"Metamorphose" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... many lions and hyaenas, and there is no check upon the increase of the former, for the people, believing that the souls of their chiefs enter into them, never attempt to kill them; they even believe that a chief may metamorphose himself into a lion, kill any one he chooses, and then return to the human form; therefore, when they see one, they commence clapping their hands, which is the usual mode of salutation here. The consequence is, that lions and hyaenas are so abundant that we see little huts ...
— Missionary Travels and Researches in South Africa - Journeys and Researches in South Africa • David Livingstone
... the main mast, upon which appears a regular fore and aft suit of canvass, consisting of mainsail, gaff topsail, and gaff top-gallantsail, reducing the vessel to a square rig forward, and a plain fore and aft rig aft. A few minutes more, and the foremast passed through the same metamorphose, leaving the "Sea Witch" a three-masted schooner, with fore and aft sails on every mast and every stay. All this had been accomplished with a celerity that showed the crew to be no strangers to the manouvres through which they had just passed, each man requiring to work with marked intelligence. ...
— The Sea-Witch - or, The African Quadroon A Story of the Slave Coast • Maturin Murray
... sorte qu'il y a des bandes entieres, qui meriteroient plutot d'etre appelles bandes silicieuses, que marneuses; comme il y a, enfin, une grande quantite de pyrites, qu'ailleurs, il est tres probable qu'elle se serve la du meme moyen qu'ici pour operer la metamorphose en question. ...
— Theory of the Earth, Volume 1 (of 4) • James Hutton
... few hours had done much to metamorphose me, certes, they had done something for my fair friends also; anything more unlike what they appeared in the morning can scarcely be imagined. Matilda in black, with her hair in heavy madonna bands upon her fair ...
— Charles O'Malley, The Irish Dragoon, Volume 1 (of 2) • Charles Lever
... incongruity of these metaphors is thus noticed:—"Within the space of three or four couplets, he transforms a man into as many different animals. Allow him but the compass of three lines, and he will metamorphose him from a wolf into a harpy, and in three more he will make ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. II - With His Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore
... —a metamorphose greater, I suspect, than any to be found in Ovid, and a transmigration of soul far beyond those imagined by ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 32, June 8, 1850 • Various
... as these to disfigure or, it might rather be said, to metamorphose the object, render it necessary to take an accurate view of its real nature and form: in order as well to ascertain its true aspect and genuine appearance, as to unmask the disingenuity and expose the fallacy of the counterfeit resemblances which have been ...
— The Federalist Papers • Alexander Hamilton, John Jay, and James Madison
... beings in the sixth of the line, hoping to metamorphose them finally into generals,—barring those whom the bullets might take off. But the emperor's calculation was scarcely fulfilled, except in the matter of the bullets. This regiment, often decimated ...
— Juana • Honore de Balzac
... they are all grown into big, fat creatures ready for the market; later in the summer the axolotls are said to take to the rushes, in the autumn they become scarce, but none have ever been known to leave the water or to metamorphose, nor are any perfect Amblystomas found in the vicinity ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 1 - "Austria, Lower" to "Bacon" • Various
... less civilized than they were before. The moral and physical condition of these tribes continually grew worse, and they became more barbarous as they became more wretched. Nevertheless the Europeans have not been able to metamorphose the character of the Indians; and though they have had power to destroy them, they have never been able to make them submit to the rules ...
— American Institutions and Their Influence • Alexis de Tocqueville et al
... goldsmiths there must have been a whole army of lapidaries and gem-cutters occupied in the engraving of cylinders. Numerous and delicate operations were required to metamorphose a scrap of crude rock, marble, granite, agate, onyx, green and red jasper, crystal or lapis-lazuli, into one of those marvellous seals which are now found by the hundred scattered throughout the museums of Europe. They had to be rounded, reduced to the ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 3 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... the heterogeneity existing, or supposed to exist, between the nerve impression and the sensation. "However much we may follow the excitement through the whole length of the nerve," writes Lotze,[18] "or cause it to change its form a thousand times and to metamorphose itself into more and more delicate and subtle movements, we shall never succeed in showing that a movement thus produced can, by its very nature, cease to exist as movement and be reborn in the shape of sensation...." It will ...
— The Mind and the Brain - Being the Authorised Translation of L'me et le Corps • Alfred Binet
... dutifully she tied them on, a big brown cabbage above each ear. When she had scrambled into her checked gingham "sailor suit," all spick and span, Missy stood eying herself in the mirror for a wistful moment, wishing her tight braids might metamorphose into lovely, hanging curls like Kitty Allen's. They come often to a "strange child"—these moments of vague longing to overhear one's self termed a "pretty child"—especially on the eve ...
— Missy • Dana Gatlin
... exhibited a very criminal sort of compliance. Uther became desperately enamoured of Igerna, wife of the duke of Cornwal, and tried every means to seduce her in vain. Having consulted Merlin, the magician contrived by an extraordinary unguent to metamorphose Uther into the form of the duke. The duke had shut up his wife for safety in a very strong tower; but Uther in his new form gained unsuspected entrance; and the virtuous Igerna received him to her embraces, by means of which he begot ...
— Lives of the Necromancers • William Godwin
... as Turgot found out in 1775, when he had been transferred to a greater post, and the clergy had joined his bitterest enemies. Then he touched the corporate spirit, and perceived that for authority to lay a hand on ecclesiastical privilege is to metamorphose goodwill into the most rancorous malignity. Meanwhile, the letters in which Turgot explained his views and wishes to the cures, by them to be imparted to their parishes, are masterpieces of the care, the patience, the interest, of a good ruler. Those impetuous and peremptory spirits who see ...
— Critical Miscellanies (Vol. 2 of 3) - Turgot • John Morley
... the first thing I did was to metamorphose myself into a Frenchwoman. I cut off my hair, hid a very good complexion of my own with rouge, reconciled myself to powder, which I had never used before, put on a robe with a large hoop, and went to the Tuileries, full ...
— The Adventures of Peregrine Pickle, Volume I • Tobias Smollett
... out of Foston since I saw you. God send I may be still an animal, and not a vegetable! but I am a little uneasy at this season for sprouting and rural increase, for I fear I should have undergone the metamorphose so common in country livings. I shall go to town about the end of March; it will be completely empty, and the drugs that remain will be entirely occupied about hustings ...
— A Letter Book - Selected with an Introduction on the History and Art of Letter-Writing • George Saintsbury
... historical meaning, all national character, all psychological reality, were lost in the chaotic result. And meanwhile, in the absence of any stable language, of any durable literary fashion, the Middle Ages were unable to give to these epic stuffs, at any one period of their life of metamorphose, a form sufficiently artistically valuable to secure anything beyond momentary vogue, to secure for them the immortality of the great Greek tales of adventure and warfare and love. Thus it came about that the epic cycle of Charlemagne, after supplanting in men's minds the grand sagas of ...
— Euphorion - Being Studies of the Antique and the Mediaeval in the - Renaissance - Vol. II • Vernon Lee
... Rappelkopf's hatred of mankind knows no bounds; he remains deaf to the good king's remonstrances. At last the latter determines to make Rappelkopf see his behaviour in its true light. To this end he promises to metamorphose the misanthrope into the exact likeness of his own brother in law, in which form he is to return home on the following morning in order to test the real feelings of his ...
— The Standard Operaglass - Detailed Plots of One Hundred and Fifty-one Celebrated Operas • Charles Annesley
... Pasaconaway, who was seen by Gookin "at Pawtucket, when he was about one hundred and twenty years old." He was reputed a wise man and a powwow, and restrained his people from going to war with the English. They believed "that he could make water burn, rocks move, and trees dance, and metamorphose himself into a flaming man; that in winter he could raise a green leaf out of the ashes of a dry one, and produce a living snake from the skin of a dead one, and many similar miracles." In 1660, according to Gookin, at a great feast and dance, he made his farewell speech to his people, in ...
— A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers • Henry David Thoreau |
