"Burmese" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... keys, he exhibited those arcana, of the inner rooms which apparently are not for sale but which are kept solely for the purpose of dazzling the imagination: jade Buddhas, contemplative and priceless, locked in wonderful Burmese cabinets, strange ornaments of brass and perfume-burners from India, mandarin robes of peacock-blue, and tiny caskets of that violet lacquering which is one of the ...
— The Orchard of Tears • Sax Rohmer
... a defiant reply to all their representations, and even assumed the offensive with his frontier garrisons. He then declared open war. The Mongol general, Nasiuddin, collected all the forces he could, and when the Burmese ruler crossed the frontier at the head of an immense host of horse, foot, and elephants, he found the Mongol army drawn up on the plain of Yungchang. The Mongols numbered only 12,000 select troops, ...
— China • Demetrius Charles Boulger
... it was necessary to secure the consent of both the Burmese and Chinese governments—a task of almost insurmountable difficulty because of the natural dislike of these two powers to share with another the trade monopoly they had heretofore exclusively enjoyed. Then again there lies between the civilizations of India and China a broad tract of wild and mountainous ...
— The Galaxy, Volume 23, No. 2, February, 1877 • Various
... a Phocean vale; a gigantic cup filled with tranquillity. A spirit brooded over it, serene, majestic, immutable—like the untroubled calm which rests, the Burmese believe, over every place which has guarded ...
— The Metal Monster • A. Merritt
... together. In later life he commanded the Bellerophon, at the bombardment of St. Jean d'Acre in 1840. In 1850 he went out in the Hastings, in command of the East India and China station, but on the breaking out of the Burmese war he transferred his flag to a steam sloop, for the purpose of getting up the shallow waters of the Irrawaddy, on board of which he died of cholera in 1852, in the seventy- fourth year of his age. His sweet temper and affectionate disposition, in ...
— Memoir of Jane Austen • James Edward Austen-Leigh
... the mouth, by the way, is strongly disapproved by the Arabs, who call it 'El Sifr,' and say that Satan must have touched any one before he can whistle, and that it takes forty days to purify the mouth which has so defiled itself. The Burmese were, up to a very late date, ignorant of the art, and expressed great astonishment when an American whistled an air, exclaiming that 'he made music with his mouth.' The natives of Tonga Islands, in Polynesia, consider whistling most disrespectful to their gods, ...
— Chatterbox, 1906 • Various
... is the only really strange figure (if we exclude Olaf) in this group of poseurs. She is half Burmese, I believe, ...
— The Yellow Claw • Sax Rohmer
... and when it was ready enjoyed it hugely, for the fresh wind made the pennons cut strange capers. The winged lion of Venice looked as if trying to fly away home; the Chinese dragon appeared to brandish his forked tail as he clawed at the Burmese peacock; the double-headed eagle of Russia pecked at the Turkish crescent with one beak, while the other seemed to be screaming to the English royal beast, "Come on and lend a paw." In the hurry of hoisting the Siamese elephant got turned upside down, and now danced gayly on his head, ...
— Under the Lilacs • Louisa May Alcott
... seemed as if life in India was going to be as quiet as life in England, but in 1824 the king of Ava, a Burmese city, demanded that Eastern Bengal should be given up to him, or war would be instantly declared. The answer sent to the 'Lord of the Great White Elephant' was a declaration of war on the part of our viceroy ...
— The Red Book of Heroes • Leonora Blanche Lang
... it out," Kitwater replied. "Looking over his old records he discovered something that put him on the track. Then I happened to remember that, years ago, when I was in Hanoi, an old man had told me a wonderful story about a treasure-chamber in a ruined city in the Burmese jungle. A Frenchman who visited the place, and had written a book about it, mentions the fact that there is a legend amongst the natives that vast treasure is buried in the ruins, but only one man, so far as we can discover, ...
— My Strangest Case • Guy Boothby
... in a great ebony chair, smoked rapidly and nervously—looking about the strangely appointed room with its huge picture of the Madonna, its jade Buddha surmounting a gilded Burmese cabinet, its Persian canopy and Egyptian divan, at the thousand and one costly curiosities which it displayed, at this mingling of East and West, of Christianity and paganism, with a ...
— Tales of Chinatown • Sax Rohmer
... under the hammer in a London saleroom. There were Chinese sets in red and white, wonderful figures standing upon concentric balls; antique Persian sets in cream-coloured ivory decorated in colours and gold, kings and queens on elephants, knights on horses, and bishops on camels; Burmese sets with royal personages seated on chairs of state; and some very remarkable English porcelain, Wedgwood ware, and Minton ...
— Chats on Household Curios • Fred W. Burgess
... cried. "I thought I knew the tongue. Burmese beyond a doubt. I wish those fellows would not speak quite so quickly. I wish that I had learned a little more of the language when I had the ...
— The Slave of Silence • Fred M. White
... position England could not tolerate for one moment. Fortunately for us French intrigue outwitted itself, and the Secret Treaty became known. It was in this way. Draft copies of the agreement drawn up in French and Burmese were exchanged between Monsieur Haas and King Theebaw. But Monsieur Haas could not read Burmese, and he distrusted the King. A trusted interpreter was necessary, and there was only one man in Mandalay that seemed to him sufficiently trustworthy. To Signor A—— then, the ...
— An Australian in China - Being the Narrative of a Quiet Journey Across China to Burma • George Ernest Morrison
... Bandoola, the Burmese general. Stanley gave a sudden spring, and buried his knife in the leopard. They forced the canoe behind bushes, so as to be entirely concealed. The Burmese make a great effort to capture Pagoda Hill. Stanley cut down the man who was ...
— On the Irrawaddy - A Story of the First Burmese War • G. A. Henty
... stations along a line running north and south between Calcutta and Darjiling or within a hundred miles on either side of the same, and the second a long series of stations crossing Northern India in a nearly westerly direction. The observations made at the Burmese stations were unfortunately affected by an error arising from the retardation of the Madras time-signals through ...
— A Study of Recent Earthquakes • Charles Davison
... the story possesses the usual features. There is the clever young detective, in whose company we expectantly scour the bazaars and alleys of Mangadone in search of a missing boy. There are Chinamen and Burmese, opium dens and curio shops, temples and go-downs. Miss MARJORIE DOUIE has more than a superficial knowledge of her stage setting, and gets plenty of movement and colour into it. And if she has elaborated the characters and inter-play of her Anglo-Burmese colony to an extent that is not justified ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 153, August 1, 1917. • Various
... cream-coloured, bay, brown, and grey Kattywar horses being striped. Eastward of India, the Shan (north of Burmah) ponies, as I am informed by Mr. Blyth, have spinal, leg, and shoulder stripes. Sir W. Elliot informs me that he saw two bay Pegu ponies with leg-stripes. Burmese and Javanese ponies are frequently dun-coloured, and have the three kinds of stripes, "in the same degree as in England." (2/36. Mr. G. Clark in 'Annal and Mag. of Nat. History' 2nd series volume 2 1848 page 363. Mr. Wallace informs me that he saw in Java a dun and clay-coloured horse with spinal ...
— The Variation of Animals and Plants under Domestication - Volume I • Charles Darwin
... enough to question him myself, he laughed at my curiosity, and told me stories that sounded so very much like Baron Munchausen's, that I was sure he was making fun of me. What I heard from Miss Matty was that he had been a volunteer at the siege of Rangoon; had been taken prisoner by the Burmese; and somehow obtained favour and eventual freedom from knowing how to bleed the chief of the small tribe in some case of dangerous illness; that on his release from years of captivity he had had his letters ...
— Cranford • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... on the Burman Empire, which probably you are not much acquainted with. Parts of it are in the same longitude as the north of Sumatra; and I merely wish to mention some peculiarities connected with the Burmese. The government is entirely despotic, and the sovereign almost deified. When anything belonging to him is mentioned, the epithet 'golden' is invariably attached to it. When he is said to have heard anything, 'it has reached the golden ears:' the perfume of roses ...
— The World of Waters - A Peaceful Progress o'er the Unpathed Sea • Mrs. David Osborne
... measurement of Aino skulls, is 45.90 ounces avoirdupois, a brain weight said to exceed that of all the races, Hindoo and Mussulman, on the Indian plains, and that of the aboriginal races of India and Ceylon, and is only paralleled by that of the races of the Himalayas, the Siamese, and the Chinese Burmese. Mr. Davies says, further, that it exceeds the mean brain weight of Asiatic races in general. Yet with all this the Ainos are a ...
— Unbeaten Tracks in Japan • Isabella L. Bird
... an overcoat now becomes no slight undertaking, and he finds that reading now tires his eyes much more than does writing. He touches on the Burmese war, "which seems likely to be even worse than the Egyptian and Sudanese iniquity in its results to us." And he adds, "We have now without any just cause of war, or even the pretence of any, invaded this province, which is subject and tributary to China, and lawlessly act the marauder ...
— Memoir and Letters of Francis W. Newman • Giberne Sieveking
... like Carlyle's came over his countenance as he reprobated the selfish, wild-cat competition which made life harder and more horrible to-day for a well-doing poor man in England than among the Malays or Burmese before they had any modern inventions. Co-operation was the upward road for humanity. Men grew out of beasthood by it, and by it civilisation began. Forgetting it, men retrograded, subsiding swiftly, so that there were ...
— Alfred Russel Wallace: Letters and Reminiscences Vol 2 (of 2) • James Marchant
... Burmese the "tug of war" is a part of the religious ceremonies held when there is a scarcity of rain. Instead of rope, long, slender canes are twisted together, and spokes are thrust through to give a firm hold. The sides are taken by men from different ...
— Harper's Young People, September 28, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... cultivator, an' felony for to shoot. We hunted, an' we hunted, an' tuk fever an' elephints now an' again; but no dacoits, Evenshually, we puckarowed wan man, 'Trate him tinderly,' sez the Lift'nint. So I tuk him away into the jungle, wid the Burmese Interprut'r an' my clanin'-rod. Sez I to the man, 'My paceful squireen,' sez I, 'you shquot on your hunkers an' dimonstrate to my frind here, where your frinds are whin they're at home?' Wid that I introjuced him to the clanin'-rod, an' he comminst ...
— Indian Tales • Rudyard Kipling
... much indebted to those of America for their investigations of the Karen, the Siamese, Asamese, Chinese, and numerous African languages; and for grammars and dictionaries of the Burmese, Chinese, the Hawaiian, and the modern Armenian, Syrian, and Chaldee tongues. Foreign and comparatively unknown languages have thus been reduced to a system and grammar by which they can readily be acquired ...
— Handbook of Universal Literature - From The Best and Latest Authorities • Anne C. Lynch Botta
... with many men acrost the seas, An' some of 'em was brave an' some was not: The Paythan an' the Zulu an' Burmese; But the Fuzzy was the finest o' the lot. We never got a ha'porth's change of 'im: 'E squatted in the scrub an' 'ocked our 'orses, 'E cut our sentries up at Suakim, An' 'e played the cat an' banjo with our forces. So 'ere's to you, Fuzzy-Wuzzy, ...
— Verses 1889-1896 • Rudyard Kipling
... pressure groups: Kachin Independence Army; Karen National Union, several Shan factions (all insurgent groups); Burmese Communist ...
— The 1990 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency
... of plants was also largely increased on this remarkable journey, which was followed by a still more perilous expedition, commenced in February of the following year, from Assam through the Burmese dominions to Ava, and down the Irrawadi to Rangoon, in the course of which he was reported to have been assassinated. The hardships through which he passed during the journey and his excessive application ...
— Journals of Travels in Assam, Burma, Bhootan, Afghanistan and The - Neighbouring Countries • William Griffith
... a large Burmese war-vessel, of which one of our steamers was sent in search, while the company's steamers proceeded up the river to meet a fleet of war-boats, pouring in a tremendous fire on the stockades on their way. The war-boats, in spite of their ...
— The Three Commanders • W.H.G. Kingston
... of the Asiatics who have crowded into Georgetown is a wonderful one, Chinese, Burmese, Javanese, Arabs, Malays, Sikhs, Madrassees, Klings, Chuliahs, and Parsees, and still they come in junks and steamers and strange Arabian craft, and all get a living, depend slavishly on no one, never lapse into ...
— The Golden Chersonese and the Way Thither • Isabella L. Bird (Mrs. Bishop)
... that pervades the Orient, if it is not due to the inheritance of a common psychic nature, to what is it due? Surely to the possession of a common civilization and social order. It would be hard to prove that Japanese, Koreans, Chinese, Siamese, Burmese, Hindus (and how many distinct races does the ethnologist find in India), Persians, and Turks are all descendants from a common ancestry and are possessed therefore by physical heredity of a common racial psychic nature. Yet such is the requirement ...
— Evolution Of The Japanese, Social And Psychic • Sidney L. Gulick
... On my left is the fragment of the sergeant gunner whom I took for a drive. His misfortunes and his cheerful indifference to them make him a man of social importance. He shows with regret how the shell cut in half a marvellous little Burmese lady, whose robes once swept down his arm in glorious blues and reds, but are now lapped ...
— Ladysmith - The Diary of a Siege • H. W. Nevinson
... by the Earl of Amherst, under whose administration the Burmese war commenced, and by which large territories, between Bengal and China, were added ...
— A Modern History, From the Time of Luther to the Fall of Napoleon - For the Use of Schools and Colleges • John Lord
... allowed; the spare sights were cased as carefully as the chronometers; the chocks for spare spars, two of them, were made of four-inch Burma teak carved with dragons' heads that was one result of Bai-Jove-Judson's experiences with the Naval Brigade in the Burmese war; the bow-anchor was varnished instead of being painted, and there were charts more than the Admiralty scale supplied. The Admiral was well pleased, for he loved a ship's husband - a man who had a little ...
— This is "Part II" of Soldiers Three, we don't have "Part I" • Rudyard Kipling
... that led through the very heart of the native quarter of Mangadone; dust raised into a misty haze which hung in the air and actually introduced a light undernote of red into the effect. Dust, which covered the bare feet of the coolies, the velvet slippers of the Burmese, which encroached everywhere and no one regarded, for presently, just at sundown, shouting watermen, carrying large bamboo vessels with great spouts, would come running along the road, casting the splashing water on all sides, and reduce the dry ...
— The Pointing Man - A Burmese Mystery • Marjorie Douie
... "Lake-Dwellers" of Switzerland formed an even earlier and not quite pure offshoot. The only people who can be cited as fairly pure-blooded specimens of the race at the present day are some of the brown tribes of Indians of South America. The Burmese and Siamese have also Tlavatli blood in their veins, but in their case it was mixed with, and therefore dominated by, the nobler stock of one of ...
— The Story of Atlantis and the Lost Lemuria • W. Scott-Elliot
... and let me tell you that you're a living example of a contradiction in terms. You use your brains, Mr. Handyside, yet you smoke a cigar calculated to atrophy the keenest intellect. You, an American, chewing a vile Burmese Cheroot! Cre' nom d'un pipe! When this bubble has burst ...
— Number Seventeen • Louis Tracy |
