"Pottage" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... say that. I brought you here to say it! Thank God! I love her, Septimus. I love her with every fiber in me. If I had sold my name to these people I should have sold my honor. I should have sold my birthright for a mess of pottage. I couldn't have looked her in the face again. Whether she will marry me or not has nothing to do with it. It would have had nothing to do with it in your case. You would have been the best kind of fool and ...
— Septimus • William J. Locke
... cloaks. It is the fashion of them to wear cloaks when they go abroad, but especially on Sundays. They have neither good bread, cheese nor drink. They cannot make them, nor will they learn. Their butter is very indifferent, and one would wonder how they could contrive to make it so bad. They use much pottage made of coal-wort, which they call kail, sometimes broth of decorticated barley. The ordinary country-houses are pitiful cots, built of stone and covered with turfs, having in them but one room, many of them no chimneys, the windows very small holes and not ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... we quit the highroad to reach the monument, we come upon pretty pastoral groups. It is supper-time-l'heure de la soupe, as French rustics say— and before every cottage-door are squatted family groups, eating their pottage on the doorsteps. Around are the dogs and cats, chickens, pigs and goats. To every humble homestead is attached orchard, garden, even a patch of corn or vineyard. All ...
— The Roof of France • Matilda Betham-Edwards
... the most opulent and powerful spirits ever seen on earth have scarcely done more than indicate what kind of birthrights they bartered away for a mess of pottage. Coleridge, for example, ceased to write poetry after thirty because, by dissipating his overplus of life, he had too grievously wronged what ...
— The Joyful Heart • Robert Haven Schauffler
... to mention that Nature requires very large and chargeable provisions to be made for accomplishing the pleasures of the body; nor can the height of delicacy be had in black bread and lentil pottage. But voluptuous and sensual appetites expect costly dishes, Thasian wines, perfumed unguents, and varieties ...
— Essays and Miscellanies - The Complete Works Volume 3 • Plutarch
... This has been brought from the Credit, far up in the west, by a family who have come down on a special mission from some great chief to his brethren on the Otonabee, and the squaws have cooked some in honour of the guests. That pot that sends up such a savoury steam is venison-pottage, or soup, or stew, or any name you choose to give the Indian mess that is concocted of venison, wild rice, and herbs. Those tired hounds that lie stretched before the fire have been out, and now they enjoy the privilege of the fire, some praise from the hunters, and receive withal an occasional ...
— Lost in the Backwoods • Catharine Parr Traill
... daily experience could be eliminated at once and struck off the balance, never to return again, if life were but viewed aright, and held in the scale of true valuations. Nothing is more idle than to sell one's soul for a mess of pottage; for the pottage is not worth the price. Seen in the most practical, every-day light, it is a bad bargain. Not only is it true that a man's life consisteth not in the abundance of things that he possesseth, ...
— The Life Radiant • Lilian Whiting
... pottage," said Madame, a little uneasily, "is like surprise in an individual; it brings out the flavor of every ingredient, so my ...
— Atlantic Monthly Vol. 3, No. 16, February, 1859 • Various
... contemplated its effects. In Congress Chase, Sumner, Seward, and even moderates like Edward Everett denounced the ambitious politician from Illinois who had dared to "sell the birthright of the free States for a mess of pottage." It was a revival of the sectional hatred, as well as of the fears of the aggressive planters who had enticed Douglas to go one step farther than ...
— Expansion and Conflict • William E. Dodd
... thou wilt pardon the sin and shame of my forgetfulness! The smoke of thy altar-fires, the steam of thy incense, and the odors of thy sanctity rise from every hypaethral shrine in Rome. Out-doors and in-doors, wherever the foot wanders, on palatial stairs or in the hut of poverty, in the convent pottage and the Lepre soup, in the wooden platter of the beggar and the silver tureen of the prince, thou fillest our nostrils, thou satisfiest our stomach. Thou hast no false pride; great as thou art, thou condescendest to be ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 31, May, 1860 • Various
... meat for a sacrifice, and with this view the best hunters were dispatched to the forest, in quest of those animals supposed to be most acceptable to the mighty guest. The women were directed to prepare tasmanane and pottage in the best manner. All the idols were brought out, examined, and put in order. As a grand dance was always supposed to be an agreeable entertainment to the Great Spirit, one was ordered, not only for his gratification, ...
— Traditions of the North American Indians, Vol. 2 (of 3) • James Athearn Jones
... any body, much more to a clergyman of any church; but I thought you were aware that it is counted very insulting to Catholics to offer them meat on Fridays, as if they were apostates who would sell their souls for a 'mess of pottage;' and I thought you were aware that we are Catholics, and that our religion forbids us to eat ...
— The Cross and the Shamrock • Hugh Quigley
... wrens' hearts. Mr Tomkins and I undertook to order these fellows, according to that excellent way which we had seen in your lordship's most honourable actions. Some consented to go with us, though unwillingly; but most of them ran to the pottage pot, swearing it was dinner time. We went all on board this night, except our great mastiff dog, which we could not induce to follow us, for I think he was ashamed of our cowardly behaviour. The land here is of an excellent soil, and ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. VIII. • Robert Kerr
... the land buying horses, and lending their stout hearts and ready rifles to every effort for freedom which the Texans made. For though the Americans were few in number and much scattered, they were like the salt in a pottage, and men caught fire and the ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 2 of 8 • Various
... "the one whom you've had threatened with arrest because he harangued too freely on the street corner." He paused to finish impressively: "I see now that the man who throws away his spiritual birthright for a mess of pottage hates the one who keeps his in ...
— Suzanna Stirs the Fire • Emily Calvin Blake
... such Dishes as I think fit whilst I live; and when I die, thou knowest I have left thee all!" Phansy Father talking like that! Were I not so provoked, I could laugh. And he to sell his Children's Birthright for a Mess of Pottage, who, instead of loving savoury Meat, like blind Isaac, was, in fact, the most temperate of Men! who cared not what he ate, so 'twas sweet and clean; who might have said with godly Mr. Ball of Whitmore, that he had two Dishes of Meat to his Sabbath-dinner,—a ...
— Mary Powell & Deborah's Diary • Anne Manning
... Romans; one is made of parsley, pennyroyal, cheese, pine-tops, honey, brine, eggs, cucumbers, onions, and hen livers; the other is much the same as the soup-maigre of this country. Then there is a loin of veal boiled with fennel and caraway-seed, on a pottage composed of pickle, oil, honey, and flour, and a curious hachis of the lights, liver, and blood of a hare, together with a dish of roasted pigeons. Monsieur le baron, shall I help you to a plate of this soup?" The German, who did not at all disapprove of the ingredients, ...
— The Adventures of Peregrine Pickle, Volume I • Tobias Smollett
... you not know that your mess of pottage must be eaten with you by the people who care for you?—and one of them dislikes pottage. Indeed, I would have liked the book, had anybody else written it. I almost like it as it is, in spots, and sometimes I even go to the great length of liking you,—because 'if only ...
— The Cords of Vanity • James Branch Cabell et al
... This has been brought from the Credit, far up in the west, by a family who have come down on a special mission from some great chief to his brethren on the Otonabee, and the squaws have cooked some in honour of the guests. That pot that sends up such a savoury steam is venison pottage, or soup, or stew, or any name you choose to give the Indian mess that is concocted of venison, wild rice, and herbs. Those tired hounds that lay stretched before the fire have been out, and now they enjoy the privilege of the fire, some praise from the hunters, ...
— Canadian Crusoes - A Tale of The Rice Lake Plains • Catharine Parr Traill
... rolled And sphered to perfect freedom, ere the old Incrusted statutes that our God defy Be crushed in its rotation, and those die That lived defiance through them. Then man's gold No more shall manhood buy, or men be sold For pottage messes. We may not be nigh To see the glory, but if true and bold Our hands may haste ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol I, Issue I, January 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... Esau like all nater An' then cornfiscatin' all debts to sech a small pertater; There's p'litickle econ'my, now, combined 'ith morril beauty Thet saycrifices privit eends (your in'my's, tu) to dooty! Wy, Jeff'd ha' gin him five an' won his eye-teeth 'fore he knowed it, An', slid o' wastin' pottage, he'd ha' eat it up an' ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 09, No. 51, January, 1862 • Various
... until they came to a certain West End corner, where they both descended. Little Mr. Constable's sensations were, if anything, less enviable, and he had not Mr. Plimpton's recuperative powers. He had sold that night, for a mess of pottage, the friendship and respect of three generations. And he had fought, for pay, against his ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... refusing to sacrifice his existence to the first person who spoke him civilly. We may wish there had been more of rugged simplicity in his way of dealing with temptations to sell his birthright for a mess of pottage; less of mere irritability. But then this irritability is one side of soft temperament. The soft temperament is easily agitated, and this unpleasant disturbance does not stir up true anger nor lasting indignation, but only sends quick currents of eager irritation ...
— Rousseau - Volumes I. and II. • John Morley
... day, ocean and continent, Fire, plant and mineral say, 'Not in us;' And haughtily return us stare for stare. For we invade them impiously for gain; We devastate them unreligiously, And coldly ask their pottage, not their love. Therefore they shove us from them, yield to us Only what to our griping toil is due; But the sweet affluence of love and song, The rich results of the divine consents Of man and earth, ...
— Poems - Household Edition • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... long pencils of color, from palettes of painted glass, touch with rose and gold the low brow and downcast eyes and dainty bosom of a bust of Clyte. Beebe and Moonshee are preparing below in the open air their evening meal; and the smoke of their pottage is borne slowly, heavily on the hot still air, stirred only by the careless laughter of girls plunging and paddling in the dimpled lake. The blended gloom and brightness without enter, and interweave ...
— The English Governess At The Siamese Court • Anna Harriette Leonowens
... dulleth the sight, &c." Nor does Parkinson give a much more favourable account. "Our dainty eye now refuseth them wholly, in all sorts except the poorest; they are used with us sometimes in Lent to make pottage, and is a great and generall feeding in Wales with the vulgar gentlemen." It was even used as the proverbial expression of worthlessness, as in the "Roumaunt of the Rose," where the author says, speaking of "Phiciciens ...
— The plant-lore & garden-craft of Shakespeare • Henry Nicholson Ellacombe
... "he has sold his birthright for a mess of pottage! Don't touch that paper, Crewe, or ...
— Jack O' Judgment • Edgar Wallace
... easy it would be for me, dear friend," she cried, with a catch in her voice, "to do as other women do; to accept the HONORABLE MARRIAGE you offer me, as other women would call it; to be false to my sex, a traitor to my convictions; to sell my kind for a mess of pottage, a name and a home, or even for thirty pieces of silver, to be some rich man's wife, as other women have sold it. But, Alan, I can't. My conscience won't let me. I know what marriage is, from what vile slavery it has sprung; on what unseen horrors for my sister women it is reared and buttressed; ...
— The Woman Who Did • Grant Allen
... that he lived in the House on the Mount he never visited his friends, nor saw his native land once he had departed from her. He loved the Blessed Virgin with singleness of heart, and on the seventh day of the week he abstained from one portion of pottage out of devotion to her. In these three desires he was heard of the Lord before his death, namely, to die on an high day, and amid the Brothers—for he greatly loved them—and to have a short death struggle; which things ...
— The Chronicle of the Canons Regular of Mount St. Agnes • Thomas a Kempis
... victuals of the under servants were weighed out in ounces, by the Don himself; with so much garlic in the other scale: A thin slice of bacon went through the family a week together; for it was daily put into the pot for pottage; was served in the midst of the dish at dinners, and taken out and weighed by the steward, at the end of every meal, to see how much it lost; till, at length, looking at it against the sun, it appeared transparent, and then he would have whipped it ...
— The Works of John Dryden, Volume 5 (of 18) - Amboyna; The state of Innocence; Aureng-Zebe; All for Love • John Dryden
... Take Sheeps-heads, Wooll and all, hack, hew, and bruise them into pieces, make Pottage of it, with Oatmeal, and ...
— The School of Recreation (1684 edition) • Robert Howlett
... parting blessing, which should secure the privileges and pre-eminence of the first-born. The hunter went into the fields, and Rebekah recollected that Jacob had purchased the birthright of his brother for a mess of pottage one day when he came in from the chase faint with hunger and exhaustion. She determined by a stroke of management to secure the patriarchal benediction. She sent him to the flocks after two kids, which were prepared with the savory delicacy his father loved, dressed him up in Esau's apparel, ...
— Half Hours in Bible Lands, Volume 2 - Patriarchs, Kings, and Kingdoms • Rev. P. C. Headley
... was in Jewry a prophet, called Habbacuc, who had made pottage, and had broken bread in a bowl, and was going into the field, for to ...
— Deuteronomical Books of the Bible - Apocrypha • Anonymous
... night, beneath a broiling sun, or exposed to cold, rain, and hail, the coarsest of black bread and lentil pottage, formed his scanty meal; his associates the ...
— Jack Harkaway's Boy Tinker Among The Turks - Book Number Fifteen in the Jack Harkaway Series • Bracebridge Hemyng
... did indeed actually announce himself to be the author of "Red Pottage," in the presence of a large number of people, including the late Mr. William Sharp, who related the occurrence to me. But the incident ended uncomfortably for the claimant, which one would have thought he ...
— The Lowest Rung - Together with The Hand on the Latch, St. Luke's Summer and The Understudy • Mary Cholmondeley
... you a regimen, Madam, replied he; which, I am sure, the doctor will approve of, and will make physic unnecessary in your case. And that is, 'go to rest at ten at night. Rise not till seven in the morning. Let your breakfast be watergruel, or milk-pottage, or weak broths: your dinner any thing you like, so you will but eat: a dish of tea, with milk, in the afternoon; and sago for your supper: and, my life for your's, this diet, and a month's country air, will ...
— Clarissa, Volume 7 • Samuel Richardson
... between them. Laban retains the white ones, as most numerous: Jacob has to put up with the spotted ones, as the mere refuse. But he is able here, too, to secure his own advantage: and as by a paltry mess (/of pottage/) he had procured the birthright, and, by a disguise, his father's blessing, he manages by art and sympathy to appropriate to himself the best and largest part of the herds; and on this side also he becomes the truly worthy progenitor of the people of Israel, and a model for his descendants. ...
— Autobiography • Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
... experience. It had been rendered worthless, perhaps rather contemptible by a later one—that of falling in love with Rachel, and the astonishing discovery that he was in love for the first time. He had sold his birthright for a mess of red pottage, as surely as any man or woman who marries for money or liking. He had not believed in his birthright, and holding it to be worthless, had given it to the first person who had ...
— Red Pottage • Mary Cholmondeley
... As in the Arab family, for old and young, for the babe in arms, and the strong man from his field of toil, the provision is the same, so in all our class-work we have the sameness of provision with almost as great disparity of capacity and need. If, out of the whole mental "mess of pottage" that can be taken which builds the student up in true wisdom and knowledge, it is fortunate; but if nothing is assimilated on which the mind could truly thrive, no fault is found with the provision, ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 21, August, 1891 • Various
... this individual; we regret only that he gets so little out of the great American tradition. The raiment becomes him badly. Speaking in slang and following the baseball scores does not make an American. If he sells his birthright let it be for something more than a mess of pottage. Even if he should succeed in assimilating himself with the other races, whether it be by the accumulation of wealth or baptism or successful denial of his origin, yet we doubt whether he can become really happy—for ...
— The Menorah Journal, Volume 1, 1915 • Various
... given in other cases:—viz. of the decoction, five ounces, of common oil, three ounces, of sugar, two ounces, and of cassia fistula, one ounce. But if she will not take a clyster, one or two yolks of new laid eggs, or a little peas-pottage warm, a little salt and sugar, and supped a little before meat, will be very convenient. But if her belly be distended and stretched with wind a little fennel seed and aniseed reduced to a powder and mixed with honey and sugar made after ...
— The Works of Aristotle the Famous Philosopher • Anonymous
... is all over now, my girl! There are no chiefs, and no clans any more! The chiefs that need not, yet sell their land like Esau for a mess of pottage—and their brothers with it! And the Sasunnach who buys it, claims rights over them that never grew on the land or were hid in its caves! Thank God, the poor man is not their slave, but he is the worse off, for they will ...
— What's Mine's Mine • George MacDonald
... Ellis pocketed the purse with nonchalance. He stood leaning on his boar-spear, and looked round upon the rest. They, in various attitudes, took greedily of the venison pottage, and liberally washed it down with ale. This was a good day; they were in luck; but business pressed, and they were speedy in their eating. The first-comers had by this time even despatched their dinner. Some lay down upon the grass and fell instantly asleep, like boa-constrictors; ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 8 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... "no man," that "no rational and immortal being," will ever be so ungrateful as to complain of those who have withheld from him that which is "worse than nominal," and a curse. For if such, and such only, be his inalienable birthright, were it not most wisely exchanged for a mess of pottage? The vagrant, then, should not be consulted whether he will work or not. He should be "confined and compelled" to work, says Dr. Channing. Nor should the idle and the vicious, those who cannot be induced to work by rational motives, be asked whether they ...
— Cotton is King and The Pro-Slavery Arguments • Various
... charming. The two rows of babies formed a pretty sight, with their hair all tied on the tops of their heads with red, green, and blue ribbons. One teacher asked a row of eight children, "Where does rice grow?" The whole eight opened their mouths wide, filled as they were with the pottage, and replied in concert, in a sing-song, "It grows in the water." Then the teacher gave the order, "Hands up!" and it was pretty to see all those little arms fly up, which a few months ago were all in swaddling-clothes, and all those little ...
— Cuore (Heart) - An Italian Schoolboy's Journal • Edmondo De Amicis
... "I can guess what that feeling must be; the perfect emptiness and despair of having a great work done. I suspect there aren't many great masterpieces that one couldn't have bought cheap by offering the mess of pottage at the right moment. Oh, no, I didn't mean a sneer when I said cheap. I really understand. That very next morning out in the orchard, thinking over it, I managed to be glad you'd gone—alone. Your own way, rather than back with me to Ravinia. But—I'm glad I came to-night and ...
— Mary Wollaston • Henry Kitchell Webster
... talk it over with me by ten o'clock. I'll see Mazie in the meantime." Mr. Vandeford placed the precious "Purple Slipper" in the hands of a man who at that very moment had two successful plays running on Broadway, his interest in both of which he had sold out for a mess of pottage to be consumed in the company of Miss Mazie Villines of ...
— Blue-grass and Broadway • Maria Thompson Daviess
... may change its opposition from the tyrannical to the insidious; it can know no other change. Yet do I meet persons who call themselves Americans,—miserable, thoughtless Esaus, unworthy their high birthright,—who think that a mess of pottage can satisfy the wants of man, and that the Viennese listening to Strauss's waltzes, the Lombard peasant supping full of his polenta, is happy enough. Alas: I have the more reason to be ashamed of my countrymen that it is not among ...
— At Home And Abroad - Or, Things And Thoughts In America and Europe • Margaret Fuller Ossoli
... them, but euery man goeth to his bench to take his afternoones sleepe, which is as ordinary with them as their nights rest. When they exceede, and haue varietie of dishes, the first are their baked meates (for roste meates they vse little) and then their broathes or pottage. Their common drinke is Mead, the poorer sort vse water and a third drinke called Quasse, which is nothing else (as we say) but water turned out of his wits, with a litle ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques, and Discoveries of The English Nation v. 4 • Richard Hakluyt
... all his host replied, Intent some pottage to provide, Which heated well, with spice infused, Was to his shivering ...
— Aesop, in Rhyme - Old Friends in a New Dress • Marmaduke Park
... seat, and there large forests of it are found. The edible farina is the central pith, which varies considerably in different trees, and as to the time required for its attaining proper maturity. It is eaten by the natives in the form of pottage. A farina of an inferior kind is supplied by the Gomuti palm (Borassus gomutus), another tree peculiar to the Eastern Archipelago growing in ...
— The Commercial Products of the Vegetable Kingdom • P. L. Simmonds
... We barter life for pottage, sell true bliss For wealth or power, for pleasure or renown; Thus, Esau-like, our Father's blessing miss, Then wash with fruitless tears ...
— The Daisy Chain, or Aspirations • Charlotte Yonge
... on into his oration by the time they arrived. He was at the moment engaged in dilating upon the peril through which the country had recently passed, and thanking God that Canada had loyally stood by the Empire and had refused to sell her heritage for a mess of pottage. ...
— The Major • Ralph Connor
... intellectual efforts were now required of him he went out to feed on the fresh air. As he crossed the landing an odour of hot pottage came to meet him. Through the ever-open door he caught a glimpse of a woman's form throned, as it were, above clouds of curling steam. A voice went out, ...
— The Divine Fire • May Sinclair
... cock's head In the path—and it was white! Saw Brinvilliers {334} in his pottage: Faltered, ...
— Andromeda and Other Poems • Charles Kingsley
... barrack-hospital, he would say, there he would receive proper treatment like any other of His Majesty's soldiers; the regimental surgeons had quite sufficient science to cure him. And it regularly happened that after a four or five days' course of a platter of coarse barley pottage, and half an ounce of plain black commissariat bread, the young gentleman was so completely cured of every bodily ailment that he had never the faintest wish ever afterwards to divert himself in the hospital, but preferred instead to attend ...
— The Day of Wrath • Maurus Jokai
... to more wealth. But—she could not forbear a wry grimace at the idea. Some fateful hour love would flash across her horizon, a living flame. She could visualize the tragedy if it should be too late, if it found her already bound—sold for a mess of pottage at her ease. She did not mince words to herself when she reflected on this matter. She knew herself as a creature of passionate impulses, consciously resenting all restraint. She knew that men and women ...
— Big Timber - A Story of the Northwest • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... of brilliant lawyers and powerful men who have thus sold their birthrights for messes of pottage. No matter how much you need money, never accept a retainer or fee of any kind from any corporation, person, or "interest" which really does not want your active service, but in that manner is purchasing ...
— The Young Man and the World • Albert J. Beveridge
... 393. Cf. the story of the wife of Cormac, who was barren till her mother gave her pottage. Then she had ...
— The Religion of the Ancient Celts • J. A. MacCulloch
... pottage. Plumm pottage. Calves' head and bacon. Boiled beef, a clod. Goose. Two baked puddings. Pig. Three dishes of minced Plumm pottage. pies. Roast beef, sirloin. Two capons. Veale, a loin. Two dishes of tarts. ...
— Highways & Byways in Sussex • E.V. Lucas
... from Pease Pottage, in the recesses of St. Leonard's Forest, and two miles from the main route, is Holmbush Beacon Tower. This should be visited for the sake of the magnificent woodland views; in the distance are the south Downs visible from Butser Hill ...
— Seaward Sussex - The South Downs from End to End • Edric Holmes
... those on which we beat hemp, and in these they beat their corn to powder with wooden beetles. The meal is kneaded into cakes, which they lay on a broad hot stone, covering it up with other heated stones, which thus serve instead of ovens. Besides these cakes, they make several kinds of pottage from their maize, and also of beans and pease, both of which they have in abundance. They have also a variety of fruits, such as musk-melons and very large cucumbers. They have likewise large vessels ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume VI - Early English Voyages Of Discovery To America • Robert Kerr
... of his imagination. He had not dreamed of a business life in connection with himself. Though he had always had a certain admiration for his successful uncle, Norman Lloyd, yet he had always had along with the admiration a recollection of the old tale of the birthright and the mess of pottage. He had expected to follow the law, like his father, but when he had finished college, about two years after his father's death, he had to face the unexpected. The stocks in which the greater part of the elder Lloyd's money had been invested had ...
— The Portion of Labor • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... Mrs. Davis, is a considerable sum of money, but it is a small mess of pottage compared with what awaits you in the hands of the Washington Trust Company. Let me see how much ...
— Clark's Field • Robert Herrick
... especially as it may bear upon the personal glory of our Redeemer. Love to Christ is often tested by an enlightened and firm adherence to the "truth as it is in Jesus," when "false apostles will sell it for a mess of pottage." (Prov. xxiii. 23; 2 Cor. xiii. 8.) The first promise here is of a temporal kind, of protection in time of general danger. The "temptation" thus predicted may refer to some of those "ten persecutions" waged by the Roman emperors ...
— Notes On The Apocalypse • David Steele
... sure about bribery and corruption. It may be a bad thing, but many seem to think otherwise. Much may be said on both sides of the question. Oh! don't tell me of a worm selling his birthright for a mess of pottage: I never read of such worms in Buffon, or even in Pliny. But if they do exist in the human form, the baseness consists in the sale, not in the quid pro quo. A mess of pottage in itself is a very good thing—I should say, a very respectable ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 455 - Volume 18, New Series, September 18, 1852 • Various
... the author of Red Pottage, niece of that lovable Reginald Cholmondeley, and herself an old friend, sent greetings and urgent invitations. Archdeacon ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... a thoroughly commonplace woman hung round with the money her late husband had bequeathed her, Maryon's very antithesis in all that pertained to the beautiful—this sickened her. It seemed to her as though he were yielding his birthright in exchange for a mess of pottage. ...
— The Moon out of Reach • Margaret Pedler
... the King against his comfort, and then ordered the boots to be chopped into little pieces, stewed and seasoned. Then sending for the culprit shoemaker, he ordered him to eat his own boots, thus converted into a pottage; and with this punishment the unfortunate mechanic, who had thought his life forfeited, was sufficiently glad ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... is at Frejus, the next in Paris. There, they all adore him; but he summons the government. 'What have you done with my children, the soldiers?' he says to the lawyers. 'You're a mob of rascally scribblers; you are making France a mess of pottage, and snapping your fingers at what people think of you. It won't do; and I speak the opinion of everybody.' So, on that, they wanted to battle with him and kill him—click! he had 'em locked up in barracks, or flying out of windows, or ...
— Folk Tales Every Child Should Know • Various
... very different from what it was at home. The hours were later, the coffee was weaker in the morning, the pottage was weaker, the boiled beef less relieved by other diet, the dresses finer, the evening engagements constant. I did not find these visits pleasant. We might not knit, which would have relieved the tedium a little; but we sat in a circle, talking together, only interrupted occasionally ...
— Curious, if True - Strange Tales • Elizabeth Gaskell
... Us. Jeremiah used to come in to that fireside very much as the Parson does to ours. The Parson, to be sure, never prophesies, but he grumbles, and is the chorus in the play that sings the everlasting ai ai of "I told you so!" Yet we like the Parson. He is the sprig of bitter herb that makes the pottage wholesome. I should rather, ten times over, dispense with the flatterers and the smooth-sayers than the grumblers. But the grumblers are of two sorts,—the healthful-toned and the whiners. There are ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... clothes and lodgings are so exalted in unthinking estimates. To be without them would be distressingly inconvenient, no doubt; but one can have luxurious provision of both and remain very wretched. Even the body itself cannot thrive if it has no more than these three pottage messes! Freedom to come, go, speak, work, play,—in short, to be one's self,—is to the body more than meat and gold, and to the ...
— Bits About Home Matters • Helen Hunt Jackson
... them to pleasure. Also, S. Germanus mixed ashes with his bread, that he should feel no pleasure in his meat-time. Other sauce than hunger, they took none. S. Gregory says: "bread made of bran and water, with cold or other simple pottage is good food to the well-taught stomach, with sauce of GOD'S love if he have it therewith: without this sauce, no sustenance has savour that man enjoys." Some eat no meat before the night; some only every other day; ...
— The Form of Perfect Living and Other Prose Treatises • Richard Rolle of Hampole
... very costive may doe well to eat moistning meats, and to use mollifying hearbes, raisons stoned, corants, damascene prunes, butter, or the yolkes of egges, and the like in their broths, or pottage. If these will not be sufficient, then let a day be spared from drinking the water, and let the party take some lenitive medicine, as laxative corants, or some such like thing: whereof the Physitian hath ever great choice and variety, wherewith he can fit directly every one his case; to whom present ...
— Spadacrene Anglica - The English Spa Fountain • Edmund Deane
... is raised to a high quality only when the artist refuses to sell his soul for a mess of pottage. He may, to be sure, need the pottage, but the price is too great. Rather will he find his attitude expressed in these ...
— Italy, the Magic Land • Lilian Whiting
... fire to boil their pottage, Two poor old dames, as I have known, Will often live in one small cottage, But she, poor woman, dwelt alone. 'Twas well enough when summer came, The long, warm, lightsome summer-day, Then at her door the canty dame Would sit, as any ...
— Lyrical Ballads 1798 • Wordsworth and Coleridge
... birthright?" said Berry. "We know they had birthrights. And I'd sooner be a birthright than a wine-cooler any day. Besides, Jonah could go as a mess of pottage. There's an idea for ...
— The Brother of Daphne • Dornford Yates
... were employed in boiling sorrel and different kinds of berries in large square kettles made of cedar wood. This pottage, when it had attained a certain consistency, they took out with ladles, and poured it into frames about twelve inches square. These were then exposed to the sun, until their contents became so many dried cakes. This was their principal ...
— Pioneers in Canada • Sir Harry Johnston
... Plymire might be, and pictured to myself some old attorney who had fallen into the hands of Doddridge Knapp, and had, through misfortune, been forced to sell everything for the mess of pottage to keep life in him. But there was small time for musing, and I went out to do Doddridge Knapp's bidding in the stock-gambling ...
— Blindfolded • Earle Ashley Walcott
... convent; and thou must take also a bushel of lentils and sift and crush and cook them. Then must thou fetch water in barrels and fill the four fountains; after which thou must take three hundred and threescore and six wooden platters and crumble the cracknels therein and pour of the lentil pottage over each and carry every monk and patriarch his platter.' 'Take me back to the King and let him kill me,' said Alaeddin; 'it were easier to me than this service.' 'If thou do the service that is due from thee,' replied the old woman, ...
— The Book Of The Thousand Nights And One Night, Volume III • Anonymous
... political character of the same description, —hollow-ware, not generally porcelain, indeed,—cracked in every direction, but deftly bound together with silver strips of preferment, till it is consistent enough to serve all the need of its possessor in receiving large messes of the public pottage. How the Chinese would have admired Mr. Tyler's Commissioner, if they had known the exquisite perfection of crackle displayed in his political career! To be sure, the ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. II., November, 1858., No. XIII. • Various
... the display being proportioned to the wealth and condition of the host and the consideration to be paid to the guests. The head cook and his assistants entered in procession, bearing the dishes in regular order, and deposited them on the table with due solemnity. The pottage was first served, and when this course was eaten, the vessels and spoons were removed. The carver performed his office on the meats, holding the joint, according to the traditions of his order, carefully with the ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 109, November, 1866 • Various
... for mighty Wealth will enter in, and with Wealth comes jolly Mirth and gentle Peace. May all the corn-bins be full and the mass of dough always overflow the kneading-trough. Now (set before us) cheerful barley-pottage, full ...
— Hesiod, The Homeric Hymns, and Homerica • Homer and Hesiod
... blind beggars whither they might repair after their long quest in the streets of Paris. St. Louis at his death left them an annual rente of thirty livres parisis that every inmate might have a good mess of pottage daily, and Philip le Bel ordered a fleur-de-lys to be embroidered on their dress that they might be known as the king's poor folk. The buildings, now transferred to the Rue de Charenton, originally covered a vast area of ground between ...
— The Story of Paris • Thomas Okey
... chieftains; and the Russian fabrics were a temptation to all, especially to the women; but to the honor of the Circassians, the tribes with few exceptions disdained to sell their birthright of independence for a mere mess of pottage. Relations of trade and amity could be established only with the tribes whose position on the frontier compelled them to be neutral. The chiefs in the interior, though often jealous of each other, held themselves too high to be bought by the common enemy for a price; and the intrigue ...
— Life of Schamyl - And Narrative of the Circassian War of Independence Against Russia • John Milton Mackie
... taught because they will be useful in later life, while Latin and Greek are omitted because they have no practical use, although their educational value may be greater, you will be bartering away the boy's rightful heritage of knowledge for a mess of pottage." ...
— Cambridge Essays on Education • Various
... one;' a grand wedding, and nothing but plain rice pottage to eat! Not a scrap of meat in it, neither sweet nor salt! It would serve the skinflints right if we upset the bride ...
— Tales Of The Punjab • Flora Annie Steel
... dinner, and Dennet, with her little boy and girl, was on the steps dispensing the salt fish, broken bread, and pottage of the Lenten meal to the daily troop who came for her alms, when, among them, she saw, somewhat to her alarm, a gipsy man, who was talking to little Giles. The boy, a stout fellow of six, was astride on the balustrade, looking up eagerly into the face of the man, who began imitating the note of ...
— The Armourer's Prentices • Charlotte M. Yonge
... reign, burst out. That is to say, appealed to the REICHSHOFRATH (Imperial Aulic Council at Vienna; chief Court of the Empire in such cases); openly protesting there, That their Papa had no power to make such a bargain, selling their birthright for immediate pottage; and that, in brief, they would not stand by it at all;—and summoned Friedrich Wilhelm to show cause why ...
— History Of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. VI. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... the Swiss Protestant minister and author, is of the opinion that coffee (and not lentils, as others have supposed) was the red pottage for which Esau sold his birthright; also that the parched grain that Boaz ordered to be given Ruth ...
— All About Coffee • William H. Ukers
... the country by that name from himself, for he was named Adom; which appellation he got on the following occasion:—One day returning from the toil of hunting very hungry, [it was when he was a child in age,] he lighted on his brother when he was getting ready lentile-pottage for his dinner, which was of a very red color; on which account he the more earnestly longed for it, and desired him to give him some of it to eat: but he made advantage of his brother's hunger, and forced him to resign up to him his birthright; and he, being pinched with famine, resigned it ...
— The Antiquities of the Jews • Flavius Josephus
... and loved to sit In the low hut or garnish'd cottage, And praise the farmer's homely wit, And share the widow's homelier pottage: At his approach complaint grew mild; And when his hand unbarr'd the shutter, The clammy lips of fever smiled The welcome, ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 13, No. 362, Saturday, March 21, 1829 • Various
... think of a rag-picker's wife as dining sparingly out of a bag—not with her head inside like a horse, but thrusting her scrawny arm elbow deep to stir the pottage, and sprinkling salt and pepper on for nicer flavor. Following such preparation she will fork it out like macaroni, with her head thrown back to present the wider orifice. If her husband's route lies along the richer streets she will have by way of ...
— Journeys to Bagdad • Charles S. Brooks
... cabbage greens; broth. "Kail through the reek," to give one a severe reproof. Kail-brose, pottage of meal made with the scum of broth. Kale-yard, a vegetable garden. Ken, to know. Kend, knew. Kenna, kensna, know ...
— Old Mortality, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... the two Southwestern representatives put up at the Grand Union, Copah's tar-paper-covered simulacrum of a hotel; and during that day Ford contrived to sell his birthright for what he, himself, valued at the moment as a mess of pottage. ...
— Empire Builders • Francis Lynde
... to boil their pottage, Two poor old Dames, as I have known, Will often live in one small cottage; But she, poor woman! housed alone. 'Twas well enough when summer came, The long, warm, lightsome summer day, Then at her door the canty dame Would sit, as ...
— The Children's Garland from the Best Poets • Various
... even they are coming, though by slow degrees, to realize that the Faith may be still more sacred. For the rest of us, the issue was formulated by Gladstone sixty years ago: "You have our decision: take your own; choose between the mess of pottage and the birthright ...
— Prime Ministers and Some Others - A Book of Reminiscences • George W. E. Russell
... us a priceless heritage. Is there to be found among us now one who would so dishonor the memory of these sainted dead; one so lost to love of country and loyalty to his race, as to offer to sell our birthright for a mess of pottage? When we were slaves, Garrison labored to make us free; when our manhood was denied, he proclaimed it. Shall we in the day of freedom be less loyal to our country and true to ourselves than were the friends who ...
— Masterpieces of Negro Eloquence - The Best Speeches Delivered by the Negro from the days of - Slavery to the Present Time • Various
... thou so tart, my brother? Esau sold his birthright, and that for a mess of pottage, and that birthright was his greatest jewel; and if he, why might not Little-faith do so ...
— The Pilgrim's Progress - From this world to that which is to come. • John Bunyan
... thus they'll drive liberty from out the land; but when a brave people, like the Americans, from their infancy us'd to liberty (not as a gift, but who inherit it as a birth-right, but not as a mess of pottage, to be bought by, or sold to, ev'ry hungry glutton of a minister) find attempts made to reduce them to slavery, they generally take some desperate successful measure for their deliverance. I should ...
— The Fall of British Tyranny - American Liberty Triumphant • John Leacock
... and he cried, 'No trifling! I can't wait, beside! I've promised to visit by dinner time Bagdat, and accept the prime Of the Head-Cook's pottage, all he's rich in, For having left, in the Caliph's kitchen, Of a nest of scorpions no survivor— With him I proved no bargain-driver, With you, don't think I'll bate a stiver! And folks who put me in a passion May find me pipe to ...
— English Critical Essays - Nineteenth Century • Various
... many young [people] knotting together and crying out Porridge often and seditiously in the church, and took the Common Prayer Book, they say, away.' There is a four leaved pamphlet, 4to 1642, by Gyles Calsine, entitled 'A Messe of Pottage, very well seasoned and crumb'd with bread of life, and easie to be digested against the contumelious slanderers of the Divine ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn, Vol. II • Aphra Behn
... series of continuing wrongs against India which if India has any sense of honour, she must right at the sacrifice of all the material wealth she possesses. If she does not, she will have bartered her soul for a 'mess of pottage.' ...
— Freedom's Battle - Being a Comprehensive Collection of Writings and Speeches on the Present Situation • Mahatma Gandhi
... up, Mother Drum," he says; "you have fried collops enow for us, I trow; and if more are wanted for the Billy Boys, you can to your pan again. You began your brandy pottage too early tonight, Mother. Let us have no more of your vapours 'twixt this and day-break, prithee. What would ...
— The Strange Adventures of Captain Dangerous, Vol. 1 of 3 • George Augustus Sala
... the rebel Tyrone, and wished I had never received my lord of Essex's honor of knighthood. She is quite disfavored[141] and unattired, and these troubles waste her much. She disregarded every costly cover that cometh to the table, and taketh little but manchet and succory pottage. Every new message from the city doth disturb her, and she frowns on all the ladies. I had a sharp message from her, brought by my lord Buckhurst, namely thus. 'Go tell that witty fellow my godson ...
— Memoirs of the Court of Queen Elizabeth • Lucy Aikin
... community was already astir, and then the Angelus summoned all to the church, where mass was said, and a short time given to the religious instruction of the neophytes. Breakfast followed, composed mainly of the staple dish atole, or pottage of roasted barley. This finished, the Indians repaired in squads, each under the supervision of its alcalde, to their various tasks in workshop and field. Between eleven and twelve o'clock, a wholesome and sufficiently generous midday meal ...
— The Famous Missions of California • William Henry Hudson
... that might hamper our action on its behalf. We must simplify our lives; we must not neglect to set an example even in small matters. The material claims of life absorb far too much of our time. We are constantly selling our birthright for a mess of pottage. We shall never be truly devoted propagandists till we have freed ourselves from ...
— A Girl Among the Anarchists • Isabel Meredith
... for them all. To sacrifice decency to self-interest wasn't in them, nor never would be. Some there might be, like 'Enery Steptoe, who would sell their birthright for a mess of pottage, but Mary Ann Courage was not of that company, nor any other woman upon whom she could use her influence. If a hussy had been put to reign over them, reigned over by a hussy none of them would be. All they asked was to see her once, to deliver the ...
— The Dust Flower • Basil King
... exhortations Goodwife Dolly brought him to rise and accept his bowl of pottage, though he could not swallow much, and soon put it ...
— The Herd Boy and His Hermit • Charlotte M. Yonge
... a bowl of hot pottage and a warm cake for thee, Naomi. Eat all of it," she commanded. "And talk not to me of robbers. In truth, there are as many robbers in the khan at Bethlehem as upon the length of Jerusalem highway. The caravan to Egypt will pay for straw for six camels ...
— Christmas Light • Ethel Calvert Phillips
... make paste of it, and of the paste, cakes or wreathes, then they lay them on a broad and hote stone, and then couer it with hote stones, and so they bake their bread in stead of Ouens. (M135) They make also sundry sorts of pottage with the said corne and also of pease and of beanes, whereof they haue great store, as also with other fruits, as Muske-Millions, and very great Cowcumbers. They haue also in their houses certaine vessels ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques and Discoveries of - the English Nation. Vol. XIII. America. Part II. • Richard Hakluyt
... can hardly consent to sell our birthright for so poor a mess of pottage as this petty jealousy offers. A teachable spirit in matters of which we are ignorant, is usually as profitable and respectable as abundant self-conceit, and rendering to Caesar the things that are Caesar's, quite ...
— Farm drainage • Henry Flagg French
... God, nor dance nor choose our own clothes nor laugh nor think. We shall scurry hither and thither before the flick of the devil's tail and be ready for the burning. We shall have sold our birthright of daring for an insipid mess of pottage: sold our right to choose and to spare, to slay and to leave alive, to be glad and to be sorry, to be martyrs if we would be, to explore, to risk, to win. We shall be docile and respectable, and the standard ...
— Nonsenseorship • G. G. Putnam
... younger brother cooking some lentils, begged a portion of it for himself. Jacob seized the chance to make a sharp bargain. He offered his brother the food—which is called in the quaint Bible language a "mess of pottage"—making him promise in return that he would let their father give his blessing to the younger instead of the older son. Esau was a careless fellow, too hungry to think what he was saying, and ...
— Rembrandt - A Collection Of Fifteen Pictures and a Portrait of the - Painter with Introduction and Interpretation • Estelle M. Hurll
... cost more than that—about a hundred francs—in Paris. At second-hand, of course. The French government can imprison you, you know, for ten years, if you wear one without the right to do so, but they have no punishment for those who choose to part with them for a mess of pottage. ...
— Gallegher and Other Stories • Richard Harding Davis
... W. Thomason, and presented to the nation by King George III. We will mention a few of them. A controversial religious tract rejoices in the title of A fresh bit of Mutton for those fleshy-minded Cannibals that cannot endure Pottage. A political skit upon Prince Rupert is styled An exact Description of Prince Rupert's malignant She-Monkey, a great Delinquent, and has a comical woodcut upon the title page of the animal, in a cap and petticoat and with a sword by its side. ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. 5, Issue 2, February, 1864 • Various
... described by Treitschke as the typical Protestant nation; but the misfortune of German Protestantism has been that it has never "protested." Through the fusion and confusion of Church and State the Germans have sold their spiritual birthright for a mess of pottage. Their spiritual life has been almost entirely divorced from action. It has been centred in the intellect and in the emotions. It has moved in a world ...
— German Problems and Personalities • Charles Sarolea
... who, even when hard pressed by hunger, sells his birthright for a mess of pottage, is unwise. But what shall we say of him who parts with his birthright and does not get even the pottage in return ? It is not necessary to inquire whether opulence be an adequate compensation for the sacrifice of bodily and mental ...
— The Diary and Letters of Madame D'Arblay Volume 1 • Madame D'Arblay
... why could she not be like other people? Certainly once in a while she could have the things she "loved." It was only a small mess of pottage—some chops, a cup of real coffee, some after-dinner mints. The doctor had proscribed them all, but "Once won't hurt." Her conscience did prick, but days passed; there was no spell, no chill, no headache. "It didn't hurt me" was her triumphant conclusion; and ...
— Our Nervous Friends - Illustrating the Mastery of Nervousness • Robert S. Carroll
... said to Jacob, Feed me, I pray thee, with that same red pottage, for I am faint; therefore was his name ...
— The Woman's Bible. • Elizabeth Cady Stanton
... tastes, have corresponding aspirations? If they differed in thought and life and expression, let them differ—it was of no consequence. She found her husband's exactions tiresome. He had her birthright, she had his pottage; let the matter end there, ...
— Princess • Mary Greenway McClelland
... we warm and dress our fairy children. If we find clean water and clean towels, we leave them money, either in their basins or in their shoes; but if we find no clean water in their houses, we wash our children in their pottage, milk, or beer, or whate'er we find: for the sluts that leave not such things fitting, we wash their faces and hands with a gilded child's clout, or else carry them to some river, and duck them over head and ears. We often use to dwell in some great ...
— The Sources and Analogues of 'A Midsummer-night's Dream' • Compiled by Frank Sidgwick
... I'll sell my loyalty for a mess of pottage! No, I'm for a well-regulated monarchy: hurrah ...
— The Island Home • Richard Archer
... sante of boiled meat for dinner being very valetudinary.... When he is in pretty good health, that he may venture upon more savoury hotter things, &c." The most rigorous Protestants will relax to hear how "To make a Pan Cotto as the Cardinals use in Rome." And if "My Lord Lumley's Pease Pottage" sounds homely, be it known, on the word of the eloquent Robert May, that his lordship "wanted no knowledge in the discerning this mystery." What fastidious simplicity in the taste of the great is suggested by "My Lord ...
— The Closet of Sir Kenelm Digby Knight Opened • Kenelm Digby
... whole; to receive this world at the loss of the next world; or, as our Lord has it, to gain the whole world and to lose our own soul. Lot's choice of Sodom and Gomorrah, and Esau's purchase of the mess of pottage in the Old Testament; and then Judas's thirty pieces of silver, and Ananias and Sapphira's part of the price in the New Testament, are all so many well-known instances of getting in the hundred and ...
— Bunyan Characters - Third Series - The Holy War • Alexander Whyte
... complex interests, or she can have recourse to the supreme test of arms. It is absurd to think that Italy, after seven months of preparation, when she is in an especially advantageous diplomatic and military position, will be satisfied with the Biblical mess of pottage or less—mere promises. ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 2, May, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... had the mysterious stranger mixed the "insane verb" with the family pottage? He returned before I could answer this self-asked inquiry, and resumed coolly his broken narrative. Finding myself forgotten in the man I had so long hesitated to introduce to my friends, I retired to rest early, only to hear, through the thin partitions, two ...
— Drift from Two Shores • Bret Harte |
