"Biped" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... grave philosophers and thoughtful students. By the ancient Egyptians cats were held in the highest esteem; and we learn from Diodorus Siculus, their "lives and safeties" were tendered more dearly than those of any other animal, whether biped or quadruped. "He who has voluntarily killed a consecrated animal," says this writer, "is punished with death; but if any one has even involuntarily killed a cat or an ibis, it is impossible for him to escape death: the ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 5, No. 3, March, 1852 • Various
... riding round all the neighbourhood with invitations. The halls were swept and adorned with the best suit of hangings. All the gentlemen, young and old, all the keepers and verdurers, were put in requisition to slaughter all the game, quadruped and biped, that fell in their way, the village women and children were turned loose on the blackberries, cranberries, and bilberries, and all the ladies and serving-women were called on to concoct pasties of many stories high, subtilties of wonderful ...
— Unknown to History - A Story of the Captivity of Mary of Scotland • Charlotte M. Yonge
... is sometimes alleged that great valour he showed When he chased a mad cow for three miles on the road; But there's also another account of the hunt With a four-legged pursuer, a biped in front. ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 153, Sept. 12, 1917 • Various
... constant friend of grave philosophers and thoughtful students. By the ancient Egyptians cats were held in the highest esteem; and we learn from Diodorus Siculus, their 'lives and safeties' were tendered more dearly than those of any other animal, whether biped or quadruped. 'He who has voluntarily killed a consecrated animal,' says this writer, 'is punished with death; but if any one has even involuntarily killed a cat or an ibis, it is impossible for him to escape death: the ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 419, New Series, January 10, 1852 • Various
... invitation, And much bustle it caused in the plumed creation; Such ruffling of feathers, such pruning of coats, Such chirping, such whistling, such clearing of throats, Such polishing bills, and such oiling of pinions, Had never been known in the biped dominions. Peacock at Home. ...
— The Daisy Chain, or Aspirations • Charlotte Yonge
... another thing which is also called man, and he is the subject of not a few lucubrations, more or less scientific. He is the legendary featherless biped, the zoon politikhon of Aristotle, the social contractor of Rousseau, the homo economicus of the Manchester school, the homo sapiens of Linnaeus, or, if you like, the vertical mammal. A man neither of here nor there, neither of this age nor of another, who has neither sex nor country, who ...
— Tragic Sense Of Life • Miguel de Unamuno
... women left the table, while the entrance of the bear threw the gentlemen present into convulsions of laughter. It was too much for the human biped; he was forced to leave the room, and ...
— Roughing it in the Bush • Susanna Moodie
... goat has no protection except elevation and precipitous rocks, and to the hunter who has the energy to climb up to him he, too, is easy prey. Usually his biped enemy finds him and attacks him in precipitous mountains, where running and hiding are utterly impossible. When discovered on a ledge two feet wide leading across the face of a precipice, poor Billy has nothing to do but to take the bullets ...
— The Minds and Manners of Wild Animals • William T. Hornaday
... offered by Reddy's swinging form proved too much for the enraged animal. Doubtless he imagined that all his troubles came from that biped or monkey hanging up yonder, just within reach of his claws if he arose on his hind legs. Hence his eagerness to make ...
— The Outdoor Chums After Big Game - Or, Perilous Adventures in the Wilderness • Captain Quincy Allen
... saw Mary Ann he did not remember having seen her before. This time she was a biped, and wore a white cap. Besides, he hardly glanced at her. He was in a bad temper, and Beethoven was barking terribly at the intruder who stood quaking in the doorway, so that the crockery clattered on the ...
— Merely Mary Ann • Israel Zangwill
... impostor and biped animal already alluded to, actuated by an overweening desire of notoriety, and in order to catch the applause of some one, grovelling in the morasses of insignificance and vice, like himself, leaves his native obscurity, and indulges in falsehood, calumny, and ...
— The Hedge School; The Midnight Mass; The Donagh • William Carleton
... of ducks, a barking of terriers, mixed with the deep bay of two or three large heavy fox-hounds which had been lounging about in the shade, and a peal of joyous welcome from all beings, quadruped or biped, ...
— Warwick Woodlands - Things as they Were There Twenty Years Ago • Henry William Herbert (AKA Frank Forester)
... of the man maddened him—as was the case with three out of the five—the thrashing-and-hunger treatment had to be continued until the elephant began to understand that release from his situation could be afforded only by the terrible biped. ...
— Freeland - A Social Anticipation • Theodor Hertzka
... formation so much explored for economical purposes as the Argile plastique around Paris, and the clays and sands of corresponding age near London, should never have afforded any vestige of a feathered biped previously to the year 1855, shows what diligent search and what skill in osteological interpretation are required before the existence of birds of remote ages can ...
— The Student's Elements of Geology • Sir Charles Lyell
... most ungainly-looking fowl you can well imagine; while on a half-buried tree trunk, running out towards it into the water, crouched a wiry, black creature, of about average dog size, wriggling a long, restless tail, and apparently in the very act of springing at the long-legged biped in the water. Just now they were eying each other very intently; but from the splashed and bedraggled appearance of both, it was evident there had been recent hostilities, which, judging from the attitude of the combatants, were about to ...
— Happy Days for Boys and Girls • Various
... to have ever seen one of them perfectly awake, except at feeding-time. In every respect we uphold the biped lions against their four-footed namesakes, and we boldly challenge controversy ...
— Sketches by Boz - illustrative of everyday life and every-day people • Charles Dickens
... and Guinevere had been a fish, then a helpless biped, and now suddenly, somewhere between my salad and coffee, she became an aquatic quadruped. Strangest of all, her hands were mobile, her feet useless; and when the dance was at an end, and she sank slowly ...
— Edge of the Jungle • William Beebe
... score, it would probably be somewhat different; for be it known that the husband of Mrs. Moggs is of the kind that is neither useful nor ornamental. He belongs to that division which addicts itself mainly to laziness—a species of the biped called husband, which unfortunately is not so rare that we seek for the specimen only in museums. We know not whether Montezuma Moggs was or was not born lazy; nor shall we undertake to decide that laziness is an inherent quality; ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol. XXXII No. 2. February 1848 • Various
... raise it above the brute, for a rattlesnake has his muscular, aesthetic, and talking part as much as man, only he talks with his tail, and says, "I am angry with you, and should like to bite you," more laconically and effectively than any phonetic biped could, were he so minded. And, in fact, the real difference between the brute and man is not so much that the one has fewer means of expression than the other, as that it has fewer thoughts to express, and ...
— The Stones of Venice, Volume I (of 3) • John Ruskin
... to canines; and they are all directed forwards, and have a triangular or compressed conical form. From a careful consideration of all the discovered remains of this bird, Professor Owen concludes that "Odontopteryx was a warm-blooded feathered biped, with wings; and further, that it was web-footed and a fish-eater, and that in the catching of its slippery prey it was assisted by this Pterosauroid armature of its jaws." Upon the whole, Odontopteryx ...
— The Ancient Life History of the Earth • Henry Alleyne Nicholson
... give it any day to Jack Noakes or Tom Styles. Then why do I say our chairman? Simply because I hear the phrase constantly repeated about me. Such is the involuntary operation of the mental faculty in the imitative biped man. Mr Crimple, I believe you never take snuff? Injudicious. ...
— Life And Adventures Of Martin Chuzzlewit • Charles Dickens
... ghostly line which is length without breadth—and how absurd it is to require of us to draw it! And would not a country-bumpkin feel as much insulted, if we told him he was a "carnivorous ape," or a "mammiferous two-handed animal," as the French soldier did when his officer called him a biped? If we give man his old prerogative, a "rational animal," how many would refuse the title to pretty women and spendthrift sons, while others would most willingly ...
— History of English Humour, Vol. 2 (of 2) • Alfred Guy Kingan L'Estrange
... of biped mammalia into merely men and women is of comparatively recent date. In very early times, however, when wisdom was commoner than now, the classification began with gods and goddesses, heroes, men and women, with lower types ...
— An Ocean Tramp • William McFee
... long ago remarked that the birds of remote islands, such as the Galapagos, which had never seen man, were at first not in the least afraid of him. It required, however, but a few generations of experience to show these creatures that the unfeathered biped was a singularly dangerous animal, and they at once and permanently adopted the habit of avoiding him. This incident of itself shows how quick birds are to learn certain large and important lessons. We see also the reverse of this education in fear ...
— Domesticated Animals - Their Relation to Man and to his Advancement in Civilization • Nathaniel Southgate Shaler
... my lord strolled into Russia; there he drove a pair of horses, one of whom put his head down and did the work; the other pranced and capricoled alongside, all unconscious of the trace. He seemed happier than his working brother; but the biped whose career corresponded with this playful animal's was ...
— Christie Johnstone • Charles Reade
... and, although neither hoarse nor shrill, it is no more musical than the crow of the other biped, who struts about on his widely-spread toes in the yard, to which Christina Fasch has come to feed the pigs. There are five of them, pink-nosed and yellow-coated, and they keep up a grunting and snarling chorus within their wooden enclosure, ...
— The Empire Annual for Girls, 1911 • Various
... office but the coach was gone. Here followed a long Brutus-and-Cassius discourse between a shilling-buttoned-waistcoatteer of a porter and myself, which ended in my extending mercy to the suppliant coach-owners, and agreeing to accept a place for Monday. All well thus far. The biped knock of the post alighted on the door at twelve, and two letters were placed upon my German dictionary,—your own, which I at first intended to reply to viva voce, had not the second informed me of my brother's arrival in England, his short leave of absence, and his intention to visit ...
— A Letter Book - Selected with an Introduction on the History and Art of Letter-Writing • George Saintsbury
... in his dress, and from the cravat to the well-polished boot, his costume was perfect. An effeminate, solemn-looking dandy outwardly—within, as ferocious and hard a human biped as ever disgraced ...
— The Monctons: A Novel, Volume I • Susanna Moodie
... thumb with his teeth and bit it to the bone. Hawes yelled with pain and strove furiously to get his hand away, but Carter held it like a tiger. Hawes capered with agony and yelled again. The first to come to his relief was Mr. Eden. He was at the biped's side in a moment, and pinched his nose. Now, as his lungs were puffing like a blacksmith's bellows, his mouth flew open the moment the other breathing-hole was stopped, and Hawes got his bleeding ...
— It Is Never Too Late to Mend • Charles Reade
... in our regard for the hero we forgot his humanity wherever it was his interest that we should forget it, and while we admired him as a man we judged him only as a fox. We doubt whether it would have been possible, if he had been described as an open acknowledged biped in coat and trousers, to have retained our regard for him. Something or other in us, either real rightmindedness, or humbug, or hypocrisy, would have obliged us to mix more censure with our liking than ...
— Short Studies on Great Subjects • James Anthony Froude
... recommend that method, owing to the impossibility of putting on the break. The pace ultimately acquired is greater than is pleasant, and the roof is too near the floor to allow of any successful attempt to bring things to an end by the reassumption of a biped character. ...
— Ice-Caves of France and Switzerland • George Forrest Browne
... smiling, "that I thought I'd better try a bit of it myself. Hence the sylvan note. Ras, if you go to sleep by that tree, I'll like as not let you sleep there until you die. Go back to camp and build a fire and hollow out the feathered biped." ...
— Diane of the Green Van • Leona Dalrymple
... mean habitations. I don't wonder the tenants were glad to make our arrival the excuse for running off. Here are men claiming to have been worth forty thousand dollars, half in biped property, half in all other kinds, and they lived in dens such as a drayman would have disdained and a hod-carrier only accepted ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 8, No. 46, August, 1861 • Various
... Christian man. But Teufelsdroeckh is prouder and more violent of spirit than the sedate and patrician Roman, and he leaps at the throat of fear in a wild defiance. "What art thou afraid of? Wherefore, like a coward, dost thou forever pip and whimper, and go cowering and trembling? Despicable biped! What is the sum-total of the worst that lies before thee? Death? Well, Death: and say the pangs of Tophet too, and all that the Devil and Man may, will or can do against thee! Hast thou not a Heart; canst thou ...
— Among Famous Books • John Kelman
... possessed (by some strange chance or mischance) of the power of speech, with a few other faculties in common with colored people and the rest of mankind, had, nevertheless, neither souls nor human feelings. According to his view, they were a sort of featherless biped-beast—an almost hairless orang-outang, with short arms and long legs, having an unquenchable thirst for human blood; whom, therefore, it was the duty of every Christian body—black, yellow, and white—to shoot down and scalp wherever they were to be found on top of the ...
— Burl • Morrison Heady
... heard rushing over the rocks,—this pretty idol for a weak and kindly and easily satisfied worshipper, was to be enthroned as the queen of his affections, to be adopted as the companion of his labors! The boy, led by the commonest instinct, the mere attraction of biped to its female, which accident had favored, had thrown away the dearest possession of manhood,—liberty,—and this bauble was to be his lifelong reward! And yet not a bauble either, for a pleasing person and a gentle and sweet nature, which had once made her seem to him the very paragon of loveliness, ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist) |
