"Butterfly" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Saturday Review wrote, "when little Jenny had climbed to the top of the mast, resting on the powerful shoulders of Orso, and from this eminence, suspended above the earth, in danger of death, she outstretched her arms and poised like a butterfly, the circus became silent and all eyes and hearts followed with trembling the movements of this wonderful child. That he who saw her on the mast or on a horse," concluded the Saturday Review, "will never forget her, because the greatest painter in the world, even Mr. Harvey, ...
— Sielanka: An Idyll • Henryk Sienkiewicz
... not," he answered; "if I had known I am sure I would have felt that I ought not to come. But I didn't know, and so you see I am as innocent as a butterfly. More innocent, in fact, for that little wagwings knows where he ought not to go, and he goes there all ...
— The Captain's Toll-Gate • Frank R. Stockton
... looked in the glass, which a woman ne'er misses. Nor ever wants time for a sly glance or two, A butterfly,[1] fresh from the night-flower's kisses. Flew over the mirror, and shaded her view. Enraged with the insect for hiding her graces, She brushed him—he fell, alas; never to rise: "Ah! such," said the girl, "is the pride of our faces, "For which the soul's innocence ...
— The Complete Poems of Sir Thomas Moore • Thomas Moore et al
... an Alpine butterfly to-day—one of those Parnassians all white with wings veined a greenish black. Couldn't catch ...
— In Secret • Robert W. Chambers
... one from another, and we saw a number of little ladies in charming, brilliant, butterfly-like garments coming to meet us with odd, graceful, stilted movements. Everything must from this point be done according to the strictest etiquette, so the Tai-tai of least rank came first to meet us, and led us back to where stood the head wife, in whose presence we respectfully removed ...
— The Fulfilment of a Dream of Pastor Hsi's - The Story of the Work in Hwochow • A. Mildred Cable
... Broderip's, of Bristol, which entertained us very much. My father observed he had but very few butterflies, and he said, "No, sir, a circumstance which happened to me some time ago, determined me never to collect any more butterflies. I caught a most beautiful butterfly, thought I had killed it, and ran a pin through its body to fasten it to a cork: a fortnight afterward I happened to look in the box where I had left it, and I saw it writhing in agony: since that time ...
— The Life And Letters Of Maria Edgeworth, Vol. 1 • Maria Edgeworth
... the boy's education. Violence of direction in education falls flat: man is a lonely creature, and has to work out his career in his own way. To help the grub spin its cocoon is quite unnecessary, and to play the part of Mrs. Gamp with the butterfly in its chrysalis stage is to place ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 5 (of 14) • Elbert Hubbard
... midst of that fevered and delirious energy. He took her through the plant, elucidating the mechanical processes of the daily miracle of publication, more far-reaching than was ever any other voice of man, more ephemeral than the day of the briefest butterfly. Throughout, the visitor's pensive eyes kept turning from the creature to the creator, until, back in the trim quietude of his office, famed as the only orderly working-room of journalism, she ...
— Success - A Novel • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... the rare occasions when visitors were admitted, an unfinished landscape in oils was always on the easel, in a prominent place in his sitting room. He would invariably refer to it, telling one in his humorously unconvincing way that 'he had just put in the butterfly.' Those of us who had seen his work in the drawing class presided over by 'Bully' Wakeman at Portora were not likely to ...
— Oscar Wilde, Volume 1 (of 2) - His Life and Confessions • Frank Harris
... admire it, and say something about it. Harder and harder grew the frost, yet still the forest-clad hills possessed a something that drew the mind open to their largeness and grandeur. Earth is always beautiful—always. Without colour, or leaf, or sunshine, or song of bird and flutter of butterfly's wing; without anything sensuous, without advantage or gilding of summer—the power is ever there. Or shall we not say that the desire of the mind is ever there, and will satisfy itself, in a measure at least, even with ...
— Field and Hedgerow • Richard Jefferies
... and a pair of Indian bells. Her round white arms seemed ever beckoning and striving to entice to her side some youth who was fleeing from her allurements. She appeared to pursue him, with movements light as a butterfly; her whole mien was like that of an inquisitive Psyche, or a floating spirit that might at any ...
— Herodias • Gustave Flaubert
... only incipient stages, tadpole states of men, as caterpillars are social, but the butterfly not. The true and finished man ...
— The American Mind - The E. T. Earl Lectures • Bliss Perry
... where the linnets nested, the mocking birds that sang all night long; the perfume of the jasmine, of the orange-blossoms, the pink flame of the peach trees in April, the ever-changing color of the mountains. And I remember Ninette, my little Creole mother, gay as a butterfly, carefree as a meadow-lark. 'Twas she who planted ...
— Cupid's Understudy • Edward Salisbury Field
... ways, and devoted to all kinds of animals, used to like sitting in a kitchen that was infested with these repulsive creatures, and told me that when she was alone they would run over her dress and were not in the least startled when she took them up. I have heard of a butterfly which used to come and sip sugar from the hand of a lady; and those who have kept spiders and ants declare that these intelligent creatures learn to distinguish their friends. So also fish, like the great ...
— Introduction to the Science of Sociology • Robert E. Park
... think I would rather be your bridegroom, Borghild." The memory was sweet but it was bitter too; and the bitterness rose and filled her heart. She threw her head back proudly, and laughed a strange, hollow laugh. "A bastard's bride, ha, ha! A fine tale were that for the parish gossips." A yellow butterfly lighted on her arm, and with a fierce frown on her face she caught it between her fingers. Then she looked pityingly on the dead wings, as they lay in her hand, and murmured between her teeth: "Poor thing! Why did you come in ...
— Tales From Two Hemispheres • Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen
... say that the father of all men and animals was the butterfly, Cherwit Make (earth-maker), who fluttered down from the clouds to the Blue Cliffs at the junction of the Verde and Salt Rivers, and from his own sweat made men. As the people multiplied they grew selfish and quarrelsome, so that Cherwit Make ...
— Myths And Legends Of Our Own Land, Complete • Charles M. Skinner
... of that transmutation to the senses of other men would be called 'death'.—Even as to caterpillars; in all probability the caterpillar dies, and he either does not see, which is most probable, or at all events he does not see the connection between the caterpillar and the butterfly, the beautiful Psyche ...
— The Life of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - 1838 • James Gillman
... keen old eye had not long to look before it saw the truth, and then, silently, the old man turned back. His hands trembled on the chair, and he slowly thrust them into his pockets, breathing hard through his nose. The boy expected an outbreak, but none came. A bee buzzed above them. A yellow butterfly zigzagged by. Blackbirds chattered in the firs. The screech of a peacock shrilled across the yard, and a ploughman's singing ...
— The Little Shepherd of Kingdom Come • John Fox
... mysterious woods; and when, in fancy, he looked beneath that veil into her eyes, as unfathomable as the ocean itself, he was struck dumb with reverence and wonder, for they held in keeping all the secrets of the moon and the stars, of dawn and sunset, of green things growing and flowers in bloom, of the butterfly in the crysalis and on the wing, of still waters ...
— The Dreamer - A Romantic Rendering of the Life-Story of Edgar Allan Poe • Mary Newton Stanard
... journeyed through life. Moreover, though purchased pictures have other values, the old cases set on the walls of one's den bring back memories that are the joy and solace of many idle moments later in life—each rarer egg, each extra butterfly picturing some day or place of keen triumph, otherwise long since forgotten. Here, for instance, is a convolvulus hawk father found killed on a mountain in Switzerland; there an Apollo I caught in the Pyrenees; here a "red burnet" with "five eyes" captured as ...
— A Labrador Doctor - The Autobiography of Wilfred Thomason Grenfell • Wilfred Thomason Grenfell
... like the butterfly, without volition or effort? Human appointments are different. Work is the inevitable, and with the proper tools, ...
— Short Story Writing - A Practical Treatise on the Art of The Short Story • Charles Raymond Barrett
... rudimental and the complete; corresponding with the two conditions of the worm and the butterfly. What we call "death," is but the painful metamorphosis. Our present incarnation is progressive, preparatory, temporary. Our future is perfected, ultimate, immortal. The ultimate life is ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 2 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... deep-seated gratitude to her for his son, Anthony Dexter cherished no emotion for the sake of his dead wife. She had come and gone across his existence as a butterfly crosses a field, touching lightly here and there, but lingering not at all. Except for Ralph, it was as though she had never been, so little did she now ...
— A Spinner in the Sun • Myrtle Reed
... like fire. The Chevalier du Halga was still there, and the last deal of a lively mouche was going on. Charlotte de Kergarouet, in despair at Calyste's indifference, was paying attention to his father as a means of promoting her marriage. Calyste wandered hither and thither like a butterfly which had flown into the room by mistake. At last, when mouche was over, he drew the Chevalier du Halga into the great salon, from which he sent away Mademoiselle ...
— Beatrix • Honore de Balzac
... with its fresh bunches of blossoms was waving above the window, casting in flickering shadows upon the floor: the evergreens of the shrubbery twinkled in the sun, as the light breeze swept over them: the birds were chirruping all about, and a yellow butterfly alighted and trembled on the window-sill at the moment. It was one of the softest and gayest days of spring; and the best thing was to do nothing but enjoy it. She moved to the south window with her work, and sewed or let the wind blow upon her face ...
— Deerbrook • Harriet Martineau
... should pervert those opportunities into a mere platform for the display of a harmful badness. Evolution was not aiming at Belgravia when it set out on its long journey from the flaming mist of the nebula. We cannot suppose that Nature is content with the egoism of the social butterfly. The very blood of dead humanity cries ...
— The Mirrors of Downing Street - Some Political Reflections by a Gentleman with a Duster • Harold Begbie
... I exclaimed, a little surprised, surveying her dress of palest and softest Indian muslin; for she looked to me far too much of a butterfly for such serious work. "Do you really mean it; or are you one of the ten thousand modern young ladies who are in quest of a Mission, without understanding that Missions are unpleasant? Nursing, I can tell you, is not all crimped cap and ...
— Hilda Wade - A Woman With Tenacity Of Purpose • Grant Allen
... fragile silks and laces. Gillian kissed the top of his head, shook solemnly an insistent paw, and put him on one side. She moved to the dressing table and inspected herself critically in the big mirror. She looked with grave amusement. Was that Gillian Locke? She wondered did a butterfly feel more incongruous when it shed its dull grub skin. For so many years she had worn the sombre garb of the convent schoolgirl, the change was still new enough to delight and the natural woman within her responded to the fascination of pretty clothing. The dark draperies of the convent ...
— The Shadow of the East • E. M. Hull
... with me As with the flower; Blooming on its own tree For butterfly and bee Its summer morns: That I might bloom mine hour 20 A ...
— Goblin Market, The Prince's Progress, and Other Poems • Christina Rossetti
... the red sham to her skirt, Sissy was able to chaperon her senior all the more effectively at Crosby Pemberton's party. Irene danced like a thing whose vocation is motion. She was a twig in a rain-storm, a butterfly seeking sweets, a humming-bird whose wing beat the air with a very rhapsody of rhythm. She was on the floor with the first note Professor Trask struck, and she danced down the side of the little hall, when the waltz was over and all the other couples had seated themselves, as ...
— The Madigans • Miriam Michelson
... own I like not Johnson's turgid style, That gives an inch the importance of a mile; Casts of manure a wagon-load around To raise a simple daisy from the ground; Uplifts the club of Hercules—for what?— To crush a butterfly or brain a gnat; Creates a whirlwind from the earth to draw A goose's feather or exalt a straw; Sets wheels on wheels in motion—such a clatter! To force up one poor nipperkin of water; Bids ocean labour with tremendous roar, To heave a cockle-shell upon the shore. Alike in every theme his ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 14, Issue 394, October 17, 1829 • Various
... answered her, "since being dressed as a butterfly does not prevent one from being an insect, and the best sustained preservation lasts at most till the ...
— The Memoirs of Madame de Montespan, Complete • Madame La Marquise De Montespan
... occupied in surveying the luxuries of a box at the top of the house, called a bed-chamber, which seemed just large and just hot enough for a chrysalis, and a corresponding box below, termed the back parlour, which would certainly not have been large enough for the said chrysalis when turned into a butterfly, Mr. Morris Brown, after duly, expatiating on the merits of Clarence, proceeded to speak of the terms; these were soon settled, for Clarence was yielding and the lady not above three times as extortionate as ...
— The Disowned, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... protruding and hanging out. An ox feeding, and putting up his muzzle to pull down a mouthful of hay; but seeing me, a stranger, in the upper part of the field, he remains long gazing, and finally betakes himself to feeding again. A solitary butterfly flitting to and fro, blown slightly on its course by a cool September wind,—the coolness of which begins to be tempered by a bright, glittering sun. There is dew on the grass. In front, beyond the lower spread of forest, ...
— Passages From The American Notebooks, Volume 1 • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... silence he has heard Talking bee and ladybird, And the butterfly has flown O'er him as he ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 14 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... necessity of a southern continent as a balance was supposed to be unanswerable; and so it was, till Captain Cook found there was no such thing. We are poor silly animals: we live for an instant upon a particle of a boundless universe, and are much like a butterfly that should argue about the nature of the seasons and what creates their vicissitudes, and does not exist itself to see one ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole, V4 • Horace Walpole
... his fingertips that Selincourt was watching him with an amused smile, Lawrence returned Mrs. Cleve's nod with less than his usual ease. Her eye ranged on from Selincourt, to whom she waved a butterfly salute, over the rather faded elegance of Laura Clowes and the extremely youthful charms of Isabel: apparently she did not admire Lawrence's ladies: she spoke to her cavalier, an elderly, foreign-looking man with a copper complexion and curly dark hair, and they laughed together. What ensued between ...
— Nightfall • Anthony Pryde
... her head down the dark limbs to her feet. Deep silence prevailed. The head of the Nubian was thrown back as if in a rigid swoon but above it the crotals still tinkled with an extraordinary languor, a dying vibration, quick and soft as the wing flutterings of a captured butterfly. Her eyes grew dim but in their inner depths glittered two sparks; the face remained severe, impersonal, but upon the sensuous red lips of that sphinx-like mouth a smile trembled, faint as the dying sound of ...
— The Satyricon, Complete • Petronius Arbiter
... feathery, crimson sea-weeds of the most delicate tracery. It is much to be regretted that these lower marine animals are not better known. The plumage of the tropical birds, the down on the most brilliant butterfly's wing, are not more beautiful in coloring than the hues of many Radiates, and there is no grace of motion surpassing the movements of some of them in their native element. The habit of keeping marine animals ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 57, July, 1862 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... stooping, stood alone in the middle of the room between the rows of butterfly cases. "Ach! is it you, my friend?" he said sadly, peering through his glasses. A drab sack-coat of alpaca hung, unbuttoned, down to his knees. He had a Panama hat on his head, and there were deep furrows on his pale cheeks. "What's the matter now?" I asked ...
— Lord Jim • Joseph Conrad
... emergency, they hit upon the expedient of dismissing their servant, and starving themselves through the winter and spring, for the purpose of making a display in the summer; and this last they were now doing. Eugenia fluttered like a butterfly, sometimes in white satin, sometimes in pink, and again in embroidered muslin; while her mother, a very little disgusted with society, but still determined to brave it through, held aside her cambric wrapper and made faces over three glasses of spring water in the morning, drowned herself ...
— Dora Deane • Mary J. Holmes
... Oh dear, what a horrid thing it is to be poor!" and Jessie surveyed the shabby little shoes affectionately, as her eyes filled with tears; for the road looked very rough and steep now. when she remembered how she used to dance through life as happy as a butterfly in a garden full of ...
— A Garland for Girls • Louisa May Alcott
... cabin of that peerless steamer, the New World, and a splendid company were assembled about the table. Among the passengers thus prepared for gastronomic duty, was a little creature of the genus Fop, decked daintily as an early butterfly, with kids of irreproachable whiteness, "miraculous" neck-tie, and spider-like quizzing glass on his nose. The little delicate animal turned his ...
— The Book of Anecdotes and Budget of Fun; • Various
... a vision of a bright butterfly with "dye-dusty wings" in stiff, glass-covered brittleness. He wondered if marrying might ...
— Old Crow • Alice Brown
... metallic starlings by the dozen, and little green pigeons—for those domiciled come and go at all hours of the day. Occasionally a sulphur-crested cockatoo comes sailing down to the diminishing pool through interwoven leafage noiselessly as a butterfly; but scrub fowls, scared by the apparition in white, scamper off with a clatter, scattering the dead leaves. In such narrow quarters, birds are under restraint, and show anxiety and apprehension. There is no sport or play. ...
— Tropic Days • E. J. Banfield
... returned, with heightened color. "We will not refer to this again;" and she brushed away a butterfly that was fluttering about her conceitedly in its ...
— The Queen of Sheba & My Cousin the Colonel • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... and her weary aching eyes gathering a few impressions in a passive way. On the walls hung dimly seen portraits strangely familiar to her. The man in a green dressing gown with floating hair had a face she knew; so had the lady in the yellow ruff. And was that not the old crest, the Delavie butterfly, with the motto, Ma Vie et ma Mie, carved on the mantelpiece? Thus she knew that she must be in Delavie House, and felt somewhat less desolate as she recognised several portraits as duplicates of those at the Great ...
— Love and Life • Charlotte M. Yonge
... Bridal of earth and sky. Bride. Bridegroom. Bridle (tongue). Brightness of sun. Bright side of child-life. Broom. Brother (bone). (younger). Brotherhoods. Brother-stars. Bruises. "Bub." Bube. Bud. Buddha. Bulbulhezar. "Bull-roarer." Buried armies. Buschgroszmutter. Butter. Butterfly. Butz. ...
— The Child and Childhood in Folk-Thought • Alexander F. Chamberlain
... step, and the entomologist may revel to his heart's content among gaudily coloured Heliconiae, Hesperiae, and Erycinae, or watch the larger butterflies of the restricted genus Papilio, slowly winging their lazy flight among the trees just beyond the reach of his insect net. A common butterfly here (Peridromia amphinome) has the singular habit of frequenting the trunks and limbs of the trees where it rests with expanded wings, and generally manages adroitly to shift its position, and escape when swept at with the net. Some large ...
— Narrative Of The Voyage Of H.M.S. Rattlesnake, Commanded By The Late Captain Owen Stanley, R.N., F.R.S. Etc. During The Years 1846-1850. Including Discoveries And Surveys In New Guinea, The Louisiade • John MacGillivray
... card, although I love play. I go much in society; I shine there, and walk home to save the cost of a carriage. My door-keeper cleans my rooms and keeps my linen in order. My private life is sad, dull, and humiliating. It is the black chrysalis of the bright butterfly which you know. That is what Prince Panine is, my dear Jeanne. A gentleman of good appearance, who lives as carefully as an old maid. The world sees him elegant and happy, and its envies his luxury; but this luxury is as deluding as watch-chains ...
— Serge Panine, Complete • Georges Ohnet
... change!" thought Doctor Mack. "It seems only yesterday that Walter started for college, a bashful, unformed boy, full of good resolutions, and determined to distinguish himself in scholarship. Now he has become a gay butterfly. And, what is worse, he has learned to deceive his old guardian, and his chief aim seems to be to have a good time. What can I do to ...
— Walter Sherwood's Probation • Horatio Alger
... dozen turns in the air, and the point of it came down lightly, like a butterfly, on the man's shoulder. He lowered it further, as if seeking a particular spot, and then, deliberately, he pushed it in as ...
— The Vultures • Henry Seton Merriman
... mass of red-gold hair, as stupid as she was sly, and as rich as she was spendthrift, the lovely Olimpia had been sent adventuring to the bees of Ferrara, not as lacking honey for Venice, but as being too great a treasure for her mother's house. Her mother was La Farfalla—a swollen butterfly in these days—and frankly said that she could not afford such a daughter. Olimpia had no instructions; in fact, needed none. She went cheerfully out to what Monna Nanna and the Blessed Virgin should prepare for ...
— Little Novels of Italy • Maurice Henry Hewlett
... his knees. There was only one other man breakfasting. He was a small, wiry person, white of hair, and spectacled, and was at that moment curiously employed. He had pinned to the table a small butterfly, yellow, with tiny dots on the wings. He was critically inspecting his find through a ...
— A Splendid Hazard • Harold MacGrath
... beneath the leaves that kept them dry Flew many a glittering insect here and there, And darted up and down the butterfly, That seemed a living blossom of the air. The flocks came scattering from the thicket, where The violent rain had pent them; in the way Strolled groups of damsels frolicksome and fair; The farmer swung the scythe or turned the hay, And 'twixt the ...
— Poems • William Cullen Bryant
... little girl. Uncle Elbert," said Varney, "is a bit of a social butterfly. Mrs. Carstairs is an earnest domestic character. As I gather, that was what they clashed on—the idea of what a home ought to be. When the split came, Mrs. Carstairs took the child and Uncle Elbert was willing enough to have her do it. That was natural enough, Peter. ...
— Captivating Mary Carstairs • Henry Sydnor Harrison
... word. His heavy lids were dropped over his deep-set eye; he stood motionless, nervously fiddling with his butterfly net—awkwardness, and, as it seemed, irresponsiveness, in his ...
— Robert Elsmere • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... of mysterious flutes; As if the music of a god's good-will Had taken on material attributes In blooms, like chords; and in the water-gleam, That runs its silvery scales from stream to stream; In sunbeam bars, up which the butterfly, A golden note, vibrates then flutters on— Inaudible tunes, blown on the pipes of Pan, That have assumed a visible entity, And drugged the air with beauty so, a Faun, Behold, I seem, and ...
— Myth and Romance - Being a Book of Verses • Madison Cawein
... all of these the learned gentleman knows nothing. With all these wretched beings, hard, raw reality wipes off the poetic coloring more easily than does the hand the colored dust of the wings of a butterfly. One look, cast by the professor at those unnumbered female sufferers, would have seriously disturbed his poetically colored picture, and spoiled his concept. The women, whom he sees, make up but a trifling minority, and that ...
— Woman under socialism • August Bebel
... professor producing his revolver, a weapon that might have proved fatal to a butterfly, but certainly would not be of any effect against the shaggy foes ...
— The Boy Aviators' Polar Dash - Or - Facing Death in the Antarctic • Captain Wilbur Lawton
... many female women together in your born days. Think of it, thousands and thousands with crimson books fluttering in their hands, as if each woman had caught a great red butterfly and was holding him out by the wings. All these female women were rigged out in gorgeous dresses, rustling, moving, and flaming with all sorts of colors, like a hillside covered with gorgeous flowers, broken up ...
— Phemie Frost's Experiences • Ann S. Stephens
... not misunderstand the mechanical view of things. When we use the word "machine," we call before our minds certain gross and relatively simple mechanisms constructed by man. Between such and a flower, a butterfly, and a human body, the difference is enormous. He who elects to bring the latter under the title of mechanism cannot mean that he discerns no difference between them and a steam engine or a printing press. He can only mean that he believes he might, could he attain to a glimpse into their ...
— An Introduction to Philosophy • George Stuart Fullerton
... would you answer? I could not answer, but should maintain my ground. Will you think over this, and some time, either by letter or when we meet, tell me what you think? Also I want to know whether your FEMALE mimetic butterfly is more beautiful and brighter than the male. When next in London I must get you to show me your kingfishers. My health is a dreadful evil; I failed in half my engagements during this ...
— The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin, Volume II • Francis Darwin
... that it was difficult to believe that the little insignificant creature in the cradle had really been the shapeless colourless chrysalis out of which this pretty, living, golden-locked boy had proceeded, like a beautiful butterfly. But—what seemed of more importance—along with this pleasing grace of physical form the boy soon displayed such eminent intellectual faculties as astonished both his foster-father and his teachers. Johannes grew up in a workshop which sent forth some ...
— Weird Tales, Vol. II. • E. T. A. Hoffmann
... stockings, and the little white feet were certainly much prettier to look at. "Now," cried Star, "I will go down-stairs and wait for Daddy Captain, and perhaps he will think I am a real fairy. Oh, wouldn't that be fun? I am sure I look like one!" and down the stairs she flitted like a golden butterfly. Once in the kitchen, the housewife in her triumphed for a moment over the fairy: she raked up the fire, put on more wood, and swept the hearth daintily. "But Ariel did such things for Prospero," she said. "I'm Ariel just the same, so I may as well fill the kettle and put some apples down ...
— Captain January • Laura E. Richards
... walked home, I saw such a sweet little white girl, carried in the arms of a great black woman, whose head looked like an immense butterfly, fastened on her shoulders; for she had a handkerchief on it, of all the colors of the rainbow, and it was spread out on ...
— The Little Nightcap Letters. • Frances Elizabeth Barrow
... of a lifetime of misery—one little day of bliss! Just one day in which there shall be no yesterday, and no to-morrow—one day of Elysium against years of Purgatory! Let us have our idyl, dear, as my mother and father had theirs—even though it must be as brief as a butterfly's existence, let us not deny ourselves that much. I ask only ...
— One Day - A sequel to 'Three Weeks' • Anonymous
... purpose; the skin is cast; the form is changed; a pair of wings, painted like the morning flowers, spring out, and presently the ugly worm that trailed its slow length through the dust is transformed into the beautiful butterfly, basking in the bright sunshine, the envy of the child and the admiration of the man. Is there no appeal in this wonderful and enchanting fact to man's highest reason? Does it contain no suggestion that man, representing the highest pinnacle of created life upon the globe, must undergo a final ...
— Hidden Treasures - Why Some Succeed While Others Fail • Harry A. Lewis
... gawped. I don't know as I could be blamed. Course, I'd seen bunchy little blondes before; but this was the first time I'd ever seen one that had draped herself in a rainbow. That's the only word for it. The thin, fluttery silk thing with the butterfly sleeves is shaded from cream white to royal purple, and underneath is one of these Dolly Varden gowns of flowered pink, set off by a Roman striped sash two feet wide. And when you add to that such details as gold shoes, ...
— Shorty McCabe on the Job • Sewell Ford
... Life is too deep for either you or me to fathom. I gave it up as a bad job long ago. What you just said about having a knife stuck into you comes the nearest to my own notion. I feel a good deal as I fancy a butterfly must when he has been intercepted in a gay and joyous flight and stuck against the wall with a sharp pin, among a million other specimens which the great entomologist has gathered for some purpose which no one but himself ...
— The Redemption of David Corson • Charles Frederic Goss
... Gaiety and Innocence! The moment when the fatal fruit was eaten, They parted ne'er to meet again; and Malice Has ever since been playmate to light Gaiety, From the first moment when the smiling infant Destroys the flower or butterfly he toys with, To the last chuckle of the dying miser, Who on his deathbed laughs his last to hear His wealthy neighbour has become ...
— The Talisman • Sir Walter Scott
... I knew," answered Nicky-Nan. "I glimpsed him followin' me, back along the path; an' when I turned about for a chat, he dodged behind a furze-bush like as if he was pouncin' on some valuable butterfly. 'That's odd,' I thought: for I'd never heard of his collectin' such things. But he's often told me how lonely a constable feels, an' I thought he might have picked up wi' the habit to amuse himself. So on I walked, waitin' for him to catch me up; an' by-an'-by turned about to look for en. ...
— Nicky-Nan, Reservist • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch (Q)
... tree produces sixty pounds of olives, which yield fifteen pounds of oil: the best quality selling at twelve sous the pound, retail, and ten sous, wholesale. The high hills of Languedoc still covered with snow. The horse-chestnut and mulberry are leafing; apple trees and peas blossoming. The first butterfly I have seen. After the vernal equinox, they are often six or eight months without rain. Many separate farm-houses, numbers of people in rags, and abundance of beggars. The mine of wheat, weighing thirty pounds, costs four ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson
... not sympathise with the extravagance of generosity any more than with that of presumption and credulity. He walked the straight line of life, and felt an equal contempt for the man who wandered up the hill-sides, no matter whether to chase a butterfly, or to catch a prospect of ...
— Zanoni • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... them is it that their summer, is a short one, and the parwong not abundant, or cholera might be added to the other dangers of Arctic residence. But the days of the buttercup and the daisy, and of the butterfly and the mosquito are few. With the winter comes the all-pervading snow, and the keen, bracing north-west wind, the rosy cheek and the frozen nose; but with it also comes rugged health and a steady diet of ...
— Schwatka's Search • William H. Gilder
... Time, and all such as can pay, For the Summer-green country are up and away; But what of the poor pale-faced waifs of the slums? Oh, the butterfly flits, and the honey-bee hums O'er the holt and the heather, the hill and the plain, But they flit and they hum for Town's children in vain; Unless—ah! unless—there is hope in that word!— Mrs. JEUNE'S kindly plea by the Public is heard. Heard? Everyone feels 'tis a duty to listen. The eyes ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 99, August 16, 1890 • Various
... into some higher life; if all that it changes in us is our body—the mere shell and husk of us— such a change as comes over the snake, when he casts his old skin, and comes out fresh and gay, or even the crawling caterpillar, which breaks its prison, and spreads its wings to the sun as a fair butterfly. Where is the sting of death, then, if death can sting, and poison, and corrupt nothing of us for which our friends have loved us; nothing of us with which we could do service to men or God? Where is the victory of the grave, if, so far from the grave holding us down, it frees us ...
— The Water of Life and Other Sermons • Charles Kingsley
... reaped an excellent harvest both of seeds and plants. Here as well as at every other place that we had landed upon within the tropic, the air is crowded with a species of butterfly, a great many of which were taken. It is doubtless the same species as that which Captain Cook remarks are so plentiful in Thirsty Sound. He says, 'We found also an incredible number of butterflies, so that for the space of three or ...
— The History of Australian Exploration from 1788 to 1888 • Ernest Favenc
... cast them in a mould whence the metal will issue in a different shape, so life liquefies the grub, a mere digesting machine, now thrown aside, and out of its running matter produces the perfect insect, bee, butterfly or beetle, the final manifestation of ...
— The Life of the Fly - With Which are Interspersed Some Chapters of Autobiography • J. Henri Fabre
... like May. Yesterday I saw bluebirds and a butterfly; so this whiter of a fortnight is over. I fancy there is a trifle less coughing in the camp. We hear of other stations in the Department where the mortality, chiefly from yellow fever, has been frightful. Dr. —— is rubbing his hands professionally over the fearful tales ...
— Army Life in a Black Regiment • Thomas Wentworth Higginson
... Collingwood, ses as 'ow a want of ox-eye-gent, being a French name, as 'e called the atmispeare, were fearful for pullin' people down, an' makin' 'em go off their food, which you hardly eats anythin', an' not bein' a butterfly it's expected as your ...
— The Mystery of a Hansom Cab • Fergus Hume
... said Beppo, brightening a little, as Beppina flung him a butterfly kiss and ran back to her room. She threw on her clothes in two minutes, fastened her long black hair with a hair-pin, and appeared again in the corridor just as Beppo returned from the kitchen with a pan of crumbs in ...
— The Italian Twins • Lucy Fitch Perkins
... beaten puppy. The smaller bird (apparently indigenous and a new species) was occasionally seen flying over the water during the day, but the larger ones come out almost exclusively at night. A light attracts them and Hamilton, with the aid of a lantern and a butterfly-net, tried to catch some. Others swooped about, well out of range, shrieking the while in an uncanny way. Numbers of them were secured afterwards by being dug out of their holes, Mac being just as keen to locate them as Hamilton was to secure ...
— The Home of the Blizzard • Douglas Mawson
... was trusted."—Nixon cor. "A packhorse which is driven constantly one way and the other, to and from market."—Locke cor. "By instructing children, whose affection will be increased."—Nixon cor. "He had a comely young woman, who travelled with him."—Hutchinson cor. "A butterfly, who thought himself an accomplished traveller, happened to light upon a beehive."—Inst., p. 267. "It is an enormous elephant of stone, which disgorges from his uplifted trunk a vast but graceful shower."—Ware cor. ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown
... in toward shore, looked like a giant butterfly; and her name, emblazoned in gold on her prow, was, appropriately, the Farfalla. Earlier in the season, with a green hull and a dingy brown sail, she had been, prosaically enough, the Maria. But since the advent of the girl all this had been changed. The Farfalla ...
— Jerry • Jean Webster
... sure they had gagged me, and bound me, and stripped me almost stark naked, and locked me up as fast as a butterfly, 'till she came and made me a man again; and therefore I have reason to love her the longest ...
— The Works of John Dryden, Vol. II • Edited by Walter Scott
... the rest, gathered more flowers than any of them. On being praised by Venus, her companions, being envious of her, told the goddess that Astery had been assisted by Cupid, Venus's son, in culling the blossoms. For this supposed offence she was immediately turned by Venus into a butterfly, and her wings, which before were white, were stained with the colours of all the flowers she had gathered, "for memory of her pretended crime, though crime none ...
— The Death of Saul and other Eisteddfod Prize Poems and Miscellaneous Verses • J. C. Manning
... wellnigh to overflowing. Most of them had brought silver—shall I say alas! or happily? Generally some pretty trifle which vouched for the sentiment and taste of the gift horse without seeming to tax the poor animal's resources. For instance, Mrs. Guy Sloane brought a silver butterfly intended for a pen-wiper, and my old friend Sam Bolles a silver paper-knife. Polly Flinders (I never remember her married name), who has babies of her own, gave Josephine a silver whistle, ostensibly intended for my grandson, and Gillespie ...
— The Opinions of a Philosopher • Robert Grant
... than the Periclean for the very reason that the Divinity is neither the devil nor a bungler; that three thousand years of human consciousness is not nothing; that a whole is greater than its part, and a butterfly than a chrysalis? But it was the assumption that it was therefore in any way great in the abstract that occasioned my profound astonishment, and indeed contempt. Civilisation, if it means anything, can only mean the art by which men live musically together—to the lutings, as it were, of Panpipes, ...
— Prince Zaleski • M.P. Shiel
... "red and yellow"—we must say what red and what yellow, and how much of each. A magenta-coloured dahlia and a lemon put together would set, I should think, any teeth on edge; yet ripe corn goes well with poppies, but not too many poppies—while if one wing of our butterfly were of its present yellow and the other wing of the same scarlet as the spot, it would be an ugly object instead of one of the delights of God. It is interesting, it is fascinating to take the hint from such things—to splash the golden wings of your Resurrection ...
— Stained Glass Work - A text-book for students and workers in glass • C. W. Whall
... The only one of the family that professed not to "think much of her," was the contemptuous Cornelius. Even Vavasor, who soon became a frequent caller, if he chanced to utter some admiring word concerning the pretty deft creature that had just flitted from the room like a dark butterfly, would not in reply draw from him more than a grunt and a half sneer. Yet now and then he might have been caught glowering at her, and would sometimes, seemingly in spite of himself, ...
— Weighed and Wanting • George MacDonald
... tired of displaying her feet and ankles (and a little more) in gales of wind on cliff and pier and parade, or climbing the Malvern Hills. When she puts on goloshes it nearly breaks his heart, and he would fly to other climes! He revels in her infantile pouts and jealousies and heart-burnings and butterfly delights and lisping mischiefs; her mild, innocent flirtations with beautiful young swells, whose cares ...
— Social Pictorial Satire • George du Maurier
... butterflies live on honey, but the previous caterpillar lives on vegetable leaves, while the maggots of large flies require flesh for their food. What induces the bee, who lives on honey, to lay up vegetable powder for its young? What induces the butterfly to lay its eggs on leaves when itself feeds on honey?... If these are not deductions from their own previous experience or observation, all the actions of mankind must ...
— Evolution, Old & New - Or, the Theories of Buffon, Dr. Erasmus Darwin and Lamarck, - as compared with that of Charles Darwin • Samuel Butler
... the Countess; 'but we both serve the same person, as you know - or if you do not, then I have the pleasure of informing you. Your conduct is so light - so light,' she repeated, the fan wavering higher like a butterfly, 'that perhaps you do not truly understand.' The Countess rolled her fan together, laid it in her lap, and rose to a less languorous position. 'Indeed,' she continued, 'I should be sorry to see any young woman in your situation. You began with every advantage ...
— Prince Otto • Robert Louis Stevenson
... of abode as this, and such inhabitants of it as ourselves, and them picture the descent among us—as of a goddess dropping from the clouds—of a lively, handsome, fashionable young lady—a bright, gay, butterfly creature, used to flutter away its existence in the broad sunshine of perpetual gayety—a child of the new generation, with all the modern ideas whirling together in her pretty head, and all the modern accomplishments ...
— The Queen of Hearts • Wilkie Collins
... had always been, this new Margaret was to the old as a radiant butterfly to its chrysalis,—as the glory of the opening flower to the promise of the bud. And Hennie Penny's quickened intelligence, projecting itself into the future, could fathom heights and depths and greater ...
— Pearl of Pearl Island • John Oxenham
... the end of improvement and upward growth, the increase in real virtue, in knowledge, and in wisdom. Nature is a silent preacher which holds forth upon week-days as on Sabbaths. We see the acorn grow into the oak, the egg into the bird, the maggot into the butterfly. Shall we doubt, then, that the human soul, the most precious of all things, is also upon the upward path? And how can the soul progress save through the cultivation of virtue and self-mastery? What other way is there? There is none. We may say with confidence, then, that we are placed here ...
— Micah Clarke - His Statement as made to his three Grandchildren Joseph, - Gervas and Reuben During the Hard Winter of 1734 • Arthur Conan Doyle
... Donito Miguelito is staying with us now; you can fancy the joy of tending this saintly old man in his feebleness. I prepare myself the little dishes that please him; it is a sacred task; it is like feeding a holy butterfly. ...
— Fernley House • Laura E. Richards
... its spectacular course; Ione Burke, Polly Marshall, and Mrs. Vining were in the cast; tableau succeeded tableau; "I wish I were in Dixie," was sung, and the popular burlesque ended in the celebrated scene, "The Birth of the Butterfly in the Bower of Ferns," with the entire company kissing their finger-tips to a vociferous ...
— Ailsa Paige • Robert W. Chambers
... market."—LOCKE: Joh. Dict. "By instructing children, the affection of which will be increased."—Nixon's Parser, p. 136. "He had a comely young woman which travelled with him."—Hutchinson's Hist., i, 29. "A butterfly, which thought himself an accomplished traveller, happened to light upon a beehive."—Inst., p. 143. "It is an enormous elephant of stone, who disgorges from his uplifted trunk a vast but graceful shower."—Zenobia, i, 150. "He was met by a dolphin, who sometimes swam before him, ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown
... window of his brougham. He saw a chariot in distress, a chariot such as would have become an Ondine by the waters of the Serpentine, and the very last sort of equipage that you could expect to see smashed in the Poultry. It was really breaking a butterfly upon a wheel to crush its delicate springs, and crack its dark brown panels, soil its dainty hammer-cloth, and endanger the lives of its young coachman in a flaxen wig, and its two tall footmen in short coats, worthy ...
— Tancred - Or, The New Crusade • Benjamin Disraeli
... the pale butterfly, with its dainty spots of orange, he sees before him the stately halls of fair gold, with their slender saffron pillars, and is taught how the delicate drawing high upon the walls shall be traced in tender tones of orpiment, and repeated by ...
— The Gentle Art of Making Enemies • James McNeill Whistler
... then a pigeon flashed by the windows, sheering away high above the sunlit city. Once, wind-caught, or wandering into unaccustomed heights, high in the blue a white butterfly glimmered, still mounting to infinite altitudes, fluttering, ...
— The Common Law • Robert W. Chambers
... seem to indicate successive ages of grub and butterfly-life; certainly Rome has been a grub long enough. Let us hope the sun of Victor Emmanuel, the King of Gallant Men, will hasten the time when the Romans shall wing their way to the light of Liberty. These mockeries of architecture shall then stand as warning fingers to the Romans of the ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 2, No. 2, August, 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... hat, and her hair was coiled close about her exquisite head. White and black, regular, significant, antique—like a cameo of some Greek woman, long dead. She stood by a little table, one hand on it, the other like some butterfly against her gown.... It was like a pose—but unconscious, he ...
— The Wind Bloweth • Brian Oswald Donn-Byrne
... by my baby's bed That's open to the sky, There fluttered round and round my head A radiant butterfly. ...
— Ballads of a Bohemian • Robert W. Service
... these actions, performed without experience by the young, and in nearly the same manner by each individual, performed with eager delight by each breed, and without the end being known,—for the young pointer can no more know that he points to aid his master, than the white butterfly knows why she lays her eggs on the leaf of the cabbage,—I cannot see that these actions differ essentially from true instincts. If we were to see one kind of wolf, when young and without any training, as soon as it scented ...
— On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection • Charles Darwin
... bright worsted, hangs from the middle of the low ceiling; and hung against the wall, between two glaring woodcuts representing "Lady Caroline" in red and "Highland Mary" in blue, is a deep frame filled with worsted flowers, to which a butterfly and a bumble-bee have been pinned. Paper lacework depends from their kitchen-shelves, and common eggshells, artificially colored, decorate the lilac-bushes in the side yard. They are always making new mats or piecing quilts in a ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 26, July 1880. • Various
... the boy interested. I unfolded my story, as it occurred to me at the moment. 'Yes,' said I, 'ten years ago I saw her first. Dancing as a butterfly dances from flower to flower. Dancing on the stage—a fairy sprite. I loved her—worshiped her. It could never be. There in the dark of the wings, she told me so. And she shed a tear—a sweet tear ...
— Seven Keys to Baldpate • Earl Derr Biggers
... went merrily. Lady Honoria never enjoyed herself more in her life. She revelled in the luxurious gaiety around her like a butterfly in the sunshine. How good it all was—the flash of diamonds, the odour of costly flowers, the homage of well-bred men, the envy of other women. Oh! it was a delightful world after all—that is when one did ...
— Beatrice • H. Rider Haggard
... silvery wings, not feathered, but glistening almost as brilliantly as new-killed fish and with the same subtle play of colour, and these wings were not built on the plan of bird-wing or bat, Mr. Wace learned, but supported by curved ribs radiating from the body. (A sort of butterfly wing with curved ribs seems best to express their appearance.) The body was small, but fitted with two bunches of prehensile organs, like long tentacles, immediately under the mouth. Incredible as it appeared to Mr. Wace, the persuasion at last became irresistible, that it was these creatures which ...
— Tales of Space and Time • Herbert George Wells
... vital: the father of the baroness, a financier, who could be easily turned into a "heavy" conventional father, but, as played by Hermann Nissen, is a positively original characterisation. Max the butterfly (Ernst Dumcke) was wholly admirable. I shall be very much surprised if Der gute Ruf does not soon appear on the stage of other lands. Its picture of manners, its mundane environment, its epigrams and dramatic bravoura will make ...
— Ivory Apes and Peacocks • James Huneker
... some force outside of herself and stronger than gravitation, strong as destiny. It was only an inch to lean, and it was accomplished without volition on her part. Her shoulder touched his as lightly as a butterfly touches a flower, and just as lightly was the counter-pressure. She felt his shoulder press hers, and a tremor run through him. Then was the time for her to draw back. But she had become an automaton. Her actions had passed beyond the control of her will—she never thought of control or will in ...
— Martin Eden • Jack London |
