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Nutshell   /nˈətʃˌɛl/   Listen
Nutshell

noun
1.
The shell around the kernel of a nut.



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"Nutshell" Quotes from Famous Books



... personally, Carlyle was of course against the North, and perhaps one may say on the side of the South, as shown by his epigram, "The American Iliad in a Nutshell,"—one of the few instances (if I may trust my own opinion concerning so great a genius) in which even his immense power of humor and pointed illustration has fallen flat and let off a firework which merely fizzed without flashing. Ruskin also would appear, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 100, February, 1866 • Various

... every legal and friendly restraint. But his existence depends on their success, or in replacing them. The broker, therefore, is quite as anxious for his clients to make money as they are themselves. More profit, more margin; more margin, more commissions and less risk. There you have it in a nutshell. ...
— Ainslee's, Vol. 15, No. 6, July 1905 • Various

... actually exist in literature: "pastoralism" in the abstract, unless treated in the pure historical manner, is apt, like all similar criticism and discussion of "kinds" in general, to tend to [Greek: phlyaria].[128] For a history in a nutshell there is perhaps room even here, because the relations of the thing to fiction cannot be well understood without it. That the association of shepherds,[129] with songs, and with the telling of "tales" in both senses, is immensely old, is ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 1 - From the Beginning to 1800 • George Saintsbury

... against a desire; she has simply not felt the need of drink. Further, her sleep continues to be splendid. She is getting more and more calm, in spite of the fact that on several occasions her sang-froid has been severely tested. To put the matter in a nutshell, she is a changed woman. But what impresses me most is the fact that when she took to your method she thought herself at the end of her tether, and in the event of its doing her no good had decided to kill herself (she had already attempted ...
— The Practice of Autosuggestion • C. Harry Brooks

... it, in a nutshell. Audrey understood. She was that sort. She never held small resentments. He rather ...
— Dangerous Days • Mary Roberts Rinehart

... difficulty, in a "nutshell," was that the commanding officer of the district was furnished no more troops or supplies for this state of war than had been provided and furnished him for a state of ...
— The Great Salt Lake Trail • Colonel Henry Inman

... I desired the topsail filled away. He replied that he would shoot any man who dared to touch a rope without his orders; he 'would go his own course, and had no idea of trusting himself with a d—d nutshell;' and then he went below for his pistols. I called my right-hand man of the crew, and told him my situation; I also informed him that I wanted the main topsail filled. He answered with a clear 'Ay, ay, ...
— The Naval History of the United States - Volume 1 (of 2) • Willis J. Abbot

... guard in the corridor. Once in awhile you will go out upon the balcony and take a look. You see, I am afraid of someone. Oh, Baldos, what's the use of my trifling like this? You are to escape from Edelweiss to-night. That is the whole plan—the whole idea in a nutshell. Don't look like that. Don't you want to go?" Now she was trembling ...
— Beverly of Graustark • George Barr McCutcheon

... thing right there in a nutshell, Little Sister," he said. "You see it's like this: the Book tells us most distinctly that 'God is love.' Now it was love that sent Laddie to bind himself for a long, tedious job, to give ...
— Laddie • Gene Stratton Porter

... speech, the words, may on occasion identify themselves with either of the two functional units; more often they mediate between the two extremes, embodying one or more radical notions and also one or more subsidiary ones. We may put the whole matter in a nutshell by saying that the radical and grammatical elements of language, abstracted as they are from the realities of speech, respond to the conceptual world of science, abstracted as it is from the realities of experience, and that the word, the existent ...
— Language - An Introduction to the Study of Speech • Edward Sapir

... again dear Chief! and put me To yoking foxes, milking of he-goats, Pounding of water in a mortar, laving The sea dry with a nutshell, gathering all The leaves are fallen this autumn—making ropes of sand, Catching the winds together in a net, Mustering of ants, and numbering atoms, all That Hell and you thought exquisite torments, rather Than stay me here a thought more. I would sooner Keep fleas within ...
— Poems, 1799 • Robert Southey

... go again!" warned the recalcitrant. "If you don't stop eating that mustache you'll have stomach trouble that no Scotch whisky will ever cure. The whole thing is in a nutshell," a sly humor creeping into his eyes. "I am tired of writing ephemeral things. I want to write something that ...
— A Splendid Hazard • Harold MacGrath

... absolute profligacy, he was a well-disposed young man, and would doubtless grow wiser as he increased in years; but that his fortune was very limited, and that all his expectations in that way wouldn't fill a nutshell." ...
— Blackwoods Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 365, March, 1846 • Various

... in a nutshell, an' jess so clar as apple jack: we owes a heap; we'se gittin' inter debt deeper an' deeper ebery yar; we lose money workin' de ole trees; we hain't got no new ones; an', dar's no use to talk,—master Robert won't put de hands inter ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 3 No 2, February 1863 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various

... put it in a nutshell: the ideal of the American woman is to be respectable without being bored; and from that point of view this world they've invented has more originality than I ...
— The Custom of the Country • Edith Wharton

... nutshell, dear lady," Francis Markrute said, and for a minute he looked into her eyes with such respectful, intense admiration that Lady ...
— The Reason Why • Elinor Glyn

... once said of him at a public meeting: "Oh, gentlemen, what a comfort it is to have a leader who says what he means and means you to understand what he says." Here in a nutshell was the quality which the country most admired in the Duke of Devonshire. They always knew exactly what he stood for, and whether he was a Unionist or a Home-ruler, a Free-trader or a Protectionist. He was never seeking for a safe point to rest ...
— The Adventure of Living • John St. Loe Strachey

... and turned to the British Consul: "This is an international affair, eh? See if I don't state the proposition in a nutshell—if I may be pardoned the bromide. This steamer is a German, and the proposition is to get her under the American flag so firmly that she'll stay there; then, I suppose, we're to charter her to the British Government, or one ...
— Cappy Ricks Retires • Peter B. Kyne

... impression of the doctor and the landlady separately, in connection with the wrong set of circumstances, the dreaming mind comes right at the third trial, and introduces the doctor and the landlady together, in connection with the right set of circumstances. There it is in a nutshell!—Permit me to hand you back the manuscript, with my best thanks for your very complete and striking confirmation of the rational theory of dreams." Saying those words, Mr. Hawbury returned the written paper to Midwinter, with the pitiless ...
— Armadale • Wilkie Collins

... applauding. "Senator, I congratulate you on your logic. Payne, there's the philosophy of our era in a nutshell. Now let us hear how star-eyed youth, inspired by ideals, controverts the wisdom of the togoed sage? Annette, dear!" he roared. "Come out! Come out and ...
— The Plunderer • Henry Oyen

... to be known, or all that is interesting to know, about the places we visit. Then, again, our time as a rule being limited, we want the whole matter—history, antiquities, places of interest in the neighbourhood, etc. in a nutshell. The brief book serves its purpose well enough; but it is not thrown away like the newspaper and the magazines; however cheap and badly got up it may be, it is taken home to serve another purpose, to be a help to memory, and nobody can have it until its owner removes himself (but not his possessions) ...
— Afoot in England • W.H. Hudson

... evidence," he said, "ought to go to the coroner's jury. It clinches the case against Perry. Here's the whole business in a nutshell: the buttons missing from his blouse, one found in Number Five, the other in your bungalow; Miss Hardesty's having seen him the night of the murder; the ease with which he undoubtedly got the kitchen ...
— The Winning Clue • James Hay, Jr.

... there," answered the little old woman, pointing to a tiny shadow, no bigger than a nutshell, floating on ...
— The Adventures of Pinocchio • C. Collodi—Pseudonym of Carlo Lorenzini

... should begin to send out our paragraphs, affirmative, negative, and explanatory, and along about the first of May we should sit down about a hundred strong, the most distinguished people in the country, and solemnize our triumph. There it is in a nutshell. I might expand and I might expound, but that's the ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells

... Winter, 1947-48 numbers of "The Nutshell", news bulletin of the NNGA, have been issued by the Secretary's office. It is intended to have this bulletin distributed to members four times a year. It will carry news of the Association's activities, supplementing ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Report of the Proceedings at the Thirty-Eighth Annual Meeting • Northern Nut Growers Association

... furnished me with the clew to all the investigations I afterward conducted; I won't tell you how I went about collecting data and more data, little by little, for that would bore you. I'll put the thing for you in a nutshell." ...
— The Quest • Pio Baroja

... informed the captain that I desired the maintopsail filled away, in order that we might close up with the Essex Junior. He replied that he would shoot any man who dared to touch a rope without his orders; he 'would go his own course, and had no idea of trusting himself with a d—d nutshell'; and then he went below for his pistols. I called my right-hand man of the crew and told him my situation. I also informed him that I wanted the maintopsail filled. He answered with a clear 'Ay, ay, sir!' in a manner which was not to be misunderstood, and my confidence was perfectly restored. ...
— Admiral Farragut • A. T. Mahan

... against your father's ignorance has given me the victory. Last night I gained my point: the news to that effect is no doubt contained in that document. It was a question of price—it always is. I knew your father's bid, and—I went a few thousands higher and got the prize. That's the story in a nutshell. Of course there are a number of complications and details, but I spare you them; in fact, I don't suppose you understand them. It is a mere matter ...
— At Love's Cost • Charles Garvice

... is a mistake to try and grip anything with a dead hand. But if I get through, and I believe I have a good chance of doing so, you must just keep things going till I get back—which won't be long. There's the case in a nutshell! You quite understand? I don't want you to do what you think I should wish, because I don't wish. And now we won't say another word about it, unless there are any questions you would like to ask. By the way, I have arranged the programme for the day. The doctor ...
— Father Payne • Arthur Christopher Benson

... a nutshell. A woman never thoroughly cares for her lover until he has ceased to care for her; and it is not until you have snapped your fingers in Fortune's face and turned on your heel that she begins ...
— Idle Thoughts of an Idle Fellow • Jerome K. Jerome

... Third Method of Analysis, described above, is an attempt very briefly to epitomize the chief elements of a great scheme,—to give, in a nutshell, the substance of what our grammarians have borrowed from the logicians, then mixed with something of their own, next amplified with small details, and, in some instances, branched out and extended to enormous bulk and length. Of course, they have ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown

... been taken to Marteel she was missed again. Israel hurried away to the sea, and there he came upon her. Alone, without help, she had found a boat on the beach and had pushed off on to the water. It was a double-pronged boat, light as a nutshell, made of ribs of rush, covered with camel-skin, and lined with bark. In this frail craft she was afloat, and already far out in the bay not rowing, but sitting quietly, and drifting away with the ebbing tide. The wind was rising, and ...
— The Scapegoat • Hall Caine

... tea in a buttercup, cream in a blue-bell, Marigold butter and hollyhock cheese, Slices of strawberry served in a nutshell, And honey just ...
— Five Mice in a Mouse-trap - by the Man in the Moon. • Laura E. Richards

... well before going farther to summarize what we have been saying. Here in a nutshell is ...
— Outwitting Our Nerves - A Primer of Psychotherapy • Josephine A. Jackson and Helen M. Salisbury

... gates with iron, I shuttered my doors with flame, Because to force my ramparts your nutshell navies came; I took the sun from their presence, I cut them down with my blast, And they died, but the Flag of England blew ...
— The Works of Rudyard Kipling One Volume Edition • Rudyard Kipling

... two-thirds of the distance, when a sudden gust of wind, rushing forth from the narrow gorges of the valley of the Rhone, stirred up the waves of the lake, and produced one of those short seas which so often prove fatal. The sail of the little boat was soon gone, and it seemed like a nutshell dancing on the still-increasing waves. It was impossible to think of returning, and full half an hour of fatigue and danger must elapse before the boat could be moored in safety under the hanging cliffs of Haute-Combe. Fate willed ...
— Raphael - Pages Of The Book Of Life At Twenty • Alphonse de Lamartine

... in your own homes, among your own families. Under ordinary circumstances you would hesitate. If the question was about tariff, you would hesitate and look at the awful consequences. That there is a diversity between us is very true. What of it? It lies in a nutshell. We can fix it in a minute, if you will be calm and act ...
— A Report of the Debates and Proceedings in the Secret Sessions of the Conference Convention • Lucius Eugene Chittenden

... situation in a nutshell, as it were, he put his hands in his pockets and observed Frank covertly out of the corners of his eyes. Seeing how crestfallen he looked, the ...
— Our Frank - and other stories • Amy Walton

... dash that I understood why those Homeric words had come to my lips a while ago. This was indeed like nothing so much as like being out on rough waters and in a troubled sea, with nothing to brace the storm with but a wind-tossed nutshell of a one-man sailing craft. I knew that experience for having outridden many a gale in the mouth of the mighty St. Lawrence River. When the snow reached its extreme in depth, it gave you the feeling which a drowning man may have when fighting his desperate fight ...
— Over Prairie Trails • Frederick Philip Grove

... the matter in a nutshell, there is small risk a general will be regarded with contempt by those he leads, if, whatever he may have to preach, he shows ...
— The Cavalry General • Xenophon

... their widest and noblest meanings these hopes which had been handed down from one generation of Jews to another. The story of the life of Jesus will be given in detail in other courses in this series. Here, in a nutshell, is what Jesus did: he helped men to believe in a God who loved all men as his children, whether rich or poor, learned or ignorant, Jews or Gentiles or Samaritans, even the bad as well as the good; for if they were bad, they needed his love to help ...
— Hebrew Life and Times • Harold B. Hunting

... "It gives in a nutshell the miracle of art and the imagination. You get this queer irascible musician quite impossibly and unfortunately in love with a wealthy patroness, and then out of his brain comes THIS, a tapestry of glorious music, setting out love to lovers, lovers who love ...
— Ann Veronica • H. G. Wells

... a nutshell, are not only the natural variations of the rock garden, but the inspiration. No rock garden worthy of the name has ever been created by man that did not depend upon a study of those that nature has given the world in prodigal abundance. ...
— Making A Rock Garden • Henry Sherman Adams

... corporeal identity so honest and satisfactory. A cynic might have said that his mind moved in rather narrow limits. But then within those limits he was so ruddy and jubilant that I could not but remember something Shakspeare says about the ease of being bounded in a nutshell and yet counting one's self king of infinite space,—were it not for bad dreams. These "bad dreams" had never retarded the British digestion of Sir Joseph Barley. No American citizen could, by any possibility, be so shut in measureless content. It is only a very few of our well-to-do women of the ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 80, June, 1864 • Various

... said, "but in a nutshell, the Nautilus can hold only a certain number of men, so couldn't master estimate ...
— 20000 Leagues Under the Seas • Jules Verne

... as of odour, fruit, gum, resin, wax, honey, seem brought about in the same manner as in the glands of animals; the tasteless moisture of the earth is converted by the hop plant into a bitter juice; as by the caterpillar in the nutshell, the sweet powder is converted into a bitter powder. While the power of absorption in the roots and barks of vegetables is excited into action by the fluids applied to their mouths like the lacteals and ...
— Evolution, Old & New - Or, the Theories of Buffon, Dr. Erasmus Darwin and Lamarck, - as compared with that of Charles Darwin • Samuel Butler

... the position in a nutshell," she said. "Still am I not right? For hasn't he charm, poor dear fellow, so very much cleverness—so ...
— Deadham Hard • Lucas Malet

... soul; we feel that we have wider thoughts than we knew; the soul has been living, as it were, in a nutshell, all unaware of its own power, and now suddenly finds freedom in the sun and the sky. Straight, as if sawn down from turf to beach, the cliff shuts off the human world, for the sea knows no time and ...
— Highways & Byways in Sussex • E.V. Lucas

... on his tongue, among the simple islanders—singing a serenade under the window of his Shetland mistress—is conceived in the very highest manner of romantic invention. The words of his song, "Through groves of palm," sung in such a scene and by such a lover, clench, as in a nutshell, the emphatic contrast upon which the tale is built. In Guy Mannering,[31] again, every incident is delightful to the imagination; and the scene when Harry Bertram lands at Ellangowan is a model ...
— Essays of Robert Louis Stevenson • Robert Louis Stevenson

... stiff, formal, severe. He seldom praised her work and never ungrudgingly. His censure was rare too, to be sure, but this obviously was because Rose almost never gave him an excuse for it. Of course she was up to her work, but, well, she had better be. This, in a nutshell, was his attitude toward her. Nothing but the undisputable fact that she was up to her work (Gertrude was comforting here, with her reticent but convincing reports of Abe Shuman's satisfaction with her) kept Rose from losing confidence. Even as it was, working for Galbraith in ...
— The Real Adventure • Henry Kitchell Webster

... a nutshell when an English deist inveighed bitterly against the rigid instruction of Christian homes. The deist said: "Consider the helplessness of a little child. Before it has wisdom or judgment to decide for itself, it is prejudiced in favour of Christianity. How selfish ...
— Fifty-Two Story Talks To Boys And Girls • Howard J. Chidley

... gave us shelter From the blinding sleet and hail— When we lurked within the thicket, And, beneath the waning moon, Saw the sentry's bayonet glimmer, Heard him chant his listless tune— When the howling storm o'ertook us, Drifting down the island's lee, And our crazy bark was whirling Like a nutshell on the sea— When the nights were dark and dreary, And amidst the fern we lay, Faint and foodless, sore with travel, Waiting for the streaks of day; When thou wert an angel to me, Watching my exhausted sleep— Never didst thou hear me murmur— Couldst ...
— Lays of the Scottish Cavaliers and Other Poems • W.E. Aytoun

... thousand inhabitants, it boasted four book-stores, two of them good ones. Now, with a population more than doubled, only these latter two survived, and they must soon go to the wall. The reason? It was in a nutshell. A book which sold at retail for one dollar and a half cost the bookseller ninety cents. If it was at all a popular book, "Thurston's" advertised it at eighty-nine cents—and in any case at a profit of only ...
— The Damnation of Theron Ware • Harold Frederic

... his case in a nutshell. "Our client," he contended, "was NOT the man against whom the warrant in this case had been duly issued; he was NOT the man named Guy Waring; he was NOT the man whom the witnesses deposed to having seen at Mambury; he was ...
— What's Bred In the Bone • Grant Allen

... things. Nothing but the roots of things, their inmost anatomy, attracted him; he brushed away contemptuously the beauties on which Longfellow spent the tenderness of his character, and threw aside like an empty nutshell the form to which an artist might have given the devotion of his best art, for the art's sake. In his temper there was no patience with shams, little toleration of forms. It would, I should think, be clear ...
— The Autobiography of a Journalist, Volume I • Stillman, William James

... title would not then have involved an important difference between its working and its technical forms, and it would have better fulfilled the object of a title, which is, of course, to give, as far as may be, the essence of a book in a nutshell. We learn on the authority of Mr. Darwin himself {83a} that the "Origin of Species" was originally intended to bear the title "Natural Selection;" nor is it easy to see why the change should have been made if an accurate expression of the contents of the book was the only thing which Mr. Darwin ...
— Luck or Cunning? • Samuel Butler

... read the interview, and followed the "Northmorland Case" with passionate interest, for months, from the time it began with melodrama, and turned violently to tragedy, up to the present moment when (as the journalists neatly crammed the news into a nutshell) "it bade fair to end ...
— The Golden Silence • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson

... viewed the present trial as heaven-sent to purify and strengthen. So your religious egotists are ever wont to read into the great waves of chance, as here and there a ripple from them sets their own little vessels shaking, as here and there some splash of foam, a puff of wind, strikes the nutshell which floats their lives, a personal, deliberate intervention, an event designed by the Everlasting to test their powers, ripen their characters, equip their souls for an eternity ...
— Lying Prophets • Eden Phillpotts

... your portmanteau, and I will plant it in my garden. It must have been erected in the very infancy of British Christianity, for the two or three first converts; yet hath it all the appertenances of a church of the first magnitude, its pulpit, its pews, its baptismal font; a cathedral in a nutshell. Seven people would crowd it like a Caledonian Chapel. The minister that divides the word there, must give lumping penny-worths. It is built to the text of two or three assembled in my name. It reminds me of the grain of mustard seed. If ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb (Vol. 6) - Letters 1821-1842 • Charles and Mary Lamb

... "I 'll answer your questions so far as I think best, and then I 'll ask a few of you. The lady upstairs is Viola Henley, the wife of Philip Henley. She has come down here to take legal possession of this property. That is the situation in a nutshell. I am merely accompanying her to make sure that she gets ...
— Gordon Craig - Soldier of Fortune • Randall Parrish

... in both respects . . . . They form not, therefore, a rival power as against the Union, but an apostolic ministry to it, and their political gospel is state rights and self-government. This is political Mormonism in a nutshell."* ...
— The Story of the Mormons: • William Alexander Linn

... of her or know the reason why. They've poisoned her against me, that's about how it is in a nutshell. I'll get that pouting to be in that dirty Harlem hole with her mother and grandmother out of her or know ...
— Humoresque - A Laugh On Life With A Tear Behind It • Fannie Hurst

... last forty years must be compressed into a nutshell. The famine was over at last, but its effects remained. Nearly a million of people had emigrated, yet the condition of life for those remaining was far from satisfactory. The Encumbered Estates Act, which had completed the ruin of many of the older proprietors, pressed, in some respects, even ...
— The Story Of Ireland • Emily Lawless

... is the world in a nutshell," told the exact truth. Between snow-capped Mount Herman on the north, which is ten thousand feet above the ocean, and the Dead Sea on the south, which is thirteen hundred feet below the level of ...
— Birdseye Views of Far Lands • James T. Nichols

... is the whole matter in a nutshell. Why do your teeth like crackling crust, and your organs of taste like spongy crumb, and your digestive contrivances take kindly to bread rather ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)

... disease due to disturbed internal secretory function of the pancreas is diabetes. An enormous amount of work has been spent upon the various aspects of it as a mystery. Hundreds of papers in a dozen languages upon the subject are in existence. In a nutshell, they have established pretty well that diabetes is a disease in which there is an excess of sugar in the blood and urine because of an insufficient amount of the secretion of the islands of Langerhans in ...
— The Glands Regulating Personality • Louis Berman, M.D.

... one leg negligently over the other. "It really comes to this, doesn't it? That you want me to marry a certain somebody, and that I think I cannot afford to marry her. Then it lies in the proverbial nutshell." ...
— April's Lady - A Novel • Margaret Wolfe Hungerford

... subject lies in a nutshell, or rather an apple-skin. We have clerical authority for affirming that all its miseries were let loose upon the human race by "them greenins" tempting our mother to curious pomological speculations; and from that ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 83, September, 1864 • Various

... makes the slum, has come nearer that ideal than any and all the rest of us. And the president of it these ten years, the same who with his brother tried to reform Gotham Court, is the head, too, of the citizens' union which is the whole reform programme in a nutshell. All of which is as it ought ...
— The Battle with the Slum • Jacob A. Riis

... 'em often when I was a lad. But now, you see, I can carry the basket with one arm, as if it was an empty nutshell, and give you th' other arm to lean on. Won't you? Such big arms as mine were made for little arms like ...
— Adam Bede • George Eliot

... fulfilled his part in the great contract. The matter lies in a nutshell. The men who enter the Church are sufficiently intelligent and well educated to appreciate the advantages of Christian democracy, fellowship, solidarity, and brotherly love. The republic of the Church has ...
— Saracinesca • F. Marion Crawford

... whole story in a nutshell. For his experiments in septic poisons, Mr. Arcubus had hired this apartment, with its convenient balcony for the cultivation of his antidotes. Having prepared his decoctions, he had this night caused himself ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume V, Number 29, March, 1860 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various

... despatched Mr. Dolby to America for the purpose of surveying the proposed scene of operations. Immediately on his emissary's return, Dickens drew up a few pithy sentences, headed by him, "The Case in a Nutshell." His decision was what those more immediately about him had for some time anticipated. He made up his mind to go, and to go quite independently. The Messrs. Chappell, it should be remarked at once, had no part whatever in the enterprise. The Author-Reader accepted for himself the sole responsibility ...
— Charles Dickens as a Reader • Charles Kent

... admirable, well-lighted spaces on the walls for casts and pictures, and the mantelpiece was charming, extremely high, and made of oak; in a word, the exact sitting-room that Vandover had in mind. Already he saw himself settled there as comfortably and snugly as a kernel in a nutshell. It was true that upon investigation he found that the grate had been plastered up and the flue arranged for a stove. But for that matter there were open-grate stoves to be had that would permit the fire to be seen and that ...
— Vandover and the Brute • Frank Norris

... the beginning to me of an interest apart from that which had brought me to King's Cobb. A real nutshell drama had usurped the place of that fictitious one that had as yet failed to mark an epoch by so much as a scratch. I accepted the former as some solace for the intolerable wrong inflicted upon me by the sea ...
— At a Winter's Fire • Bernard Edward J. Capes

... not exactly a faultless, circulation, in order that these various foodstuffs may be digested, i.e., converted into these flesh, bone, and brain-forming tissues. In order to have a tolerable circulation, the body must have a regular amount of exercise and of fresh air. There, in a nutshell, is the secret of the whole matter. Given a fairly normal state of health to begin with, that health may be maintained by a little wise direction of our actions towards supplying the really very moderate demands of Nature, upon which, ...
— The Girl's Own Paper, Vol. VIII, No. 357, October 30, 1886 • Various

... coat—and the lady. Whoever the man was, he appeared to be wrapped up in both of them, and he certainly did not court observation. I naturally thought that the feminine attachment accounted for this, and for the same reason, I did not even seek to scrutinize him too closely. To put the thing in a nutshell, I saw a man whom I believed to be Jack Talbot—and who certainly resembled him in face and figure—attired in Talbot's clothes, and wearing a coat which I had noted so particularly as to be able to describe it to my tailor when ordering a similar one. Add to that the appearance of an attractive ...
— The Albert Gate Mystery - Being Further Adventures of Reginald Brett, Barrister Detective • Louis Tracy

... Oman," I replied; "in fact, you have put the case in a nutshell. What can I have the pleasure ...
— The Vanishing Man • R. Austin Freeman

... am, a happy prisoner at large, in this nutshell of a house at the Hills, which you have never seen since it has become the family mansion. I am now in the actual tenure and occupation of the little room, commonly called Rosamond's room, bounded on the N. E. W. and S. by blank—[N.B. a very dangerous practice of leaving blanks ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. VII - Patronage • Maria Edgeworth

... the Eldest of the Wise Men) There you have it! That, as some one has admirably phrased it, is the situation in a nutshell. What shall ...
— King Arthur's Socks and Other Village Plays • Floyd Dell

... imputed it to some disorder in my brain. I answered it was very true; and I wondered how I could forbear, when I saw his dishes of the size of a silver three-pence, a leg of pork hardly a mouthful, a cup not so big as a nutshell; and so I went on, describing the rest of his household stuff and provisions after the same manner. For, although the queen had ordered a little equipage of all things necessary while I was in her service, yet my ...
— The Children's Hour, v 5. Stories From Seven Old Favorites • Eva March Tappan

... them, and they know," she said to herself. "I have given them the whole story in a nutshell. I don't ...
— Betty Vivian - A Story of Haddo Court School • L. T. Meade

... up the whole business in a very small nutshell. That there was temptation everywhere, and that honest men and thieves were to be found on race courses, in banks, in every business, but that, like the horses, a fair share of them ...
— Thoroughbreds • W. A. Fraser

... waved his spoon around in a wide sweep to indicate the comprehensive nature of that class of responsibilities which render people responsible, and several exclaimed, admiringly, "He is right!—he has put that whole tangled thing into a nutshell—it is wonderful!" After a little pause to give the interest opportunity to gather and grow, he went on: "Very good. Let us suppose the case of a pair of tongs that falls upon a man's foot, causing a cruel hurt. Will you ...
— Personal Recollections of Joan of Arc - Volume 1 (of 2) • Mark Twain

... I have often thought that the passage "I often wonder... given to the world to-day," contains the whole duty of the conscientious biographer in a nutshell.] ...
— The Life of Sir Richard Burton • Thomas Wright

... ——'s Current Topics Society. The latter is an extraordinary affair, where society women who have no time to read the news of the day listen to short lectures on the news of the preceding week, discussed pro and con, giving these women in a nutshell material for intelligent conversation when they meet senators and other men at the various receptions before which they wish to make an ...
— As A Chinaman Saw Us - Passages from his Letters to a Friend at Home • Anonymous

... you are going to say: you mean that I had best look out for a military swell; but, after all, the matter lies in a nutshell. I am the insulted party, and draw pistols at ten paces. If that frightens him, he will make the ...
— The Champdoce Mystery • Emile Gaboriau

... divinities called Chance and Circumstance. Prepare, if possible; where it is impossible, work straight forward, and keep your eyes open and your tongue oiled. Wit and a good exterior—there is all life in a nutshell. ...
— St Ives • Robert Louis Stevenson

... in his own Hamlet: "O God, I could be bounded in a nutshell and count myself a king of infinite space, were it not that I have bad dreams—which dreams indeed are ambition; for the very substance of the ambitious is merely the shadow of a dream—and I hold ambition of so airy and light a quality that it ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1920 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various

... a whirligig for a dollar, making the establishment and its occupants cost a dollar and a half, why would not one of his splendid palaces, with two or three pairs of mice in it, bring three, or even five dollars? That was the point, and there was the argument all lying in a nutshell. ...
— Make or Break - or, The Rich Man's Daughter • Oliver Optic

... course all the sensible men are dead!' he said indifferently. 'But that is a pet saying of mine—the Church of England in a nutshell.' ...
— Robert Elsmere • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... in a line with my finger," said the old woman, pointing to a little boat which, seen at that distance, looked like a nutshell with a very little man ...
— Pinocchio - The Tale of a Puppet • C. Collodi

... Mr Nicholls; very much obliged indeed we are; and that's puttin' the matter in a nutshell," supplemented the second man, with another ...
— Dick Leslie's Luck - A Story of Shipwreck and Adventure • Harry Collingwood

... the truth—and I have had to tell it in a nutshell, space growing limited. Philip Hamlyn had ascertained it all beyond possibility of dispute, had seen Mrs. O'Connett, and had brought ...
— The Argosy - Vol. 51, No. 5, May, 1891 • Various

... easily have found their way to America on the ice, and have been modified as we find them by "the well-known influence of climate." And the persons who gave expression to this idea never dreamed of its real significance. In truth, here was the doctrine of evolution in a nutshell, and, because its ultimate bearings were not clear, it seemed the most natural of doctrines. But most of the persons who advanced it would have turned from it aghast could they have realized its import. As it was, however, only here and there ...
— A History of Science, Volume 4(of 5) • Henry Smith Williams

... at the message beside him. "'The G.O.C. wishes to meet the Engineer Officer in charge of Left Section, at Centre Battalion Headquarters, at 10 a.m., A.A.A. Message ends.' There in a nutshell you have ...
— No Man's Land • H. C. McNeile

... the Spanish words on his tongue, among the simple islanders—singing a serenade under the window of his Shetland mistress—is conceived in the very highest manner of romantic invention. The words of his song, "Through groves of palm," sung in such a scene and by such a lover, clinch, as in a nutshell, the emphatic contrast upon which the tale is built. In "Guy Mannering," again, every incident is delightful to the imagination; and the scene when Harry Bertram lands at Ellangowan is a model instance of ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson, Volume 9 • Robert Louis Stevenson

... history of the Church in a nutshell? Is it not the symbol of life for us all? The solemn law under which we live demands persistent effort, and imposes continual antagonism upon us; there is no reason why we should regard that as evil, or think ourselves hardly used, because ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. John Chapters I to XIV • Alexander Maclaren

... fine work. Here's the thing in a nutshell. You find the girl. Right. Of course, you've got to meet her once, just to establish the connexion. Then you get busy. First week, looks. Just look at her. Second week, letters. Write to her every day. Third week, ...
— The Man Upstairs and Other Stories • P. G. Wodehouse

... what nails and planks are when they have been soaked in sea-water for ten years. On any ordinary occasion, a man would rather not go in her from Marseilles to the Chateau d'If, but on an occasion like this one would willingly go round the world in a nutshell." ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - MURAT—1815 • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE

... me, and I will send you the proper food; and it will not be gum, or cold-cream or candels ether, I can tell you. Why even Mr. le Cure wood no enuf not to give you enny of those things. That Teddy is not fit to have a godchild, and that is the hole story in a nutshell. I dunno just what I shall do if he rites to me. Mebbe I will anser and mebbe I wont. I guess I shall tell miss Betty about it. Have I ever tole you about her? She lives in the big house on the hill next to Sid Perkins and she has hare like, well ...
— Deer Godchild • Marguerite Bernard and Edith Serrell

... of fresh sea air. Yes, it would be delightful to be on board Flying Fish now. However, no doubt Algie Thynne—(how eloquently, by the way, you describe him! putting all the complications of his character and the dazzling charm of his personality in a nutshell by the simple sentence 'He's rather a nut!')—amply compensates for my absence. You ask if I know him. I do, though perhaps more by reputation than anything else. We have met once or twice. Where? I can't quite recall. Perhaps at the ...
— The Limit • Ada Leverson

... stucco-work and frescoes. Next to it was an ustrinum where corpses were cremated, and on the other side a second tomb, also decorated with painted stucco-work. Here was found a piece of agate in the shape of a nut, so beautifully carved that it was mistaken for a real nutshell. There was also a skeleton, the skull of which was found between the legs, and in its place there was a mask or plaster cast of the head, reproducing most vividly the features of the dead man. The cast is now ...
— Pagan and Christian Rome • Rodolfo Lanciani

... most precious? To economize time is, consequently, to become wealthy. Now, is there anything that consumes so much time as those anxieties which I call 'pot-boiling'?—a vulgar expression, but it puts the whole question in a nutshell. For instance, what can eat up more time than the inability to give proper security to persons from whom you seek to borrow money when, poor at the moment, you are ...
— The Illustrious Gaudissart • Honore de Balzac

... tu part, i rot them lines this marnin. mister tomas sais as i gov im mi prumass befor i cum to ave the apiness of see yu. butt i dant thinc i giv mor promass to him. nor 2 manni uthers. mi deerest deer and troo luv cuppid! i feer our nutshell song is blitid and its ros kwencht in its blum. them was plesent ours when the carnashuns and tullups was all in blo, wasunt them mi deer luv. mister tomas sais ass he can mari me in a munth and father sais i hot tu take im. iff so be as yu caun't du it beefor i thinc i shal take im ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction. - Volume XII, No. 347, Saturday, December 20, 1828. • Various

... in a “nutshell,” was that the commanding officer of the district was furnished no more troops or supplies for this state of war than had been provided and furnished him for a ...
— The Great Salt Lake Trail • Colonel Henry Inman

... glass, and other materials, and fuse them, the product is a slag. This is what physical laws do. If I take those same materials, and form them into a telescope, that is what mind does." This is the whole question in a nutshell. That design implies an intelligent designer, is a self evident truth. Every man believes it; and no man can practically disbelieve it. Even those naturalists who theoretically deny it, if they find ...
— What is Darwinism? • Charles Hodge

... true today of Nellie and her husband. A man and a woman needed each other's help, could make a more successful fight, go farther together than either could alone. To Martin that was the whole matter in a nutshell, and Rose's gentle question threw ...
— Dust • Mr. and Mrs. Haldeman-Julius

... singularly economical, as the agent who paid might also be authorized to receive, whereby there would be a saving in salary; and, finally, that under this category, the whole affair might be brought within the limits of a nutshell, and the compass of ...
— The Monikins • J. Fenimore Cooper

... fun!" said Florrie Willing. "Rush, rush, rush from morning to night. That's little old New York in a nutshell." ...
— V. V.'s Eyes • Henry Sydnor Harrison

... belief; it is to be so little that the elves can reach to whisper in your ear; it is to turn pumpkins into coaches, and mice into horses, lowness into loftiness, and nothing into everything, for each child has its fairy godmother in its own soul; it is to live in a nutshell and to count yourself the king ...
— Shelley - An Essay • Francis Thompson

... orders to take her to Valparaiso. When Farragut gave his first order, her skipper, a hot-tempered old sea-dog, flew into a rage, and declaring that he had "no idea of trusting himself with a blamed nutshell," rushed below for his pistols. The twelve-year-old commander shouted after him that, if he came on deck again, he would be thrown overboard, and thenceforth was master of the ship. He was back on the ...
— American Men of Action • Burton E. Stevenson

... lord, from the sight of these noisy geese of the Capitol, whose brains put together would not fill a nutshell," retorted Chilo. "O first-born of Apollo, I am writing a Greek hymn in thy honor, and I wish to spend a few days in the temple of the Muses to ...
— Quo Vadis - A Narrative of the Time of Nero • Henryk Sienkiewicz

... in a nutshell and depends entirely upon whether Lance continues true to his love or not. If he remains true, your scheme for parting them will have but little effect; if he prove false, why then all will be well, according to ...
— A Mad Love • Bertha M. Clay

... home there. He has asked also another niece, Miss Alicia Steele. He wants these girl visitors to bring with them two friends, and as Alicia does not wish to avail herself of that privilege, Bernice may take two with her. She wants to take Dotty and Dolly. There, that's the whole story in a nutshell. The question is, ...
— Two Little Women on a Holiday • Carolyn Wells

... very little room; should a Lemmon or Nut be proportionably magnify'd to what this seed of Tyme is, it would make it appear as bigg as a large Hay-reek and it would be no great wonder to see Homers Iliads, and Homer and all, cramm'd into such a Nutshell. We may perceive even in these small Grains, as well as in greater, how curious and carefull Nature is in preserving the seminal principle of Vegetable bodies, in what delicate, strong and most convenient Cabinets she lays them and closes ...
— Micrographia • Robert Hooke

... slightly accelerated pace to receive fresh honors. That gave me a lesson which I have never forgotten; no honor that has come to me have I ever fully earned; and no disgrace that I have earned has ever been visited upon me for the public to know. There in a nutshell you have the moral training of the heir to a modern throne. What chance, then, have I to know anything ...
— King John of Jingalo - The Story of a Monarch in Difficulties • Laurence Housman



Words linked to "Nutshell" :   shell



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