"Peacock" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... you have thus suddenly turned the peacock! You do not deceive me! You have arrayed yourself thus for ...
— When Dreams Come True • Ritter Brown
... Look! there's a fellow!" cried the young sparrows, as the old one approached the nest. "That, for certain, is a young peacock; all sorts of colors are playing in his feathers: it quite hurts one's eyes to look at him, just as our mother told us. Chirp! chirp! That is the beautiful!" And now they began pecking at the bird with their little beaks, so that it was quite impossible ...
— A Christmas Greeting • Hans Christian Andersen
... blue checked pinafore, to which his eyes were accustomed, the little figure was clad in a robe of dark green velvet with a long train, which spread out on the staircase behind her, very much like the train of a peacock. The body, made for a grown woman, hung back loosely from her shoulders, but she had tied a scarf of gold tissue under her arms and round her waist, while from the long hanging sleeves her arms shone round and white as sculptured ...
— Captain January • Laura E. Richards
... of the Serpentine towards the north, a wide slope of grass and trees above the water has been fenced off for the benefit of the Peacock family, and these are objects of great interest to admirers of all ages. The males come in for most attention, owing to their beauty. It is a very droll sight to see Mr. Peacock, with gorgeous tail and crest fully outspread, his richly coloured ...
— Chatterbox, 1905. • Various
... time before his decease; it is in an exceedingly rare little volume, including his poems of "One thing needful" and his "Ebal and Gerizzim"; with "a catlogue of all his other books." London: printed for Nath, Ponder, at the Peacock in the Poultry, 1688. On the reverse of the title is a singular advertisement; "This author having published many books, which have gone off very well, there are certain ballad sellers about Newgate, and on London Bridge, who have put the two first letters of ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... for thy loss, the herd of deer Forget to browse; the peacock on the lawn Ceases its dance[67]; the very trees around Shed their pale leaves, like tears, ...
— Sakoontala or The Lost Ring - An Indian Drama • Kalidasa
... hues the peacock's plumes adorn, Yet horror screams from his discordant throat. Rise, sons of harmony, and hail the morn, While warbling larks on russet pinions float; Or seek at noon the woodland scene remote, Where ...
— English Poets of the Eighteenth Century • Selected and Edited with an Introduction by Ernest Bernbaum
... one alighted,—a little grey thing wearing a pair of peacock-tinted diamonds on its forewings; and as it sat there, quivering, the iridescent incrustations changed from burnished ...
— Athalie • Robert W. Chambers
... the folds of her dress trailing over the dewy grass, and a flickering halo of sunlight tremulous upon her diadem of golden hair! Sometimes she wore a coquettish little hat, with a turned-up brim and a peacock's plume; sometimes a broad-leaved hat of yellow straw, with floating ribbon and a bunch of feathery grasses perched bewitchingly upon the brim. She had the dog Pluto with her always, and generally a volume of some new novel under her arm. I am ashamed to be obliged to confess that this young heiress ...
— Henry Dunbar - A Novel • M. E. Braddon
... don't go back till I get him—not if I stay here a week," he declared, with jocular savagery. "Took half my leader and my pet fly—I got him with a peacock-bodied gray hackle that I revised to suit my own notions—and, by the great immortal Jehosaphat, he looked like a whale when he jumped up clear of the riffle, turned over, and—" His flabby, white hand made ...
— Good Indian • B. M. Bower
... of the boom times of silver mining, she seemed prettier than ever to Robert Fairchild, more girlish, more entrancing. The big eyes appeared bigger now, peeping from the confines of a poke bonnet; the little hands seemed smaller with their half-length gloves and shielded by the enormous peacock feather fan they carried. Only a moment Fairchild hesitated. Maurice Rodaine, attired in a mauve frock suit and the inevitable accompanying beaver, had stopped to talk to some one at the door. She stood alone, looking about the hall, laughing and nodding,—and ...
— The Cross-Cut • Courtney Ryley Cooper
... could not be true; but when I came to the birds, I found those which frequented the island so correctly described, that I had no longer any doubt on the subject. Perhaps what interested me most were the plates in which the barn-door fowls and the peacock were described, as in the background of the first were a cottage and figures, representing the rural scenery of England, my own country; and in the second there was a splendid mansion, and a carriage and four horses driving up to the door. In short, it is impossible to convey to the reader ...
— The Little Savage • Captain Marryat
... hedge broke in, the banner blew, The butler drank, the steward scrawl'd, The fire shot up, the martin flew, The parrot scream'd, the peacock squall'd, The maid and page renew'd their strife, The palace bang'd and buzz'd and clackt, And all the long pent stream of life ...
— The Children's Garland from the Best Poets • Various
... peacock[25] to the queen of heaven Complain'd in some such words:— 'Great goddess, you have given To me, the laughing-stock of birds, A voice which fills, by taste quite just, All nature with disgust; Whereas that little paltry thing, The nightingale, pours from her throat ...
— The Fables of La Fontaine - A New Edition, With Notes • Jean de La Fontaine
... I-turn-the-crank-of-the-Universe air And a tone which, at least to my fancy, appears Not so much to be entering as boxing your ears, Is unfolding a tale (of herself, I surmise, 1210 For 'tis dotted as thick as a peacock's with I's), Apropos of Miranda, I'll rest on my oars And drift through a trifling digression on bores, For, though not wearing ear-rings in more majorum, Our ears are kept bored just as if we still wore ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell • James Lowell
... male retaining all his natural ornaments.") Nevertheless I am still inclined from many facts strongly to believe that the beauty of the male bird determines the choice of the female with wild birds, however it may be under domestication. Sir R. Heron has described how one pied peacock was extra attentive to the hens. This is a subject which I must take up as soon as my ...
— More Letters of Charles Darwin Volume II - Volume II (of II) • Charles Darwin
... migrated to Nantgwilt in Wales. Here the Shelleys contemplated receiving Godwin and his family, Miss Hitchener with her American pupils; and why not Miss Hitchener's father, reported to have been an old smuggler? Here Shelley first met Thomas Love Peacock. They were unable to remain at Nantgwilt owing to various mishaps, and migrated to that terrestrial paradise in North Devon, Lynmouth. This lovely place, with its beautiful and romantic surroundings loved and exquisitely described ...
— Mrs. Shelley • Lucy M. Rossetti
... intensity of the light of the great stars decrease in the following manner: Sirius, Canopus, a Centauri, Acherner, b Centauri, Fomalhaut, Rigel, Procyon, Betelgueuse, e of the Great Dog, d of the Great Dog, a of the Crane, a of the Peacock. These experiments will become more interesting when travellers shall have determined anew, at intervals of forty or fifty years, some of those changes which the celestial bodies seem to undergo, either at their surface or with respect to their distances ...
— Equinoctial Regions of America • Alexander von Humboldt
... coming briskly along the terrace and down the steps that led from the house. Miss Corbet was dressed with what she herself would have said was a milkmaid's plainness; but Isabel looked in astonishment at the elaborate ruff and wings of muslin and lace, the shining peacock gown, the high-piled coils of black hair, and the twinkling buckled feet. She had a lively bright face, a little pale, with a high forehead, and black arched brows and dancing eyes, and a little scarlet mouth that twitched humorously now and then after speaking. She rustled up, flicking her handkerchief, ...
— By What Authority? • Robert Hugh Benson
... he wouldn't tell a lie. Wal, I used all his sayin's in my argument to show Beasley thet if he didn't haul up short he'd end almost as short. Beasley's thick-headed, an' powerful conceited. Vain as a peacock! He couldn't see, an' he got mad. I told him he was rich enough without robbin' you of your ranch, an'—wal, I shore put up a big talk for your side. By this time he an' his gang had me crowded in a corner, an' from their ...
— The Man of the Forest • Zane Grey
... her heartily, and then the Fairy despatched one of her peacocks to her palace to bring a gorgeous robe for Mayblossom, who certainly needed it, for her own was torn to shreds by the thorns and briars. Another peacock was sent to the Admiral to tell him that he could now land in perfect safety, which he at once did, bringing all his men with him, even to Jack-the-Chatterer, who, happening to pass the spit ...
— The Red Fairy Book • Various
... ere I die. On the tree-tops a crested peacock lit, And o'er him flow'd a golden cloud, and lean'd Upon him, slowing dropping fragrant dew. Then first I heard the voice of her, to whom Coming thro' Heaven, like a light that grows Larger and clearer, with one mind the Gods Rise up for reverence. She to Paris made Proffer of royal power, ample ...
— The Early Poems of Alfred Lord Tennyson • Tennyson
... our little lessons upon the beauties of modesty and humility, we have picked out basic arrogances—tail of a peacock, horns of a stag, dollars of a capitalist—eclipses of astronomers. Though I have no desire for the job, I'd engage to list hundreds of instances in which the report upon an expected eclipse has been "sky overcast" or "weather unfavorable." ...
— The Book of the Damned • Charles Fort
... like a goldfinch, Or like a peacock gay; So, if you'll have me, Jenny, Let us appoint ...
— Children's Rhymes, Children's Games, Children's Songs, Children's Stories - A Book for Bairns and Big Folk • Robert Ford
... formed of the world's mind and manner of proceeding. In the privacy of the dressing-room, the candles being lighted and the mirror adjusted at the best angle for a view of self, they assume their character, and peacock to their reflection, meditating: Does it become me? Will it be generally liked? Will it advance me towards my heart's desire? Then they catch up their cloak, twist the mirror back to its usual position, puff out the candles, and steal forth into their ...
— The Folly Of Eustace - 1896 • Robert S. Hichens
... Root: A Study of Peyotism, the New Indian Religion, among the Delawares, University of Pennsylvania Press, Philadelphia, 1934. The use of peyote has now spread northwest into Canada. See Milly Peacock Stenberg's The Peyote Culture among Wyoming Indians, University of Wyoming Publications, Laramie, ...
— Guide to Life and Literature of the Southwest • J. Frank Dobie
... the well; and, as the devil would have it, there was but one well among us all—so this corporal used to water the regiment just as a groom waters his horses; and all spreading out, you know, just like the tail of a peacock."—"Of which the corporal was the rump," interrupted the doctor. The captain looked grave. "You found it warm in that country?" inquired the surgeon. "Warm!" exclaimed the captain; "I'll tell you what, doctor, when you go where you have sent many a patient, and where, for that very reason, you certainly ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 13 Issue 364 - 4 Apr 1829 • Various
... renew the outer man, and try it agin, and it's look at the stable and hosses with Sir Host, and the dogs, and the carriages, and two American trees, and a peacock, and a guinea hen, and a gold pheasant, and a silver pheasant, and all that, and then lunch. Who the plague can eat lunch, that's ...
— The Attache - or, Sam Slick in England, Complete • Thomas Chandler Haliburton
... of his or her style of structure. When we find a man or a woman who is absolutely faultless in form and features, we usually find a fool. I do not remember that I ever met a very handsome man or woman, who was not as vain and shallow as a peacock. I recently met a magnificent woman of middle age at a railroad station. She was surrounded by all those indescribable somethings and nothings which mark the rich and well-bred traveller, and her face was queenly—not sweet and pretty like a doll's face—but ...
— Lessons in Life - A Series of Familiar Essays • Timothy Titcomb
... which is not often, I prepare for myself fresh vegetables, broil a fish that has not forgotten the water,—and with a roll and a little fruit, that is my dinner. The soteltes at kings' tables, all colored sugar and pastry and isinglass—they are only good for people who can eat peacock, and those are very few. Do you know, Master Gay, what is the great secret of my art? To know what is good, and ...
— Masters of the Guild • L. Lamprey
... finest fleeces Baetis shows, Than the dormouse with her golden hue: Lips more fragrant than the Paestan rose, Than the Attic bees' first honey-dew, Or an amber ball, new-pressed and warm; Paled the peacock's sheen in your compare; E'en the winsome squirrel lost his charm, And the Phoenix seemed no longer rare. Scarce Erotion's ashes yet are cold; Greedily grim fate ordained to smite E'er her sixth brief winter had ...
— Post-Augustan Poetry - From Seneca to Juvenal • H.E. Butler
... some very fine original drawings by Gaspar Poussin, exceedingly delicate. On the back a profile most exquisitely finished, another just begun, and another by his brother in admirable style, sketch of a peacock by Houdekoeta. "When I was in Portugal," said Mr. Beckford, "I had as much influence and power as if I had been the King. The Prince Regent acknowledged me in public as his relation (which indeed I was). I had the privilege of an entrance at all times, and could visit ...
— Recollections of the late William Beckford - of Fonthill, Wilts and Lansdown, Bath • Henry Venn Lansdown
... gaunt manse and came to the kirkyard with the dark, low stones over the generations dead. But the grass was vivid, and the daisies bloomed, and even the yew-trees had some kind of peacock sheen, while the sky overhead burnt essential sapphire. Even the white of the lark held a friendly tinge as of rose petals mixed somehow with it. And the bell that was ending its ringing, if it was solemn, was also silver-sweet. Glenfernie determined that he would go ...
— Foes • Mary Johnston
... entering the little hamlet, exchanging the grassy path for a sidewalk of planks laid lengthwise, and the peace of nature for such signs of civilization as a troop of geese, noisily promenading across the thoroughfare, and a peacock—in its pride of pomp as a favored bird of old King Solomon—crying from the top of the shed and proudly displaying its gorgeous train. Barnes wiped the perspiration from his brow, ...
— The Strollers • Frederic S. Isham
... termed—was in places more than remarkable. Buddhas, nautch-girls, sacred white elephants, serial fairy stories, and the rest were all worth studying; but I think the chefs-d'oeuvre of the two artistic centres were a peacock and a multi-coloured dragon. The bird stood before a temple (on the mid forearm), serenely conscious of its own perfection. Every feather on its body was true to life, every spot on its tail a microscopic wonder. ...
— The Recipe for Diamonds • Charles John Cutcliffe Wright Hyne
... room, (there were five,) a fine-toned guitar rested against the wall; in another, was a large fly-brush of peacock's feathers, with a most unconscionable number of eyes. In the third, was Captain Moore's sword and sash. In the fourth, was Mrs. Moore's work-basket, where any amount of thimbles, needles, and all sorts of sewing implements could be found. And in the fifth corner was the ...
— Aunt Phillis's Cabin - Or, Southern Life As It Is • Mary H. Eastman
... volumes as having been the gift of Joseph Cottle, seven or eight and twenty years ago. I have a great many thousand volumes, of all sorts, sizes, languages, and kinds, upon all subjects, and in all sorts of trims; from those which are displayed in 'Peacock Place,' to the ragged inhabitants of 'Duck Row.' The room in which I am now writing contains two thousand four hundred volumes, all in good apparel; many of them of singular rarity and value. I have another room full, and a passage full; book-cases ...
— Reminiscences of Samuel Taylor Coleridge and Robert Southey • Joseph Cottle
... scutcheon, shone brightly against the western rays. From the flower-beds in the quaint garden near at hand, the fresh yet tranquil air wafted faint perfumes from the lingering heliotrope and fading rose. The peacock perched dozily on the heavy balustrade; the blithe robin hopped busily along the sun-track on the lawn; in the distance the tinkling bells of the flock, the plaining low of some wandering heifer, while breaking the silence, seemed still to blend with the repose. All images ...
— Lucretia, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... this explanation in the extraordinary case of the black- shouldered peacock, the so-called Pavo nigripennis given in my 'Variation under Domestication;' and I might have been bolder, as the variety is in many respects intermediate between the two ...
— The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin, Volume II • Francis Darwin
... horsemen on bronze horses. Childish cries greeted each draconarius as he marched by carrying his ensign—a dragon embroidered on a long piece of cloth which flapped in the wind. And the crowd pointed at the crests of the helmets plumed with peacock feathers, and the scarfs of scarlet silk flowing over the camber of ...
— Saint Augustin • Louis Bertrand
... never did a forbidding face shine with so winning and amicable an expression as did hers on that merciful occasion. The sun dancing a hornpipe on Easter Sunday morning, or the full moon sailing as proud as a peacock in a new halo head-dress, was a very disrespectable sight, compared to Norah's red beaming face, shrouded in her dowd cap with long ears, that descended to her masculine and substantial neck. Owing to ...
— The Station; The Party Fight And Funeral; The Lough Derg Pilgrim • William Carleton
... as proud as a peacock, and wore "the smile that won't come off" as he flitted around the ...
— Ted Strong's Motor Car • Edward C. Taylor
... Street 'flaneur', or the idler at Watier's Club. Well-read in a desultory fashion, he wrote verses which were not without merit in their class. The following are the first and last stanzas of 'The Butterfly's Funeral', a poem which was suggested by Mrs. Dorset's 'Peacock at Home' and Roscoe's ...
— The Works of Lord Byron: Letters and Journals, Volume 2. • Lord Byron
... it ain't no trouble," said the servant, cheerfully, "and better me nor that 'aughty peacock, as ain't to be trusted, say what you will, seeing criminals is a-looking out of his eyes, hide one though he may with a piece of glarse, ...
— The Opal Serpent • Fergus Hume
... away by the flood of melody, sang. His voice displayed itself like a peacock's plumage, and died in spasms of ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... me and see," responded Liza, with a laugh. "That's nothing to what Nabob Johnny said to me once, and I gave him a slap over the lug for it, the strutting and smirking old peacock. Why, he's all lace—lace at his neck and at his ...
— The Shadow of a Crime - A Cumbrian Romance • Hall Caine
... have a song to sing, O! [HE] Sing me your song, O! [SHE] It is sung with a sigh And a tear in the eye, For it tells of a righted wrong, O! It's a song of a merrymaid, once so gay, Who turned on her heel and tripped away From the peacock popinjay, bravely born, Who turned up his noble nose with scorn At the humble heart that he did not prize; And it tells how she begged, with downcast eyes, For the love of a merryman, moping mum, Whose soul was sad, whose glance was glum, Who sipped ...
— Songs of a Savoyard • W. S. Gilbert
... lady's owre fine; I cam out o' a bottle o' wine, A bottle o' wine's owre dear; I cam out o' a bottle o' beer, A bottle o' beer's owre thick; I cam out o' a gauger's stick, A gauger's stick's butt and ben; I cam out o' a peacock hen." ...
— A History of Nursery Rhymes • Percy B. Green
... swords and ribbons; the CAPTAIN of the band wearing a cocked hat and a peacock's feather in it by way of cockade, and the CLOWN, or 'BESSY,' who acts as treasurer, being decorated with a hairy cap ...
— Ancient Poems, Ballads and Songs of England • Robert Bell
... Augustus Peacock and Julius Candy (this enviable duo) were two such young men as may be met with in herds any fine afternoon publishing their persons to the frequenters of Regent-street. They did credit to their tailors, who were liberal enough to give them credit in return. Their coats were guiltless ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 1, Complete • Various
... remember, you are in love," said Macchiavelli, with a shrug, "else you would never have such inconvenient engagements. Why, we are to eat a peacock and ortolans under the loggia among Bernardo Rucellai's rare trees; there are to be the choicest spirits in Florence and the choicest wines. Only, as Piero de' Medici is to be there, the choice spirits may happen ...
— Romola • George Eliot
... boys' bodies being consequently in imminent hazard of being jerked off the coach, Nicholas had enough to do over the stones to hold them on. Between the manual exertion and the mental anxiety attendant upon this task, he was not a little relieved when the coach stopped at the Peacock at Islington. He was still more relieved when a hearty-looking gentleman, with a very good-humoured face, and a very fresh colour, got up behind, and proposed to take the other ...
— The Life And Adventures Of Nicholas Nickleby • Charles Dickens
... idle poor? You are much surer that you are doing good when you pay money to those who work, as the recompence of their labour, than when you give money merely in charity. Suppose the ancient luxury of a dish of peacock's brains were to be revived, how many carcases would be left to the poor at a cheap rate: and as to the rout that is made about people who are ruined by extravagance, it is no matter to the nation that some individuals suffer. When so much general productive exertion is the consequence ...
— The Life Of Johnson, Volume 3 of 6 • Boswell
... every thing seem'd resting on his nod, As they could read in all eyes. Now to them, Who were accustom'd, as a sort of god, To see the sultan, rich in many a gem, Like an imperial peacock stalk abroad (That royal bird, whose tail 's a diadem), With all the pomp of power, it was a doubt How power could ...
— Don Juan • Lord Byron
... edges with precious stones. Upon it stands a bell-shaped case about three feet in height, and three feet in diameter at the base. It is made of silver, elaborately gilt, and decorated with a number of costly jewels. A peacock in the middle blazes with jewels. Six smaller cases, reputed to be of gold, are enclosed within the large one, and under the last is the tooth of Buddha. As it is as large as that of a great bull, one trembles to think how monstrous must have ...
— The Story of Ida Pfeiffer - and Her Travels in Many Lands • Anonymous
... bough which the reindeer had brushed with its horns a peacock threw back its head and cried in harsh lamentation, having no sweet voice wherewith to acclaim its prize. And so ever since it cries, as it goes up into the boughs to roost, because it shares with the nightingale its grief for the memory ...
— The Blue Moon • Laurence Housman
... twelve pounds of beads of the finest varieties, three zinc mirrors, two razors, one long butcher's knife, two pair scissors, one brass bugle, one German horn, two pieces of red and yellow handkerchiefs, one piece of yellow ditto, one peacock Indian scarf, one blue blanket, six German silver spoons, sixteen pairs of various car-rings, twelve finger-rings, two dozen mule harness bells, six elastic heavy brass spring wires, one pound long white horsehair, three combs, one papier-mache ...
— Ismailia • Samuel W. Baker
... increased by this beastly carousal, and thus be a means of blessing. It may be asked, Can the savage be possessed of pride and of self-esteem? I unhesitatingly answer yes, as I have had abundant opportunity of seeing. They will strut with peacock pride when wearing a specially gaudy-colored headdress, although that may be ...
— Through Five Republics on Horseback • G. Whitfield Ray
... the "Ter-il-bas" (Tayr Taus?), is a particular kind of peacock which is introduced with a monstrous amount of nonsense about "Dagon and his son Bil-il-Sanan" and made to determine elections by alighting upon the head of one of the candidates in Chavis and Cazotte, "History of Yamalladdin ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 5 • Richard F. Burton
... that a pigeon might in the course of ages grow to be a peacock if there was a persistent desire on the part of the pigeon through all these ages to do so. We know very well that this has not probably occurred in nature, inasmuch as no pigeon is at all likely to wish to be very different ...
— Life and Habit • Samuel Butler
... at either end of the dining-room table, Simmons standing at one side, his yellow eyes gleaming with interested affection and his fly-brush of long peacock feathers waving steadily, even when he moved about ...
— The Awakening of Helena Richie • Margaret Deland
... stitch is a precious stone, bursts into flame, scatters in snakes of fire, swarms on the ivory-toned, tea-rose flesh, like splendid insects with dazzling wings, marbled with carmine, dotted with morning gold, diapered with steel-blue, streaked with peacock-green. ...
— Figures of Several Centuries • Arthur Symons
... magnificence of Oriental taste. It is impossible to describe the dazzling splendour of the jewels with which their costumes absolutely blazed; especially those in the little golden caps, or salmas, which some of them wore. There were bouquets of roses, jessamine, peacock's-feathers, and butterflies, formed of diamonds, rubies, emeralds, and other precious gems. We do not draw on our imagination here, good reader. It is probable that if a comparison had been instituted, these pirates could have far outshone any court of Europe ...
— The Pirate City - An Algerine Tale • R.M. Ballantyne
... or feigned passion for Duke Alphonso's sister, Leonora d'Este, was not the cause or occasion of his detention, and that the famous cell or dungeon ("nine paces by six, and about seven high") was not "the original place of the poet's confinement." It was, as Shelley says (see his letter to Peacock, November 7, 1818), "a very decent dungeon;" but it was not Tasso's. The setting of the story was admitted to be legendary, but the story itself, that a poet was shut up in a madhouse because a vindictive magnate resented his love of independence and impatience of courtly servitude, was questioned, ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 2 • George Gordon Byron
... as a prince in the Arabian Nights might have been told to bring from a far distant country before he could hope to win the hand of some lovely princess. Among them was a clock under a glass case, consisting of a golden tree, with a peacock, an owl, a cock, a mouse, a stream of running water, and many other things. At each hour the peacock unfolds his tail, the cock crows, the owl rolls his goggle eyes, and the mouse runs out of its hole. But far more interesting than all the crowns of gold, the robes of silk, ...
— Fred Markham in Russia - The Boy Travellers in the Land of the Czar • W. H. G. Kingston
... untam'd steer "More fierce; more stubborn than the ancient oak; "Than water more deceitful; slippery more "Than bending willows, or the greenest vines; "More stubborn than these rocks; than seas more rough; "Than the prais'd peacock prouder; sharper far "Than fire; and piercing more than thistles keen. "More savage than a nursing bear; more deaf "Than raging billows; than the trodden snake "More pitiless; and, what I more than all "Would wish thou wast not, fleeter than the deer, "Chas'd ...
— The Metamorphoses of Publius Ovidus Naso in English blank verse Vols. I & II • Ovid
... wonder that a wave of soft laughter swept over the room. It was evident that vanity equalling that of the peacock moved Patricia to turn about that every one might see both front and back of her dress, but no one could have guessed why Arabella in a plain brown woolen dress kept pace with her ...
— Dorothy Dainty at Glenmore • Amy Brooks
... to appear there, because I am compelled to do so," returned the duchess; "but I do not know that it is incumbent upon me to be as gay as a peacock, on the occasion of my poor Philip's betrothal to that girl of De Montespan's. To me it is more like a funeral than a festival, so you may get out my suit of court mourning. The skirt of black velvet, the train ...
— Prince Eugene and His Times • L. Muhlbach
... a gordian shape of dazzling hue, Vermilion-spotted, golden, green, and blue; Striped like a zebra, freckled like a pard, Eyed like a peacock, and all crimson barr'd; And full of silver moons, that, as she breathed, Dissolv'd, or brighter shone, or interwreathed Their lustres with the gloomier tapestries— So rainbow-sided, touch'd with miseries, She seem'd, at once, some penanced ...
— Lamia • John Keats
... of an elk now unexpectedly startles the ear; presently it is replied to by another, and once more the plover shrieks "Did he do it?" and a peacock waking on his roost gives one loud ...
— Eight Years' Wandering in Ceylon • Samuel White Baker
... design. Design means intention and motive. Many of the motives in Oriental textile decorations are suggestive of intention, as is shown by their names. Among Indian patterns we meet with "ripples of silver," "sunshine and shade," "pigeon's eye," "peacock's neck," &c.[96] ...
— Needlework As Art • Marian Alford
... mathematicians have formulated other kinds of algebras, in which the operators do not obey the laws of ordinary algebra. This study was inaugurated by George Peacock, who was one of the earliest mathematicians to recognize the symbolic character of the fundamental principles of algebra. About the same time, D. F. Gregory published a paper "on the real nature of symbolical algebra.'' In Germany the work of Martin Ohm ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... very numerous on certain portions of the lunar disc, and give the Moon the freckled appearance which it presents in the telescope, and which Galileo likened to the eyes in the feathers of a peacock's tail. They are believed to be of volcanic origin, and have been classified as follows: 'Walled plains, mountain rings, ring plains, crater plains, craters, craterlets, and crater cones.' Upwards of 13,000 of these mountains have been enumerated, and 1,000 are known to ...
— The Astronomy of Milton's 'Paradise Lost' • Thomas Orchard
... pier glass. She prevailed on her mamma to let her send cards of invitation to all her acquaintances, in order to enjoy the inexpressible pleasure of being gazed at. As soon as they were met, she would walk backwards and forwards before them, like a peacock, and seemed to consider herself as the empress of the world, and they as ...
— The Looking-Glass for the Mind - or Intellectual Mirror • M. Berquin
... Scotland, on account of its absorption in Irish affairs. But he was not writing a formal history, and these points did not appeal to him at all. He drew with inimitable skill a picture of the despised and fantastic Jew, vain as a peacock and absurdly dressed, alien in race and in his real creed, smiling sardonically at English ways, enthusiasms, and institutions, until he became, after years of struggle and obloquy, the idol of what was then the proudest ...
— The Life of Froude • Herbert Paul
... of the needle cases, and although Jim had a look of complete disgust upon his face, showing how he disapproved of Danny's lying, the latter, proud as a peacock, instead of being ashamed of swindling kind-hearted ladies, said in a tone of voice which left no doubt that he would do exactly as he proposed: "Eh, Jim, when I get to be a plinger I shall have at least a dozen road kids peddling ...
— The Trail of the Tramp • A-No. 1 (AKA Leon Ray Livingston)
... was closed as I did so, and I stumbled back towards the stair with my struggling captive tucked under my arm; I mounted into one of London's darkest slums, carrying a beautiful white peacock! ...
— The Devil Doctor • Sax Rohmer
... was guilty of the following inconsistency; he pressed the paint carefully out of the brush into the pot. Having thus economized his material, he hurled the pot which contained his economy at "the Johnstone," he then adjourned to the "Peacock," and "away at once ...
— Christie Johnstone • Charles Reade
... hawk-eagle is also a fine bird. It is very addicted to peafowl. The hillmen call it the Mohrhaita, which, being interpreted, is the peacock-killer. It utters a loud cry, which Thompson renders whee-whick, whee-whick. This call is uttered by the bird both when on the wing and at rest. Another cry of this species has been ...
— Birds of the Indian Hills • Douglas Dewar
... corner of Allandale Street and Centre Street, Peacock Tavern stood a century ago. It was kept by Captain Lemuel Child, distinguished for having led the Minute Company of the Third Parish in the battle of Lexington. This tavern was a somewhat noted resort at that time, being on the direct highway ...
— Annals and Reminiscences of Jamaica Plain • Harriet Manning Whitcomb
... with the broad, bright sky above me, and the clear, heaven-wide air around me; and bird and beast frolicking in freedom and gladness near and about me. I loved them all, and all their various noises, even to the unearthly scream of our bright, proud peacock. I shut my eyes and see them still; the world of gay-plumaged birds, with their sweet, wild songs, the little white-faced lambs, the wee, roly-poly pigs, the verdant ducks, the soft, yellow goslins, and the dignified old cows stalking about. ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII No. 6 June 1848 • Various
... against Peacock Piggott!' said Lord Squib; 'pretty Peacock Piggott! Tell it not in Gath, whisper it not in Ascalon; and, above all, insinuate it not to ...
— The Young Duke • Benjamin Disraeli
... But much will certainly continue to be read and enjoyed by the sons and grandsons of those for whom it was originally written; and his name will be coupled with those of Wilson, Lockhart, Sydney Smith, Peacock, Jerrold, Mahony, and Hood, as that of a man gifted with humor as genuine and original as theirs, however opinions may vary as to the ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 3 • Various
... shirts of my husband's, which John received with an ecstacy of delight. He retired instantly to the stable, but soon returned, with as much of the linen breast of the garment displayed as his waistcoat would allow. No peacock was ever prouder of his tail than the wild Irish lad ...
— Roughing it in the Bush • Susanna Moodie
... heartily, adding, "How ridiculous!" We laugh at their sable beauties adorning their necks and bosoms with trumpery glass-beads, and they laugh at our red and white beauties adorning their heads with ostrich feathers. The Chinese have their peacock's feather as a set-off against our button-hole ribbon; "Ainsi va le monde." One of the Aheer Touaricks, who, unlike my Ghat friends, return presents, brought me to-day a damaged ostrich skin and feathers. Being quite out of ...
— Travels in the Great Desert of Sahara, in the Years of 1845 and 1846 • James Richardson
... many groups that have special attraction for children. For instance, among the "Birds we read about" are the flamingo, cassowary, condor, and quetzal; the eagle owl is contrasted with the pygmy owl, and the peacock, lyre bird, albatross, ...
— Library Work with Children • Alice I. Hazeltine
... at his best now that he is dead," continued Louis, who had read up the animal life he expected to find in Borneo. "Like a peacock, though to a less extent, he can spread out his pretty feathers, but not in the same manner; for they open out in the form of a circle, making a sort of round disk on his back and concealing his head. If ...
— Four Young Explorers - Sight-Seeing in the Tropics • Oliver Optic
... laughter joined Mother Bab's at one paragraph: "Do you remember the blue sailor suits you used to make for me when I was a tiny chap? And once you made me a real tam and I was proud as a peacock in it. Well, since I'm here and wearing a sailor suit I feel like a masculine edition of Alice in Wonderland when she felt herself growing bigger and bigger and I wonder sometimes if I'll shrink back again and ...
— Patchwork - A Story of 'The Plain People' • Anna Balmer Myers
... she takes all my clothes and gives them to the hotel waiters. I am ordered to put on her livery. It is a Cracovian costume in her colors, light-blue with red facings, and red quadrangular cap, ornamented with peacock-feathers. The costume is ...
— Venus in Furs • Leopold von Sacher-Masoch
... dinners' and makeshifts of yours. We have made such advances in the art, that we have been venturing to invite, more than once, your friends Verrius and Camillus (what elegant and fastidious gentlemen they are!). But see how audacious we are getting! I have even given Hirtius a dinner—but without a peacock. My cook could imitate nothing in his entertainments except ...
— Cicero - Ancient Classics for English Readers • Rev. W. Lucas Collins
... way home through the Borough I met a venerable old man, not a mendicant, but thereabouts; a look-beggar, not a verbal petitionist; and in the coxcombry of taught charity I gave away the cake to him. I walked on a little in all the pride of an Evangelical peacock, when of a sudden my old aunt's kindness crossed me; the sum it was to her; the pleasure she had a right to expect that I—not the old impostor—should take in eating her cake; the ingratitude by which, ...
— Selected English Letters (XV - XIX Centuries) • Various
... deserted Thames?—I am wishing for a handful or two of those floods that drowned me last year all the way from Wentworth Castle. I beg my best compliments to my lady, and my best wishes that every pheasant egg and peacock egg may produce as many colours ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole, Volume 2 • Horace Walpole
... hawk, the epervier, the black and red-headed vulture, the raven and the crow. Among the granivorous, the turkey, the wapo (a small kind of prairie ostrich), the golden and common pheasant, the wild peacock, of a dull whitish colour, and the guinea-fowl; these two last, which are very numerous, are not indigenous to this part of the country, but about a century ago escaped from the various missions of Upper California, at which they had been bred, and since have propagated in incredible ...
— Travels and Adventures of Monsieur Violet • Captain Marryat
... in the fair company dancing and singing through the long summer nights. Or Chalamala, last and most famous of the Gruyere jesters, would preside over a Conseil de folie, with his jingling bells and nodding peacock plumes, recounting with jest and rhyme the legends of the ancient heroes of Gruyere. Only Count Perrod was forbidden to wear his spurs, having one day torn the pied stockings of the fool. "Shall I marry the great lady of La Tour Chatillon?" he had asked his merry counselor. ...
— The Counts of Gruyere • Mrs. Reginald de Koven
... single trait—except man. Men are not all cowards like the rabbit, nor all brave like the house-fly, nor all sweet and innocent and gentle like the lamb, nor all murderous like the spider and the tiger and the wasp, nor all thieves like the fox and the bluejay, nor all vain like the peacock, nor all frisky like the monkey. These things are all in him somewhere, and they develop according to the proportion of each he received in his allotment: We describe a man by his vicious traits and condemn him; or by ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... chiefly upon the splendor of his court and the magnificent structures he erected. He rebuilt the ancient City of Delhi upon a new site, adorned it with public buildings of unparalleled cost and beauty, and received his subjects seated upon the celebrated peacock throne, a massive bench of solid gold covered with mosaic figures of diamonds, rubies, pearls and other precious stones. It cost L6,500,000, which is $32,500,000 of our money, even in those times, when jewels were cheap compared with the prices of today. In 1729 Nadir Shah, the King of Persia, ...
— Modern India • William Eleroy Curtis
... the light dragoons are pursuing us. If we reach Compiegne we shall stop at the Peacock. It is kept ...
— Twenty Years After • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... as a pattern stencilled on the background, we recognise that no pattern could be more exquisite in its variety of broken up and harmonised lines. The exquisite qualities of all graceful things, flowers, branches, swaying reeds, and certain animals like the stag and peacock, seem to have been abstracted and given to these half-human and wholly wonderful creatures—these thin, ill put together, unsteady youths and ladies. The ingenious grace of Botticelli passes sometimes from the realm of art to that of poetry, as in the case of those flowers, with stiff, ...
— Renaissance Fancies and Studies - Being a Sequel to Euphorion • Violet Paget (AKA Vernon Lee)
... discipline, which left him more exhausted than twenty battles, his enemies suddenly developed wings from their shoulders, the feathers of which were of white and gold and vermilion, every feather having an eye in it, not like those in the peacock's feathers, but one full of life and motion, being a female eye, lovely and gracious. And with these wings they poised themselves a little, and so ...
— Stories from the Italian Poets: With Lives of the Writers, Vol. 2 • Leigh Hunt
... precious stones. Upon it rests a bell-shaped case, about three feet high, and at the base three feet in diameter. It is made of silver, is elaborately gilt, and decorated with costly jewels. In the middle blazes a peacock of precious stones. Six smaller cases, said to be of gold, each diminishing in size, are enclosed within the large case, and under the last is the tooth of Buddha. It is as large as that of a great bull, so ...
— Celebrated Women Travellers of the Nineteenth Century • W. H. Davenport Adams
... Watkinson advises his readers to consult "Mr. Jeafferson's painstaking volumes on the Real Shelley." Mr. Jeafferson's work is truly painstaking, but it is the work of an advocate who plays the part of counsel for the prosecution. Hunt, Peacock, Hogg, Medwin, Lady Shelley, Rossetti, and Professor Dowden—these are the writers who should be consulted. Shelley was but a boy when Harriet Westbrook proposed to run away with him. Had he acted like the golden youth of his age, and kept her for a while as his mistress, there ...
— Flowers of Freethought - (Second Series) • George W. Foote
... arrival—for what passed on the voyage is not for us to speak of—was like a peacock, with great state and pomp. The declaration of His Honor, that he wished to stay here only three years, with other haughty expressions, caused some to think that he would not be a father. The appellation of Lord General, and similar titles, were never before known here. Almost every day he caused ...
— Narrative of New Netherland • J. F. Jameson, Editor
... to screen the old man from the hot rays of the sun. As noon approached, all eyes were turned up to this window. In due time, the chair was seen approaching to the front, with the gigantic fans of peacock's feathers, close behind. The doll within it (for the balcony is very high) then rose up, and stretched out its tiny arms, while all the male spectators in the square uncovered, and some, but not by any means the ...
— Pictures from Italy • Charles Dickens
... collect his thoughts. "No—it was somewhere—away from here—it was—I do not know—but it appears that this recollection is connected with a lovely sky and some religious fete; mademoiselle was holding flowers in her hand, the interesting boy was chasing a beautiful peacock in a garden, and you, madame, were under the trellis of some arbor. Pray come to my aid, madame; do not these ...
— The Count of Monte Cristo • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... carried by officers and privates. A single bugle (and a sorry one it is) composes the band. Many an embryo Napoleon, in his own conceit, whose martial spirit has been excited to flaming intensity of heat by the peacock-plumage and gaudy trappings of our militia companies, when marching through the streets to the sound of drum, fife, and brass band, if he could have looked upon us, and then consulted the state of the military thermometer within him, would probably ...
— What I Saw in California • Edwin Bryant
... modesty itself in those days as he has been ever since, even when equipped with the yellow jacket and peacock feather of the head coach. As player and as coach and often as the two combined, Daly's connection with West Point football covered eight years, in the course of which he never played on or coached a losing team. His record against ...
— Football Days - Memories of the Game and of the Men behind the Ball • William H. Edwards
... rather gave me a shock. It was like being told by some authority in astronomy that your earth was about to collide with Wernecke's Comet. And, vain peacock that I was, I rather liked to think of Peter going through life mourning for me, alone and melancholy and misogynistic for the rest of his days! Yet there must be dozens, there must be hundreds, of attractive girls along the paths which he travels. ...
— The Prairie Child • Arthur Stringer
... wish Miss Bat was here to give you girls a good shaking. Do let someone else have a chance at the glass, you peacock!" exclaimed Molly Loo, pushing Susy aside to arrange her own blue turban, out of which she plucked the ...
— Jack and Jill • Louisa May Alcott
... fore-limbs, at first folded and pressed against one another on the thorax, open to their full extent, forming a cross with the body, and exhibiting the axillae ornamented with rows of pearls, and a black spot with a central point of white. These two eyes, faintly recalling those of the peacock's tail, and the fine ebony embossments, are part of the blazonry of conflict, concealed upon ordinary occasions. Their jewels are only assumed when they make themselves ...
— Social Life in the Insect World • J. H. Fabre
... showered him with titles. He was made a "Ti-tu," which gave him the highest rank in the Chinese army. The Emperor himself commanded that he should be rewarded with "a yellow riding jacket, to be worn on his person, and a peacock's feather to be carried on his cap; also, that there be bestowed on him four suits of the uniform proper to his rank of Ti-tu, in token of our favor and ...
— Boys' Book of Famous Soldiers • J. Walker McSpadden
... of the peacock opportunely spreading his tail on the stackyard wall, just as they reached Garum Firs, was enough to divert the mind temporarily from personal grievances. And this was only the beginning of beautiful sights at Garum ...
— The Mill on the Floss • George Eliot
... quaint story may be found more fully detailed in the Midrash Tanchuma (see Noah) and the Yalkut on Genesis. The Mohammedan legend is somewhat similar. It relates how Satan on the like occasion used the blood of a peacock, of an ape, of a lion, and of a pig, and it deduces from the abuse of the vine the curse that fell on the children of Ham, and ascribes the color of the purple grape to the dark hue which thenceforth tinctured all the fruit of their land as ...
— Hebraic Literature; Translations from the Talmud, Midrashim and - Kabbala • Various
... know. We have eyes for such things, though women-folk haven't. I see a man who has serious intentions, that's Levin: and I see a peacock, like this ...
— Anna Karenina • Leo Tolstoy
... over two hundred years in age, the thrifty almond-trees, and the gaudy-colored pinons, with their honeysuckle-like bloom, delight the eye. The flamboyant absolutely blazed in its gorgeous flowers, like ruddy flames, all over the grounds. The remarkable fan-palm spread out its branches like a peacock's tail, screening vistas here and there. Through these grounds flows a small swift stream, which has its rise in the mountains some miles inland, its bright and sparkling waters imparting an added beauty to ...
— Due South or Cuba Past and Present • Maturin M. Ballou
... say that. Cross between a peacock and a parrot, she must be, he thought vindictively. It was maddening that she would not—could not, perhaps?—live up to that ...
— The Lookout Man • B. M. Bower
... nature of our present color names must appear to any thoughtful person. Baby blue, peacock blue, Nile green, apple green, lemon yellow, straw yellow, rose pink, heliotrope, royal purple, Magenta, Solferino, plum, and automobile are popular terms, conveying different ideas to different persons and utterly failing to define colors. The terms used for a single hue, such as ...
— A Color Notation - A measured color system, based on the three qualities Hue, - Value and Chroma • Albert H. Munsell
... years with other rare and precious commodities to contribute to the splendour of his court; and doubtless their magnificence added a distinct feature even where so much that was beautiful was to be seen; but, to show itself off to the best advantage, one cannot imagine a better place for a peacock than a grey old English home, round whose mellow stone walls time is lingering lovingly. The touch of brilliant life beside the appeal of the venerable past adds perfection to the picture. I have always had an immense admiration for peacocks, and soon after I came ...
— Grain and Chaff from an English Manor • Arthur H. Savory
... the flat coils of her hair lay a little bunch of grapes between two vine leaves, wrought in gold, and at her waist hung a dagger, the silver sheath chased with forms of animals. Standing behind her the little Anglian slave Laetus gently fanned her with a peacock's tail, or sprinkled her with perfume from a vial; the air was ...
— Veranilda • George Gissing
... Smith had provided for Susannah was large and high. On its Brussels carpet immense vases of flowers and peacock's feathers sprawled; stiff and gaudy furniture was ranged round the painted walls; stiff window curtains fell from stiff borders of tasteless upholstery. Susannah, long ignorant of anything but deal and rag carpets, knew hardly more ...
— The Mormon Prophet • Lily Dougall
... European. If you went out into the world of amusement a little more—and it would be good for you—you would know that she has the most exquisite voice in the history of civilization. She transcends the nightingale because her body is beautiful. She transcends the peacock because her voice is beautiful. She is, in fact, worthy of every homage, and you will meet her in a short time. Like all perfect things ...
— The Blue Germ • Martin Swayne
... gayety, San Francisco was proud of the reputation of being the Paris of America. Its women were beautiful, and they knew it. They liked to adorn their beauty with fine clothes and peacock along the streets on matinee days. If you asked a San Francisco girl why she wore such expensive clothes, she would say, frankly, "Because I like to have the men admire me," and she would see no harm in saying it. There was very ...
— The San Francisco Calamity • Various
... preserved fresco began to appear. Walls were shortly uncovered, decorated with flowering plants and running water, while on each side of the doorway of a small inner room, stood guardian griffins with peacock's plumes in the same flowery landscape. Round the walls ran low stone benches, and between these, on the north side, separated by a small interval, and raised on a stone base, rose a gypsum throne with a high back, and originally covered with decorative designs. ...
— The Sea-Kings of Crete • James Baikie
... three hundred and six men. The Macedonian had one hundred and six men killed and wounded. The United States five killed and seven wounded. The Victory of the Constitution over the Java, followed next, and was succeeded by that of the Hornet, commanded by Captain Lawrence, over the Peacock. The loss of this brave officer in the subsequent engagement between the Chesapeake and Shannon, was generally lamented by ...
— Thrilling Narratives of Mutiny, Murder and Piracy • Anonymous
... say, ye good-for-nothing varlets; or ye sha'n't have pie and ale to-night. But marry, now, ye shall have pie—ay, pie and ale without a stint; for ye are good lads, and ye have pleased the Queen at last; and I am as proud of ye as a peacock is of ...
— Master Skylark • John Bennett
... table. Several nobles and other courtiers were present. As soon as the party had taken their places, a curtain behind them was drawn on one side, when half-a-dozen young females issued forth, each carrying large fans of peacock's feathers, and noiselessly placed themselves behind the rajah's chair. The hue of their skins was scarcely darker than that of the women of Southern Europe; their hair, black as jet, drawn over the forehead, was twisted ...
— The Young Rajah • W.H.G. Kingston
... Cambridge; and with the rest, or some of them, I continued to wage war for more than a year. And yet, for a word spoken with kindness, how readily I would have resigned (had it been altogether at my own choice to do so) the peacock's feather in my cap as the merest of bawbles. Undoubtedly, praise sounded sweet in my ears also; but that was nothing by comparison with what stood on the other side. I detested distinctions that were ...
— Autobiographic Sketches • Thomas de Quincey
... original fountain of pride is the heart. For out of the heart comes pride; it is, therefore, because they are led by their hearts, which naturally tend to lift them up in pride. This pride of heart tempts them, and by its deceits overcometh them; yea, it doth put a bewitching virtue into their peacock's feathers, and then they are swallowed up with the ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... teacher with all the might that her pinched little twelve-year-old body could bring to bear. She saw only the snippish, opinionated, young peacock, and the self-assurance which came from the empty-headed ability to tie a ribbon well. She was so occupied with resenting the young teacher's feeling of vast superiority that she failed to understand, as did the Farnshaw child, that along with all that vainglorious assumption went ...
— The Wind Before the Dawn • Dell H. Munger
... Bolivar's Albion Rifles we find the Irish names of Pigott, Tallon, Peacock, Phelan, O'Connell, McNamara, Fetherstonhaugh, French, Reynolds, Byrne, and Haig, and the medical officer was Dr. O'Reilly. We find mention in General Millar's Memoirs of Dr. Moore, an Irishman, who attended Bolivar in most of ...
— The Glories of Ireland • Edited by Joseph Dunn and P.J. Lennox
... friends as the dead in doom, And build to them a final tomb; Let the starred shade that nightly falls Still celebrate their funerals, And the bell of beetle and of bee Knell their melodious memory. Behind thee leave thy merchandise, Thy churches and thy charities; And leave thy peacock wit behind; Enough for thee the primal mind That flows in streams, that breathes in wind: Leave all thy pedant lore apart; God hid the whole world in thy heart. Love shuns the sage, the child it crowns, ...
— Poems - Household Edition • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... on the huge oaken table were placed the various dishes of the feast—a mighty boar's head, decorated with laurel and rosemary, whose approach was often heralded with trumpets as the king of the feast; then came a peacock, stuffed with spices and sweet herbs, and adorned with its gay feathers, and then followed a goodly company of geese, capons, sirloins of beef, pheasants, mince-pies, and plum-porridge. A carol was often sung when the boar's head was brought in; here is one from ...
— Old English Sports • Peter Hampson Ditchfield
... passed it under inspection. "No wonder," she exclaimed, "it looks so handsome! It's verily woven with peacock's feathers." ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book II • Cao Xueqin
... polished panels, as she lifted and let fall the heavy silver knocker, in the middle of an oval silver plate, around the edges of which were raised the square letters of the name "Darrington." The clanging sound startled a peacock, strutting among the verbena beds, and his shrill scream was answered by the deep hoarse bark of some invisible dog; then the heavy door swung open, and a gray-headed negro man, who wore a white linen apron over his black clothes, ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson
... are near. To lovers this bird is one of good omen, foretelling rich and good mates. To dream of geese is also favourable; but the person who sees in a vision an owl, had better prepare for sickness and poverty, and look for attacks from enemies. A young man who dreams of a peacock may be sure of getting a beautiful wife; and a maid who fancies in her sleep that this beautiful bird is coming towards her, may be certain that the fates are to provide her with a rich good-looking husband. To dream of swans denotes success to the business man, lovers to the ...
— The Mysteries of All Nations • James Grant
... do but give the world a fair challenge, and tell it, 'There—you know the worst of me: come on and try a fall, for either you or I must down.' Slander? Ask Leigh here, who has but known me a fortnight, whether I am not as vain as a peacock, as selfish as a fox, as imperious as a bona roba, and ready to make a cat's paw of him or any man, if there be a chestnut in the fire: and yet the poor fool cannot help loving me, and running of my errands, and taking all my schemes and my dreams for ...
— Westward Ho! • Charles Kingsley
... have frequently great preference to a particular peafowl. They were all so fond of an old pied cock, that one year, when he was confined, though still in view, they were constantly assembled close to the trellice-walls of his prison, and would not suffer a japanned peacock to touch them. On his being let out in the autumn, the oldest of the hens instantly courted him and was successful in her courtship. The next year he was shut up in a stable, and then the hens all courted his rival." (26. 'Proceedings, Zoological Society,' 1835, p. 54. The japanned ...
— The Descent of Man and Selection in Relation to Sex • Charles Darwin
... Haselnoss's vast house when he peopled the back yard with outlandish birds—Barbary geese with scarlet cheeks, Guinea hens, and a white peacock, which perched habitually on the garden wall, and which divided with the negress ...
— Library of the World's Best Mystery and Detective Stories • Edited by Julian Hawthorne
... for some time, asking me what right I had to be aristocratic, or, in fact, anybody else;—went over his eternal old talk about aping foreign habits, as if we hadn't a right to adopt the good usages of all nations, and finally said that the use of liveries among us was not only a "pure peacock absurdity," as he called it, but that no genuine American would ever ask another to ...
— The Potiphar Papers • George William Curtis
... stool. The thing was an utter failure. A cottage piano, with a photo-frame and a fern upon, it is what the soul cries out for in connection with Robina. Dick is not artistic. Dick does not go with peacocks' feathers and guitars. I can see Dick with a single peacock's feather at St. Giles's Fair, when the bulldogs are not looking; but the decorative panel of peacock's feathers is too much for him. I can imagine him with a banjo—but a guitar decorated with pink ribbons! To begin with he is not ...
— They and I • Jerome K. Jerome
... have spent hours in contemplating the picturesque groups it presented. There lay the salmon in its delicate coat of blue and silver; the mullet, in pink and gold; the mackerel, with its blending of all hues,—gorgeous as the tail of the peacock, and defying the art of the painter to transfer them to his canvas; the plaice, with its olive green coat, spotted with vivid orange, which must flash like sparks of flame glittering in the depths of the dark waters; ...
— Flora Lyndsay - or, Passages in an Eventful Life • Susan Moodie
... most bizarre excesses. He wantons in dainty affectations of speech and eccentricities of phantasy. Here we find again the orchard closes, the pleached pleasances, and all those queer picture paradises, peopled with tall lilied maidens, angels with peacock wings and thin gold hoops above their heads, and court minstrels thrumming ...
— A History of English Romanticism in the Nineteenth Century • Henry A. Beers
... Peacock,[442] shows "great distrust {197} of the results of algebraical science which were in existence at the time when it was written." Truly it does; for, as Dr. Peacock had shown by full citation, it makes war of extermination upon all ...
— A Budget of Paradoxes, Volume I (of II) • Augustus De Morgan
... very peacock of peacocks?" asks Nietzsche. "Even before the ugliest of all buffaloes it unfoldeth its tail and never wearieth of its lace fan of silver and gold." But the sea is not moved by slander. "Roll on, thou deep ...
— A Tramp's Sketches • Stephen Graham
... had let me alone all the time to scrub and polish and wash—the things they set me to at first—I thought I should have been quite happy. To see my table full of glasses without a spot, and my brass-taps shining, made me as proud as a peacock! But then of course I had to learn the real work, and that was very odd ...
— Marcella • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... Ingles,' or English rooster. Then come the double-bass pigs, who have free access to the balcony and parlour. A chorus of hens, chickens, and guinea-fowls, varies the entertainment; while the majestic 'perjuil,' or peacock, perched on his regal box, the guano roof, applauds the performance below in plaintive and heart-rending tones. Before I am up and stirring, a dark domestic brings me a tiny cup of boiling coffee and a paper cigarette, and waits for further orders. Don Severiano proposes a stroll (he tells ...
— The Pearl of the Antilles, or An Artist in Cuba • Walter Goodman
... those arrears of sleep incurred during his Eastern career. He had been active enough under a tropical sky, when his mind was kept alive by a modicum of hard work and a very wide margin of sport—pig-sticking, peacock-shooting, paper-chases, all the delights of an Indian life. But now, vegetating on a slender pittance in the semi-slumberous idleness of Les Fontaines, he had nothing to do and nothing to think about; and he was glad to shorten his days by dozing away the fresher hours of the ...
— The Golden Calf • M. E. Braddon
... Go to hell, and shut the door after you!" His man, who seems a very decent little fellow, though he is as vain as a peacock, and speaks with a Cockney accent which is simply terrible, came down the passage after me, and explained "on his own," as he expressed it, that his master, "Mr. Ernest," was upset by the long journey, and that I was not to mind. I did not wish to make him uncomfortable, so I explained that I ...
— The Lady of the Shroud • Bram Stoker
... will stop long enough in his mad chase to open and shut his tail, fan-fashion, with a dainty egotism that, in the peacock, becomes ...
— Bird Neighbors • Neltje Blanchan
... resemblance to which illustrious personage his downtrodden retainers were said to detect in the lineaments of his swarthy face. Environment had added to that store of insolence wherewith Nature had equipped him, and the King's favour—in which he was my rival—had gone yet further to mould the peacock attributes of his vain soul. So that this wondrous humble tone of his gave me pause; for to me it seemed that not even a courtship gone awry could account for it in ...
— Bardelys the Magnificent • Rafael Sabatini
... red-inked depictions of mortal frailty—she would flatly refuse to discuss crime or disease—and she would comment disparagingly at too frequent intervals on the littleness of human aims and the emptiness of the peacock-life which she saw manifested about her. "I don't understand—I can't," she would say, when she was alone with the Beaubien. "Why, with the wonderful opportunities which you rich people have, how can you—oh, ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking
... lungs! Excellent!—All the same, Christianity ought to keep an eye on the monarchy. Ought to tear the falsehood away from it! Ought not to go in crowds to stare at a coronation in a church, like apes grinning at a peacock! I know what I felt at that moment. I had rehearsed it all once that morning already—ha, ha! Ask your Christianity if it may not be about time for it to interest itself a little in the monarchy? It seems to me that ...
— Three Dramas - The Editor—The Bankrupt—The King • Bjornstjerne M. Bjornson
... to toe, feet locked, a morris of shuffling feet without body phantoms, all in a scrimmage higgledypiggledy. The walls are tapestried with a paper of yewfronds and clear glades. In the grate is spread a screen of peacock feathers. Lynch squats crosslegged on the hearthrug of matted hair, his cap back to the front. With a wand he beats time slowly. Kitty Ricketts, a bony pallid whore in navy costume, doeskin gloves rolled back ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce
... in the bodice, for one dinner dress, and my high black silk to fall back upon for another. Worn open in front, with a lace handkerchief and a locket, it does really very nicely. Then I've got three afternoon dresses, the grey you gave me, the sage-greeny aesthetic one, and the peacock-blue with the satin box-pleats. It's a charming dress, the peacock-blue; it looks as if it might have stepped straight out of a genuine Titian. It came home from Miss Wells's this morning. Wait five minutes, like a dear boy, and I'll run and put it on and let ...
— Philistia • Grant Allen
... rightly constituted young man is entirely devoid of the desire to "show off" in the presence of timid and interesting ladies. Without that spirit of "show-off," what would induce our knights to meet in glorious tournaments? Without it, what would our chivalry amount to? Without it, why should a peacock spread its tail? I do not belittle it, since from this spirit of "show-off" arises one great good—respect for the opinion of our fellow-man. So Max, with a dash of "show-off" in his disposition, laughed at Yolanda's fears and answered that ...
— Yolanda: Maid of Burgundy • Charles Major
... the General, shaking him by the hand, and then standing beside the Prince, he remarked, "the prince is taller than I am, but I feel as big as anybody," upon which he strutted up and down the room as proud as a peacock, amid shouts of ...
— A Unique Story of a Marvellous Career. Life of Hon. Phineas T. • Joel Benton
... "Peacock! Did you think that one glimpse of your black eyes and fine hair would make such an impression that ...
— Kitty's Class Day And Other Stories • Louisa M. Alcott
... very good editions of Peacock's delightful romances. Nightmare Abbey forms a volume of J. M. Dent's edition in 9 volumes, edited by Dr. Garnett; and the whole of Peacock's remarkable stories are contained in a single volume of Newnes' ...
— Immortal Memories • Clement Shorter
... mathematicians to carry astronomical and mechanical science to the highest perfection. Professors Ivory and de Morgan afterwards adopted the "Calculus"; but several years elapsed before Mr. Herschel and Mr. Babbage were joint-editors with Professor Peacock in publishing an abridged translation of La Croix's "Treatise on the Differential and Integral Calculus." I became acquainted with Mr. Wallace, who was, if I am not mistaken, mathematical teacher of the Military College at Marlow, and editor of a mathematical journal published there. ...
— Personal Recollections, from Early Life to Old Age, of Mary Somerville • Mary Somerville |
