"Pickings" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... sequestered, as they will be shortly. To this he agreed, on behalf of his Grace, who needs money much, but inquired as to himself. I replied L500 for him and his jackals, including Dr. Legh, of which no account would be asked. He told me it was not enough, for after the jackals had their pickings nothing would be left for him but the bones; I, who asked so much, must offer more, and he made as though to dismiss me. At the door I turned and said I had a wonderful pink pearl that he, who loved ...
— The Lady Of Blossholme • H. Rider Haggard
... an appropriate simile, that jackal;— I 've heard them in the Ephesian ruins howl By night, as do that mercenary pack all, Power's base purveyors, who for pickings prowl, And scent the prey their masters would attack all. However, the poor jackals are less foul (As being the brave lions' keen providers) Than human ...
— Don Juan • Lord Byron
... a handsome vessel—for her size, one of the handsomest in the King's service—and newly fitted out at Plymouth Dock. So the boys had brave pickings from her in the way of brass-work, ship's instruments, and the like, let alone some barrels of stores not much spoiled. They loaded themselves with as much as they could carry, and started for home, meaning ...
— Wandering Heath • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... eyes, to take their share, disputing with each other on the choice and suitableness of each object, comparing the cost of adjudication with the means of lessening it, discussing the certain profits of selling again and of the transfer, and consuming in advance the pickings arising from sales and leases."—In Provence, where things are more advanced and corruption is greater than elsewhere, where the purport and aims of the Revolution were comprehended at the start, it is still worse. Nowhere did Jacobin rulers display their real character ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 4 (of 6) - The French Revolution, Volume 3 (of 3) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... asserted Mr. Bates, as he extracted a huge wad of crumpled bills from his trousers pocket. "Any old time she wants anybody strangled or stabbed and you ain't handy, she can call on your friend Biff. Here's your split of last month's pickings at the gym. One hundred and eighty-one large, juicy simoleons; count 'em, one hundred and eighty-one!" And he threw the money on ...
— The Making of Bobby Burnit - Being a Record of the Adventures of a Live American Young Man • George Randolph Chester
... one of the girls came in breathless and cried: "Hooraa! What d'ye think? Betty wants a dresser, and I've got the shop for ye, my dear. Guinea a week and the pickings; and you go tomorrow ...
— The Christian - A Story • Hall Caine
... interest one stratum: the old ladies, the white-haired, fair-handed women of fifty and sixty and even seventy, spinsters and widows, for whom life was nothing but a desk and a job of petty pickings—mailing circulars or assorting letters or checking up lists. She watched them so closely because she speculated always, "Will ...
— The Job - An American Novel • Sinclair Lewis
... salad, and thoroughly dry it by shaking it in a cloth. Cut up the lettuces and endive, pour the dressing on them, and lightly throw in the small salad. Mix all well together with the pickings from the body of the lobster; pick the meat from the shell, cut it up into nice square pieces, put half in the salad, the other half reserve for garnishing. Separate the yolks from the whites of 2 hard-boiled eggs; chop the whites very fine, and rub the yolks through a sieve, and afterwards ...
— The Book of Household Management • Mrs. Isabella Beeton
... atrocious smile. His glance resulted from his will, and his smile from his nature. His first studies in his art had been directed to roofs. He had made great progress in the industry of the men who tear off lead, who plunder the roofs and despoil the gutters by the process called double pickings. ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo
... all me and my sort has done for Parry! It's mean, that's wot it is, BOB. P'raps they'll chuck British jockeys next! Much good their Grong Pree, ancetrer, will be then, my boy. Our 'osses, our jockeys, and our bookies has bin the making of French Sport,—and werrv nice little pickings there's bin out of it take it all round. Wot'll Ler Hig Life, and Hart, and Leagues o' Patriots, and miles o' bullyvards, and COOK's Tourists and Awful Towers do for Parry without hus, I wonder? We shall see! Ah, Madame lar Republick, maybe you'll be sorry, you ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 100. March 14, 1891. • Various
... gone back, he shamelessly continued, to learn how the land lay; for, should they be all dead, as he almost expected, for Pepe there would be pickings. ...
— Ambrotox and Limping Dick • Oliver Fleming
... and seen through the riddle that knocked me silly, Frank. That's just what it must mean—the pay-car would offer fat pickings, all in cash; and they've held up their flight to Canada just to try and gobble it. Oh! what a slick game, with Todd giving false information, and perhaps just leading the police further and further away from Bloomsbury tonight, so as to leave the pay-car ...
— The Aeroplane Boys Flight - A Hydroplane Roundup • John Luther Langworthy
... in favorable seasons, with occasionally a fourth picking. Under the stimulus of East Indian heat and moisture, the "flushes," or new growth of shoots, buds and leaves, are renewed as often as once in a week or ten days; so that during a season of nine months, from a dozen, to a maximum of thirty pickings are made. The same conditions apply to the tea plantations of Java. After ten or twelve years the bushes decline in vigor from the strain of constant loss of young growth, and are replaced by new plants. Thirty pounds of green leaves ...
— Tea Leaves • Francis Leggett & Co.
... explorer sharply. Then, more slowly, "I shouldn't wonder if you're right, Doctor. I'd like to take a little trip with a washing-pan up through there! If that is so, as it well might be, there'd be some rich pickings for the taking. However, we're here for elephant first and last, and I'm not inclined to linger ...
— The Rogue Elephant - The Boys' Big Game Series • Elliott Whitney
... in the village, perhaps half a mile away, and they were off generally long before the children were up; and Maddie and Lolly usually ate such pickings as they left upon the table, and spent their days as they pleased, with little thought or ...
— Little Alice's Palace - or, The Sunny Heart • Anonymous
... there sorrel once, and combed his forelock with both spurs alternate," Andy lied boldly. "He's pickings. Take him back and ...
— The Happy Family • Bertha Muzzy Bower
... flowing into Montague's hands which embittered Nidderdale and Carbury. They understood that he had really brought money into the concern, and was therefore entitled to take money out of it. Nor did it occur to them to grudge Melmotte his more noble pickings, for they knew how great a man was Melmotte. Of Cohenlupe's doings they heard nothing; but he was a regular city man, and had probably supplied funds. Cohenlupe was too deep for their inquiry. But they ...
— The Way We Live Now • Anthony Trollope
... She wore a coarse dress of uncolored homespun cotton, of the plainest and scantiest make, low in the neck, short in the sleeves and skirt. Her feet and head were bare. A sack of like material with her dress was tied about the waist, apron-like. This was to receive immediately the pickings from the hand. When filled it was emptied in a pick-basket, holding with a little packing fifty or sixty pounds. This small basket was kept in the picker's vicinity, being moved forward whenever the sack was taken back for emptying. ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, October, 1877, Vol. XX. No. 118 • Various
... bread and butter out of my mouth; and as for the fees—there won't be a chance for recording a homestead site; there isn't any counting on such things, for they're a homeless lot, always moving from pillar to post with free pickings wherever they locate over night, just like the gypsies that ...
— Flamsted quarries • Mary E. Waller
... is founded on a fear that the acceptance may be a temptation to you to let fall the bone (hard as it is) which is in your mouth and must afford tolerable pickings, for the shadow of independence. You cannot propose to become independent on what the low state of interest could afford you from such a principal as you mention; and the most graceful excuse for the acceptance, would be, that it left you free to your voluntary functions. That is ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb (Vol. 6) - Letters 1821-1842 • Charles and Mary Lamb
... Joshua was. He was going with one of the Marshall girls in Carmel, and the thing was settled final. Hows'ever, Josh went away to the war without getting married, because he allowed that if he got killed, an unmarried girl wouldn't have to take last pickings of the men, like a widow would. Mighty kind, square, good-hearted chap that Josh Ward now I can tell ye! Thought of others first all the time. He owned a mighty nice place that his aunt had willed to him. She liked Josh, but ...
— The Rainy Day Railroad War • Holman Day
... relaxed into a bacchanalian chaos of trampled debris, merchandise strewn as if a flock of vultures had left their pickings—a battlefield strewn with gewgaws and the tinsel of Christmastide, ...
— Every Soul Hath Its Song • Fannie Hurst
... account of her afternoon which has been already quoted. Dress was her weapon and her stock in trade; it was, she said, necessary to her "career." And on this plea she steadily exacted in its support a proportion of the family income which left but small pickings for the schooling of her younger brothers and the allowances of her two younger sisters. But so great were the indulgence and the pride of her parents—small Devonshire land-owners living on an impoverished estate—that ...
— The Testing of Diana Mallory • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... two bags up came "Just" Smith, who had done so bravely before; but alas! as that Belleville fan had truly said, the local pitcher had tightened up and was not such "easy pickings" now; so Smith only whiffed, and the ...
— The Chums of Scranton High Out for the Pennant • Donald Ferguson
... expressed a desire Mr. Bulmer fulfilled it without boggling over inconvenient scruples, perhaps; and there was the worst that could with equity be said of him. An impoverished gentleman must live somehow, and, deuce take it! there must be rather pretty pickings among the broken meats of an Ormskirk. To this effect de Soyecourt moralized one evening as the two sat ...
— Gallantry - Dizain des Fetes Galantes • James Branch Cabell
... those who dislike too quiet a life, and a very honourable one, for war is honor itself; but I did not speak of that, Cleonice. I would only say that this man of might loves thee—that he is rich, rich, rich. Pretty pickings at Plataea; and we have known losses, my child, sad losses. And if you do not love him, why, you can but smile and talk as if you did, and when the Spartan goes home, you will lose a tormenter and gain ...
— Pausanias, the Spartan - The Haunted and the Haunters, An Unfinished Historical Romance • Lord Lytton
... have thought twice before he broke my poor mother's heart with his cantankerous ways. Cheveleigh beneath him, forsooth! I'm not going to have it cut up for a lot of trumpery girls! I've settled the property and whatever other pickings there may be upon my little Clara—grateful, and worthy of it! Her husband shall take Dynevor name and arms—unless, to be sure, he had a title of his own. The girl was much admired at Rome last winter, had a fair offer or two, but not a word will she say to any of them. I can't tell what's ...
— Dynevor Terrace (Vol. II) • Charlotte M. Yonge
... smart seaman has the pull over the herring buss, or the skulking coaster that works from Christmas to Christmas with all the danger and none of the little pickings. But enough said! Up with the prisoner, and let us get him ...
— Micah Clarke - His Statement as made to his three Grandchildren Joseph, - Gervas and Reuben During the Hard Winter of 1734 • Arthur Conan Doyle
... line, where he conducted negotiations with a certain "revolucionista" of no particular notoriety as yet, of avaricious character, unscrupulous nature, and with a small following of fellow bandits and a large animosity for Americans. His ambition was to emulate the brilliant Villa. But pickings had been poor of late, no more than that of stealing a few horses from across the border. To Burkhardt, who had heard of him and sought him out, he listened with interest and bargained with zest. Five thousand in gold for fifty men was like pearls from Paradise. And whatever this ...
— In the Shadow of the Hills • George C. Shedd
... bookseller knew little of the value of his wares; it was his object to turn a small certain profit on his expenditure. It is reckoned that an energetic, business-like old bookseller will turn over 150,000 volumes in a year. In this vast number there must be pickings for the humble collector who cannot afford to encounter the children of Israel at Sotheby's or ...
— Books and Bookmen • Andrew Lang
... holds title to the pickings of the world. America wants some or all of them. The two countries are headed straight for a conflict, which is as inevitable as morning sunrise, unless the menace of Bolshevism grows so strong, and remains so threatening that the great capitalist rivals will be compelled to join forces ...
— The American Empire • Scott Nearing
... quiltings, and cotton pickings on the plantation. She told me a good deal about the cornshuckings: about how they selected a general, whose job was to get up on top of the corn pile and holler at the top of his voice, leading the cornshucking song, while the others ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves: Volume IV, Georgia Narratives, Part 1 • Works Projects Administration
... safety, Mr. Brown and Day remained where I left them, and were watching my movements with some curiosity, and considerable anxiety. Had they advanced towards the house at the same moment as myself, we should all have bitten the dust, and rich pickings the stockmen would have had emptying our pockets, and boasting of their exploits in shooting three men with but a single ...
— The Gold Hunter's Adventures - Or, Life in Australia • William H. Thomes
... none can tell. It is not yet agreed. There is small competition for the task. There are better pickings here on the border, raiding now and then, and pocketing the gold of this Wassmuss between-whiles! Who wants the task of escorting a machine in a box ...
— Hira Singh - When India came to fight in Flanders • Talbot Mundy
... as he would. Yet now when seated in the solitude of this refuge, his thoughts went back to her tenderly; for to her they always returned like birds to their tree, from all the regions whither the energetic dispersion of Mr Cupples might have scattered them for their pickings of intellectual crumbs. Now, however, it was but as to a leafless wintry tree, instead of a nest bowered in green leaves. Yet he was surprised to find that he was not ten times more miserable; the fact being that, as he had no reason ...
— Alec Forbes of Howglen • George MacDonald |
