I had a consuming ambition to possess a miller's thumb. I believe I have never since wanted anything more desperately than I wante...d my right thumb to be flattened as my father's had become, during his earlier years of a miller's life.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
The conscientious mother of this age approaches the birth of her first baby with two ideas firmly in mind. One is that she will ra...ise the baby by schedule. The other, that she will not let it suck its thumb.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Now he sings of Jacky Horner, Sitting in the chimney corner,... Eating of a Christmas pie, Putting in his thumb, O fie! Putting in, O fie! his thumb, Pulling out, O strange, a plum.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
I went to a very militantly Republican grammar school and, under its influence, began to revolt against the Establishment, on the ...simple rule of thumb, highly satisfying to a ten-year-old, that Irish equals good, English equals bad.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
I can never bring you to realize the importance of sleeves, the suggestiveness of thumb-nails, or the great issues that may hang f...rom a boot-lace.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Blueberries as big as the end of your thumb, Real sky-blue, and heavy, and ready to drum... In the cavernous pail of the first one to come!LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Night City was like a deranged experiment in Social Darwinism, designed by a bored researcher who kept one thumb permanently on th...e fast-forward button. Stop hustling and you sank without a trace, but move a little too swiftly and you'd break the fragile surface tension of the black market; either way, you were gone ... though heart or lungs or kidneys might survive in the service of some stranger with New Yen for the clinic tanks.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Give a lift to a tomato, you expect her to be nice, don't ya? After all, what kind of dames thumb rides, Sunday school teachers?LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Except in a few well-publicized instances (enough to lend credence to the iconography painted on the walls of the media), the rigo...rous practice of rugged individualism usually leads to poverty, ostracism and disgrace. The rugged individualist is too often mistaken for the misfit, the maverick, the spoilsport, the sore thumb.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »