Diccionario ingles.comDiccionario ingles.com
Synonyms, antonyms, pronunciation

  Home
English Dictionary      examples: 'day', 'get rid of', 'New York Bay'




Potter   Listen
verb
Potter  v. i.  (past & past part. pottered; pres. part. pottering)  
1.
To busy one's self with trifles; to labor with little purpose, energy, of effect; to trifle; to putter; to pother.
Synonyms: putter; pother. "Pottering about the Mile End cottages."
2.
To walk lazily or idly; to saunter.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








Advanced search
     Find words:
Starting with
Ending with
Containing
Matching a pattern  

Synonyms
Antonyms
Quotes
Words linked to  

only single words



Share |





"Potter" Quotes from Famous Books



... again was the look of death in the faces of the children. Their eyes haunted him in the dark as they slept on the same floor. He would get out of there when he was strong again. But these children would never go except to be hauled in the dead wagon to the Potter's Field. And he heard the rattle of ...
— The Man in Gray • Thomas Dixon

... worthy of note, is that which concerns the quinces, which brings to one's mind the ancient Greek custom that the bridegroom and bride should eat a quince together, as a part of the wedding ceremonies. (See Potter's Grecian Antiquities.) ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 63, January 11, 1851 • Various

... Cartouche once took the diligence to Lille, and found in it a certain Abbe Potter, who was full of indignation against this monster of a Cartouche, and said that when he went back to Paris, which he proposed to do in about a fortnight, he should give the lieutenant of police some ...
— The Paris Sketch Book Of Mr. M. A. Titmarsh • William Makepeace Thackeray

... the De Goncourts. A Great Musician is a paradox, a miracle, a multiple-sided man—stern, firm, selfish, proud and unyielding; yet sensuous as the ether, tender as a woman, innocent as a child, and as plastic as potters' clay. And with most of them, let us frankly admit it, the hand of the Potter shook. When people write about musicians, they seldom write moderately. The man is either a selfish rogue or an angel of light—it all depends upon your point of view. And the curious part is, ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great - Volume 14 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Musicians • Elbert Hubbard

... take the puny colonies in his mighty arms and dash them against the high rock of the sea. He will dash them in pieces 'like a potter's vessel.' What are we ...
— True to His Home - A Tale of the Boyhood of Franklin • Hezekiah Butterworth

... all ulcered into one great canker, Gain,—these make the general character of the middling class, the unleavened mass of that mediocrity which it has been the wisdom of the shallow to applaud. Pah! we too are of this class, this potter's earth, this paltry mixture of mud and stone; but we, my friend, we will knead ...
— The Disowned, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... M^r Whitefield to Boston myself. I shall write to M^r Keen a general Sketch of affairs. I hope to be able when I see the D^r & the Trustees meet to be able to determine what to do the ensuing winter. This Parish have M^r Potter to preach next Sabbath & expect M^r Austin after that. M^r Austin is now asleep in your house. I expect M^r Wheelock will be at home the last of next week or beginning of week after. Mary & Cloe I expect will ride up in ...
— The History of Dartmouth College • Baxter Perry Smith

... came, and I was so proud of them! Then the fever broke out. I went to get medicine when she and the little ones were so sick, and I got on a spree—I don't remember—but when I came to, they showed me their graves in the potter's field; they said the medicine might have saved them. Oh, Job, I can't think! It ...
— The Transformation of Job - A Tale of the High Sierras • Frederick Vining Fisher

... and are the forty-five righteous men for whose sake the world is preserved. I don't know whether there are thirty here (that is, in Babylon), and fifteen in the land of Israel, or vice versa; as it is said (Zech. xi. 13), "I took the thirty pieces of silver and cast them to the potter in the house of the Lord." It stands to reason that there are thirty in the land of Israel, and, therefore, fifteen here. Abaii says that the greater part are to be found under the gable end of the synagogue. Rav Yehudah says the reference is to the thirty righteous men always found among the ...
— Hebraic Literature; Translations from the Talmud, Midrashim and - Kabbala • Various

... Bonchamps endeavoured to reach the Nile, but, after surmounting many difficulties, stuck in the marshes of the Upper Sobat, and was obliged to return. Another expedition of Abyssinians, under Dejaj Tasamma and accompanied by three Europeans—-Faivre (French), Potter (Swiss) and Artomonov (Russian)—started early in 1898, and reached the Nile at the Sobat mouth in June, a few days only before Major Marchand and his gallant companions arrived on the scene. But no contact was made, and the expedition ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia

... had slept on it for seventy-three years. Last Sunday his son—himself old—was carted to the churchyard, as is the country custom, in an open van; to-day the father, still living, goes to what will be to him a strange land. His home is broken up—he will potter no more with maize for the chicken; the gorse hedges will become solid walls of golden bloom, but there will never again be a spring for him. It is very hard, is it not, at ninety? It is not the tyranny of any one that has done it; it is ...
— Field and Hedgerow • Richard Jefferies

... try to avoid it. It is not necessary you should know that I am chaste and that my mind is pure. But do not judge lightly those whom you call unfortunate, and who should be sacred to you, since they are unfortunate. The disdained and lost girl is the docile clay under the finger of the Divine Potter: she is the victim and the altar of the holocaust. The unfortunates are nearer God than the honest women: they have lost conceit. They do not glorify themselves with the untried virtue the matron prides herself on. They possess humility, which is ...
— The Red Lily, Complete • Anatole France

... in reproduction are that, through the rightly directed wills of the father and mother, preceding and during antenatal life, the child's form or body, character of mind and purity of soul are formed and established. That in its plastic state, during antenatal life, like clay in the hands of the potter, it can be molded into absolutely any form of body and soul the ...
— Searchlights on Health - The Science of Eugenics • B. G. Jefferis and J. L. Nichols

... like them o' David the son o' Jesse, are endit. Gang on, my dear lad, gang on to pluck brands frae the burnin'. Haud oot a helpin' han' to ilka son and dauchter o' Adam 'at will tak a grip o' 't. Be a burnin' an' a shinin' licht, that men may praise, no you, for ye're but clay i' the han's o' the potter, but yer Father in heaven. Tak the drunkard frae his whusky, the deboshed frae his debosh, the sweirer frae his aiths, the leear frae his lees; and giena ony o' them ower muckle o' yer siller at ance, for fear ...
— Robert Falconer • George MacDonald

... Just potter around in quest of the best steering gear, or try to decide whether you will set up your rigging with old-fashioned lanyards or with turnbuckles, if you want strain of detail. Shall the binnacle be located in front of the wheel in the centre of the beam, or ...
— The Cruise of the Snark • Jack London

... Barlow," she whispered, taking off her glasses to wipe away the moisture gathering so fast upon them. Then resuming them, she continued: "I'm a hewer of wood—a drawer of water. God made me so, and shall the clay find fault with the potter for making it into a homely jug? No, indeed; and I was a very foolish old jug to think of sticking myself in with the chinaware. But I've larnt a lesson," and the philosophic woman read on, feeling comforted to know that though a vessel of the rudest make, a paltry jug, as she called ...
— Family Pride - Or, Purified by Suffering • Mary J. Holmes

... theory to suppose many things which our knowledge of the human race absolutely forbids us to believe: for example, it was necessary to suppose that the Australians or New Zealanders, having once possessed so simple and convenient an art as that of the potter, had lost every trace of it; and that the same tribes, having once had so simple a means of saving labour as the spindle or small stick weighted at one end for spinning, had given it up and gone back to twisting threads with the hand. In fact, it ...
— History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom • Andrew Dickson White

... shall bear rule over the earth. And the fourth kingdom shall be strong as iron, forasmuch as iron breaketh in pieces and subdueth all things; and as iron that breaketh all these, shall it break in pieces and bruise. And whereas thou sawest the feet and toes, part of potter's clay and part of iron, the kingdom shall be divided, but there shall be in it of the strength of the iron; forasmuch as thou sawest the iron mixed with clay, so the kingdom shall be partly strong and partly broken. And ...
— The Young Captives - A Story of Judah and Babylon • Erasmus W. Jones

... city, one feels that there is nothing rigid, nothing oppressive, nothing inaccessible to the influence of changing conditions. If the buildings are Cyclopean, so is the race that reared them. The material world seems as clay on the potter's wheel, visibly taking on the impress of the human spirit; and the human spirit, as embodied in this superbly vital people, seems to be visibly thrilling to ...
— America To-day, Observations and Reflections • William Archer

... it will take a good interview to say how much. As for the little Solomons, I am prepared to [be] fond of all of them, as I am of all children, even the grubby little mendicants that run these Italian streets. I am glad you and Grey have pottered. Potter again. I have had such a nice letter from Lawrence. It makes me think it is all going "to be the fair ...
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton • Maisie Ward

... Mo. 2d. May I be enabled to give myself up as clay into the Potter's hand, without mixing up any thing of my own contriving; and in the silence of all flesh, wait to have the true seed watered and nourished by ...
— A Brief Memoir with Portions of the Diary, Letters, and Other Remains, - of Eliza Southall, Late of Birmingham, England • Eliza Southall

... suffers, which arraigns The law that bids it suffer? Has it not A claim for some remembrance in the book That fills its pages with the idle words Spoken of man? Or is it only clay, Bleeding and aching in the potter's hand, Yet all his own to treat it as he will, And when he will to cast it at his feet, Shattered, dishonored, lost for evermore? My dog loves me, but could he look beyond His earthly master, would his love extend To Him who—hush! I will not doubt that He Is better than ...
— The Dog's Book of Verse • Various

... people on the bank, set up a shout; but Squire Lyman could not speak. He seized Dr. Potter by the shoulder, and sank ...
— Little Grandmother • Sophie May

... some, "in order," he said, "that we may not begin to quarrel with our friends, when we have got entirely rid of our enemies." So too our expending these passions entirely on our enemies will give less trouble to our friends. For it ought not to be, as Hesiod[535] says, that "potter envies potter, and singer envies singer, and neighbour neighbour," and cousin cousin, and brother brother, "if hastening to get rich" and enjoying prosperity. But if there is no other way to get rid of strife and envy and quarrels, accustom yourself to be vexed at your ...
— Plutarch's Morals • Plutarch

... ordinary mule-drivers - Potter and Morris, a little acrobat out of a travelling circus, a METIF or half- breed Indian named Jim, two French Canadians - Nelson and Louis (the latter spoke French only); Jacob, a Pennsylvanian auctioneer whose language was a mixture of Dutch, Yankee, and German; and (after we reached ...
— Tracks of a Rolling Stone • Henry J. Coke

... train, discipline, drill, inculcate, instil, indoctrinate. Thoughtful, contemplative, meditative, reflective, pensive, wistful. Tire, weary, fatigue, exhaust, jade, fag. Tool, implement, instrument, utensil. Trifle, dally, dawdle, potter. Try, endeavor, essay, attempt. Trust, confidence, reliance, assurance, faith. Turn, revolve, rotate, ...
— The Century Vocabulary Builder • Creever & Bachelor

... some vague disappointment at what she heard, but her words were cheerful enough. "Oh of course—whatever he likes best," she said. "I will tell Potter to make everything ready. I suppose there's no chance of his being ...
— The Market-Place • Harold Frederic

... associating with himself a Mr. Sanborn, a young man of push and enterprise, has opened up an extensive cattle ranch in Potter and Randall counties, Texas. They have fenced with wire a tract thirty miles long by about fifteen miles broad, and have now upon it 14,000 head of cattle. Two twisted No. 11 wires were used for this fence, and the posts are the best that could be procured. The wire was taken ...
— Prairie Farmer, Vol. 56: No. 1, January 5, 1884. - A Weekly Journal for the Farm, Orchard and Fireside • Various

... whether they could put them into English. Some of them I coveted for the mountains. Men with clear heads and big hearts, and built after Sandy M'Naughton's model. It does seem a sinful waste of God's good human stuff to see these fellows potter away their lives among theories living and dead, and end up by producing a book! They are all either making or going to make a book. A good thing we haven't to read them. But here and there among them is some quiet chap who will make a book that ...
— Black Rock • Ralph Connor

... in my bed, I'll rise at half-past ten, When all the world is nicely groomed and full of golden song; I'll smoke a bit and joke a bit, and read the news, and then I'll potter round my peach-trees till I hear the luncheon gong. And after that I think I'll doze an hour, well, maybe two, And then I'll show some kindred soul how well my roses thrive; I'll do the things I never yet ...
— Ballads of a Bohemian • Robert W. Service

... long since faded out of your heart that you would hardly know what the word meant if you chanced to read it in print. Thought, too, is dead within you, and feeling even so numbed that you hardly suffer any more. Practically you are a man who ought to be in your coffin—at peace in Potter's field—who, by the mere mechanic habit of existence, mournfully parades the public streets, holding up a banner with some strange device, the scoff of the pitiless wayfarer—as like as not supporting against an empty stomach the savoury ...
— Vanishing Roads and Other Essays • Richard Le Gallienne

... coffee-houses, but you see them hourly exemplified in living scenes. This is probably the most ancient city in the world. Eleazar, the trusty steward of Abraham, was a citizen of it nearly 4,000 years ago, and the Arabs maintain that Adam was created here out of the red clay that is now fashioned by the potter into other forms. ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Volume 19 - Travel and Adventure • Various

... significance of nature is impelled to expression; and his delight is not fully realized and complete until he has uttered it. Such art is love expressed, and the artist's work is his "hymn of the praise of things." But the joy for both the potter and the painter, the joy which is so bound up with art as to partake of its very essence, is the joy which attends self-expression and the satisfaction of ...
— The Gate of Appreciation - Studies in the Relation of Art to Life • Carleton Noyes

... the establishment of a Norse theatre in Bergen; this became an accomplished fact in 1850; but in consequence of harassing business complications he went again to America. During this visit (1852-1857) he bought 125,000 acres in Potter county, Pennsylvania, for a Norwegian colony, which was to have been called Oleana after his name; but his title turned out to be fraudulent, and the troubles he went through in connexion with the undertaking were enough to affect his health ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 4 - "Bulgaria" to "Calgary" • Various

... was the 'eminent and pious and learned Divine,' Dr Barnabas Potter, whom he presented with the living of Dean Prior. Herrick and his predecessor were indeed a contrast to one another, for Dr Potter was 'melancholy, lean, and a hard student.' He was afterwards transplanted ...
— Devon, Its Moorlands, Streams and Coasts • Rosalind Northcote

... [Flacius's tract of 1567] more than six times that Illyricus says: Satan condidit, fabricavit, transformavit veterem hominem, Satan est figulus, that is: The devil created and made man, the devil is man's potter." The idea of a creation out of nothing, however, was not taught in the statements to which Hesshusius referred. (Preger ...
— Historical Introductions to the Symbolical Books of the Evangelical Lutheran Church • Friedrich Bente

... but Violet could not divest herself of the impression that there was more acute personal feeling than he was aware of. In the Ellesmere gallery, he led them to that little picture of Paul Potter's, where the pollard willows stand up against the sunset sky, the evening sunshine gleaming on their trunks, upon the grass, and gilding the backs of the cows, while the placid old couple look on at the milking, the hooded lady shading her face ...
— Heartsease - or Brother's Wife • Charlotte M. Yonge

... fear, of his [W.'s] Latin productions are wholly free from faults, which he would have been taught to avoid in our best public seminaries, and of which I have seen many glaring instances in the works of Archbishop Potter, Dr. John Taylor, Mr. Toup, and several eminent scholars now living, who were brought up ...
— Notes & Queries No. 29, Saturday, May 18, 1850 • Various

... this apparently unintelligible custom have any reference to the 21st verse of the IXth chap. of St. Paul's Epistle to the Romans: "Hath not the potter power over the clay, of the same lump to make one vessel unto honour, and another unto dishonour?"—the earthen fragments thus turned to dishonour ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 74, March 29, 1851 • Various

... in town last night than have been seen here for a long time. Everyone who wears cuffs and a necktie got a 'twice-over' and was 'out amongst 'em.' In the gallery of the opera house roosted the college faculty and the Potter boy who holds the Cottonwood Valley belt as the champion lay-down collar swell, and near him was Everett Fowler, who was making his first public appearance in his new parted spring whiskers, and was the observed of all observers. Colonel Alphabetical Morrison, ...
— In Our Town • William Allen White

... grease-spots from cotton or woolen materials, absorbent pastes, and even common soap, are used, applied to the spot when dry. When the colors are not fast, place a layer of fuller's-earth or pulverized potter's clay over the spot, and press with a very hot iron. For silks, moires and plain or brocaded satins, pour two drops of rectified spirits of wine over the spot, cover with a linen cloth, and press with a hot iron, changing the linen instantly. ...
— Practical Suggestions for Mother and Housewife • Marion Mills Miller

... steps, we sought the plantation of Mr. Potter—a very different one from that of Mr. Gibbons, as all was finish and neatness; a fine mansion well stored with books, and some fine oaks, some of which Mr. ...
— Maria Mitchell: Life, Letters, and Journals • Maria Mitchell

... affairs. It was a fearsome war, and many forgot afterwards whose was the first life lost in the struggle,—poor little Mr. Baptiste's, whose body lay at the Morgue unclaimed for days before it was finally dropped unnamed into Potter's Field. ...
— The Goodness of St. Rocque and Other Stories • Alice Dunbar

... now it passed to a second BROWN, Who took it and likewise claimed a crown. When Brown conveyed it unto WARE, Having had one crown, to make it fair, He paid him two crowns to take the chair; And Ware, being honest, (as all Wares be,) He paid one POTTER, who took it, three. Four got ROBINSON; five got Dix; JOHNSON primus demanded six; And so the sum kept gathering still Till after ...
— The Poetical Works of Oliver Wendell Holmes, Complete • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.

... wherever he traveled that successful stupidity, although secretly despised, was often the master of the people, while a genius with the wisdom of the ages, starved at the castle gate, and like Mozart and Otway, found rest in the Potter's field. ...
— Shakspere, Personal Recollections • John A. Joyce

... found a ranch to suit me. I bought it, the cattle, and everything on it. The former owner and his family were not long ere they left, and then my sons entered on their duties. They understood the work, I did not, but I used to potter about and help in ...
— The Truth About America • Edward Money

... There is a passage in Clement of Alexandria, not unlike this in statement of the same doctrine ("Stromaton" 1. vi. m. 14, p. 794 Ed. Potter). The passage is quoted in "Faith of Catholics." ...
— Purgatory • Mary Anne Madden Sadlier

... be disappointed in Paul Potter's "Bull," because people always speak of it at once, if they hear you are going to Holland; but if you could be disappointed in that young and winning beast who kindly stands there with diamonds in his great velvet eyes, and the breath coming and going under his rough, wholesome ...
— The Chauffeur and the Chaperon • C. N. Williamson

... some countries, as among the Bechuanas, the Boeotians, and the Peruvians, the spot where men first came out on earth is known to be some neighbouring marsh or cave. Lastly, man is occasionally represented as having been framed out of a piece of the body of the Creator, or made by some demiurgic potter out of clay. All these legends are told by savages, with no sense of their inconsistency. There is no single orthodoxy on the matter, and we shall see that all these theories coexist pell-mell among the mythological traditions of civilised races. In almost every mythology, too, the whole ...
— Myth, Ritual, and Religion, Vol. 1 • Andrew Lang

... guest would potter about the house or, when the weather was fine, stroll down to the shore, where he would walk up and down the strip of sandy beach in the lee of the wind hour after hour. Now and then he wandered out upon the dunes that stretched along ...
— The Inn at the Red Oak • Latta Griswold

... common hangman, is a known expedient to make it sell; so, to write a book that deserveth such treatment, is another: And a third, perhaps as effectual as either, is to ply an insipid, worthless tract with grave and learned answers, as Dr. Hickes, Dr. Potter,[3] and Mr. Wotton have done. Design and performances, however commendable, have glanced a reputation upon the piece; which oweth its life to the strength of those hands and weapons, that were raised ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, Vol. III.: Swift's Writings on Religion and the Church, Vol. I. • Jonathan Swift

... young turkeys were under shelter. The visitors hurried to the door, bewailing the windows they had left open at home, and hoping their husbands would have sense enough to see to things. And the mamma ran upstairs to close the windows and potter over some collars and ruffles that had blown about, never thinking of ...
— St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, Vol. 5, September 1878, No. 11 • Various

... help.—Unless we are willing to find out all we can about a poor man, we have no business to indulge our sympathy or ease our conscience by giving him money or food. It is often easier to give than to withhold. But it is far more harmful. When Bishop Potter says that "It is far better,—better for him and better for us,—to give a beggar a kick than to give him a half-dollar," it sounds like a hard saying, yet it is the strict truth. In a civilized and Christian ...
— Practical Ethics • William DeWitt Hyde

... horses through the crowd with a rudeness which provoked complaint. But a new danger awaited him at the stable. The hostler challenged him as an old acquaintance, pretending to have known him in the service of Mr. Potter, at Exeter. The fact was that, during the civil war, Charles had lodged at that gentleman's house. He turned aside to conceal his alarm; but had sufficient presence of mind to avail himself of the partial mistake of the hostler, and to reply, "True, I once lived a servant ...
— The History of England from the First Invasion by the Romans - to the Accession of King George the Fifth - Volume 8 • John Lingard and Hilaire Belloc

... moths in carpets when they are taken up, sprinkle tobacco or black pepper on the floor before the carpets are put down, and let it remain after they are laid down. When the dust is well shaken out of carpets, if there are any grease spots on them, grate on potter's clay very thick, cover them with a brown paper, and set on a warm iron. It will be necessary to repeat this process several times, to get out all the grease. If the carpets are so much soiled as to ...
— The American Housewife • Anonymous

... ancient form there stands and huge, that turns His shoulders towards Damiata, and at Rome As in his mirror looks. Of finest gold His head is shap'd, pure silver are the breast And arms; thence to the middle is of brass. And downward all beneath well-temper'd steel, Save the right foot of potter's clay, on which Than on the other more erect he stands, Each part except the gold, is rent throughout; And from the fissure tears distil, which join'd Penetrate to that cave. They in their course Thus far precipitated down the rock Form Acheron, and ...
— The Divine Comedy • Dante

... Wrote a letter, by the Captain's order, to get Davison to go as mate with us. Our Captain went to York to carry it to Capt. Potter. At 3 P.M. came in a sloop from Jamaica, in a 20 days passage, from which we learn that Admiral Vernon's fleet was fitting out for Cuba.[F] I wish them more success than what they got against Carthagena; for by all report they got more blows than ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, No. 47, September, 1861 • Various

... his extreme youth. Many anecdotes are told of this brilliant composer, and all of them seem to illustrate a practical and resourceful mind, while they show little of the eccentricity that is supposed to belong to genius. It was Sir Arthur Sullivan who first popularized Schumann in England. Potter, head of the Royal Academy in London in 1861, had known Beethoven well, and had never been converted to a love of music less great than his—nor was his taste very catholic—and he continually regretted Sullivan's championship of Schumann's music. ...
— Operas Every Child Should Know - Descriptions of the Text and Music of Some of the Most Famous Masterpieces • Mary Schell Hoke Bacon

... murmured. "He fought Tusk Potter, but I'm sure it's no worse than a blow on the head ...
— Sunlight Patch • Credo Fitch Harris

... affected only incidentally the problem which was before our meeting last Monday night. It is easy to find precedent for the occupancy of a Unitarian pulpit by a minister not a Unitarian. At the time of the famous Year-Book controversy, Mr. Potter of New Bedford, Mass., and several of his colleagues, withdrew from the Unitarian body, but continued to hold their Unitarian pulpits. The latest instance of which I chance to know was called to my attention by the death last week of Prof. George A. Foster, of Chicago University. ...
— A Statement: On the Future of This Church • John Haynes Holmes

... with much painter's feeling, and fine mouldings again. The tiled roof projecting in the shadow above, protects the first Ceramicus-home. I think the women are meant to be carrying some kind of wicker or reed-bound water-vessel. The Potter's servant explains to them the extreme advantages of the new invention. I can't make any conjecture about the author ...
— Mornings in Florence • John Ruskin

... been so flurried by my hasty arrival that I did not at first observe that the desk on my right, usually occupied by a boy called Potter, ...
— Boycotted - And Other Stories • Talbot Baines Reed

... investigation, of difficulties encountered and overcome by heroic industry, does not that marvellous machine tell of! It is indeed, in itself, a monument of the power of self-help in man. Grouped around it we find Savary, the military engineer; Newcomen, the Dartmouth blacksmith; Cawley, the glazier; Potter, the engine-boy; Smeaton, the civil engineer; and, towering above all, the laborious, patient, never-tiring James Watt, ...
— Self Help • Samuel Smiles

... again and again that it is beautiful. The rocky steeps that enclose the town have a Scottish air, and traveled visitors, beholding them, are fain to allude to the Trosachs; but the river that rolls through the mountains, and has whirled them into a hollow as the potter turns a vase, is continental in its character, and plunges through the landscape with a swell of eddy and a breadth of muscle that are like nothing ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XII. No. 31. October, 1873. • Various

... Do you suppose he had anything to do with the robbery at Stresch & Potter's department store? They say the thieves got more than ...
— The Girls of Central High on Lake Luna - or, The Crew That Won • Gertrude W. Morrison

... are old and decrepit, filled with stubborn, hereditary prejudices, and cursed with an aristocracy and a bourgeoisie; but Russia is young, knows nothing of social castes, and has no deep-rooted prejudices to contend with. The population is like potter's clay, which can be made to assume any form that science may recommend. Alexander II. began a magnificent sociological ...
— Russia • Donald Mackenzie Wallace

... your father," he interrupted gently, "do you not think that sometimes the potter's thumb slips in the making of ...
— The Good Comrade • Una L. Silberrad

... lifting in his heart. He fell on his knees before the little house and offered up a prayer. Long he staid in that place, preaching gentle doctrines and ministering to the men and women of that lonely village, and when the fisherman apostle, Thomas Potter, died he left the church to Murray, who, in turn, bequeathed it, "free, for the use ...
— Myths And Legends Of Our Own Land, Complete • Charles M. Skinner

... of noise, as a general rule. I remember Cats-meat Potter-Pirbright bringing a police rattle into the Drones one night and loosing it off behind my chair, and I just lay back and closed my eyes with a pleasant smile, like someone in a box at the opera. And the same applies to the time when my Aunt ...
— Right Ho, Jeeves • P. G. Wodehouse

... great French potter and inventor of a new process in the potter's art, born in Perigord, of humble parentage; celebrated for his fine earthenware vases ornamented with figures artistically modelled, but above all for his untiring zeal and patience in the study of his ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood

... rebels from their rifle-pits in front of the lines, extending from Fort Pringle, and pushed them vigorously. The next day I was at Bull's Bay, with a dozen steamers, among them the finest of the squadron. General Potter had twelve to fifteen hundred men, the object being to carry out your views. We made as much fuss as possible, and with better success than I anticipated, for it seems that the rebs conceived Stono to be a feint, and the real ...
— The Memoirs of General W. T. Sherman, Complete • William T. Sherman

... afterwards: moderate living, joy of thinking, hours of meditation, secret knowledge of the self, of his eternal entity, which is neither body nor consciousness. Many a part of this he still had, but one part after another had been submerged and had gathered dust. Just as a potter's wheel, once it has been set in motion, will keep on turning for a long time and only slowly lose its vigour and come to a stop, thus Siddhartha's soul had kept on turning the wheel of asceticism, the wheel of thinking, the wheel of differentiation for a long time, still turning, but it turned ...
— Siddhartha • Herman Hesse

... the cold doom which now awaits her. Say, noble priestess—say! I feel I am parting from thee. Some links in the mighty spell which binds me are already broken. Some great influence is at work moulding my soul to something good. I will let it work. I will be passive in the hands of this great Potter, and out of darkness—gross darkness and sin—He may bring forth a being clothed with radiant immortality. Already a new dawn upheaveth, and more peace than Endora hath experienced in a lifetime ...
— Saronia - A Romance of Ancient Ephesus • Richard Short

... there be such a thing as an Agrarian on earth, he would fight bravely for his land, though it should be of no greater extent than would suffice him for a grave, according to the strictest measurement of the potter's field. Would every honest believer do as much ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 3, No. 18, April, 1859 - [Date last updated: August 7, 2005] • Various

... island some twenty fathoms from Place Royale, about a hundred paces long, where a good and strong settlement might be made. There are also many meadows, containing very good and rich potter's clay, as well adapted for brick as for building purposes, and consequently a very useful article. I had a portion of it worked up, from which I made a wall four feet thick, three or four high, and ten fathoms long, to see how it would stand during the winter, when the freshets ...
— Voyages of Samuel de Champlain V3 • Samuel de Champlain

... the guns of the enemy against him and advanced inside the rebel lines. About six o'clock I ordered Warren's corps to the support of Hancock's. Burnside, on the left, had advanced up east of the salient to the very parapet of the enemy. Potter, commanding one of his divisions, got over but was not able to remain there. However, he inflicted a heavy loss upon the enemy; but not without loss ...
— Personal Memoirs of U. S. Grant, Complete • Ulysses S. Grant

... influence that under his direction the people gladly undertook extensive works of bridge building and road making. Like Shotoku Taishi, his name is associated by tradition with achievements not properly assignable to him, as the invention of the potter's wheel—though it had been in use for centuries before his time—and the production of various works of art which can scarcely have occupied the attention of a religious zealot. By order of the Empress Gensho, Gyogi was thrown into prison for a time, ...
— A History of the Japanese People - From the Earliest Times to the End of the Meiji Era • Frank Brinkley and Dairoku Kikuchi

... done all this myself, without the voluntary help of any human being. I have used men as the mechanic uses tools, making them do his work, or as the potter uses clay, molding ...
— Victor's Triumph - Sequel to A Beautiful Fiend • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth

... the old man, "he ist a creat deal potter, mein young vrient.—You Shack, you hafe work well. You gan go to mein haus, und die frau will give you blenty of mealie gake und zom milk. You don't eat doo motch, or you will pe pad again, und want dem shdick. ...
— Diamond Dyke - The Lone Farm on the Veldt - Story of South African Adventure • George Manville Fenn

... trod, Careless of pain, so it led to God, Seemed the hunger-pang and the poor man's wrong, The weak ones trodden beneath the strong. Should the worm be chooser?—the clay withstand The shaping will of the potter's hand? ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier

... made great progress since 1867, and many who voted against the proposition then would to-day vote and work heartily for it, and doubtless, if submitted again it would be carried by a large majority. A recent conversation with Ex-Gov. Potter, who voted against it, confirms this opinion, and Senator Plumb is softening. A noticeable feature of the meetings of the political campaign of 1880, was the presence of large numbers of women. On the eve of the election, at a full meeting in the largest hall ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume II • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage

... literature, or at any rate in the kingdom of the great dead, all wrongs shall be redressed, and patient merit shall take no more quips and scorns from the unworthy: there, if an able artist, as, we will say, F. H. Potter just dead, dies poor, neglected, and unable to fight his way through the ranks of men with not a tenth part of his genius, there, at any rate, shall right be done; there the mighty shall be put down from his seat, and the lowly and meek, if clever as well as good, shall meet his just reward. It ...
— Ex Voto • Samuel Butler

... man who does not believe himself free believes he is in the hands of God, and that is the beginning of wisdom and the beginning of virtue. We are in the hands of God as the clay is in those of the potter; the mad vase would be the one which reproached the potter for having made it small instead of big, common instead of decorative. It is the beginning of wisdom to believe oneself in the hands of God; to see Him, to see Him the least indistinctly that we can, therein lies the highest wisdom; we ...
— Initiation into Philosophy • Emile Faguet

... "Sometimes the potter's thumb slips in the moulding, so in the firing the pot cracks." Mrs. Steel's brilliant study of Anglo-Indian life is based upon this text. It is one of the most dramatic and ...
— Franklin Kane • Anne Douglas Sedgwick

... and quarries of marble, granite, onyx, serpentine, limestone and sandstone—beds of fire clay, kaolin, fire and potter's clays, talc and asbestos ...
— A Review of the Resources and Industries of the State of Washington, 1909 • Ithamar Howell

... thoroughly dry can be safely burned in the kiln. It can readily be understood that it would not be possible to make such fragile pieces by the usual processes with plastic clay, which must be of the consistency of putty or dough, on the potter's wheel or by ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 1082, September 26, 1896 • Various

... by lines of pollarded willows on which some sappers had strung a field telephone. Raindrops hung on the copper wire like a string of pearls, and the heavy clay of the fields was scooped and moulded by the rain into little saucer-like depressions as if by a potter's thumb. Behind us lay the reserve trenches, their clay walls shored up with wickerwork, and their outskirts fringed with barbed wire whose intricate and volatile coils looked like thistledown. The village behind whose walls we now sheltered lay in a No Man's Land between ...
— Leaves from a Field Note-Book • J. H. Morgan

... and the youths well woven shirts that were slightly oiled. The girls were crowned with garlands, while the young men had daggers of gold that hung by silver baldrics; sometimes they would dance deftly in a ring with merry twinkling feet, as it were a potter sitting at his work and making trial of his wheel to see whether it will run, and sometimes they would go all in line with one another, and much people was gathered joyously about the green. There was a bard also to sing to them and play his lyre, while two tumblers went about performing in the ...
— The Iliad • Homer

... found on King William Land or Adelaide Peninsula, he could not remember exactly where. He had not given the spoon to Captain Barry, but to the wife of Sinuksook, an Iwillik Esquimau, who afterward gave it to a Captain Potter. We saw Sinuksook's wife a little later, and she distinctly remembered having given the spoon to Captain Potter. It was necessary, therefore, to find ...
— Schwatka's Search • William H. Gilder

... subject every month. Blackwood is rather in a bad pickle just now—sent to Coventry by the trade, as the booksellers call themselves, and all about the parody of the two beasts.[92] {p.221} Surely these gentlemen think themselves rather formed of porcelain clay than of common potter's ware. Dealing in satire against all others, their own dignity suffers so cruelly from an ill-imagined joke! If B. had good books to sell, he might set them all at defiance. His Magazine does well, and beats Constable's: but we will talk ...
— Memoirs of the Life of Sir Walter Scott, Volume V (of 10) • John Gibson Lockhart

... discovery, namely, that if the table only turned around in front of you, you could see all sides of the bowl from the same position, and it would be easier to make it regular. This is just what the potter's wheel does. It is really two horizontal wheels. The upper one is a disk a foot or two in diameter. This is connected by a shaft with the lower one, which is much larger. When the potter was at work at a wheel of this sort, he stood on one ...
— Makers of Many Things • Eva March Tappan

... large open-mouth jars with flaring rims, corrugated or often indented with the thumb-nail or some hard substance, the coil becoming obscure on the lower surface. The inside of these jars is smooth, but never polished, and in one instance the potter used the corrugations of the coil as an ornamental motive. The paste of which this coiled ware was composed is coarse, with argillaceous grains scattered through it; but it was well fired and is still hard and durable. When taken in connection with its tenuity, ...
— Archeological Expedition to Arizona in 1895 • Jesse Walter Fewkes

... listened to a wonderful sermon by Dr. Chalmers, whose force, and energy, and vehement, but rather turgid eloquence carried, for the moment, all before them,—his audience becoming like clay in the hands of the potter. But I must confess that the pregnant thoughts and serene self-possession of the young Boston minister had a greater charm for me than all the rhetorical splendors of Chalmers. His voice was the sweetest, the most winning and penetrating of any I ever heard; nothing ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)

... was the "Mark L. Potter," from Bangor for Key West, with a cargo of lumber. As there was no alternative but to destroy her, the officers and crew were transferred to the Chickamauga, and she was set on fire. This capture was made on Sunday the 30th. The next morning at 7.30 ...
— The Narrative of a Blockade-Runner • John Wilkinson

... prisoner's case was called in the local justice's court, but Farnum's lawyer had no difficulty in having the hearing postponed. The prisoner gave the name of James Potter, which undoubtedly was fictitious. No bail was offered for "Potter." If Mr. Melville felt inclined to do that, he undoubtedly dreaded that such an act would be construed as a tacit admission of Don's connection with the ...
— The Submarine Boys' Trial Trip - "Making Good" as Young Experts • Victor G. Durham

... for "t' young mester" as she obstinately persisted in calling the man whom she had once nursed upon her knee, and a singular sturdy foreign man (Rene L'Apotre in the language of his own land, but known as Renny Potter to the land of his adoption); which latter was more than suspected of having escaped from the Liverpool Tower, at that time the lawful place of custody of French ...
— The Light of Scarthey • Egerton Castle

... know—but I love my garden, and I love working in it. To potter with green, growing things, watching each day to see the dear, new sprouts come up, is like taking a hand in creation, I think. Just now my garden is like faith—the substance of things hoped for. But bide ...
— Anne's House of Dreams • Lucy Maud Montgomery

... his own likeness make, As much as clay, though of the purest kind By the Great Potter's art refined, Could the Divine impression take, He thought it fit to place him where A kind of heaven, too, did appear, As far as earth could such a likeness bear. That Man no happiness might want, Which earth to her first master could ...
— Cowley's Essays • Abraham Cowley

... not be something else, and something greater. It sent his mind inwards; it drove him to meditate upon the laws and secrets of his art. The result was, that he arrived at a perception and a grasp of them which might, perhaps, have been envied, certainly have been owned, by an Athenian potter. Relentless criticism has long since torn to pieces the old legend of King Numa, receiving in a cavern, from the Nymph Egeria, the laws that were to govern Rome. But no criticism can shake the record of that illness and mutilation ...
— MacMillan's Reading Books - Book V • Anonymous

... of Perthes, if you have never read it. That and "Palissy the Potter" are among the most interesting ...
— Autobiography and Letters of Orville Dewey, D.D. - Edited by his Daughter • Orville Dewey

... added considerably to it under the direction of the architect Boullee, who also re-designed the gardens. Thanks to Beaujon, the wonderful Gobelins of to-day were hung upon the walls, and many paintings by Rubens, Poissin, Van Loo, Von Ostade, Murillo, Paul Potter and Joseph ...
— Royal Palaces and Parks of France • Milburg Francisco Mansfield

... against the Lyttelton family has been denied, with some degree of warmth, by Mr. Potter, and since by Mr. Graves. The latter says, "The truth of the case, I believe, was, that the Lyttelton family went so frequently with their family to the Leasowes, that they were unwilling to break in upon Mr. Shenstone's retirement on every occasion, and, therefore, ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, LL.D. in Nine Volumes - Volume the Eighth: The Lives of the Poets, Volume II • Samuel Johnson

... very prudent here, and the climate suits us both, especially my wife, who is so vigorous that I depute her to go and see the Palazzi, and tell me all about them when she comes back. Old Rome is endlessly interesting to me, and I can always potter about and find occupation. I think I shall turn antiquary—it's just the occupation for a decayed naturalist, though you need not tell the ...
— The Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley Volume 2 • Leonard Huxley

... of shy and wistful romance that atoned for the huge awkwardness of this taciturn elephant. Mark was at present the manager of a small china manufactory at Longshaw, the farthest of the Five Towns in Staffordshire, and five miles from Bursley. He was an exceptionally clever potter, but he never made money. He had the dreamy temperament of the inventor. He was a man of ideas, the kind of man who is capable of forgetting that he has not had his dinner, and who can live apparently content ...
— Tales of the Five Towns • Arnold Bennett

... or nucleated, is the formal basis of all life. It is the clay of the potter: which, bake it and paint it as he will, remains clay, separated by artifice, and not by nature, from the commonest brick or ...
— English: Composition and Literature • W. F. (William Franklin) Webster

... the Palmer House, one of the most magnificent hotels of that day, whose proprietor, Mr. Potter-Palmer, was a perfect gentleman, courteous, kind, and generous, for he filled the immense apartment I occupied with the rarest flowers, and taxed his ingenuity in order to have my meals cooked and served in the French style, a ...
— My Double Life - The Memoirs of Sarah Bernhardt • Sarah Bernhardt

... scholar boards outside, and twenty-four hours a day if he boards within; that at this age the human clay is soft, that it has not yet received its shape, that no acquired and resistant form yet protects it from the potter's hand, against the weight of the turning-wheel, against the friction of other morsels of clay kneaded alongside of it, against the three pressures, constant and ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 6 (of 6) - The Modern Regime, Volume 2 (of 2) • Hippolyte A. Taine

... —sorcerer, witch. —vision-seer. "Girls and Boys." Girls' Friendly Society. Girls, wild. Glastonbury Thorn. Glow-worm. Gluskap (Glooskap). Glyceria. Goats. "Go backs." Goblins. God, idea of. as begetter. as creator. as father. as mother. as potter. "God's bird." Gods and goddesses of childhood. Gods, playthings of. Going out. Gold. Golden Age. of childhood. of love. "Golden Darling." Golden House. Gold-seers. Good and evil. Goose. Gotterburg. Graces. Grammar. —school. "Grandfather." Grandfather-fire. ...
— The Child and Childhood in Folk-Thought • Alexander F. Chamberlain

... of Bhima and Arjuna of great prowess; the ascertainment by Balarama and Krishna, at the sight of these matchless exploits, that the heroes were the Pandavas, and the arrival of the brothers at the house of the potter where the Pandavas were staying; the dejection of Drupada on learning that Draupadi was to be wedded to five husbands; the wonderful story of the five Indras related in consequence; the extraordinary and divinely-ordained wedding of Draupadi; the sending ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa - Translated into English Prose - Adi Parva (First Parva, or First Book) • Kisari Mohan Ganguli (Translator)

... placed the vessel containing the twins along with the unburnt clay vessels which a potter had set in order and then gone to sleep, intending to get up during the night and light his furnace; in this way she thought the little innocents would be reduced to ashes. It happened, however, that the potter ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 3 • Richard F. Burton

... he resumed, "is based on a condition of affairs, still prevalent in the business, which made it easy for the bank to fire and blackball myself. I represented the clerk who had no protection; the insignificant individual. He is—rather I should say, dating from to-day—he has been clay in the potter's hands; but the potter has got to go out of business, and we're here now to see that he does." (Here, the bankclerks expressed their endorsement of the idea in clapping and laughter.) "Heretofore, my friends, ...
— A Canadian Bankclerk • J. P. Buschlen

... is a fact, although they express it oddly—and so is reprobation—and so is what they say of free will, and so is conversion. It is true that we bring natures into the world which are moulded by circumstances and by their own tendencies, as clay in the hands of the potter. Look round you and see that some are made for honour and some for dishonour. So far I agree with the Evangelicals still, and I agree too with them that if what they call faith—that is, a distinct conviction of sin, a resolution to say to oneself "Sammy, my boy, this won't do,"* a perception ...
— The Life of Froude • Herbert Paul

... letter from Col. Potter, who left me yesterday at 11 o'clock, after bringing about 100 men to me at Jamaica. Major Smith, I expect has all the rest that were to come from Suffolk county. There have about 40 of the militia joined me from the regiments in Queens county, and about 50 of the troop belonging ...
— The Campaign of 1776 around New York and Brooklyn • Henry P. Johnston

... or changes which has truly BEEN. The flight of time is but the spinning of the potter's wheel to which we are as clay. This fleeing circumstance is but the machinery which stamps the soul (that vessel moulded for the Great Master's hand). And its latest impress is the best: though the base of the cup be adorned ...
— A Handbook to the Works of Browning (6th ed.) • Mrs. Sutherland Orr



Words linked to "Potter" :   muck around, potter's wheel, tinker, Josiah Wedgwood, potter's earth, monkey, craftsman, putter around, monkey around, thrower, occupy, muck about, Spode, potter's clay, potterer, Wedgwood, potter's field, potter around, Josiah Spode, work, Martha Beatrice Potter Webb, Collis Potter Huntington, move



Copyright © 2024 Diccionario ingles.com