"Ant" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... to mind several elderly women of her acquaintance, pensioners of her own group, who still wore its livery, struck its attitudes and chattered its jargon, but had long since been ruthlessly relegated to these slave-ant offices. Never in the world would she join ...
— The Glimpses of the Moon • Edith Wharton
... "Ant tit she ever sail a poat in the lochs in Lonton?" asked Long Shon, as the boat sped away rapidly, with the ...
— Three Boys - or the Chiefs of the Clan Mackhai • George Manville Fenn
... with it, and shuffle along the ground toward them, scolding all the while in a harsh voice. I feared at first that they might kill him, but I soon found that he was able to take care of himself. I would turn over stones and dig into ant-hills for him, and he would lick up the ants so fast that a stream of them seemed going into his mouth unceasingly. I kept him till late in the fall, when he disappeared, probably going south, and I ...
— Birds and Bees, Sharp Eyes and, Other Papers • John Burroughs
... Boar Inn was stirring like an ant-hill, with firefly lanterns flitting up and down, and a cheery glow about the open door. The horses of the company, scrubbed unreasonably clean, snorted and stamped in little bridled clumps about the courtyard, and ...
— Master Skylark • John Bennett
... own up. The occasion was obscure, insignificant—what you will: a lost youngster, one in a million—but then he was one of us; an incident as completely devoid of importance as the flooding of an ant-heap, and yet the mystery of his attitude got hold of me as though he had been an individual in the forefront of his kind, as if the obscure truth involved were momentous enough to affect mankind's conception of itself. . ...
— Lord Jim • Joseph Conrad
... base and contemptible a condition, as they are too low for the Law to looke on, and too meane for a King to interpone his authoritie, or bend his eye vpon: yet are they corruptions, as well as the greatest of them. So is an Ant an Animal, as well as an Elephant: so is a VVrenne Auis, as well as a Swanne, and so is a small dint of the Toothake, a disease as well as the fearefull Plague is. But for these base sorts of corruption in Common-wealthes, not onely the King, or any inferior Magistrate, ...
— A Counter-Blaste to Tobacco • King James I.
... to Bajazet, "that the earth is covered with my warriors from sea-to sea. Kings compose my body guard, and range themselves as servants before my tent. Are you ignorant that the destiny of the universe is in my hands? Who are you? A Turkoman ant. And dare you raise your head against an elephant? If in the forests of Natolia you have obtained some trivial successes; if the timid Europeans have fled like cowards before you, return thanks to Mohammed for your success, for it is not owing to your own valor. Listen to the counsels of wisdom. ...
— The Empire of Russia • John S. C. Abbott
... boys came with torches of fire to my rescue. They are the largest and the most ferocious ant we know anything about. In an incredibly short space of time they can kill any goat, chicken, duck, hog or dog on the place. In a few hours there is not a rat, mouse, snake, centipede, spider, or scorpion in your house, as they are chased, killed and carried ...
— The Upward Path - A Reader For Colored Children • Various
... numerous, are not so troublesome or so venomous as in many parts of the torrid zone. The white ant is perhaps as destructive as any other insect, and the greatest precaution hardly preserves ...
— Lives of the Three Mrs. Judsons • Arabella W. Stuart
... that awful spirit of Deluge, which lives in the traditions of every race. Jean had never heard of waterspout or cloudburst or any modern name given to the Force whenever its leash is slipped for a few minutes. He felt himself as trivial a thing in chaos as the ant which clung on his hand and bit him because ...
— Old Kaskaskia • Mary Hartwell Catherwood
... also stood the test of her feverish dealings with him. He said that she was the only country worth inhabiting in a cursed world, that she was God's own country. Then I fanned his flame with my own home-sick talk. The wind was blowing chillily north-westward that night on the other side of our ant-hill shelter. A kindred wind was blowing just as steadfastly in my own soul. I had had my contrarieties lately, both of hard times and pastoral reverses; but, and that seemed to matter more, I was beginning to feel my age, its untimely growth as my work grew. Had ...
— Cinderella in the South - Twenty-Five South African Tales • Arthur Shearly Cripps
... plain from Nehemiah xii:9, where the descendants of the high priest, Joshua are traced down to Jaddua, the sixth high priest, who went to meet Alexander the Great, when the Persian empire was almost subdued (Josephus, "Ant." ii. 108), or who, according to Philo-Judaeus, was the sixth and last high priest under the Persians. (57) In the same chapter of Nehemiah, verse 22, this point is clearly brought out: "The Levites in the days of Eliashib, ...
— A Theologico-Political Treatise [Part II] • Benedict de Spinoza
... disguise of an ant, deceived Eurymedusa, the daughter of Cleitos. Her son was for this reason called Myrmidon (from {myrmex}, an ant), and was regarded as the ancestor of the ...
— The Iliad of Homer - Translated into English Blank Verse • Homer
... exactly; but from the quail, the woodcock, the swallow, and a thousand others, that are apparently more generous than the poor ant, to which AEsop has given a reputation for avarice that it will have some trouble to shake off. The birds swallow the seeds, many of which are covered with a hard, horny skin, that often resists digestion; these are carried by the inhabitants of the air across rivers, seas, and lakes, and are deposited ...
— Willis the Pilot • Paul Adrien
... and pointing towards the water. Following the line of his outstretched hand, my eyes fell upon a sight that made me jump, old hunter as I was even in those days. About twenty paces from the little skerm was a large ant-heap, and on the summit of the ant-heap, her four feet rather close together, so as to find standing space, stood the massive form of a big lioness. Her head was towards the skerm, and in the bright moonlight I saw her lower it and lick ...
— Hunter Quatermain's Story • H. Rider Haggard
... imitated the diligence of the ants, and like them were indefatigable, continually employed in cultivating the earth; the change from ants to men is founded merely on the equivocation of their name, which resembles that of the ant: they bore a further resemblance to these little animals, in that instead of inhabiting towns or villages, at first they commonly resided in the open fields, having no other retreats but dens and the cavities of trees, until ...
— The Iliad of Homer • Homer
... yards from the enemy's positions, being there well within rifle range, the line halted, lay down, and opened fire. The smooth surface of the ground gave little natural shelter; what {p.053} there was was found chiefly behind ant hills, of which there were very many. The musketry fire here undergone was severe, for the only diversion to it continued so far to be the British artillery, the flanking movement not having yet fully developed. Under the undivided ...
— Story of the War in South Africa - 1899-1900 • Alfred T. Mahan
... she is unscrupulous, that the wish of the woman is the politely insincere wish of the Deity, and that she pursues her course with a serene sureness unknown to man. It is when a woman does not know what she wants that she baffles the philosopher just as the ant in her aimless discursiveness baffles the entomologist. Of course, if the philosopher has guessed her unformulated desire, then things are easy for him, and he can discourse with certitude on feminine vagaries, ...
— Septimus • William J. Locke
... first until within a very few days of its death on May 7, 1882. Tamerlane learned patience from a spider; perhaps Tanner was taught by them how to fast. The Hour, from which we take this item, also has the following: Another spider story is sent from California by the Rev. Dr. McCook, of honey-ant fame. He found a small cocoon of eggs and young spiders, which had no less than five other kinds of insects living in and about it. These intruders consisted of small red ants, a diminutive beetle, and a series formed by a minute chalcid, parasitic on a larger chalcid, which ...
— Prairie Farmer, Vol. 56: No. 4, January 26, 1884 - A Weekly Journal for the Farm, Orchard and Fireside • Various
... an Englishman named Jesse once put a small caterpillar near an ants' nest, and watched. Soon an ant seized it; but the caterpillar was too heavy to be moved by one ant alone, so away he ran until he met another ant. They stopped for a few moments, during which each tapped the other's head with his feelers in a very lively manner. Then they both hurried off to ...
— St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, Vol. 5, Nov 1877-Nov 1878 - Scribner's Illustrated • Various
... sympathy with himself. All things mingle with and extend his own 'ego;' and that can be so widened as to embrace the interests of the whole world, until man can be in as much sympathy with a grain of sand, or the most distant star, and take as much share in the ant, and in the dwellers on Saturn, as in his own stomach and toes. In this way the whole universe becomes a constituent part of his 'ego;' thus his desires cease individually to exist, and are assimilated with the entire phenomenal world, and he longs for nothing beyond this. The 'ego' ceases ...
— The Malady of the Century • Max Nordau
... wait very long, for they brought him a heap of pearls, and all he had to do was to thread them on the string. Just as he was about to make a knot he saw a lame ant coming slowly towards him, for one of her feet had been ...
— Fairy Tales of the Slav Peasants and Herdsmen • Alexander Chodsko
... he browses a mouthful of young leaves here, scratches up a root there, tears the bark off a decaying tree and eats the insects underneath, lifts a stone and finds a mouse or a lizard beneath, or loiters for twenty minutes over an ant-hill. With plenty of time, he is never in a hurry, and ...
— Bear Brownie - The Life of a Bear • H. P. Robinson
... banks; this is the Ornithorhyncus paradoxus, with webbed feet, a thick soft fur, and broad flat jaws, which look very much like the bill of a duck (Figures 2.269 and 2.270). The other form, the land duck-bill, or spiny ant-eater (Echidna hystrix), is very much like the anteaters in its habits and the peculiar construction of its thin snout and very long tongue; it is covered with needles, and can roll itself up like a hedgehog. A cognate form (Parechidna ...
— The Evolution of Man, V.2 • Ernst Haeckel
... feel like an ant in an anthill?" asked Belle, cheerfully watching the departing carriage. "She really didn't take no interest in Timothy because there ...
— Poor, Dear Margaret Kirby and Other Stories • Kathleen Norris
... Castellamare in the left-hand corner, at a distance of some fourteen miles, is a vast rich plain, fringed on the shore with towns, and covered with white houses and gardens. Out of this rises the isolated bulk of Vesuvius. This growing mountain is manufactured exactly like an ant-hill. ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... place. This set flowing towards me for days a stream of people, like a line of ants passing to and from the scene of a terrific false alarm. I had nothing to do but sit perfectly still and let each ant, as it ran up, touch me with its antennae, get the counter-sign, and turn back to the village ant-hill. Not all, however. Some remained to hear me abuse the Cobbs; or, counting on my support, fell to abusing the Cobbs themselves. When I made not a word of reply, except to assure ...
— A Kentucky Cardinal • James Lane Allen
... all the coasts and boundaries of Europe, and plainly distinguish the fine lines of the railways, we should also see small, dark, short forms running backwards and forwards along them. We should see, as it were, a teeming ant-hill, and after every ant we should see a small puff of smoke. In Scandinavia and Russia the bustle would seem less lively, but in the centre of Europe the ants would scurry ...
— From Pole to Pole - A Book for Young People • Sven Anders Hedin
... patch of ground, not so very large, with a spring of ever-flowing water, a garden, and a little timberland. He asks for nothing more, except that a kindly fate will make these beloved possessions forever his own. He will go to the ant, for she is an example, and consider her ways and be wise, and be content with what he has as soon as it is enough. He will not enter the field of public life, because it would mean the sacrifice of peace. He would have to keep open house, submit to the attentions of a body-guard ...
— Horace and His Influence • Grant Showerman
... employed no less than four months in developing the mysteries of Joseph's coat, from Genesis, xxxvii. 3.: "And he made him a coat of many colours." In reply to the sarcasm on Mr. Bragge, Mr. Walter Wilson states (Hist. and Ant. of Diss. ch. i. p. 247.) that the following ...
— Notes and Queries, No. 28. Saturday, May 11, 1850 • Various
... Central Australia are the scene of a marvellous transformation. In the dry season all is hot and desolate, the ground has only patches of wiry scrub, with an occasional parched acacia tree, all is stones and sand; there is no sign of animal life save for the thousand ant-hills. Then suddenly the rainy season sets in. Torrents fill the rivers, and the sandy plain is a sheet of water. Almost as suddenly the rain ceases, the streams dry up, sucked in by the thirsty ground, and as though literally ...
— Ancient Art and Ritual • Jane Ellen Harrison
... uproar arose from a bed near the beach. "There's a million ants in my bed!" shrieked Migwan, jumping up and shaking her blankets. She had spread her bed on a colony of ant hills, and the ants had improved the shining hours until bedtime by crawling ...
— The Camp Fire Girls in the Maine Woods - Or, The Winnebagos Go Camping • Hildegard G. Frey
... over the boat decks in long red curling tongues. Her cannon fire had ceased, and from what Leonard could see, he thought the English ships had quit firing at her. She still fled southward, however. Smoke began to roll out of her turrets, and her crew came swarming out on her deck like a disturbed ant's nest. Through his glasses, Madden saw them hunched against the fire, working to launch a boat, when of a sudden there was a blinding flare; a huge cloud of smoke leaped from the sea, and after four or five minutes, a thunder heavily audible even amid ...
— The Cruise of the Dry Dock • T. S. Stribling
... and south-east is rocky on the top, covered with sandy soil growing grama and very few cedar bushes, studded with ant-hills, and devoid of all remains of human structures so far as I could see. Pottery and obsidian are ever present, but become perceptibly less and almost disappear further east. The rills which drain the eastern slope carry much ...
— Historical Introduction to Studies Among the Sedentary Indians of New Mexico; Report on the Ruins of the Pueblo of Pecos • Adolphus Bandelier
... begun to get married, 'n' us all sittin' lookin' on 'n' no more guessin' what was comin' next than a ant looks for a mornin' paper. The minister was gettin' most through 'n' the deacon was gettin' out the ring, 'n' we was lookin' to get up 'n' out pretty quick, when—my heavens alive, Mrs. Lathrop, I never will forget that minute—when Mr. Jilkins—poor man, he's sufferin' enough for it, Lord ...
— Susan Clegg and Her Neighbors' Affairs • Anne Warner
... were laid up to let the water run away, and many of them keep their old names, but these are the only relics of the old days. The land is not, and never was, very valuable. The roads are wide, and on either side have wide waste strips cut up roughly by horse tracks, cart ruts and ant hills. Bracken, gorse, rushes, thistles and brambles grow there, and you may find many fine blackberries in September. The coarse Aira grass is found with its leaves as rough as files. The villages are often built round greens which serve as the ...
— Lessons on Soil • E. J. Russell
... son of a bitch—it's youss guys that never washes. I bet yer me borram dollar I ant got a god-damn chat ...
— Combed Out • Fritz August Voigt
... and -ant, of the persons of the verbs are the personal pronouns, so that the inflection is really a verb and a pronoun in a state of agglutination; i.e., in a state where the original separate existence of the two sorts of words is still manifest. This is probably the case with languages in general. ...
— A Handbook of the English Language • Robert Gordon Latham
... into the tent again; and nerved himself to await the inevitable scene. Meanwhile he could see Rina alight at the door, search the cabin hastily, and dart about outside, like a distracted ant returning to find her dwelling rifled. She followed the tracks down to the water's edge, dragging the horse after her. Seeking over the water, she soon discovered the dugout lying at Garth's camp; whereupon she clambered on ...
— Two on the Trail - A Story of the Far Northwest • Hulbert Footner
... a time. "Dese tings 'ave to happen," he said at last. "What is it? Plagues of ants and suchlike as God wills. Dere was a plague in Trinidad—the little ants that carry leaves. Orl der orange-trees, all der mangoes! What does it matter? Sometimes ant armies come into your houses—fighting ants; a different sort. You go and they clean the house. Then you come back again;—the house is clean, like new! No cockroaches, no fleas, no ...
— The Country of the Blind, And Other Stories • H. G. Wells
... into castes, with intermediate gradations (which I imagine are rare) interest me much. See "Origin" on the driver-ant, page 241 (please look ...
— More Letters of Charles Darwin - Volume I (of II) • Charles Darwin
... choose; sometimes he angers me With telling me of the moldwarp and the ant, Of the dreamer Merlin, and his prophecies; And of a dragon and a finless fish, A clipt-wing'd griffin and a moulten raven, A couching lion, and a ramping cat. And such a deal of skimble-skamble stuff, As puts me from my faith. ...
— Waverley Volume XII • Sir Walter Scott
... not the worm, The noxious thing, beneath your heel? Ah! had you taught me to perform Due labor for the common weal! Then, sheltered from the adverse wind, The worm and ant had learned to grow; Ay,—then I might have loved my kind;— The aged beggar dies ...
— The World's Best Poetry, Volume 3 - Sorrow and Consolation • Various
... certificate on the back was thus: "Registered in the book of Certificates, folio xxxii, et sequ. Signed, ANT. PEITAS." ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume IX. • Robert Kerr
... what seemed to be the words of the sluggard in answer to the attempt to awake him: 'Yet a little sleep, a little slumber, a little folding of the hands to sleep.' They are a quotation from an earlier chapter (ch. vi.) where 'His Laziness' is sent to 'consider the ways of the ant and be wise.' They are a drowsy petition which does not dispute the wisdom of the call to awake, but simply craves for a little more luxurious laziness from which he has unwillingly been aroused. And is it not true that we admit ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... of the Lord,' she murmured. 'I can only see by my own poor bees, but He has every hive, every ant's nest, every leaf, every blade of grass. He lives, He feels, He loves, He suffers, He does good by means of all these. Oh, Monsieur Hennetius, you are right not to pain the Lord, who loves ...
— The Man-Wolf and Other Tales • Emile Erckmann and Alexandre Chatrian
... Chausee d' Antin to the Rue de Lille. At that time—it was in 1836—the race of feuilletonists and journalists, which now swarms everywhere, numerous as the ants one sees when a hole is made in an ant-hill, had not yet succeeded in multiplying in numbers. Still, there used to appear in Varvara Pavlovna's drawing-room a certain M. Jules, a gentleman who bore a very bad character, whose appearance ...
— Liza - "A nest of nobles" • Ivan Sergeevich Turgenev
... goods to his creditor. According to civil law [*Cod. IV, x, de Oblig. et Action, 12] money lays an obligation not on the person of a freeman, but on his property, because the person of a freeman "is above all pecuniary consideration" [*Dig. L, xvii, de div. reg. Jur. ant. 106, 176]. Hence, after surrendering his property, he may lawfully enter religion, nor is he bound to remain in the world in order to earn the means of paying ...
— Summa Theologica, Part II-II (Secunda Secundae) • Thomas Aquinas
... lovers who had reached a point of confidence and revelation. Nothing in the situation tallied with Ranulph's ideas of Guida and his knowledge of life. He had, as one might say, been eye to eye with this girl for fifteen years: he had told his love for her in a thousand little ways, as the ant builds its heap to a pyramid that becomes a thousand times greater than itself. He had followed her footsteps, he had fetched and carried, he had served afar off, he had ministered within the gates. ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... my harmas-laboratory, I place in the first rank an Ant-hill of Polyergus rufescens, the celebrated Red Ant, the slave-hunting Amazon. Unable to rear her family, incapable of seeking her food, of taking it even when it is within her reach, she needs servants ...
— The Mason-bees • J. Henri Fabre
... improvement. Lastly, the progress of mankind in arts and sciences, which continues slowly to extend, and to increase, seems to evince the youth of human society; whilst the unchanging state of the societies of some insects, as of the bee, wasp, and ant, which is usually ascribed to instinct, seems to evince the longer existence, and greater maturity of those societies. The juvenility of the earth shows, that it has had a beginning or birth, and is a strong natural argument ...
— The Temple of Nature; or, the Origin of Society - A Poem, with Philosophical Notes • Erasmus Darwin
... on the north side of the rock, where the hole is not visible. This might make the credulous Britons think the predictions proceeded solely from the rock-deity. The voice on the outside was distinctly conveyed to the person in the aperture, as was several times tried.'—Arch. Soc. Ant. ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 19. No. 534 - 18 Feb 1832 • Various
... buried [Greek: en lithine larnaki] (Joann. Ant. fr. 214). The great stone coffins of Honorius and Valentinian will be remembered by every visitor ...
— The Letters of Cassiodorus - Being A Condensed Translation Of The Variae Epistolae Of - Magnus Aurelius Cassiodorus Senator • Cassiodorus (AKA Magnus Aurelius Cassiodorus Senator)
... are getting too serious. I've given you enough ethics for one talk, I think! Do let us have a little play. Lily, what were you so busy about, at the ant-hill in ...
— The Ethics of the Dust • John Ruskin
... ant-heap. But I know you are right. For Lassalle the Fighter the world holds no wife. If I could only be sure that the victory will ...
— Dreamers of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... let none wist! Live, day by day, With little and with little swelling Thy tale of duty done—the way The wise ant-people build ...
— Poems with Power to Strengthen the Soul • Various
... nbvkv kl hmprwiM] "all interpreters have been perplexed by it." The interpretations by means of which they endeavour to rid themselves of this embarrassment (see the collection of them in Frischmuth's dissertation on this passage, Jena; reprinted in the Thes. Ant.) are only calculated plainly to manifest it. Kimchi gives this explanation: "Although ye shall increase and be multiplied on the earth, yet the nations shall not envy you, nor wage war against you; and it shall no more ...
— Christology of the Old Testament: And a Commentary on the Messianic Predictions. Vol. 2 • Ernst Hengstenberg
... did not venture to disturb him. It was a panorama of wonderful beauty. They seemed to stand up among the clouds, the air was so pure and cool and bracing. Far beneath, the houses of the town looked like a tiny ant-nest, enveloped in a filmy haze. The great plain stretched around for miles and miles, dotted here and there by many a pretty homestead, and intersected by the winding river, glinting and glistening in the sun as ...
— Thankful Rest • Annie S. Swan
... the orderliness of their lives. They had but the studio, a bedroom, and a tiny kitchen. Mrs. Stroeve did all the housework herself; and while Dirk painted bad pictures, she went marketing, cooked the luncheon, sewed, occupied herself like a busy ant all the day; and in the evening sat in the studio, sewing again, while Dirk played music which I am sure was far beyond her comprehension. He played with taste, but with more feeling than was always justified, and into his music poured all ...
— The Moon and Sixpence • W. Somerset Maugham
... crowned cranes beginning to pair, the flocks of spurwinged geese, the habits of the ostrich, the nests of bee-eaters, pass under review in rapid succession. His sphere of observation ranges from the structure of the great continent itself to the serrated bone of the konokono, or the mandible of the ant. ...
— The Personal Life Of David Livingstone • William Garden Blaikie
... I was a-goin' to tell you that I only went up to Wiggleses to borrow a crosscut from Josiar. True as I live I w'ant inside the gate for I met Josiar a-comin' out o' the milkin' yard and I then and there ups and tells him what I ...
— Marguerite Verne • Agatha Armour
... carefully all over and found no crack. Not a mouse, not even an ant could have entered in. He went out in perplexity and, after the usual formalities, again stepped into his palankeen, which was accompanied to the ...
— Eastern Shame Girl • Charles Georges Souli
... (Deuteromelia) The Gods have heard my vows (Weelkes) The lark, linnet and nightingale to sing some say are best (Pammelia) The love of change hath changed the world throughout (Carlton) The lowest trees have tops, the ant her gall (John Dowland) The man of life upright (Campion and Rosseter) The greedy hawk with sudden sight of lure (Byrd) The match that's made for just and true respects (Byrd) The Nightingale so ...
— Lyrics from the Song-Books of the Elizabethan Age • Various
... waiting to see this fool led away to die by torture of the ant-heap or some other dreadful doom. But ...
— The Wizard • H. Rider Haggard
... nothing, have taken the place of the reigns of judges and kings, according to which reckoning was previously made (1Chronicles v. 29, seq.). One sees clearly from Sirach l., and from more than one statement of Josephus (e.g., Ant., xviii. 4, 3, xx. 1, 11), how in the decorations of Aaron (where, however, the Urim and Thummim were wanting; Nehemiah vii. 65) people reverenced a transcendent majesty which had been left to the people of God as in some sense a compensation ...
— Prolegomena to the History of Israel • Julius Wellhausen
... had hewed a path. Monkeys and parrots chattered at them, and a white miasmatic vapour hung over trees and lakes, burying the clearings in its wreaths, and lifting only at mid-day, to close again upon the woods at night. They talked of alligators, jaguars, the giant ant-eater, and the mysterious bird known to them as the 'ipetata', which in its tail carries a burning fire. In the recesses of the thickets demons lurked, and wild Caaguas, who with a blowpipe and a poisoned arrow slew you and your horse, ...
— A Vanished Arcadia, • R. B. Cunninghame Graham
... after dark. A successful haul. More Natives. Miago's Heroism. The plague of Flies. Dampier's description of it. Native Habitations. Underweigh. Wind and weather. Tidal Phenomenon. Natural History. Singular Kangaroo. Bustard. Cinnamon Kangaroo. Quails. Goanas and Lizards. Ant Hills. Fishing over the side. A day in the Bush. A flood of fire. Soil and Productions. White Ibis. Curious Tree. Rain water. Geology of the Cliffs. Weigh, and graze a Rock, or Touch and go. The Twins. Sunday Strait. Roe's Group. Miago and his friends. A black dog. ...
— Discoveries in Australia, Volume 1. • J Lort Stokes
... my birth," he began with a profound sigh. "Ze noble blot of ze Countess of Zomerblat flows in my veins. Me vere born six veek after ze vetting. Ze man of my Mutter (I called him 'Papa') vere farmer to ze Count von Zomerblat. He coult not forget my Mutter's shame, ant loaft me not. I had a youngster broser Johann ant two sister, pot me vere strange petween my own family. Ven Johann mate several silly trick Papa sayt, 'Wit sis chilt Karl I am never to have one moment tranquil!' ...
— Boyhood • Leo Tolstoy
... were all fled, the beauty of the tropic day was spread upon Papeete; and the wall of breaking seas upon the reef, and the palms upon the islet, already trembled in the heat. A French man-of-war was going out, homeward bound; she lay in the middle distance of the port, an ant heap for activity. In the night a schooner had come in, and now lay far out, hard by the passage; and the yellow flag, the emblem of pestilence, flew on her. From up the coast, a long procession of canoes headed round the point and towards ...
— The Ebb-Tide - A Trio And Quartette • Robert Louis Stevenson and Lloyd Osbourne
... of knowledge in a superior degree, as it was his courage, acuteness, and experience alone which placed him at the head of his tribe, though Del Rio from this circumstance wishes to infer that the Gitanos were spies sent by foreign foes, and with some simplicity inquires, 'Quo ant cui rei haec curiosa exploratio? nonne compescenda vagamundorum haec curiositas, etiam si solum peregrini ...
— The Zincali - An Account of the Gypsies of Spain • George Borrow
... subterranean galleries. Thus there existed beneath the county of Stirling a vast tract, full of burrows, tunnels, bored with caves, and perforated with shafts, a subterranean labyrinth, which might be compared to an enormous ant-hill. ...
— The Underground City • Jules Verne
... literary men? Some old literary hack, hard-working and talented, will wear away the doorstep of the publishers' offices for thirty-three years, cover reams of paper, be had up for libel twenty times, and yet not step beyond his ant-heap. Can you mention to me a single representative of our literature who would have become celebrated if the rumor had not been spread over the earth that he had been killed in a duel, gone out of his mind, been sent into exile, or ...
— The Schoolmistress and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... earthworks of defense, for man the impetuous had already flung up great gray dumps of rock, broken and wrenched from the bulk of the slope, where he quested for gleaming yellow metal. He had ripped out the adamant—the matrix of the gold—for as far as Beth could see. Like ant-heaps of tremendous dimensions stood these monuments of toil—rock-writings, telling of the heat and desire, the madness of ...
— The Furnace of Gold • Philip Verrill Mighels
... the carriage door, helped Mr. John to get into the coach, wished him a most pleasant journey, no end of enjoyment and other meaningless things, all of which made much the same agreeable impression upon Mr. John as if an ant had crept into his boot and he could not kill it because he was in company. Only when the carriage door was shut to and he saw Margari's face no more did he begin to breathe ...
— The Poor Plutocrats • Maurus Jokai
... flashed. "Not yet, ma!" he said, firmly. "It 'ud be with us like it was with the Hornbys; they didn't have nothin' to eat, and they went to the organization ant the man asted 'em if they had a bed or a table, an' when they said yes, he said, 'Well, why don't you sell 'em?' No, ma! As long as we've got coal I'll git the vittles some way!" He had to pause, for a violent attack of coughing shook him from head to foot. "I think I can git a night job next ...
— Mrs. Wiggs of the Cabbage Patch • Alice Caldwell Hegan
... blanket that covered the water several feet from the bank, and unfortunate bees that had fallen into the river struggled frantically to gain a footing on them. Water beetles shot over the surface in small shining parties, and schools of tiny minnows played along the banks. Once a black ant assassinated an enemy on Dannie's shoe, by creeping up behind it and puncturing ...
— At the Foot of the Rainbow • Gene Stratton-Porter
... of English people, the distance and coldness of their own Channel which they put between them and whoever has not been presented to them in a proper manner. Humanity seems to be an ant-hill on which they tread; they know none of their species except the few they admit into their circle; they ignore even the language of the rest; tongues may move and eyes may see in their presence but neither sound nor look ...
— The Lily of the Valley • Honore de Balzac
... Myrmeleon-lion-ant. The term "monster" is equally applicable to small abnormal things and to great, while such epithets as "vast" are merely comparative. The cavern of the myrmeleon is vast in comparison with the hole of the common red ant. A grain of ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 2 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... head away and pretended to be interested in a black ant that was crawling rapidly up the wall below him; he was a truthful pussy and preferred to change the subject. The stranger was comfortable and sat lazily ...
— The Book of the Cat • Mabel Humphrey and Elizabeth Fearne Bonsall
... Hungerford. Hapgood was down on him like a Gull on a sand ele. He sed Hungerford was a mene sneak and had treted him bad. He told me a Lot about how Hungerford worked you fokes for sukkers and how he helped. Seems him and Hungerford was old shipmates and chums and had worked your ant Laviny the same way. Hungerford used to pay him, but now that he is flat Broke and can't help no more, he won't give him a cent. Hapgood says if you knew what he knows you'd be intterested. He says Hungerford pade him to get a hold of Tellygrams ...
— Cap'n Dan's Daughter • Joseph C. Lincoln
... Syria. That Quirinus undertook a census of Judaea we know certainly from Josephus, who, however, remarks that he was sent to execute this measure when Archelaus' country was laid to the province of Syria (compare "Ant.," bk. xvii. ch. 13, sec. 5; bk. xviii. ch. 1, sec. 1; "Wars of the Jews," bk. ii. ch. 8, sec. 1; and ch. 9, sec. 1) thus, about ten years after the time at which, according to Matthew and Luke, Jesus must have been born" (Strauss's "Life of Jesus," ...
— The Freethinker's Text Book, Part II. - Christianity: Its Evidences, Its Origin, Its Morality, Its History • Annie Besant
... a morning meeting of the smaller council. The day was dull, the chamber warm, the business to be transacted monotonous; and Blondel, far from well and interested in one thing only—beside which the most important affairs of Geneva seemed small as the doings of an ant-hill viewed through a glass—had fallen asleep, or nearly asleep. Naturally a restless and wakeful man, of thin habit and nervous temperament, he had never done such a thing before: and it was unfortunate that he succumbed on this occasion, ...
— The Long Night • Stanley Weyman
... an arrow. And he says as follows: '...and lordly Periclymenus. Happy he! For earth-shaking Poseidon gave him all manner of gifts. At one time he would appear among birds, an eagle; and again at another he would be an ant, a marvel to see; and then a shining swarm of bees; and again at another time a dread relentless snake. And he possessed all manner of gifts which cannot be told, and these then ensnared him ...
— Hesiod, The Homeric Hymns, and Homerica • Homer and Hesiod
... block of wood and began to chop the block under his feet. He screeched and she chopped; he screeched and she chopped; until he became an old man again and made the enigmatical confession: "I have transformed myself not once nor twice only. I was first a fish, then I became a bird, an ant, and a quadruped, and now I have once more made trial of being a human being. It isn't better thus than being among the ants; but among human beings—it isn't worse!" Here the chopping was evidently a threat to kill. Nor, if we may trust the stories, was this threat ...
— The Science of Fairy Tales - An Inquiry into Fairy Mythology • Edwin Sidney Hartland
... animals have been for ages considered as patterns of industry: they were specially noticed by the wise king Solomon. He says, "go to the ant, thou sluggard, consider her ways, and be wise." The ant lays eggs in the manner of common flies; from these eggs are hatched small maggots, or worms without legs; these, after a short time, change into large white ...
— The History of Insects • Unknown
... what I say. All will be destroyed. Why should man prosper in that which he has in common with the ant, while he fails in that which places him on a level with the gods. Or is this the aim and limit of ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... time to put in on him. That's the reason they'd stayed so long up the draw. Poor old Johnny! I was glad it was night, and he was dead. Apaches are the worst Injuns there is for tortures. They cut off the bottoms of old man Wilkins's feet, and stood him on an ant-hill—. ...
— Arizona Nights • Stewart Edward White
... Further, solicitude for the necessary means of livelihood is by nature instilled into man, and this solicitude even other animals share with man: wherefore it is written (Prov. 6:6, 8): "Go to the ant, O sluggard, and consider her ways . . . she provideth her meat for herself in the summer, and gathereth her food in the harvest." But every command issued against the inclination of nature is an unjust command, ...
— Summa Theologica, Part I-II (Pars Prima Secundae) - From the Complete American Edition • Saint Thomas Aquinas
... honest," he said to himself. "From the stock-jobbing owners down to the nickel-filching conductors they steal—steal—steal!" And then he wondered at, laughed at, his heat. What did it matter? An ant pilfering from another ant and a sparrow stealing the crumb found by another sparrow—a man robbing another man—all part of the universal scheme. Only a narrow-minded ignoramus would get himself wrought up over it; a philosopher would laugh—and take what he ...
— The Grain Of Dust - A Novel • David Graham Phillips
... pyjamas, waving his fists at the skylight. Through the glass, Gussie was staring down. His eyes were bulging and his mouth was open, giving him so striking a resemblance to some rare fish in an aquarium that one's primary impulse was to offer him an ant's egg. ...
— Right Ho, Jeeves • P. G. Wodehouse
... cannot fly, His soiled wing has lost its power; And he winds adown the mountain high For many a sore and weary hour Through dreary beds of tangled fern, Through groves of nightshade dark and dern, Over the grass and through the brake, Where toils the ant and sleeps the snake; Now over the violet's azure flush He skips along in lightsome mood; And now he thrids the bramble-bush, Till its points are dyed in fairy blood; He has leaped the bog, he has pierced the brier, He has swum the brook, and waded the ...
— Selections From American Poetry • Various
... His gold rings. By the time of Hadrian the wearing of a gold ring (ius anuli aurei) was no more than a sign of free birth, and the only privilege conferred was that of obtaining office. See Anulus, Dict. Ant. ...
— The Apologia and Florida of Apuleius of Madaura • Lucius Apuleius
... a favorite device was to tie the bushranger hand and foot, and then place him on an ant hill. The black ant of Australia has a bite that is very painful, and when hundreds of thousands of ants are biting a man all at once, the feeling is something fearful. The ant-hill torture was generally successful. After submitting to it for a time, the bushranger generally gave up the secret ...
— The Land of the Kangaroo - Adventures of Two Youths in a Journey through the Great Island Continent • Thomas Wallace Knox
... be a microscope, a real swell one, that we see what-do-you-call-'ems in water with, and stars, and ant-eggs, and all sorts of games, you know. Won't it be a jolly good present?" said Tommy, rather confusing microscopes and ...
— Little Men - Life at Plumfield With Jo's Boys • Louisa May Alcott
... along I glanced down into those cellars, with steps so polished, so slippery, so well-soaped, that one might slide in as into the den of an ant-lion—to see if I might not discover Hoffman himself seated on a tun, his feet crossed upon the bowl of his gigantic pipe, and surrounded by a tangle of grotesque chimeras, as he is represented in the vignette of the ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume V (of X) • Various
... science entails should tend to induce those whose attention is constantly fixed on Nature to imagine that from Nature can be drawn not only lessons of physical life but lessons also of conduct. Of course this is quite wrong; for Nature has no moral lesson to teach us. We are told to go to the ant—at least the sluggard is—but for what? To amend his sluggardliness. No one has ever suggested that we should go to Nature to learn to be humble, kindly, unselfish, tolerant, and Christian, in our dealings with others; and for this excellent reason, that none of these things ...
— Science and Morals and Other Essays • Bertram Coghill Alan Windle
... actual income to keep from swearing to a falsehood. I looked for a loophole, but there did not appear to be any. Inquiry No. 1 covered my case as generously and as amply as an umbrella could cover an ant-hill: ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... undertook the management of the flocks and herds of the family, (p. 24.) At nineteen he became religious, and "left off playing chess," made a kind of Budhist vow never to injure living thing and felt his foot paralyzed from having accidentally trod upon an ant, (p. 30.) At twenty, thoughts of rebellion and greatness rose in his mind; at twenty-one, he seems to have performed his first feat of arms. He was a practised warrior when he served, in his twenty-seventh ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 6 • Edward Gibbon
... Ant so you puts a tog into mein stone-heap, and you steps onto mein grass, ant you knock ober all mein beautiful mullein-stalks and mein ...
— The Junior Classics Volume 8 - Animal and Nature Stories • Selected and arranged by William Patten
... frosty in the morning, and has not quite dried yet, you can find some cold little cider apples, with one side knurly, and one shiny bright red or yellow cheek. They are wet with dew, these little apples, and a black ant runs anxiously over them when you turn them round and round to see where the best place is to bite. There will almost always be a bird's nest in the tree, and it is most likely to be a robin's nest. The prehistoric robins must have been cave ...
— Deephaven and Selected Stories & Sketches • Sarah Orne Jewett
... noun, and aphides its plural form.) But enough of aphis enemies, and now for the friends, which, as well as foes, they owe to the sweet milk—the honey-dew—which they give out. So these friends, you see, are fair-weather friends, interested friends; and among them are several varieties of the ant tribe. ...
— The Nursery, September 1877, Vol. XXII, No. 3 - A Monthly Magazine for Youngest Readers • Various
... the truth about their sister's husband. They took their sister into the garden and asked her many questions, but Maria kept silent about the snake's secret. So her sisters fastened her to a tree at the bottom of which was an ant's nest. Maria could not long endure the pain of the bites of the ants and told her sisters the truth. They let her go back home, but she could not find her husband anywhere, and set out to look for ...
— Philippine Folk-Tales • Clara Kern Bayliss, Berton L. Maxfield, W. H. Millington,
... rounds, Lest seed-time and the happy harvests fail; Which guides the stars in their celestial course, And guides the pigeon's swift unerring flight O'er mountain, sea and plain and desert waste, Straight as an arrow to her distant home; Teaching the ant for winter to prepare; Clothing the lily in its princely pride; Watching the tiny sparrow when it falls; Nothing too great for His almighty arm; Nothing too small for His all-seeing eye; Nothing too mean for ...
— The Dawn and the Day • Henry Thayer Niles
... rumour or fable knows what goes on within them. For, when you have passed the woods and the dense, tangled thickets, in the depths you come upon a great rampart of stumps, logs, and roots, defended by a quagmire, a thousand streams, and a net of overgrown weeds and ant-hills, nests of wasps and hornets, and coils of serpents. If by some superhuman valour you surmount even these barriers, farther on you will meet with still greater danger. At each step there lie in wait for you, like the ...
— Pan Tadeusz • Adam Mickiewicz
... Booth's map of East London, with its coloured lines showing the swarms of human beings who live ignobly and die obscurely, and realise for yourself of what import the cult of beautiful form is to these human ant-heaps. Walk down the populous Whitechapel Road of a Saturday night, or traverse the long slimy alleys of Rotherhithe among the timber wharves, and discover how many of your countrymen and contemporaries are living neither in your country nor in your century. To Mr. Henry James, the dull undertone ...
— Without Prejudice • Israel Zangwill
... a more striking instance in the animal kingdom of adaptation of structure to habit than is afforded by the hairy armadillo—Dasypus villosus. He appears to us, roughly speaking, to resemble an ant-eater saddled with a dish cover; yet this creature, with the cunning Avhich Nature has given it to supplement all deficiencies, has discovered in its bony encumbrance a highly efficient weapon of offence. Most other edentates are diurnal and almost exclusively ...
— The Naturalist in La Plata • W. H. Hudson
... the robin-redbreast and the wren, Since o'er shady groves they hover, And with leaves and flowers do cover The friendless bodies of unburied men. Call unto his funeral dole The ant, the field-mouse, and the mole, To rear him hillocks that shall keep him warm, And (when gay tombs are robb'd) sustain no harm; But keep the wolf far thence, that's foe to men, For with his nails he'll ...
— English Songs and Ballads • Various
... the Chemist's house, filled the open space across from it and overflowed down the steps leading to the beach. It was uncanny, standing there, to see these swarming little creatures, like ants whose hill had been desecrated by the foot of some stray passer-by. They were enraged, and with an ant's unreasoning, desperate courage they were ready to fight and to die, ...
— The Girl in the Golden Atom • Raymond King Cummings
... foundation stones are carried to the apex, and the swiftness of this transfer is increasing in a sort of geometrical ratio. I see that the result of this is something like that which would take place in an ant-heap if the community of ants were to lose their sense of the common law, if some ants were to begin to draw the products of labor from the bottom to the top of the heap, and should constantly contract the foundations and broaden the apex, and should ...
— What To Do? - thoughts evoked by the census of Moscow • Count Lyof N. Tolstoi
... by the white plumes became bigger. All at once a ship lying dark on the water, scarcely a mile away on the weather-bow, spat out a long ribbon of light like an ant-eater's tongue, and we found ourselves standing in a glare of light as if we were actors in ...
— The International Spy - Being the Secret History of the Russo-Japanese War • Allen Upward
... spying all them chaps at work," he said. "It reminds me for all the world of an ant-hill. Never did see so many chaps before. What be they a-doing? Digging a big drain or making a ...
— With Lee in Virginia - A Story of the American Civil War • G. A. Henty
... laws are made of the worst manners, even so are the best lawyers of the worst men. He hums about Westminster Hall, and returns home with his pockets like a bee with his thighs laden; and that which Horace says of an ant, Ore trahit quodcunque potest, atque addit acervo, is true of him, for he gathers all his heap with the labour of his mouth rather than his brain and hands. He values himself, as a carman does his horse, by the money he gets, and looks down upon all that gain less as scoundrels. ...
— Character Writings of the 17th Century • Various
... Buddha's order ... should not intentionally destroy the life of any being, down even to a worm or an ant.—Mahavagga. ...
— The Essence of Buddhism • Various
... All we have to do is to follow the foothills. We shall probably find Juan and his burro sound asleep on an ant-hill somewhere. He's positively the laziest human being I ever set ...
— The Pony Rider Boys in New Mexico • Frank Gee Patchin
... second, though more than twenty miles away, still in the back foreground of the picture. Thread-like, brown trails wound away over the plain and up into the mountains, here and there dotted by travelers crawling ant-like along them a few inches an hour. Take the most perfect day of late May or early June in our North, brush off the clouds, make the air many times fresher and clearer, add October nights, and multiply the sum total by 365, and it is ...
— Tramping Through Mexico, Guatemala and Honduras - Being the Random Notes of an Incurable Vagabond • Harry A. Franck
... stirred up the little ant, a native of the fields, to take compassion on her. The leader of the ant hill, followed by whole hosts of his six-legged subjects, approached the heap, and with the utmost diligence, taking grain by grain, ...
— Bulfinch's Mythology • Thomas Bulfinch
... served the city for fuel instead of wood for six months. 34. Enoch being informed by Adam the world was to be drowned and burnt, made two pillars, one of stone to withstand the water, and one of brick to withstand the fire, and inscribed upon them all known knowledge.—See Josephus, Ant. Jud. 35. A Franciscan friar, counsellor to the Inquisition, who visited the principal libraries in Spain to make a catalogue of the books op- posed to the Romish religion. His "index novus librorum pro- hibitorum" was published at Seville ...
— Religio Medici, Hydriotaphia, and the Letter to a Friend • Sir Thomas Browne
... Ant. Eccl. Ribibus, tom. iii. p. 263. For an inattention to this the Council of Soissons, in 1121, ordered some transcripts of Abelard's works to be burnt, and severely reproved the author for his unpardonable ...
— Bibliomania in the Middle Ages • Frederick Somner Merryweather
... another and much more effective way of transmigration by the kind assistance of the ant who colonizes the scalebug as well for its wax as it colonizes the Aphis for its honey. Birds on their feathers and the gardener himself on his dress contribute ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 286 - June 25, 1881 • Various
... giving offence to many people, if I confute this great man; yet I will give preference over this fear to the consideration I have for the entreaties of a friend, provided that you make me a promise. ANT.—What? LAUR.—It is, that when you have dined with me you do not ask me to give you supper, that is to say, I desire that you be content with the answer to the question you have put to me, and do ...
— Theodicy - Essays on the Goodness of God, the Freedom of Man and the Origin of Evil • G. W. Leibniz
... from the superiority in kind;—for only by its co-existence with reason, free will, self-consciousness, the contra-distinguishing attributes of man, does the instinctive intelligence manifested in the ant, the dog, the elephant, &c. become human understanding. It is a truth with which Heraclitus, the senior, but yet contemporary, of AEschylus, appears, from the few genuine fragments of his writings that are yet extant, to have ...
— Literary Remains, Vol. 2 • Coleridge
... mania for repairing and reconstructing, this instinct of the active ant that immediately commences to rebuild its hill, obliterated by some careless foot, has become ...
— With Those Who Wait • Frances Wilson Huard
... like an ant-hill in commotion, there is so much scurrying around; but I know that is what you thoroughly enjoy. You shall have a finger in every pie if you will come out and help me to ...
— Two Little Knights of Kentucky • Annie Fellows Johnston
... every squire that made his domain swarm with busy hands, like a bee-hive or ant-hill, would not serve his own interest, as well as that of ...
— The Querist • George Berkeley
... the glasses as he trained them off in the direction the five men had gone. Twice he saw them cross over ridges. Then a tiny, swift-moving speck came into his field of view, traveling up the slope of a distant divide. The ant-like rider dipped over the crest of it ...
— The Settling of the Sage • Hal G. Evarts
... weapons and implements requisite for the safeguarding of her existence, and for just as long as it is necessary for her to have them. Here, as elsewhere, Nature proceeds with her usual economy; for just as the female ant, after fecundation, loses her wings, which are then superfluous, nay, actually a danger to the business of breeding; so, after giving birth to one or two children, a woman generally loses her beauty; probably, ...
— The Essays of Arthur Schopenhauer; Studies in Pessimism • Arthur Schopenhauer
... now, not now; for if I were to mix with men now I should fly asunder like a rotten wineskin full of fermenting wine; a swarm of bees is buzzing in my head, and an ant-hill is growing in my bosom. Go now and leave ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... Lady Bird! fly away now To your house in the old willow-tree, Where your children, so dear, have invited the ant. And a ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction. - Volume 10, No. 270, Saturday, August 25, 1827. • Various
... individual. Instinct is a race-habit. Instinct is blind, unreasoning, mechanical. This was the dividing of the ways in the climb of aspiring life. The perfect culmination of instinct we find in the ant-heap and the beehive. Instinct proved a blind alley. But the other path, that of reason, led on and on even to Mr. Burroughs ...
— Revolution and Other Essays • Jack London
... the occupant for whom the house was intended. Of course, the houses for the larger birds must be protected in other ways. Charles Tesch of Milwaukee suggests a sticky fly paper compound made of resin (melted) and castor oil as a preventive for the inroads of the small red ant, if ...
— Bird Houses Boys Can Build • Albert F. Siepert
... master's personal character or deserts. He is as much attached to Bill Sykes as he would be to the best of men. The workings of what we call instinct in beavers, bees, and ants are marvellous and seem in some ways almost to outstrip humanity, but they are not, like humanity, progressive. The ant and the bee of thousands of years ago are the ant and the bee of the present day. The bee is not even taught by experience that her honey will be taken again next year. Still less is it possible to detect anything like moral aspiration or effort at improving the community ...
— No Refuge but in Truth • Goldwin Smith
... floor of some great bazaar. The floor is set with ranks of kiosks spaced apart, about which men congregate only to divide and go all ways; these kiosks might easily be booths. The floor itself is in constant movement; it is a disturbed ant-heap with its denizens speeding about always in unconjectural movements. Groups gather, thrust hands and fingers upward, shout and counter-shout, as though bent on working up a fracas; then when they seem to have succeeded they make notes in small books and walk quietly ...
— Westward with the Prince of Wales • W. Douglas Newton |
