Free translatorFree translator
Synonyms, antonyms, pronunciation

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




Piecemeal   /pˈismˌil/   Listen
Piecemeal

adverb
1.
A little bit at a time.  Synonyms: bit by bit, in stages, little by little.






WordNet 3.0 © 2010 Princeton University








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

Synonyms
Antonyms
Quotes
Words linked to  

only single words



Share |





"Piecemeal" Quotes from Famous Books



... love of Thy love I do it; reviewing my most wicked ways in the very bitterness of my remembrance, that Thou mayest grow sweet unto me (Thou sweetness never failing, Thou blissful and assured sweetness); and gathering me again out of that my dissipation, wherein I was torn piecemeal, while turned from Thee, the One Good, I lost myself among a multiplicity of things. For I even burnt in my youth heretofore, to be satiated in things below; and I dared to grow wild again, with these various and shadowy loves: my beauty consumed away, and I stank in Thine eyes; pleasing ...
— The Confessions of Saint Augustine • Saint Augustine

... for the reckless native policy of the colonists had almost ruined the island. It remained but to treat for a ransom. The Governor at once declared himself unable to meet the extravagant demands of the English admiral, and in order to bring him to terms Drake began to burn the town piecemeal. But so well was it built that little harm could be done, and every day his ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 1-20 • Various

... The four enormous piers upon which it rests were weakened by the ignorance of early restorers, who cut into them freely, and dug graves in such manner as to imperil their foundations. The most arduous work of Sir Gilbert Scott was the strengthening of these piers, effected piecemeal by partial reconstruction of the piers themselves and by laying a durable substratum of cement right down to the chalk. The fine ring of eight bells was rehung. Visitors will find the ascent of the spiral staircase long and arduous, but will be rewarded by the almost unrivalled ...
— Hertfordshire • Herbert W Tompkins

... remedies were afforded them against delays in payment of debts, one of which was that in case it happened that several persons had been lending to anybody, they had authority to divide his body piecemeal according to the proportionate amounts that he was owing. Yet, however much this principle had been declared legal, still it had surely never been put into practice. For how could a nation have proceeded to ...
— Dio's Rome, Vol VI. • Cassius Dio

... the book piecemeal, however, the author's statements of his own observations and analysis are so thorough and so admirable, his drawings so good, and the interest of many separate portions so great, that it seems hardly fair to complain of the rather fragmentary effect of ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 103, May, 1866 • Various

... torture, failed in their efforts, and declared themselves beaten, not knowing what further punishment to inflict, and marvelling that she still lived, with her body pierced through and through, and torn piecemeal by so many tortures, of which a single one should have sufficed to kill her. But that blessed saint, like a valiant athlete, took fresh courage and strength from the confession of her faith; all feeling of pain vanished, and ease returned ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume I. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot

... Nicky who first perceived and pointed out a change in Jane. She moved among them abstractedly, with mute, half alienated eyes. She seemed to have suffered some spiritual disintegration that was pain. She gave herself to them no longer whole, but piecemeal. At times she seemed to hold out empty, supplicating hands, palms outward, showing that she could give no more. There was, she seemed to say, no more ...
— The Creators - A Comedy • May Sinclair

... held a hand of each, and looked alternately at them. Breathless, I watched. It was almost as exciting as if I had been joining in the play—more so, for to me everything was sur l'imprevu—revealed piecemeal, while to them some degree of foreknowledge must exist, to deprive the ceremony ...
— The First Violin - A Novel • Jessie Fothergill

... Monsieur, two mortal hours in this inn, fried by the sun, bored to death, murdered piecemeal by flies, and infuriated by the want of hospitality in this out-of-the-way ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet

... Mississippi from New Orleans, under a heavy but unwary guard, on a "tin-clad" steamer, to wear out the rest of the war in a Northern prison. Forbidden to gather even in pairs, they had yet moved freely about, often passing each other closely enough to exchange piecemeal counsels unnoticed, and all at once, at a tap of the boat's bell had sprung, man for man, upon their keepers and instantly were masters of them, of them, of their arms stacked on the boiler-deck and of the steamboat, which they had promptly run ashore on the East Louisiana ...
— Kincaid's Battery • George W. Cable

... at the hour it suited her, transferred her base of operations to town, to which impenetrable scene she had also herself retired; and his raising of the first Two Hundred, during five exasperated and miserable months, and then of another Seventy piecemeal, bleedingly, after long delays and under the epistolary whiplash cracked by the London solicitor in his wretched ear even to an effect of the very report of Miss Cookham's tongue—these melancholy efforts formed a scramble up an arduous steep where steps were planted ...
— The Finer Grain • Henry James

... by hunger, thirst, weariness, and sleep, when they reached the shores of the Beresina and found fuel and fire and victuals, countless wagons and tents, a whole improvised town, in short. The whole village of Studzianka had been removed piecemeal from the heights of the plain, and the very perils and miseries of this dangerous and doleful habitation smiled invitingly to the wayfarers, who beheld no prospect beyond it but the awful Russian deserts. A huge hospice, in short, was erected for twenty hours of ...
— Farewell • Honore de Balzac

... the 79th and 69th New York. An impact followed that seemed to rock the globe. Wisconsin and New York retired whence they came, and it was all done in a moment. Other regiments took their places. McDowell was making a frontal attack and sending in his brigades piecemeal. The plateau was uneven; low ridges, shallow hollows, with clumps of pine and oak; one saw at a time but a segment of the field. The nature of the ground split the troops as with wedges; over all the Henry Hill the fighting now became from ...
— The Long Roll • Mary Johnston

... use to question those dark and swollen waters? what use to demand of them the bright form, that, it might be, slept beneath them?-it might be, had been washed piecemeal to the ocean? ...
— Outpost • J.G. Austin

... surprising for a vireo; still I had no question about his identity (he sat between me and the sun) till I changed my position, when behold! the vireo was a linnet. A strange performance, indeed! What could have set this fluent vocalist to practicing exercises of such an inferior, disconnected, piecemeal sort? Within the next week or two, however, the same game was played upon me several times, and in different places. No doubt the trick is an old one, familiar to many observers, but to me it had all ...
— Birds in the Bush • Bradford Torrey

... inflamed him as it might a beast that ravens. He grew mad with a desire to have Christian by the throat once again, not to loose this time till he had crushed out his life, or beat out his life, or stabbed out his life; or all these, and torn him piecemeal likewise: and ah! then, not till then, bleed his heart with weeping, like a child, like a girl, over the piteous fate of his poor ...
— The Were-Wolf • Clemence Housman

... peerage both alike Birds—Eyeless, Shagless, and returnless, too— Oh! day of death, oh! chaos of hard times!— And princes, dukes, and lords, they all stood still, Feeling within their pockets' silent depths; And sailors went a-moaning out to sea, And chew'd their cables piecemeal: then they wept, And slept on the abyss without a quid. All quids were gone, cigars were in their graves; The plant, their mother, had been rooted up; Pawnbrokers had a ton of pipes apiece, And "Antis" triumph'd. Then they had no need To keep ...
— Tobacco; Its History, Varieties, Culture, Manufacture and Commerce • E. R. Billings

... against him. Besides, it is hard for a man of intellect to be satisfied with charity pure and simple: it waters such a very small corner of the kingdom of wretchedness! Its effects are almost always piecemeal, fragmentary: it seems to move by chance, and to be engaged only in dressing wounds as fast as it discovers them: generally it is too modest and in too great a hurry to probe down to the roots of the evil. Now it was just this probing ...
— Jean-Christophe Journey's End • Romain Rolland

... third of the triad of great English sailors by whom the principal part of Australia was revealed. A poet of our own time, in a line of singular felicity, has described it as the "last sea-thing dredged by sailor Time from Space; "* (* Bernard O'Dowd, Dawnward, 1903.) and the piecemeal, partly mysterious, largely accidental dragging from the depths of the unknown of a land so immense and bountiful makes a romantic chapter in geographical history. All the great seafaring peoples contributed something towards the result. The Dutch especially evinced ...
— The Life of Captain Matthew Flinders • Ernest Scott

... happened in the day of Elijah, who had sworn that neither rain nor dew should fall upon the earth; the eighth was the one in the time of Elisha, when an ass's head was sold for fourscore pieces of silver; the ninth is the famine that comes upon men piecemeal, from time to time; and the tenth will scourge men before the advent of Messiah, and this last will be "not a famine of bread, nor a thirst for water, but of hearing the words of ...
— The Legends of the Jews Volume 1 • Louis Ginzberg

... He fancied himself before a secret tribunal in the midst of which towered San Giacinto's colossal figure. He could hear the deep voice he dreaded pronouncing his doom. He was to be torn to shreds piecemeal, burnt by a slow fire, flayed alive by those enormous hands. There was no conceivable horror of torture that did not suggest itself to him at such times. It is true that when he went to bed at night he was generally either so stupefied by opium or so intoxicated with strong drink ...
— Sant' Ilario • F. Marion Crawford

... in order that it may be seen what further appropriations are involved in a settlement for all these lands upon the basis which Congress has adopted. It does not seem to me to be a wise policy to deal with this question piecemeal. It would have been better, if a remnant of title remains in the Choctaws and Chickasaws to the lands in the leased district, to have settled the whole matter at once. Under the treaty of 1855 the Choctaws and Chickasaws ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents, Volume IX. • Benjamin Harrison

... capacity for salvation. Degeneration in the spiritual sphere involves primarily the impairing of the faculties of salvation and ultimately the loss of them. It really means that the very soul itself becomes piecemeal destroyed until the very capacity for God and ...
— Natural Law in the Spiritual World • Henry Drummond

... the spy, as well as the spy-courier," MacLeod said. "The information he transmitted was picked up piecemeal from different indiscreet lab-workers and students attached to our team. Of course, we are investigating, mumble-mumble. Naturally, no one will admit, mumble-mumble. No stone will be left ...
— The Mercenaries • Henry Beam Piper

... Griffenbottom in public life. Mr. Griffenbottom did not exactly say these hard things in the hearing of Sir Thomas, but he so said them that they became the common property of the Jorams, Triggers, Spiveycombs, and Spicers; and were repeated piecemeal to the ...
— Ralph the Heir • Anthony Trollope

... child, by piecemeal," he said in a low voice, "as we can; but if such a freight came to the castle at once, my lady would have her claws on it, and little more wouldst thou ever see thereof. Moreover, I shall have enough to ...
— The Dove in the Eagle's Nest • Charlotte M. Yonge

... hag-ridden dream, mistake God's fair living world for a pallid, vacant Hades and extinct Pandemonium. But through such Purgatory pain," continues he, "it is appointed us to pass; first must the dead Letter of Religion own itself dead, and drop piecemeal into dust, if the living Spirit of Religion, freed from this its charnel-house, is to arise on us, new-born of Heaven, and with new healing ...
— Sartor Resartus - The Life and Opinions of Herr Teufelsdrockh • Thomas Carlyle

... expands The dismal stream, when it hath reach'd the foot Of the grey wither'd cliffs. Intent I stood To gaze, and in the marish sunk, descried A miry tribe, all naked, and with looks Betok'ning rage. They with their hands alone Struck not, but with the head, the breast, the feet, Cutting each other piecemeal with their ...
— Literary Remains (1) • Coleridge

... former recollection, I could scarcely make out any resemblance of the features. This showed that the second scene came long after the first: my father must by that time have begun to resemble his later self. A weird feeling stole over me. Was I going to relive my previous life, piecemeal? Was the past going to unroll itself in slow but regular panorama to my sleeping vision? Was my First State to become known like this in ...
— Recalled to Life • Grant Allen

... to advertise it; and, when a tenant was actually found, it was all he could do to give him the lease. He tried his wife's love and patience as a man must to whom the future is easy in the mass but terrible as it translates itself piecemeal into the present. He experienced remorse in the presence of inanimate things he was going to leave as if they had sensibly reproached him, and an anticipative homesickness that seemed to stop his heart. Again and again his wife had ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells

... stripes—how do you fancy that? I wonder if my mere narration can make your blood boil, as the facts did mine? Among the patients in this room was a young girl, apparently from fourteen to fifteen, whose hands and feet were literally rotting away piecemeal, from the effect of a horrible disease, to which the negroes are subject here, and I believe in the West Indies, and when it attacks the joints of the toes and fingers, the pieces absolutely decay and come off, leaving the limb a maimed and horrible ...
— Journal of a Residence on a Georgian Plantation - 1838-1839 • Frances Anne Kemble

... father confessors—guiding the opinions of the multitude, who blindly follow the suggestions of those to whom they may have entrusted their literary consciences. If your work is denounced and to be released at once from your sufferings by one blow from the paw of a tiger, than to be worried piecemeal by creatures who have all the will, but not the power, to inflict the ...
— Newton Forster • Frederick Marryat

... to the top of all bad endeavor, and then when all the earth and all constellations and galaxies and all the universe are watching, God will hurl him down with a violence and ghastliness enough to persuade five hundred eternities that a rebellion against God must perish. God will not do it by piecemeal, God will not do it by small skirmish. He will wait until all the troops are massed, and then some day when in defiant and confident mood, at the head of his army, this Goliath of hell stalks forth, our champion, the son of David, will ...
— New Tabernacle Sermons • Thomas De Witt Talmage

... of it all, the work went on: foot by foot the wall of pile-bound rock rose and the long wooden conduit curved away down the valley; and when at length the hydraulic plant began to arrive, piecemeal, Lisle found Crestwick eminently useful. He superintended the transport, patrolling the trails and keeping them repaired. His skill with shovel and ax was negligible, but he could send a man or two ...
— The Long Portage • Harold Bindloss

... possession of the English about twenty years, but, to save the expense of keeping it up, a fleet under Lord Dartmouth was sent out to destroy all the works, and to bring home the garrison. The destruction of the mole, which was admirably built, caused much labour, it being necessary to blow it up by piecemeal. Its ruins, as well as the rubbish of the town, were thrown into the harbour to prevent ...
— How Britannia Came to Rule the Waves - Updated to 1900 • W.H.G. Kingston

... Argemone the fair, type of intellectual light! Oh, that I were a Zeuxis to unite them instead of having to paint them in two separate pictures, and split perfection in half, as everything is split in this piecemeal world!' ...
— Yeast: A Problem • Charles Kingsley

... selfish regard for their own safety, had withdrawn all their soldiers within the peninsula, and began hastily to build a wall across the isthmus of Corinth with the hope of keeping back the invading army. Athens was left to care for itself. It was thus that Greece usually let itself be devoured piecemeal. ...
— Historic Tales, vol 10 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris

... close of every speech of his own, and shepherded me with the utmost care through the whole scene. I shall never forget the well-meaning feeble villain, stricken down by remorse and impending terror, and the dominative Baron bullying him the while, with words supplied piecemeal by the sufferer. ...
— The Making Of A Novelist - An Experiment In Autobiography • David Christie Murray

... but piecemeal thou must break, To separate contemplation, the great whole: And as the ocean many bays will make, That ask the eye—so here condense the soul To more ...
— Fair Italy, the Riviera and Monte Carlo • W. Cope Devereux

... gazed on admiringly by the expert eyes of Darius, in his shirt-sleeves, Big James, in his royally flowing apron, and Chawner, the journeyman compositor, who, with the two apprentices outside, completed the staff! Aided by no mechanic more skilled than a day-labourer, those men had got the machine piecemeal into the office, and had duly erected it. At that day a foreman had ...
— Clayhanger • Arnold Bennett

... Tolstoy, I have something to say about "Resurrection," which I have read not piecemeal, in parts, but as a whole, at one go. It is a remarkable artistic production. The least interesting part is all that is said of Nehludov's relations with Katusha; and the most interesting the princes, the generals, the aunts, the peasants, ...
— Letters of Anton Chekhov • Anton Chekhov

... the Publican's Journal. Young Duncan Macmorrogh was a limb of the law, who had just brought himself into notice by a series of articles in 'The Screw and Lever,' in which he had subjected the universe piecemeal to his critical analysis. Duncan Macmorrogh cut up the creation, and got a name. His attack upon mountains was most violent, and proved, by its personality, that he had come from the Lowlands. He demonstrated the inutility of all elevation, and declared that the Andes were the ...
— The Young Duke • Benjamin Disraeli

... princely body yielded to this thief; The high despite whereof so wounded me That, trance-like, as a senseless stone I lay; For neither wit nor tongue could use the mean T'express the passions of my pained heart. Forceless, perforce, I sank down to this pain, As greedy famine doth constrain the hawk Piecemeal to rend and tear the yielding prey: So far'd it with me in that heavy stound. But now what shall I do? how may I seek To ease my mind, that burneth with desire Of dire revenge? For never shall my thoughts ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. VII (4th edition) • Various

... stares on Hazel at certain times. Also Mr. Wagstaff had caused the stockholders of Free Gold a heavy loss—which was only offset by the fact that the Free Gold properties were producing richly. None of this was even openly flung at her. She gathered it piecemeal. And it galled her. She could not openly defend either Bill or herself against the ...
— North of Fifty-Three • Bertrand W. Sinclair

... yourselves; but until then I will say nothing about it, not from any wish to disappoint your curiosity, or to make myself important, but simply because the whole story partakes so much of the marvellous, that I am afraid to tell it in a piecemeal, hasty fashion, for fear I should be set down as one of those common fellows of whom there are so many in my profession, who are not ashamed to narrate things they have not seen, and even to tell wonderful stories about wild animals they have ...
— Hunter Quatermain's Story • H. Rider Haggard

... infernal regions. What happiness would it be for the souls intended for these devilish repasts, if they were thereby to find an end to their torments! But no sooner are they swallowed, digested, and returned piecemeal into the pools of hell than they are regenerated, and arise to become the ...
— Faustus - his Life, Death, and Doom • Friedrich Maximilian von Klinger

... of consuming it? Does he really eat, that is to say, does he divide his food piecemeal, does he carve it into minute particles, which are afterwards ground by a chewing-apparatus? I think not. I never see a trace of solid nourishment on my captives' mouths. The Glow-worm does not eat in the strict sense of the word: he drinks his fill; he ...
— The Glow-Worm and Other Beetles • Jean Henri Fabre

... he was to give Madame Lacelooper, for whom he entertained the highest regard, so much trouble. Legations were peculiarly situated at times, he said. In reply to an intimation from the gentleman in waiting, he said, gentlemen of the diplomatic corps never paid in piecemeal. Here Thomas would put an end to the comedy by announcing the arrival of the 'Minister for Foreign Affairs,' and politely bowing out the retiring gentleman, who, you may well imagine, maintained a reluctant gravity. There was no end of these little diplomatic ...
— The Adventures of My Cousin Smooth • Timothy Templeton

... wooden house embowered in creepers; a house that was far gone in the respectable stages of antiquity, and seemed indissoluble from the green garden in which it stood, and that yet was a sea-traveller in its younger days, and had come round the Horn piecemeal in the belly of a ship, and might have heard the seamen stamping and shouting and the note of the boatswain's whistle. It will recall to you the nondescript inhabitants, now so widely scattered:—the two horses, the dog, and the four cats, some of them still looking in ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 7 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson

... "Dictator"—that is, the would-be "Dictator"—to allow him to burn up the wrecked houses wholesale without the tedious bother of pulling them down and handling the debris. The timorous committees would not countenance such an idea. Nothing but piecemeal tearing down of the wrecked houses tossed together by the mighty force of the water and destruction by never-dying bonfires would satisfy them. Yet all of them must come down. Most of the buildings reached ...
— The Johnstown Horror • James Herbert Walker

... ascertain or to compute indefinitely if we have patience; but it would contradict the definition of an infinite number to suppose the endless series of them to have actually counted themselves out piecemeal. Zeno made this manifest; so the infinity which our intellect requires of the sense-datum is thus a future and potential rather than a past and actual infinity of structure. The datum after it ...
— A Pluralistic Universe - Hibbert Lectures at Manchester College on the - Present Situation in Philosophy • William James

... The programme on such occasions varied little; the child was permitted to rummage among the treasures in the box until she had satisfied her perennial curiosity; conversation with her absent-minded father ensued, which ultimately included a personal narrative, dragged out piecemeal from the reticent, dreamy invalid. Then always a few pages of the diary kept by the late Herr Wilner were read as a bedtime story. And bath and bed and dreamland followed. That was the invariable routine, now once more in ...
— The Dark Star • Robert W. Chambers

... temples of gods and the homes of men beneath its barren solid waves. The leprosy gnaws the flesh off a man's bones, and joints and limbs drop off—he is a living death. So with every soul that is under the dominion of these lying desires—it is slowly rotting away piecemeal, 'waxing corrupt according ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ephesians; Epistles of St. Peter and St. John • Alexander Maclaren

... the light of 'the true definitions' to begin with. There is no use in revolutions till we have it; and as for empirical institutions, mankind has seen the best of them;—we are perishing in their decay, dying piecemeal, going off into a race of ostriches, or something of that nature—or threatened with becoming mere petrifactions, mineral specimens of what we have been, preserved, perhaps, to adorn the museums of some ...
— The Philosophy of the Plays of Shakspere Unfolded • Delia Bacon

... worth anything at all, let them be polished to perfection; let an author "keep his piece nine years," or ninety and nine, till he has made it as musical as he can—at least, as musical as his other performances. Not that we counsel dilatory and piecemeal composition. The thought must be struck off in the passion of the moment; the sword-blade must go red-hot to the anvil, and be forged in a few seconds: true; but after the forging, long and weary polishing and grinding ...
— The International Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 1, August 1850 - of Literature, Science and Art. • Various

... it is believed by the aid of some of the Rohan family, to escape from prison. She fled to London, where for some time she and her husband lived on the proceeds of the necklace, which they had broken up and sold piecemeal to jewelers in London and other cities; but they were soon reduced to great distress. After the Revolution had broken out in Paris, they tried to make money by publishing libels on the queen, in which they are believed to have obtained the aid of some who in former times had been under great personal ...
— The Life of Marie Antoinette, Queen of France • Charles Duke Yonge

... Yes, but though the British had arrived, as the signals showed, could they remain? It seemed almost too good to be true. And that hateful Trones Wood? Had we taken that, too, as a part of the tidal wave of a broad attack instead of trying to take it piecemeal? ...
— My Second Year of the War • Frederick Palmer

... From Manning I elicited piecemeal some few and vague ideas. This meagreness was not due to a disinclination on Manning's part, but only to the fact that he never quite grasped my interest in mere surroundings. Yes, said he, it was a pretty flat country, and some brush. Yes, there were mountains, some ways off, though. ...
— The Killer • Stewart Edward White

... give us that rounded and final beauty which we expect in a work of art; and the reader of Donne's Sermons in their latest form will be wise if he comes to them expecting to find beauty piecemeal and tarnished though in profusion. He will be wise, too, not to expect too many passages of the same intimate kind as that famous confession in regard to prayer which Mr. Pearsall Smith quotes, and which no writer on Donne ...
— The Art of Letters • Robert Lynd

... lawful and right. I fall certainly by my own sword, but honourably. I go about and am dying piecemeal, like Athens. Did we know that we adorned our statues for a funeral procession? that we were weaving our own shrouds? that the choruses of our tragedies ...
— Historical Miniatures • August Strindberg

... to the professor when his answer arrived. The sight of the handwriting of one of her lover's faithfullest friends was like a peal of bells to her, and she tore the letter open, and began to blink and spell at a strange language, taking the frosty sentences piecemeal. He begged her to be firm in her resolution, give up Alvan and obey her parents! This man of high intelligence and cultivation wrote like a provincial schoolmistress moralizing. Though he knew the depth of her passion for Alvan, and had within the month received her lark-song of her betrothal, ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith

... with so many of the statues only being piecemeal, as it were, and so many of the men having kinder women's hair, I declare it seems as if I don't know the ladies from the gentlemen half ...
— The Girl with the Green Eyes - A Play in Four Acts • Clyde Fitch

... Evolutionism, in spite of its appeals to particular scientific facts, fails to be a truly scientific philosophy because of its slavery to time, its ethical preoccupations, and its predominant interest in our mundane concerns and destiny. A truly scientific philosophy will be more humble, more piecemeal, more arduous, offering less glitter of outward mirage to flatter fallacious hopes, but more indifferent to fate, and more capable of accepting the world without the tyrannous imposition of our human and ...
— Mysticism and Logic and Other Essays • Bertrand Russell

... ready at the slightest touch to grip whatever is near, not only by suction, but by the great claws set all round within its circle. And in the centre of this net-work of living traps is the chasm-like mouth, with its enormous parrot-beak, ready to rend piecemeal whatever is held by the tentaculae. The very thought of it makes one's flesh crawl. Well did Michelet term them "the insatiable ...
— The Cruise of the Cachalot - Round the World After Sperm Whales • Frank T. Bullen

... about that, sir," answered the carpenter. "If she once strikes on that bar, she'll never get off again, except piecemeal; but that's better than ...
— The Three Admirals • W.H.G. Kingston

... plans of defence. It was now gravely proposed, to build a fleet three times as powerful as that of the British, and station it near Singapore and Anjeer, to intercept the British vessels ere they reached China, and annihilate their fleet piecemeal. The forests were to be felled to supply materials: the only thing wanting was some English men-of-war, to serve as models. Again, Hou-chunn, the Marshal Ney of China, was ready to face the whole British fleet if he had ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 433 - Volume 17, New Series, April 17, 1852 • Various

... keep quiet. Several times before Calton had been on the point of going to her and trying to get the secret out of her—that is, if she knew it; but now fate appeared to be playing into his hands, and a voluntary confession was much more likely to be true than one dragged piecemeal ...
— The Mystery of a Hansom Cab • Fergus Hume

... such heaps of them, and then bale after bale of prints and chintz, don't you call it, till the captain was half-frightened—he would get at the ship's papers, he said; so these poor fellows were pulled up, piecemeal, and pitched into the sea, the very sailors calling to each other to 'cover the faces',—no papers of importance were found, however, but fifteen swords, powder and ball enough for a dozen such boats, and bundles of ...
— Life and Letters of Robert Browning • Mrs. Sutherland Orr

... ships, and revictual; for I have tobacco enough to pay for it.' But he was powerless, as he confesses, to govern his crew, and no one knows how the heartbroken old man spent the next two dreadful months. His ships slunk back piecemeal to English havens, and on May 23, Captain North, who had commanded the 'Chudleigh,' had audience of the King, and told him the whole miserable story. On May 26,[12] Raleigh made his appearance, with the 'Destiny,' in the harbour of Kinsale, ...
— Raleigh • Edmund Gosse

... front of Nashville, the great battles in which General Thomas so nobly fulfilled his promise to ruin Hood, the details of which are fully given in his own official reports, long-since published. Rumors of these great victories reached us at Savannah by piecemeal, but his official report came on the 24th of December, with a letter from General Grant, giving in general terms the events up to the 18th, and I wrote at once through my chief of staff, General Webster, ...
— The Memoirs of General W. T. Sherman, Complete • William T. Sherman

... useful articles with which Fremont had provided himself, was an India rubber boat, twenty feet long and five feet wide. This was very buoyant and the carts and baggage were carried over piecemeal in it, with the exception of the last two carts. Laden with these the boat left the shore but had not gone far when the man at the helm, who was exceedingly nervous, managed to capsize the craft, with all its precious cargo. The hunters were so dismayed over the prospect of ...
— The Life of Kit Carson • Edward S. Ellis

... proposed that. What if he had not gone to the Hurons? Frightful stories of torture she had heard rushed to her mind. Old Noko had witnessed them. So had some of the men at the fort. Death itself was not so hard, but to have burning sticks thrust into one's skin, to have fingers and toes cut off, piecemeal—oh, she had saved him from that. Yes, she would marry Savignon, and then throw herself into the river, after she had kept ...
— A Little Girl in Old Quebec • Amanda Millie Douglas

... cavalry and pursue the Romans, whereas he himself marched up toward the sources of the river and commanded that the elephants cross where the tributary streams converged. In this manner, while the water was temporarily dammed and torn piecemeal by the animals' bulk, he effected a crossing more easily below them. Scipio overtaken stood his ground and would have offered battle but for the fact that by night the Gauls in his army deserted. Embarrassed ...
— Dio's Rome, Volume 1 (of 6) • Cassius Dio

... He was a lawyer by profession, and having made money in Edinburgh, had gone so far south as Moonfleet to get quit, as was said, of the memories of rascally deeds. It was about four years since he bought a parcel of the Mohune Estate, which had been breaking up and selling piecemeal for a generation; and on his land stood the Manor House, or so much of it as was left. Of the mansion I have spoken before. It was a very long house of two storeys, with a projecting gable and doorway in the middle, ...
— Moonfleet • J. Meade Falkner

... will then take it is impossible to say. It may be found desirable to re-annex the country, though, in my opinion, that would be, after all that has passed, an unfortunate step; its inhabitants may be cut up piecemeal by a combined movement of native tribes, as they would have been, had they not been rescued by the English Government in 1877, or it is possible that the Orange Free State may consent to take the Transvaal under its wing: who can say? There is only one thing that our recently ...
— Cetywayo and his White Neighbours - Remarks on Recent Events in Zululand, Natal, and the Transvaal • H. Rider Haggard

... from this opprobrium, or ill-timed compliment to royalty, the remodelling of Buckingham-house, or rather the erection of the New Palace in St. James's Park, was decided on; and how far this design has been accomplished in the palace, we leave it to the taste of our readers to determine. Various piecemeal, not to say absurd, descriptions have, during the progress of the work, appeared in the London and provincial papers, many of them originating in party feeling; but the structure has now so far advanced to completion as to enable every spectator to estimate its merits and demerits; and we are sorry ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 10, - Issue 278, Supplementary Number (1828) • Various

... but he does it because he is a savage. He has not the wants of the civilized man, and therefore he does not wait to supply them before he seeks to gratify others. When man rises in the scale of civilization, his whole nature rises. You can't mount a ladder piecemeal; your head will go up first, unless you are an acrobat, and choose to go up feet foremost; but even if you are Gabriel Ravel, your whole body must needs ascend together. The savage is comfortable, not according to your notions of comfort, but according ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 4, No. 24, Oct. 1859 • Various

... one yet green, the other more mature, Who found for nature's wane in art a cure. These dames, amidst their joking and caressing The man they long'd to wed, Would sometimes set themselves to dressing His party-colour'd head. Each aiming to assimilate Her lover to her own estate, The older piecemeal stole The black hair from his poll, While eke, with fingers light, The young one stole the white. Between them both, as if by scald, His head was changed from grey to bald. 'For these,' he said, 'your gentle pranks, I owe you, ladies, many ...
— The Fables of La Fontaine - A New Edition, With Notes • Jean de La Fontaine

... "that I did not see her so much at my leisure that I could take particular notice of her beauty, or of her charms piecemeal; but taken in ...
— Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra

... the nobles were divided, either deliberately or because the land was conquered piecemeal and parcelled out as it was conquered. (For example, Odo had 473 manors in ...
— Ontario Teachers' Manuals: History • Ontario Ministry of Education

... answer, in all courtesy and humility—for I sympathise deeply with such men and women, and respect them deeply likewise—But are not people discontented already, from the lowest to the highest? And ought a man, in such a piecemeal, foolish, greedy, sinful world as this is, and always has been, to be anything but discontented? If he thinks that things are going all right, must he not have a most beggarly conception of what going ...
— Health and Education • Charles Kingsley

... down on the sand again, his head in his hands, and Mr. Milford, deeply interested, turned to the children. His questions called out a confusing and involved account, told piecemeal by Georgina and Richard ...
— Georgina of the Rainbows • Annie Fellows Johnston

... such large animals as elephants; and the fact that the teeth found in the cave were of very young specimens seems to suggest that the hyaenas now and then found the carcase of a young elephant that had died, and dragged it piecemeal to their cave. The same would possibly apply to some of the other large animals, for hyaenas, unless in great extremes of hunger never attack a living animal. They have a loud and mournful howl, beginning low and ending high, and also a ...
— The Evolution Of An English Town • Gordon Home

... in excess of its intrinsic worth, what more natural than that the holder of it should open negotiations with its rightful owner, and thus make more money by quietly restoring it than by its dismemberment and sale piecemeal? But such a fuss was kicked up, such a furore created, that it is no wonder the receiver of the goods lay low, and said nothing. In vain were all ports giving access to the Continent watched; in vain were the police of France, Belgium, and Holland warned to look out for this treasure. Two ...
— The Triumphs of Eugene Valmont • Robert Barr

... to be entitled a campaign, he had, in his loneliness, fallen into the habit of reflecting at the close of his day's work; and the rubbing of that unused opaque mirror hanging inside a man of action had helped him piecemeal to perceive bits of his conduct, entirely approved by him, which were intimately connected, nevertheless, with a train of circumstances that he disliked and could not charge justly upon any other shoulders than his own. What was to be thought of it? He would not be undergoing this botheration ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith

... sacrificed to incompetency with every circumstance of barbarity attending the execution. Mr. Newman in language of appalling force, written a year after his conversion, has described the Anglican service as "a ritual dashed upon the ground, trodden on, and broken piecemeal; prayers clipped, pieced, torn, shuffled about at pleasure, until the meaning of the composition perished, and offices which had been poetry were no longer even good prose; antiphons, hymns, benedictions, invocations, shovelled away; Scripture lessons turned into ...
— Cardinal Newman as a Musician • Edward Bellasis

... Governments grow, piecemeal, both in their tasks and in the means by which those tasks are to be performed, and very few Governments are organized, I venture to say, as wise and experienced business men would organize them if they had ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various

... mirror the whole comes out at once. Now we often in the Christian life deal with ourselves as if we were painters and sculptors, not as if we were mirrors: we hammer and chisel away at ourselves to bring out some resemblance to Christ in some particulars, thinking that we can do it piecemeal; we might as well try to feed up our body piecemeal; we might as well try to make our eye bright without giving our cheek colour and our hands strength. The body is a whole, and we must feed the whole and nourish the whole if any one part of ...
— How to become like Christ • Marcus Dods

... her nephew. No relation at all"—Fyne emitted with a convulsive effort this, the most awful part of the suspicions Mrs. Fyne used to impart to him piecemeal when he came down to spend his week-ends gravely with her and the children. The Fynes, in their good-natured concern for the unlucky child of the man busied in stirring casually so many millions, spent the moments of their weekly reunion in wondering earnestly what could be done to defeat the ...
— Chance • Joseph Conrad

... present it to the Elector. By the end of November Spalatin had completed his task (one marvels at the leisureliness of this, in view of the serious condition of the Elector; or was the manuscript translated and administered piecemeal to the noble patient?), and early in December he returned the original, doubtless together with his own translation, to Luther, who had requested its return, "in order to ...
— Works of Martin Luther - With Introductions and Notes (Volume I) • Martin Luther

... urging me to write something for the Athenaeum, which he was then editing, I was induced to show him these earliest essays; but I declined to give them to him, whereat he was angered; perhaps the rather in that I objected to piecemeal publication, possibly also casting some reproach (as the fashion of the day then was) upon magazine and journalistic literature generally. That I made an enemy of him was evidenced by a spiteful little notice in the Athenaeum of April 21st (three months after ...
— My Life as an Author • Martin Farquhar Tupper

... with me broke the egg with hatchets, and making a hole in it, pulled out the young roc piecemeal, and roasted it. I had in vain entreated them not to ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments • Anonymous

... Ottawa four times before the outbreak, to try to waken the Government to the seriousness of the situation.[3] The North-West Council sent strong memorials backing the requests of the Metis. And still, though some of the grievances were redressed, in piecemeal fashion, no attempt was made to grapple adequately with the difficult questions presented by the meeting {77} of two stages of civilization, to understand the disputes, the real wrongs, the baseless fears. When in 1883 ...
— The Day of Sir Wilfrid Laurier - A Chronicle of Our Own Time • Oscar D. Skelton

... The County Council is opening out a few new thoroughfares piecemeal." Oh yes, in an illogical, unsystematic, English patchwork fashion, we are driving a badly-designed, unimpressive new street or two, with no expansive sense of imperial greatness, through the hopelessly congested and most squalid quarters. But that is all. ...
— Post-Prandial Philosophy • Grant Allen

... adjust the machinery of government to the needs of the time. In England Locke's influence has been less dynamic than static; it has helped us to preserve a moderation in politics; to be content with piecemeal legislation, because to attempt too much might be to alienate the sympathies of the majority; to keep our political eye, so to speak, on the ebb and flow of public opinion—since it is public opinion that is the final court of appeal; to tolerate ...
— The Rise of the Democracy • Joseph Clayton

... This piecemeal letter, dear, will show you in what a bustle and fever I live since I have been working at my candidature. I go here and go there, to 'at homes,' to dinner parties, to evening parties. I am even supposed to be 'zebra' to good Madame Ancelin, ...
— The Immortal - Or, One Of The "Forty." (L'immortel) - 1877 • Alphonse Daudet

... like that of Marathon or that at Waterloo, a cairn, even a shaft of the most durable form and material, are fit memorials of the place where a great battle was fought. They seem less appropriate as monuments to individuals. I doubt the durability of these piecemeal obelisks, and when I think of that vast inverted pendulum vibrating in an earthquake, I am glad that I do not live in its shadow. The Washington Monument is more than a hundred feet higher than Salisbury steeple, but it does not look to me so high as that, because ...
— Our Hundred Days in Europe • Oliver Wendell Holmes

... account than a China orange! Things near us are seen of the size of life: things at a distance are diminished to the size of the understanding. We measure the universe by ourselves, and even comprehend the texture of our own being only piecemeal. In this way, however, we remember an infinity of things and places. The mind is like a mechanical instrument that plays a great variety of tunes, but it must play them in succession. One idea recalls another, but it at the same time excludes all others. In trying ...
— English Prose - A Series of Related Essays for the Discussion and Practice • Frederick William Roe (edit. and select.)

... if the 'five days' fit of philanthropy' [the attempt to abolish the slave-trade] which has just sprung up, and which has slept for twenty years together, were allowed to sleep one summer longer, it would appear to me rather more wise than thus to take up a subject piecemeal, which it has been publicly declared ought not to be agitated at all till next session of Parliament. Perhaps, by such imprudence, the slaves themselves may be prompted by their own authority, to proceed at once to a 'total and immediate ...
— The Trial of Theodore Parker • Theodore Parker

... played awhile, they heard a mighty tumult, and a wailing of men, and a croaking of Ravens, as they carried the men in their strength into the air, and, tearing them betwixt them, let them fall piecemeal to the earth. And during the tumult they saw a knight coming towards them, on a light grey horse, and the left foreleg of the horse was jet-black to the centre of his hoof. And the knight and the horse were fully accoutred with huge heavy blue armour. And a robe of honour of ...
— The Mabinogion • Lady Charlotte Guest

... condense into a connected story the facts learnt piecemeal from Sir John in conversation. To a certain extent they supplied, if not an explanation, at least an account of the change that had come over my friend. But only to a certain extent; there the explanation broke down and I was left baffled. ...
— The Lost Stradivarius • John Meade Falkner

... then silence, and there he was, sitting just as though he had dreamed it all. Then a voice called, "Did you get them?" And he mechanically put up the receiver without a word. Something had happened—just what, he could only guess—make out piecemeal. There was trouble—he could feel that. Uncle Buzz had somehow stepped beyond the pale. He had heard the words "all night" and "no trace of him." This was no ordinary trouble. This was not ...
— Stubble • George Looms

... introducing their religion among the natives of Luzon, and were giving them instructions, ceremonies, and the form of observing their religion, by means of certain gazizes [333] whom they brought with them. Already a considerable number, and those the chiefest men, were commencing, although by piecemeal, to become Moros, and were being circumcised [334] and taking the names of Moros. Had the Spaniards' coming been delayed longer, that religion would have spread throughout the island, and even through the ...
— History of the Philippine Islands Vols 1 and 2 • Antonio de Morga

... martyrdom—this daily dying for six and twenty years? Was it any less, borne for our Lord's love, than any of His martyrs? They that are burned or beheaded, they do but suffer once, and then no more. It must be easier, methinks, than to die piecemeal, as she did. And she knew so little! Isoult, dost thou think Christ will count her in the number ...
— Robin Tremain - A Story of the Marian Persecution • Emily Sarah Holt

... same condition applies to the west, though I cannot speak with any authority on that subject. Apparently this obvious action of the Germans is exactly what happened. When their northern front had been combed, we find forces subtracted piecemeal from the north, reaching an aggregate of thirty divisions, or at least nearly fifteen divisions more than had been anticipated. The ...
— World's War Events, Vol. II • Various

... grain-giving earth, empty of human beings. No labourers—no household smoke. The fire of the burning villages has smouldered out, and round the houses, and in the courtyards, lie the debris of their normal life, trampled, dirty and piecemeal, under foot. Poor farms of the Ile-de-France!—dwellings of old time, into whose barns the rich harvests of the fields had been joyously gathered year by year—old tiled roofs, clothed with ancestral moss—plain hospitable rooms where masters and servants met familiarly together:—you ...
— Towards The Goal • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... always existed just as she teaches them, that Jesus instituted confession, extreme unction and marriage, and that he taught what was afterwards decided upon by the Nicene and Trent Councils. Nothing can be more erroneous. The Christian dogma has been formed, like everything else, slowly and piecemeal, by a sort of inward vegetation. Theology, by asserting the contrary, raises up a mass of objections, and places itself in the predicament of having to reject all criticism. I would advise any one who wishes to realise this to read in a theological work the treatise ...
— Recollections of My Youth • Ernest Renan

... work hauling off such vessels as would float. One, a large hardwood, well-fastened hull, we determined to save. Her name was Pendragon. The owner was aboard—a young man with no experience who had never previously owned a vessel. He was so appalled at the disaster that he decided to have her sold piecemeal and broken up. We attended the auction on the beach and bought each piece as it came to the hammer. Getting her off was the trouble. We adopted tactics of our own invention. Mousing together the two mastheads with a bight of rope, we put on it a large whoop traveller, and to that fastened ...
— A Labrador Doctor - The Autobiography of Wilfred Thomason Grenfell • Wilfred Thomason Grenfell

... to do so by certain of your friends, and because such a paper was needed here. I was promised certain pecuniary aid in so doing; it might have been given me without cost or risk to any one. All I ever had was a loan by piecemeal of $1000, from James Coggeshall. God bless his honoured memory! I did not ask for this, and I think it is the one sole case in which I ever received a pecuniary favour from a political associate. I am very thankful that he did not die till ...
— A Political History of the State of New York, Volumes 1-3 • DeAlva Stanwood Alexander

... now—perfectly fitted, no doubt, for them. If they once began to rebel and mutiny against that law, all was over with them. That great, foolish, ignorant multitude would have broken up, probably fought among themselves—certainly parted company, and either starved in the desert, or have been destroyed piecemeal by the wild warlike tribes, Midianites, Moabites, Amalekites—who were ready enough for slaughter and plunder. They would never have reached Canaan. They would never have become a great nation. So they had to be, by necessity, under martial law. The word must be, Obey ...
— The Gospel of the Pentateuch • Charles Kingsley

... suffice to say that, having in some measure appeased the raging thirst which consumed us by the blood of the victim, and having by common consent taken off the hands, feet, and head, throwing them together with the entrails, into the sea, we devoured the rest of the body, piecemeal, during the four ever memorable days of the seventeenth, eighteenth, nineteenth, ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 3 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe

... bark of an old tree, we find the bark homogeneous. The outer layers have perished and been cast off. As the tree grows from within, the bark is stretched and, if not replaced, cracks and falls away piecemeal. So, in most old trees, the bark consists of successive layers of the ...
— Outlines of Lessons in Botany, Part I; From Seed to Leaf • Jane H. Newell

... long time there, eating fruit and bread and chocolate, on the grass, over which came to our ears, horizontal, faint, but solid still and metallic, the sound of the bells of Saint-Hilaire, which had melted not at all in the atmosphere it was so well accustomed to traverse, but, broken piecemeal by the successive palpitation of all their sonorous strokes, throbbed as it brushed the flowers ...
— Swann's Way - (vol. 1 of Remembrance of Things Past) • Marcel Proust

... that buy up the poor man's victuals by wholesale, and sell it to him again for unreasonable gains, by retail, and as we call it by piecemeal; they are got into a way, after a stinging rate, to play their game upon such by extortion: I mean such who buy up butter, cheese, eggs, bacon, &c. by wholesale, and sell it again, as they call it, by pennyworths, two pennyworths, a halfpennyworth, or the like, to the poor, all the week ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan

... Allan brought piecemeal and fitted up a small dynamo from some extensive ruins to southeastward. He brought wiring and several still intact incandescent lights. Before long Cliff Villa shone resplendent, to the awe and marvel ...
— Darkness and Dawn • George Allan England

... not affect the question whether, under all the circumstances, and solemn surroundings, the labor which has been bestowed, and the character of the men that have presented this paper, we should consider it as an entirety, or attempt to cut it up by piecemeal, by which neither they, nor the public, will ever ascertain what the judgment of Congress was on the results of their labor. ...
— A Report of the Debates and Proceedings in the Secret Sessions of the Conference Convention • Lucius Eugene Chittenden

... Colonel Clay was polymorphic, like the element carbon! Doubtless, with his extraordinary sleight of hand, he had substituted real diamonds for the shapeless mass that came out of the apparatus, in the interval between handing the pebbles round for inspection, and distributing them piecemeal to the men of science and representatives of the diamond interest. We all watched him closely, of course, when he opened the crucibles; but when once we had satisfied ourselves that something came out, our doubts were set at rest, and we forgot to watch whether he distributed those somethings ...
— An African Millionaire - Episodes in the Life of the Illustrious Colonel Clay • Grant Allen

... him did guard That piecemeal lay his armour scattered; And still fought hard that stalwart lord Until ...
— Axel Thordson and Fair Valborg - a ballad • Thomas J. Wise

... Femme," p. 340-1.] Each of the laws enumerated above, does, in principle, abolish slavery; and all of them together abolish it in fact. True, not as a whole, and at a stroke, nor all in one place; but in its parts, by piecemeal, at divers times and places; thus showing that the abolition of slavery is ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society

... most cases ciphers, and in all cases ignorant and enslaved—with no room for expansion, and little or no hope of political or social betterment; every inch of liberty, in every direction, which they had gained, wrung from their oppressors piecemeal, in ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No 4, October, 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various

... left behind. [22] No more the hirelings, purchased near and far, Crowd to the ranks of mercenary war. The idle merchant on the useless quay Droops o'er the bales no bark may bear away; Or, back returning, sees rejected stores Rot piecemeal on his own encumbered shores: 270 The starved mechanic breaks his rusting loom, And desperate mans him 'gainst the coming doom. Then in the Senates of your sinking state Show me the man whose counsels may have weight. Vain is each voice ...
— Byron's Poetical Works, Vol. 1 • Byron

... us? An inch of pasteboard on a wooden globe, of no more account than a China orange! Things near us are seen of the size of life: things at a distance are diminished to the size of the understanding. We measure the universe by ourselves, and even comprehend the texture of our being only piecemeal. In this way, however, we remember an infinity of things and places. The mind is like a mechanical instrument that plays a great variety of tunes, but it must play them in succession. One idea recalls another, but it at the same time excludes all others. In trying to renew old recollections, ...
— Table-Talk - Essays on Men and Manners • William Hazlitt

... of his internal qualities, in gross and piecemeal, the diversity of means by which he is united and knit, and the accidents that threaten him. Now those that write lives, by reason they insist more upon counsels than events, more upon what sallies from within, than upon what happens without, are the most proper for my reading; and, therefore, ...
— The Essays of Montaigne, Complete • Michel de Montaigne

... social order which involves charity is not one which maintains justice. Thus it may be said that the prophets, because they operated in terms of the reorganization of the whole of society and not of the incidental correction of piecemeal evils, were humanists. Their program was constructive and aimed at the enfranchisement of manhood. The rabbis, on the other hand, were (relatively only) philanthropists. Their program was remedial, and they aimed rather at the relief of suffering than the realization ...
— The Menorah Journal, Volume 1, 1915 • Various

... orderliness in their mythical conceptions, and no such thing as an universe. The natural question, "Who made the world, or how did the things in the world come to be?" is the question which is answered by cosmogonic myths. But it is answered piecemeal. To a Christian child the reply is given, "God made all things". We have known this reply discussed by some little girls of six (a Scotch minister's daughters, and naturally metaphysical), one of whom solved all difficulties by the impromptu myth, "God first made a little place ...
— Myth, Ritual, and Religion, Vol. 1 • Andrew Lang

... rules of perspective were systematized, the perspective of a picture betrays its history, tells how much of it was seen together, and what was added. Even late in the fifteenth century pictures are still more or less mosaics,—their piecemeal origin confessed by slight indications in the midst even of very advanced technical skill. Thus, in Antonio Pollaiuolo's "Three Archangels," in the Florence Academy,—three admirably drawn figures, abreast, and about equally distant from the frame, the line of the right ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 77, March, 1864 • Various

... prices, from fifteen to one hundred dollars, forming a small suburb of samples. The lumber is floated down the Volga and her tributaries from the great forests of Ufa, and made up in Samara. The peasant purchaser disjoints his house, floats it to a point near his village, drags it piecemeal to its proper site, sets it up, roofs it, builds an oven and a chimney of stones, clay, and whitewash, plugs the interstices with rope or moss, smears them with clay if he feels inclined, and his house is ready for occupancy. Although such houses are cheap and warm, it would be a great ...
— Russian Rambles • Isabel F. Hapgood

... for national defence continued to proceed in these parochial ways. Pitt's authority at Westminster was at no time more firmly founded than at the time of the meeting of the new Parliament in the autumn of 1796. Yet the piecemeal methods went on as before. He proposed to raise by means of the ballot a levy of 15,000 men in order to recruit the navy and the Line regiments; and he further asked for a levy of 60,000 men as a Supplementary Militia, one tenth being embodied by turns so as not ...
— William Pitt and the Great War • John Holland Rose

... riots and revolts. One reverend thing after another ceases to meet reverence: in visible material combustion, chateau after chateau mounts up; in spiritual invisible combustion, one authority after another. With noise and glare, or noisily and unnoted, a whole Old System of things is vanishing piecemeal: on the morrow thou shalt look ...
— The French Revolution • Thomas Carlyle

... of oil and alcohol, which Marvin and Borup were to bring to me, was, I felt, vital to our success; but even if they did not come in with it, I could not turn back here. While pacing the floe, I figured out how we should use our sledges piecemeal as fuel in our cookers, to make tea after the oil and alcohol were gone. By the time the wood of the sledges was exhausted, it would be warm enough so that we could suck ice or snow to assuage our thirst, and get along with our pemmican and raw dog without tea. ...
— The North Pole - Its Discovery in 1909 under the auspices of the Peary Arctic Club • Robert E. Peary

... the church; but if he should refuse that condition, as was suspected, the supreme authority would be given to certain lords under the nomination of the pope. In a subsequent examination before the commons, Bedloe added, (for these men always brought out their intelligence successively and by piecemeal,) that Lord Carrington was also in the conspiracy for raising men and money against the government; as was likewise Loro Brudenel. These noblemen, with all the other persons mentioned by Bedloe, were immediately committed to ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part F. - From Charles II. to James II. • David Hume

... city of God, which is eternal in the heavens, for ever coming down among men, and actualising itself more and more in every succeeding age. I only know that I know nothing, but with a hope that Christ, who is the Son of Man, will tell me piecemeal, if I be patient and watchful, what I ...
— Daily Thoughts - selected from the writings of Charles Kingsley by his wife • Charles Kingsley

... outlying Austrian possessions. The main cause of this bewildering subdivision of Germany was the habit of dealing with a principality as if it were merely private property which might be divided up among several children, or disposed of piecemeal, quite regardless of the wishes ...
— An Introduction to the History of Western Europe • James Harvey Robinson

... do the Council of State, by whom they manage the executive government of the kingdom. I cannot tell why they nourish suspicion against me, unless it is because I will not deliver this poor innocent army, which has followed me in so many military actions, to be now pulled asunder, broken piecemeal and reduced, so that they who have protected the state at the expense of their blood, will not have, perchance, the means of feeding themselves by their labour; which, methinks, were hard measure, since it is taking from Esau his birthright, ...
— Woodstock; or, The Cavalier • Sir Walter Scott

... whose presence you stand, infidel?" he shrieked. "Do you know that I am lord and Subhadar of Bengal, of Behar, and Orissa; and that I have a million men who would die at my bidding? I will have you torn piecemeal, I will have your eyes picked out with knives and your flesh torn by hot pincers! I will plunge this knife into you, I will rip you up as I would a wild boar, I will strew your entrails on the earth, I will give your heart ...
— Athelstane Ford • Allen Upward

... path was the blackness of desolation. The trees were still burning, but it was in a smoldering, smoking way, with blazing branches here and there, dropping piecemeal to the ground. The flames, which charged forward as they do through the dry prairie grass, had passed by, and the brother and sister had now the opportunity to attempt to ...
— Through Forest and Fire - Wild-Woods Series No. 1 • Edward Ellis

... actions and gestures, instead of appearing the consequence of simple volition, seemed, like those of an automaton, to wait the revolution of some internal machinery ere they could be performed; and his words fell from him piecemeal, interrupted, as if he had first to think what he was to say, then how it was to be said, and as if, after all, it was only by an effort of continued attention that he completed a sentence without forgetting both the ...
— Kenilworth • Sir Walter Scott

... the numbers, it will be found easier to deal with these great national problems in bulk than piecemeal, and their very size will give them an impetus when once they are fairly set in motion. It will be found as easy to dispose of 1,000 people as of a hundred, and of 50,000 as of a thousand, if they be properly organised. Indeed, for many ...
— Darkest India - A Supplement to General Booth's "In Darkest England, and the Way Out" • Commissioner Booth-Tucker



Words linked to "Piecemeal" :   gradual



Copyright © 2024 Free Translator.org