"Butterfly" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... sea had died away outside, and the blossoms were still. A yellow butterfly floated lazily past the window. The song of the birds hushed—I smelt the sea—I smelt the perfume of heated summer air rising from fields and flowers, the ineffable scents of June and of the long days of the year—and with it, from countless green meadows beyond, came the hum of myriad ...
— The Empty House And Other Ghost Stories • Algernon Blackwood
... Balesuna. But the trail still continued to bend to the right till it promised to make a loop, and the point of intersection seemed to be the edge of the plantation where the horses had been left. Crossing one of the quiet jungle spaces, where naught moved but a velvety, twelve-inch butterfly, they heard the ...
— Adventure • Jack London
... said, "if we lived still in the days of the ancient gods, I would not trust any butterfly nor any bird, nay, not even a gold-piece, for, behind every thing, I should suspect Jove disguised, for the purpose of surprising my ...
— LOUISA OF PRUSSIA AND HER TIMES • Louise Muhlbach
... that swings, Pursuing soft a butterfly of snow, In spiral flights and subtle traversings, One winging high, ...
— Enamels and Cameos and other Poems • Theophile Gautier
... their legs well shaken down before they could be got in, even there— and then, ten to one but they began to tumble out at the door, which was but imperfectly fastened with a wire latch—but what was THAT against it! Consider the noble fly, a size or two smaller than the elephant: the lady-bird, the butterfly—all triumphs of art! Consider the goose, whose feet were so small, and whose balance was so indifferent, that he usually tumbled forward, and knocked down all the animal creation. Consider Noah and his family, like idiotic tobacco-stoppers; ...
— Some Christmas Stories • Charles Dickens
... yours to-day. All that you do, I have done; All your childish ways I've run, All your joys and pangs I've had— All that make you gay or sad; I have sported in the brook, Truant from my work or book; Chased the butterfly and bee, Robb'd the bird's nest on the tree; Damm'd the brook and built my mill; Flew my kite from hill to hill; Sported with my top and ball— Childish joys, I know them all. Childish sorrows, too I've felt— Anguish that my heart would melt; Tears have wet my burning cheek, ...
— The Poets and Poetry of Cecil County, Maryland • Various
... girl ran in, laughing and calling to her mother to see a butterfly which she had caught; but at the sight of that mother's tears she grew quiet of a sudden, and went up close, and received a kiss on ...
— A Woman of Thirty • Honore de Balzac
... thou hast thought of all thou wouldst have, is the list complete, Janet; canst thou not suggest something more? I will send it to one of the court mantua-makers and if thou sendest the proper measurements our lady will soon be a modish butterfly." At the word modish a sudden thought came to Katherine and she leant over and whispered in Janet's ...
— Mistress Penwick • Dutton Payne
... butterfly in the plain old house, and seemed to make a swift dazzle. Aunt Lois warmed curiously toward her, feeling as if the sun was shining after ...
— A Little Girl in Old Philadelphia • Amanda Minnie Douglas
... ministry"; and des Lupeaulx, unable to keep from laughing, let the matter pass. The most harmless of Bixiou's jokes perpetrated among the clerks was the one he played off upon Godard, presenting him with a butterfly just brought from China, which the worthy man keeps in his collection and exhibits to this day, blissfully unconscious that it is only painted paper. Bixiou had the patience to work up the little masterpiece for the sole purpose of ...
— Bureaucracy • Honore de Balzac
... eats them, and it is false. An exquisite artist; physically and spiritually he is art; he is the muse herself, or rather, he is one of the minions of the muse. Passing from flower to flower he goes, his whole nature pulsing with butterfly voluptuousness. He has written poems as good as Hugo, as good as Leconte de Lisle, as good as Banville, as good as Baudelaire, as good as Gautier, as good as Coppee; he never wrote an ugly line in his life, but he never wrote a line that some one of his ...
— Confessions of a Young Man • George Moore
... of art at an early time. Some time before the twenty-ninth Olympiad, Butades of Sicyon, the potter, settled there. The record of [231] early inventions in Greece is sometimes fondly coloured with human sentiment or incident. It is on the butterfly wing of such an incident—the love-sick daughter of the artist, who outlines on the wall the profile of her lover as he sleeps in the lamplight, to keep by her in absence—that the name of Butades the potter has come down to us. The father fills up the outline, long ...
— Greek Studies: A Series of Essays • Walter Horatio Pater
... and yelping, and looking wistfully over the swollen flood, which the poor thing had not the courage to brave. This day, for the first time, I heard the song of the Canada sparrow, a soft, sweet note, almost running into a warble. Saw a small, black velvety butterfly with a yellow border to its wings. Under a warm bank found two flowers of the houstonia in bloom. Saw frogs' spawn near Piny Branch, ...
— Wake-Robin • John Burroughs
... established and confuted! For instance, the necessity of a southern continent as a balance was supposed to be unanswerable; and so it was, till Captain Cook found there was no such thing. We are poor silly animals: we live for an instant upon a particle of a boundless universe, and are much like a butterfly that should argue about the nature of the seasons and what creates their vicissitudes, and does not exist itself to see one annual ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole, V4 • Horace Walpole
... there might have been an awkward pause; for if you expect a cousin, and there alights a butterfly of the tropics, what hospitality can you offer? But no sense of embarrassment ever came near Malbone, especially with the children to swarm over him and claim him for their own. Moreover, little Helen got in the first remark in ...
— Malbone - An Oldport Romance • Thomas Wentworth Higginson
... there is no reason that there should be any harm in it. I would much rather he had some real business in hand than be merely a butterfly of fashion. You must not entertain that horror of ...
— The Marriage of Elinor • Margaret Oliphant
... he did it well. He added a touch or two of luxury, the faintest aroma of splendor. Pettingill had designed the curiously wayward table, with its comfortable atmosphere of companionship, and arranged its decoration of great lavender orchids and lacy butterfly festoons of white ones touched with yellow. He had wanted to use dahlias in their many rich shades from pale yellow to orange and deep red, but Monty held out for orchids. It was the artist, too, who had found in a rare and happy moment the massive gold candelabra—ancient things of a more luxurious ...
— Brewster's Millions • George Barr McCutcheon
... mind, all his evil days vanished, and all hatred. Age was forgotten, and at this moment, when his soul began to flutter its wings like a new butterfly, all the foregoing was blotted out; there was no longer any suffering, nor dying. Timeless! There was nothing but spring air, lovely, hopeful spring air. And truly, the evil days of old age, of mockery, and of the railroad, of autumn tempests on the road, of a pulse that slackened in the veins—nothing ...
— The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries - Masterpieces of German Literature Vol. 19 • Various
... East Aurora only two hours—"not long enough" she said, "to knock the gold and emerald off the butterfly's beautiful wings." ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 6 - Subtitle: Little Journeys to the Homes of Eminent Artists • Elbert Hubbard
... hand, is one who has high health and spirits, who has the free use of his limbs, with all his wits about him, who feels the circulation of his blood and the motion of his heart, who is ready to laugh and cry in a breath, and who had rather chase a ball or a butterfly, feel the open air in his face, look at the fields or the sky, follow a winding path, or enter with eagerness into all the little conflicts and interests of his acquaintances and friends, than doze over a musty spelling-book, repeat barbarous distichs after his master, ...
— Table-Talk - Essays on Men and Manners • William Hazlitt
... about "breaking a butterfly upon a wheel" came to him as she chattered on, telling him delightedly how she had made up her mind to surprise him with tomato bisque if it was her last act, and how she had discovered a box that was labeled "condensed milk," and opened it with infinite ...
— I've Married Marjorie • Margaret Widdemer
... butterfly that lighted on a seat-cover and pulled off first one wing and then the other in spite of Aunt Lizzie's entreaties. She dropped it on the bottom of the surrey and put her astonishingly large foot ...
— The Dude Wrangler • Caroline Lockhart
... the noise of the brook; overhead leaves stirred and whispered in the breezes; shadows moved; sun-spots waxed and waned on tree-trunk and leaf and on the brown ground under foot. A scarlet-banded butterfly—he they call the Red Admiral—flitted persistently about an oak tree where the stain of sap darkened ...
— Athalie • Robert W. Chambers
... shall pay his; and I tell you what, sir, we three will have a thoroughly good outing. We'll take it easy, and we'll travel just where you like, and while you make notes, Lawrence here and I will fish and run about and catch butterflies, eh? Hang it, I haven't caught a butterfly these three or four and thirty years, and I think it's time I had a try. Eh, what ...
— Yussuf the Guide - The Mountain Bandits; Strange Adventure in Asia Minor • George Manville Fenn
... since Abel's time, I do suppose, but it was all new to us; and indeed, my two companions had fresh ways of putting things that seemed to make them their own in a manner. Yvon maintained that gaiety was the best that life had to give; that the butterfly being the type of the human soul, the nearer man could come to his prototype, the better for him and for all. Sorrow and suffering, he cried, were a blot on the scheme, a mistake, a concession to the devil; if all would ...
— Rosin the Beau • Laura Elizabeth Howe Richards
... but impeccable," she laughed. "Well, I flittered and fluttered up and down the avenue, like a distracted butterfly. I spent a few hours in Tiffany's with such a ...
— Bambi • Marjorie Benton Cooke
... Ellen's wish to obtain living creatures, and they were constantly seeking about, and coming back sometimes with a beautiful butterfly or moth, sometimes with parrots ...
— On the Banks of the Amazon • W.H.G. Kingston
... reformation of the rules for the legitimate and reasonable conduct of the game of "Kicke-ball." No, mon cher Monsieur, these they are agreeable to leave as they are, remembering that the ball, formidable though he may be on account of his size, is harmless as a butterfly in the contact, being filled only with air. Moreover they see no reason to change when an "Onze" of this New Athletic France can, with the old rules, claim as she does the noble victory of le deux "tries" to nothing, ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 98, March 15, 1890 • Various
... made an effort to live, between the close of the eighth volume of the Spectator and the beginning of the present century. Of these a few have still a place on our shelves, but for the most part they enjoyed a butterfly existence, and serve but to prove the immeasurable superiority of the writers who created ...
— The Age of Pope - (1700-1744) • John Dennis
... I love play. I go much in society; I shine there, and walk home to save the cost of a carriage. My door-keeper cleans my rooms and keeps my linen in order. My private life is sad, dull, and humiliating. It is the black chrysalis of the bright butterfly which you know. That is what Prince Panine is, my dear Jeanne. A gentleman of good appearance, who lives as carefully as an old maid. The world sees him elegant and happy, and its envies his luxury; but this luxury is as deluding ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... at this moment, fighting indeed desperately with himself not to yield at all, Edgar kept away from his sister's step-daughter still more, as if a quarrel had fallen between them; and Adelaide gained in proportion, for suddenly that butterfly, undecided fancy of his seemed to settle on the rector's daughter, to whom he now paid more court than to the whole room beside—court so excessive and so patent that it made the families laugh knowingly, and say among themselves evidently the Hill would soon receive its new mistress, and the rector ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XVII. No. 101. May, 1876. • Various
... Variegation. — N. variegation; colors, dichroism, trichroism; iridescence, play of colors, polychrome, maculation, spottiness, striae. spectrum, rainbow, iris, tulip, peacock, chameleon, butterfly, tortoise shell; mackerel, mackerel sky; zebra, leopard, cheetah, nacre, ocelot, ophite[obs3], mother-of-pearl, opal, marble. check, plaid, tartan, patchwork; marquetry-, parquetry; mosaic, tesserae[obs3], strigae[obs3]; ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... gained, even sometimes in the case of closely related beings, by the most diversified means. How differently constructed is the feathered wing of a bird and the membrane-covered wing of a bat; and still more so the four wings of a butterfly, the two wings of a fly, and the two wings with the elytra of a beetle. Bivalve shells are made to open and shut, but on what a number of patterns is the hinge constructed, from the long row of neatly interlocking teeth in a Nucula to the simple ligament of ...
— On the Origin of Species - 6th Edition • Charles Darwin
... always that—smooth-tongued, until he has lured his victim to ruin!" retorted Ned, bitterly. "Beware of him, lady, for he is a rattlesnake in the disguise of a bright-winged butterfly." ...
— Deadwood Dick, The Prince of the Road - or, The Black Rider of the Black Hills • Edward L. Wheeler
... mere vegetative form is here seen withdrawing in order that a higher manifestation of the spirit may take place. The same principle can be seen at work in the insect kingdom, when the caterpillar's tremendous vitality passes over into the short-lived beauty of the butterfly. In the human being it is responsible for that metamorphosis of organic processes which occurs on the path from the metabolic to the nervous system, and which we came to recognize as the precondition for the appearance of consciousness ...
— Man or Matter • Ernst Lehrs
... those spokesmen of the a priori, one of those nurslings of the womb, like a bee or a butterfly, a dogmatic, inspired, perfect, and incorrigible creature.... Being a finished child of nature, not a joint product, like most of us, of nature, history, and society, he abounded miraculously in his own clear sense, but was obtuse to the droll miscellaneous lessons ...
— Human Traits and their Social Significance • Irwin Edman
... foolish, but I do want to be a regular butterfly for a little while and see what it is like. You know I couldn't help seeing a good deal of fashionable life abroad, though we were not in it, and here at home the girls tell me about all sorts of pleasant things that are ...
— Rose in Bloom - A Sequel to "Eight Cousins" • Louisa May Alcott
... colour of a room should never be arbitrarily prescribed or settled for the one who is to be its occupant. It should be as much a matter of nature as the lining of a shell is to the mussel, or as the colour of the wings of a butterfly. ...
— Principles of Home Decoration - With Practical Examples • Candace Wheeler
... flowers are exquisite. The Chinese are expert at making artificial flowers which are true to nature in every detail. Often above the flower a beautiful butterfly is poised on a delicate spring, and looks so natural that it is easy to be deceived into believing it to be alive. When the jasmine is in bloom beautiful creations are made of these tiny flowers by means of standards from which protrude fine wires on which ...
— Court Life in China • Isaac Taylor Headland
... upon my word!" said Dorothy, in great indignation at this treatment, and then, standing up, she gazed about the dell rather disconsolately; but there was no living thing in sight except a fat butterfly lazily swinging up and down on a blade of grass. Dorothy touched him with her finger to see if he were awake, but the Butterfly gave himself an impatient shake, and said, fretfully, "Oh, don't," and, after waiting a moment, to be sure that was all he had to say, she ...
— The Admiral's Caravan • Charles E. Carryl
... Cuban senoritas—refugees at Tampa—dark-eyed, of course, languid of manner, to be sure, and with the eloquent fan, ever present, omnipotent—shutting and closing, shutting and closing, like the wings of a gigantic butterfly; adventurers, adventuresses; artists, photographers; correspondents by the score—female correspondents; story writers, novelists, real war correspondents, and real draughtsmen—artists, indeed; and a host of lesser ...
— Crittenden - A Kentucky Story of Love and War • John Fox, Jr.
... And thou, hast thou not found One heart-throb for the pity, though thine eye Lights at the gold and purple butterfly Brightening the ...
— Silhouettes • Arthur Symons
... 'Why did you mix yourself up in my affairs at all?' he went on. Again she made no reply, but the question set her thinking: why had she mixed herself up in this mysterious business? It was quite at variance with the usual methods of her gay and butterfly existence to meddle at all with serious things. Had she acted merely from a desire to see justice done and wickedness punished? Or was it the desire of adventure? Or was it, perhaps, the desire to be of service to His Serene ...
— The Grand Babylon Hotel • Arnold Bennett
... women. Ah, those dear butterfly creatures will come to the nasty sticky papers that were meant to catch bluebottles only; well, then, they must take the consequences. What! Lady Merivale—the fair Eveline. Does she ...
— Adrien Leroy • Charles Garvice
... of the caterpillar comes the butterfly; with mankind it is the other way round, out of the butterfly comes ...
— Note-Book of Anton Chekhov • Anton Pavlovich Chekhov
... and stalked up to Emily Travis. He looked her over, keenly and carefully, every square inch of her. Especially did he appear interested in her silky brown hair, and in the color of her cheek, faintly sprayed and soft, like the downy bloom of a butterfly wing. He walked around her, surveying her with the calculating eye of a man who studies the lines upon which a horse or a boat is builded. In the course of his circuit the pink shell of her ear came between his ...
— The Spinner's Book of Fiction • Various
... legends, but the desire to be impartial, is, I hope, perfectly consistent with a tender regard for the legendary background of history. To subject a legend or tradition to the logical process of reasoning and analysis, is like crushing a butterfly or breaking a scent bottle, and expecting still to keep the beauty of the one and the fragrance of the other. I do not, therefore, push the inquiry further than to remark that legend and tradition are generally the reflection of a certain amount of truth, and the truth in this case is that ...
— Fragments of Two Centuries - Glimpses of Country Life when George III. was King • Alfred Kingston
... one was Mr. Fountain. He sat disconsolate on a seat all alone. Mrs. Bazalgette fluttered about like a butterfly, and sparkled like ...
— Love Me Little, Love Me Long • Charles Reade
... of a compound do not fully coalesce, as to-day, to-night, to-morrow; or when each retains its original accent, so that the compound has more than one, or one that is movable, as first-born, hanger-on, laughter-loving, garlic-eater, butterfly-shell, the hyphen should ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown
... repulsed, or torn away, it had no choice but to wither on the ground. Dorothy's acuteness taught her that severity would crush the spirit of the child, and she nurtured him with the gentle care of one who handles a butterfly. Her husband manifested an equal affection, although it grew daily ...
— Bible Stories and Religious Classics • Philip P. Wells
... be truly difficult to hold the butterfly and force it to be still without brushing the down from its beautiful wings. But, paint now, Pesne, I will seat myself behind your ...
— Berlin and Sans-Souci • Louise Muhlbach
... be irritated. She was such a friendly little soul and so obviously devoted to Ruth that he felt she was entitled to be a nuisance as a sitter. He wondered more and more what weird principle of selection had been at work to bring Bailey and this butterfly together. He had never given any deep thought to the study of his brother-in-law's character; but, from his small knowledge of him, he would have imagined some one a trifle more substantial and serious as the ideal wife for him. Life, he conceived, ...
— The Coming of Bill • P. G. Wodehouse
... butterfly there comes an end to summer. The flowers dropped from the frames and died in the garden; a pitiless winter set in; and day after day the mittened and mufflered schoolboy, dragging his sled through drifts of heavy snow to school, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 22, Aug., 1859 • Various
... admitted (but refused to show me), consisted of a butterfly-cocoon rattle, an eagle-bone whistle, and a feather headband. "I don't really do nothing but help nature," he said. When I replied that only some people know how to help nature he was gratified and smiled. "Oh well, it's all psychological anyway," he answered, ...
— Washo Religion • James F. Downs
... peeping of hylas; Sunday, the 4th, was enlivened by a farewell visitation of bluebirds; during the first week, at least four sorts of butterflies—Disippus, Philodice, Antiopa, and Comma—were on the wing, and a single Philodice (our common yellow butterfly) was flying as late as the 16th. Wild flowers of many kinds—not less than a hundred, certainly—were in bloom; among them the exquisite little pimpernel, or poor man's weather-glass. My daily notes ...
— The Foot-path Way • Bradford Torrey
... convention, her independence, had captivated him. Sometimes he believed that he thoroughly understood her, when all at once he would find himself mentally peering into some dark corner into which the penetrating light of his usually swift deduction could throw no glimmer. She possessed the sins of the butterfly and the latent possibilities of a Judith. She was the most interesting feminine problem he had in his long years encountered. The mother mildly amused him, for he could discern the character that she was sedulously striving to batten ...
— The Place of Honeymoons • Harold MacGrath
... haven't found it so yet," said Alice, "but when you have to turn into a chrysalis, you know, and then after that into a butterfly, I should think it'll feel a little queer, don't ...
— Alice's Adventures Under Ground • Lewis Carroll
... Now the butterfly dance followed the others. This was danced by the boys and girls together, and the pairs were equal in size, age and the color of their garments. When all the dances had ended, the dancers marched ...
— The Chinese Fairy Book • Various
... "I know all about bees, but I didn't know befo' that a butterfly could sting. But I'd ruther be stung than to have no attention paid to me at all." She arose to go away, but he intercepted her. "Beggin' yo' pardon, ma'm, for what I've said an' what I am about to say, will you let me talk business to you for ...
— The Starbucks • Opie Percival Read
... I should see a butterfly," he said, "a butterfly that had flown up from the land of eternal summer, and ...
— The Black Pearl • Mrs. Wilson Woodrow
... blizzard-scourged ice-field. A silent rage burned suddenly through all his veins—which was well, since the cold of that spring-fed river had already begun to finger stealthily about his heart. A delicate little pale-blue butterfly, like a periwinkle-petal come to life, fluttered over Barnes's grim, upturned face, and went dancing gaily out across the shining water, joyous in the sun. In its dancing it chanced to dip a hair's-breadth too low. The treacherous, bright surface caught it, ...
— The Backwoodsmen • Charles G. D. Roberts
... is like a butterfly, thinking only of the pleasures of the moment. Nellie Ribsam came down close to the edge of the creek and threw some crumbs out upon the surface. In the clear water she could see the shadowy figures of the minnows, as they glided upward ...
— Through Forest and Fire - Wild-Woods Series No. 1 • Edward Ellis
... The butterfly—a flying flower - Wheels swift in flashing rings, And flutters round his quiet kin, With brave flame-mottled wings. The wild Pinks burst in crimson fire The Phlox' bright clusters shine, And Prairie-Cups are swinging free To spill ...
— Pike County Ballads and Other Poems • John Hay
... cried Star, "I will go down-stairs and wait for Daddy Captain, and perhaps he will think I am a real fairy. Oh, wouldn't that be fun? I am sure I look like one!" and down the stairs she flitted like a golden butterfly. Once in the kitchen, the housewife in her triumphed for a moment over the fairy: she raked up the fire, put on more wood, and swept the hearth daintily. "But Ariel did such things for Prospero," she said. "I'm Ariel just the same, so I may as well fill the ...
— Captain January • Laura E. Richards
... butterfly flew into the room, and passed by Mad. de Coulanges, who was sitting near the open window. "Oh! the beautiful butterfly!" cried she, starting up to catch it. "Did you ever see such a charming creature? Catch it, M. de Brisac!—Catch ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. 6 • Maria Edgeworth
... small kingdom, my stage-manager and lieutenant-general, was a girl of twelve, Mariposa by name. She received the fanciful title from a young visitor to the plantation who had studied Spanish. "Mariposa" meant butterfly, she told the baby's mother, who gratefully accepted the compliment to her newly born daughter. The mother and her mates called her "Mary Posy." The mistress, who was fond of the madcap sponsor, retained ...
— When Grandmamma Was New - The Story of a Virginia Childhood • Marion Harland
... opened its leaves, and out of the middle of it stepped a beautiful little fairy woman, no taller than your finger. She had a white robe on, a little crown on her long yellow hair; there were two wings on her shoulders, just like the downy brown wings of a butterfly, and in her hand she had a little ...
— Wonder-Box Tales • Jean Ingelow
... herself talking in a corner of the room with the girl, and fell to studying her face anew. A closer inspection merely consolidated her earlier judgment. She smiled inwardly as she remembered Jack Glover's ridiculous warning. It was like killing a butterfly with a steam hammer, to loose so much vengeance against this frail piece ...
— The Angel of Terror • Edgar Wallace
... the second or third floor, or out on the pavement below. The city seemed to be exuding the soaked-in heat of the long summer's day. The women who floated by were dressed in the lightest of muslins; even the plainest of them gained a new charm in their airy and butterfly-looking costumes. The men walked bareheaded, waistcoatless, fanning themselves with straw hats. Here and there, as they turned into Shaftesbury Avenue, an immaculately turned-out young man in evening dress passed along the baked pavements and dived ...
— Nobody's Man • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... and Nothing but Juliet Butterfly Love Romantic Stories of Non-Romantic Love Obstacles to Monopolism Wives and Girls in Common Trial Marriages ...
— Primitive Love and Love-Stories • Henry Theophilus Finck
... another to clothe the landscape with profuse and luxuriant vegetation. How strange to see the humming-bird dart like a streak of golden light among the fragrant shrubs; stranger still to see the butterfly, attracted by the lines of some stray wild flower, flutter away again, repelled by the chilling neighbourhood of the last remnant of a snow-drift lying in a sheltered corner, where no sunbeam ever finds ...
— The King's Warrant - A Story of Old and New France • Alfred H. Engelbach
... represents the moral truth: the minister's black veil, emblem of the secret of every human heart; the print of a hand on the heroine's cheek in "The Birthmark," a sign of earthly imperfection which only death can eradicate; the mechanical butterfly in "The Artist of the Beautiful," for which the artist no longer cares, when once he has embodied his thought. Zenobia in "The Blithedale Romance" has every day a hot-house flower sent down from a Boston conservatory and wears it in her hair or the bosom of her gown, where it seems to express her ...
— Four Americans - Roosevelt, Hawthorne, Emerson, Whitman • Henry A. Beers
... those strangely constituted beings who cannot bear to see any innocent thing suffer. It matters not whether it be a worm in the dust, a butterfly in the air, a bird, a flower, or a human creature. The first time I saw you I knew that your state of health precluded you from the enjoyment of life natural to your sex and age. I also perceived that the physicians had been at work upon you trying to probe into the causes of your ailment, and ...
— A Romance of Two Worlds • Marie Corelli
... rushes, or bedeck the thorn With daisies sparkling with the dews of morn; While she, these simple gifts would grateful take—- Love for their own and for the giver's sake. Or, they would chase the butterfly and bee From flower to flower, shouting in childish glee; Or hunt the cuckoo's echo through the glade, Chasing the wandering sound from shade to shade. Or, if she conned the daily task in vain, A word from Edmund ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Volume XXIV. • Revised by Alexander Leighton
... from Noirmoutiers, laden to the very edge with white salt sparkling all over with shining spangles, and worked by picturesque crews; men with the great three-cornered hat of the Breton salt-worker, and women whose great cushioned caps with butterfly wings were as white and glittering as the salt. Then there were coasting vessels like floating drays, their decks piled with sacks of flour and casks; tugs dragging interminable lines of barges, or perhaps some three-master of Nantes arriving from the other side of the world, returning ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern — Volume 11 • Various
... butterfly Appear in gayer coats than I; Let me be dressed fine as I will, Flies, worms, ...
— Ruby at School • Minnie E. Paull
... epoch with his lyre, 110 And fill the earth with feats of Chivalry:[308] His Fancy like a rainbow, and his Fire, Like that of Heaven, immortal, and his Thought Borne onward with a wing that cannot tire; Pleasure shall, like a butterfly new caught, Flutter her lovely pinions o'er his theme, And Art itself seem into Nature wrought By the transparency of his bright dream.— The second, of a tenderer, sadder mood, Shall pour his soul out o'er Jerusalem; ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 4 • Lord Byron
... Spirit of God will touch that man's heart and transform him into one of the holiest and most useful of men. It has often occurred in the past and will doubtless often occur in the future. There sits before you a woman, who is a mere butterfly of fashion. She seems to have no thought above society and pleasure and adulation. Why preach to her? Without the regenerating power of the Holy Spirit, it would be foolishness and a waste of time; but you can never tell, perhaps this very night the Spirit of God will shine in that darkened ...
— The Person and Work of The Holy Spirit • R. A. Torrey
... vast and starry Heavens may terrify us; its immensity may seem to overwhelm us. But our inquiring thought flies curiously on the wings of dream, toward the remotest regions of the visible. It rests on one star and another, like the butterfly on the flower. It seeks what will best respond to its aspirations: and thus a kind of communication is established, and, as it were, protected by all Nature in these silent appeals. Our sense of solitude has disappeared. We feel that, if only as infinitesimal atoms, we form ...
— Astronomy for Amateurs • Camille Flammarion
... dumb darlings, the spotted flycatchers, seem to have absolutely nothing to say, and accordingly have the wit to hold their tongues; and devote the whole of their small intellect to sitting on the iron rails, flitting off them a yard or two to catch a butterfly in air, and flitting back with ...
— Prose Idylls • Charles Kingsley
... example from A Butterfly; That on a rough, hard rock Happy can lie; Friendless and all ...
— Modern British Poetry • Various
... had long golden hair of which she was very proud. She was different from her sister, and never helped with the work, but spent the day combing her hair and catching butterflies. She would catch a pretty butterfly, cruelly stick a pin through it, and fasten it in her hair. Then she would go down to the lake to see her reflection in the clear water, and would laugh to see the poor butterfly struggling in pain. The people disliked ...
— Philippine Folklore Stories • John Maurice Miller
... sterling, were the means of subsistence for herself and her family. When she first returned to Cartside a few religious friends called to welcome her home. The gay and wealthy part of her former acquaintances, who, like the butterfly, spread their silken wings only to bask in the warmth of a summer sun, found not their way to the lonely cottage of an afflicted widow. Her worth, though in after-life rendered splendid by its own ...
— The Power of Faith - Exemplified In The Life And Writings Of The Late Mrs. Isabella Graham. • Isabella Graham
... position were not so sad, I should be tempted to smile," said Florence. "Mr. de Brabazon will not do this thing. His emotions are as strong as those of a butterfly." ...
— Adrift in New York - Tom and Florence Braving the World • Horatio Alger
... off half Park Lane and that wonderful district which she would have us believe lay all about it. One met the oddest people in her drawing-room, where she fluttered about among them like a gay little butterfly while Sir Arthur, her serious husband, locked ...
— The Story of Bawn • Katharine Tynan
... kindliness of Spring, Flowers that smile nor birds that sing. Bumble-bee nor butterfly, Nor grassy hill nor anything Of magic keep me safe to rhyme In this Heaven beyond my time. No! ...
— Fairies and Fusiliers • Robert Graves
... BUTTERFLY, Madame, a little Japanese lady whose child has remained the same size and age for the past ...
— Who Was Who: 5000 B. C. to Date - Biographical Dictionary of the Famous and Those Who Wanted to Be • Anonymous
... king that he had spoken insolently to her. The king sent for him. Tom, to escape his fury, crept into an empty snail shell, and lay there till he was almost starved; when peeping out of the shell he saw a fine butterfly settled on the ground: he now ventured out, and getting on it, the butterfly took wing, and mounted into the air with little Tom on his back. Away he flew from field to field, from tree to tree, till at last he flew to the king's court. The king, ...
— Cole's Funny Picture Book No. 1 • Edward William Cole
... thin, elderly ankles, and adorned with many flying ribbands and furbelows. An impossibly high garden hat crowned her faded head, allowing certain rather unattached-looking ringlets of colourless blonde hair to stray about her cheeks. She made one think of a butterfly, no longer young, but attempting to keep up the illusions of spring. Hilda and her mother smiled and returned the ...
— Greifenstein • F. Marion Crawford
... so," agreed Mr. Brown. "We'll have to look for Tom. Bunny and Sue, you stay with me. Uncle Tad, you and Bunker walk around in the woods. It may be that Tom fell and hurt himself, when running after a bird or butterfly, and can't ...
— Bunny Brown and His Sister Sue at Camp Rest-A-While • Laura Lee Hope
... don't remember my tellin' you about Lucy Lee, the Virginia butterfly we took in over the week-end once and how I had to scratch around one Saturday to find some male dinner mate for her, and picked this hard-boiled egg from the bond room, one of these buddin' John D.'s who keeps an expense ...
— Torchy As A Pa • Sewell Ford
... be lost. Flyaway must overtake the girls, and, if possible, get to heaven before they did. She flew about like a distracted butterfly. ...
— Dotty Dimple's Flyaway • Sophie May
... things with his hands and feet, was a very distinguished pupil of Mr. MacLaren's; for the little gentleman was as active as a monkey, and - to quote his own remarkably figurative expression - was "a great deal livelier than the Bug and Butterfly."* ...
— The Adventures of Mr. Verdant Green • Cuthbert Bede
... the Baptists. There are four or five chapels set apart for their improvement in Preston, and the smartest of these is in Fishergate. In Leeming-street it was in the chrysalis state; in Fishergate the butterfly epoch has been reached. A dull, forlorn looking edifice, afterwards taken advantage of by the Episcopalian party, and now cleared off to make way for St. Saviour's church, once formed the sacred asylum of a portion of the Baptists; but ...
— Our Churches and Chapels • Atticus
... known and picturesque of the Indian dances, follows somewhat the lines of a Virginia Reel. The Indian maidens stand in a line facing each other, their blankets wrapped about them. The head couple, facing each other, spread wide their blankets behind them like great butterfly wings. Then they dance forward and back, forward and back, beckoning, retreating, gesturing, and finally dance off, with one blanket wrapped about two pairs of shoulders. Then the next couple, and so on. All sorts ...
— Patriotic Plays and Pageants for Young People • Constance D'Arcy Mackay
... to be a certain small collier lying in the downs, awaiting a fair wind to carry her into the port of London. This collier (a schooner) was named the "Butterfly," perhaps because the owner had a hazy idea that there was some resemblance between an insect flitting about from flower to flower and a vessel sailing from port to port! Black as a chimney from keelson to truck, ...
— The Lifeboat • R.M. Ballantyne
... after this somewhat gross and material fashion, for the berries she gave him, the flowers she wove in his hair, and the brooks that drove his mimic mills. He chased the butterfly, he climbed the trees, he would stand in the rain, paint his cheeks with berry juice, dabble in the mud, and nothing was secure from his prying fingers and curious eyes. He must touch and taste of everything, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 11, September, 1858 • Various
... they pleased, there were plenty of Chinese husbands whose purses were full enough to keep the merchants of Chinatown contented. The tiny, dressed-up Oriental dolls—boy and girls—who strolled about with pink balloons or butterfly kites, in the short intervals between "Mellican" school and Chinese school, were not baby-actors playing parts on the stage, but real flesh and blood children, who had no idea that they were odd to look at in their gay-coloured gowns and ...
— The Port of Adventure • Charles Norris Williamson and Alice Muriel Williamson
... Ercole. "This is a bad world. A man falls in love with a pretty little caterpillar; he wakes up and finds himself married to a butterfly. Oh, this is a very ...
— Whosoever Shall Offend • F. Marion Crawford
... This elegant stranger, who had emerged from mystery to disturb the Christmas day of a humble organist, now leaned on the friendly arm of the little man, walking along with him, not as he once sauntered through the promenade, a butterfly disdaining all but the brightest of sunbeams, the sweetest of flowers. Poor worm! he was half frozen in this wintry brightness, this exhilarating atmosphere, in which ...
— Gifts of Genius - A Miscellany of Prose and Poetry by American Authors • Various
... I answered her, "since being dressed as a butterfly does not prevent one from being an insect, and the best sustained preservation lasts at most till ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... had concluded the above remarks comes a pretty little note sealed with a pretty little butterfly—bearing a northern postmark—and to the ...
— The Book of Snobs • William Makepeace Thackeray
... at the expense of our friends—this butterfly may fold his wings, and lie under cover in the cold air of Glendearg; but were he at Holyrood, he would, did his life depend on it, expand his spangled drapery in the eyes of the queen and court—Rather than fail of distinction, he would sue for love to our gracious ...
— The Monastery • Sir Walter Scott
... which with extended arms he gradually fluttered round, keeping time with the music. In some of the quicker movements he either snapped his fingers or used wooden castanets, or held the pleated skirt of his coat fully extended like butterfly wings. There was very little variation to his dancing which, like the Persian was more a feat of endurance and speed than a graceful performance. The ankle did ...
— Across Coveted Lands - or a Journey from Flushing (Holland) to Calcutta Overland • Arnold Henry Savage Landor |
