"Worm" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... reality more acceptable than the paint which hides it. He then tries to peruse the book, but the leaves have not been opened; he meets with some resistance, the living book must be read according to established rules, and the book-worm falls a victim to a coquetry, the monster which persecutes all those who make a business of love. As for thee, intelligent man, who hast read the few preceding lines, let me tell thee that, if they do not assist in opening thy eyes, thou ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... was his guide, and the pupil made rapid progress. Dasent's work had drawn Morris' attention to the sagas, and within a few months most of the sagas had been read in the original. Although The Saga of Gunnlang Worm-tongue was published in the Fortnightly Review, for January, 1869, the Grettis Saga, of April, was the first published book on an Old Norse subject. The next year gave the Voelsunga Saga. In 1871, Morris made a journey through Iceland, the fruits ...
— The Influence of Old Norse Literature on English Literature • Conrad Hjalmar Nordby
... to forbid the personal settlement of personal quarrels. But his eyes, which could not read print, could read the signs of the times He foresaw the inevitable coming of that day. Already, he had given up the worm and mash-vat, and no longer sought to make or sell illicit liquor. That was a concession to the Federal power, which could no longer be successfully fought. State power was still largely a weapon in factional ...
— The Call of the Cumberlands • Charles Neville Buck
... remained insensible to all the goodness of his new friends. The sun rose and sank, and rose and sank again, and many times after that; and still the boy lay stretched on his uneasy bed, dwindling away beneath the dry and wasting heat of fever. The worm does not work more surely on the dead body, than does this slow creeping fire ...
— Oliver Twist • Charles Dickens
... would have been of Harry now! The days crawled one after the other like weary snakes. She tried to read the New Testament: It was to her like a mouldy chamber of worm-eaten parchments, whose windows had not been opened to the sun or the wind for centuries; and in which the dust of the decaying leaves choked the few beams that found their way through the ...
— David Elginbrod • George MacDonald
... forgotten in this new excitement, followed them. He was well enough informed in reference to the work of the London City Missionaries to understand at a glance that one of those fearless men had managed to worm his way into the thieves' den, and was perhaps in danger of his life. That the man realised his danger was apparent from the fact that he stood erect and closed his eyes for a moment—evidently in silent prayer for help in the ...
— The Garret and the Garden • R.M. Ballantyne
... to eat a grub which is found in the small gum-tree, and when our party came to the creek already mentioned, a native fled on their approach, leaving his fire, and some decayed wood he had drawn out of the creek, for the purpose of procuring a large worm which is found in it, and which they eat. The smell of this wood is so strong, that few Europeans are able to bear it for any length of time; indeed, it cannot be distinguished from the ...
— An Historical Journal of the Transactions at Port Jackson and Norfolk Island • John Hunter
... gone through many trials since we last met. When I left him in Khartoum ill with guinea-worm in the leg, he was on his way to Cairo; but after my departure he had been tempted by the slave-traders to re-engage in the infamous but engrossing career, and he too had become a slave-hunter. He had never received ...
— Ismailia • Samuel W. Baker
... "you couldn't handle a big rod and line like this; and if you could, you would get it tangled up in those flags out there; now you just unwrap your little line, put a little worm on your little hook and drop it over there by that stump, and you will catch a ...
— "Say Fellows—" - Fifty Practical Talks with Boys on Life's Big Issues • Wade C. Smith
... less trouble and more effective. The tent caterpillar, which is easily seen, should be destroyed at once. We have yet another insect to contend with which infests the apple and pear, commonly called the Coddling Moth, and the larva, the apple-worm (Garpocapsa pomonella). The loss by the ravaaes of this insect alone to the fruit growers of the United States fan hardly be estimated, as in many cases the whole crop is rendered worthless. Such a vast destruction of two of the most valuable fruits the world produces should ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 433, April 19, 1884 • Various
... straightforward, good-natured fellow. His connection with Madame Karenina, by creating so much sensation and attracting general attention, had given him a fresh distinction which soothed his gnawing worm of ambition for a while, but a week before that worm had been roused up again with fresh force. The friend of his childhood, a man of the same set, of the same coterie, his comrade in the Corps of Pages, Serpuhovskoy, who had ...
— Anna Karenina • Leo Tolstoy
... a fishing-hook [from the Anglo-Saxon ongul, for the same]. It means also a red worm used for a bait in angling ...
— The Sailor's Word-Book • William Henry Smyth
... intoxication; and to his feet the spring of the panther; and his soft hand should become the clammy hand of a wasted skeleton; while suddenly from his heart would burst in crackling and all-devouring fury the unquenchable flames; and in the affected lisp of his tongue would come the hiss of the worm ...
— The Abominations of Modern Society • Rev. T. De Witt Talmage
... striding about, he thought to himself, 'I can only save myself by feigning to be asleep'; so he laid himself down as if he were in a sound sleep. When the giants came up to him, the first pushed him with his foot, and said, 'What worm is this that lies here curled up?' 'Tread upon him and kill him,' said the second. 'It's not worth the trouble,' said the third; 'let him live, he'll go climbing higher up the mountain, and some cloud will come rolling ...
— Grimms' Fairy Tales • The Brothers Grimm
... inclination to punish the blacks for their treachery, as well as the loss of time and the trouble they had occasioned. This, however, was forbidden by the great-hearted Willem, who could no more blame the natives for what they had done than the bird that picks up a worm upon ...
— The Giraffe Hunters • Mayne Reid
... Jane. "A cringing worm is what you want, not a bright, smiling child. Rebecca looks to me as if she'd been through the Seven Years' War. When she came downstairs this morning it seemed to me she'd grown old in the night. If you follow my advice, which you seldom do, you'll let me take her and Emma Jane down beside the ...
— Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... is not only wealthy, but is, moreover, elevated to some honorable position, and one would think he must enjoy the honors with which he is surrounded; but there is in his bosom an ungoverned passion, which, like a canker-worm, eats away his joys one ...
— The Happiness of Heaven - By a Father of the Society of Jesus • F. J. Boudreaux
... Winds, blow! And rave and shriek, And snarl and snow Till your breath grows weak— While here in my room I'm as snugly shut As a glad little worm In ...
— Riley Child-Rhymes • James Whitcomb Riley
... of all beneath the moon, How must he bend his soul's ambition down Prostrate, the reptile own, and disavow His boasted stature, and assuming brow? Claim kindred with the clay, and curse his form, That speaks distinction from his sister worm? What dreadful pangs the trembling heart invade? Lord, why dost thou forsake whom thou hast made? Who can sustain thy anger? who can stand Beneath the terrors of thy lifted hand? It flies the reach of thought; oh, save me, Power Of powers supreme, in that tremendous hour! Thou who beneath the frown ...
— The Poetical Works of Edward Young, Volume 2 • Edward Young
... in his turn, and immediately commenced in an embarrassed voice, the half-forgotten message. It is unnecessary to dwell upon the evasive though polite manner with which the French general had eluded every attempt of Heyward to worm from him the purport of the communication he had proposed making, or on the decided, though still polished message, by which he now gave his enemy to understand, that, unless he chose to receive it in person, he should ...
— The Last of the Mohicans • James Fenimore Cooper
... foremost, and with face turned backwards to the disk in his right hand, his whole body, in that moment of rest, full of the circular motion he is about to commit to it, he seemed—beautiful pale spectre—to shine from within with a light of his own, like that of the glow-worm in the thicket, or the dead and rotten roots of the old trees. And as if they had a proper motion of their own in them, the disks, the quoits, ran, amid the delighted shouts and laughter of the boy, as he follows, scarcely less swift, to score the points of their contact with the ...
— Miscellaneous Studies: A Series of Essays • Walter Horatio Pater
... spiritual refuge of some kind; and there were, in the main, two camps that offered it:—this of Neo-Platonism, proclaiming Human Divinity and strong effort upward in the name of that; and that other which proclaimed human helplessness, and that man is a poor worm and weakling, originally sinful, and with nothing to hope from his own efforts, but all from the grace, help, or mercy of Extracosmic Intervention. It was a terribly comfortable doctrine, this last, for a race staggering towards the end of its manvantara under a fearful load of detritus, a ...
— The Crest-Wave of Evolution • Kenneth Morris
... as from some Tartarean breathing, hovered about the mouths of the furnaces. Moment by moment these mouths opened and belched and closed. It was the fiery respiration of a gigantic beast, of a long worm whose dark body enveloped the smoky city. The beast heaved and panted and rested, again and again—the beast that lay on its belly for many a mile, whose ample stomach was the city, there northward, hid ...
— The Web of Life • Robert Herrick
... gettin' 'round some spryer this year. An' I snum! there's Marty, too. He's workin' in his mother's garden reg'lar. I seen him. 'Fore you came, Miss Janice, if Marty was diggin' in the garden an' found a worm, he thought he was goin' fishin' and got him a bait can and a pole, an' set right off for the lake—that's right!" and Walky shook all over, and grew so red in the face over his joke that Janice was really afraid ...
— Janice Day at Poketown • Helen Beecher Long
... de Sartines was undoubtedly a sagacious police-minister," said the emperor, musingly. "His precaution is good for those who are afraid; but I am not! If I conquer my enemies, I thereby trample in the dust this vile serpent, too, that would sting me, and then would crawl as a worm at my feet. If I yield to my enemies, let the structure which I have built fall upon me. It will not matter then whether Talleyrand's hand, too, broke off a piece of the wall or not; it would have fallen without ...
— NAPOLEON AND BLUCHER • L. Muhlbach
... with was Buena Vista, quite a distance up among the mountains, while in the visit now being described they were not found anywhere in the mountains, save in the vale below Cassels. They were breeding at Arvada, for a female was seen carrying a worm in her bill, and I am sure a nest might easily have been found had I not been so busily occupied in the study of other and rarer species. However, the recollection of the merry lyrists with the speckled breasts and silvery voices, ...
— Birds of the Rockies • Leander Sylvester Keyser
... a year Sigmund deemed that the time for his testing was come, and once again he set an adder in the meal-sack and bade the lad bake bread. And the boy feared not the worm, but kneaded it with the dough and baked all together. So Sigmund cherished him as his own son, and he grew strong and valiant and loved Sigmund as ...
— The Story of Sigurd the Volsung • William Morris
... Mollie. "It is perfectly sweet of you to take such an interest, and I feel a positive worm. But ...
— Dope • Sax Rohmer
... have landed a shark with the strength which I put into that wild jerk, but I saw only the worm bait dangling above my astonished face. With my second cast I lifted a trout clear of the water; then caught my line in an overhanging branch and saw my erstwhile prisoner shoot away up-stream. The tangled line ...
— David Malcolm • Nelson Lloyd
... &c.; maize, or Indian corn; musical instruments; mustard-flower; paper, painted or stained paper, &c.; pencils, lead and slate; perfumery; perry; pewter; pomatum; pots of stone; puddings and sausages; rice; sago; seeds, garden, &c.; silk (manufactures of), &c.; silk-worm gut; skins (articles manufactured of); soap, hard and soft; spa-ware; spirits, viz., brandy, geneva, and other foreign spirits, &c.; steel manufactures; tallow; tapioca; tin; tobacco; tongues; turnery; twine; varnish; wafers; washing-balls; wax (sealing); ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... shearer, herdin' in between like I do, than the richest sheepman on the range," said Dad. "They're tied down to one little spot; they work out a hole in their piece of the earth like a worm. It ain't no life. I can have more fun on forty dollars than Tim Sullivan can ...
— The Flockmaster of Poison Creek • George W. Ogden
... caddis-worm, with a beautifully built house, in the roots of the Water-Soldier, and I'm going to look along the edge for some shells. We must have shell-fish, you know, to keep the aquarium ...
— Brothers of Pity and Other Tales of Beasts and Men • Juliana Horatia Gatty Ewing
... following afternoon. His manner was not more friendly now than at his first coming, and I followed him with sighs when he asked me to lead him to my daughter. As we went in with the constable, and I, for the first time, saw my child in chains before me—she who in her whole life had never hurt a worm—I again felt as though I should die for very grief. But she smiled and cried out to Dom. Syndicus, "Are you indeed the good angel who will cause my chains to fall from my hands, as was done of yore to St. Peter?" [Footnote: The Acts of the Apostles, xii. 7.] To which he replied, ...
— Sidonia The Sorceress V2 • William Mienhold
... his mouth, "was a universal despot! the tyrannical disturber of the world! a poor worm! an arch-rebel, who had overturned their altars, and polluted them with blood; who had exposed the true ark of the Lord, represented by the holy image, to the profanation of men, and the inclemency of the ...
— History of the Expedition to Russia - Undertaken by the Emperor Napoleon in the Year 1812 • Count Philip de Segur
... a six months' method book; of the man who wore brass buttons; the moving story of three leeches and two gentlemen; the doctor up a creek; and the reason why you should not eat pork along here because all the natives have either got the guinea-worm, or kraw-kraw or ulcers; and then the pigs go and—dear me! it was a near thing that time. I'll ...
— Travels in West Africa • Mary H. Kingsley
... a good God reigneth, Generous-hearted and kind and true; Since unto a worm like me he deigneth To send so royal a gift as you. Bright as a star you gleam on my bosom, Sweet as a rose that the wild bee sips; And I know, my own, my beautiful blossom, That none but a God could ...
— Poems of Passion • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... of infant dew Brought and sweetened with a blue And pregnant violet; which done, His killing eyes begin to run Quite o'er the table, where he spies The horns of watered butterflies, Of which he eats, but with a little Neat cool allay of cuckoo's spittle. Next this the red-cap worm that's shut Within the concave of a nut. Moles' eyes he tastes, then adders' ears; To these for sauce the slain stags' tears, A bloated earwig, and the pith Of sugared rush he glads him with. Then he takes a little moth, Late fatted in a scarlet cloth, A spinner's ham, ...
— The Hesperides & Noble Numbers: Vol. 1 and 2 • Robert Herrick
... Keats's sensibility—guarded and armed; Wordsworth's Christianized love of Nature; and Coleridge's Christianized view of philosophy—to his own fancy, language, melody, and purpose; a lofty ideal of man the spirit, to a deep sympathy with man the worm, toiling, eating, drinking, struggling, falling, rising, and progressing, amidst his actual environments; and become the Magnus Apollo of ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 3, August, 1850. • Various
... flared so high, sunk by slow degrees to mere embers among the ashes. It appeared that the nibble, which had seemed but the preliminary to swallowing the bait, was after all no more than a nibble; that the fish had merely nosed the worm and swum away. In the meantime, while eaten up by the suspense of this inaction, she was witness to activity of the most strenuous variety. Never had she seen a man spring up into favour as did Harrison Blake. His campaign meetings were ...
— Counsel for the Defense • Leroy Scott
... Indies: also the inventor of ships: your monk that was the inventor of ordnance and of gunpowder: the inventor of music: the inventor of letters: the inventor of printing: the inventor of observations of astronomy: the inventor of works in metal: the inventor of glass: the inventor of silk of the worm: the inventor of wine: the inventor of corn and bread: the inventor of sugars: and all these, by more certain tradition than you have. Then have we divers inventors of our own, of excellent works; which since you have not seen, it were too long ...
— The New Atlantis • Francis Bacon
... passed the iron gates, mounted the drive, and set her foot upon the broad-flagged terrace, the night had come completely; the palace front was thick with lighted windows; and along the balustrade, the lamp on every twentieth baluster shone clear. A few withered tracks of sunset, amber and glow-worm green, still lingered in the western sky; and she paused once again to watch ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 7 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... comrades, that the hour of our visitation is come. Not Can Grande and his hounds are hunting us this night; not the tumbril, the branding-irons, nor the cart's tail, are for us; but the pains of death, the fire eternal, the untirable worm, the trumpet of the Last Things! Who comes knocking in high God's name? Who saith 'Open'?—I will tell you: it is She who last night lit upon my village and my own sister's son. Eh! bodies of all dogs, what will become of us sinners?" Here the shepherd beat the drum ...
— Little Novels of Italy • Maurice Henry Hewlett
... royal ladies to whom they belonged must still be waiting within earshot, ready to reply to our summons as soon as we deign to call them; we may even anticipate the joy they will evince when these sumptuous ornaments are restored to them, and we need to glance at the worm-eaten coffins which contain their stiff and disfigured mummies to recall our imagination to the stern reality of fact. Two other pyramids, but in this case of stone, still exist further south, to the left of ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 2 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... one spring. These love self, not life, and self is but the shadow of life. When it is taken for life itself, and set as the man's centre, it becomes a live death in the man, a devil he worships as his god; the worm of the death eternal he clasps to his ...
— Unspoken Sermons - Series I., II., and II. • George MacDonald
... touched an experience which the most close-knit and determined nature might well dread. Life has no terrors for such a man. Society has no hold on him. The trifling inconveniences of the mode of life are as nothing compared with its satisfactions. The worm that never dies is dead in him. The great mystery of consciousness and of effort is quietly dissolved into the vacant happiness of sensation,—not base sensation, but the sensation of the dawn and the sunset, ...
— Emerson and Other Essays • John Jay Chapman
... misty valleys fieldward winds the lowing herd, And the early worm is being dropped on by the early bird; And Aurora hangs her jewels from the bending rose's cup, And the myriad voice of Nature calls thee to MY ...
— Verses and Translations • C. S. C.
... seeming All nature shows: In golden sunlight gleaming, Blushes the rose. How very happy things must be That are so bright and fair to see! Ah, no! in that sweet flower, A worm there lies; And lo! within the hour, ...
— Frank Fairlegh - Scenes From The Life Of A Private Pupil • Frank E. Smedley
... higher in their appearance in point of time. If such be not the case,—if fish made their first appearance, not in their least perfect, but in their most perfect state,—not in their nearest approximation to the worm, but in their nearest approximation to the reptile,—there is no room for progression, and the argument falls. Now, it is a geological fact, that it is fish of the higher orders that appear first on the stage, and that they are found to occupy exactly the same level during the vast ...
— Evolution - An Investigation and a Critique • Theodore Graebner
... were visible; market-people, cloaked and furred, went by on the water or on the banks; the deep woods of the shores were black and gray and brown. Poor August could see nothing of a scene that would have delighted him; as the stove was now set, he could only see the old worm-eaten ...
— Famous Stories Every Child Should Know • Various
... as an absent-minded person who had gone bathing and left his clothes everywhere, so that he has hung his hat upon the beaver and his coat upon the sheep. The rabbit has white warmth for a waistcoat, and the glow-worm has a lantern for a head. But man has no heat in his hide, and the light in his body is darkness; and he must look for light and warmth in the wild, cold universe in which he is cast. This is equally true of his soul and of his body; he is ...
— A Miscellany of Men • G. K. Chesterton
... far enough for the rain to splatter on her bright hair and whip it into curls, and bring a deeper shade of pink to her cheeks, and a deeper blue to her eyes. "Ariel!" she fluted, "Spirit of the Violin, I'm hungry—earthily, worm-of-the-dustly, unromantically hungry! ...
— A Woman Named Smith • Marie Conway Oemler
... episode of the element of the marvellous with which Voltaire had surrounded it. He called to his aid the testimony of the Duc de Choiseul, who, having in vain attempted to worm the secret of the Iron Mask out of Louis XV, begged Madame de Pompadour to try her hand, and was told by her that the prisoner was the minister of an Italian prince. At the same time that Dutens wrote, "There ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... together. But, Hamish, I often think that Allister came home just in time. If it had gone on much longer, I must either have given out or become an earth-worm at last, with no thought but how to slave and save and turn everything ...
— Shenac's Work at Home • Margaret Murray Robertson
... the second story, the spare furniture dwindled down to a couple of old deal chairs, of which one, belonging to the back-room, was shorn of a leg, and bottomless. The story above, boasted no greater excess than a worm-eaten wash-tub; and the garret landing-place displayed no costlier articles than two crippled ...
— The Life And Adventures Of Nicholas Nickleby • Charles Dickens
... that your sister was to form a part of your household. When do you expect her?" and her cold gray eyes rested steadily upon Katy, who never before so fully realized the distance there was between her husband's friends and her own. But as the worm will turn when trampled on, so Katy, though hitherto powerless to defend herself, aroused in Helen's behalf, and in a tone as quiet and decided as that of her mother-in-law, replied: "She will come whenever ...
— Family Pride - Or, Purified by Suffering • Mary J. Holmes
... my way past. The vehicle was a queer old affair, that looked as if it had been dug out of some antediluvian stable yard. The curtains were brown with age and dust, and riddled with holes; the body was bare and worm-eaten, and the springs perfectly green with mould. The horses were thin and lank, and the harness in as sorry a condition as the coach. The driver's clothes, which were very old fashioned, hung about him in loose folds, and he gazed upon me with a strange, stony ...
— The Three Brides, Love in a Cottage, and Other Tales • Francis A. Durivage
... open door of the next room on one side, you saw the shelves full of books, and from beyond, through the narrow uplifted door, came the glimmer of the weapons on the wall of the little armoury. Two ancient tapestry-covered settees, in which the ravages of moth and worm had been met by a skilful repair of chisel and needle, a heavy table of oak, with carved sides as black as ebony, and a few old, straight-backed chairs, were ...
— Wilfrid Cumbermede • George MacDonald
... shaggy young Adam, "I feel that my sins are forgiven me and that I am a child of God. I ask the prayers of all Christian people that I may continue faithful." He was a moonshiner who had destroyed his whisky and cut up his own copper worm and vats during the meeting. As he resumed his seat a little thin woman in a blue cotton dress sprang to her feet, hopped with the belligerent air of a fighting jaybird across the intervening space and lost herself in the arms of the regenerated moonshiner. She was ...
— A Circuit Rider's Wife • Corra Harris
... breed, for which Laguiole is an important market. The wines of Entraygues, St Georges, Bouillac and Najac have some reputation; in the Segala chestnuts form an important element in the food of the peasants, and the walnut, cider-apple, mulberry (for the silk-worm industry), and plum are among the fruit trees grown. The production of Roquefort cheeses is prominent among the agricultural industries. They are made from the milk of the large flocks of the plateau of Larzac, and the choicest are ripened in ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 1 - "Austria, Lower" to "Bacon" • Various
... was nothing but a collection of worm-eaten planks roughly bound together by cross-beams which resembled roughly hewn logs. It opened directly on a steep staircase of lofty steps, muddy, chalky, plaster-stained, dusty steps, of the same width as itself, which could ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo
... calmly corrected Miriam. "We are early, but you and Grace are distressingly early. I suppose you found the fabled worm." ...
— Grace Harlowe's Fourth Year at Overton College • Jessie Graham Flower
... the spade, With pictures full, of wax and of wool; Their livers I stick, with needles quick; There lacks but the blood, to make up the flood. Quickly, dame, then bring your part in, Spur, spur upon little Martin, Merrily, merrily, make him sail, A worm in his mouth, and a thorn in his tail, Fire above, and fire below, With a whip in your hand, to make him go. Ben Johnson's Works, by Gifford, vol. ...
— Discovery of Witches - The Wonderfull Discoverie of Witches in the Countie of Lancaster • Thomas Potts
... ye are; yonders great looking for Tulley, the old senate has put on his spectacles, and Lentulus and he are turning the leaves of a dog-hay [?], leaves of a worm-eaten Chronicle, ...
— A Collection Of Old English Plays, Vol. IV. • Editor: A.H. Bullen
... forming the narrow peninsula of Maniquarez. The night was delightfully cool; swarms of phosphorescent insects* glistened in the air (* Elater noctilucus. ), and over a soil covered with sesuvium, and groves of mimosa which bordered the river. We know how common the glow-worm* (* Lampyris italica, L. noctiluca.) is in Italy and in all the south of Europe, but the picturesque effect it produces cannot be compared to those innumerable, scattered, and moving lights, which embellish the nights of the torrid zone, and seem to repeat on the earth, along the ...
— Equinoctial Regions of America • Alexander von Humboldt
... Denmark be A couch for luxury and damned incest. But, howsoever, thou pursuest this act, Taint not thy mind, nor let thy soul contrive Against thy mother aught; leave her to heaven, And to those thorns that in her bosom lodge, To prick and sting her. Fare thee well at once! The glow-worm shows the matin to be near, And begins to pale his ineffectual fire! Adieu! adieu! adieu! ...
— Shakspere, Personal Recollections • John A. Joyce
... who seemed to know the whole Bible by heart, say in prayer, on behalf of himself and his people, "we are all poor wurrums of the airth." "Probably, however," he continued, "he would have objected to be treated as a worm." ...
— Two Knapsacks - A Novel of Canadian Summer Life • John Campbell
... and beautifying sun, all-nourishing and all-enlightening; calling into existence and fructifying, not only the rich, and rare, and lovely, but also the noxious and poisonous plant and the creeping worm. These have also the right of life: if left to themselves, they soon die of their own insignificance or nothingness—die under the contempt of ...
— Berlin and Sans-Souci • Louise Muhlbach
... urgently prompted me to sin; through fair words the worm goaded me into accursed frowardness, until I basely performed the 900 deadly act, committed the crime, and robbed the tree in the grove, as it was not lawful to do, and ...
— Genesis A - Translated from the Old English • Anonymous
... be tried with the embryos of animals. Take the ovule of the worm, the eagle, the elephant, and of man himself. Let the most skilled observer apply the most searching tests to distinguish one from the other and he will fail. But there is something more surprising still. Compare next the two sets of germs, the vegetable ...
— Natural Law in the Spiritual World • Henry Drummond
... the officers of the guard, and especially those who did duty at the prison of the alchymist. He insinuated himself at last into their confidence, and obtained free ingress to his friend as often as he pleased; pretending that he was using his utmost endeavours to conquer his obstinacy and worm his secret out of him. When their project was ripe, a day was fixed upon for the grand attempt; and Sendivogius was ready with a post-chariot to convey him with all speed into Poland. By drugging some wine which he presented to the guards of the prison, he rendered them so ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds • Charles Mackay
... continued coasting along South America. But his greedy crew could never forget the sight of those Veragua natives actually smelting gold. The men became sulky and clamored to go back; and furthermore, the ships were too worm-eaten and too covered with barnacles to proceed. On December 5, in order to take the gold-seekers back to Darien, he reluctantly gave over his search for the passage to the Indian Ocean. But the minute he turned north new gales began to blow. These continued so furiously ...
— Christopher Columbus • Mildred Stapley
... not enter on my list of friends, Though graced with polished manners and fine sense, Yet wanting sensibility, the man Who needlessly sets foot upon a worm. An inadvertent step may crush the snail That crawls at evening in the public path; But he that has humanity, forewarned, Will tread aside and let the reptile live. The creeping vermin, loathsome ...
— Practical English Composition: Book II. - For the Second Year of the High School • Edwin L. Miller
... are often but plaited thongs of leather, covered with strong linen, and stretched until they are hard as wood. All Mary Fawcett's furniture was of mahogany, the only wood impervious to the boring of the West Indian worm. This tiny house on the mountain needed but a day's work to clean it, and another to transform it into an arbour of the forest. The walls of the rooms were covered with ferns, orchids, and croton leaves. Gold and silver candelabra had been carried up from the ...
— The Conqueror • Gertrude Franklin Atherton
... all that he had heard to her disparagement from her bad father's lips, or, if he half remembered discrediting all in that moment of excitement, he flung himself at her feet, and grovelled like a crushed worm on the floor, in the ...
— The Roman Traitor (Vol. 1 of 2) • Henry William Herbert
... spirits, flays them, and their limbs Piecemeal disparts. Howling there spread, as curs, Under the rainy deluge, with one side The other screening, oft they roll them round, A wretched, godless crew. When that great worm Descried us, savage Cerberus, he op'd His jaws, and the fangs show'd us; not a limb Of him but trembled. Then my guide, his palms Expanding on the ground, thence filled with earth Rais'd them, and cast it ...
— The Divine Comedy • Dante
... exception of the Natchalnik and another man. "This is new," said he; "I never knew them to be so wary and suspicious before." We now found ourselves within the walls of the fortress. A shabby wooden cafe was opposite to us; a mosque of the same material rose with its worm-eaten carpentry to our right. The cadi, a pompous vulgar old man, now met us, and signified that we might as well repose at his chardak, but from inhospitality or fanaticism, gave us neither pipes nor coffee. His worship ...
— Servia, Youngest Member of the European Family • Andrew Archibald Paton
... worm to the supreme Buddha, constitute one fraternal race, by the unavoidable effects of the law of retribution constantly interchanging their residences in a succession of rising and sinking existences, ranging through all the earths, heavens, and hells of the universe, ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger
... days are in the yellow leaf; The flowers and fruits of love are gone; The worm, the canker, and the grief ...
— A History of the Nineteenth Century, Year by Year - Volume Two (of Three) • Edwin Emerson
... be something to do if, henceforth, I have to feed that growing glutton. It will be a worm gnawing at ...
— The Man Who Laughs • Victor Hugo
... and it was easy enough for him to see that I understood the situation. It was useless for him to tell me that any tenderness on the part of my uncle saved me from arrest, for the son would have crushed me like a worm beneath his feet in spite of the father. I think he got up and left me because he could not control his temper, and feared a scene. He cooled off in a few moments, and came back, ...
— Seek and Find - or The Adventures of a Smart Boy • Oliver Optic
... slain in battle, with which may be compared the well-known legend connected with the lily of the valley formerly current in St. Leonard's Forest, Sussex. It is reported to have sprung from the blood of St. Leonard, who once encountered a mighty worm, or "fire-drake," in the forest, engaging with it for three successive days. Eventually the saint came off victorious, but not without being seriously wounded; and wherever his blood was shed there sprang up lilies of the valley in profusion. After the battle ...
— The Folk-lore of Plants • T. F. Thiselton-Dyer
... old room it is, this silent library of the choleric duke, with its walls panelled in worm-eaten oak reflecting the firelight and its rows of volumes too close to the grave to be handled. Here and there above the high wainscoting are ancestral portraits, some of them as black as a favourite pipe. Above the great stone chimney-piece ...
— A Village of Vagabonds • F. Berkeley Smith
... Beyond the meadows were other hills, and knolls, and rocky heights, all covered with an almost impenetrable forest, and there the hardest fighting of those terrible days was done. A narrow road, bordered by a worm-fence (Western boys know what a worm-fence is), wound around the foot of the hill, and led to a large mansion standing half hidden in a grove of oaks and elms, not half a mile away. Before this mansion were pleasant lawns and gardens, and in its rear a score or more of little negro houses, ...
— Our Young Folks, Vol 1, No. 1 - An Illustrated Magazine • Various
... insupportable.—"Oh world! oh world! but that thy strange mutations make us wait thee, life would not yield to age." We should die before our time, even of moral diseases, unaided by physical ones; but the uncertainty of human events, which is the "worm i'the bud" of happiness, is to the miserable a cheering and consolatory reflection. Thus have I dragged on for some weeks, postponing, as it were, my existence, without any resource, save the homely philosophy of "nous verrons demain." ...
— A Residence in France During the Years 1792, 1793, 1794 and 1795, • An English Lady
... after passing through reedy grass as high as the horse's ears, went for some miles up and down hill, through woods composed entirely of the Ailanthus glandulosus, with leaves much riddled by the mountain silk-worm, and a ferny undergrowth of the familiar Pteris aquilina. The deep shade and glancing lights of this open copsewood were very pleasant; and as the horse tripped gaily up and down the little hills, and the sea murmur mingled with the rustle of the breeze, and a glint of white surf sometimes ...
— Unbeaten Tracks in Japan • Isabella L. Bird
... log house during the Ku Klux days. Dey would watch you just like a chicken rooster watching fer a worm. At night, we was skeered to have a light. Dey would come around wid de 'dough faces' on and peer in de winders and open de do'. Iffen you didn't look out, dey would skeer you half to death. John Good, a darkey blacksmith, ...
— Slave Narratives Vol. XIV. South Carolina, Part 2 • Works Projects Administration
... and acquire a position through him. With the aid of his wealthy friends Kingo could easily enough have obtained employment as a companion to some young noble going abroad for travel and study. It came, therefore, as a surprise to all when he accepted a call as assistant to the Reverend Jacobsen Worm at Kirkehelsinge, a country parish a few miles from Vedby. The position was so far short of what a young man of Kingo's undoubted ability and excellent connections might have obtained, that one may well ask for his motive in accepting it. And although Kingo himself has left ...
— Hymns and Hymnwriters of Denmark • Jens Christian Aaberg
... thrown ashore on the gulf of Genoa. It was again sent to Sicily, brought to Spain by the Viceroy of Naples, stolen by Napoleon, and in Paris was subjected to a brilliantly successful operation for transferring the layer of paint from the worm-eaten wood to canvas. It came back to Spain with other stolen goods from the Louvre. La Perla was bought by Philip IV. at the sale of Charles I.'s effects after his decapitation. Philip was fond of Charles, but could not resist the temptation to profit by his death. This picture ...
— Castilian Days • John Hay
... the prisoner saw a little mound of earth rising between two of the great stones of the floor. At first he thought that some tiny worm or insect was trying to build a house for itself. Looking closer he saw that it was only the home of a little plant. The stray seed had been brought by the wind, and it was now sending its roots down into the crevice between the stones. "Poor little plant!" said ...
— A Kindergarten Story Book • Jane L. Hoxie
... there is no sending thee a basketful, or I would do it. They would wilt and wither ere they reached thee; the atmosphere thou breathest would strike a deadly worm into their hearts before thou couldst get ...
— Jane Talbot • Charles Brockden Brown
... for seed!) And how the luscious cabbages and kails Have bloomed before you in their bed At seven dollars a head! And how your onions took a prize For bringing tears into the eyes Of a hard-hearted cook! And how ye slew The Dragon Cut-worm at a stroke! And how ye broke, Routed, and put to flight the horrid crew Of vile potato-bugs and Hessian flies! And how ye did not quail Before th' invading armies of San Jose Scale, But met them bravely with your little pail Of poison, which ye put upon ...
— The Poems of Henry Van Dyke • Henry Van Dyke
... The offences of a pupil against a tutor, almost the holiest relation of life, are described in the Laws of Menu, ii. 191 to 218, 242, 8. "By censuring his preceptor, though justly, he will be born an ass; by falsely defaming him, a dog; by using his goods without leave, a small worm; by envying his merit, a larger insect or reptile." As the Roman law did not contemplate the possibility of parricide, that of Menu has no provision against the ...
— Nala and Damayanti and Other Poems • Henry Hart Milman
... the same images retained possession of my brain. I had ever before me the old dark murky rooms—the gaunt suits of mail with their ghostly silent air—the faces all awry, grinning from wood and stone—the dust and rust and worm that lives in wood—and alone in the midst of all this lumber and decay and ugly age, the beautiful child in her gentle slumber, smiling through ...
— The Old Curiosity Shop • Charles Dickens
... Windy Bill, with great emphasis, "as to that snake, I want you to understand this: yereafter in my estimation that snake is nothin' but an ornery angle-worm!" ...
— The Boy Scouts Book of Stories • Various
... Like a storm-driven bird at night we fly out of the Nowhere; for a moment our wings are seen in the light of the fire, and, lo! we are gone again into the Nowhere. Life is nothing. Life is all. It is the Hand with which we hold off Death. It is the glow-worm that shines in the night-time and is black in the morning; it is the white breath of the oxen in winter; it is the little shadow that runs across the grass and ...
— King Solomon's Mines • H. Rider Haggard
... completely lost As though on a street, miserably gray and shrill. Workers stream from dilapidated gates. A weary person moves quietly in a round tower. A hearse crawls along the street, two steeds out front, Soft as a worm and weak. And over all lies an old rag— ...
— The Verse of Alfred Lichtenstein • Alfred Lichtenstein
... down here in this place; I'll go to heaven too, now, cerdily!" She sprang from the pillow and stood on one foot, like a strong-minded little robin that will not be trifled with by a worm. ...
— Dotty Dimple's Flyaway • Sophie May
... Behind the pomp and glory of life That seething old anarchic strife? For there in many a dim blue glade Where the rank red poppies burned, And if perchance some dreamer strayed He nevermore returned, Cold incarnate memories Of earth's retributory throes, Deadly desires and agonies Dark as the worm that never dies, In the outer night arose, And waited under those wonderful skies With Hydra heads and mocking eyes That winked upon the waning West From out the gloom of the oak-forest, Till all the wild profound of wood That o'er the haunted valley slept Glowed ...
— Collected Poems - Volume One (of 2) • Alfred Noyes
... thyself beneath from the eye of the Living God! By-and-by His Day shall come! His Terrible Lightning shall flash from the East to the West! His Dreadful Flaming Thunder-bolt shall fall, riving thy secret fastnesses to atoms, and leaving thee, poor worm, writhing in the dazzling effulgence of His Light, and shrivelling beneath the consuming ...
— Shapes that Haunt the Dusk • Various
... have been deported. They, on their side, swear they were not paid their wages; he, on his, that they robbed and swindled him beyond endurance: both perhaps justly. A more important case was that of an agent despatched (as I heard the story) by a firm of merchants to worm his way into the king's good graces, become, if possible, premier, and handle the copra in the interests of his employers. He obtained authority to land, practised his fascinations, was patiently listened to by Tembinok', supposed himself on the highway ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 18 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... many indigenous insects, birds, and quadrupeds, welcomed the apple-tree to these shores. The tent-caterpillar saddled her eggs on the very first twig that was formed, and it has since shared her affections with the wild cherry; and the canker-worm also in a measure abandoned the elm to feed on it. As it grew apace, the blue-bird, robin, cherry-bird, king-bird, and many more, came with haste and built their nests and warbled in its boughs, and so became orchard-birds, and multiplied more than ever. It was an era in the history of their ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 61, November, 1862 • Various
... all the fairer for this. The young monk's faith that sees heaven laid open and beholds the angels, is something far below the power of the old monk who points them out to him. The ex-steward was like the old monk; he would have given his life to defend a worm-eaten shrine. ...
— The Jealousies of a Country Town • Honore de Balzac
... and laid down on the ground, and have him beaten with a rod of rough briar till his skin was quite red and raw. He would then call for a bucket of salt, and fling upon the raw flesh till the man writhed on the ground like a worm, and screamed aloud with agony. This poor man's wounds were never healed, and I have often seen them full of maggots, which increased his torments to an intolerable degree. He was an object of pity and terror to ...
— The History of Mary Prince - A West Indian Slave • Mary Prince
... manner he secretly nursed the worm of grief that preyed upon his vitals, the alteration in his countenance and conduct did not escape the eyes of that discerning young lady. She was alarmed at the change, yet afraid to inquire into the source of it; for, being ignorant of his distress, she could impute it to no cause in which her ...
— The Adventures of Ferdinand Count Fathom, Complete • Tobias Smollett
... the editor; for somehow newspaper reporting seemed more congenial to the vivid New York climate than singing in a church choir, and the hugeness of the To-day and To-morrow building turned her again into a worm. It did not so much scrape the sky as soar into it, and when she timidly murmured the words "editorial offices" she was shot up to the top in an elevator as in a perpendicularly ...
— Winnie Childs - The Shop Girl • C. N. Williamson |
