"Cuttle" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... doubt," interposed Peterkin, "that he means cuttle, which is the short name for cuttle-fish, which, in such an inland place as this, must of course be hoaxes! But what do you mean, Mak? Describe the ...
— The Gorilla Hunters • R.M. Ballantyne
... reading Bahnsen ("Critique de l'evolutionisme de Hegel-Hartmann, au nom des principes de Schopenhauer"). What a writer! Like a cuttle-fish in water, every movement produces a cloud of ink which shrouds his thought in darkness. And what a doctrine! A thoroughgoing pessimism, which regards the world as absurd, "absolutely idiotic," and reproaches ...
— Amiel's Journal • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... in the worms, crustaceans, and insects, of a series of rings united by their edges, but more or less moveable on each other; third, there is the bilateral or molluscan type of life,—life embodied in a form in which there is a duality of corresponding parts, ranged, as in the cuttle-fishes, the clams, and the snails, on the sides of a central axis or plane; and fourth, there is the vertebrate type of life,—life embodied in a form in which an internal skeleton is built up into two cavities placed the one over the other; the upper for the reception ...
— The Testimony of the Rocks - or, Geology in Its Bearings on the Two Theologies, Natural and Revealed • Hugh Miller
... uttered had these coals of Parnes(1) been dismembered, and yet it came very near it; had they perished, their death would have been due to the folly of their fellow-citizens. The poor basket was so frightened, look, it has shed a thick black dust over me, the same as a cuttle-fish does. What an irritable temper! You shout and throw stones, you will not hear my arguments—not even when I propose to speak in favour of the Lacedaemonians with my head on the block; and yet ...
— The Acharnians • Aristophanes
... many inquiries about Fergus and his school, that she began to think it must be with a view to his own pretty boy, who came back all sea-water and ecstasy, with a store of limpets, sea-weeds, scales, purses, and cuttle-fish's backbones for the delectation of his sisters. Above all, he was eloquent on the shell of a lacemaker crab, all over prickles, which he had seen hanging in the window of a little tobacconist. He had been so much fascinated by it that General ...
— The Long Vacation • Charlotte M. Yonge
... and the harpooners amused themselves by dredging up great masses of the weed, and turning out the many strange creatures abiding therein. What a world of wonderful life the weed is, to be sure! In it the flying fish spawn and the tiny cuttle-fish breed, both of them preparing bounteous provision for the larger denizens of the deep that have no other food. Myriads of tiny crabs and innumerable specimens of less-known shell-fish, small fish of species as yet unclassified in any work on natural history, with jelly-fish of every conceivable ...
— The Cruise of the Cachalot - Round the World After Sperm Whales • Frank T. Bullen
... never be able to see the fine instrument you are master of, abused; but, once fix your desire on anything useless, and all the purest pride and folly in your heart will mix with the desire, and make you at last wholly inhuman, a mere ugly lump of stomach and suckers, like a cuttle-fish. ...
— The Ethics of the Dust • John Ruskin
... of brilliance and poetic beauty in my work rather than of lack of fidelity to the original. Finally I did not want to set myself up as a paraphraser, thus securing myself that retreat which many use to cloak their ignorance, wrapping themselves like the cuttle-fish in darkness of their own making to avoid detection. Now, if readers do not find here the grandiloquence of Latin tragedy, 'the bombast and the words half a yard long,' as Horace calls it, they must not blame me if in performing my function of translator I have preferred ...
— Erasmus and the Age of Reformation • Johan Huizinga
... threats—only one simple wish. That you may be having some cuttle-fish fried on the stove just as you are going to set forth to plead the cause of the Milesians,[104] which, if you gain, means a talent in your pocket; that you hurry over devouring the fish to rush off to the Assembly; suddenly you are called and run off with your mouth ...
— The Eleven Comedies - Vol. I • Aristophanes et al
... the artist comes from a mollusk, and is the fossil or extant ink-bag of a cephalopod or squid, while the cuttle-fish bone is used for a variety of purposes. In the islands of the Pacific the young of the pearly nautilus are strung upon strings and sold for $25 and $20 as necklaces. The tritons are in fair demand, and many tons of cowries are sent to Europe yearly, while the shipment ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 362, December 9, 1882 • Various
... then like to know how it comes about that when each piece of a story is true the whole story turns out false. I take it these people have some sense; they see plainly that Judge Douglas is playing cuttle-fish, a small species of fish that has no mode of defending itself when pursued except by throwing out a black fluid, which makes the water so dark the enemy cannot see it, and thus it escapes. Ain't the Judge playing ...
— The Papers And Writings Of Abraham Lincoln, Complete - Constitutional Edition • Abraham Lincoln
... Lowell cares to read this letter, will you allow me to "make it over to him jointly," as Captain Cuttle says. I wished to write to him, but I am afraid only you would tolerate my writing so much when I have nothing to say. If he would ever send me a line I should be infinitely obliged, and would quickly respond. We read the "Washers ...
— Memoir of John Lothrop Motley, Complete • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... boneless body, secreting in a curious vesicle a liquor precisely resembling wine lees;—and the "needle-fish" (aiguille de mer), less thick than a Faber lead-pencil, but more than twice as long;—and huge cuttle-fish and prodigious eels. One conger secured off this coast measured over twenty feet in length, and weighed two hundred and fifty pounds—a veritable sea-serpent.... But even the fresh-water inhabitants of Grande ...
— Two Years in the French West Indies • Lafcadio Hearn
... station and intellect and so large of heart; and the contrast between Carker the manager and his brother, who for some early dishonest act, long since repented of, remains always Carker the junior; and about Captain Cuttle, and that poor, muddled nautical philosopher, Captain Bunsby, and the Game Chicken, and Mrs. Pipchin, and Miss Tox; and Cousin Feenix with wilful legs so little under control, and yet to the core of him a gentleman; and the apoplectic Major Bagstock, the Joey B. who claimed to be "rough and ...
— Life of Charles Dickens • Frank Marzials
... for writing was a reed, sharpened and split at the point, like our pens, called calamus. Their ink was sometimes composed of a black liquid emitted by the cuttle fish. ...
— Roman Antiquities, and Ancient Mythology - For Classical Schools (2nd ed) • Charles K. Dillaway
... to have lunch at a restaurant near the harbor, where, instead of the usual French menu which obtained at all the hotels, purely Sicilian dishes were served. First came a species of marine soup, that consisted of tiny star-fish and cuttle-fish stewed till they were very tender, then smothered in white sauce. Slices of tunny fish followed, almost as substantial as beefsteak, then some goats flesh, that closely resembled mutton, and with it a vegetable called fennel, which is rather like ...
— The Princess of the School • Angela Brazil
... cunning Nippes about the towne, came unto a poore Cutler to have a Cuttle made according to his owne minde, and not aboue three inches would he have both the knife and the haft in length: yet of such pure mettall, as possibly may bee. Albeit the poore man never made the like before, yet being promised foure times the value ...
— The Third And Last Part Of Conny-Catching. (1592) - With the new deuised knauish arte of Foole-taking • R. G.
... when a horrible cuttle-fish rushed at her, and a horned oni snapped his tusks at her, a skeleton poked his bony fingers in her face, and finally a long, hairy serpent, with a big head and lolling tongue, sprang out and coiled around her, cracking her bones, ...
— Japanese Fairy World - Stories from the Wonder-Lore of Japan • William Elliot Griffis
... Gills, pushing the bottle towards the new-comer, Captain Cuttle, who thereupon proceeded to fill his glass, and the wonderful Madeira loosened his tongue to the extent of giving utterance to a ...
— Ten Girls from Dickens • Kate Dickinson Sweetser
... in the mud-plastered cells: and the sea slumbers, with zephyr-wooing calm spread clear over the broad ship- tracks, not breaking in squalls on the stern-posts, not vomiting foam upon the beaches. O sailor, burn by the altars the glittering round of a mullet or a cuttle-fish, or a vocal scarus, to Priapus, ruler of ocean and giver of anchorage; and so go fearlessly on thy seafaring to the bounds of the ...
— Select Epigrams from the Greek Anthology • J. W. Mackail
... or lug, dug from the wet sands. The squid or cuttle, herrings, caplin, any meat, or even a false fish of bright tin or ...
— The Sailor's Word-Book • William Henry Smyth
... of the best of Browne's comic illustrations is the one in "Dombey," wherein Captain Cuttle encounters Mrs. Macstinger in charge of Bunsby, bent on rivetting matrimonial chains upon that confused and ancient mariner. Bunsby is one of the happiest of Dickens's creations; stupid as an owl, he ...
— English Caricaturists and Graphic Humourists of the Nineteenth Century. - How they Illustrated and Interpreted their Times. • Graham Everitt
... that's every bit as comfortable as an anvil, and just as a dentist climbs into you as far as the arm pits and begins probing at the bottom of a tooth which has roots extending back behind your ears, like an old-fashioned pair of spectacles, that the canary bird should wipe his nose on a cuttle bone and dash into a melodious outburst of two hundred thousand twitters, all of them being twitters of the same size, shape, and color. For that matter, I don't even know what kind of an animal a cuttle is, although I should ...
— Cobb's Anatomy • Irvin S. Cobb
... you cut-purse rascal! you filthy bung, away! by this wine, I'll thrust my knife in your mouldy chaps, an you play the saucy cuttle with me. Away, you bottle-ale rascal! you basket-hilt stale juggler, you! Since when, I pray you, sir? God's light, with two points on ...
— King Henry IV, Second Part • William Shakespeare [Chiswick edition]
... an actor of whom, on and off the stage, Field never wearied. Night after night would we go to see "Billy," as he was familiarly and irreverently called, as Bardwell Slote in the "Mighty Dollar," or as Captain Cuttle in "Dombey and Son." Although originally an Irish comedian of rollicking and contagious humor, Florence had played "Bardwell Slote" so constantly and for so many years that his voice and manner in every-day life had the ingratiating tone of that typical ...
— Eugene Field, A Study In Heredity And Contradictions - Vol. I • Slason Thompson
... The Cuttle Fish ranch is five miles from Markham. That thriving metropolis has ten houses and eleven saloons, in spite of Dakota being 'prohibition.' Markham is in the heart of the Bad Lands, the wonderful freakish Bad Lands, where great herds of cattle range ...
— A Woman Tenderfoot • Grace Gallatin Seton-Thompson
... was with some reluctance I obeyed. I went back to my own room and sat resolutely down to my task. Are there any of you, my readers, who have not read the "Life of Robert Hall?" If so, in the words of the great Captain Cuttle, "When found, make a note of it." Never mind what your theological opinion is,—Episcopalian, Presbyterian, Baptist, Paedobaptist, Independent, Quaker, Unitarian, Philosopher, Freethinker,—send for Robert Hall! Yea, if there exists ...
— The Caxtons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... He ceased that profusion of compliment in which he had hitherto carried off in safety all serious meaning. For indeed the doctor considered that compliments to a single gentleman were what the inky liquid it dispenses is to the cuttle-fish, that by obscuring the water sails away from its enemy. Neither did he, as before, avoid prolonged conversations with the young lady, and contrive to escape from all solitary rambles by her side. On the contrary, he now sought ...
— My Novel, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... crumbs of coarse bread, crackers, lumps of sugar, cuttle-fish to peck at, and a number of other things. Miss Laura did everything just as he told her; but I think she talked to the birds more than he did. She was very particular about their drinking water, and washed out the little glass cups that ...
— Beautiful Joe • Marshall Saunders
... trees, plates of brass, or lead, etc. For writing upon paper or parchment, the Romans employed a reed, sharpened and split in the point like our pens, called calamus, arundo, or canna. This they dipped in the black liquor emitted by the cuttle fish, which served ...
— The Lives Of The Twelve Caesars, Complete - To Which Are Added, His Lives Of The Grammarians, Rhetoricians, And Poets • C. Suetonius Tranquillus
... came to my son Dinkie, though it couldn't be denied they carried many a cheering word and many a companionable message to Dinkie's mother. But it brought me up short, to think that my own husband would try to play cuttle-fish with a clean-hearted and a clean-handed man like Peter. The wave that went through my body, on this occasion, was one of rage. I tried to say something, but I couldn't. The lion of my anger had me down, by this time, with his paw ...
— The Prairie Child • Arthur Stringer
... the "Modoc," a long and ungainly creature, with arms and legs so seemingly profuse and unmanageable, that they reminded one of the tentacles of a cuttle-fish—Estella was "passing ...
— Cape Cod Folks • Sarah P. McLean Greene
... on every scene and which must have been the roughest theatrical tinkers' work, but at two or three of which we certainly assisted. I associate them with Mr. Brougham's temple of the art, yet am at the same time beset with the Captain Cuttle of Dombey and Son in the form of the big Burton, who never, I earnestly conceive, graced that shrine, so that I wander a trifle confusedly. Isn't it he whom I remember as a monstrous Micawber, the coarse parody of a charming creation, with the entire baldness ...
— A Small Boy and Others • Henry James
... staffs and escorts, had ridden into the notch to have a look at the enemy's guns—which had straightway obscured themselves in towering clouds of smoke. It was hardly profitable to be curious about guns which had the trick of the cuttle-fish, and the season of observation had been brief. At its conclusion—a short remove backward from where it began—occurred the conversation already partly reported. "It is the only place," the general repeated thoughtfully, "to get ...
— The Collected Works of Ambrose Bierce, Vol. II: In the Midst of Life: Tales of Soldiers and Civilians • Ambrose Bierce
... thing to provoke laughter. There was neither charm nor freshness about the dress or its wearer; the velvet, like the complexion had seen wear. Lucien felt ashamed to have fallen in love with this cuttle-fish bone, and vowed that he would profit by Louise's next fit of virtue to leave her for good. Having an excellent view of the house, he could see the opera-glasses pointed at the aristocratic box par excellence. ...
— Lost Illusions • Honore De Balzac
... the order of the Cephalopods, to which belong the cuttle-fish and the octopus (sacred to Victor Hugo), may be, for all we can say to the contrary, an order with a future. Their kindred, the Gastropods, have, in the case of the snail and slug, learnt the trick of air-breathing. And not improbably there are even now genera of ...
— Certain Personal Matters • H. G. Wells
... general features. The parish church, also, bore a strong resemblance to the one I had noticed the previous evening. These old Essex towns are "as much alike as two peas," and you must make a note of it, as Captain Cuttle says, was the thought first suggested by the coincidence. I went into a cosy, clean-faced inn on the main street, and addressed myself with much satisfaction to a short season of rest and refreshment, exchanging hot ...
— A Walk from London to John O'Groat's • Elihu Burritt
... accompanies his craft. Our Scottish fishermen have a limited vocabulary, which scarce extends beyond the names of the few common fishes with which the market is supplied. But at Marseilles or Genoa or in the Levant they have names for many hundreds of species, of fish and shell-fish and cuttle-fish and worms and corallines, and all manner of swimming and creeping things; they know a vast deal about the habits of their lives, far more, sometimes, than do we 'scientific men'; they are naturalists by tradition and by trade. ...
— The Legacy of Greece • Various
... about three o'clock in the afternoon she would seldom speak—it taking that time to thaw her, by all accounts, into but talking terms with humanity. During the interval she did little but look, and keep looking out of her large, metallic eyes, which her enemies called cold as a cuttle-fish's, but which by her were esteemed gazelle-like; for Goneril was not without vanity. Those who thought they best knew her, often wondered what happiness such a being could take in life, not considering the happiness which ...
— The Confidence-Man • Herman Melville
... Trumbull so full of venom, that his words did not carry conviction to the minds of his hearers. It was a matter of common observation that Democrats seemed ill at ease after the debate.[744] "Judge Douglas is playing cuttle-fish," remarked Lincoln, noting with satisfaction the very evident discomfiture of his opponent, "a small species of fish that has no mode of defending itself when pursued except by throwing out a black fluid, which makes the water so dark the ...
— Stephen A. Douglas - A Study in American Politics • Allen Johnson
... is not settled whether the back of a cuttle-fish answers to the dorsal or ventral surface of a gasteropod. It is not decided whether the arms and funnels of the one have or have not their homologues in the other. The dorsal integument of a Doris and the cloak of a whelk are both called 'mantle,' ...
— Thomas Henry Huxley; A Sketch Of His Life And Work • P. Chalmers Mitchell
... where he appeared in Philadelphia as Dr Ollapod in The Poor Gentleman. He took a prominent place, both as actor and manager, in New York, Philadelphia and Baltimore, the theatre which he leased in New York being renamed Burton's theatre. He had much popular success as Captain Cuttle in John Brougham's dramatization of Dombey and Son, and in other low comedy parts in plays from Dickens's novels. Burton was the author of a large number of plays, one of which, Ellen Wareham (1833), was produced simultaneously at five London theatres. In Philadelphia he established ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 4 - "Bulgaria" to "Calgary" • Various
... common ones, two small sorts of crabs, and two others which the natives brought, one of them of a thick, tough, gelatinous consistence, and the other a sort of membranaceous tube or pipe, both which are probably taken from the rocks. And we, also, purchased from them once a very large cuttle-fish. ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 16 • Robert Kerr
... creations: when we express ourselves in a Pickwickian sense, wait for something to turn up with Mr. Micawber, drop into poetry with Silas Wegg, move on with little Joe, feel 'umble after the manner of Uriah Heap, are willin' with Barkis, make a note of, in company with Captain Cuttle, or conclude with Mr. Weller, Senior, that it is the part of wisdom to beware of "widders," we may observe that what binds us to this motley crowd of creatures is not their grotesquerie but their common humanity, their likeness to ourselves, the ...
— Masters of the English Novel - A Study Of Principles And Personalities • Richard Burton
... on several occasions, by watching the habits of an Octopus, or cuttle-fish. Although common in the pools of water left by the retiring tide, these animals were not easily caught. By means of their long arms and suckers, they could drag their bodies into very narrow crevices; and when thus fixed, it required great force ...
— A Book of Natural History - Young Folks' Library Volume XIV. • Various
... a long gut out of her throat, which, like as an Angler doth his line, she sendeth forth, and pulleth in again at her pleasure, according as she sees some little fish come near to her; and the Cuttle-fish, being then hid in the gravel, lets the smaller fish nibble and bite the end of it; at which time she, by little and little, draws the smaller fish so near to her, that she may leap upon her, and then ...
— The Complete Angler • Izaak Walton |
