"Polecat" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... by the door), "mak' yersel' sure o' that. There'll be never a man o' them but he'll hang for it same as a polecat on ...
— The Christian - A Story • Hall Caine
... looked up to see what sort of person he had to do with. This commissary was a man of very repulsive mien, with a pointed nose, with yellow and salient cheek bones, with eyes small but keen and penetrating, and an expression of countenance resembling at once the polecat and the fox. His head, supported by a long and flexible neck, issued from his large black robe, balancing itself with a motion very much like that of the tortoise thrusting his head out of his shell. He began by ...
— The Three Musketeers • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... have done him wrong, as none knows better than thou. Tressilian's conscience is of other mould—the world thou speakest of has not that which could bribe him from the way of truth and honour; and for living in it with a soiled fame, the ermine would as soon seek to lodge in the den of the foul polecat. For this my father loved him; for this I would have loved him—if I could. And yet in this case he had what seemed to him, unknowing alike of my marriage and to whom I was united, such powerful reasons to withdraw me from this place, that ...
— Kenilworth • Sir Walter Scott
... could edit a paper of this nature? You do not seem to know the first rudiments of agriculture. You speak of a furrow and a harrow as being the same thing; you talk of the moulting season for cows; and you recommend the domestication of the polecat on account of its playfulness and its excellence as a ratter! Your remark that clams will lie quiet if music be played to them was superfluous—entirely superfluous. Nothing disturbs clams. Clams always lie quiet. Clams care nothing whatever about music. ...
— Editorial Wild Oats • Mark Twain
... gains neither character nor influence by abandoning good manners. It may indeed make itself disagreeable and annoying, and so silence opposition, as a polecat may effectually close the wood path which you had designed to take. It may be feared, and in the same way as that animal—feared and despised. But this effect must not be confounded with newspaper power and influence. ...
— Ars Recte Vivende - Being Essays Contributed to "The Easy Chair" • George William Curtis
... a cupboard a polecat lies Laughing between his paws, And there's more than a hint of amused surprise In the gape of the lynx, in the marten's eyes, In the poise of the ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, June 11, 1919 • Various
... in the fork of my boughs, and all your family without payment of any rent." Then the magpie, having made and confirmed certain new stipulations with the willow,—and principally that she should never admit upon her any snake or polecat, cocked his tail, and put down his head, and flung himself from the bough, throwing his weight upon his wings; and these, beating the fleeting air, now here, now there, bearing about inquisitively, ...
— The Notebooks of Leonardo Da Vinci, Complete • Leonardo Da Vinci
... following year; but he did not lose voice, spurs, strength, nor productiveness. This bird has now retained the same character during five seasons, and has begot both hen-feathered and male-feathered offspring. Mr. Grantley F. Berkeley relates the still more singular case of a celebrated strain of "polecat Game fowls," which produced in nearly every brood a single hen-cock. "The great peculiarity in one of these birds was that he, as the seasons succeeded each other, was not always a hen-cock, and not always of the colour called the polecat, which is black. From ...
— The Variation of Animals and Plants under Domestication - Volume I • Charles Darwin
... out a yelp of rage. "Why, you sneakin', double-dyed, bushwhackin' polecat!" the old Westerner bellowed. "We shoulda kept you hawg-tied, 'stead o' lettin' you ...
— Tom Swift and The Visitor from Planet X • Victor Appleton
... And at last the Devil put it into his relentless heart to buy poison, in order with it to kill his two companions. And straightway he went on into the town to an apothecary, and besought him to sell him some poison for destroying some rats which infested his house and a polecat which, he said, had made away with his capons. And the apothecary said: "Thou shalt have something of which (so may God save my soul!) no creature in all the world could swallow a single grain without losing his life thereby—and ...
— Chaucer • Adolphus William Ward
... Snivel was a dog belonging to Mr B. in early days. "We had an adventure this morning, which, if poor Snivel had been living, would have set up her bristles in great style. A foumart was caught in the back kitchen; you may perhaps know it better by the name of polecat. It is the first I ever saw or smelt; and certainly it was in high odour. Poor Snivel! I still have the hairs which we cut from her tail thirty years ago; and if it were the fashion for men to wear lockets, in a locket they should be worn, for I never ...
— Heads and Tales • Various
... those for summer are of deer or elk-skin, dressed without the hair, and with soles of elk-skin. On great occasions, or whenever they are in full dress, the young men drag after them the entire skin of a polecat fixed to the heel of the moccasin. Another skin of the same animal, either tucked into the girdle or carried in the hand, serves as a pouch for their tobacco, or what the French traders call bois roule.(1) This is the inner bark of a species ...
— First Across the Continent • Noah Brooks
... Essays:—"There was no want of low minds and bad hearts in the generation which witnessed her (Miss Burney's) first appearance. There was the envious Kenrick and the savage Wolcot; the asp George Steevens and the polecat John Williams. It did not, however, occur to them to search the parish register of Lynn, in order that they might be able to twit a lady with having concealed her age. That truly chivalrous exploit was reserved for a bad writer of our own time, whose spite she had provoked by not furnishing ...
— Autobiography, Letters and Literary Remains of Mrs. Piozzi (Thrale) (2nd ed.) (2 vols.) • Mrs. Hester Lynch Piozzi
... then bade him lie down, and he obeyed her with that strange double understanding of the delirious; for even while submitting, he muttered "liar," "polecat," and then "Trampas." ...
— The Virginian - A Horseman Of The Plains • Owen Wister
... watched de hole of a 'possum all night long. An' at las', suh, de 'possum done come out of his hole. An' what yoh t'ink de ole scallywog done did? Well, suh, he done come out, an' when he done come out, he was a polecat!" ...
— Jokes For All Occasions - Selected and Edited by One of America's Foremost Public Speakers • Anonymous
... Thus, the Chippewas, from their agility, are denominated "Sauteurs," or Jumpers; the Ottawas, the "Courtes-oreilles," or Short-ears. The Menomonees, from the wild rice so abundant in their country, are called "Folles Avoines;"—the Winnebagoes, from their custom of wearing the fur of a polecat on their legs when equipped for war, are termed "les Puans;"—the Pottowattamies, from their uncleanly habits, "les Poux;"—the Foxes are ...
— Wau-bun - The Early Day in the Northwest • Juliette Augusta Magill Kinzie
... have been distinctly unfavorable. That Denyse female," continued the veteran lawyer, "is a raddled old polecat. Mischief is her specialty. How did she get ...
— Little Miss Grouch - A Narrative Based on the Log of Alexander Forsyth Smith's - Maiden Transatlantic Voyage • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... my part, Richard. There seems to have been a little run of it in this state, and when Judge Warren caught it and gave it to me I talked like a fool, I suppose. But you must remember that a polecat can give the most level-headed man an almighty start—and then the level-headed man walks out around the polecat and goes on his way ...
— The Landloper - The Romance Of A Man On Foot • Holman Day
... run across things—a wolf, mebbe, that'll get fresh with you, or a sneakin' coyote that'll kind of make the hair raise on the back of your neck, not because you're scared of him, but because you know his mean tricks an' don't admire them, or a wildcat, or a hydrophobia polecat, ma'am," he said, with slightly reddening cheeks; "but mostly, ma'am, I reckon you'll like shootin' at side-winders best. Sometimes they get mighty full of fight, ma'am—when ...
— The Range Boss • Charles Alden Seltzer |
