"Feathering" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... heavens are these Which not a poet sings, O, Unknown Eros? What this breeze Of sudden wings Speeding at far returns of time from interstellar space To fan my very face, And gone as fleet, Through delicatest ether feathering soft their solitary beat, With ne'er a light plume dropp'd, nor any trace To speak of whence they came, or whither they depart? And why this palpitating heart, This blind and unrelated joy, This meaningless desire, That moves me like the Child Who in the flushing darkness troubled lies, ...
— The Unknown Eros • Coventry Patmore
... to be reinstated in royal favour is at the back of all Sophie's subsequent actions—this and her intention of feathering her own nest out of the estate of her protector. It explains why she worked so hard to have the Prince de Conde assume friendly relations with a family whose very name he hated: that of the Duc d'Orleans. It is a clue to the mysterious death, eight years later, of the Prince de Conde, ...
— She Stands Accused • Victor MacClure
... and loyal man, he takes half the care and work off your shoulders. Such men are however rare, and if not very closely looked after, they are apt to abuse their position, and often harass the ryots needlessly, looking more to the feathering of their own nests than ...
— Sport and Work on the Nepaul Frontier - Twelve Years Sporting Reminiscences of an Indigo Planter • James Inglis
... think," he continued, "that Mr. Topcliffe will do all this for love, or rather, for mere malice? I have heard more of the fellow since he hath been in Derby than in all my life before; and, I tell you, he is for feathering his own nest if he can." ...
— Come Rack! Come Rope! • Robert Hugh Benson
... replied Mrs. Campbell; "and the branches of the trees, feathering down as they do to ...
— The Settlers in Canada • Frederick Marryat
... pupil during the next quarter of an hour. Sylvia did her best to obey him; and Edna, intent on keeping him in the best of humor, expressed her enjoyment of a situation whose finish she anticipated far more eagerly than did her friend; for Sylvia, although apparently intent on feathering, was planning how she could avoid being left alone for ...
— The Opened Shutters • Clara Louise Burnham
... had suddenly opened into a sort of amphitheatre to give room for a pure and profound lake of a few acres extent, and a space of level ground around it. The banks then arose everywhere steeply, and in some places were varied by rocksin others covered with the copse, which run up, feathering their sides lightly and irregularly, and breaking the uniformity of the green pasture-ground.Beneath, the lake discharged itself into the huddling and tumultuous brook, which had been their companion since they had entered ...
— The Antiquary, Complete • Sir Walter Scott
... trouble to confide to me. He had strong reason to believe that Tooke, the managing clerk at Bristol, was carrying on a course of peculation, and feathering his nest at the expense of the firm. What a grand discovery, thought I, for such a youth to have made. The firm would be infinitely obliged to him, and his fortune would be secured. He shook his head, and said that was all my ignorance; the man, Tooke, was ...
— Chantry House • Charlotte M. Yonge
... man-apes, towering volcanoes about whose summits clouds and unearthly traditions float together, strange animals and birds, and stranger men, pythons, bejuco ropes stained with human blood, feathering palm trees now fanned by soft breezes and now crushed to the ground by tornadoes;—on no mimic stage was ever a more wonderful scene set for such a company of actors. That the truly remarkable stories written by Sargent Kayme do not exaggerate the ...
— Anting-Anting Stories - And other Strange Tales of the Filipinos • Sargent Kayme
... up his sleeves, and took an oar in each brown hand, bending rhythmically to his task. He looked about him, then at the girl, and drew a deep breath, feathering his oars. "I guess I must have dreamed about this ...
— Half Portions • Edna Ferber
... the statesmen of South-Eastern Europe are a collection of rather swarthy, frock-coated personages who, when not engaged in decrying each other, are very busily occupied in feathering their own nests. If any one of them, at the outset of his career, had a sense of humour we suppose that in this heated atmosphere it must have long ago evaporated. But strangely enough, the two most prominent politicians ...
— The Birth of Yugoslavia, Volume 2 • Henry Baerlein
... over all, 82 feet; depth of hold, 14 feet 5 inches, and a draft of 7 feet 6 inches. Her propelling machinery is what is known as the 3-cylinder compound direct acting engine, and her power (6,500-horse) is applied through side wheels with feathering buckets, and steam is supplied from ...
— The Hudson - Three Centuries of History, Romance and Invention • Wallace Bruce
... curiosity. When our train stopped, the conductor told us that we would have to lie over all night, and many of the passengers left to find accommodations in the hotels of the town. It was now night, when a man came into the car and exclaimed, 'The strikers are tarring and feathering a poor wretch out here, who has taken sides with the road—come out and see it!' Nearly every one in the car hastened out. I had risen, when a gentleman behind me gently pulled my coat, and said to me, 'Sit down a moment.' He went on to say: ...
— California Sketches, Second Series • O. P. Fitzgerald
... higher than the mere feathering of my own nest. The vision of working for my wife and children somehow induced a yearning for altruism in a broader sense. While free from any vestige of religion, in the ordinary meaning of the word, I was ...
— The Rise of David Levinsky • Abraham Cahan
... is the crookedest bunch that ever made fuel for hell-fire. You won't get a square deal; they're going to get the fat anyhow. They've got the best claims spotted, an' men posted to jump them at the first chance. Oh, they're feathering their nests all right. They're like a lot of greedy pike just waiting to gobble down all they can. A man can't buy wine at twenty dollars per, and make dance-hall Flossies presents of diamond tararas ...
— The Trail of '98 - A Northland Romance • Robert W. Service
... angle, curving slightly, forming a rather small, irregular head, widest near the top; while in open ground the head is broad-spreading, hemispherical, with numerous rather equal, long and slender branches, and a fine spray with drooping tendencies. In the sunlight the silvery-yellow feathering and the metallic sheen of trunk and branches make the yellow birch one of the most attractive trees of the New ...
— Handbook of the Trees of New England • Lorin Low Dame
... specialty is "to look after the feathering, cackling, roosting, rising, and general behavior of these hundred chicks. An honest, ignorant woman, she could not have passed an examination in the youngest class."—Oliver ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook, Vol. 3 • E. Cobham Brewer
... garden: an autumn garden now, bathed in westering sunshine, fortified from the valley by a carved gold height of beech trees, open on every other side over sunburnt moorland pale and rough as a stubble-field in its autumn feathering of light brown grasses and seedling flowers aflicker in a west wind. Tonight however Isabel saw nothing of it, she lay as if asleep, her face hidden in her pillow: she, the most active person in the house, who was never tired like Val nor lazy like Rowsley! Conscience pricked ...
— Nightfall • Anthony Pryde
... Whene'er the snow came feathering down, Four barbed steeds,—from the Bull's head, Carried ...
— Broad Grins • George Colman, the Younger
... eye!" yelled back a courageous Irishman. "What do you think these oars are, anyway—a flock of humming birds? Whoever heard of feathering a hundred-ton weight? Feather Pike's Peak, say ...
— Biltmore Oswald - The Diary of a Hapless Recruit • J. Thorne Smith, Jr.
... waly, my gay goss hawk, "Gin your feathering be sheen!" "And waly, waly, my master dear, "Gin ye look pale ...
— Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border, Vol. II (of 3) • Walter Scott
... the services at the house or at the church. There had been some wild talk among the younger and many of the lower members of the community, notably the "poor" non-slave-holding whites, of tarring and feathering Joseph Corbin, and riding him on a rail out of the town on the day of the funeral, as a propitiatory sacrifice to the manes of Thomas Jeffcourt; but it being pointed out by the undertaker that it might involve some uncertainty ...
— Colonel Starbottle's Client and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... of John Brown is yet to be atoned for, by the slave-holding oligarchy. His undying spirit haunts them by day and by night, and in the midst of their voluptuous enjoyments, the very thought of John Brown chills their souls and poisons their pleasures. Their tarring and feathering of good citizens; their riding them upon rails, and ducking them, in dirty ponds; their destruction of liberty presses, and the hanging of John Brown and his friends, to intimidate men from the advocacy of freedom, will all come tumbling ...
— The Underground Railroad • William Still
... been blithely looking forward to the goodwill of it, when jink, at the old man's death, in stepped a nephew, and ousted the poo-oor fellow. He had bawled shrilly, but to no purpose; he had to be travelling. When he rose to greatness in Barbie it was whispered that the nephew discovered he was feathering his own nest, and that this was the reason of his sharp dismissal. But perhaps we should credit that report to Barbie's disposition rather than ...
— The House with the Green Shutters • George Douglas Brown |
