"Thistle" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... him with her when she went to milk the cow; and it being a very windy day, she tied him with a needleful of thread to a thistle, that he might not be blown away. The cow, liking his oak-leaf hat, took him and the thistle up at one mouthful. While the cow chewed the thistle, Tom, terrified at her great teeth, which seemed ready to crush him to pieces, ...
— Children's Literature - A Textbook of Sources for Teachers and Teacher-Training Classes • Charles Madison Curry
... lightness it assumed the moment feet moved in time with the music. If life had been a continuous waltz no partner of hers less awkward than a rhinoceros could have avoided falling in love with her. But waltzes ended all too soon and the thistle-down sylph of a woman became my plain homely Blanquette, uninspiring of romance save in the hardware bosom of the quincaillier at the corner ...
— The Beloved Vagabond • William J. Locke
... field, along the hedge, and the bank above the ditch, stood the weeds. There were dense clumps of them—Thistle and Burdock, Poppy and Harebell, and Dandelion; and all their heads were full of seed. It had been a fruitful year for them also, for the sun shines and the rain falls just as much on the poor weed ...
— The Junior Classics Volume 8 - Animal and Nature Stories • Selected and arranged by William Patten
... then escorted the ladies home. But Thumbelina could not sleep that night; so she got out of bed, and plaited a great big blanket of straw, and carried it off, and spread it over the dead bird, and piled upon it thistle-down as soft as cotton-wool, which she had found in the field-mouse's room, so that the poor little thing should lie ...
— The Yellow Fairy Book • Leonora Blanche Alleyne Lang
... there, or drowned sailors either, from the upper parts, because these are all mashed to pieces by the great weight long before they get so far, or else come to a place where perhaps they float. But I dare say a cannon sometimes comes careering solemnly down, and circling about like a dead leaf or thistle-down; and then the ragged fellows go and play about the cannon and tell themselves all kinds of stories about the fish higher up and their iron houses, and perhaps go inside and sleep, and perhaps dream of it all ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 18 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... the sharp-taloned Goblins when the thorns of the Ryls reached their savage hearts and let their life-blood sprinkle all the plain. And afterward from every drop a thistle grew. ...
— The Life and Adventures of Santa Claus • L. Frank Baum
... fell Dean, by whose command Was form'd this Machiavelian plot, Not leave a thistle on thy land; Then who will own thee ...
— Poems (Volume II.) • Jonathan Swift
... now and took up the pail. The cows meandered along. She was rather glad Jim did not see the thistle. She would not tell him ...
— A Little Girl in Old New York • Amanda Millie Douglas
... her wish, at the mature age of fifty, after twenty years of joyless married life with a shrewish, bony wife; he, who had always until then deferred so to her will, now swayed only by his passion for this gay young widow, lighter than thistle-down! She had promised herself to keep watch over the present, and there was the past coming back to plague her. But ought she to speak? Her life in the household was one of silent reproach and protest; she ...
— The Downfall • Emile Zola
... have passed before Christianity had obtained a footing among the Roman people; we know not how. To use Dr. Martineau's expressive similitude, the Faith was blown over the world silently like thistle-seed, and as silently here and there it fell and took root. We know no more who were its first preachers in Rome than we do who they were in Britain. It was in Rome before St. Paul arrived in the city, for he had already written his Epistle to the Romans; but evidently ...
— Old St. Paul's Cathedral • William Benham
... rail to Glasgow and thence joyfully sailed away from beloved Scotland, flying to our fortunes on the wings of the winds, care-free as thistle seeds. We could not then know what we were leaving, what we were to encounter in the New World, nor what our gains were likely to be. We were too young and full of hope for fear or regret, but not too ...
— The Story of My Boyhood and Youth • John Muir
... donkey that he didn't know it, and it only comes harder for him. The fool ought to have been better acquainted with his own interior condition; then he might have eased his descent to his royal thistle, secured his repast or gone without it, and got back to his stable with a whole skin. Otherwise it is just the same. The heart is an idiot baby, Robert: it feeds on pap and thinks it is guzzling nectar ...
— A Pessimist - In Theory and Practice • Robert Timsol
... fling, and wince, As if he'd been beside his sense, Striving to disengage from thistle That gall'd him sorely under ...
— History of English Humour, Vol. 1 (of 2) - With an Introduction upon Ancient Humour • Alfred Guy Kingan L'Estrange
... other roses In the songs of East and West Of love and war and worshipping, And every shield and crest Of thistle or of lotus Or sacred lily wrought In creeds and psalms and palaces And temples of ...
— The Congo and Other Poems • Vachel Lindsay
... approach to the great Alps, which await him at the close of the day. It is about Mulhausen that he begins to feel a change in the landscape. The fields broaden into rolling downs, watered by clear and running streams; the green Swiss thistle grows by riverside and cowshed; pines begin to tuft the slopes of gently rising hills; and now the sun has set, the stars come out, first Hesper, then the troop of lesser lights; and he feels—yes, indeed, there is now no mistake—the well-known, ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Complete - Series I, II, and III • John Symonds
... contrasted with her pure white front, and twisted in a dainty curve to match her features. Her feet and tiny claws were the pink of a sea-shell. Her eyes were small (harvest mice have small eyes), but they were very gentle. As she sighted him, she swung lightly up a thistle stem, and sat for a moment balanced on the head. Evidently he was ...
— "Wee Tim'rous Beasties" - Studies of Animal life and Character • Douglas English
... grazing-grounds, and by the brink of the dull-green, serried hop-rows, talking at rare intervals about the value of the crops, the drainage of the estate, the village schools, the Primrose League, and the iniquities of Mr. Gladstone, while Oke of Okehurst carefully cut down every tall thistle that caught his eye—I sometimes felt, I say, an intense and impotent desire to enlighten this man about his wife's character. I seemed to understand it so well, and to understand it well seemed to imply such a comfortable acquiescence; and it seemed so unfair that just ...
— Hauntings • Vernon Lee
... rivulet came tumbling down, giving to the scene an appearance of the most delightful coolness, and amusing the ear with the unceasing roar of a waterfall. From the very face of the cliff, where there seemed to be scarcely soil enough to nourish a thistle, numerous shrubs and dwarf trees protruded themselves; whilst above it, and on every side of the area, the hills were covered with wood, interrupted now and then by the bald forehead of a blackened rock. In front of the hamlet again, ...
— The Campaigns of the British Army at Washington and New Orleans 1814-1815 • G. R. Gleig
... paled. The indecisiveness which never dared to grasp the thistle firmly was troubling him with a new dilemma. Yet something in Marcia Terroll made a call upon him which no other woman had yet made—the call to be honest at ...
— Destiny • Charles Neville Buck
... paces before he could rein it in. Then he looked up to avoid imaginary dangers, and then back again to see a horse rolling on the ground, the gaunt man standing and slashing over it at a rent and fluttering mass of grey that streamed and wrapped about them both. And thick and fast as thistle-down on waste land on a windy day in July the cobweb ...
— The Country of the Blind, And Other Stories • H. G. Wells
... his garden, and saw the wild brier The thorn and the thistle grow broader and higher; The clothes that hang on him are turning to rags; And his money still wastes till ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 1 (of 4) • Various
... that you kick aside, the plant pressing up between the boards, the dew shimmering on the weed. Investigate all your surroundings, especially the small, neglected places, and try to have an opinion about what you observe. A busy man, a merchant, noticed, some time ago, a thistle growing by the wayside. He was journeying in the steam-cars at the time; and, although the next stopping-place was somewhat far, he walked back to find the strange flower. The prize he gained was a rare plant, a beautiful thistle of which he had ...
— Hold Up Your Heads, Girls! • Annie H. Ryder
... roses, arnica liniment, ointment of marshmallow root, of poplar-buds, basilicon ointment, ointment of white camphor, salt of wormwood, salts of the blessed thistle, sal-prunella.] ...
— Privateering and Piracy in the Colonial Period - Illustrative Documents • Various
... saddle there was some coarse grass which was in full seed, and therefore very nourishing for the horses; also abundance of anise and sow- thistle, of which they are extravagantly fond, so we turned them loose and prepared to camp. Everything was soaking wet and we were half-perished with cold; indeed we were very uncomfortable. There was brushwood about, but we could get no fire till we had shaved off the wet outside of some dead branches ...
— Erewhon • Samuel Butler
... for impure, bestial and selfish thoughts to blossom into loving and altruistic habits. Thistle seeds bring forth only the thistle. Contrariwise, it is entirely impossible for continual altruistic, sympathetic, and serviceful thoughts to bring forth a low and vicious character. Either thoughts or feelings precede ...
— The Art of Public Speaking • Dale Carnagey (AKA Dale Carnegie) and J. Berg Esenwein
... the ground as the lumberman sinks his axe in the bark. The shimmer of hot gas spread out from the point of explosion. Through it as through an aureole one saw that twelve inches of green wood had been cut in two as neatly as a thistle-stem is severed by a sharp blow from a walking-stick. The body of the tree was carried across the splintered stump with crushing impact from the power of its flight, plus the power of the burst of the explosive charge which broke the shell-jacket into slashing ...
— My Year of the War • Frederick Palmer
... addicted to this practice, and that this might be his method of amusement while unprovided with a partner. The nest of the Hemp-bird is made of cotton, the down of the fern, and other soft materials, woven together with threads and the fibres of bark, and lined with thistle-down, if it be late enough to obtain it, and sometimes with cow's hair. It is commonly placed in the fork of the slender branches of a maple, linden, or poplar, and is fastened ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 12, October, 1858 • Various
... burrs of a plant something like a thistle. They are about the size of a small egg, only not quite so large around, and they do not taper so much, though one end is a little larger than the other. They have sharp points, sort of like hooks, which all turn down toward the stem, so you can run your ...
— Under Fire - A Tale of New England Village Life • Frank A. Munsey
... fine examples of Sussex backs illustrated are typical of popular styles. Fig. 11 shows the Royal lion of England, accompanied by the emblems appearing on the Royal arms in the seventeenth century; the Tudor rose crowned, the Scottish thistle, and the French fleur-de-lis indicative of the throne of France to which English sovereigns then laid some claim. The date of this fine back is 1649. Fig. 7 is of an earlier period, being dated 1588, beneath which are the initials "I.F.C." ...
— Chats on Household Curios • Fred W. Burgess
... fellow prowled about promiscuously a while, assailing one and another in French, to about as much purpose as one might have tried to storm the walls with discharges of thistle down; all smoked and drank as before. But as several other visitors arrived, and it became evident that if we did not come to see the castle, it was not likely we came for any thing else, a man was fished up from some depths unknown, with a promising ...
— Sunny Memories of Foreign Lands V2 • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... and the verification of it are of so recent a date, that we cannot resist giving it a place in our pages. In the account of the late Captain Flinder's voyage of discovery, is the melancholy relation of the loss of the master, Mr. Thistle, with seven others, in a boat, on the inhospitable shores of Terra Australia. To this narrative, the following note is subjoined, which we shall here quote in Captain Flinder's own words: "This evening, Mr. Fowler, the lieutenant, ...
— Thaumaturgia • An Oxonian
... before observed is eatable, and not unlike a greengage. I returned home loaded with this undescribed genus: I found likewise a fine Buddleia, and Menispermum, with some rare Compositae, among which was an arborescent Eupatorium and a gigantic thistle, a Prunus in flower and fruit, and a neat Liparis, Calamus, Tree- fern, Tupistra, Pandanus, were likewise observed, and a beautiful Viburnum, Corol sterilibus, 4 phyllis, foliis niveis carneo venosis: petal fertil calyptratis, deciduis, ...
— Journals of Travels in Assam, Burma, Bhootan, Afghanistan and The - Neighbouring Countries • William Griffith
... were present, having first filled the court with murmurs, answered in this manner: 'Great goddess, be pleased to reflect a little on the animosities such a choice may create among the rival flowers; even the worthless Thistle will pretend to deserve the crown, and if denied, will perhaps grow factious, and disturb your peaceful reign.' 'Your fears are groundless,' replied the goddess; 'I apprehend no such consequence; my resolution is already fixed; hear, ...
— On the Portraits of English Authors on Gardening, • Samuel Felton
... at the moment," she answered, "at the 'Sign of the Blue Thistle.' He has with him his secretary, Donovan; his valet, and two serving-men. They have their lodgment in four rooms on the second floor; he is bid to the ball at the Duchess of Gordon's to-night and at eleven to-morrow leaves in his private ...
— Nancy Stair - A Novel • Elinor Macartney Lane
... Payne stopped to look at a great sow-thistle that was growing vigorously under a hedge-row. "Did you ever see such a bit of pure force?" said Father Payne. "I see a fierce conscious life in every inch of that plant. Look at the way he clips himself in, and strains to the earth: look at his great rays of leaves, thrust out so geometrically ...
— Father Payne • Arthur Christopher Benson
... threatened the whole kingdom with civil war and confusion. The queen conferred titles upon those who appeared to have influence in the nation [118] [See note Y, at the end of this Vol.] and attachment to her government, and revived the order of the thistle, which the late ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.II. - From William and Mary to George II. • Tobias Smollett
... tress of that glorious hair, so near to him now that, by leaning a little forward, he might have touched it with his lips. The thought brought him no horror. For even as he looked, one of her hands crept up to her cheek—the small, soft hand that had touched his face and hair as lightly as a bit of thistle-down—and he knew that two hands like that could not have killed a man who was fighting ...
— The Valley of Silent Men • James Oliver Curwood
... Charles Sharpe, I have hit on a plan, which, I think, will look very well, if tolerably executed,—namely, to have the lady seated in due form on the top of the lid (which will look handsome, and will be well taken), and to have a thistle wreathed around the sarcophagus and rising above her head, and from the top of the thistle shall proceed the birse. I will bring a drawing with me, and they shall get the cup ready in the mean time. I hope to be at Abbotsford on Monday night, to stay for a week. My cat has eat two or ...
— Memoirs of the Life of Sir Walter Scott, Volume V (of 10) • John Gibson Lockhart
... William L. Marcy, Secretary of State of the United States; and Her Majesty, the Queen of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland, James, Earl of Elgin and Kincardine, Lord Bruce and Elgin, a peer of the United Kingdom, knight of the most ancient and most noble Order of the Thistle, and Governor General in and over all Her Britannic Majesty's provinces on the continent of North America and in and over the island of Prince Edward—who, after having communicated to each other their respective full powers, found in good and ...
— Canada and the States • Edward William Watkin
... yearning for liberty and its manifestation that the bird trappers depend to secure more victims. No sooner does the piping call go forth from the golden throats of the little prisoners, than a reply comes from the thistle tops, far down the field. A moment more and the traps are surrounded with the black and yellow beauties. The fact that one of their own kind is within the curious little house which confronts them seems to send all their timidity to the winds and they fairly fall over ...
— Birds Illustrated by Colour Photography, Vol II. No. 4, October, 1897 • Various
... the correlation of the body with the ether, and by thinking of it as light as thistle-down, will come the power ...
— Cosmic Consciousness • Ali Nomad
... to pull to pieces with the fingers. v. ad loc. et Junius, voce Tease. Hence teasing for carding wool with teasels, a specics of thistle or instrument. ...
— The Forme of Cury • Samuel Pegge
... of plants, the power of increase is even greater and its effects more distinctly visible. Hundreds of square miles of the plains of La Plata are now covered with two or three species of European thistle, often to the exclusion of almost every other plant; but in the native countries of these thistles they occupy, except in cultivated or waste ground, a very subordinate part in the vegetation. Some American plants, like the cotton-weed (Asclepias ...
— Darwinism (1889) • Alfred Russel Wallace
... within the meadow mist Their halos, wavering thistle-downs of light; The loon, that seemed to mock some goblin tryst, Laughed; and the echoes, huddling in affright, Like Odin's hounds, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, Issue 49, November, 1861 • Various
... gardens, with bells large and clear; crimson pinks; the Michaelmas daisy; a plant with a thin, radiated yellow flower, of the character of an aster; a centaurea of a light purple, handsomer than any English one; a thistle in the dryest places, resembling an eryngo, with a thick, bushy top; mulleins, yellow and white; the wild mignonnette, and the white convolvulus; and clematis festooning the bushes, recalled the flowery fields ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 4, September, 1850 • Various
... snow, only a few veins and patches here and there, threading and seaming the steep, as if a white-footed hare had been coursing about. Little stubby brier shoots, and clumps of russet bracken, and dead heather, ruffling like a brown dog's back, broke the dull surface of withered herbage, thistle stumps, teasels, rugged banks, and naked brush. Down in the bottom the noisy brook was scurrying over its pebbles brightly, or plunging into gloom of its own production; and away at the bend of the valley was seen the cot of poor ...
— Mary Anerley • R. D. Blackmore
... on them! In a second—in less than a second, the terrible fireball had burst like a shell! Thousands of glittering fragments were flying around them in all directions—but with no more noise than is made by so many light flakes of thistle-down floating about some warm afternoon in summer. The blinding, blasting steely white glare of the explosion almost bereft the travellers of the use of their eyesight forever, but no more report reached their ears than if it had taken place at the bottom of the Gulf of Mexico. In an atmosphere ...
— All Around the Moon • Jules Verne
... oaks and beeches still wore their liveries of rustling amber, the short grass on hill-side pastures was intensely green, flocks of thistle-birds disguised in demure russet passed in wavering flight from thicket to thicket, and over all a hot sun blazed in a sky of sapphire, linking summer and autumn together in the magnificence of a ...
— A Young Man in a Hurry - and Other Short Stories • Robert W. Chambers
... troth, I have no moral meaning; I meant, plain holy-thistle. You may think, perchance, that I think you are in love: nay, by'r lady, I am not such a fool to think what I list; nor I list not to think what I can; nor, indeed, I cannot think, if I would think my heart out of thinking, that you are in love, or that you will be in love, or ...
— Much Ado About Nothing • William Shakespeare [Knight edition]
... is Sixty Years since) the now universal potato was unknown, but which were stored with gigantic plants of KALE or colewort, encircled with groves of nettles, and exhibited here and there a huge hemlock, or the national thistle, overshadowing a quarter of the petty enclosure. The broken ground on which the village was built had never been levelled; so that these enclosures presented declivities of every degree, here rising like terraces, there sinking like ...
— Waverley • Sir Walter Scott
... down seed—"Tiddly, widdly, widdly! Pouff, pouff, puff." said Mr. Jackson. He blew the thistle- down ...
— The Great Big Treasury of Beatrix Potter • Beatrix Potter
... unwholesomeness; dogs move round as if upon a hunt and on the scent for game; the yoked goose, after more than one expression of its sense of dignity, retires a little out of the way; and now the ground sparrow, deeming his thistle or over-hanging Barberry-bush insecure against the incursions of all these comers and goers, regrets at a short and watchful distance, and with all the anxiety of a politician, that he had not built more wisely under covert of the other side of ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, April 1844 - Volume 23, Number 4 • Various
... the fields with his mother went, To milk the cow was her intent; The wind blew high as they did walk, So she tied him to a thistle stalk; The cow the thistle view'd and cropp'd, In her mouth, with Tom, it soon was popp'd! Her teeth put Tom in such a fright, That he "mother" bawl'd with all his might! The cow, on hearing such a rout, Open'd her jaws, and ...
— An Entertaining History of Tom Thumb - William Raine's Edition • Unknown
... thought out detail and perfection more minutely. There it lay, the gift of a generous man to a lonely girl, everything for her graduating night! The filmy gown with its touch of colour in embroidered thistle flowers; the slippers and gloves; even the lace scarf, cloud-like and alluring; the long gloves and ...
— The Place Beyond the Winds • Harriet T. Comstock
... while the grasshopper sang out shrill In the grass beneath the blanching thistle, And the afternoon air, with a tender thrill, Harked to the ...
— Poems • William D. Howells
... against contagion. Rivers and mountains are easily crossed by corrupting example. Ardent spirits, like all other fluids, perpetually seek their level. In vain does the farmer eradicate from his fields the last vestige of the noisome thistle, while the neighboring grounds are given up to its dominion, and every wind scatters the seed where it listeth. The effort against intemperance, to be effective, must ...
— Select Temperance Tracts • American Tract Society
... sobs and flew away again, nearly scared out of its wits. A goldfinch came and perched on a furze-bush near, looked wonderingly at the odd-shaped thing that made such funny noises, and then flew away to a thistle and began to search for any stray seeds that might have been overlooked. Little spiders ran over the boulder and put out delicate feelers to try to discover what curious pinky-white things those were that lay on the old stone; then, after a first venture, finding them harmless, ...
— The Carroll Girls • Mabel Quiller-Couch
... had evidently made up his mind that the road to the Landslip was not a congenial one. In vain the boy who drove him cheered him onwards, in vain Denys tugged at his bridle, in vain Audrey walked in front holding out an inviting thistle. At length Mrs. Henchman got flurried ...
— The Girls of St. Olave's • Mabel Mackintosh
... dead; he will do nothing more of any worth. Women like her are like the Indian drugs, that sleep and kill. How is that any fault of mine? He could see the thing she was. If he will fling his soul away upon a creature lighter than thistle-down, viler than a rattlesnake's poison, poorer and quicker to pass than the breath of a gnat—whose blame is that except his own? There was a sculptor once, you know, that fell to lascivious worship of the marble image he had made; well,—poets are not ...
— Wisdom, Wit, and Pathos of Ouida - Selected from the Works of Ouida • Ouida
... certain weeds which would not grow on them if they were made chemically perfect, as indicated by analysis. It is also believed that those weeds, which naturally grow on the most fertile soils, are the ones most easily destroyed. There are exceptions (of which the Thistle is one), but this is given as a ...
— The Elements of Agriculture - A Book for Young Farmers, with Questions Prepared for the Use of Schools • George E. Waring
... hat he had for his crown; His shirt of web by spiders spun; With jacket wove of thistle's down; His trowsers were of feathers done. His stockings, of apple-rind, they tie With eyelash from his mother's eye His shoes were made of mouse's skin, Tann'd with the downy ...
— English Fairy Tales • Joseph Jacobs (coll. & ed.)
... (the name adopted by the Italian Bartholomew Sacchi), which dates from the fifteenth century, do not lead us to suppose that alimentary horticulture had made much progress since the time of Charlemagne. Moreover, we are astonished to find the thistle placed amongst choice dishes; though it cannot be the common thistle that is meant, but probably this somewhat general appellation refers to the vegetable-marrow, which is still found on the tables of the higher classes, or perhaps ...
— Manners, Custom and Dress During the Middle Ages and During the Renaissance Period • Paul Lacroix
... strode into the roughly-furnished kitchen-like room, looking as unlike a clergyman and a lawyer as could be imagined, for both were dressed in well-worn garments, half farmer, half back wood settler, the one with a thistle staff or spud in his hand, the other shouldering a double gun, which, following the example of his companion, he set up in a corner in company with the spud and a couple of fishing rods and a landing-net, before going to the broad shelf over the fire-place, upon ...
— The Peril Finders • George Manville Fenn
... disintegrated into one solid mass, and covered with vegetation. You can lie on the blossoming clover, where the bees hum and the crickets chirp around you, and can look through the arch which frames its own fair picture. In the foreground lies the steep slope overgrown with bayberry and gay with thistle blooms; then the little winding cove with its bordering cliffs; and the rough pastures with their grazing sheep beyond. Or, ascending the parapet, you can look across the bay to the men making hay picturesquely on far-off lawns, or to the cannon on the outer ...
— Malbone - An Oldport Romance • Thomas Wentworth Higginson
... my desk, the thistles are in their glory, and in a vase at my elbow stands a single head of the tall swamp variety, along with a handful of fringed gentians. Forgetting what it is, one cannot help pronouncing the thistle beautiful,—a close bunch of minute rose-purple flowers. But who could ever feel toward it as toward the gentian? Beauty is a thing not merely of form and color, but of memory and association. The thistle is an ugly customer. In a single respect it lays itself out to be agreeable; ...
— The Foot-path Way • Bradford Torrey
... came into a great plain, acres and acres of green rag-weed where the wheat had grown, all so flat one thought of an enormous billiard table, and now, where the railroad crossed the country roads, they saw the staunch brown thistle, sometimes the sumach, and always the graceful iron-weed, slender, tall, proud, bowing a purple-turbaned head, or shaking in an agony of fright when it stood too close to the train. The fields, like great, flat emeralds set in new metal, ...
— The Gentleman From Indiana • Booth Tarkington
... built by the Government for the old Dutch naturalists who surveyed and explored the mountain. There are a lot of strawberries planted there, which do very well, but there were not many ripe. The common weeds and plants of the top were very like English ones, such as buttercups, sow-thistle, plantain, wormwood, chickweed, charlock, St. John's wort, violets and many others, all closely allied to our common plants of those names, but of distinct species. There was also a honey-suckle, and a tall and very pretty kind of cowslip. ...
— Alfred Russel Wallace: Letters and Reminiscences, Vol. 1 (of 2) • James Marchant
... silent. So, too, was the actress, for some moments; then, softened almost to tears, half closing her eyes, and letting her fancy float away like thistle-down over town and country, upland, valley, and moor, she said softly,—"Dear Burleigh Grange, how lovely it must be now! What a verdurous twilight reigns under the old elms of the avenue!—in what a passion of bloom the roses are ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 4, No. 23, September, 1859 • Various
... compos'd of Crickets bones, And daintily made for the nonce, For feare of ratling on the stones, With Thistle-downe they shod it; For all her Maydens much did feare, If Oberon had chanc'd to heare, 150 That Mab his Queene should haue bin there, He would not haue ...
— Minor Poems of Michael Drayton • Michael Drayton
... sound. It is the intake of the breath of horror from ten thousand pairs of lungs. Look! Look! The edges of the parachute ruffle, and then it blossoms out like an opening flower. It bounces on the air a little, and rocking gently sinks like thistle-down ...
— Back Home • Eugene Wood
... what there was about my partner—a whimsical humor, a slight mocking sound in his voice, which pleased me; he took nothing seriously; everything he said was as light as a thistle-down; he reminded me of the wit of grandmamma and the Marquis; we got ...
— The Reflections of Ambrosine - A Novel • Elinor Glyn
... intellect. Thus, the beauty of the rose would not certainly be so perceptible to us, wanting its fragrance, and, with a nauseous smell, would not probably be admitted, as I may say, into the rank of agreeableness, though it is in reality a beautiful and pleasing object; nor, supposing the thistle, or any other ugly flower, possessed of the fragrance of the rose, should we therefore think it an object of taste, any more than we can think the form of an elephant beautiful, though endued ...
— An Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Taste, and of the Origin of - our Ideas of Beauty, etc. • Frances Reynolds
... thistle and the thorns and the weeds shall bear its foods of a valiant worth. There shall be no hunger or tears of the poor, for the Lord ...
— The Secret of the Creation • Howard D. Pollyen
... ago. Joanna made no demur, though, a month before, nothing would have induced her to believe that she would be staying with Susie this March at Whitethorn. Mr. Crawfurd walked with his daughters to the great gate, and Joanna, looking back, saw him, on his return, switching the thistle-heads in the hedge, as she had never witnessed him attempt in her experience; she could almost fancy he was whistling, as Harry Jardine went piping along before he fell in ...
— Girlhood and Womanhood - The Story of some Fortunes and Misfortunes • Sarah Tytler
... the procession the Highlanders, who were real Scotchmen, in plaids, and bonnets with eagle feathers. Every one had a claymore by his side, and a thistle on his breast; and there were pipers playing on bagpipes ...
— Life at Puget Sound: With Sketches of Travel in Washington Territory, British Columbia, Oregon and California • Caroline C. Leighton
... tongue. This is a curious feature, for prickles usually grow out of veins. In the receptacle formed where the bases of the upper leaves grow together, rain and dew are found collected - a certain cure for warts, country people say. Venus' Cup, Bath, or Basin, and Water Thistle, are a few of the teasel's folk names earned by its curious little tank. In it many small insects are drowned, and these are supposed to contribute nourishment to the plant; for Mr. Francis Darwin has noted that protoplasmic filaments reach ...
— Wild Flowers, An Aid to Knowledge of Our Wild Flowers and - Their Insect Visitors - - Title: Nature's Garden • Neltje Blanchan
... neither the rose nor the thistle, nor does he forget the solitary blade of grass in the distant waste. He destroys thoroughly and unceasingly. Everywhere we may see how he crushes to dust plants and beasts, men and their works. Even the Egyptian pyramids, that would seem to defy him, are trophies of his power,—monuments ...
— Pearls of Thought • Maturin M. Ballou
... brickfields, and straggling village streets, the larger houses of the petty great, flower-grown railway banks, garden-set stations, and all the little things of the vanished nineteenth century still holding out against Immensity. Here and there would be a patch of wind-sown, wind-tattered giant thistle defying the axe; here and there a ten-foot puff-ball or the ashen stems of some burnt-out patch of monster grass; but that was all there was to hint at the coming ...
— The Food of the Gods and How It Came to Earth • H.G. Wells
... Where the thistle lifts a purple crown Six foot out of the turf, And the harebell shakes on the windy hill— O the ...
— The World's Best Poetry, Volume 3 - Sorrow and Consolation • Various
... sufficiently to proceed. The little path, that led to the building, was overgrown with grass and the flowers which St. Aubert had scattered carelessly along the border were almost choked with weeds—the tall thistle—the fox-glove, and the nettle. She often paused to look on the desolate spot, now so silent and forsaken, and when, with a trembling hand, she opened the door of the fishing-house, 'Ah!' said she, 'every thing—every ...
— The Mysteries of Udolpho • Ann Radcliffe
... effectually as if it were the wind, and they, the sand and pebbles, of our illustration; or, on the other hand, as if the intelligence of a gardener had been operative in cutting the weaker organisms down. The thistle, which has spread over the Pampas, to the destruction of native plants, has been more effectually "selected" by the unconscious operation of natural conditions than if a thousand agriculturists had spent ...
— Darwiniana • Thomas Henry Huxley
... indulgences they were allowed only on some few particular days in the year. They lodged together in little bands upon beds made of the rushes which grew by the banks of the river Eurotas, which they were to break off with their hands without a knife; if it were winter, they mingled some thistle-down with their rushes, which it was thought had the property of giving warmth. By the time they were come to this age, there was not any of the more hopeful boys who had not a lover to bear him company. The ...
— Plutarch's Lives • A.H. Clough
... of republican government in America the angel of freedom and the demon of slavery wrestled for the mastery. Tallyrand has beautifully and forcibly said: "The Lily and Thistle may grow together in harmonious proximity, but liberty and slavery delight in the separation." The pronounced policy of the best minds at the adoption of the Federal Constitution was to repress it as an institution inhuman in its character and fraught with mischief. Foretelling with ...
— Shadow and Light - An Autobiography with Reminiscences of the Last and Present Century • Mifflin Wistar Gibbs
... a snowflake falls, then a few others, soft as the spray of the thistle in the early days of October. Gently as the fairy balloons of the dandelion they float through the air and rest upon the withered leaves of the white oaks. Soon they come faster, and now the forest-crowned ridge half a mile away which was in plain sight a minute ago is screened ...
— Some Winter Days in Iowa • Frederick John Lazell
... Mezhesay, n. a turkey Mesahmaig, n. a whale Mahzhahmagoos, n. trout Mahnoomin, n. rice Mezheh, adv. everywhere Magwah, adv. while Manmooyahwahgaindahmoowin, n. thankfulness Meshejemin, n. a currant, (fruit) Mahzahn, n. a thistle Mahjegooday, n. a petticoat Menekahnekah, adv. seedy Mejenahwayahdahkahmig, n. pity Mahmahdahwechegawenebun, it was a strange custom Menesenoo, n. a hero Mesquahsin, n. brick, which signifies, red stone Mesahowh, that is Moosay, n. a worm Moong, n. a loon Meene, n. a kind ...
— Sketch of Grammar of the Chippeway Languages - To Which is Added a Vocabulary of some of the Most Common Words • John Summerfield
... been incredible. So it is with plants; cases could be given of introduced plants which have become common throughout whole islands in a period of less than ten years. Several of the plants, such as the cardoon and a tall thistle, which are now the commonest over the wide plains of La Plata, clothing square leagues of surface almost to the exclusion of every other plant, have been introduced from Europe; and there are plants which now range in India, as I hear from Dr. Falconer, from Cape Comorin to the Himalaya, ...
— On the Origin of Species - 6th Edition • Charles Darwin
... diamonds. His Royal Highness Prince Albert wore a field-marshal's uniform, with the collars of the Orders of the Garter and the Black Eagle (of Prussia), with four stars set in diamonds of the Garter, the Thistle, St. Patrick, and the Bath, and the ensigns of ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... yellowbird, or goldfinch. This is one of the last birds to nest, seldom hatching its eggs till late in July. It seems as if a particular kind of food were required to rear its brood, which cannot be had at an earlier date. The seed of the common thistle is apparently its mainstay. There is no prettier sight at this season than a troop of young goldfinches, led by their parents, going from thistle to thistle along the roadside and pulling the ripe heads to pieces for the seed. The plaintive call of the young ...
— Bird Stories from Burroughs - Sketches of Bird Life Taken from the Works of John Burroughs • John Burroughs
... at any rate, in the 'land o' cakes' who can admire and appreciate their marvellous early singers, and whose admiration for The Lord of the Isles and the verses To a Mountain Daisy does not blind them to the exquisite beauties of The Testament of Cresseid, The Thistle and the Rose, and the Dialog betwix Experience and ...
— Reviews • Oscar Wilde
... an innermost speck Of silver, singing afloat Beneath the night, Like balls of thistle-down Wandering up and down Over the whispering town ...
— Look! We Have Come Through! • D. H. Lawrence
... McCarthy (author of "Out-of-Doors" and "Gods and Devils"), and to Robert Loveman, best known for his felicitous "Rain Song," a poem too well known to be quoted here. Any poet who has ever lived might have been proud to have written that poem. It goes as lightly as thistle-down, yet is freighted with thought. Its philosophy is so sublimated and so natural and easy that we are likely to forget that it has any philosophy at all. The fifty or more stanzas of his "Gates of Silence" are probably far less well known. Let me ...
— The Last Harvest • John Burroughs
... poor as Christ was—kindly, too, It seems so strange the thistle, hatred, grew To whip your tender backs, with great ado, Because you ...
— Hydesville - The Story of the Rochester Knockings, Which Proclaimed the Advent of Modern Spiritualism • Thomas Olman Todd
... The slim marsh-thistle's purple plume Droops tasselled on the stem, The golden hawkweeds pierce like flame The grass that ...
— Songs of Angus and More Songs of Angus • Violet Jacob
... great-grandfather, Lord Mackenzie of Kintail, in his lands in the Lordship of Ardmeanach and in the Earldom of Ross; was made a member of the Privy Council by James II. on his accession to the throne in 1685, and chosen a Knight Companion of the Thistle, on the revival of that ancient Order in 1687. The year after the Revolution Seaforth accompanied his Royal master to France, but when that Prince returned to Ireland in the following year to make a final effort for the recovery of ...
— History Of The Mackenzies • Alexander Mackenzie
... wizened shrub, a starveling bough, A fleecy thistle filched from by the wind, A weed, Pan's trampling ...
— The Poetry Of Robert Browning • Stopford A. Brooke
... growing out of a Plant, or somewhat like the hairs of Animals) as there is to be found amongst small shrubs that compose bushes; but for the most part, they consist of small transparent parts, some of which grow in the shape of small Needles or Bodkins, as on the Thistle, Cowag-ecod and Nettle; others in the form of Cat's claws, as in Cliders, the beards of Barley, the edges of several sorts of Grass and Reeds, &c. in other, as Coltsfoot, Rose-campion, Aps, Poplar, Willow, and almost all other ...
— Micrographia • Robert Hooke
... geniuses. The poet is a tree that may be blown about by all winds and watered by every fall of dew; and bears his works as his fruit, as the fablier of old bore his fables. Why attach one's self to a master, or graft one's self upon a model? It were better to be a bramble or a thistle, fed by the same earth as the cedar and the palm, than the fungus or the lichen of those noble trees. The bramble lives, the fungus vegetates. Moreover, however great the cedar and the palm may be, it is not with the sap one sucks from them that one can become great one's self. A giant's ...
— Prefaces and Prologues to Famous Books - with Introductions, Notes and Illustrations • Charles W. Eliot
... away, pulled up an iron-weed growing on the road-side, and fell to whipping a large purple thistle. Her thirst grew; she left the thistle and fell to whipping the rank grass. Then was heard an angry buzz, as the assaulted bees swarmed out of their ...
— That Old-Time Child, Roberta • Sophie Fox Sea
... back to the Little Country to be counsellor at law to its people in time of need, and a father to Solon Denney and his two children. Solon could direct large affairs acceptably, but he and his babes were as thistle-down in ...
— The Boss of Little Arcady • Harry Leon Wilson
... west wind had increased suddenly, a cold steady wind, coasting down the Argentine pampas, bending the sparse trees and giant thistle, ruffling the river, shallowing it, until to-morrow many a poor sailorman would regret his optimistic anchorage ... Shane shivered.... To-morrow October would be making a din in the streets.... And the poor skippers fighting their way round the Horn, ...
— The Wind Bloweth • Brian Oswald Donn-Byrne
... mossy passes, Saucy grasshoppers Leapt about the grasses And the thistle-burs; And the whispered chuckle Of the katydid Shook the honeysuckle Blossoms where ...
— Riley Child-Rhymes • James Whitcomb Riley
... friends and families of the prisoners together on the public square. Then they dug five graves. Then five Japanese officers came stalking across the public square, whisking at the thistle-tops with swords as they came; and then walked up to these innocent Russian boys, and whacked ...
— Flash-lights from the Seven Seas • William L. Stidger
... is as safe from hungry cattle as though fenced in by barbed wire. A cow must be starving that would care to flavor her luncheon with the needles that the thistle bears. The common skunk cabbage would make a tempting meal for her after a winter of dry feeding, had not Nature given it an odor that disgusts even a spring-time appetite. The milkweed welcomes the bees and flies that help to distribute her ...
— The Romance of Rubber • United States Rubber Company
... being! No storms, no clouds, in thy blue sky foreseeing, Play on, play on, My elfin John! Toss the light ball—bestride the stick— (I knew so many cakes would make him sick!) With fancies buoyant as the thistle-down, Prompting the face grotesque, and antic brisk, With many a lamb-like frisk, (He's got the scissors, snipping ...
— The Ontario Readers: The High School Reader, 1886 • Ministry of Education
... pine forest touched it on one side, a brawling stream twisted itself like a live snake half round it on the other. A plot of green grass, ill kept and deformed, with noxious weeds, dock, fennel, thistle, and foul stramonium, was surrounded by a rough wall of loose stones, forming the lawn, such as it was, where, under a tree, seated in an armchair, was a solitary woman, whom Fanchon recognized as her aunt, Marie Josephte ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby
... where we should suppose it to be a very common and noxious weed, from the name there given it of Fico del inferno, or the Devil's Fig: it has long been introduced to this country; GERARD, who cultivated it with success, ludicrously attributes its nickname to a different source: "The golden Thistle of Peru, called in the West-Indies, Fique del inferno, a friend of mine brought it unto me from an iland there, called Saint Johns Iland, among other seedes, what reason the inhabitants there have to call it so it is unto me unknown, unless it be bicause of his fruite, which ...
— The Botanical Magazine Vol. 7 - or, Flower-Garden Displayed • William Curtis
... which is a well-known and very useful vegetable in England, comes from the root of a species of sunflower (Helianthus tuberosus). It has nothing to do with the real artichoke, which is a huge and gorgeous thistle, and it has equally nothing to do with Jerusalem. The English people have always taken a special delight in mispronouncing and corrupting words in order to produce as much confusion as possible in their names for things. Jerusalem is a corruption of Girasole, ...
— Pioneers in Canada • Sir Harry Johnston
... me like a little white lily of the valley, all pure and sweet, but I was no more fit to be with her than a prickly thistle. I loved dearly to tease her. Once she had some bronze shoes, and I wanted some too, but there were none to be had in town, and to console myself, I said to dear little Fel, "I'd twice rather have black shoes, bronzes look so rusty; O, my! If I couldn't ...
— Aunt Madge's Story • Sophie May
... literally, but really Carthamus creticus, a thistle-like plant used for making spindles (Sprengel ap. L. & S.), the Euonymous europaeus being our spindle-tree. Aristot. "H. A." ix. ...
— The Sportsman - On Hunting, A Sportsman's Manual, Commonly Called Cynegeticus • Xenophon
... or more of them. In districts where, as far as the eye can see, the plains are as level and smooth as a bowling-green, especially in winter when the grass is close-cropped, and where the rough giant-thistle has not sprung up, these mounds appear like brown or dark spots on a green surface. They are the only irregularities that occur to catch the eye, and consequently form an important feature in the scenery. In some places they are so ...
— The Human Side of Animals • Royal Dixon |
