"Limpet" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... sentimentalise over the tender thing. The tender thing has now taken charge of this island, and men fight it, with torn hands, for bread and life. A singular, insidious thing, shrinking and biting like a weasel; clutching by its roots as a limpet clutches to a rock. As I fought him, I bettered some verses in my poem, The Woodman;[3] the only thought I gave to letters. Though the kuikui was thick, there was but a small patch of it, and when I was done I attacked ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 25 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... high-water mark, offered nothing to reward their quest, having been dry for several hours, and long ago thoroughly gone over by earlier foragers. So the bears pushed on down toward the lower stretches, where the ledges were still wet, and the long, black-green weed-masses still dripping, and where the limpet-covered protuberances of rock still oozed and sparkled. With her iron-hard claws the mother bear scraped off a quantity of these limpets, and crushed them between her jaws with relish, swallowing the salty juices. ...
— The House in the Water - A Book of Animal Stories • Charles G. D. Roberts
... look the world boldly in the face; and in adverse times he must look either to alms or the poor's rates. If work fails him altogether, he has not the means of moving to another field of employment; he is fixed to his parish like a limpet to its rock, and can neither migrate ...
— Self Help • Samuel Smiles
... going to settle down like a limpet. I hope I shall be living in luxury on you twenty years from now. Is this ...
— Piccadilly Jim • Pelham Grenville Wodehouse
... "And I shall wed thee, Agathe! although Ours be no God-blest bridal—even so!" And from the sand he took a silver shell, That had been wasted by the fall and swell Of many a moon-borne tide into a ring— A rude, rude ring; it was a snow-white thing, Where a lone hermit limpet slept and died In ages far away. 'Thou art a bride, Sweet Agathe! Wake up; we must not linger!' He press'd the ring upon her chilly finger, And to the sea-bird on its sunny stone Shouted, 'Pale priest that liest ...
— Adventures among Books • Andrew Lang
... Fisheries was supported by Sir A. GRIFFITH-BOSCAWEN in a speech crammed full of miscellaneous information. We learned that the Minister once smoked a pipe of Irish tobacco, and said "Never Again"; that the slipper-limpet, formerly the terror of the oyster-beds had now by the ingenuity of his Department been transformed into a valuable source of poultry-food, and that the roundabout process by which the Germans in bygone days imported eel-fry from the Severn for their own rivers, and ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 158, April 28, 1920 • Various
... Not that I actually suspected the man; but to take him straightway into my confidence was simply impossible. A man of another temperament might have done so—and quite possibly have been right; but his effect on me was like tapping a limpet. ...
— The Man From the Clouds • J. Storer Clouston
... me he was away, and then he seemed to think that I ought to go. I stuck like a limpet. I sent him to fetch Ogden's tutor. His name is Broster—Reggie Broster. He is a very nice young man. Big, broad shoulders, and ...
— The Little Nugget • P.G. Wodehouse
... of a decrepit woman naming herself wife when she is only a limpet of vitality, with drugs for blood, hanging-on to blast the healthy and vigorous! I remember old Colney's once, in old days, calling that kind of marriage a sarcophagus. It was to me. There I lay—see myself lying! wasting! Think what ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... its currents, the winds. Towards any place from which the air has been drawn by suction,[5] air presses with a force or weight of nearly fifteen pounds on a square inch of surface. Such a pressure holds the limpet to the rock when, by contracting itself, the fish has made a place without air[6] under its shell. Another familiar instance is that of the fly which walks on the ceiling with feet that stick. The barometer tube, emptied of air, and filled with ...
— Barometer and Weather Guide • Robert Fitzroy
... of the cruisers were busy amid the wreckage where here, on a spar, some stunned form clung like a limpet, and there, a-bob in the curling seas, a swimmer in his life-suit tossed ...
— In Secret • Robert W. Chambers
... Lionel's departure that Estelle realized there was nothing between her and the Indian frontier except the drawing-room sofa. She fixed herself as firmly on this shelter as a limpet takes hold upon a rock. People were extremely kind and sympathetic, and Winn himself turned over a new leaf. He was gentle and considerate to her, and offered to read aloud to ...
— The Dark Tower • Phyllis Bottome
... those tremendously solid brown, or rather black, rocks which emerge from the sand like something primitive. Rough with crinkled limpet shells and sparsely strewn with locks of dry seaweed, a small boy has to stretch his legs far apart, and indeed to feel rather heroic, before he gets ...
— Jacob's Room • Virginia Woolf
... indifference, by adopting the literal sense and Scriptural import of heresy, that is, wilful error, or belief originating in some perversion of the will; and of heretics, (for such there are, nay, even orthodox heretics), that is, men wilfully unconscious of their own wilfulness, in their limpet-like ...
— Coleridge's Literary Remains, Volume 4. • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... the outside, and the result of the search is a very remarkable collection of weapons, implements, ornaments, and figured stones." There is no description of the precise position of any of these relics in the ruins, with the exception of two upper stones of querns and a limpet shell having on its inner surface the presentation of a human face, which are stated to have been found in the interior of the fort. No objects of metal or fragments of pottery were discovered in course of the excavations, and of bone there were only two small pointed objects ...
— The Clyde Mystery - a Study in Forgeries and Folklore • Andrew Lang
... and at forty had turned his back upon the world, forswearing all its amusements but those of the table, which his poor digestion made more painful than pleasurable, all of its ambitions but those of getting money And all friendships but those of the captain, to whom he was attached like a limpet ...
— The Redemption of David Corson • Charles Frederic Goss
... in all these circumstances that Mrs. Shafto should cling as a limpet to Jane Tebbs, whom she had so often apostrophised as a "meddling, mischievous, malignant old cat," but Lucilla Shafto was suffering from a violent mental shock. The sudden descent, as it were in one day, from comfortable affluence ...
— The Road to Mandalay - A Tale of Burma • B. M. Croker
... From their prominent position the teeth of the male must also be used for grasping and levering or pulling steadfast limpets from rocks. They needs must be hard and have strength as well as science at the back of them, for a limpet can resist a pulling force of nearly 2000 times its own weight. The sutures of the jaws of the fish enable it to accommodate its grip to the various sizes of limpets, and to take a fair and square hold, while the lower jaw ...
— The Confessions of a Beachcomber • E J Banfield
... with full purpose of heart,' as the limpet does to the rock. Cling to Jesus Christ, the revelation of God's grace. And how do we cling to Him? What is the cement of souls? Love and trust; and whoever exercises these in reference to Jesus Christ is built into Him, and belongs to Him, and has a vital ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: The Acts • Alexander Maclaren
... him!" says Telson, who has also artfully squeezed himself into the front rank hard by; "besides, he's a Limpet, and Limpets have no right to ...
— The Willoughby Captains • Talbot Baines Reed
... Halichondria papillaris,—remarkable chiefly for its sharp siliceous spicula and its strong phosphoric smell; and the characteristic vegetable is the smooth-stemmed tangle, or queener. In yet another zone we find the common limpet and the vesicular kelp-weed; and the small gray balanus and serrated kelp-weed form the productions of the top. We may see exactly the same zones occurring in broad belts along the shore,—each zone indicative of a certain overlying depth of water; but it seems curious enough ...
— The Cruise of the Betsey • Hugh Miller
... gizzards of birds before the Egyptian women ground their corn between two stones; and the crushing teeth of the hyena make the best models we know of for hammers to break stones on the road. The tongue of certain shell fish—of the limpet, for instance—is full of siliceous spines which serve as rasp and drill; and knives and scissors were carried about in the mandibles and beaks of ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol 3 No 3, March 1863 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... Aufidius used to mix honey with strong Falernian injudiciously; because it is right to commit nothing to the empty veins, but what is emollient: you will, with more propriety, wash your stomach with soft mead. If your belly should be hard bound, the limpet and coarse cockles will remove obstructions, and leaves of the small sorrel; but not without Coan white wine. The increasing moons swell the lubricating shell-fish. But every sea is not productive of the exquisite sorts. The Lucrine muscle is better than the ...
— The Works of Horace • Horace
... pick limpets off a rock? If so, you know how tight they cling. the limpet clings to the rock just in the same way as this leather does to the stone; the little animal exhausts the air inside it's shell, and then it is pressed against the rock by the whole weight of the ...
— The Fairy-Land of Science • Arabella B. Buckley
... he braced himself for the final effort. The surface of the cliff here was loose, and the stones rattled continually from beneath his feet; but he clung like a limpet, nothing daunted, and at last his hands were gripped in the coarse grass that fringed the summit. Sheer depth was below him, and the inward-curving cliff offered no possibility ...
— The Rocks of Valpre • Ethel May Dell
... righteous anger, which may be lawfully indulged if the sun go not down upon it; and as he who shrinks from all fire of wrath lives but a vaporous life, so he who will never be moved is proud of a poor crustacean strength, like the limpet, winning darkness in exchange for dull stability. As for me, in the propitious hour when the heart longs for expansion, I give it honourable licence, and quicken its unfolding by spells of magical words. At such times I invoke the aid of passionate souls, not shrinking even from the ...
— Apologia Diffidentis • W. Compton Leith
... young and hungry tiger. At present, it was true, there was a billiard-table between them; but his lordship felt that he could have done with good, stout bars. He nestled in his seat with the earnest concentration of a limpet on a rock. It would be deuced bad form, of course, for Jimmy to assault his host, but could Jimmy be trusted to remember the ...
— The Intrusion of Jimmy • P. G. Wodehouse
... accommodation for teetotal amateur photographers or wistful wandering Sunday-school treats. As, unfortunately, the Queen's highway ran down in tortuous descent to the handful of fishermen's cottages that had clung there limpet-like for ages, there was always a chance of such a stray visitation; but it was remote, and the whole place, hand and heart, was in ...
— The Quest of the Golden Girl • Richard le Gallienne
... they had cashed their checks, "Seein' as how I've become independently wealthy by following your lead, Adelbert, all I got to say is that I'm a-goin' to stick to you like a limpet to a rock. What'll we do ...
— Captain Scraggs - or, The Green-Pea Pirates • Peter B. Kyne
... circled Chinatown in this way. Langford next dropped into a long, swinging stride and started up toward the railway tracks and out on to the high road of Coldcreek. Doggedly, limpet-like, Phil ...
— The Spoilers of the Valley • Robert Watson
... stained and weather-spoiled, the rock in some parts looking quite chalky, and elsewhere gleaming hard and dull like dirty marbles, while in the huge withdrawals of the coast yawn darksome gullies and caverns. Here, in that morning's walk, I saw three little hermit-crabs, a limpet, and two ninnycocks in a pool of weeds under a bearded rock. What astonished me here, and, indeed, above, and everywhere, in London even, and other towns, was the incredible number of birds that strewed the ground, at some points resembling ...
— The Purple Cloud • M.P. Shiel
... again and again to pry Pop out of Waupoos, but he clung to it like a limpet. He had had opportunities, too, to move his business to big cities, but he was afraid to venture. He was fairly sure of sustenance in Waupoos so long as he nursed every penny; but he could never find the courage to transplant himself ...
— In a Little Town • Rupert Hughes
... are walking at a brisk pace, their naked feet making no sound on the springy turf of the streets, carrying on their heads huge burdens which are usually crowned by the hat of the bearer, a large limpet-shaped affair made of palm leaves. While some carry these enormous bundles, others bear logs or planks of wood, blocks of building stone, vessels containing palm-oil, baskets of vegetables, or tin tea-trays on which are folded shawls. ...
— Travels in West Africa • Mary H. Kingsley
... he said. "When you are in the niches below me, it will hang close to your hands. If you are slipping, and feel you must clutch at something, catch hold of that. Only, if possible, shout first, and I will stick on like a limpet, and try to withstand the strain. But don't do it, ...
— The Mistress of Shenstone • Florence L. Barclay
... a limpet, Eddy. Thank Gord! you ain't dead after all." It's slow and it's sure and it's steady (Which is 'ard, for 'e's big and I'm small). The rockets are shootin' and shinin', It's rainin' a perishin' flood, ...
— Rhymes of a Red Cross Man • Robert W. Service
... shore is covered with smooth stones, and there you may find the Limpet in great numbers. Patella is the Latin name, but children call it Tent-Shell. Oval at the base, it slopes upward to a point a little ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 11, September, 1858 • Various
... small titular decoration that placed her more definitely for Imogen's eye than she had ever been placed before. The Pottses were middle-class with a vengeance. Imogen's irritation grew as she watched these limpet-like friends, one sprawling and ill-at-ease for all his careful languor, the other quite dreadfully well-mannered, sipping her tea, arching her brows and assuming all sorts of perilous elegancies of pronunciation that Imogen had never before heard her attempt. ...
— A Fountain Sealed • Anne Douglas Sedgwick |
