"Twitter" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... set up a great twitter. Anybody could see that he was frightened. And one of Jolly Robin's sons, perched in an apple tree near the stone wall where Mr. Chippy lived in a wild grapevine, wondered ...
— The Tale of Grumpy Weasel - Sleepy-Time Tales • Arthur Scott Bailey
... delicious dreamy feeling when one first wakes on a summer morning, with the twitter of birds in the air, and the fresh breeze coming in at the open window—when, lying lazily with eyes half shut, one sees as in a dream green boughs waving, or waters rippling in a golden light? It is ...
— Alice's Adventures Under Ground • Lewis Carroll
... feller come bummin' roun' th' back-door fur a hand-out—all starved t' death—just before I took th' train t' Calgary." She dabbed at the false-front of red hair, which had become somewhat disarranged. "La, la!" she murmured, "I'm all of a twitter!" ...
— The Luck of the Mounted - A Tale of the Royal Northwest Mounted Police • Ralph S. Kendall
... is this I hear of your fine charities, master Israel?" said Ben Aboo. "Ah, do not look surprised. There are little birds enough to twitter of such follies. So you are throwing away silver like bones to the dogs! Pity you've got too much of it, Israel ben Oliel; pity you've got too much of ...
— The Scapegoat • Hall Caine
... lawyer rose from his bed, and at that very moment a thousand little birds, who lived in his room, began to twitter and trill. "Awake so early, little ones!" whispered the lawyer. He ...
— The German Classics, v. 20 - Masterpieces of German Literature • Various
... on his knees and sat staring at the pond. Overhead the trees were whispering; behind him, in and out of their holes the rabbits whisked; far off he could hear the twitter of a swallow; the foxglove was dead, the bracken was turning brown, the cones from the fir trees were lying on the ground. As he watched, a strange thing happened. Slowly and slowly the pond lengthened out and out, stretching away and away until it became a river—a long river that went on ...
— Very Short Stories and Verses For Children • Mrs. W. K. Clifford
... each one giving out his own notes without any regard for the others, but apparently the score had been written for them all, since the innumerable strains made one divine harmony. From the full-orbed song from the maple by my window, down to the faintest chirp and twitter, there was no discord; while from the fields beyond the village the whistle of the meadow-larks was so mellowed and softened by distance as to incline one to wonder whether their notes were real or mere ideals ...
— A Day Of Fate • E. P. Roe
... when he preferred his humble office to all honours among the godless. He was shut out by some unknown circumstances from external participation in the Temple rites, and longs to be even as one of the swallows or sparrows that twitter and flit round the sacred courts. No doubt to him faith was much more inseparably attached to form than it should be for us. No doubt place and ritual were more to him than they can permissibly be to those who have heard and understood the great charter of spiritual worship spoken first ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... invisible riddles of Heaven and earth, of all the concealed secrets beyond the blue of the sky; all the panorama of Nature strung out in a wild, sweet forest song. Jinnie had backed against the wall as she played, and when out of her soul came the twitter of the morning birds, the babbling of the brook on its way to the sea, the scream of the owl in a high woodland tree, Lafe turned to watch her, and from that moment until she dropped exhausted into a chair, he did not ...
— Rose O'Paradise • Grace Miller White
... slam, dogs began to bark, cocks began to crow and hens to cluck; a breeze sprang up outside and set the branches of the trees swaying and creaking; the doves began to coo upon the roofs, the swallows to twitter under the eaves, flies came out and buzzed about the window, mice squeaked in the wainscot and ran scampering along the rafters. The fountain in the garden leapt up sixty feet into the air, and the goldfish swam among the water-lily ...
— The Sleeping Beauty • C. S. Evans
... start. The young farmer's mind is on his work. We suspect he has capacities outside of his cornfield and yuca patch, but to this point in the record before us he gives no clue. He is a farmer, and nothing else. The bright-winged birds flit and gleam and twitter in the evergreen woods about him, but his hand is on the plough and his ear drinks in only the music of his panting team. From his window, looking eastward, he sees the advance beams of the sun flung across the savanna: he takes the hint, and hurries out to look after his young ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 1, July, 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... Duroy; and she and Mrs. Delano were shown in to wait for the lady of the house. They had no sooner entered, than the parrot flapped her wings and cried out, "Bon jour, joli petit diable!" And then she began to whistle and warble, twitter and crow, through a ludicrous series of noisy variations. Flora burst into peals of laughter, in the midst of which the lady of the house entered the room. "Excuse me, Madame," said she. "This parrot is an old acquaintance of ...
— A Romance of the Republic • Lydia Maria Francis Child
... motionless tree-tops; variegated wood-peckers tapped loudly on the stout bark; the blackbird's bell-like trill was heard suddenly in the thick foliage, following on the ever-changing note of the gold-hammer; in the bushes below was the chirp and twitter of hedge-warblers, siskins, and peewits; finches ran swiftly along the paths; a hare would steal along the edge of the wood, halting cautiously as he ran; a squirrel would hop sporting from tree to tree, then suddenly sit still, with its tail over ...
— A Sportsman's Sketches - Volume II • Ivan Turgenev
... ornately gilded, On whose convenient coignes and curves The pert brown sparrows late have builded. They flit, and flirt, and prune their wings, Not awed at all by golden glitter, And make among the silent strings Their satisfied ephemeral twitter. ...
— Ride to the Lady • Helen Gray Cone
... the wind nice? Isn't the sun nice? Isn't everything nice? Let us both chirp and hop and twitter. Come on! Come on!" ...
— The Secret Garden • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... open, setting his jaw against the prospect, and calling himself an old fool, while his heart beat loudly, and then seemed to stop beating altogether. He had seen the dawn lighting the window chinks, heard the birds chirp and twitter, and the cocks crow, before he fell asleep again, and awoke tired but sane. Five weeks before he need bother, at his age an eternity! But that early morning panic had left its mark, had slightly fevered the will of one who had always had his own way. He would see her as often as he ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... and the birds began to twitter; day was breaking. The girl was worn out and panting, and when the sun rose in the purple sky, she stopped, for her swollen feet refused to go any further; but she saw a pond in the distance, a large pond whose stagnant water ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume II (of 8) • Guy de Maupassant
... had bestowed on us for our efforts in cleaning the fruit trees and cornfields of injurious insects, I went to work with new vigor to get out some bugs for my luncheon, and was thus pleasantly employed when a sharp twitter from my mother attracted ...
— Dickey Downy - The Autobiography of a Bird • Virginia Sharpe Patterson
... sayest thou? How dost thou like being saved? Doth not thy mouth water? Doth not thy heart twitter at being saved? Why, come then: "The Spirit and the bride say, Come. And let him that heareth say, Come. And let him that is athirst come. And whosoever will, let him take the water of ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... of the deer, the she of the lynx, the female of the wolf, the she of the bear, the goose, the duck, the hen, and the female of the rabbit. What do they do when they want a mate? . . . They bellow and run, they meow and bow, they howl and prance, they twitter and dance . . . just as women have always done. And when the male comes, what does the female do? She pretends indifference, she feigns innocence, she runs away, and stops to listen, afraid lest she has run too far; and then, if he does not follow, she comes ...
— The Drama of the Forests - Romance and Adventure • Arthur Heming
... you're a broken-down critter, Who is all of a trimmle and twitter, With your palate unpleasantly bitter, As if you'd just eaten a pill— When your legs are as thin as dividers, And you're plagued with unruly insiders, And your spine is all creepy with spiders, And you're ...
— The Complete Plays of Gilbert and Sullivan - The 14 Gilbert And Sullivan Plays • William Schwenk Gilbert and Arthur Sullivan
... searched the ground carefully, she could discover no trace of the hillock where she had so often scattered flowers. A squirrel leaped and frisked in the boughs above her, and she startled a rabbit from the thick grass and fallen yellow leaves: but neither these, nor the twitter of gossiping orioles, nor the harsh, hungry cry of a bluebird told her a syllable of all that had happened ...
— St. Elmo • Augusta J. Evans
... on this peculiarly English season of 'peace and goodwill.' I remember the picturesque snow (seen here only on the distant blue mountain tops), the icy stalactites pendant from the leafless branches, the twitter of the robin redbreast, the holly, and the mistletoe, decorated homes, redolent with the effects of the festive cooking, and the warm blazing firelight, the meeting of families and of friends, the waits, the grand old ...
— Christmas: Its Origin and Associations - Together with Its Historical Events and Festive Celebrations During Nineteen Centuries • William Francis Dawson
... days here have been a real rest, I have been so much alone. There are no women to twitter; and when Mr. Maxwell is not at work he talks of things that are worth talking about. The climate, too, is bracing and wholesome, and the boisterous afternoon wind, which sweeps letters and papers irreverently away, ...
— The Golden Chersonese and the Way Thither • Isabella L. Bird (Mrs. Bishop)
... just in time; and, instead of fleeing desperately across the pool, to be almost inevitably overtaken by the strong-winged bird, it dashed forward and perched for refuge on a fold of the dazzling white shirt. The foiled shrike, with an angry and astonished twitter, flew off to a tree ...
— The Watchers of the Trails - A Book of Animal Life • Charles G. D. Roberts
... do the things which I do, as easily, as naturally, as happily as any fool of a dicky-bird does his infernal twittering on an April morning. God knows whether there's anything in my work or in his twitter; but neither he nor I are likely to improve our output by pondering and cogitation.... Please resume ...
— The Common Law • Robert W. Chambers
... Chillington Wood by the time she reached Three- Walks-End—the converging point of radiating trackways, now floored with a carpet of matted grass, which had never known other scythes than the teeth of rabbits and hares. The twitter overhead had ceased, except from a few braver and larger birds, including the cuckoo, who did not fear night at this pleasant time of year. Nobody seemed to be on the spot when she first drew near, but no sooner did Margery stand at the intersection of the roads than a slight crashing became ...
— The Romantic Adventures of a Milkmaid • Thomas Hardy
... coyote, and the red of fox, and the small, wary heads of old gobblers just sticking above the grass; and he saw deep tracks of game as well as the slow-rising blades of bluebells where some soft-footed beast had just trod. And he heard the melancholy notes of birds, the twitter of grouse, the sough of the wind, the light dropping of pine-cones, the near and distant bark of squirrels, the deep gobble of a turkey close at hand and the challenge from a rival far away, the cracking of twigs in the thickets, the murmur ...
— The Man of the Forest • Zane Grey
... adapts itself to a change in surroundings. In perching, they cling to the side of the chimney, using the spine-pointed tails for a support. They are most active early in the morning and late in the afternoon, when one may hear their rolling twitter ...
— Birds Illustrated by Colour Photography, Vol II. No. 4, October, 1897 • Various
... loved, my girl-mother, she whom now I saw unfolding like the glory of the morning—the transfigured woman. Through her I came to love the wee thing, as it grew strong; as its little soul unfolded itself in twitter and cry and half-formed word, and as its eyes caught the gleam and flash of life. How beautiful he was, with his olive-tinted flesh and dark gold ringlets, his eyes of mingled blue and brown, his perfect little limbs, and the soft voluptuous roll which the blood of Africa had ...
— The Souls of Black Folk • W. E. B. Du Bois
... Brighteye wandered, singing, singing, down the lanes and main road of the river-bank, were, however, infrequent; and the surest sign of his approach, before he came in sight, was the continuous, gossiping twitter I have already described. This habit of singing and twittering was not connected with amorous sentiments towards any sleek young female; Brighteye adopted it long before he was of an age to seek a mate, and he ceased practising his solos before the first winter set in ...
— Creatures of the Night - A Book of Wild Life in Western Britain • Alfred W. Rees
... sunshine. He followed me and gamboled like a dog, rolling over on the turf and exhibiting his delight in a hundred ways. If I worked, he sat and watched me, or looked off over the bank, and kept his ear open to the twitter in the cherry-trees. When it stormed, he was sure to sit at the window, keenly watching the rain or the snow, glancing up and down at its falling; and a winter tempest always delighted him. I think ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... as the programme of a concert he had been unable to attend. I have no more learning about bird-music than would help me to guess that a dull dissyllabic refrain in the heart of the wood came from the cuckoo; and when at moments I heard a twitter of fuller tone, with a more suggestive modulation, I could only hope it was the nightingale. I have listened for the nightingale more than once in places so charming that his song would have seemed but the articulate expression of their beauty, and have never heard much beyond ...
— Italian Hours • Henry James
... corner of the cloth from about that which lay so inertly under the all-hiding cloak, and choked, and stuttered, and then recovering himself, blandly led the Arab to the lift which whirled them to the first floor, leaving the occupants on the verandah all a-twitter, whilst the coffee grew cold and the cigarettes ...
— Desert Love • Joan Conquest
... few stiller things than the stillness of a summer's noon such as this, a summer's noon in a broken woodland, with the deer asleep in the bracken, and the twitter of birds silent in the coppice, and hardly a leaf astir in the huge beeches that fling their cool shade over the grass. Afar off a gilded vane flares out above the grey Jacobean gables of Knoll, the chime of a village clock ...
— Stray Studies from England and Italy • John Richard Green
... "whoever's that? You, Miss Damaris? Alone here in the dark. You did make me jump. But there," she added, repentant of her unceremonious exclamation, "I don't know what possesses us all to-night. The least thing seems to make you jump. Mrs. Cooper's all of a twitter, and Laura—silly girl—is almost as bad. I suppose it's the weather being so quiet after yesterday's gale. For my own part I always do like a wind about. It seems company, particularly these long evenings if you're called on to go round ...
— Deadham Hard • Lucas Malet
... a dash of southern sunshine amidst the blossoms. Sometimes he stopped in his frolic to find a bit of string, over which he raised an impromptu jubilate, or to fly with his mate to the nest, uttering that soft rich twitter of his in a mixture of blarney and congratulation whenever she found some particularly choice material. But his chief part seemed to be to furnish the celebration, while she took ...
— Ways of Wood Folk • William J. Long
... good-natured laugh rang out over the plain and along the road. In front of them, Doorke, like a little black shadow, danced up and down in his cart to the jolting of the wheels as he jogged quietly along. The crickets chirped in the ditch; and from high up in the trees came the dying twitter of birds about to go ...
— The Path of Life • Stijn Streuvels
... again, where the crickets and katydids were chirping in the grass, and the drowsy twitter of birds came from the maples above. The moon, at its full, swung slowly over the hill, and threads of silver light came into the fragrant dusk of the garden. Now and then the moonlight shone full upon Miss Ainslie's face, touching her hair as if with loving tenderness ...
— Lavender and Old Lace • Myrtle Reed
... is—so it is!" beginning with a twitter, answered the canary; "but they said I talked ...
— St. Nicholas, Vol. 5, No. 5, March, 1878 • Various
... across the Plaza. Stopping at the door of the Exchange Hotel, she leaned against the low slab of petrified wood that for many a year served as a loafer's roost before the hotel doorway. Inside the building Jondo caught the clear twitter of a bird's song at daybreak, twice repeated. A pause, and then it came again, fainter this time, as if the bird were fluttering away ...
— Vanguards of the Plains • Margaret McCarter
... I heard the twitter of sparrows, the jingle of bells, the hooting of a siren, or was it my neighbor singing "A rose I gave to you"? of course it was,—the rumble of a post-office van, and the cry of children's voices, rather peevish voices, poor mites! Never mind, ...
— The Professional Aunt • Mary C.E. Wemyss
... reason for this optimism. We had been shown the lizard-brooch, a dazzling thing of gold and precious stones, which Micklebrown had picked up last Bank Holiday on the cliff at Cocklesea and presented to his fiancee, Miss Twitter, after inquiry at the police-station had ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 159, September 8th, 1920 • Various
... as to the various times and tones of their song. The crowing of the cock is a sound should wake men from their beds, the horned-owl groans, the screech-owl shrieks, the night-owl cries 'tuwhit, tuwhoo', the cicalas chatter, and the swallows twitter shrill. But the wisdom and eloquence of the philosopher are ready at all times, waken awe in them that hear, are profitable to the understanding, and their music is of ...
— The Apologia and Florida of Apuleius of Madaura • Lucius Apuleius
... "Turnkey, lock the cell!"' Companionship doesn't seem to me the normal thing. Solitude is the normal thing, with a few bits of talk thrown in, like meals, for refreshment. But you can't lay down rules for people about it. Some people are simply gregarious, and twitter together like starlings in a shrubbery: that isn't talk—it's only a series of signals and exclamations. The danger of solitude is that the machinery runs just as you wish it to run—and ...
— Father Payne • Arthur Christopher Benson
... sod 'neath the trees brown and bare, A smell of fresh mould on the mild southern air, A twitter of bird song, a flutter, a call, And though the clouds lower, and threaten and fall— There's Spring ...
— The Price of the Prairie - A Story of Kansas • Margaret Hill McCarter
... of the perky little clump of trees, and facing East awaited developments. A thin, cold wind had sprung up, and was quietly stirring the leaves above me to an uneasy sibilance. I heard, now, too, an occasional sleepy twitter as if a few members of the orchestra had come into their places and were indolently testing the tune of their pipes. It came into my mind that the cold stir of air was the spirit of the dying night, fleeing westward ...
— The Jervaise Comedy • J. D. Beresford
... pathway lay a long clump of greenery, and from behind this there stuck straight up into the air four human legs clad in parti-colored hosen, yellow and black. Strangest of all was when a brisk tune struck suddenly up and the four legs began to kick and twitter in time to the music. Walking on tiptoe round the bushes, he stood in amazement to see two men bounding about on their heads, while they played, the one a viol and the other a pipe, as merrily and as truly as though they were seated in a choir. Alleyne crossed himself as he gazed at this unnatural ...
— The White Company • Arthur Conan Doyle
... chance of bad weather to injure, the golden grain of the Sicilian harvest. Here lives the blue-breasted hermit bird in unmolested solitude; and, careless of solitude, the Passer solitarius utters her small twitter in the hollows—a few goats browse amongst the scanty thistles, and one or two dogs protect them. Snakes, hatched in vast number under the warm stones, show you their progress, by the motion they impart to the thin light grass; and an endless variety of new lizards present themselves ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 363, January, 1846 • Various
... insects and the twitter of linnets seemed to deepen into a roar. A faint "halloo" came from far up the mountain-side, and in the distance men's voices rang ...
— The Wizard's Daughter and Other Stories • Margaret Collier Graham
... arms. Purple heather mixed with fragrant thyme, blue harebells and pale bents of quiver-grass edged the path, and thistledown, drifting from the chalk uplands, lay like snow in the hollows, or danced like living things on the path before her. A brood of goldfinches, with merry twitter and flashing wings, flitted round a tall milk thistle with variegated leaves and a little farther on, just at the opening of a glade from the path, she beheld a huge dragon-fly, banded with green, black, and gold, poised on wings invisible in their ...
— Hopes and Fears - scenes from the life of a spinster • Charlotte M. Yonge
... when she wasn't hungry, to be petted and cried over and half crushed in mamma's arms, to be taken by papa out into the cool, clear dawning, with the sky just beginning to flush like a sea shell and a waking bird or two to twitter about getting up, to be put into a coach that rolled and rumbled, to be put into something else that rolled and rumbled a thousand times worse; nothing had ever happened anything like this in any of ...
— Connor Magan's Luck and Other Stories • M. T. W.
... hedges—where a few green twigs yet stood together bravely, resisting to the last the tyranny of nipping winds and early frosts—took heart and brightened up; the stream which had been dull and sullen all day long, broke out into a cheerful smile; the birds began to chirp and twitter on the naked boughs, as though the hopeful creatures half believed that winter had gone by, and spring had come already. The vane upon the tapering spire of the old church glistened from its lofty ...
— Life And Adventures Of Martin Chuzzlewit • Charles Dickens
... but the occasional twitter of some bird. If a watcher was there, he gave no sign of his presence, and quite a couple of hours must have passed away before, utterly tired out, and hearing not the slightest sound, Scarlett ...
— Crown and Sceptre - A West Country Story • George Manville Fenn
... swallow, oft, beneath my thatch Shall twitter from her clay-built nest; Oft shall the pilgrim lift the latch, And share my meal, a ...
— Poems Every Child Should Know - The What-Every-Child-Should-Know-Library • Various
... where shops appear, those shops are not besieged by the crowds of more populous thoroughfares. Commerce is not turbulent, nor is the public consumer besieged by loud invitations to "buy." Bird-fanciers have sought the congenial tranquillity of the scene; and pigeons coo, and canaries twitter, in Vauxhall Walk. Second-hand carts and cabs, bedsteads of a certain age, detached carriage-wheels for those who may want one to make up a set, are all to be found here in the same repository. One tributary stream, in the great flood of gas which illuminates ...
— No Name • Wilkie Collins
... York ear, which ought to be fairly unbiased since the New York accent is a composite of all accents, English women chirrup and twitter. But the beautifully modulated, clear-clipped enunciation of a cultivated Englishman, one who can move his jaws and not swallow his words whole, comes as near to perfection in English as the diction of the Comedie Francaise comes to ...
— Etiquette • Emily Post
... like a rattle of hail, Clinking a cymbal or castanet; Chirping a twitter or sending a wail Through a piccolo that thrills me yet; Reeling ripples of riotous bells, And tipsy tinkles of triangles— Wrangled and tangled in skeins of sound Till it seemed that my very soul spun round, As I leaned, in a breathless joy, toward my Radiant uncle, who snapped ...
— Songs of Friendship • James Whitcomb Riley
... he went, he became aware of a sound that was not the stir of leaves, nor the twitter of birds, nor the music of running waters, though all these were in his ears,—for this was altogether different; a distant sound that came and went, that swelled to a murmur, sank to a whisper, yet never wholly died away. Little by little the sound grew plainer, ...
— The Amateur Gentleman • Jeffery Farnol et al
... the shape of a chalk line on the table. The length of the effusion did not matter; a long aria, or a brilliant but spasmodic cadenza, each counted one, and one only. The Bermondsey bird, heedless of the issue at stake, devoted the precious moments to eating, emitting nothing beyond a dyspeptic twitter which didn't count; and his proprietor stood by me evidently chagrined, and perspiring profusely, either from anxiety or superfluous attire. Nearly half the time had gone by before Bermondsey put forth its powers. Meanwhile, ...
— Mystic London: - or, Phases of occult life in the metropolis • Charles Maurice Davies
... Fancy's two-winged doorway slow doth close. The birds begin to twitter and to sing. All nature waketh and on pointed toes Young truant Morpheus stealeth gently in. Oh, happiness of reinstalled repose, And balsam for thy cold and sweated skin! 'Twas worse than all the nightmares, blessed ...
— Too Old for Dolls - A Novel • Anthony Mario Ludovici
... pleasant to inhabit, we knew little of the place we had ventured into, or its location. How we were to get out did not appear, nor for the time being did this greatly concern us; and soon after supper the camp was wrapped in slumber, undisturbed by any coyote duet, or, on this occasion, even the twitter ...
— Crossing the Plains, Days of '57 - A Narrative of Early Emigrant Tavel to California by the Ox-team Method • William Audley Maxwell
... starflowers. Further promise of yellow beauty was given by the stalks of the evening-primrose scattered on every hand, the flowers furled now, sleeping. In the groves were pines, small cedars, and a sprinkling of sturdy dwarf oaks. And from their shelter came the welcome sound of a bird's twitter. ...
— The Bells of San Juan • Jackson Gregory
... purple-tinted sheaves standing with their heads together. The Titan-strewn rocks felt it likewise with all their heather and broom. There was no husbandman in the plain, no song of the solitary goat-girl, no creak of the plough, no twitter even of a bird. It was not yet the hour when Virgil says every field is silent, but the repose ...
— Two Summers in Guyenne • Edward Harrison Barker
... for us. I chose her on account of her name, and it is a piece of good luck that she cooks extraordinarily well. There is also a maid, but we don't know her name, so we call her Magnolia. I'm really writing all this rot to get myself into the "twitter-twitter" mood. One of the characters in my new comedy talks like a character in a book by E. F. Benson, and I have to work myself up into a state of babbling fatuity before I can write her ...
— Changing Winds - A Novel • St. John G. Ervine
... very near the toes of one of the sparrows, and he flew. There was a twitter, then a stir all over the tree; but nothing further happening, they tucked in their heads again ...
— Roof and Meadow • Dallas Lore Sharp
... time—some twenty minutes in excess of his calculations, as a glance at the sky informed him. (He carried no watch.) He hurried home in a twitter of nervousness, which increased as he drew near to his front door. In the passage he stumbled against a pail of water, all but upsetting it, and swore under his breath at his evil luck, which had deferred ...
— Nicky-Nan, Reservist • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch (Q)
... the Southern summer had laid itself up here to rest in Scandinavian forest-solitude, and sought itself out a glade where it might lie in the sun's hot beams and sleep: hence this stillness, as if it were night. Not a bird is heard to twitter, not a pine-tree moves: of what does the Southern summer dream here in the North, amongst ...
— Pictures of Sweden • Hans Christian Andersen
... burning Californian sunlight, and away in the distance the ridges and peaks of distant mountains stood out sharply clear against the intense blue of the sky. There was great stillness everywhere,—a pause, as it seemed, in the mechanism of the universe. The twitter of a bird or the cry of some wild animal would have been a relief,—so Seaton felt, ...
— The Secret Power • Marie Corelli
... 'trampoosing' over America. It spoilt poor Hall—turned his brain. He has done little or nothing since but make-believe about criticism, talk dawdle-poetry with a lisp, write irresistible verses under the name of 'Sedley' in his own magazine, twitter sentimentally about 'little Moore,' his 'dear little Moore'—puffing himself all the time anonymously in the newspaper, while he is damning himself, with unmistakable sincerity, twelve times a year in his own magazine. We do not think very highly of the mutton-headed ...
— The Philadelphia Magazines and their Contributors 1741-1850 • Albert Smyth
... days in Pekin, and was whirling through China, when a telegram arrived from the home authorities, who viewed his movements with uneasiness, ordering him to return at once to England. 'It did not produce a twitter in me,' he wrote to his sister; 'I died long ago, and it will not make any difference to me; I am prepared to follow the unrolling of the scroll.' The world, perhaps, was not big enough for him; and yet how clearly he recognised that he was 'a poor insect!' 'My heart tells ...
— Eminent Victorians • Lytton Strachey
... themselves but not to sing. Now and again a solitary wing feathered the chill air; but for the most part the birds huddled closer in the swinging nests, or under the bracken, or in the tufty grass. Here a faint twitter was heard and ceased. A little farther a drowsy voice called "cheep-cheep" and turned again to the warmth of its wing. The very grasshoppers were silent. The creatures who range in the night time had returned to their ...
— The Crock of Gold • James Stephens
... I.C. Wilson was far in advance of his former attempts, and Beauseant by Thomas Beck added laurels to his already established reputation as a first-class amateur. Glavis by Master Asa Rawson was rendered in his usual facetious style, creating a universal twitter all around the hall. Mons. Deschappells by Albert Brown was laughable in the extreme, partly from the age of so young a father, as seen through the scarcity of his be-floured locks, and partly from its surroundings. The landlord by B.F. Tucker was ...
— Sixty Years of California Song • Margaret Blake-Alverson
... choicest prawns. The water that glided past the bank was like crystal; the evening sun lit up the scene with orange and gold; and as the two boys lolled restfully upon the bank listening to the murmur of the running water, the twitter of birds, and the distant lowing of some ox, they thoroughly appreciated everything, even the rest after their tiring night's work and ...
— Quicksilver - The Boy With No Skid To His Wheel • George Manville Fenn
... valley with its leafless woods and level water-meadows; the flaring pomp of sunset hung low in the west over the bare ploughland or the wide-watered plain; the wailing of the wind round the firelit house; the faint twitter of awakening birds in the ivy; the voice and smile of my children; the music breaking the silence of the house at evening. In a moment the sensation comes over me, that the sound or sight is sent not vaguely or lightly, but deliberately ...
— The Altar Fire • Arthur Christopher Benson
... birds, love, That twitter 'mid the dew, Could sing in words and tell, love, The love I bear to you, They would not end their song, love, The night's long vigil through; But all the wings that morning brings Would soar amid the blue, And float along on waves of song, With ...
— A Williams Anthology - A Collection of the Verse and Prose of Williams College, 1798-1910 • Compiled by Edwin Partridge Lehman and Julian Park
... alone sitting by one of the open windows, busy with some work; not so busy but that she smelt the roses, and felt the glory of light and colour that was outside, and heard the hum of bees and the twitter of birds and the soft indistinguishable chirrup of insects, which filled the air. Diana sewed on, till another slight sound mingled with those—the tread of a foot on the gravel walk down below; then she lifted her head suddenly, and with that her hands and her work fell into ...
— Diana • Susan Warner
... only wring All the sweetness to the lees Of all the kisses clustering In juicy Used-to-bes, To dip his rhymes therein and sing The blossoms on the trees—, "O Blossoms on the Trees," He would twitter, trill, and coo, "However sweet, such songs as these Are not as sweet as you—: For you are blooming melodies The eyes may ...
— Afterwhiles • James Whitcomb Riley
... his life, and she never was weary of replying. His days were full of this perpetual intercourse. So it happened that to get out alone into the absolute stillness, broken only by the rustle of the leaves, the sound of the wind as it brought them down, the twitter of the birds, the tinkle of the little stream, was a new delight to Geoff, unlike anything that had gone before. And to see miles and miles before him, to see all round, roads stretching into the unknown, houses and churches and woods, all nameless and new; ...
— A Country Gentleman and his Family • Mrs. (Margaret) Oliphant
... the ten minutes before the gong sounded by Miss Bird that there would have been no chance of their overlooking the hour. If they had been late, Miss Bird would have been spoken to, and on the distressing occasions when that had happened, it had put her, as she said, all in a twitter. ...
— The Squire's Daughter - Being the First Book in the Chronicles of the Clintons • Archibald Marshall
... he hastened back, using less caution, because by this time the snow had smoothed over his tracks, and was falling faster every moment. The actors had already begun to pack, and Messer' Fazio was running about in a twitter, albeit he declared that, beside themselves, not a soul in Genoa knew of his having lodged these Corsicans. Doubtless, however, his house would be searched in the morning, and the important, the pressing need was to ...
— Sir John Constantine • Prosper Paleologus Constantine
... have been Italy for the blue of the sky and the caressing warmth of the sun. They threw open the big window and in flooded the perfume of lilacs and the twitter of sparrows, which is the nearest to a bird song one can expect in New York. But after all, this was n't New York; nor Spain; nor even the inner woods; it was just Here. And Here is where the eyes of a man and a woman meet with ...
— The Seventh Noon • Frederick Orin Bartlett
... over, then: does truth sound bitter As one at first believes? Hark! 'tis the sparrows' good-night twitter About ...
— An Introduction to the Study of Browning • Arthur Symons
... feeling &c 824; fullness of the heart &c (disposition) 820; passion &c (state of excitability) 825; ecstasy &c (pleasure) 827. blush, suffusion, flush; hectic; tingling, thrill, turn, shock; agitation &c (irregular motion) 315; quiver, heaving, flutter, flurry, fluster, twitter, tremor; throb, throbbing; pulsation, palpitation, panting; trepidation, perturbation; ruffle, hurry of spirits, pother, stew, ferment; state of excitement. V. feel; receive an impression &c n.; be impressed with &c adj.; entertain feeling, harbor ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... with its little wings outspread. My dog crept softly up to it, when suddenly an old black-breasted sparrow threw himself down from a neighboring tree and let himself fall like a stone directly under the dog's nose, and, with ruffled feathers, sprang with a terrified twitter several times against his open, threatening mouth. He had flown down to protect his young at the sacrifice of himself. His little body trembled all over, his cry was hoarse, he was frightened to death; but he sacrificed himself. My dog must have seemed to him a gigantic monster, ...
— Bird Day; How to prepare for it • Charles Almanzo Babcock
... morning, the turtle-doves whose pairing he blessed, and all the feathered flock whom Benozzo represents him preaching to in the lovely fresco at Montefalco—if, as I say, there is throughout his life and thoughts a sort of perpetual whir and twitter of birds, it is, one feels sure, because the creatures of the air, free to come and go, to sit on beautiful trees, to drink of clear streams, to play in the sunshine and storm, able above all to be like himself, poets singing to God, are the symbols, in the ...
— Renaissance Fancies and Studies - Being a Sequel to Euphorion • Violet Paget (AKA Vernon Lee)
... question about it. I should have said so last year; and I don't know what it is keeps me from saying so now. I suppose I know a little more about things than I did; and your father's being so bent on it sets me all in a twitter. He thinks his money can do everything. Well, I don't say but what it can, a good many. And 'Rene is as good a child as ever there was; and I don't see but what she's pretty-appearing enough to suit any one. She's pretty-behaved, too; and she IS the most capable girl. I presume young men don't ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... the wizard hour Whose shining, silent sorcery hath such power! Still, still the streets, between their carcanets Of linking gold, are avenues of sleep: But see how gable ends and parapets In gradual beauty and significance Emerge! And did you hear That little twitter-and-cheep, Breaking inordinately loud and clear On this still, spectral, exquisite atmosphere? 'Tis a first nest at matins! And behold A rakehell cat—how furtive and acold! A spent witch homing from some infamous ...
— The Song of the Sword - and Other Verses • W. E. Henley
... stared, eyes blinked, and short, unhollowed lips stretched over yellow teeth, then, with a flutter of dark garments, the Chinese started away from the fixed beams and were gone into the shadow. Except for the sudden twitter of a voice, the spurt of a stone flung up against the metal of the car, they melted silently out of sight and hearing. Sick with panic, Fanny leant down upon her knees and covered her head with her two arms, expecting a blow from above. Seconds passed, and ice-cold, ...
— The Happy Foreigner • Enid Bagnold
... up on taller stalks than those that grow in the meadows. The black flowers of the sedges are powdered with yellow pollen; and dark green sword-flags are beginning to spread their fans. But just across the road, on the topmost twigs of birch poles, swallows twitter in the tenderest tones to their loves. From the oaks in the meadows on that side titlarks mount above the highest bough and then descend, sing, sing, singing, ...
— Nature Near London • Richard Jefferies
... the early twilight fell from the leaden sky, and the shadows began to skulk behind the bushes, and the birds gathered to their nests with sleepy twitter, she tripped over a little stone, fell weakly to the ground, and lay still. She had not the strength to get to ...
— The Junior Classics • Various
... happened long before, when they weren't robin red-breasts but only robins. It is a merry, tender sort of story. They twitter it in a chuckling fashion to their children. If you prefer to hear it first-hand, creep out to the nearest holly-bush on almost any Christmas Eve when snow has made the night all pale and shadowy. If the robins have chosen your holly-bush as their rendezvous and you understand their language, you ...
— Christmas Outside of Eden • Coningsby Dawson
... the margin of Lake Forsaken, with lesser sentinel rocks about it, she sat cross-legged until she glanced up at last to see that the west was kindling, and that she must start back to the duller realities of home. She had been interrupted by no break in the silence except the little forest twitter of birds and now and then the cool splash where a ...
— Destiny • Charles Neville Buck
... rose and the birds began to twitter and sing, the girl rose and looked in her mirror. There she saw the bright, happy face that ...
— Children's Literature - A Textbook of Sources for Teachers and Teacher-Training Classes • Charles Madison Curry
... of their endeavors to lure back the dancers, determined to join the excitement, and ceased playing. The leader laid down his violin, the pianist trailed up the key- board with a departing twitter and quit his stool. They all crossed the hall, headed for the crowd, some of them making ready to bet. As they approached the Bronco Kid, his lips thinned and slid apart slightly, while out of his heavy-lidded eyes there flared unreasoning rage. Stepping forward, he seized ...
— The Spoilers • Rex Beach
... again hear the rattle of the dishes? The clink of the spoon against the cup? The moving up of the chairs? The chatter of the voices, each with its own peculiar pitch and quality? The twitter of a bird outside the window? The tinkle of a distant bell? The chirp of ...
— The Mind and Its Education • George Herbert Betts
... head and shoulders against the bole of a tree, and not until the light of the moon was driven away by the darkness that preceded dawn by an hour or two did his eyes close in restless slumber. He was roused by the wakening twitter of birds and in the cold water of a creek that ran near he bathed his face and hands. Peter wondered why there was no fire and no ...
— The Country Beyond - A Romance of the Wilderness • James Oliver Curwood
... the city Dagonet danced away. But thro' the slowly-mellowing avenues And solitary passes of the wood Rode Tristram toward Lyonesse and the west. Before him fled the face of Queen Isolt With ruby-circled neck, but evermore Past, as a rustle or twitter in the wood Made dull his inner, keen his outer eye For all that walk'd, or crept, or perched, or flew. Anon the face, as, when a gust hath blown, Unruffling waters re-collect the shape Of one that in them sees himself, return'd; But at ...
— The Last Tournament • Alfred Lord Tennyson |
