"Owl" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... the profound. Thus saith the good practical man, who, because his mind is a congeries of commonplaces, piques himself on not being led away by his imagination. The owl prides himself on the incontestable fact that he is ...
— International Weekly Miscellany, Vol. 1, No. 5, July 29, 1850 • Various
... to see a owl cloce it has offle big eyes, and wen you come to feel it with your fingers, wich it bites, you fine it is mosely fethers, with only jus meat enuf to hole ...
— The Universal Reciter - 81 Choice Pieces of Rare Poetical Gems • Various
... bluebirds. In the woods there were mountain chickadees and nuthatches of various kinds, together with an occasional woodpecker. In the northern country we had come across a very few blue grouse and ruffed grouse, both as tame as possible. We had seen a pigmy owl no larger than a robin sitting on top of a pine in broad daylight, and uttering at short intervals a queer ...
— American Big Game in Its Haunts • Various
... held somethin' valerble," said Maum' Hepsey, looking like a solemn old owl, "else why should he ha' been so mighty pertickeler 'bout havin' it stored safe? Den, ag'in, he must ha' been killed, else why shouldn't he ha' come back for it? An' why should we let de things—whatever is in it—moulder away, instead o' gettin' de good ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 22, September, 1878 • Various
... presentment may be recognised and applauded. In FitzGerald's Letters there is a delightful story of a parrot who had one accomplishment—that of ruffling up his feathers and rolling his eyes so that he looked like an owl. When the other domestic pets were doing their tricks, the owner of the parrot, to prevent its feelings being hurt, used carefully to request it "to do its little owl." And the truth is that we most of us want to do our little owl. Stevenson said candidly that applause was the breath ...
— Escape and Other Essays • Arthur Christopher Benson
... in all his mien, Which would so captivate, I ween, Wisdom's own goddess Pallas; That she'd discard her fav'rite owl, And take for pet a brother fowl, Sagacious ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Vol. 7. - Poetry • George Gordon Byron
... looked back at the great black shadow which he knew was the Green Forest. Way over in the middle of it he heard the hunting-call of Hooty the Owl. Then he looked out over the Green Meadows, and from way over on the far side of them sounded the bark of Reddy Fox, and it was answered by the deep voice of Bowser the Hound up in Farmer Brown's dooryard. For some reason that last sound made Paddy the Beaver shiver ...
— The Adventures of Jerry Muskrat • Thornton W. Burgess
... own, were made. Maffitt, in command of the "Owl" crossed the Western Bar a night or two after the fall of Fort Fisher, and while our troops were evacuating Fort Caswell and other military stations along the river. Crossing the bar, and suspecting no danger, he continued on his way up to Smithville, where he anchored. ...
— The Narrative of a Blockade-Runner • John Wilkinson
... these engravings," said he, drawing forward some which indeed represented Italian ruins, grand and ivy mantled, where the owl might well assert her solitary domain. "He has two great advantages, an eye enlightened by travel, and a ...
— Ernest Linwood - or, The Inner Life of the Author • Caroline Lee Hentz
... valleys, and look down upon the tops of the oaks that grew beneath, and to watch the wind lifting the boughs all glittering in the moonlight; they looked like a sea of ruffled green water. It is very solemn, Lady Mary, to be in the woods by night, and to hear no sound but the cry of the great wood-owl, or the voice of the whip-poor-will, calling to his fellow from the tamarack swamp, or, may be, the timid bleating of a fawn that has lost its mother, or the ...
— In The Forest • Catharine Parr Traill
... it moaned softly past me, I fancied—nay, I felt sure I detected something that was not ordinary. I blew my nose, and had barely ceased marvelling at the loudness of its reverberations, before the piercing, ghoulish shriek of an owl sent the blood in torrents to my heart. I then laughed, and my blood froze as I heard a chorus, of what I tried to persuade myself could only be echoes, proceed from every crag and rock in the valley. For some seconds after this I sat still, hardly daring to breathe, ...
— Scottish Ghost Stories • Elliott O'Donnell
... says he, in his most Roman manner,—he never calls me Horatio unless about to treat me to the divine right of fathers,—'Horatio,' says he, 'you're old enough to marry.' 'Indeed, I greatly fear so, sir,' says I. 'Then,' says he, solemn as an owl, 'why not settle down here and marry?' Here he named a certain lovely person whom, 'twixt you and me, sir, I have long ago determined to marry, but, in my own time, be it understood. 'Sir,' said I, 'believe me I would ride over and ...
— The Amateur Gentleman • Jeffery Farnol et al
... well to borrow the Squire's old stuffed owl for a target; there would be some chance of your hitting him, he is so big," said his sister, who always made fun of the boy when he began ...
— Under the Lilacs • Louisa May Alcott
... or four small ones, but I am not 'lit' by a jugful! The idea! Drunk on four high-balls! Why, they just clear my brain—drive the fog out. Maybe it's the Scotch, maybe the soda. A fine combination, the high-ball. I am as stupid as an owl when I am cold sober, but when I drink, I soar! I feel like a lark with nothing between myself and the sun except a little fresh air and exercise. Oh, there's nothing the matter with me; any one can ...
— The Statesmen Snowbound • Robert Fitzgerald
... followed their owl in peacock's feathers," cried Buchan; "and being tired of the game, I, like the ...
— The Scottish Chiefs • Miss Jane Porter
... nor bit on him feeling, Flies ever; red drops o'er the victim are stealing: His whole body bleeds. Alas! to the wild horses foaming and champing That followed with mane erect, neighing and stamping, A crow-flight succeeds. The raven, the horn'd owl with eyes round and hollow, The osprey and eagle from battle-field ...
— Symphonies and Their Meaning; Third Series, Modern Symphonies • Philip H. Goepp
... these more open spaces, and to skirt the glades rather than to cross them. The breeze had freshened a little, and the whole air was filled with the rustle and sough of the leaves. Save for this dull never-ceasing sound all would have been silent had not the owl hooted sometimes from among the tree-tops, and the night-jar whirred above ...
— The Refugees • Arthur Conan Doyle
... him not too early, to clean his boots, go on errands into the town, and be always in the way till five o'clock. From that hour until about two in the morning Mr. Miles devoted to amusement, returning with his latch key, and often rousing the night owl and his servant with a bacchanalian or Anacreontic melody. In short, Mr. Miles was a loose fish; a bachelor who had recently inherited the fortune of an old screw his uncle, and was spending thrift in all the traditional modes. ...
— It Is Never Too Late to Mend • Charles Reade
... at our desire, The little clamorous owl shall sit Through her still time; and we aspire To make a law (and know not it) Unto the life of a ...
— Poems • Alice Meynell
... everywhere you can,' he called to her; 'tell me if you see a squirrel stirring, or the eyes of an owl looking ...
— The Dictator • Justin McCarthy
... saw two big eyes gleaming in the dark. They belonged to Mrs. Owl, and as Willie was only a little mouse he didn't know that Mrs. Owl had a special ...
— Willie Mouse • Alta Tabor
... Jack Carleton, he chuckled and gurgled with a noise like that of water running out of a bottle, while the main victim of all this merriment was as solemn as an owl. After rubbing and adjusting himself, as may be said, he turned slowly about and gazed inquiringly at his friends in the boat, as if puzzled to understand ...
— The Lost Trail - I • Edward S. Ellis
... it too well. It's a stencil. Only the outside of him does it. He's just as bad as you are; only he doesn't hold up a corner of the doorway all the evening, and beam vaguely in general, like a good-natured, dear old owl." ...
— The Gray Dawn • Stewart Edward White
... the noble dames who presided over it—solemn, inexperienced owl-like conventionalists who insisted on the last tittle and jot of order and procedure—was a joke to Berenice. She recognized the value of its social import, but even at fifteen and sixteen she was superior to it. She was superior to her superiors ...
— The Titan • Theodore Dreiser
... things, squirrels, and chipmunks, and weasels, chattering ground-hogs, thumping rabbits, and stealthy foxes, not to speak of a host of flying things, from the little gray-bird that twittered its happy nonsense all day, to the big-eyed owl that hooted solemnly when the moon came out. A wonderful place this forest, for children to live in, to know, and to love, and in ...
— Glengarry Schooldays • Ralph Connor
... to see his odd ways. It might amuse Mrs. Patmore and the children. They'd have more sense than he! He'd be like a Fool kept in the family, to keep the household in good humour with their own understanding. You might teach him the mad dance set to the mad howl. Madge Owl-et would be nothing to him. "My, how he capers!" [In the margin is written:] One of the ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb (Vol. 6) - Letters 1821-1842 • Charles and Mary Lamb
... do is to arrest Hade with the warrant he has for the burglar," explained Gallegher; "and to take him on to New York on the owl train that passes Torresdale at one. It don't get to Jersey City until four o'clock, one hour after the morning papers go to press. Of course, we must fix Hefflefinger so's he'll keep quiet and not tell ...
— Gallegher and Other Stories • Richard Harding Davis
... smaller kind. I have always found them seated in holes in the rocks, or in shady dells, and have never seen them fly in the daytime unless compelled by fear; they are very stupid when disturbed, and in flight and manner closely resemble the common English owl. I cannot however recollect having ever seen one on the ...
— Journals Of Two Expeditions Of Discovery In North-West And Western Australia, Vol. 1 (of 2) • George Grey
... cheerful sunshine, sighed through the rents in the tottering walls, and amid the branches of the solitary, crooked pine-tree, which bent its riven head over the building, its distorted limbs creaking and groaning as they swayed to and fro; while an owl shrieked his twit-to-hoo to the departing sun, as he prepared to go abroad with other creatures of the night in search of prey; and cold grey twilight covered the mountain-side. There still sat the lone ...
— Mountain Moggy - The Stoning of the Witch • William H. G. Kingston
... woods; but their gloom was more intense, and the very birds seemed to grow sad with her melancholy musings. Their song, that used to be so sprightly, was now subdued and mournful, and all their gay and bubbling hilarity was gone. If she wandered forth towards evening, the owl hooted in her path, and the raven croaked above her. She heard not the light matin of the lark. Fancy, stimulated alone by gloomy impressions, laid hold on them only, failing to recognise ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 1 (of 2) • John Roby
... a final good night and went below, and Ruby, who could not persuade himself that it was final, continued to walk the deck until his eyes began to shut and open involuntarily like those of a sick owl. Then he also went below, and, before he fell quite asleep (according to his own impression), was awakened by the bell that called the men to land on the rock and ...
— The Lighthouse • R.M. Ballantyne
... walked to the farther edge of the meadow before he stopped, and Al Woodruff never turned his back to a foe. An owl hooted unexpectedly, and Lorraine edged closer to her captor, who was gathering dead branches one by one and throwing them toward a certain spot which he had evidently selected for a campfire. He looked at her ...
— Sawtooth Ranch • B. M. Bower
... full justice to the chronology of bird biography, and gives ample dates as to their coming and going, nesting and hatching. But as to their geographical distribution the information is scanty, and not always quite reliable. Thus the snowy-owl is described (p. 78) as occurring "principally on the sea-coast," whereas it is tolerably abundant in the very heart of Massachusetts, Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, etc.; the snow-bird is described as nesting in the White Mountains (p. 314), while the more remarkable fact that it nests on ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 122, December, 1867 • Various
... that young woman's—I can't say thumb, but say her big toe. So if he does wot he does about you, it's through me, and he'll sit innercent like by the fire twiddlin' of his thumbs, and talkin' of the weather. Master would be crafty as an old fox if he weren't stupid as an owl. I can't think how he can have allowed himself to get so much into Polly's power. It is so; and when he wants to do a thing without her knowin', he has to do it underhand ways. Well, he thort if he let our 'oss and trap go, as ...
— The Broom-Squire • S. (Sabine) Baring-Gould
... the distant howling of dogs in Catharines-town; and presently the great forest owls woke up, yelping like goblins across the misty intervale. Strangely enough, the dulled pandemonium, joined in by dog and owl and drum and chanting savages, made but a single wild and melancholy monotone seeming to suit the time and place as though it were the voice of this ...
— The Hidden Children • Robert W. Chambers
... of mine, in whom I am interested, and who perhaps lends me his support after his kind, is a little red owl, whose retreat is in the heart of an old apple-tree just over the fence. Where he keeps himself in spring and summer, I do not know, but late every fall, and at intervals all winter, his hiding-place is discovered by the jays and ...
— A Year in the Fields • John Burroughs
... remains under control," he replied, grimly; "therefore I am in a position to inform you that you did hear the fluttering of wings. An owl has just flown into one of the trees immediately outside ...
— Bat Wing • Sax Rohmer
... on those cushions?" she asked one morning when we were out in her boat. "You ought to be dozing half the day—and instead you're as wide awake as an owl." ...
— The Harbor • Ernest Poole
... parrot group has developed some of its strangest and most abnormal offshoots. One would imagine beforehand that no two birds could be more unlike in every respect than the gaudy, noisy, gregarious cockatoos and the sombre, nocturnal, solitary owls. Yet the New Zealand owl-parrot is, to put it plainly, a lory which has assumed all the outer appearance and habits of an owl. A lurker in the twilight or under the shades of night, burrowing for its nest in holes in the ground, it has dingy brown plumage like the owls, with an undertone of green ...
— Science in Arcady • Grant Allen
... old beggar," shouted Lawless, "don't stand there winking and blinking like an owl; pull away like bricks, or I'll break your neck for you; go to work, I say!" and the miserable sexton, with a mute gesture of despair, resuming his occupation, a peal of four bells was soon ringing bravely out over hill and dale, and making "night horrible" to the startled ...
— Frank Fairlegh - Scenes From The Life Of A Private Pupil • Frank E. Smedley
... as dark as a summer midnight. Small and continuous sounds came floating up from the city beyond. Immediately below he heard the occasional voices of students passing on the stone walk, and from the meadows on the west came the melancholy hoot of an owl. ...
— The Mayor of Warwick • Herbert M. Hopkins
... From human pastures; or, O torturing fact! Who, through an idiot blink, will see unpack'd Fire-branded foxes to sear up and singe Our gold and ripe-ear'd hopes. With not one tinge Of sanctuary splendour, not a sight Able to face an owl's, they still are dight By the blue-eyed nations in empurpled vests, And crowns, and turbans. With unladen breasts, Save of blown self-applause, they proudly mount To their spirit's perch, their being's high account, Their tiptop nothings, their ...
— Famous Reviews • Editor: R. Brimley Johnson
... covering its face with its brush, and keeping only its quick, vigilant eye fixed upon the invaders of its repose. 'Come to the fire if ye will!' said she, turning to Glaucus and his companions. 'I never welcome living thing—save the owl, the fox, the toad, and the viper—so I cannot welcome ye; but come to the fire without ...
— The Last Days of Pompeii • Edward George Bulwer-Lytton
... request and appointing a select committee of seventeen members to consider the matter. They called Bradlaugh before them and interrogated him at length as to his belief in a Supreme Being and a life after death. Then they voted, and the ballot stood eight to eight. The chairman, a large white barn-owl, gave the casting vote, declining to accept the affirmation. The matter was reported to the House, and the action duly confirmed. Bradlaugh then, on advice of Labouchere, notified the House that he was willing to accept the regulation oath, ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 9 - Subtitle: Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Reformers • Elbert Hubbard
... of hell: But ye are glorious ghastly sprites, What ho! our page! Sir knave—lights, lights, The final pipes are to be lit: Sit, gentlemen, we charge ye sit Until the cock affrays the night And heralds in the limping morn, And makes the owl and raven flit; Until the jolly moon is white, And till the stars and moon ...
— The Germ - Thoughts towards Nature in Poetry, Literature and Art • Various
... left the fire, advanced to the far end of the cellar, and imitated the cry of a screech owl to perfection. There was a ...
— Messengers of Evil - Being a Further Account of the Lures and Devices of Fantomas • Pierre Souvestre
... were of the same mind as he. They acted as if they would rather make the nights ring with their music than do anything else. And Johnnie Green said one evening, when he heard Solomon Owl hooting over in the hemlock woods, that it was lucky there weren't as many Owls as there ...
— The Tale of Chirpy Cricket • Arthur Scott Bailey
... part, some station is assigned The feathered race with pinions skim the air; Not so the mackerel, and still less the bear.... Ah! who has seen the mailed lobster rise, Clap her broad wings, and soaring claim the skies? When did the owl, descending from her bower, Crop, midst the fleecy flocks the tender flower; Or the young heifer plunge, with pliant limb, In the salt wave, and fish-like strive to swim? The same with plants—potatoes 'tatoes breed— Uncostly cabbage springs from ...
— History of English Humour, Vol. 2 (of 2) • Alfred Guy Kingan L'Estrange
... all they loved to lie up in the airy wooden belfry; the great gaping bell hanging darkly above them, the mouldering cross-beams glimmering far up under the dim shadows of the roof, where dwelt a great brown owl that, unfrightened at their familiar presence, stared down at them with his round, solemn eyes. Below them stretched the white walls of the garden, beyond them the vineyard, and beyond that again the far shining river, that ...
— Otto of the Silver Hand • Howard Pyle
... and whiter than in France, and their cry is much more frightful. The Little Owl is the same with ours, but much more rare. These two birds are more common in Lower Louisiana than ...
— History of Louisisana • Le Page Du Pratz
... hours before help came to us. I stood watching and listening. It was a calm, sweet April night; there were no sounds but a few low notes of a nightingale, and nothing moved but the white clouds near the moon and a brown owl that flitted over the hedge. It made me think of the summer nights long ago, when I used to lie beside my mother in the green ...
— Black Beauty • Anna Sewell
... attended to, especially in new settlements, and those are generally the best off for a "sugar-bush;" but it occurs at that season when the last of the winter work must be done—the snow begins to melt on the roads, and the "saw whet," a small bird of the owl species, makes its appearance, and tells us, as the natives say, that "the heart of the winter is broken." All that can be done now must be done to lessen the toils of that season now approaching, from which the ...
— Sketches And Tales Illustrative Of Life In The Backwoods Of New Brunswick • Mrs. F. Beavan
... about the oldest soldier in the regiment; that he served in the First Dragoons when they were in Arizona twenty years ago, and that he gets drunk as a boiled owl every pay-day," was ...
— Starlight Ranch - and Other Stories of Army Life on the Frontier • Charles King
... of the silent juryman opened with the slow and solemn dilation of the eyes of an owl. Placed between the alternatives of declaring himself in one word or in two, his taciturn wisdom chose the shortest form of speech. "Guilty," he answered—and shut his eyes again, as if he had ...
— The Evil Genius • Wilkie Collins
... God in nature. I found her one evening on her knees in a cluster of bushes. Having discovered something red through the leaves, I brushed aside the branches, and Miss Harriet at once rose to her feet, confused at having been found thus, fixing on me terrified eyes like those of an owl ...
— Maupassant Original Short Stories (180), Complete • Guy de Maupassant
... answered, through the medium of a sooty animal at her helm, that she was (like our universities) "satisfied with her own progress"; she added, being under intoxication, "that, if any danger existed, her scheme was to drown it in the bo-o-owl;" and two days afterward he saw her puffing and panting, and fiercely dragging a gigantic three-decker out into deep water, like an industrious flea ...
— Christie Johnstone • Charles Reade
... lights twinkled in the huts at the foot of the hill; the frozen river made no sound beneath the castle wall. Cattle and sheep were snug and safe in the byres, guarded by the wise watch-dogs. Very far away in the woods an owl hooted. ...
— Masters of the Guild • L. Lamprey
... gay birds that e'er I did see, The owl is the fairest by far to me; For all the day long she sits on a tree, And when the ...
— The Little Mother Goose • Anonymous
... attended to his patients, and was returning along the old corduroy road, the night had long fallen. The bird chorus of the swamp had died away, and only the sweet note of the little screech-owl awoke the echoes of the dark woods. Now and then a gleam of spectral light through the trees showed where lay the waters of the Drowned Lands. The young man tramped moodily along the pathway, following the strip of pale sky between the black lines of trees. He was thinking of Martin's ...
— Treasure Valley • Marian Keith
... does just as well for them as another: your cousin Sophy bothers me to build an Elizabethan pigsty, and wanted her poor mother to dance with the butler in the servants' hall last Christmas, when the fellow was as drunk as an owl: I hope it mayn't end in her figuring off herself with the footman; for Sophy is rather a pet of mine, and a right-down English girl after all. But, Frank, if you can't read in peace in the library, you surely could have a room fitted up for yourself up stairs; ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 349, November, 1844 • Various
... of woodland that the first Hewishes had planted, a darkness unvisited by moonlight, where their feet rustled a carpet of dead leaves, and shy, nocturnal creatures made another rustling beside them. At the edge of the wood a bird flew out of a thorn tree. "It's a brown owl," cried Radway; but when its wings caught the moonlight they saw the band of white. "It's a magpie," she said. "One for sorrow ...
— The Tragic Bride • Francis Brett Young
... dear and mossy as they were,—swept down, like cobwebs, before the flame-besom. 'Fuit Ilium!' The old bell will never again ring out the gay 'larums of a 'Third Entry' barring-out. Homer's head no longer perches owl-like and wise over the central door-way. 'Ai, Adonai!' No more wilt proud fingers point to the spot whereat entered—not like 'Casca's envious dagger'—that well-aimed cannon-ball which pierced the picture-gallery, punched ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 32, June, 1860 • Various
... bound to say, would have guessed it. With his long scrag neck and great moons of spectacles, which he had now drawn down, the better to study me, he suggested an absurd combination of the vulture and the owl. ...
— The White Wolf and Other Fireside Tales • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... of my eyes," answered she, "dost thou not know that I am married to my cousin, and that I hate to look upon him and abhor myself in his company. Did I not fear for thy sake, I would not let the sun rise again till his city was a heap of ruins wherein the owl and the raven should hoot and wolves and foxes harbour; and I would transport its stones behind the mountain Caf."[FN23] "Thou liest, O accursed one!" said the black, "and I swear by the valour of the blacks (else may our manhood be ...
— The Book Of The Thousand Nights And One Night, Volume I • Anonymous
... his way out, Peter began to hear strange sounds. Strangest of all, and most fearsome, was a hissing that came and went, sometimes very near to him, and always accompanied by a grating noise that curdled his blood. Twice after that he saw the shadow of the great owl as it swooped over him, and he flattened himself down, the knot in his throat growing bigger and more choking. And then he heard the soft and uncanny movement of huge feathered bodies in the thick shroud of boughs overhead, and slowly and cautiously he wormed himself around, determined to ...
— The Country Beyond - A Romance of the Wilderness • James Oliver Curwood
... plains, and rocks, Speed the sacred leveret and rapacious fox; On rapid pinions cleave the fields above, The hawk descending, and escaping dove; With nicer nostril track the tainted ground, The hungry vulture, and the prowling hound; Converge reflected light with nicer eye, The midnight owl, and ...
— Lives of the English Poets - From Johnson to Kirke White, Designed as a Continuation of - Johnson's Lives • Henry Francis Cary
... against the night-sky, rose the quaint, ponderous, but broken walls of the ancient stronghold, where an owl hooted weirdly in the ivy, and where the whispering of the waters rose from the ...
— The House of Whispers • William Le Queux
... subject for description, topography, natural features of things and places, manners, races, battles, your commander himself—what themes for your pen! I will gladly, as you request, assist you in the points you mention, and will send you the verses you ask for, that is, "An owl to Athens."[618] But, look you! I think you are keeping me in the dark. Tell me, my dear brother, what Caesar thinks of my verses. For he wrote before to tell me he had read my first book. Of the first part, he said that he had never read anything better even in Greek: the ...
— The Letters of Cicero, Volume 1 - The Whole Extant Correspodence in Chronological Order • Marcus Tullius Cicero
... the solemn hoot of a distant owl was heard. One of the men holding the rope dropped it, and ...
— Raiding with Morgan • Byron A. Dunn
... little trembling hare, which the dread of all her numerous enemies, and chiefly of that cunning, cruel, carnivorous animal, man, had confined all the day to her lurking-place, sports wantonly o'er the lawns; now on some hollow tree the owl, shrill chorister of the night, hoots forth notes which might charm the ears of some modern connoisseurs in music; now, in the imagination of the half-drunk clown, as he staggers through the churchyard, or rather charnelyard, to his home, fear paints the bloody hobgoblin; ...
— The History of Tom Jones, a foundling • Henry Fielding
... and the clamour of the owl were not the cause of Rachel's wakefulness; but they tended to make it more feverish and irritable. Every now and then she would throw off the bed-clothes, and sit up with her hands round her knees, a white and rigid figure lit by the solitary candle beside her. ...
— Harvest • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... hardiest warrior with his nerves of iron, have been found dead in their beds, with straining eyeballs and horrent hair, at the first step of the Dread Progress,—thinkest thou that this weak woman—from whose cheek a sound at the window, the screech of the night-owl, the sight of a drop of blood on a man's sword, would start the colour—could brave one glance of—Away! the very thought of such sights for her makes ...
— Zanoni • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... dog died moaning in the wrath Of winds that blew aloof; The weeds were in the gravel path, The owl was on ...
— The Devil's Dictionary • Ambrose Bierce
... says, "like the Star, and procure the light of the Sages, and hide yourself from the Stupid Profane and the Ambitious, and be like the Owl, which sees only by night, and hides ...
— Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry • Albert Pike
... the more than Stygian night Descends with slow and owl-like flight, Silent as Death (who comes—we know— Unheard, unknown of all below;) Above that dark and desolate wave, The reflex of the eternal grave— Gigantic birds with flaming eyes Sweep upward, ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII. No. 3. March 1848 • Various
... The walls where hung the warrior's shining casque Are green with moss and mould; The blindworm coils where Queens have slept, nor asks For shelter from the cold. The swallow,—he is master all the day, And the great owl is ruler through the night; The little bat wheels on his circling way, With restless flittering flight; And that small bat, and the creeping things, At will they come and go, And the soft white owl with velvet wings, ...
— Brittany & Its Byways • Fanny Bury Palliser
... heighten her alarm. Scared most probably by the storm, a large white owl fluttered down the chimney, and after wheeling twice or thrice round the chamber, settled upon the bed, hooting, puffing, ruffling its feathers, and glaring at her with eyes that glowed ...
— The Lancashire Witches - A Romance of Pendle Forest • William Harrison Ainsworth
... sir, so I was—drunk as an owl on gruel, damned slimy apothecaries' gruel. But I was the better of it, sir, and got well in a week, while Cornwallis had rash and erysipelas and all manner of trouble, because he did not do as his doctor told him! ...
— Patsy • S. R. Crockett
... the spots where to bore the holes for the blasting powder that should scatter it to the winds, and let death and destruction, and the wild sea howling in upon Scaurnose, that the cormorant and the bittern might possess it, the owl and the raven dwell in it? But it would be seen what their husbands and fathers would say to it when they came home! In the meantime they must themselves do what they could. What were they men's wives for, if not to act for their husbands when ...
— The Marquis of Lossie • George MacDonald
... they stand there, while in the moonlight pale Their rifle barrels and polished bayonets gleam; Nought is heard but the owl's low, plaintive wail, And the soft musical voice ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. III, No. V, May, 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... would have resulted to him individually, if not to the world at large, from the discovery? It seems to me quite incredible that any man of common understanding could have discovered what Mr. Kissam says he did, and yet have subsequently acted so like a baby—so like an owl—as Mr. Kissam admits that he did. By-the-way, who is Mr. Kissam? and is not the whole paragraph in the 'Courier and Enquirer' a fabrication got up to 'make a talk'? It must be confessed that it has an amazingly moon-hoaxy-air. Very little dependence is to be placed upon it, in my humble ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 2 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... both officers and men appeared to Lord Cochrane more willing to talk than to fight. His presence among them, however, stirred up a new and fitful enthusiasm. On this occasion he brought with him a large blue and white flag, with an owl, the national emblem of Greece, painted on the centre, which had been conveyed from Marseilles. The flag was unfurled in the presence of seven thousand Greek soldiers, within sight of the Turkish camp. Through his interpreter, Lord Cochrane ...
— The Life of Thomas, Lord Cochrane, Tenth Earl of Dundonald, Vol. II • Thomas Lord Cochrane
... through the blue spaces of a white-clouded sky and the moon would be coming by and by. In the garden the flowers were dim, quiet and restful. A kingfisher screamed from the river. An owl hooted in the woods and crickets chirped about them, but every passing sound seemed only to accentuate the stillness in which they were engulfed. Close together they sat on the old porch and she made him tell of everything that had happened since she left the mountains, ...
— The Trail of the Lonesome Pine • John Fox, Jr.
... thy pipes Till they be weary: I will laugh, ho, ho, hoh! And make me merry. Make a ring on this grass With your quick measures: Tom shall play, I will sing For all your pleasures. The moon shines fair and bright, And the owl hollos, Mortals now take their rests Upon their pillows: The bat's abroad likewise, And the night-raven, Which doth use for to call Men to Death's haven. Now the mice peep abroad, And the cats take them, Now do young wenches sleep, Till their dreams ...
— The Sources and Analogues of 'A Midsummer-night's Dream' • Compiled by Frank Sidgwick
... shout rang through all the windows at once. It was followed by a blood-hound-like bay from Sir Christopher, a maniacal prestissimo on the organ, and loud cries, for Jimmy. But Jimmy, at my side, rolled his congested eyeballs, owl-wise. ...
— Actions and Reactions • Rudyard Kipling
... good! Would you dare to go up to that old owl's-nest Upsala and tell its learned men that the Pope is not God and that he has ...
— Master Olof - A Drama in Five Acts • August Strindberg
... continued Rednose, availing himself of the force of emphatic repetition, "is a fool! He is a child! He knows nothing! He comes across the great salt lake from the rising sun, with the air and aspect of an owl, thinking to teach us—the ...
— The Buffalo Runners - A Tale of the Red River Plains • R.M. Ballantyne
... you have frightened me!" said Ludovicka, repulsing her almost rudely. "I was asleep here, dreaming such sweet dreams, and all at once you have come and waked me, you little night owl. Go, go to bed, Louisa, and do not be so timid, child. No robbers and murderers come here, and in our castle you need ...
— The Youth of the Great Elector • L. Muhlbach
... inviolate. None ever found me out in it, except, once, a squirrel. I brought thither no guest, because, after Hollingsworth failed me, there was no longer the man alive with whom I could think of sharing all. So there I used to sit, owl-like, yet not without liberal and hospitable thoughts. I counted the innumerable clusters of my vine, and fore-reckoned the abundance of my vintage. It gladdened me to anticipate the surprise of the Community, when, like an allegorical figure of rich October, I should make my ...
— The Blithedale Romance • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... yards from where his mother lay. He had helped to tear many dead and dying rabbits into pieces. He believed, if he thought upon the matter at all, that he was exceedingly fierce and courageous. But it was his ninth week before he felt his spurs and fought his terrible battle with the young owl in the edge ...
— Baree, Son of Kazan • James Oliver Curwood
... touched her hands, her face, and moved on. One of the countless birds fluttered low, as if frightened at the advancing dark, brushed her cheek, then winged on and up and was lost in the tree above her. Somewhere deep in the gloom shrouding the little graveyard came the ghostly flutter of an owl. ...
— Rose O'Paradise • Grace Miller White
... so huge that no horse could carry him, and he wore a whole wagon-load of weapons. His armor was pitch-black except his shield, which was blood-red and had a white owl painted upon it. He was a fearsome sight to look upon, and as he strode along shaking his spear every ...
— Young Folks Treasury, Volume 2 (of 12) • Various
... year, two young fellows, named Martin and Weesel, both belonging to the village, were shot by his keepers, Martin in the leg and Weesel in the back, because they were found near a rabbit-warren at a suspicious hour in the evening; and an old fellow, whom they called Horny Owl, was so severely beaten on the head by one of the Baronet's men, that he only lived two days afterwards. Old Horny was concealed in the trunk of a hollow oak, and was found there with no less than three young ...
— Comical People • Unknown
... steps down, and notice the immense thickness of the walls, the old beams across the ceiling, the staircases as steep as ladders, and the attics, with their deep, tent-like roofs, in which swallows bred, and once a white owl. But nothing very interesting or very beautiful had resulted from the different additions made by the ...
— Night and Day • Virginia Woolf
... authority, "which was of an oblong and rather unusual shape, was said to be of such strength, that he could strike it with ease through the panel of a door, or the end of a barrel. His laugh is said to have been quite horrible; and his screech-owl voice, shrill, uncouth, and dissonant, corresponded well with ...
— The Black Dwarf • Sir Walter Scott
... the repairs they subject him to, in the leakages continually occurring, against which last, either of wind or rain, it is almost impossible to guard. And what, let us ask, are the benefits of a parcel of needless gables and peaked windows, running up like owl's ears, above the eaves of a house, except to create expense, and invite leakage and decay? If in appearance, they provoke an association of that kind, they certainly are not in good taste; and a foot or two of increased height in a wall, or a low window sufficient for ...
— Rural Architecture - Being a Complete Description of Farm Houses, Cottages, and Out Buildings • Lewis Falley Allen
... earth smelled sweetly: the whole habitation was asleep now, and there was no sound to be known as the sound of any creature, save that from the distant meadow came the lowing of a cow that had lost her calf, and that a white owl was flitting about near the eaves of the Roof with her wild cry that sounded like the mocking of merriment now silent. Thiodolf turned toward the wood, and walked steadily through the scattered hazel-trees, and thereby into the thick of the beech-trees, whose boles grew smooth ...
— Reviews • Oscar Wilde
... I had seen it on first arriving, save that now a clear moonlight rested on it, instead of the doubtful twilight. The ivy was black against the white light, the empty doorway yawned like a toothless mouth, and the round eye above looked blindness on us. As I gazed, a white owl came from within, and blinked at us over the curve. Yvon started, thinking it a spirit, perhaps; but I laughed, and taking off my hat, ...
— Rosin the Beau • Laura Elizabeth Howe Richards
... match-sticks, with pink ends. Drop one into the water, it instantly unrolls and expands into the likeness of a lotus-flower. Another transforms itself into a fish. A third becomes a boat. A fourth changes to an owl. A fifth becomes a tea- plant, covered with leaves and blossoms. . . . So delicate are these things that, once immersed, you cannot handle them without breaking them. They are ...
— Glimpses of an Unfamiliar Japan - First Series • Lafcadio Hearn
... upon the right track. On again for two hours in darkness often it was so dark that it was only by giving the horse his head that he was able to smell out the hoofs of his comrades in the partially covered grass of frozen swamp and moorland. No living thing stirred, save now and then a prairie owl flitting through the gloom added to the sombre desolation of the scene. At last the trail turned suddenly towards a deep ravine to the left. Riding to the edge of this ravine, the welcome glare of a fire glittering through a thick screen of bushes struck my eye. The guide had hopelessly ...
— The Great Lone Land - A Narrative of Travel and Adventure in the North-West of America • W. F. Butler |
