliest period to the emancipation of the Catholics • Thomas D'Arcy McGee
... their desert, and are irritably conscious of a hunter's camp in an adjacent county. To these last, of course, Fontainebleau will seem but an extended tea-garden: a Rosherville on a by-day. But to the plain man it offers solitude: an excellent thing in itself, and a good whet for company. ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 16 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... cannot hear the voices saying: 'Where is the enemy? On, on, for God, the Kaiser, and the Fatherland!'" Even Goethe's Wilhelm Meister, who is, according to Bettina, merely a supine hero, fails to elude her electric grasp: "Come, flee with me across the Alps to the Tyrolese. There will we whet our swords and forget thy rabble of comedians; and as for all thy darling mistresses, they ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VII. • Various
... the distribution of the "Sabbathfruit," would endanger the stability of the dish by vigorous tugging at the table-cloth, and elicit the reproof suggested by our reading: "You are a veritable Sambation!"—Aristotle, Pliny, Olympia, Cyrene, "Yosippon," and grandam—all unite to whet ...
— Jewish Literature and Other Essays • Gustav Karpeles
... the sceptic whet his scythe, Thy beauties to deplore; So shall I love them fonder still, ...
— A Leaf from the Old Forest • J. D. Cossar
... art right, gentle mother; albeit I did sorely long to give the varlet a lesson to teach him better. But perchance it was well I was not nigh enough. Surely it must be nigh upon the hour for dinner. Our sport has whet the edge of appetite, and I would fain hear what the missive was which yon knave brought with him. Our father will doubtless ...
— The Secret Chamber at Chad • Evelyn Everett-Green
... and fountain, its associations, and even its eatables; for some travellers have dwelt on the subject of its excellent bisque, or crayfish soup, and its eels, a solace, no doubt, to[34] that gentle degree of melancholy, which Fielding affirms to be a whet to ...
— Itinerary of Provence and the Rhone - Made During the Year 1819 • John Hughes
... within the Admiral's chest, in canvas bags, rested not a little treasure for Queen Isabella and King Ferdinand. And though it was forbidden, I knew that many of our seamen hid gold. All told we found enough to whet appetite. But still the Indians said south, ...
— 1492 • Mary Johnston
... Hammergray, Soon he stood by Vidrik knight: "Whet your spears, and sharp your swords, For the King is ...
— Ulf Van Yern - and Other Ballads • Thomas J. Wise
... nothing," Iglesias repeated, "whether vital as of those far-away southern battle-fields, or fictitious and close at hand as of the stage. Not even the sting of poverty to whet appetite and give an edge to bodily hunger. Nothing, either of fear or of hope. The measure of my obscurity is the measure of my immunity from change of fortune, bad or good. I am worthless even as food for powder. ...
— The Far Horizon • Lucas Malet
... the three secret cities. They are secret because we have taken pains to keep them so. One is in Germany, one in Russia, and one in China. A casual traveller could discover little in the German one, and little more, perhaps, in the Russian one. Enough to whet his curiosity, and no more. But in China there is the whole secret at the mercy of a successful spy. A man ...
— The Great Prince Shan • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... restraint he put upon his voice rippled it, "John, don't tamper with the affections of an old and infirm man. Drive me off the bayou plantation, compel me to acknowledge and to feel that I am a hypercrite and a liar, but don't whet a sentiment and then cut my throat with it. Be merciful unto a sinner ...
— An Arkansas Planter • Opie Percival Read
... Show'd on the lips of that malicious churl, To think what noble havocs he had made; So that I fear'd he all at once would hurl The harmless fairies into endless shade,— Howbeit he stopp'd awhile to whet ...
— The Poetical Works of Thomas Hood • Thomas Hood
... in London, had been placed over the heads of a dozen others, who had been there before him, &c., &c., &c. And then Mr. Nogo ended with so vehement an attack on Sir Gregory, and the Government as connected with him, that the dogs began to whet their teeth and prepare for a tug at ...
— The Three Clerks • Anthony Trollope
... of this great army be called, and could they come up from the dead, what eye could endure the reeking, festering putrefaction? What heart could endure the groan of agony? Drunkenness! Does it not jingle the burglar's key? Does it not whet the assassin's knife? Does it not cock the highwayman's pistol? Does it not wave the incendiary's torch? Has it not sent the physician reeling into the sick-room; and the minister with his tongue thick into the pulpit? Did not an exquisite poet, from the very top of his fame, fall ...
— The world's great sermons, Volume 8 - Talmage to Knox Little • Grenville Kleiser
... dispute for mee and tell him why, This heart, hand, minde, hath mark'd him out to die: If it be true that furies quench-les thirst, Is pleas'd with quaffing of ambitious bloud, Then all you deuills whet my Poniards point, And I wil broach you a bloud-sucking heart: 1580 Which full of bloud, must bloud store to you yeeld, Were it a peerce to flint or marble stone: Why so it is for Caesars heart's a stone, Els would bee mooued with my Countries mone. They say you furies ...
— The Tragedy Of Caesar's Revenge • Anonymous
... the Count's entreaties they only replied by hints of the difficulty or impropriety of summoning the spirits in the presence of a stranger; or of one who might, perchance, have no other motive than the gratification of a vain curiosity: but they only meant to whet the edge of his appetite by this delay, and would have been sorry indeed if the Count had been discouraged. To show how exclusively the thoughts both of Dee and Kelly were fixed upon their dupe, at this time, it is only necessary ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions - Vol. I • Charles Mackay
... gorged herself at a private luncheon. If meat is, as we are told, so plentiful that it will last for five weeks more, the mode in which it is distributed is radically bad. While at a large popular restaurant, where hundreds of the middle classes dine, each person only gets enough cat or horse to whet his appetite for more; in the expensive cafes on the Boulevards, feasts worthy of Lucullus are still served to those who are ready to part with their money with the proverbial readiness of fools. Far more practical, my worthy Republicans, would it ...
— Diary of the Besieged Resident in Paris • Henry Labouchere
... well; the only thing for which he is to blame is that he spoilt his wife. To be sure he married for love; and from such love-matches no good ever comes," added the old lady, casting a side glance at Maria Dmitrievna. Then, standing up, she added: "But now you can whet your teeth on whom you will; on me, if you like. I'm off. I won't hinder you any longer." And with ...
— Liza - "A nest of nobles" • Ivan Sergeevich Turgenev
... and full of play put forth claw, and sting, and tooth, and tusk. Birds whet their beak for prey. Clouds troop in the sky. Sharp thorns shoot up through the soft grass. Blastings on the leaves. All the chords of that great harmony are snapped. Upon the brightest home this world ever saw our first parents turned their back ...
— The Wedding Ring - A Series of Discourses for Husbands and Wives and Those - Contemplating Matrimony • T. De Witt Talmage
... a step farther and the goal is won—the object of inquiry is found. I suppose it will be admitted that the language which supplies the meaning of a word has the fairest claim to be considered its parent language. What, then, is the meaning of "Hurrah," and in whet language? As a reply to this Query, allow me to quote a writer in Blackwood's Magazine, ...
— Notes and Queries, No. 209, October 29 1853 • Various
... mouth will find the water," rejoined Nancy; "but, however, singing is dry work, and I am provided. Pass my basket aft, old gentleman, and we will find Mr Salisbury something with which to whet his whistle." The boatman handed the basket to Nancy, who pulled out a bottle and glass, which she ...
— Snarleyyow • Captain Frederick Marryat
... right where the caribou fell. It was an ideal spot on the high bank above the river, being flat and thickly covered with white moss. The banks at this point were all sand drift; we could not find a stone large enough to whet our knives. George made a stage for drying while Hubbard and I dressed the deer. Our work finished, we all sat down and roasted steaks on sticks and drank coffee. The knowledge that we were now assured of a good stock of dried meat, of course, added to the hilarity of feast. As ...
— The Lure of the Labrador Wild • Dillon Wallace
... who faces death, Who singly against worlds has fought, For what? A name he may not breathe, For liberty of prayer and thought. The angry sword he will not whet, His nobler task ...
— The Poems of Emma Lazarus - Vol. II. (of II.), Jewish Poems: Translations • Emma Lazarus
... shares in one of those unlucky banks; and so it fell upon him one morning like a clap of thunder that he was responsible for about as much as the acres of Whitethorn would retrieve, besides the trifling morsel to whet his appetite in the loss of his loose thousands. Harry Jardine was likely to know himself as "landless, landless," as ...
— Girlhood and Womanhood - The Story of some Fortunes and Misfortunes • Sarah Tytler
... innocent, much less from wholesome and useful pleasure, such as human life doth need or require. And if jocular discourse may serve to good purposes of this kind; if it may be apt to raise our drooping spirits, to allay our irksome cares, to whet our blunted industry, to recreate our minds being tired and cloyed with graver occupations; if it may breed alacrity, or maintain good humour among us; if it may conduce to sweeten conversation and endear society; then is it not inconvenient, or ...
— Sermons on Evil-Speaking • Isaac Barrow
... the army in particular. I had like to have been in the army myself once; but I liked the commission I have better. Come, captain, let not your noble courage be cast down; what say you to a glass of white wine, or a tiff of punch, by way of whet?" ...
— Amelia (Complete) • Henry Fielding
... to flattery as deftly as the best of them. It was an art at which his tongue was wonderfully facile, considering the fact that he mingled so seldom with men in the outside doings of life. His wits had no foil to whet against and grow sharp, save the hard substance of his own inflexible nature, for he was born with that shrewd faculty for taking men "on the blind side," as they used to call that ...
— The Bondboy • George W. (George Washington) Ogden
... killed, as these are, and not only stunned. Moreover, most of yonder dead wear knives which should have melted or shattered with the sheaths burnt off them. Yet those knives are as though they had just left the smith's hammer and the whet-stone," and he drew some of ...
— She and Allan • H. Rider Haggard
... credit of one's manhood, is not often repeated. And while it was telling, Jack "sat tight" and listened, storing up every vile word and every monstrous detail in his mind that he might have something to whet his vengeance upon when the time for vengeance should come. But his agitation was so evident, his distress so poignant, that Alvaros thought it would be very good fun to direct public attention to it; so, feigning ...
— The Cruise of the Thetis - A Tale of the Cuban Insurrection • Harry Collingwood
... into too much detail, let me try to explain it to you. This settlement of my affairs that you speak of was forcibly done by the courts, in the interest of others, and to my great injury. The rascals set out to cut my throat—was it required of me to whet the knife for them? They set out to strip me of the last penny I had, and they had every advantage, despotic powers, with complete access to all my private papers. If the robbers overlooked something that I had, a bagatelle I needed for the days ...
— Queed • Henry Sydnor Harrison
... playing at push-pin, or riding astride on a hobby-horse. For how unjust is it, if when we allow different recreations to each particular course of life, we afford no diversion to studies; especially when trifles may be a whet to more serious thoughts, and comical matters may be so treated of, as that a reader of ordinary sense may possibly thence reap more advantage than from some more big and stately argument: as while one in a long-winded oration descants in commendation ...
— In Praise of Folly - Illustrated with Many Curious Cuts • Desiderius Erasmus
... knowledge of all that has taken place since Aubert raised his humble chapel upon the lonely rock. Who does not know that sense of annoyance at being conducted over some historic building by a professional guide who mentions names and events that just whet the appetite and then leave a hungry feeling for want of any surrounding details or contemporary events which one knows would convert the mere "sight" into holy ground. I submit that a French guide, a French hand-book ...
— Normandy, Complete - The Scenery & Romance Of Its Ancient Towns • Gordon Home
... findeth them wanting in those Ancient ones, and that doth not much more admire that smoothly equall neatnesse, continued sweetnesse, and flourishing comelinesse of Catullus his Epigrams, than all the sharpe quips and witty girds wherewith Martiall doth whet and embellish the conclusions of his. It is the same reason I spake of erewhile, as Martiall of himselfe. Minus illi ingenio laborandum fuit, in cuius locum materia successerat. [Footnote: Mart. Praf. 1. viii.] "He needed the lesse worke with his wit, in place whereof matter came in supply." The ...
— Literary and Philosophical Essays • Various
... "There wait they within that would snare me; There whet they their swords for my slaying. My bane they shall be not, the cowards, The brood of the churl and the carline. Let the twain of them find me and fight me In the field, without shelter to shield them, And ewes of the ...
— The Life and Death of Cormac the Skald • Unknown
... weapon out of Nature's hand; they have peppered away at the poor ill-used stomach with drugs and draughts, not very deleterious I grant you, but all more or less indigestible, and all tending, not to whet the appetite, but to clog the stomach, or turn the stomach, or pester the stomach, and so impair the appetite, and so ...
— A Simpleton • Charles Reade
... full of fish and watching them handled with a pitch fork as a man tosses hay didn't whet our appetites any, but when we remembered that it was these same fish—a day or two older,—for which we had been paying double the price charged for them here the difference overcame our scruples. The men ...
— One Way Out - A Middle-class New-Englander Emigrates to America • William Carleton
... adventure. One morning, about a day's ride from his destination, he met two gay cavaliers, with finely caparisoned horses, speeding on their way to Paris. They saw the dust-stained horse, and dustier rider, and, thinking it would be fine sport to whet their blades on his clumsy ...
— Marguerite De Roberval - A Romance of the Days of Jacques Cartier • T. G. Marquis
... Kona's sea whet my joy, Clouds that drop fain in fair weather. The clustered dew-pearls shake to the ground; The boys drone out the na-u to the West, 5 Eager for Sol ...
— Unwritten Literature of Hawaii - The Sacred Songs of the Hula • Nathaniel Bright Emerson
... spurned so hard that both his feet went through the boat and he stood on the bottom of the sea. He pulled the serpent up to the gunwale; and in truth no one has ever seen a more terrible sight than when Thor whet his eyes on the serpent, and the latter stared at him and spouted venom. It is said that the giant Hymer changed hue and grew pale from fear when he saw the serpent and beheld the water flowing into the boat; but just at the moment when Thor grasped the hammer and lifted ...
— The Younger Edda - Also called Snorre's Edda, or The Prose Edda • Snorre
... was Saturday—a day on which I rarely saw her, as it was my habit to spend all Sunday with her. I was always somewhat an epicure in my moral nature. I liked to pet my inclinations, as I have seen good livers whet their appetites, by self-denial. ...
— Told in a French Garden - August, 1914 • Mildred Aldrich
... skipper, "place half a bottle of claret near Mr Rattlin. When your throat is dry, younker, you can whet your whistle; and when you come to any particular fine paragraph, you may wash it down ...
— Rattlin the Reefer • Edward Howard
... the university is to develop character—to make men. It misses its aim if it produces learned pedants, or simple artisans, or cunning sophists, or pretentious practitioners. Its purport is not so much to impart knowledge to the pupils, as to whet the appetite, exhibit methods, develop powers, strengthen judgment, and invigorate the intellectual and moral forces. It should prepare for the service of society a class of students who will be wise, thoughtful, progressive guides in whatever ...
— The History Of University Education In Maryland • Bernard Christian Steiner
... approval it was plain the captain agreed with every interruption, and they seemed to whet his interest in the story he had ...
— The Girl Scouts at Sea Crest - The Wig Wag Rescue • Lillian Garis
... court, but very seldom in his shop, or waiting on his customers; and the other, they say, lies a-bed till eleven o'clock every day, just comes into the shop and shows himself, then stalks about to the tavern to take a whet, then to Child's coffee-house to hear the news, comes home to dinner at one, takes a long sleep in his chair after it, and about four o'clock comes into the shop for half an hour, or thereabouts, then to the tavern, where he stays till two in the morning, gets drunk, and is led home ...
— The Complete English Tradesman (1839 ed.) • Daniel Defoe
... before the tortured fellow had told him what he saw in the rose-house. Strangely enough, the thought of his fiancee leaning on the shoulder of another man did not in the least diminish the ardor of Offitt. His passion was entirely free from respect or good-will. He used the story to whet the edge of Sam's hatred ...
— The Bread-winners - A Social Study • John Hay
... these changes to get the kinks out of our minds, our nerves, our muscles—the cobwebs off our faces. We need them to whet again the edge of appetite. We need them to invite the mind and the soul to new possibilities and powers. We need them in order to come back with new implements, or with implements redressed, sharpened, for ...
— Thoughts I Met on the Highway • Ralph Waldo Trine
... The whet administered, I was left alone for a little in the monastery garden. This is no more than the main court, laid out in sandy paths and beds of parti-coloured dahlias, and with a fountain and a black statue of the Virgin in the centre. The buildings stand around ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition - Vol. 1 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... it—designed to trap people's minds, keep them from thinking of anything but a gossamer, useless pursuit of personal pleasure. And wasn't the design faulty when everyone was bored, when some chose Departure and others sank to the unnatural practice of protection to whet their ...
— DP • Arthur Dekker Savage
... you and I are in the business ourselves. Every now and then we carry our ax to somebody and ask a whet. I don't carry mine to strangers—I draw the line there; perhaps that is your way. This is bound to set us up on a high and holy pinnacle and make us look down in cold rebuke on persons who carry their axes ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... and he assumed that she was merely one of the proteges of the mysterious wealthy backers of that unusual enterprise. He thought it very good business indeed that the clever young woman had known enough to disappear for a brief time that she might whet her audiences' appetite while she let her agents lift her prices. It didn't at all occur to him that she was actually abandoning such a career as her extraordinary success seemed to foretell. He had in mind ...
— Little Miss By-The-Day • Lucille Van Slyke
... He nears me! It is ARTHUR's pet. Light ladder this; would capsize in a jiffy. His bristles he'd scrape and his tusks he would whet Against it, I wish he were drowned in the Liffey! Whisht! Get away! He's so heavy and big. There! round the ladder he's playing the fooler. Ah! there's the rub. PATRICK scumfish that Pig! If he doesn't mean deviltry I'm a—Home ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Volume 102, January 16, 1892 • Various
... Louis XV. when he heard it. [Raumer, Beitrage (English Translation, called Frederick II. and his Times; from British Museum and State-Paper Office:—a very indistinct poor Book, in comparison with whet it might have been), p. 73 ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XII. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... but whet our zeal. You think of the campaign. Well, let it come. It was not I who first unsheathed the sword. I would have willingly prolonged the truce, And willingly have knit a closer bond, A lasting one—have given to my Sittah A husband worthy of her, ...
— Nathan the Wise • Gotthold Ephraim Lessing
... flood got us. Me and my wife here, we whet away and stayed two months. Was 5 feet in this house, and if it ever gets in here agin, we're goin down in Kentucky and never comin' back ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States - From Interviews with Former Slaves: Indiana Narratives • Works Projects Administration
... and see the professor taking a whet out of a bottle. I didn't like the looks of that. By and by he took another drink, and pretty soon he begun to sing. It was dark now, and getting black and stormy. He went on singing, wilder and wilder, and the thunder begun to mutter, and the wind to wheeze ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... shew you, Madam, The picture of your selfe, but so defac'd And mangled by proud Spanyards it woo'd whet A sword to arme the poorest Florentine In your ...
— Old English Plays, Vol. I - A Collection of Old English Plays • Various
... razor best is whet, So wit is by politeness sharpest set; Their want of edge from their offence is seen, Both pain the heart when ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 4 (of 4) • Various
... no more. These words did indeed whet his curiosity to the utmost, but the shame of acting the part of an "eavesdropper" was so great that, by a strong effort of will, he drew back and pondered for a moment what he ought to do. The unexpected tone and tenor of Gascoyne's remark had softened him slightly; ...
— Gascoyne, the Sandal-Wood Trader • R.M. Ballantyne
... the tables only, but the guests. The breakfast was by no means a matter of form. People had evidently come with more serious intentions, than merely to display new bonnets, and trifle with grapes and peaches. Sea-air gives a whet to even a lady's appetite, and if the performances that morning were any criterion of the effects of that of Glyndewi, the new Poor Law Commissioners, in forming their scale of allowances, must really have reported it a "special case." The fair ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 54, No. 334, August 1843 • Various
... appearance, the reverse. For pots, Venucule grapes the best may suit: For drying, Albans are your safer fruit. 'Twas I who first, authorities declare, Served grapes with apples, lees with caviare, White pepper with black salt, and had them set Before each diner as his private whet. ...
— The Satires, Epistles, and Art of Poetry • Horace
... he could do the deeds that set Old fighters' hearts afire; The edge of every spirit whet, And every arm inspire. Yet I have seen upon his face The tears that, as they roll, Show what a light of saintly grace May clothe ...
— Successful Recitations • Various
... Little by little we collected gold. By now, within the Admiral's chest, in canvas bags, rested not a little treasure for Queen Isabella and King Ferdinand. And though it was forbidden, I knew that many of our seamen hid gold. All told we found enough to whet appetite. But still the Indians said ...
— 1492 • Mary Johnston
... way. And what's the consequence to me? I've ceased to try and keep track of her. King Mena, too, is lost to me forever, through the over-conscientiousness of our late conductor, who says there never was a Mena, only several kings they've mixed into one. I seem to be the one who's most mixed up! To whet my appetite for Egypt now, I have to have something tasty. Where's the good of stuffing my mind with a string of names which I couldn't mention to any one at home, because I can't pronounce them? The word Dynasty ...
— It Happened in Egypt • C. N. Williamson & A. M. Williamson
... mob really been enraged for any strenuous cause, this incident would have operated merely as a preliminary whet to stimulate them to further bloodshed. But, as they were mostly actuated only by a natural desire for mischief, they were about as well satisfied with what had been done as if the Doctor himself were the victim. And besides, the fathers and respectabilities ...
— Doctor Grimshawe's Secret - A Romance • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... difficulty; a step farther and the goal is won—the object of inquiry is found. I suppose it will be admitted that the language which supplies the meaning of a word has the fairest claim to be considered its parent language. What, then, is the meaning of "Hurrah," and in whet language? As a reply to this Query, allow me to quote a writer in Blackwood's Magazine, ...
— Notes and Queries, No. 209, October 29 1853 • Various
... therewithal bade me, That I first of all of his favour should flit thee; He quoth that first had it King Heorogar of old, The king of the Scyldings, a long while of time; But no sooner would he give it unto his son, 2160 Heoroward the well-whet, though kind to him were he, This weed of the breast. Do thou brook it full well. On these fretworks, so heard I, four horses therewith, All alike, close followed after the track, Steeds apple-fallow. Fair grace he gave him Of horses and treasures. E'en thus shall ...
— The Tale of Beowulf - Sometime King of the Folk of the Weder Geats • Anonymous
... Artists," "Secrets of Success," etc. Each little book contained the evening's programme, the words and music of at least two national hymns, and "Owl Talks," a single page of crisp thoughts, to whet one's wits. At the close of each season the twenty pamphlets, continuously paged, were bound for fifty cents in two volumes with covers of red cloth. Thus the people got much for little, and they were benefited and pleased with their bargain. Encores and the discourtesy of stamping the feet ...
— The Harris-Ingram Experiment • Charles E. Bolton
... be to devote the whole of my paper to Richard of Bury. I must, however, content myself with one other noble extract, which, I hope, will whet my reader's appetite for more: "Moses, the gentlest of men, teaches us to make bookcases most neatly, wherein they [books] may be protected from any injury. Take, he says, this book of the Law and put it in the side of the Ark of ...
— The Book of Delight and Other Papers • Israel Abrahams
... deserve no credit—Flamininus, whose restless vanity sought after new opportunities for great achievements, undertook on his own part to deliver Rome from Hannibal as he had delivered the Greeks from their chains, and, if not to wield—which was not diplomatic—at any rate to whet and to point, the dagger against the greatest man of his time. Prusias, the most pitiful among the pitiful princes of Asia, was delighted to grant the little favour which the Roman envoy in ambiguous terms requested; and, when Hannibal saw ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen
... is high renown, and flight is shame! If any man shall hearken to the words Of this thy counsel, I will smite from him His head with sharp blue steel, and hurl it down For soaring kites to feast on. Up! all ye Who care to enkindle men to battle: rouse Our warriors all throughout the fleet to whet The spear, to burnish corslet, helm and shield; And cause both man and horse, all which be keen In fight, to break their fast. Then in yon plain Who is the ...
— The Fall of Troy • Smyrnaeus Quintus
... said, and the restraint he put upon his voice rippled it, "John, don't tamper with the affections of an old and infirm man. Drive me off the bayou plantation, compel me to acknowledge and to feel that I am a hypercrite and a liar, but don't whet a sentiment and then cut my throat with it. Be merciful unto a sinner who ...
— An Arkansas Planter • Opie Percival Read
... are, and not only stunned. Moreover, most of yonder dead wear knives which should have melted or shattered with the sheaths burnt off them. Yet those knives are as though they had just left the smith's hammer and the whet-stone," and he drew some of them ...
— She and Allan • H. Rider Haggard
... she saw the spectres of Goody Nurse and Goody Carrier having hold of the head of the sick man. The testimony of Mr. Parris was given in a calm and deliberate manner calculated to impress the jury with truth. Never did an assassin whet his dagger with more coolness or with more malice drive it to the heart of his victim, than did this sanctimonious villain weave the net ...
— The Witch of Salem - or Credulity Run Mad • John R. Musick
... out to-day. Well, I am content. But what to do for company? Mother is well enough, Aunt Susan is well enough; but these, like the poor, I have with me always. On so grim a day as this, one needs a new interest, a fresh element, to whet the dull edge of captivity. That was very neatly said, but it doesn't mean anything. One doesn't want the edge of captivity sharpened up, you ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... eloquence fell on deaf ears; or rather, as the captain said, all his reasons did but whet my eagerness until I fairly tingled with the imagined delight of matching myself against the hostility of the elements and man. And so he at last desisted, and gave a grudging compliance to my purpose; ...
— Humphrey Bold - A Story of the Times of Benbow • Herbert Strang
... they knew where to find me; but I shall baffle you, you villains. My post-town is fifty miles from the place where I pursue my theological studies; you are too wise to attempt a wild-goose chase. You may smack your chaps, Barney, with envy; bite them too if you please, and it will only whet my own sense of pleasure to fancy your confusion, and your hopeless denunciations in the club. I shall be back in time for term—meanwhile get the papers in readiness. Write to me at the post-town of Ellisland, and remember ...
— Charlemont • W. Gilmore Simms
... not depend for its existence upon the eyes that look upon it, I should want to give more to my hero than love and beauty. I should want to give him help in the battle of life, Henry. I should want to buckle on his armour, and sharpen the point of his lance, and whet the edge of his sword; a rich man's armour is bank-notes, and Winnie knows nothing of such paper. His spear, I am told, is a bullion bar, and Winnie's fingers scarcely know the touch ...
— Aylwin • Theodore Watts-Dunton
... he, "to study only those portions of our holy literature on which they can whet their ingenuity. But from all writings which would promote piety and fear of God he ...
— Dreamers of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... there are epithets That suit with any word— As well as Harvey's Reading Sauce With fish, or flesh, or bird. Such epithets, like pepper, Give zest to what you write; And, if you strew them sparely, They whet the appetite; But if you lay them on too thick, You spoil the ...
— A Nonsense Anthology • Collected by Carolyn Wells
... meads, And fens of Scythia green with rustling reeds; From where the Danube winds through many a land, And Mareotis laves the Egyptian strand, To rendezvous they waft on eager wing, And wait assembled the returning spring. Meanwhile they trim their plumes for length of flight, Whet their keen beaks, and twisting claws, for fight; Each crane the pygmy power in thought o'erturns, And every bosom for the battle burns. When genial gales the frozen air unbind, The screaming legions wheel, and mount the wind. Far ...
— The Minstrel; or the Progress of Genius - with some other poems • James Beattie
... familiar with the history of my case. But this man, who had tried to induce me to speak when delusions had tied my tongue, now, when I was at last willing talk, would scarcely condescend to listen; and what seemed to me his studied and ill-disguised avoidance only served to whet my desire to detain him ...
— A Mind That Found Itself - An Autobiography • Clifford Whittingham Beers
... woke Ausonia from her sleep. Forth swarm Footmen and horsemen, and in wild career Whirl up the dust. "Arm," cry the warriors, "arm!" With unctuous lard their polished shields they smear, And whet the axe, and scour the rusty spear. Their banners wave, their trumpets sound the fight. Five towns their anvils for the war uprear, Crustumium, Tibur, glorying in her might, Ardea, ...
— The Aeneid of Virgil - Translated into English Verse by E. Fairfax Taylor • Virgil
... just dedicated to the German people. When their passions had been excited to the highest pitch by dreams of victory, by wine and soul-stirring songs, they went in the evening to the residence of the French minister to whet their sword- blades on the pavement ...
— LOUISA OF PRUSSIA AND HER TIMES • Louise Muhlbach
... churchyard stile; The walls in tumbling gave a knock, And thus the steeple got a shock; From whence the neighbouring farmer calls The steeple, Knock; the vicar, Walls.[2] The vicar once a-week creeps in, Sits with his knees up to his chin; Here cons his notes, and takes a whet, Till the small ragged flock is met. A traveller, who by did pass, Observed the roof behind the grass; On tiptoe stood, and rear'd his snout, And saw the parson creeping out: Was much surprised to see a crow Venture to build his nest so low. A schoolboy ran unto't, and thought The crib ...
— The Poems of Jonathan Swift, D.D., Volume I (of 2) • Jonathan Swift
... seldom enters into the food of European nations, except the swine, the Soland goose (Pelicanus Bassanus), and formerly the swan. Of these the swine and the swan are fed previously upon vegetable aliment; and the Soland goose is taken in very small quantity, only as a whet to the appetite. Next to these are the birds, that feed upon insects, which are perhaps the most stimulating and the most nutritive of our ...
— Zoonomia, Vol. II - Or, the Laws of Organic Life • Erasmus Darwin
... metal contained in them all; but we may say, "The cook made the irons hot," referring to flat-irons; or, "The sailor was put in irons" meaning chains of iron. So also we may speak of a glass to drink from or to look into; a steel to whet a knife on; a rubber for erasing marks; ...
— An English Grammar • W. M. Baskervill and J. W. Sewell
... off to forage for the coffee, and presently returned, having been moderately successful. One egg apiece was hardly enough, however, to appease the craving of two strong men ravenous from long fasting. Indeed, it seemed only to whet the appetite, and we both set out on an eager expedition for more food. Before going far I had the good luck to meet a sutler's wagon, and though its stock was about all sold, there were still left four large bologna sausages, which I promptly ...
— The Memoirs of General Philip H. Sheridan, Vol. II., Part 6 • P. H. Sheridan
... 'roun' Brer Wolf's gal 'ceppin' it's ole Brer Rabbit, en w'en he year w'at kinder treatments de yuther creeturs bin ketchin' he 'low ter hisse'f dat he b'leeve in he soul he mus' go down ter Brer Wolf house en set de gal out one whet ef ...
— Nights With Uncle Remus - Myths and Legends of the Old Plantation • Joel Chandler Harris
... for more than twenty years explorers had been sailing from English and American ports in search of the bodies or the papers of Sir John Franklin and his party. The partial success which attended the investigations of Sir Leopold McClintock had served to whet the public appetite. A story which Captain Barry brought home from the Arctic made the curiosity still greater. He said that in 1871-73, while on a whaling expedition, he was frozen in with the 'Glacier' in Repulse Bay, and was there visited ...
— Schwatka's Search • William H. Gilder
... when to dismount, evidently, and just in time to whet one's curiosity, too. I may be asking to ride it myself, next. Well, do come again—but wait! What's the name of your ...
— Joyce's Investments - A Story for Girls • Fannie E. Newberry
... steel, Sons of the White Dragon! Kindle the torch, Daughter of Hengist! The steel glimmers not for the carving of the banquet, It is hard, broad, and sharply pointed; The torch goeth not to the bridal chamber, It steams and glitters blue with sulphur. Whet the steel, the raven croaks! Light the torch, Zernebock is yelling! Whet the steel, sons of the Dragon! Kindle ...
— Ivanhoe - A Romance • Walter Scott
... half of galloping only serves to whet the appetite of a well-girt horse, and the foaming rivals hardly allowed themselves to be pulled up at the edge of a steep grassy slope, where already here and there a yellow cowslip bud was beginning to break its pale silken sheath. At length their impatient dancing was over, ...
— The Invader - A Novel • Margaret L. Woods
... surprised him in the daytime, Solomon Owl was the noisiest of all the different families of owls in Pleasant Valley. There were the barn owls, the long-eared owls, the short-eared owls, the saw-whet owls, the screech owls—but there! there's no use of naming them all. There wasn't one of them that could equal Solomon Owl's laughing and hooting and shrieking and ...
— The Tale of Solomon Owl • Arthur Scott Bailey
... long will ye whet spears with eloquence, Fight, and kill beasts dry-handed with sweet words? Cease, or talk still and slay thy boars ...
— Atalanta in Calydon • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... "Sun's Road has come in. On the other side of the pile of bones he saw thirty bulls and a calf, and just below this he saw many buffalo. Gather in your horses. Get them up. Women, sharpen your knives. Men, whet your arrow points. Tie up your horses, and early in the morning we will go after buffalo. The camp will stay here. All will ...
— When Buffalo Ran • George Bird Grinnell
... pitched, and the stakes are set,— Ever sing merrily, merrily; The bows they bend, and the knives they whet, ...
— The Lady of the Lake • Sir Walter Scott
... where that not adheres to England,— Why, you must needs be strangers: would you be pleased To find a nation of such barbarous temper, That, breaking out in hideous violence, Would not afford you an abode on earth, Whet their detested knives against your throats, Spurn you like dogs, and like as if that God Owed not nor made not you, nor that the claimants Were not all appropriate to your comforts, But chartered unto them, what would you think To be thus used? this is the strangers ...
— Sir Thomas More • William Shakespeare [Apocrypha]
... I saw in my newspaper an announcement that enraged me. It was made in the driest, most casual way, as though nobody would care a rap; and this did but whet the wrath I had in knowing that Adam Street, Adelphi, was to be undone. The Tivoli Music Hall, about to be demolished and built anew, was to have a frontage of thirty feet, if you please, in Adam Street. Why? Because the London County Council, with its fixed idea that the happiness of mankind ...
— And Even Now - Essays • Max Beerbohm
... was killing, such thoughts came to me, like The sound of cleft-dropped waters to the ear Of the hot mower, who thereat stops the oftener To whet his glittering scythe, and, while he smiles, With the harsh, sharpening hone beats their fall's time, And dancing to it in his heart's straight chamber, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 16, No. 96, October 1865 • Various
... deep drove in his breast, there moulders with the rest A dagger, brighter once than Chundra's ray; A Rajpoot lohar whet it, and a Rajpoot woman set it Past the power of any ...
— Indian Poetry • Edwin Arnold
... God, who is of purer eyes than to behold iniquity, cannot look but with utter detestation. His wrath shall come up in his face. His face shall be red in his anger. He will whet his glittering sword, and his hand shall take hold on vengeance; and he shall recompense. He shall launch forth his lightnings, and shoot abroad his arrows. He shall unseal all his fountains, and pour out his tumbling cataracts of vengeance. He shall build his batteries ...
— Orthodoxy: Its Truths And Errors • James Freeman Clarke
... and more serious. She did not know what to make of Sophia Jane, who seemed a very naughty little girl and certainly did not deserve to be helped. She had thought of offering to give her something towards the doll's head, but now she did not quite know whet ...
— Susan - A Story for Children • Amy Walton
... which is admitted to be a model of good sense and wide liberality,—all books are not bought or issued indiscriminately to all readers, irrespective of age and so forth. The necessity for making special application may, in some cases, whet curiosity, but it also, undoubtedly, acts as a check upon unhealthy tastes, even when the book may be publicly purchased. I have heard Russians who did not wholly agree with their own censorship assert, nevertheless, that a strict censure ...
— Russian Rambles • Isabel F. Hapgood
... dishes are cooling on the table, men and women repair to a side-table; and to obtain an appetite eat bread-and- butter, cheese, raw salmon, or anchovies, drinking a glass of brandy. Salt fish or meat then immediately follows, to give a further whet to the stomach. As the dinner advances, pardon me for taking up a few minutes to describe what, alas! has detained me two or three hours on the stretch observing, dish after dish is changed, in endless rotation, and handed round with solemn pace ...
— Letters written during a short residence in Sweden, Norway, and Denmark • Mary Wollstonecraft
... said he had had to see Mr Liversedge, and had been detained later than he thought. He sat and talked to all of us for a while, but I thought his mind seemed somewhere else. I guessed where, and thought I found myself right whet after a time, when Father had come in, and Ambrose with him, and they were all talking over the fire, Ephraim left them, and coming across to my corner, asked me first thing if I ...
— Out in the Forty-Five - Duncan Keith's Vow • Emily Sarah Holt
... then when even Riney got the sack, "Lord!" they cried, "this maun be the end o't." The downfall of Gourlay had an unholy fascination for his neighbours, and that not merely because of their dislike to the man. That was a whet to their curiosity, of course; but, over and above it, they seemed to be watching, with bated breath, for the final collapse of an edifice that was bound to fall. Simple expectation held them. It was a dramatic interest—of suspense, yet certainty—that ...
— The House with the Green Shutters • George Douglas Brown
... upon them. And the one, when the wolf came by, could scant stand on his legs, and the other was already dead and his skin ripped off and carried away. And as he looked upon them suddenly, he was first about to feed upon them and whet his teeth upon their bones. But as he looked aside, he spied a fair cow in an enclosure, walking with her young calf by her side. And as soon as he saw them, his conscience began to grudge him against both those two horses. And then he sighed and said to himself, ...
— Dialogue of Comfort Against Tribulation - With Modifications To Obsolete Language By Monica Stevens • Thomas More
... ghastly holocaust they burn. Could the muster-roll of this great army be called, and could they come up from the dead, what eye could endure the reeking, festering putrefaction? What heart could endure the groan of agony? Drunkenness! Does it not jingle the burglar's key? Does it not whet the assassin's knife? Does it not cock the highwayman's pistol? Does it not wave the incendiary's torch? Has it not sent the physician reeling into the sick-room; and the minister with his tongue thick into the pulpit? Did not ...
— The world's great sermons, Volume 8 - Talmage to Knox Little • Grenville Kleiser
... as for thee, thou false woman, My sister and my fae, Grim vengeance, yet, shall whet a sword That thro thy soul shall gae: The weeping blood in woman's breast Was never known to thee; Nor th' balm that draps on wounds of woe ...
— Language of Flowers • Kate Greenaway
... myself. I used often to wonder how poor Peterkin would have liked to be with us; and he sometimes expressed much regret at being unable to join us. I used to do my best to gratify him, poor fellow, by relating all the wonders that we saw; but this, instead of satisfying, seemed only to whet his curiosity the more, so one day we prevailed on him to try to go down with us. But, although a brave boy in every other way, Peterkin was very nervous in the water, and it was with difficulty we got him to consent to be taken down, for he could never have managed to push ...
— The Coral Island - A Tale Of The Pacific Ocean • R. M. Ballantyne
... he interrupted. "That's only a tag. The people whose business it is to decide these things—DIE HERREN DICHTER—are not agreed to this day whet it's man who's fickle or woman. In this mood it's one, in that, the other; and the silly world bleats it after them, ...
— Maurice Guest • Henry Handel Richardson
... to interest the attention of Lord Byron, and to turn him away from worldly associations and topics into more abstract and untrodden ways of thought. As far as contrast indeed is an enlivening ingredient of such intercourse, it would be difficult to find two persons more formed to whet each other's faculties by discussion, as on few points of common interest between them did their opinions agree: and that this difference had its root deep in the conformation of their respective minds, needs but a glance through the rich, glittering ...
— My Recollections of Lord Byron • Teresa Guiccioli
... or sell any unlicensed matter whatsoever would be liable to fine or imprisonment, and to whet the zeal of discovery one-half of the fine was to go to the informer. Every publication, from a book to a broadsheet, must bear the name of author, printer, and licenser. Neither of Neville's pamphlets of 1647 conformed to the requirements of this act, which is not, ...
— The Isle Of Pines (1668) - and, An Essay in Bibliography by W. C. Ford • Henry Neville
... evenings, he was usually occupied in studying mechanical subjects, or in modelling experimental machines. Amongst his various speculations while at Willington, he tried to discover a means of Perpetual Motion. Although he failed, as so many others had done before him, the very efforts he made tended to whet his inventive faculties, and to call forth his dormant powers. He went so far as to construct the model of a machine for the purpose. It consisted of a wooden wheel, the periphery of which was furnished with glass tubes filled with quicksilver; as the wheel rotated, the quicksilver ...
— Lives of the Engineers - The Locomotive. George and Robert Stephenson • Samuel Smiles
... people at the last day, thousands of years hence, but hanging over all our heads already, and always ready to fall on us. Not knowing that it is as true now as it was two thousand years ago, that "God is a righteous judge, strong and patient." "If a man will not turn, He will whet His sword; He hath bent His bow, and made it ready," against those who travail with mischief, who conceive sorrow, and bring forth ungodliness. They dig up pits for their neighbours, and fall themselves into the destruction which they have made for others; not knowing that it is as true ...
— All Saints' Day and Other Sermons • Charles Kingsley
... fruits and gain of victory to get, Wherefore, dear lord, be wise, take care that yet A like misfortune happen not to you. Still in their lair the cubs and she-bear,[Q] who Rough pasturage and sour in May have met, With mad rage gnash their teeth and talons whet, And vengeance of past loss on us pursue: While this new grief disheartens and appalls, Replace not in its sheath your honour'd sword, But, boldly following where your fortune calls, E'en to its goal be glory's path explored, Which fame and honour to ...
— The Sonnets, Triumphs, and Other Poems of Petrarch • Petrarch
... stooped to whet his beak on the stones of the coping; And when once more the shout came, in querulous tones he spake, "What I said was 'more's the pity;' if the heart be long past hoping, Let it say of death, 'I know it,' or doubt on ...
— Poems by Jean Ingelow, In Two Volumes, Volume I. • Jean Ingelow
... me more eggs, or I'll scratch your eyes out,' shrieked the owl, and began to whet its beak on a beam in such a savage manner that the three cocks fled in terror to the top ...
— Brothers of Pity and Other Tales of Beasts and Men • Juliana Horatia Gatty Ewing
... contrary, he will eat anything. "He will not eat anything but meat," says Peary; "I have tried and I know." No dog accustomed to a flesh diet willingly leaves it for other food; the dog is a carnivorous animal. But hunger will whet his appetite for anything that his bowels can digest. "Muk," the counterpart of Peary's "King Malamute," has thriven for years on his daily ration of dried fish, tallow, and rice, and eats biscuits and doughnuts whenever he can get them. The malamute is affectionate and faithful ...
— Ten Thousand Miles with a Dog Sled - A Narrative of Winter Travel in Interior Alaska • Hudson Stuck
... with the Colonel, and his lady, and nieces: but I could not pass the afternoon with them, for the heart of me. There was enough in the persons and faces of the two young ladies to set me upon comparisons. Particular features held my attention for a few moments: but these served but to whet my impatience to find the charmer of my soul; who, for person, for air, for mind, never had any equal. My heart recoiled and sickened upon comparing minds and conversation. Pert wit, a too-studied desire to please; each in high good humour with herself; an open-mouth affectation ...
— Clarissa, Volume 7 • Samuel Richardson
... "Cleomelia: or, the Generous Mistress. Being the Secret History of a Lady Lately arriv'd from Bengall" (1727). The scene might equally well have been laid in the Isle of Wight, but Bengal on the title-page doubtless served to whet the curiosity of readers. ...
— The Life and Romances of Mrs. Eliza Haywood • George Frisbie Whicher
... thousand English to their side; Or, as a little snow, tumbled about, Anon becomes a Mountaine. O noble Dolphine, Go with me to the King, 'tis wonderfull, What may be wrought out of their discontent, Now that their soules are topfull of offence, For England go; I will whet on the King ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare
... got us. Me and my wife here, we whet away and stayed two months. Was 5 feet in this house, and if it ever gets in here agin, we're goin down in Kentucky and never comin' back ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States - From Interviews with Former Slaves: Indiana Narratives • Works Projects Administration
... (Being sated with sensation in excess, With the vespertinal rumour and the matutinal lie Which adorn the lucubrations of the Press), Then I turn me to the columns where there's nothing to attract, Or the interest to waken and to whet, And I revel in a banquet of unmitigated fact ...
— Lyra Frivola • A. D. Godley
... amidst a myriad of new-born aspirants, is the best proof of our maintenance of public esteem; and so long as our efforts are guided by the same singleness of purpose that first directed them we shall hope for a continuance of such favour. A multitude of contemporaries "whet each other;" "thinking nurseth thinking;" and, in like manner, reading nurseth reading, and awakens a spirit of inquiry, untiring and exhaustless, among all concerned in pursuit and ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 584 - Vol. 20, No. 584. (Supplement to Vol. 20) • Various
... preliminary speeches in the canvass. But they only served to whet the moral and intellectual and political appetite of the public for more. It was generally conceded that, at last, in the person of Mr. Lincoln, the "Little Giant" had ...
— The Great Conspiracy, Complete • John Alexander Logan
... force, if he dare use it, we must surrender; but never by our consent should we see the goods of the church plundered, with as little scruple as he would drive off a herd of English beeves. Rouse yourself, Reverend father, and doubt nothing but that the good cause shall prevail. Whet the spiritual sword, and direct it against the wicked who would usurp our holy rights. Whet the temporal sword, if it be necessary, and stir up the courage and zeal of ...
— The Monastery • Sir Walter Scott
... lawlessness is the result not of indolence, but of some sort of vigour and spontaneity. But it should be remembered that the mimetic impulses in which art among primitive races is supposed to originate, are not themselves art; and continually to whet the appetite with such primitive exercises is to perpetuate the rudimentary condition and ...
— Personality in Literature • Rolfe Arnold Scott-James
... not even await the desire of pleasure, but, or ever that desire springs up, art already satiated; eating before thou hungerest, and drinking before thou thirsteth; who to eke out an appetite must invent an army of cooks and confectioners; and to whet thy thirst must lay down costliest wines, and run up and down in search of ice in summer-time; to help thy slumbers soft coverlets suffice not, but couches and feather-beds must be prepared thee and rockers to rock thee to rest; since desire for sleep in thy case ...
— The Memorabilia - Recollections of Socrates • Xenophon
... gusto to tell the story of cruelty the like of which, it is to be hoped, for the credit of one's manhood, is not often repeated. And while it was telling, Jack "sat tight" and listened, storing up every vile word and every monstrous detail in his mind that he might have something to whet his vengeance upon when the time for vengeance should come. But his agitation was so evident, his distress so poignant, that Alvaros thought it would be very good fun to direct public attention to it; so, feigning ...
— The Cruise of the Thetis - A Tale of the Cuban Insurrection • Harry Collingwood
... Though this may seem a far-fetched simile in connection with our dinner, it is a true one. To get back to our nuts. If after a meal of several courses, rich in quality and variety, highly-spiced and flavoured, and perhaps interspersed with little piquant relishes, serving to whet the appetite for the next course, one takes only a very few nuts, or an apple, or a banana, the probability is that "these last" will give the most direct trouble. The gastric juices may be already exhausted, and the nuts, therefore, lie a hard ...
— Reform Cookery Book (4th edition) - Up-To-Date Health Cookery for the Twentieth Century. • Mrs. Mill
... only served to whet the dart of epigram. It was once bitterly said of the son of an ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. II (of 3) - Edited, With Memoir And Notes, By His Son, The Earl Of Beaconsfield • Isaac D'Israeli
... September, 1862, to consider the first draft of the Emancipation Act, those not yet familiar with the chairman's habit to supply a whet before the main dish, were startled that he should preface the business by reading the New York paper— Vanity Fair—continuing the series of "Artemus Ward's" tour with his show. This paper was the "High-handed Outrage at Utica." He laughed ...
— The Lincoln Story Book • Henry L. Williams
... from the page of classic lore, From the pure fount of ancient lay My soul has drawn the placid balm, Which charmed its every grief away, Ah! there I find that balm no more. Those spells, which make us oft forget The fleeting troubles of the day, In deeper sorrows only whet The stings they cannot tear away. When to my pillow racked I fly, With weary sense and wakeful eye. While my brain maddens, where, oh, where Is that serene consoling prayer, Which once has harbingered my rest, When the still soothing voice of Heaven Hath seemed to whisper ...
— The Complete Poems of Sir Thomas Moore • Thomas Moore et al
... of Church and social discipline were first considered and determined. The purposed delay in reaching the real object of the Council seemed to whet the appetites for the consideration of the wrongs of the East. Enthusiasm grew to fanaticism, and a grand and universal impatience of other topics finally brought the ...
— Peter the Hermit - A Tale of Enthusiasm • Daniel A. Goodsell
... banana to people who were on the very brink of perishing from starvation? It only served to whet their appetite for more. I would not, however, allow them to have any more just then; I was cruel to be kind, and resolutely turned a deaf ear alike to their entreaties and their reproaches, as I did to the cravings of my own ravenous ...
— The First Mate - The Story of a Strange Cruise • Harry Collingwood
... Will and Power. The former faculty exacted approbation of that which it was considered orthodox to admire; the latter groaned forth its utter inability to pay the tax; it was then self-sneered at, spurred up, goaded on to refine its taste, and whet its zest. The more it was chidden, however, the more it wouldn't praise. Discovering gradually that a wonderful sense of fatigue resulted from these conscientious efforts, I began to reflect whether ...
— Villette • Charlotte Bronte
... too old. Yet who does not mark in the calendar those days wherein he has met a new rich soul, that has a physiognomy, a grace and expression, peculiarly its own? Even decided repulsions have also a use. We whet our conscience on our neighbors' faults, as sober Spartans were made by the spectacle of drunken Helots;—though he who makes habitual talk about his neighbors' faults whets his conscience across the edge. If there be sermons in stones, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 12, October, 1858 • Various
... and when he went in he found Captain Beausire and Mme. Rosemilly, whom his father had brought home and engaged to dine with them in honor of the good news. Vermouth and absinthe had been served to whet their appetites, and every one had been at once put into good spirits. Captain Beausire, a funny little man who had become quite round by dint of being rolled about at sea, and whose ideas also seemed to have been worn round, like the pebbles of a beach, while he laughed with ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume VIII. • Guy de Maupassant
... oft the Learn'd hath stammer'd, In one Iron Head-piece (yet no Hammer-Lead) May (joyn'd with Nature) hit Fame on the Cocks-comb, Then 'tis that Head-piece that is crown'd with Odcomb For he, hard Head (and hard, sith like a Whet-stone) It gives Wits edge, and draws them too like Jet-stone) Is Caput Mundi for a world of School-tricks, And is not ignorant in the learned'st—tricks H'hath seen much more than much, I assure ye, ...
— The Lives of the Most Famous English Poets (1687) • William Winstanley
... of Bellaise, and the three gentlemen would be received in the unpartitioned parlour, and there treated to such lemon cakes as had been the ruin of La Sablerie; but in general the castle and the convent had little intercourse, or only just enough to whet the appetite of the prisoners for what ...
— The Chaplet of Pearls • Charlotte M. Yonge
... Doubtful ills plague us worst Endeavouring to be brief, I become obscure Engaged in the avenues of old age, being already past forty Every government has a god at the head of it Executions rather whet than dull the edge of vices Fear of the fall more fevers me than the fall itself Folly to hazard that upon the uncertainty of augmenting it For who ever thought he wanted sense? Fortune rules in all things Gentleman would play the fool to make a show of defence Happen to do anything ...
— Widger's Quotations from The Essays of Montaigne • David Widger
... weeds and blights, the pests and the vermin against which the farmer must contend. Indeed it is in the contemplation of a life of toil that he finds his honest philosophy of life: the gospel of salvation through work. Hardships whet the ingenuity of man; God himself for man's own good brought an end to the age of golden indolence, shook the honey from the trees, and gave vipers their venom. Man has been left alone to contend with an obstinate nature, and in ...
— Vergil - A Biography • Tenney Frank
... enough to make your prospect want to order, you must make it easy for him to order by enclosing order blanks, return envelopes, instructions and other "literature" that will strengthen your arguments and whet his desire; and more than that, you must reach a real climax in your letters—tell the prospect what to do and ...
— Business Correspondence • Anonymous
... spilled, spilt spilled, spilt spoil spoiled, spoilt spoiled, spoilt stave staved, stove staved, stove stay stayed, staid stayed, staid swell swelled swelled, swollen wake waked, woke waked, woke wax, grow waxed waxed (waxen) wed wedded wedded, wed whet whetted, whet whetted, whet work ...
— Word Study and English Grammar - A Primer of Information about Words, Their Relations and Their Uses • Frederick W. Hamilton
... way of writing Esop chose, Sound doctrine by example shows; For nothing by these tales is meant, So much as that the bad repent; And by the pattern that is set, Due diligence itself should whet. Wherefore, whatever arch conceit You in our narratives shall meet (If with the critic's ear it take, And for some special purpose make), Aspires by real use to fame, Rather than from an author's name. In fact, with all the care I can, I shall abide ...
— The Fables of Phdrus - Literally translated into English prose with notes • Phaedrus
... kill thee as thou didst kill my son. The merchant and the three old men being frightened, began to lament, and to fill the air with their cries.—Here Scheherazade, perceiving day, left off her story which did so much whet the sultan's curiosity, that he was absolutely resolved to hear the end of it, and put off the sultaness's execution ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments Volume 1 • Anonymous
... a rosy face, a pale green gown and a pair of tan-colored shoes were beginning to whet his curiosity. He wanted to see what the stranger was ...
— Teddy: Her Book - A Story of Sweet Sixteen • Anna Chapin Ray
... Ward led Bloom by ryebloom flowered tables. Aimless he chose with agitated aim, bald Pat attending, a table near the door. Be near. At four. Has he forgotten? Perhaps a trick. Not come: whet appetite. I couldn't do. Wait, ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce
... what haste?" returned Paslew, with a grin of cruel and malicious irony. "There be some slight preliminaries to adjust,—something to season thy haunch and whet thine appetite." He stamped with his foot, and the two attendants entered, bearing instruments ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 1 (of 2) • John Roby
... much or asked so little. It was the very boundlessness of his desires which reined him in. The appetite of the Caesars would not have represented his, all the gratification they could have commanded would have been for him but a whet. If he had a weak side it was his own astuteness: he could not always see how unutterably foolish a man might be if he were let alone. Another foible he had—intellectual appreciation of beauty pushed to fainting-point. ...
— Little Novels of Italy • Maurice Henry Hewlett
... case was enough to whet my curiosity. I was not long before I called on Raton, but not wishing to be duped by her I took due precautions. I told her that she must come and sup with me, and that I would give her the twenty-five louis ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... animals among the clover fields in the pastures? A tithe of the merry gambols they now so safely indulge in, would speedily bring about them a swarm of these infuriated insects. In all our rambles among the green fields, we should constantly be in peril; and no jocund mower would ever whet his glittering scythe, or swing his peaceful weapon, unless first clad in a dress impervious to their stings. In short, the bee, instead of being the friend of man, would be one of his most vexatious enemies, and as has been the case with the wolves ...
— Langstroth on the Hive and the Honey-Bee - A Bee Keeper's Manual • L. L. Langstroth
... please all Night to stay, My Son shall put you in the way." Which offer I most kindly took, And for a Seat did round me look; When presently amongst the rest, He plac'd his unknown English Guest, Who found them drinking for a whet, A Cask of (h) Syder on the Fret, Till Supper came upon the Table, On which I fed whilst I was able. So after hearty Entertainment, Of Drink and Victuals without Payment; For Planters Tables, you must know, Are free for all that come and go. While (i) Pon and Milk, ...
— The Sot-weed Factor: or, A Voyage to Maryland • Ebenezer Cook
... on. You see, Time won't stop to argue with us, or dicker; and our settin' down, and coaxin' him to stop a minute, and whet his scythe, and give us a chance to get round the swath he cuts, won't ammount to nothin' only wastin' our breath. His scythe is one that don't need any grindstun, and his swath is one that must ...
— Sweet Cicely - Or Josiah Allen as a Politician • Josiah Allen's Wife (Marietta Holley)
... selfishness, double-dealing, and deficient patriotism. They worked famously upon the natives, while they proved the invader to be as little capable of good policy, as of ordinary humanity. They roused the spirit of the militia, whet their anger and their swords together, and, by the time that Marion reappeared, they were ready for their General. He asked for nothing more. He re-entered South Carolina by a forced march. Travelling night and day, he hurried through the Tory settlements on Little Pedee, a space ...
— The Life of Francis Marion • William Gilmore Simms
... Visitation Is but to whet thy almost blunted purpose.[1] But looke, Amazement on thy Mother sits;[2] [Sidenote: 30, 54] O step betweene her, and her fighting Soule,[3] [Sidenote: 198] Conceit[4] in weakest bodies, strongest workes. Speake to ...
— The Tragedie of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark - A Study with the Text of the Folio of 1623 • George MacDonald
... work should be well correlated with one another and with the systematic work on the text that guides the study, so that each shall whet the edge of the other and all together accomplish ...
— College Teaching - Studies in Methods of Teaching in the College • Paul Klapper
... the table was cleared and covered with various sorts of prepared dishes—in short, a substantial and sumptuous dinner was served. The collation which had been taken at the commencement, called in the language of the country "Refresco," had been intended only to whet the appetites of the guests ...
— Celebrated Travels and Travellers - Part III. The Great Explorers of the Nineteenth Century • Jules Verne
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