"Insect" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... by all, and who receives from every family some measure of propitiatory sacrifice. We read in the li chao chuan,[6] or Divine Panorama, that "every living being, no matter whether it be a man or an animal, a bird or a quadruped, a gnat or a midge, a worm or an insect, having legs or not, few or many, all are called ...
— The Fulfilment of a Dream of Pastor Hsi's - The Story of the Work in Hwochow • A. Mildred Cable
... the less beautifully descriptive of a creature that has always seemed to me to be worthy of more attention than he has ever received from the poets of our age. I have been unable to find in the literature of Greece, Egypt or the Orient, any reference to this wonderful insect who embodies in his frail physique so much of the truest philosophy of life, and who, despite the obstacles that seem so persistently to obstruct his path, buzzes blithely ever onward, singing his lovely ...
— The Autobiography of Methuselah • John Kendrick Bangs
... of adjacent property. They attract birds and thus assist in keeping down insect pests. They may be used to prevent erosion on steep slopes. They increase the life of certain kinds of improved highways by protecting the roadbed from the direct heat of the sun. They serve as a source of food if nut-bearing or sugar-producing trees are used. They invite ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Report of the Proceedings at the Sixth Annual Meeting. Rochester, New York, September 1 and 2, 1915 • Various
... of nations! earth Thy footstool, heaven Thy throne! Thine the greatness, power, and glory, Thine the kingdom, Lord, alone! Life and death are in Thy keeping, and Thy will ordaineth all: From the armies of Thy heavens to an unseen insect's fall. ...
— Quiet Talks on the Crowned Christ of Revelation • S. D. Gordon
... For the bruis'd insect on the waste, A sigh would heave her breast; And oft her careful hand replac'd The ...
— Poems (1786), Volume I. • Helen Maria Williams
... observed, that Mrs. Wharton managed her attack upon Vivian with more art than could be expected from so silly a woman; but we must consider that all her faculties were concentrated on one object; so that she seemed to have an instinct for coquetry. The most silly animals in the creation, from the insect tribe upwards, show, on some occasions, where their interests are immediately concerned, a degree of sagacity and ingenuity, which, compared with their usual imbecility, appears absolutely wonderful. The opinion which Vivian had early formed of the weakness of this ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. V - Tales of a Fashionable Life • Maria Edgeworth
... blinds outside the three long, open windows subdued the sun-glare, yet the very odour of the cut flowers in the room seemed oppressive, while without could be heard the busy hum of insect life. ...
— The House of Whispers • William Le Queux
... pattern behind it; and Rosamund and Dion forgot all about Artemisia, as they brooded, wide-eyed, over the activities of the dwellers in the waste. At such moments they realized the magic of life, as they had never realized it in the turmoil of London. The insect with its wings that caught the sun, the intent and preoccupied little traveler whose course could be deflected by a twig, revealed the wonder that is lost and forgotten in ...
— In the Wilderness • Robert Hichens
... evening. I counted seven brooches myself on Miss Pole's dress. Two were fixed negligently in her cap (one was a butterfly made of Scotch pebbles, which a vivid imagination might believe to be the real insect); one fastened her net neckerchief; one her collar; one ornamented the front of her gown, midway between her throat and waist; and another adorned the point of her stomacher. Where the seventh was I have forgotten, but it was somewhere about ...
— Cranford • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... had dropped; all was silent as the grave; the leaves of the elm trees were motionless; no bird or insect raised its voice; everything slept; he alone was watchful, awake. Leaning over the window-sill, his thoughts searched for the governess, and he wondered anew where she was spending the dark hours. ...
— Jimbo - A Fantasy • Algernon Blackwood
... that it is now he alone who wills and orders things. He opens the door to whomsoever he pleases, uses his master like something belonging to him, weighs on each of his resolutions, and holds him in his power by dint of his stealthy unremitting efforts. Yes! it's the lion conquered by the insect; the infinitesimally small disposing of the infinitely great; the train-bearer—whose proper part is to sit at his cardinal's feet like a faithful hound—in reality reigning over him, and impelling him in whatsoever direction he chooses. Ah! the Jesuit! the Jesuit! Mistrust ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola
... rapidity, but the crystallisations are formed with equal quickness, and they are no sooner produced than they are destroyed together. Notwithstanding the sulphureous exhalations from the lake, the quantity of vegetable matter generated there and its heat make it the resort of an infinite variety of insect tribes, and even in the coldest days in winter numbers of flies may be observed on the vegetables surrounding its banks or on its floating island's, and a quantity of their larvae may be seen there sometimes encrusted ...
— Consolations in Travel - or, the Last Days of a Philosopher • Humphrey Davy
... from the variety of moisture-loving plants which took Dale's attention, and the brightly coloured insects, which took that of Saxe, while the mule was perfectly content to wait while a halt was called to capture insect or secure plant; the solemn-looking animal standing fetlock-deep in the water, and browsing on the herbage in the ...
— The Crystal Hunters - A Boy's Adventures in the Higher Alps • George Manville Fenn
... through the increased or decreased use of other parts, to other changes of a quite unexpected nature. It is also well to reflect on such facts, as the wonderful growth of galls on plants caused by the poison of an insect, and on the remarkable changes of colour in the plumage of parrots when fed on certain fishes, or inoculated with the poison of toads (95. The 'Variation of Animals and Plants under Domestication,' ...
— The Descent of Man and Selection in Relation to Sex • Charles Darwin
... told me that the mean creature had crept all over the ship on his little, bandy legs, taking him along to grumble and whine to about a lot of trifles. Crept about the decks like a wretched insect—like a ...
— Tales Of Hearsay • Joseph Conrad
... daughter, joined with the silent smoke of the censer, which rose like light mist in the air. How petty he appeared at that juncture, crushed, as it were, by some giant hand—not a demi-god in any sense, or a Titan, but rather an insect, pushing into some narrow cranny to hide from a bird of prey. Kranitski had seen Darvid then, for, on hearing of the misfortune, no power on earth or in hell could have stopped him from running, from flying to the house where it ...
— The Argonauts • Eliza Orzeszko (AKA Orzeszkowa)
... appeared, in the most decided way, during the first half of that month, although not then very apparent to a casual observer. Mr. Mayne, like many persons at the time, attributed the blight to an insect which some called Aphis Vastator, others Thrips minutissima. There was a glass case in the Dublin Exhibition of 1853, showing this insect feeding on the leaves and stalks of the potato plant. Mr. Mayne and those who agreed with him, ...
— The History of the Great Irish Famine of 1847 (3rd ed.) (1902) - With Notices Of Earlier Irish Famines • John O'Rourke
... humiliate some Egyptian god. For example, the lice covered everything and were miserably polluting. All Egyptian worship was compelled to cease, since none of the priests could perform their religious service so long as any such insect had touched them since they went through a process of purification. In smiting the cattle with murrain, the sacred bull of Memphis was humiliated whether stricken himself or because of his inability to protect the ...
— The Bible Period by Period - A Manual for the Study of the Bible by Periods • Josiah Blake Tidwell
... dusty roofs; lightning rived the rain curtain that swept the famished earth, so near at hand that the sensitive could feel it in their hair; deep thunder sent its tremor through the ground, jarring the windows of Ascalon that had looked in their day upon storms of human passion which were but insect strife ...
— Trail's End • George W. Ogden
... A night-insect buzzed against her, and, almost in the same moment, there came from down in the hollow, from beyond the trees, a sound which chilled her blood, stopped the wild beating of her heart. It seemed to echo with dreadful clearness from end to end of the heavens. A dull ...
— Denzil Quarrier • George Gissing
... silencer. At this time of the year, the song of the mosquito was his dreaded nightingale. In spite of fine-mesh screens, always one or two would get in. Mrs. Spaniel, he feared, left the kitchen door ajar during the day, and these Borgias of the insect world, patiently invasive, seized their chance. It was a rare night when a sudden scream did not come from the nursery every hour or so. "Daddy, a keeto, a keeto!" was the anguish from one of the trio. ...
— Where the Blue Begins • Christopher Morley
... been dashed. He was irritated because the thing was so small, so utterly absurd. It was like the sting of a miserable little insect,—just enough to smart, and not enough to need a strong remedy. The news of the game had also preceded him home, and his guardian's opinion of the propriety of his action did not tend to soothe his mind. Mrs. Hodges forcibly expressed herself as follows: ...
— The Uncalled - A Novel • Paul Laurence Dunbar
... Distinguished link in being's endless chain! Midway from nothing to the Deity; A beam etherial, sullied, and absorbt! Though sullied and dishonoured still divine! Dim miniature of greatness absolute! An heir of glory! a frail child of dust! Helpless immortal! insect infinite! A worm! a god!—I tremble at myself, And in myself am lost. At home a stranger, Thought wanders up and down, surprised, aghast, And wondering at her own: How reason reels! O what a miracle to man is man! Triumphantly distressed! what joy! what dread! Alternately ...
— The Age of Pope - (1700-1744) • John Dennis
... city, and if one sees no running water, or sees it rarely, the hard-working Canarienses have built tanks to save the rain, and they bring streams in flumes from the inner hills that rise six thousand feet above the sea. They grow vines and sugar and cultivate the cochineal insect, which looks like a loathsome disease (as indeed it is) upon the swarth cactus or tunera which it feeds on. And the islands grow tobacco. Las Palmas is after all only the emporium of Grand Canary and a coaling station for steamers to South Africa and the West Coast and South America. ...
— A Tramp's Notebook • Morley Roberts
... Japanese walnut. This is a worthy nut and has done well when grafted on black walnut stock. Only two varieties have proved hardy and only one of these, Gellatly, has produced good crops for a long time. Were it not for the insect pests which attack it and, worse still, the sapsucker, this tree might be considered for semi-commercial use in the north. The sapsucker is a woodpecker. It chips out bark right down to the wood, girdling large limbs and killing whole sections of a tree. This results in an excessive amount ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Report of the Proceedings at the Thirty-Seventh Annual Report • Various
... his ankle was no dream, for it stung sharply, and, sitting up, he drew up his foot, to find that he had been bitten by some insect. ...
— Old Gold - The Cruise of the "Jason" Brig • George Manville Fenn
... Bacilikil (Insect Powder). Veribest (Boot Blacking). Uwantit (Combined pocket twoblade penknife with corkscrew, ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce
... defects of her early education. Leslie became a naturalist—the most original and untrammelled of naturalists, for she proceeded upon that foundation of anecdotal and experimental acquaintance with herb and tree, insect, bird, and beast, and even atmospheric phenomena, whose unalloyed riches are peculiar ...
— Girlhood and Womanhood - The Story of some Fortunes and Misfortunes • Sarah Tytler
... flight now that, through the portholes, sky and earth looked the same: dark gray films of emptiness. The continuous weird whistle from the hidden mechanism of the sun-ship was like the drone of a monster insect, monotonous and soporific during the long intervals when the scientist was too busy with his ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science February 1930 • Various
... of my spark of hope weakened me. I slid down, with my back against the rock, and gave way to despair. As I looked up at the smooth implacable walls that imprisoned me, I felt like some poor insect clinging to the side of a bowl partly filled with water. How frantically the poor creature claws and claws the polished sides, at each effort slipping nearer and nearer to ...
— Pieces of Eight • Richard le Gallienne
... of an animal athirst, laid down at a well and drinking; and the well proved quite full, gloriously clear; it rose up munificently of its own impulse; I saw the sun through its gush, and not a mote, Lucy, no moss, no insect, no atom in the thrice-refined ...
— Villette • Charlotte Bronte
... Young Man gingerly did so. The Chemist held the insect by its wings over the sugar. "Will someone lend me one ...
— The Girl in the Golden Atom • Raymond King Cummings
... latter by sight and reputation. The man was one Skeel and rejoiced in the nick-name of "Alicran." The furtive scorpion whose sting is death is not indigenous to the territory, but Mr. Skeel had gained the appellation in New Mexico, a region where the tail-bearing insect may be found, and when the man left the Border for the Border's good ...
— The Heart of the Range • William Patterson White
... the Christian fathers, such as St. Ambrose calling Jesus "the good scarabaeus, who rolled up before him the hitherto un-shapen mud of our bodies;" a thought which seems to have been borrowed as much from the hieroglyphics as from the insect's habits; and perhaps from the Egyptian priests in some cases, using the scarabous to denote the god Horus-Ra, and sometimes the word only begotten. We trace this thought on the Gnostic gems where Ave see a winged griffin rolling before him a wheel, the emblem of eternity. He sits like a conqueror ...
— History Of Egypt From 330 B.C. To The Present Time, Volume 11 (of 12) • S. Rappoport
... orchard,—with acid junipa-apples, luscious guavas, and crowned ananas, queen of all the fruits, which they had found by hundreds on the broiling ledges of the low tufa-cliffs; and then all, sitting on the sandy turf, defiant of galliwasps and jackspaniards, and all the weapons of the insect host, partook of the equal banquet, while old blue land-crabs sat in their house-doors and brandished their fists in defiance at the invaders, and solemn cranes stood in the water on the shoals with their heads on one side, and meditated ...
— Westward Ho! • Charles Kingsley
... glowing insect was in itself no greater stride along the highway of progress than the act of picking a tasty fruit from its tree. However, the crude lantern perhaps directed his primitive mind to the possibilities of artificial light. The flaming fagot from the fire was the ...
— Artificial Light - Its Influence upon Civilization • M. Luckiesh
... every one knows, to merely have such a thing mentioned is to feel the insect in question. Such was the case with Richard, and still holding the door with one hand he put the other up ...
— Richard Dare's Venture • Edward Stratemeyer
... trees where no grass will grow. The sun was lowering when they left the gidia. Out in the gum forest again, the birds were chattering before retiring to rest. All life is still in the bush at mid-day, but now there were curious scutterings among the grass tussocks, and the whirr of its insect population sounded all round. The country got prettier—swelling pastures and stony pinches and a distant outline of hills. They could see the green line of ...
— Lady Bridget in the Never-Never Land • Rosa Praed
... it is true, in the height of his power; but, at his uprising, the air is filled with harmonious sounds, the insect tribes are on the wing, and unite their feeble voice in the universal ...
— The Little Quaker - or, the Triumph of Virtue. A Tale for the Instruction of Youth • Susan Moodie
... we'll walk together, if you're going that way." So Tom stepped off, brushing through the steaming long grass, gemmed with wild flowers, followed by the keeper; and, as the grasshoppers bounded chirruping out of his way, and the insect life hummed and murmured, and the lark rose and sang above his head, he felt happier than he had done for many a long month. So his heart opened towards his companion, who kept a little ...
— Tom Brown at Oxford • Thomas Hughes
... fill, however, because air is compressible, and the deeper down it is thrust the more will the air be compressed. At a depth of thirty-three feet the air will be compressed to half its bulk—in other words, the glass will be half-full of water. It is clear that a fly or any small insect could live in the air thus confined although thrust to great depths under water. But it could not live long, because air becomes unfit for use after being breathed a certain time, and cannot sustain life. Hence, if we are to preserve ...
— Under the Waves - Diving in Deep Waters • R M Ballantyne
... in the constellation Taurus in April, when the warmth of his rays begins to impart new life and activity to the insect world after their ...
— The Astronomy of Milton's 'Paradise Lost' • Thomas Orchard
... he, "this will make you believe me somewhat your friend. Let me put it on that finger. See, the swelling goes down. While you wear this, no insect can ever trouble you. Had you been ugly with me, I should not have given you this. But you can have your choice between it and your own blue ring. Which do ...
— The Princess Idleways - A Fairy Story • Mrs. W. J. Hays
... belonging to the fungi tribe, growing from the anus; this fungus varies from three to six inches in length, and bears at its extremity a blossom-like appendage, somewhat resembling a miniature bulrush, and evidently derives its nourishment from the body of the insect. This caterpillar when recently found, is of the substance of cork; and it is discovered by the natives seeing the tips of the fungi, which grow upwards. They account for this phenomenon, by asserting that the caterpillar, when feeding upon the rata ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 81, May 17, 1851 • Various
... momentarily over his shoulder as if disturbed by the buzzing of some insect, then with unruffled composure turned back to the girl. His eyes looked straight into hers for perhaps ten seconds, then in the same purposeful fashion he set her free and deliberately turned upon the man ...
— Charles Rex • Ethel M. Dell
... publishes the result of the scientific investigations carried on by its officers in "Annual Reports" of the Secretary and Chiefs of Divisions; in a series of "Circulars" on special subjects, in regular "Bulletins;" and in a series of studies on "Insect Life." These documents ...
— Government and Administration of the United States • Westel W. Willoughby and William F. Willoughby
... The web rocks like a cradle in the breeze. The house-fly feels honored to be the guest of such a big spider. We all have regard for big bugs. "But what is this?" cries the fly, pointing to a broken wing, "and this fragment of an insect's foot. There must have been a murder here! Let me go back!" "Ha! ha!" says the spider, "the gate is locked, the drawbridge is up. I only contracted to bring you in. I cannot afford to let you out. Take a drop ...
— Around The Tea-Table • T. De Witt Talmage
... who do not even approximately fulfil the conditions of their elevated rank, who will not endeavour after the great human-divine idea, striving to ascend, are sent away back down to that stage of development, say of fish or insect or reptile, beyond which their moral nature has refused to advance. Who has not seen or known men who appeared not to have passed, or indeed in some things to have approached the development of the more human of the lower animals! Let those ...
— Hope of the Gospel • George MacDonald
... birds have been cited in support of the various flying theories that the house fly, as an example has been disregarded. We are prone to overlook the small insect, but it is, nevertheless, a sample which is just as potent to show the efficiency of wing surface as the ...
— Aeroplanes • J. S. Zerbe***
... Jelly-Fish, a Sea-Urchin or a Star-Fish. Neither can I present the structural elements of the Mollusk plan, without reminding them of an Oyster or a Clam, a Snail or a Cuttle-Fish,—or of the Articulate plan, without calling up at once the form of a Worm, a Lobster, or an Insect,—or of the Vertebrate plan, without giving it the special character of Fish, Reptile, Bird, or Mammal. Yet I insist that all living beings are but the different modes of expressing these formulae, and that all animals have, within the limits ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 57, July, 1862 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... themselves intelligible to men. Talk of great preachers;—why the man that cannot or will not preach so as to make himself understood, is smaller, lower, less in the esteem of God, and of good, sensible, Christian men and women, than the lowest animal, or the smallest insect, on the face of the earth. Every sheep that bleats, every ox that lows, every ass that brays, every bird that sings, and every goose that gabbles, is more of a sage, if not more of a saint, than the ...
— Modern Skepticism: A Journey Through the Land of Doubt and Back Again - A Life Story • Joseph Barker
... the humming-bird with his insect-like stomach and sucking-tube, and so on up through the warblers and flycatchers, more strictly bound by the necessities of their life, closely follow the sun,—while the upper-ten-thousand, the robins, cedar-birds, sparrows, etc., like man, omnivorous ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 1, Issue 2, December, 1857 • Various
... would like to come down. Then she asked her daughters again if they thought Eliza would come pleasantly. Her remarks showed the track of her will as it veered round from refusal to assent, as bubbles in muddy water show the track of a diving insect. Finally, because the young man had a strong will, and was quite decided as to what he thought best, the girls ...
— What Necessity Knows • Lily Dougall
... mouth to wail. Then she suddenly changed her mind, climbed down, and going over to Huz began whispering vigorously into his ear. Her warm breath tickled Huz and he flopped his ear to drive away the annoying insect. Jilly beamed, calling joyfully to her mother: "Huz say ess, Mamma, Huz ...
— Chicken Little Jane on the Big John • Lily Munsell Ritchie
... to the cliff edge. Here the gorse is aflame with blossom; the short dry grass is full of tiny insect life. Various larks are singing; each one seems to sing the same song differently; perhaps each never sings ...
— The Argosy - Vol. 51, No. 4, April, 1891 • Various
... he continued, ignoring her remark, "even now, what are you doing? Oh, Viola, you're a prey to the modern madness for crawling in the dirt instead of walking upright in the sun. You might be a goddess and you prefer to be an insect. Isn't it ...
— The Woman With The Fan • Robert Hichens
... the future, as a man, and thus have a chance ultimately to reach Buddha's heaven. The belief in the transmigration of souls explains the vegetarian diet of the Buddhist. No zealous Buddhist will touch meat or even eggs, neither will he kill the smallest insect, lest he should thus inadvertently murder a relative.[2] The men care but little for any religion beyond a veneration for ...
— History of Education • Levi Seeley
... Reparation. He rigged it up a substitute; Providing it a new posterior, At least as good—if not superior. His Process. He cut it out a tail of card, And stuck it on with ox-gall, hard. (This he prefers to vulgar glue) And made that Wopse as good as new! Forgiveness. Until the grateful insect soared Away, with self-respect restored To find that mutilated part of his Had been so well replaced by artifice. Further proceedings of The Scientist, again complacent, the Philosopher. To pen and ink and paper hastened, And, in a letter to the Field, Told how the Wasp, though halved, was ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 99., Nov. 1, 1890 • Various
... a BEE, I guess;" and Nina pointed to an insect flitting by, but so far from Arthur as to render a sting from the diminutive creature impossible. Still it served as an excuse, and blessing Nina in his heart for the suggestion, Arthur talked rapidly of various matters, hoping in this way to change the conversation. ...
— Darkness and Daylight • Mary J. Holmes
... god of their worship, a core of seeds and fringe of petals representing their best effort to mimic the flaming disc and far-flung corona of the sun. Man seeks less ardently, and so more ineffectively in his will and imagination to image God. In the reverent study of insect and animal life we gain some hint of what we have been and what we may become—something corresponding to the grub, a burrowing thing; to the caterpillar, a crawling thing; and finally to the butterfly, ...
— Architecture and Democracy • Claude Fayette Bragdon
... deliberately spontaneous—that's you. Because you want to have everything in your own volition, your deliberate voluntary consciousness. You want it all in that loathsome little skull of yours, that ought to be cracked like a nut. For you'll be the same till it is cracked, like an insect in its skin. If one cracked your skull perhaps one might get a spontaneous, passionate woman out of you, with real sensuality. As it is, what you want is pornography—looking at yourself in mirrors, watching your naked animal actions in mirrors, so that you can have it all in your ...
— Women in Love • D. H. Lawrence
... itself the germ of life which is about to spring into a new existence; thus he represented the dead body from which the spiritual body was about to rise. He is depicted in the form of a man having a beetle for a head, and this insect became his emblem because it was supposed to be self-begotten and self-produced. To the present day certain of the inhabitants of the Sudan, pound the dried scarabaeus or beetle and drink it in water, believing that it will insure them a numerous progeny. The ...
— Egyptian Ideas of the Future Life • E. A. Wallis Budge
... weary heart! O heart of wo! raise up thy toil-worn brow; The fields, the trees, the very breeze—they all are resting now: The air is still, there is no sound, save that unceasing hum, That insect song of summer-time that from ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 458 - Volume 18, New Series, October 9, 1852 • Various
... are the antennae you spoke of?" "The antennae!" said Legrand, who seemed to be getting unaccountably warm upon the subject; "I am sure you must see the antennae. I made them as distinct as they are in the original insect, and I presume that ...
— Selections From Poe • J. Montgomery Gambrill
... of six little Nature books, it is the author's intention so to present to the child reader the facts about each particular flower, insect, bird, or animal, in story form, as to make delightful reading. Classical legends, myths, poems, and songs are so introduced as to correlate fully with these lessons, to which the excellent illustrations are ...
— The Little Colonel's House Party • Annie Fellows Johnston
... Of obvious insect injuries, there are two general types,—those wrought by insects that bite or chew their food, as the ordinary beetles and worms, and those wrought by insects that puncture the surface of the plant and derive their food by ...
— Manual of Gardening (Second Edition) • L. H. Bailey
... As they struggled to and fro the table was overturned and the vase dashed into a thousand fragments. The precious Water of Youth flowed in a bright stream across the floor, moistening the wings of a butterfly which, grown old in the decline of summer, had alighted there to die. The insect fluttered lightly through the chamber and settled on the snowy ...
— Twice Told Tales • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... her upper wings as though she were preparing for flight; whereupon Nilushka sought with a finger to detain her, and, in so doing, let fall the leaf, and enabled the insect to detach itself and fly away at a low level. Upon that, bending forward with arms outstretched, the idiot went softly in pursuit, much as though he himself were launching his body into leisurely flight, ...
— Through Russia • Maxim Gorky
... is an insect with us, especially on chalky districts, which is very troublesome and teasing all the latter end of the summer, getting into people's skins, especially those of women and children, and raising tumours which itch intolerably. This animal ...
— The Natural History of Selborne, Vol. 1 • Gilbert White
... practice Lucien could not tell, as naturalists are not agreed upon this point. Some have asserted that it spits the spiders and other insects for the purpose of attracting nearer the small birds upon which it preys; but this cannot be true, for it preys mostly upon birds that are not insect-eaters, as the finches: besides, it is itself as fond of eating grasshoppers as anything else, and consumes large quantities of ...
— Popular Adventure Tales • Mayne Reid
... the duty to be performed. Thus, when a sickness is caused by a fish, the Fish-hawk, the Heron, or some other fish-eating bird is implored to come and seize the intruder and destroy it, so that the patient may find relief. When the trouble is caused by a worm or an insect, some insectivorous bird is called in for the same purpose. When a flock of redbirds is pecking at the vitals of the sick man the Sparrow-hawk is brought down to scatter them, and when the rabbit, the great mischief-maker, ...
— The Sacred Formulas of the Cherokees • James Mooney
... conceive something in thought before it actually exists. He must have seen all the glories of the material universe, worlds upon worlds circling through space, moon and stars, the beauty of forest and stream, of tinted flower and iridescent insect wing before they were brought into being, and He had the power to create them. Man has this wonderful gift of imagination. The inventor sees the machine in his thought before he attempts to build it. The poet has the germ of his poem in mind, even the rhythm and rhyme, before ...
— What a Young Woman Ought to Know • Mary Wood-Allen
... as they have broken through the soil, an enemy awaits them in the small black insect commonly known as the cabbage or turnip fly, beetle, or flea. This insect, though so small as to appear to the eye as a black dot, is very voracious and surprisingly active. He apparently feeds on the juice of the young plant, perforating it with small holes ...
— Cabbages and Cauliflowers: How to Grow Them • James John Howard Gregory
... the first time, entertained no doubt of its solidarity with that country of which it afforded us the last glimpse. By morning we found our small and incommodious vessel fairly on her way through the stormy November Atlantic, toiling painfully over the broad convexity of the planet, like a plodding insect, toward the regions of the sun. After a voyage of fifteen days, wrestling with all manner of baffling winds, and with storms attended, I suppose, with some danger, though, from a happy incapacity of apprehending peril at sea till it is over, I suffered ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. 4, No 3, September 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... insignificance of the ego in the presence of eternal and unconscious nature. Thus Bazarov, who seems intended for a great hero of tragedy, is not permitted to fight for his cause, nor even to die for it. He is simply obliterated by chance, as an insect perishes under the foot of a passing traveller, who is entirely unaware that he has taken an ...
— Essays on Russian Novelists • William Lyon Phelps
... far out of his oaken walls, and called from morning to night. Hard-working parents rushed hither and thither, snatching, digging, or dragging their prey from every imaginable hiding-place. It was woful times in the insect world, so many new hungry mouths to be filled. All this life seemed to stir the young kings: they grew restless; they were late. Their three little heads, growing darker every day, bobbed this way and that; they changed places ...
— Little Brothers of the Air • Olive Thorne Miller
... and almost instantly fell into a slumber as profound as that which had already overwhelmed Tolly. As for that exhausted little fellow, he did not move during the whole night, save once, when an adventurous insect of the earwig type walked across his ruddy cheek and upper lip and looked up his nose. There are sensitive portions of the human frame which may not be touched with impunity. The sleeper sneezed, blew the earwig ...
— Twice Bought • R.M. Ballantyne
... or laudably vending Milk and Water, might have grubbed on unnoticed, and not superlatively contemptible; but when he so far mistakes his proper department, as to blunder into the field of politicks, and assume a dictatorial and offensive part, we are compelled with reluctance to scourge the insect, tho' convinced 'tis but an insect still. We are informed by your fellow townsman, whom we presume must know you well, that you are destitute of feeling; your unexampled effrontery in the publick transaction ...
— The Writings of Samuel Adams, volume II (1770 - 1773) - collected and edited by Harry Alonso Cushing • Samuel Adams
... Armadillo. Fire-flies. Singular Fandango. Epiphytes. The Junta. Indian Life. Decorative Art. Horses. Jalapa. Anglo-Mexicans. Insect-life. Monte. Fate of Antonio. Scorpion. White Negress. Cattle. Artificial lighting. Vera Cruz. Further Journey. St. Thomas's. Voyage to England. ...
— Anahuac • Edward Burnett Tylor
... Mother, busy with her millions of children, has not quite forgotten them! But now he was thinking of that other state, where, free from all mortal impediments, the memory of his sorrowful burden should be only as that of the case he has shed to the insect whose "deep-damasked wings" beat off the golden dust of the lily-anthers, as he flutters in the ecstasy of his new life over their full-blown ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 25, November, 1859 • Various
... along the barren valley in which the river once flowed—each have their attraction, which varies with the changing light, while many a happy hour may be spent in watching the many coloured lizards which play among the rocks, the curious mantis and twig-insects, and other strange specimens of insect life which abound here; while, should you weary of sight-seeing and the glare of light, quietude and repose may be found among the fruit-laden fig-trees of Kitchener's Island, or in the shady gardens ...
— Peeps at Many Lands: Egypt • R. Talbot Kelly
... the thoughts of men, 60 I held but slight communion; but instead, My joy was in the wilderness,—to breathe The difficult air of the iced mountain's top,[131] Where the birds dare not build—nor insect's wing Flit o'er the herbless granite; or to plunge Into the torrent, and to roll along On the swift whirl of the new-breaking wave Of river-stream, or Ocean, in their flow.[132] In these my early strength ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 4 • Lord Byron
... me. The luxuriant foliage expanding in magnificent variety, the brightness of the stars above, the dazzling brilliancy of the fireflies around me, the breeze laden with balmy smells, and the busy hum of insect life making the deep woods vocal, at first oppress the senses with a feeling of novelty and strangeness till the mind appears to hover between the realms of ...
— Journals Of Two Expeditions Of Discovery In North-West And Western Australia, Vol. 1 (of 2) • George Grey
... summit of the Peak no trace of psora, lecidea, or other cryptogamous plants; no insect fluttered in the air. We found however a few hymenoptera adhering to masses of sulphur moistened with sulphurous acid, and lining the mouths of the funnels. These are bees, which appear to have been attracted ...
— Equinoctial Regions of America • Alexander von Humboldt
... Funyes, an insect like a maggot, whose eggs had been inserted on my having been put into an old house infested by them; as they enlarge they stir about and impart a stinging sensation; if disturbed, the head is drawn in a little. ...
— The Last Journals of David Livingstone, in Central Africa, from 1865 to His Death, Volume II (of 2), 1869-1873 • David Livingstone
... their own particular insect enemies which attack them and no others. Some of these insects live upon the leaves, others eat the sapwood under the bark, while a few attack the roots. Certain insects burrow in and eat the heartwood. Although this does not always kill the tree, it ...
— Conservation Reader • Harold W. Fairbanks
... for the sacrifice, and, but for the gravity of his position, his appearance might have excited mirth. His body was encased in a kind of basket from which his head, arms, and legs protruded, giving him the appearance of a gigantic insect. To the top of the basket, or tamgky, to give it its native name, was attached a rope of flax, the end of which had been thrown over a branch of one of the trees to the height of about forty feet from the ground. ...
— Adventures in Southern Seas - A Tale of the Sixteenth Century • George Forbes
... account of the harm Mordaunt can do!" cried D'Artagnan. "Cap de Diou! if he troubles me too much I will crush him, the insect! Do not fly, then. It is useless; for I swear to you that you are as safe here as you were twenty years, ago—you, Athos, in the Rue Ferou, and you, Aramis, in the ...
— Twenty Years After • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... gentleman the indifferent and contemptuous regard with which one might look at and dismiss some small and irrelevant insect. ...
— Mystery at Geneva - An Improbable Tale of Singular Happenings • Rose Macaulay
... sanity, the clear consciousness of shattered faculties; he measured his own feebleness. With the first movement of vindictive rage awoke a vague caution, like that of a wild beast that is fierce but feeble—or like that of an insect whose little fragment of earth has given way, and made it pause in a palsy of distrust. It was this distrust, this determination to take no step which might betray anything concerning himself, that had made Baldassarre reject Piero ...
— Romola • George Eliot
... jurists constantly developed new theories as to the modes of diabolic entrance into the "possessed." One such theory was that Satan could be taken into the mouth with one's food—perhaps in the form of an insect swallowed on a leaf of salad, and this was sanctioned, as we have seen, by no less infallible an authority than Gregory the Great, Pope and Saint—Another theory was that Satan entered the body when the mouth was opened to breathe, and there are well-authenticated cases of doctors ...
— History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom • Andrew Dickson White
... myself when an electric shock went through me. A voice told me, 'She is here!' I looked round, and saw the countess hidden in the shadow at the back of her box in the first tier. My look did not waver; my eyes saw her at once with incredible clearness; my soul hovered about her life like an insect above its flower. How had my senses received this warning? There is something in these inward tremors that shallow people find astonishing, but the phenomena of our inner consciousness are produced as simple as those of external ...
— The Magic Skin • Honore de Balzac
... glass, and nam'd it Caroline: Each maid cry'd, Charming; and each youth, Divine! Did Nature's pencil ever blend such rays, Such vary'd light in one promiscuous blaze? Now prostrate! dead! behold that Caroline: No maid cries charming! and no youth divine! And lo the wretch! whose vile, whose insect lust Laid this gay daughter of the Spring in dust, Oh punish him, or to th' Elysian shades Dismiss my soul, where no carnation fades. He ceas'd, and wept. With innocence of mien The accus'd stood forth, and thus address'd the Queen: "Of all th' enamel'd ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 58, Number 358, August 1845 • Various
... watching the motions of water insects. There was something truly mysterious in the intentness with which he contemplated these living playthings as they sported on the breeze or examined the structure of an imperial insect whom he had imprisoned. The chase of butterflies was an apt emblem of the ideal pursuit in which he had spent so many golden hours; but would the beautiful idea ever be yielded to his hand like the butterfly that symbolized it? ...
— Mosses from an Old Manse and Other Stories • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... of large garden varieties are rarely self-pollinated, even if left uncovered, but the chances of fertilization with inferior kinds, generally the most abundant pollen producers, are so great that it is well to protect all seed-bearing blooms from insect interference. If the work is to be done on a large scale sleeves of netting or muslin large enough to enclose the entire spike will be found serviceable. The ends may be drawn together by cords looped through the fabric, effectually ...
— The Gladiolus - A Practical Treatise on the Culture of the Gladiolus (2nd Edition) • Matthew Crawford
... importance to the ranger is the study of insect infestation. Many trees are killed annually by certain insects, and these must be discovered ...
— The Lake of the Sky • George Wharton James
... heading also are included books on Dogs, Cats and Bees (!) though the inclusion of the latter reminds one of the story of the imported tortoise, which the customs officials (after much debate) decided was an insect, and therefore not liable to quarantine! Then there are books of sporting memoirs, sporting dictionaries, sport in particular countries, as well as works which treat of Maypoles and Mumming, Festivals, and ...
— The Book-Hunter at Home • P. B. M. Allan
... carpets. They were woven in bright and vari-colored patterns; the figures of men and animals were depicted upon them and the bas-relief or fresco could be replaced upon the wall by a picture in tapestry. The dyes were mainly vegetable, though the kermes or cochineal-insect, out of which the precious scarlet dye was extracted, was brought from the neighborhood of the Indus. So at least Ktesias states in the age of the Persian empire; and since teak was found by Mr. Taylor among the ruins of Ur, it is ...
— Babylonians and Assyrians, Life and Customs • Rev. A. H. Sayce
... door. "A request to make! A request to make!" She recoiled from the sight presented. A beggar stood at the entrance of Tamiya. A dirty mat wrapped around his body, feet and arms emerging from bandages, making him like to some hideous insect with its carapace, his face wrapped in a towel, the effects of leprosy were hideously patent.—"What do you here? There is naught to be had. Pray depart at once." The answer was in tones the very harshness of which seemed to cause pain to the utterer—"The request ...
— The Yotsuya Kwaidan or O'Iwa Inari - Tales of the Tokugawa, Volume 1 (of 2) • James S. De Benneville
... little blossoms would soon open and have their one chance. To all the winds of heaven they would fling out wave upon wave of delicate odor, besides enlisting a subtle form of vibration and refusing to absorb the pink light—thereby enhancing the prospects of insect visitors, on whose coming the very existence of this race ...
— Edge of the Jungle • William Beebe
... that the lamps be put out: on its return to the abode of the dead it will suffer for having shown itself: it describes the fiery torments which will be its lot. Poor fool! it has been lured to its destruction, like the insect of summer that flies into the flame. Summoning the winds to its aid, it puts out the ...
— Tales of Old Japan • Algernon Bertram Freeman-Mitford
... thee! insect meshed in the web in which thou hast entangled limbs and wings! Thou hast not only inhaled the elixir, thou hast conjured the spectre; of all the tribes of the space, no foe is so malignant to man,—and thou hast lifted the ...
— Zanoni • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... of the plant are already showing a greenish cream-colour of the opening blossoms, which will be at their perfection in October. Then, when the sun shines, there will be no lingering red admiral, nor blue fly or fly of any colour, nor yellow wasp, nor any honey-eating or late honey-gathering insect that will not be here to feed on the ivy's sweetness. And behind the blossoming curtain, alive with the minute, multitudinous, swift-moving, glittering forms, some nobler form will be hidden in a hole or fissure in the wall. Here on many a night I have listened to the ...
— Afoot in England • W.H. Hudson
... and she lay in a nest of sun-spots. Only their own voices broke the silence. Then she fell asleep, and, until she opened her eyes again, and called to him in surprise, no sound was to be heard but the sudden, crisp rustling of some bird or insect. When evening fell, they returned to their lodging, ate their supper in the smoky public room—for, outside, mists had risen—and then before them stretched, undisturbed, the long evening and the longer night, to be spent in a strange room, of which they had ...
— Maurice Guest • Henry Handel Richardson
... fusca), they all began running about in search of some place of refuge. If now I covered over one small part of the nest, after a while some ant discovered it. In such a case, however, the brave little insect never remained there, she came out in search of her friends, and the first one she met she took up in her jaws, threw over her shoulder (their way of carrying friends), and took into the covered part; then both came out again, ...
— The Junior Classics Volume 8 - Animal and Nature Stories • Selected and arranged by William Patten
... vary excepting in length or in thickness, as will be shown under Anatomy. But then there are aquatic animals which are of great variety; I will not try to convince the painter that there is any rule for them for they are of infinite variety, and so is the insect tribe. ...
— The Notebooks of Leonardo Da Vinci, Complete • Leonardo Da Vinci
... many-fingered Summer! We hold thee very dear, as well we may: It is the kernel of the year to-day— All hail to thee! Thou art a welcome corner! If every insect were a fairy drummer, And I a fifer that could deftly play, We'd give the old Earth such a roundelay That she would cast all thought of labour from her Ah! what is this upon my window-pane? Some sulky drooping cloud comes pouting up, Stamping its glittering feet along ...
— Robert Falconer • George MacDonald
... Uncle Joe was made an earl not long since—you may have heard of the fuss about it. Uncle Sam's only a miserable baron yet. And Uncle Cuthbert is that paltry insect—a baronet. ...
— The Title - A Comedy in Three Acts • Arnold Bennett
... seemed to Pegg to be sleeping as heavily as ever, and after he had looked at him carefully for a few minutes, there was a deep, buzzing hum as of some insect, and a great fly flashed across the golden rays which streamed in through the thatch, and hovered around for a few moments as if about to settle upon the ...
— Trapped by Malays - A Tale of Bayonet and Kris • George Manville Fenn
... has been, and will continue to be the leading taxidermic preservative, or rather, insect deterrent. Many people are shy of handling this, but with reasonable care the use of arsenic is perfectly safe. Always keep poisons well labeled and out of the way of children. Nine children out of ten would never think of sampling them, but the tenth might ...
— Home Taxidermy for Pleasure and Profit • Albert B. Farnham
... on the enchanted lawn the lovers turned southwards up the winding avenue. The fragrance, the light and warmth, the bird and insect voices, imperfectly expressed their own heart-happiness. The living turf softly pressed up their feet. This was the fortunate hour that comes not twice. Happy those to whom it comes at all! To live was such full bliss, every new movement overflowed the cup. Joy was it to look on earth and ...
— Idolatry - A Romance • Julian Hawthorne
... little link between the fish and the insect; and the two chatted over its strange form, till the boat returned ...
— Two Years Ago, Volume II. • Charles Kingsley
... gimlet was in full twist—"I would make an affidavit to that effect before any notary." He began loosening his coat with his skinny fingers, fumbling in his inside pocket, thrusting deep his hand, as if searching for an elusive insect in the vicinity of his arm-pit, his talk continuing: "Yes, sir, before any notary, you are so exactly like your father. Not that I've seen your father, sir, VERY MANY TIMES"—the elusive had evidently escaped, for his hand went deeper. "I've only ...
— Kennedy Square • F. Hopkinson Smith
... sublime and inexhaustible, with copiousness worthy of the theme. When she found he was an entomologist, and that it was not so much mountains as insects which interested him, she shifted her ground, but treated it with equal felicity. Strange, but nature is never so powerful as in insect life. The white ant can destroy fleets and cities, and the locusts erase a province. And then, how beneficent they are! Man would find it difficult to rival their exploits: the bee, that gives us honey; the worm, that gives us silk; the cochineal, that supplies ...
— Endymion • Benjamin Disraeli
... may at first show no interest in insects unless it be a feeling of revulsion. Through the visit of an entomologist to his home, however, he may gain some knowledge of insects. This knowledge, by arousing an apperceptive tendency in the direction of insect study, gradually develops in him a new interest which lasts throughout his whole life. It is in this way that the various school subjects widen the narrow interests of the child. By giving him an insight into various phases of his social environment, the school curriculum ...
— Ontario Normal School Manuals: Science of Education • Ontario Ministry of Education
... gray moss to swaying from the branches of the oak. And a green grasshopper crossed the terrace in four great leaps, almost scraping Satan's ear in a fashion which might easily have been fatal to the insect. Val sighed and slipped down lower in his chair. "It's great," ...
— Ralestone Luck • Andre Norton
... passing through a vast hothouse, filled with gorgeous tropical vegetation and forms of insect life. In the neighbourhood of Monte Video you might imagine yourself in a perpetual greenhouse. Here it is like being in a vast garden, in which the greenest of turf, the brightest of bedding-out plants, and the most fragrant ...
— A Voyage in the 'Sunbeam' • Annie Allnut Brassey
... insist upon your bitter Osher smile, why shut your eyes to the palpable analogy suggested? Naturalists assert that the Solanum, or apple of Sodom, contains in its normal state neither dust nor ashes, unless it is punctured by an insect (the Tenthredo), which converts the whole of the inside into dust, leaving nothing but the rind entire, without any loss of color. Human life is as fair and tempting as the fruit of 'Ain Jidy,' till stung and poisoned by the Tenthredo ...
— St. Elmo • Augusta J. Evans
... too, and with the manners of a lady. He swore again, the thing seemed so incredible, and spat upon the dust. A pretty green shining beetle crawled there. He set his heavy foot upon the insect, and ...
— The Dop Doctor • Clotilde Inez Mary Graves
... this rule, and in these modern days we are beginning to realize the dangers of this article of food, on account of the trichina contained in it; and when we turn to the Talmud, we are told that it was forbidden to the Jews, "because of a small insect which infests it." ...
— The Antediluvian World • Ignatius Donnelly
... its progress, philosophy has been unable as yet to offer the masses any ideal that can charm them; but, as they must have their illusions at all cost, they turn instinctively, as the insect seeks the light, to the rhetoricians who accord them what they want. Not truth, but error has always been the chief factor in the evolution of nations, and the reason why socialism is so powerful to-day is that it constitutes the last illusion that is still vital. In spite ...
— The Crowd • Gustave le Bon
... society. That the fly should imagine he is moving the coach is natural enough; but that the horses, and the wooden lumbering machine, and the passengers should take it for granted that the light gilded insect is carrying them all,—there is the ...
— Castilian Days • John Hay
... inestimably good things; that is, the act of dying, and not merely the being dead. It is no doubt as necessary to the nature of the soul, to its psychology, its soul-life, as the changes of the worm, chrysalis, and butterfly, are to the insect. And thus, as in all other things, where sin abounded, grace much more abounds, and even death, like a cross, is turned into a ministration of ...
— Catharine • Nehemiah Adams
... half a century before. The marble vase at the entrance held some hardened mud at the bottom, accruing from the dust that had settled in it during the gradual evaporation of the holy water; and a spider (being an insect that delights in pointing the moral of desolation and neglect) had taken pains to weave a prodigiously thick tissue across the circular brim. An old family banner, tattered by the moths, drooped from the vaulted roof. In niches there were some mediaeval busts of Donatello's ...
— The Marble Faun, Volume II. - The Romance of Monte Beni • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... his teeth in impotent rage, and groaned aloud, as he traversed his room with hasty and uneven strides. At last he paused and muttered: "Well, the spider toils on even when its very power of weaving fresh webs is exhausted; it lies in wait,—it forces itself into the webs of others. Brave insect, thou art my model! While I have breath in my body, the world and all its crosses, Fortune and all her malignity, shall not prevail against me! What man ever yet failed until he himself grew craven, and sold his soul to the arch fiend, Despair! ...
— Alice, or The Mysteries, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... there were plenty: the lads gathered the fair-cheeked fox-mushrooms, so famous in the Lithuanian songs as the emblem of maidenhood, for the worms do not eat them, and, marvellous to say, no insect alights on them; the young ladies hunted for the slender pine-lover, which the song calls the colonel of the mushrooms.52 All were eager for the orange-agaric; this, though of more modest stature and less famous in song, is still the most delicious, whether ...
— Pan Tadeusz • Adam Mickiewicz
... he spoke, for the first time, a sudden misgiving, like the pinch of an insect, brushed Barron's consciousness. He had not, as a matter of fact, examined the Dawes letter very carefully, having been, as he now clearly remembered, in a state of considerable mental excitement during the whole time it was in his possession and thinking much ...
— The Case of Richard Meynell • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... contributes to the account of A.E. Nordenskioeld's Arctic investigations, published this year in Leipzig,[2] the author says: "The question of the mode of life of insects and of its relation to their environment in the extreme north is one of especial interest. Knowing, as we do, that any insect in the extreme north has at the most not more than from four to six weeks in each year for its development, we wonder how certain species can pass through their metamorphosis in so short a period. R. McLachlan adverts, in his work ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 520, December 19, 1885 • Various
... earth, explores the soundless main, Remoulds their mass thro all its threefold reign, O'er great, o'er small extends his physic laws, Empalms the empyrean or dissects a gaz, Weighs the vast orbs of heaven, bestrides the sky, Walks on the windows of an insect's eye; Turns then to self, more curious still to trace The whirls of passion that involve the race, That cloud with mist the visual lamp of God, And plunge the poniard in fraternal blood. Here fails his light. The proud Titanian ...
— The Columbiad • Joel Barlow
... cowardice have wisely dignified with the name of antipathy. A man who talks with intrepidity of the monsters of the wilderness while they are out of sight, will readily confess his antipathy to a mole, a weasel, or a frog. He has indeed no dread of harm from an insect or a worm, but his antipathy turns him pale whenever they approach him. He believes that a boat will transport him with as much safety as his neighbours, but he cannot conquer his antipathy to the water. Thus he goes on without any reproach from his own reflections, and ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, LL.D, In Nine Volumes - Volume the Third: The Rambler, Vol. II • Samuel Johnson
... certainly more than 100,000 species of insects, and yet anybody who knows one insect—if a properly chosen one—will be able to have a very fair conception of the structure of the whole. I do not mean to say he will know that structure thoroughly, or as well as it is desirable he should know it; but he will have enough real knowledge to enable him to understand ...
— Science & Education • Thomas H. Huxley
... is not the only good quality this wonderful insect possesses: it is a deadly enemy to gnats, by which the natives of the Spanish West Indies are greatly annoyed. When they wish to rid themselves of these pests they procure two or three of the cucuiuii, and let them loose in the room, ...
— Harper's Young People, September 14, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... meanest insect dies, And is no hero! heroes dare to live When all that makes life sweet is snatched away." So with my heart, in converse, till the day In gold and crimson billows, rose and broke, The voice of Conscience, all unwearied, spoke. Love ...
— Maurine and Other Poems • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... surprised to find this. It is called the Tamarisk. This long, oval-shaped part is made by an insect which inhabits the plant, and is eaten by the inhabitants in the plains east of the Mediterranean Sea. It is there called Mount Sinai Manna, and is supposed to be the Manna which the Jews found when they were in the Wilderness ...
— The Wonder Island Boys: The Mysteries of the Caverns • Roger Thompson Finlay
... grab for the cricket, but the little black insect hopped to one side, and then, all of a sudden he began to laugh. ...
— Uncle Wiggily's Travels • Howard R. Garis
... flies and gnats swarmed around by thousands; in vain one waved myrtle-branches about like mad; the audacious insect population did not cease to sting; nor was there a single person in the well-crammed carriage whose face was not swollen and sore from their ravenous bites. The poor horses, tortured almost to death, suffered most from this truly Egyptian plague; the flies alighted upon them in large disgusting ...
— Andersen's Fairy Tales • Hans Christian Andersen
... also, that it is next to impossible to prevent the attacks of the curculio upon our smooth-skinned fruits,—the Nectarine, Apricot and Plum—and the vast amount of vigilance and care required to counteract the invasions of the various other insect pests which visit us, and to obtain even a moderate crop, in many localities, out of doors. And we must be willing to concede that the certain means of securing even a limited supply of these delicious fruits, is worthy of our ...
— Woodward's Graperies and Horticultural Buildings • George E. Woodward
... the birds loose at Portland, I wrote a letter to the Portland Advertiser, recommending the English sparrow as an insect destroyer, especially in the early spring months when the native birds are away on their migrations. This idea of picking off insects with birds commended itself to the municipal authorities of Boston and other large cities, who made large importations ...
— Picturesque Quebec • James MacPherson Le Moine
... himself, Moor peeped through the semi-transparent screen, enjoying the little episode immensely. Sylvia fanned and rested a few minutes, then went up and down among the flowers, often pausing to break a dead leaf, to brush away some harmful insect, or lift some struggling plant into the light; moving among them as if akin to them, and cognizant of their sweet wants. If she had seemed strong-armed and sturdy as a boy before, now she was tender ...
— Moods • Louisa May Alcott
... to underground retreats from the region poisoned by sunshine. Next year you will find the grass growing fresh and green where the stone lay—the ground-bird builds her nest where the beetle had his hole—the dandelion and the buttercup are growing there, and the broad fans of insect-angels open and shut over their golden disks as the rhythmic waves of blissful consciousness ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... on the threshold of oblivion by contact with some of the angles of the coach, and feeling that I was unconsciously assuming, in imitation of a humble insect of my childish recollection, that spherical shape which could best resist those impressions, when I perceived that the moon, riding high in the heavens, had begun to separate the formless masses of ...
— The Luck of Roaring Camp and Other Tales • Bret Harte
... a wicked atheist had written an article in a magazine manifesting how evil nature was, how the animals preyed upon one another, how everything from the tiniest insect to the largest elephant suffered and suffered and suffered. How even the vegetation lived a short life of agony and frustration, and then fell into foul decay.... Brandon had read the article against his will, and had then hated the writer ...
— The Cathedral • Hugh Walpole
... you fear me. This is to prove it. (Pulls him by the sleeve.) You wanted privacy! A lady's presence took up your attention! Now we are alone, Sir.—Why, what a wretch! (Flings him from him.) The vilest insect in creation will turn when trampled on; yet has this Thing undone a man—by cunning and mean arts undone him. But we have found you, Sir; traced you through all your labyrinths. If you would save yourself, fall to confession: no mercy ...
— The Gamester (1753) • Edward Moore
... governess, Miss Brown, who came to us highly recommended both as to her personal character and for ability to instruct us in arithmetic and geometry, geography, English composition, and the rudiments of French. She was barely five feet in height, and as thin and dry as an insect; and although her personal character came up to any eulogium that could be pronounced upon it, her ignorance of the "branches" specified was, if possible, greater than our own. She was particularly perplexed by geometry; she aroused our hilarity by always calling a parallelogram a parallel-O-gram, ...
— Hawthorne and His Circle • Julian Hawthorne
... not bear to see a little brother in trouble or pain, and this the beasts knew very well. He would not willingly tread upon an insect, but would step aside and gently bid the Brother Worm depart in peace. The fish which a fisherman gave him he restored to the water, where it played about his boat and would not leave him till he ...
— The Book of Saints and Friendly Beasts • Abbie Farwell Brown
... the sun blinding her in his warmth and splendour;—she knew that it was God who made them all. Did she ponder over the variety of the leaf; did she admire the painting of the flower, or watch the motions of the minute insect, which, but for her casual observation, might have lived and died unseen;—she felt, she knew that all was made for man's advantage or enjoyment, and that God was great and good. Her orisons were short, but they were sincere; unlike the child who, night and morning, ...
— Newton Forster • Frederick Marryat
... uttered these words, when the fly, whose antennae were longer than usual, and were turned towards the little prattler, gave such a leap that Mademoiselle Tom Thumb trembled. The wings of the insect fluttered, and made a little sharp noise, which, however, had nothing terrible in it, and Piccolissima perceived that her companion was laughing. It was evident that the fly must laugh with his wings, because he could not laugh in any other way. It was with his antennae that he had listened; they ...
— Piccolissima • Eliza Lee Follen
... away. To her, alone, in all that party, the warm arms of the sun brandished javelins, and the calm riches of the landscape concealed jibes. The meanest field labourer seemed happier than she, the commonest insect more wanton ...
— Too Old for Dolls - A Novel • Anthony Mario Ludovici
... Where and what then is this eternity which if it has no end can have had no beginning? I know the secret of the suns and their attendant worlds, and they are no more eternal than the insect which glitters for an hour. Out of shapeless, rushing gases they gathered to live their day, and into gases at last they dissolve ...
— When the World Shook - Being an Account of the Great Adventure of Bastin, Bickley and Arbuthnot • H. Rider Haggard
... indication of that realism which rung the death knell of the art. The grasshoppers on a golden ground, and the introduction of carefully painted insect and floral life, led to all sorts of ...
— Arts and Crafts in the Middle Ages • Julia De Wolf Addison
... centuries before, and fresh as though it had been painted yesterday. At the end of the room was a great chair, gilded and painted, too, three centuries before, and covered with velvet, gold-fringed, and powdered with golden grasshoppers. "That common insect here!" thought Rosa, in surprise, for she did not know that the chief of the house, long, long, long ago, when sleeping in the heat of noon in Palestine in the first crusade, had been awakened by a grasshopper lighting on his eyelids, ...
— Bimbi • Louise de la Ramee
... the day was devoted to cleaning and making the old home suitable for temporary if not for permanent habitation. Creeper and vine had to be cut back, so as to admit light and clear the choked-up chimney, while with the growth endless intruders, insect, reptile, and bird, were banished. The remaining stores, now very low, were brought in, and what all declared to be a very jovial supper prepared and ...
— The Peril Finders • George Manville Fenn
... disappeared shortly afterwards, when a number of large beetles, called elaters, took their place, displaying both red and green lights. The red glare, like that of a lamp, alternately flashed and vanished, as the insect turned its body in flight; and now and then a green light was displayed. The mingling of the two colours, red and green, in the evolutions of flight totally surpasses my power of description. We caught several, and had we possessed an uncoloured glass bottle ...
— The Wanderers - Adventures in the Wilds of Trinidad and Orinoco • W.H.G. Kingston
... little boy with black hair, and eyes which would have been bright if the lids had not shut them out of sight,—"I know; Utah is inhabited by a religious INSECT called Mormons." ...
— Dotty Dimple at Play • Sophie May
... closely behold This insect you think is so mean, You will find him all spangled with gold, And shining with crimson ...
— The Illustrated London Reading Book • Various
... his friend that a question of so great magnitude to him had been decided by the last sting which he had received from an insect so contemptible as Mr. Bonteen, but he expressed the feeling as well as he knew how to express it. "Oh, I shall be with you. I know what you are going to say, and I know how good you are. But I could not stand it. Men ...
— Phineas Finn - The Irish Member • Anthony Trollope
... not lightened by the clergy, professionally gloating over approaching doom, nor by the speculations of the scientists, who were now predicting an insect and aquatic world. Man, they said, could not adapt himself to the Grass—this was proved to the hilt by the tragedy of the Russian armies in the Last War—but insects had, fishes didnt need to, and birds, especially those who nested above the snowline, might ...
— Greener Than You Think • Ward Moore
... of his listening attitude seemed to hush into breathlessness the very night about him, as it did Sylvia. There was not a sound from the trees. They stood motionless, as though carved in wood; not a bird fluttered a wing; not a night-insect shrilled; the brook, dried by the summer heat to a thread, crept by noiselessly. As once more the frantic cry resounded, it seemed to pierce this opaque silence like a palpable missile, and to wing its way without hindrance up ...
— The Bent Twig • Dorothy Canfield
... liked him for, she rather—very slightly—wished to do away with, or see if it could be done away with: just as one wishes to catch a pretty butterfly, without hurting its patterned wings. No harm intended to the innocent insect, only one wants to inspect it thoroughly, and enjoy the marvel of it, in one's tender possession, and have the felicity of thinking one could crush it, ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith |
