"Goldfish" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... stop at any more cat or dog or bird shops, but passed them by, and at last they came to a shop that seemed as though it only sold creatures that did not much mind where they were—such as goldfish and white mice, and sea-anemones and other aquarium beasts, and lizards and toads, and hedgehogs and tortoises, and tame rabbits and guinea-pigs. And there they stopped for a long time, and fed the guinea-pigs with bits of bread through the cage-bars, ...
— The Story of the Amulet • E. Nesbit
... the architectural beauty of the island hills; but if he turns his gaze downward and looks through the glass bottom of the boat in which he is sailing, he will discover manifold phases of beauty in the life beneath the sea waves: in goldfish darting hither and thither, in umbrella-shaped jellyfish lazily swimming by, in starfish and anemones of infinite variety, in sea-urchins brilliant in color, and in an endless forest of water-weeds exquisitely delicate in their structure. Perhaps ...
— The World's Best Poetry, Volume 3 - Sorrow and Consolation • Various
... replied Gwent, promptly—"There must be opposition, otherwise effort would be unnecessary. My good fellow, you've got an idea that you can alter the fixed plan of things, but you can't. The cleverest of us are only like goldfish in a glass bowl—they see the light through, but they cannot get to it. The old ship of the world will sail on its appointed way to its destined port,—and the happiest creatures are those who are content to sail with it in the faith that God is at the helm!" He broke ...
— The Secret Power • Marie Corelli
... said Sylvia; "he has a great deal more sense than most of us. I wish I had half his knowledge of worms, and spiders, and ants, and goldfish, and—and—flies of every sort. Why, there isn't a thing he doesn't know about them. I call him one of the most delightful old ...
— Betty Vivian - A Story of Haddo Court School • L. T. Meade
... tottered past her, muttering and smiling to himself and shaking his trembling head as he went rocking on unsteady legs out into the sunshine, where the nursemaids and children flocked along the lake shore throwing peanuts to the waterfowl and satiated goldfish. ...
— The Tracer of Lost Persons • Robert W. Chambers
... her eyes still flashing about like goldfish in a pool. "You didn't know, dear. Of course you didn't. I'm sure we can put it right with Mitchell, although he's a sensitive man. I'll go and see him in the morning. I am glad I'm back. Well, I was telling you ... Where was ...
— The Captives • Hugh Walpole
... the success of her father's birthday dinner. She had herself assisted in decorating the table, and had insisted on placing a crystal bowl of goldfish in the center, although O'Haru had told her that goldfish were not carp, and therefore had no significance whatever ...
— The Motor Maids in Fair Japan • Katherine Stokes
... pet alligator was a sort of tank, in the bottom of which was some water, and in this were little pebbles, like those in some goldfish bowls. The tank stood near a window in the barn where the sun shone in, for Mr. Martin had told the Curlytops that their pets who lived in warm, or tropical, countries must be kept where it was warm and sunny. That was what they were used ...
— The Curlytops and Their Pets - or Uncle Toby's Strange Collection • Howard R. Garis
... caused by a poison called nicotine which is present in all tobacco. Much of this poison may be soaked out by boiling the tobacco in water. A cup of water in which a pipeful of tobacco has been boiled will kill goldfish in an hour when poured into a gallon jar of water with the fish. There is enough poison in a handful of tobacco to kill a boy who is not in ...
— Health Lessons - Book 1 • Alvin Davison
... as you described it to me. Here is the most interesting part of the whole affair. The special guard over Karuska was only lightly affected and has already recovered and is in a position to tell you exactly what happened. I got a garbled account of the affair from the warden, something about a goldfish bowl or something like that, the warden wouldn't take it seriously enough to give me details. I didn't press for them much for I knew that you would rather get ...
— Astounding Stories, February, 1931 • Various
... while a harassed lady appeared in the outer doorway, from time to time, with gestures of lamentation and entreaty. Upon the sidewalk, between the wagons and the gate, was a broad wet spot, vaguely circular, with a partial circumference of broken glass and extinct goldfish. ...
— Seventeen - A Tale Of Youth And Summer Time And The Baxter Family Especially William • Booth Tarkington
... tongues, draining the ambrosial juice with each morsel, and ate twenty or thirty each. The fish was steeped in lime-juice, not cooked, and flavored with the cocoanut sauce and wild chillies. The crayfish were curried with the curry plant of the mountains, the shrimp were eaten raw or boiled, and the goldfish ...
— Mystic Isles of the South Seas. • Frederick O'Brien
... whether we'd better wish - Hullo! you've done it now, my boy!' And, in a flash of glass and pink baby-paws, the bowl of golden carp in the middle of the table rolled on its side, and poured a flood of mixed water and goldfish into the Baby's lap and into the ...
— Five Children and It • E. Nesbit
... home—that was in the contract—and he would never have to work again. He would be a rich man for life, with a house of his own, a wife, and children growing up to venerate him. Yes, and back of the house he would have a small garden, a place of meditation and repose, with goldfish in a tiny lakelet, and wind bells tinkling in the several trees, and there would be a high wall all around so that his meditation ...
— When God Laughs and Other Stories • Jack London
... to be some ex-hoodlums left in Flushing to echo that sentiment, even after a quarter of a century. From certain signs I knew, when I hung my curtain between two trees in the little public park down by the fountain with the goldfish, that there was going to be trouble. My patience had been pretty well worn down, and I made preparations. I hired four stout men who were spoiling for a fight, and put good hickory clubs into their hands, bidding them restrain their natural desire to use them till the ...
— The Making of an American • Jacob A. Riis
... pets. They don't know it, but I cultivate an intimate knowledge of their habits and study them as, once, years ago, I was wont to study white mice and goldfish. I have watched their development, listened to their song, and have made several interesting ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, June 10, 1914 • Various
... has sent me an angel miniature Jap garden, with a tiny pergola & real dwarf trees & a bridge that you expect an Alfred Noyes lantern on, & Oh Carl, an issa goldfish in a pool! ...
— The Trail of the Hawk - A Comedy of the Seriousness of Life • Sinclair Lewis
... such as are commonly used for aquaria cost less than a dollar per gallon capacity. Goldfish globes cost about the same. White glass round aquaria are much cheaper and those made of greenish domestic glass are the cheapest of all, a glass tank holding eight gallons costing ...
— Outdoor Sports and Games • Claude H. Miller
... smothered a yawn, a deliberate yawn—not the kind you can't repress because the air is close and you feel like a goldfish when the water in the bowl has not been changed and you must gape for breath. The fat boy had been dancing attendance on her for the last hour and she was wearied with his witty sallies. Jeff and Willis Truman, a former classmate, had started ...
— The Comings of Cousin Ann • Emma Speed Sampson
... would eat, and purr, But catnip she would eat, and purr. And goldfish she did much prefer— ...
— The Congo and Other Poems • Vachel Lindsay
... dropped in, without knocking, and the head nurse came, and an interne or so, and a ward nurse, and the special nurse who was to have direct charge of me. It dawned on me that I was not having any more privacy in that hospital than a goldfish. ...
— "Speaking of Operations—" • Irvin S. Cobb
... Pippa and Sancie, Melot and Vicky. "My girls," or "My rascals," he used to call them to Tom Peters or Jack Summers, and bring them home jerky little tin pedestrians from the city, or emus pulling little carts; or (later on) bowls of goldfish or violet nosegays from Covent Garden. If he had a nearer passion, it was to stand well with all the world. That's two passions, however, to his score; and the struggle between them, in Sanchia's case, had ...
— Rest Harrow - A Comedy of Resolution • Maurice Hewlett
... standing in the midst of the loveliest garden you can possibly imagine, where fountains played in marble basins, and peacocks walked on the smooth lawns. On the edge of a marble basin sat a young and handsome man, who was dressed from head to foot in a suit of green armour, and was feeding the goldfish which swam in the ...
— The Olive Fairy Book • Various
... and not to betray what may be within in times of looting. You often approach through a mean doorway into a dirty passage; you then enter a second court, and you behold a marvellous transformation. You find the house thoroughly cleaned and perfumed, paved courts with marble fountains and goldfish, orange and jessamine trees, furniture inlaid with gold and ebony and mother-o'-pearl, and stained-glass windows. In the interior of one of the most beautiful houses I visited in Damascus the show-room was very magnificent, upholstered in velvet and gold, and with divans inlaid with marble, ...
— The Romance of Isabel Lady Burton Volume II • Isabel Lady Burton & W. H. Wilkins
... see the circus, this being the center of a thriving farming community. Joe, going into a drug store to get an ice cream soda, saw in the window of an establishment next door a large aquarium, in which goldfish were swimming about amid long, waving, ...
— Joe Strong, the Boy Fish - or Marvelous Doings in a Big Tank • Vance Barnum
... had found exactly what he required. The living-room opened wide to the sun. One stepped out from its French windows into the garden, where a little pebbly path led one wandering amongst oleanders and dwarf oranges and flaming cannas, to a corner where a tiny fountain made a home for lazy goldfish floating in placid contentment under the hot sun. Here there was an arbour wreathed in gentle wisteria, where Riviere took breakfast and the mid-day meal. At nightfall a chill snapped down with the suddenness of the impetuousness Midi, and ...
— Swirling Waters • Max Rittenberg
... puppy dog from far-away Japan, I saw you in a shop to-day where lonesomely you sat Upon a velvet cushion that was colored gold and purple, Between a bowl of goldfish, and ...
— Cross Roads • Margaret E. Sangster
... upon an open letter, which she instinctively knew to be Deryck's, and he did not look up at once. When he did look up, she saw his unmistakable start of surprise. He opened his mouth to speak, and Jane was irresistibly reminded of a tame goldfish at Overdene, which used to rise to the surface when the duchess dropped crumbs. He closed it without uttering a word, and turned again to Deryck's letter; and Jane felt herself to be the crumb, or rather the camel, which he was finding it ...
— The Rosary • Florence L. Barclay
... had skirted the marble-edged pool where the goldfish swam and glimmered, and where the great prehistoric beast had come down to bathe and drink. The water flashed white diamonds in the moonlight, and Gerald alone of them all saw that the scaly-plated vast lizard was even now rolling and wallowing there ...
— The Enchanted Castle • E. Nesbit
... can find signs of your great-grand-mother, or of the Crusades, or of the Mayans, upon anything that ever came from Chillicothe or from a five and ten cent store. Anything that looks like a cat and a goldfish looks like Leo and Pisces: but, by due suppressions and distortions there's nothing that can't be made to look like a cat and a goldfish. I fear me we're turning a little irritable here. To be damned by slumbering ...
— The Book of the Damned • Charles Fort
... handkerchiefs which were so old that they were new all over again, he reached up under the tails of his dress coat and hauled out a big glass globe that was slopping full of its crystal-pure fluid contents, with a family of goldfish swimming round and round in it, as happy as ...
— Eating in Two or Three Languages • Irvin S. Cobb
... thought we knew—was what they told us. The moon, the other side of the world, a distant city ... or even the next town. How do we really know what's there ... unless we go and see for ourselves? Does a goldfish in his bowl know what ...
— It Could Be Anything • John Keith Laumer
... laugh in the world, and she often laughed. The sick-room was kept with exquisite simplicity, with such freshness, bareness, and order as made it a place of delight. One day Cherry brought home a great Vikory bowl of silvery glass, and a dozen drifting goldfish, and Martin never tired of watching them idly while he listened to ...
— Sisters • Kathleen Norris
... poor children! In short, no martyr was ever led to the stake with half the notions of heroism and self-devotion as those with which Lady Juliana stepped into the barouche that was to conduct her to Beech Park. In the society of piping bullfinches, pink canaries, gray parrots, goldfish, green squirrels, Italian greyhounds, and French poodles, she sought a refuge from despair. But even these varied charms, after a while, failed to please. The bullfinches grew hoarse; the canaries turned brown; the parrots became stupid; ...
— Marriage • Susan Edmonstone Ferrier
... "Si, Senor," he said deferentially, and a few tears ran suddenly down his withered cheeks. The English flowers had been trampled down; an unclean hat floated on the basin, now here, now there, frightening the goldfish from one ...
— Romance • Joseph Conrad and F.M. Hueffer
... what was lacking to him to make him so, and was sure that it could only be a rich and pretty wife. This happiness then she determined to procure for him, an easy enough task, as her set contained a large selection of "goldfish." ...
— The Malady of the Century • Max Nordau
... Buhrmann were especially obsequious in seating von Schlichten in Sid Harrington's old chair, and in getting a chair for Paula Quinton. After awhile, the jumbled colors on the big screen resolved themselves into an image of Hideyoshi O'Leary, grinning like a pussycat beside an empty goldfish-bowl, licking ...
— Ullr Uprising • Henry Beam Piper
... to the rays of the sun. Coral formations of endless design and shape come to view through the limpid spectrum, forming a perfect submarine garden of wondrous beauty. Through the shrubs, branches, ferns, and sponges of coral, the brilliantly colored fish of the Southern seas sport like goldfish in ...
— Tales of the Malayan Coast - From Penang to the Philippines • Rounsevelle Wildman
... the new bonnet of Mrs. Wilson—Mr. Wilson was the richest man in Blackstable, he was thought to have at least five hundred a year, and he had married his cook—Philip sat demurely in the stiff parlour, used only to receive visitors, and busied himself with the restless movements of goldfish in a bowl. The windows were never opened except to air the room for a few minutes in the morning, and it had a stuffy smell which seemed to Philip to have a mysterious connection ...
— Of Human Bondage • W. Somerset Maugham
... back to the light, tapping a bowl of goldfish with the tip of a polished finger-nail; the room was very cool. She held a letter out. "Your uncle ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... the moment of victory he was accidentally fallen upon by the giant whom he was engaged in undermining, and lost all appetite for adventure thereby. Indeed, in his latter years he was alarmed by anything larger than a goldfish, and lived a ...
— Once on a Time • A. A. Milne
... over there," he would say, "were erected by the Turks, to commemorate a victory. Here is where Byron swam the sea from Europe to Asia; and over there is where King Midas lived, whose touch turned piastres to napoleons, and flounders to goldfish. Here, to the left, on that ...
— McClure's Magazine December, 1895 • Edited by Ida M. Tarbell
... This morning, one cloud in the east looked like a goldfish close to the horizon. I began to build a snow-house with the ...
— Memories of Hawthorne • Rose Hawthorne Lathrop
... aquarium, a recent acquisition that delights my soul. The aquarium is simply an oblong glass box mounted on a teak stand, with a tracery of teak carving outlining the box, which is the home of the most gorgeous fan-tailed goldfish. There are water plants in the box, too, and funny little Chinese temples and dwarf trees. I love to house my little people happily—my dogs and my birds and my fish. Wee Toi, my little Chinese dog, ...
— The House in Good Taste • Elsie de Wolfe
... own back yard. He knows, if he marries me, carpet slippers seven nights in the week is my speed. I never want to see a 'roof,' or a music-show, or a cabaret again to the day I die. He knows I'll fit in home like a goldfish in its bowl. Life made a mistake with me, and it's going to square itself. It's fate, Kess; that's ...
— Humoresque - A Laugh On Life With A Tear Behind It • Fannie Hurst
... my net, goldfish in my net! See how they shine who presently must wriggle on the shore. Vanity of vanities! All is vanity, and doubtless Solomon knew such ...
— The Virgin of the Sun • H. R. Haggard
... asleep. Durtal and the abbot were walking on the banks of the great pond, where the water was alive, it alone wakeful in the slumber of the woods, for the moon, which shone in a cloudless sky, sowed a myriad of goldfish, and this luminous spawn, fallen from the planet, mounted, descended, sparkled in a thousand little points of fire, of which the wind as ...
— En Route • J.-K. (Joris-Karl) Huysmans
... trilling, in and out through open windows, all down the long wing that was hers. And he heard her singing in the patio garden, where, also, she desisted long enough to quarrel with her Airedale and scold the collie pup unholily attracted by the red-orange, divers-finned, and many-tailed Japanese goldfish in the fountain basin. ...
— The Little Lady of the Big House • Jack London
... and furs. He that was favored to have audience with Monna Vittoria went to her as through a dream of loveliness, marvelling at the many splendid things that surrounded her: at the fountain in her court-yard, where the goldfish gambolled, and where a Triton that came from an old Roman villa spouted; at her corridors, lined with delicately tinted majolica that seemed cool and clean as ice in those summer heats; at her antechambers, that glowed with color and swooned with sweet odors; and, finally, at ...
— The God of Love • Justin Huntly McCarthy
... a rustic bower, tenanted by an Apollo or Greek slave in marble, or else you find yourself on turning an angle on the shady bank of a sequestered pond, in which lively trout disport themselves as merrily as those goldfish you just noticed in the aquarium in the hall hung round with Krieghoff's exquisite "Canadian scenery." You can also, as you pass along, catch the loud notes issuing from the house aviary and blending with the soft, wild melody of the wood warblers and robin; but the prominent ...
— Picturesque Quebec • James MacPherson Le Moine
... season of the handsome pied kingfisher (Ceryle rudis). This is the familiar, black-and-white bird that fishes by hovering kestrel-like on rapidly-vibrating wings and then dropping from a height of some twenty feet into the water below; it is a bird greatly addicted to goldfish and makes sad havoc of these where they are exposed in ornamental ponds. The nest of the pied kingfisher is a circular tunnel or burrow, more than a yard in length, excavated in a river bank. The burrow, ...
— A Bird Calendar for Northern India • Douglas Dewar
... were feeding the goldfish in the courtyard fountains with crumbs of the Princess's eighteenth birthday cake, when the King came into the courtyard, looking as black as thunder, with his black raven hopping after him. He shook his fist at his ...
— The Book of Dragons • Edith Nesbit
... merrymaking for seventy days and seventy nights.' This one is going by so fast that it will soon be train-time. I don't suppose they care," she added, with a nod toward the bride, "for they're going to spend their honeymoon in a Gold of Ophir rose-garden, where there are goldfish in the fountains, and real orange-blossoms. It's out in California, at Mister Stuart's grandfather's. Elsie, his sister, couldn't come, so they're going out to see her, and take her a piece of every kind of cake we have to-night, and a sample of every kind of bonbon. Don't you wonder who'll ...
— The Little Colonel: Maid of Honor • Annie Fellows Johnston
... The goldfish sing a winding song Below her pale and waxen face, The water-nymph is dancing by Lifting smooth arms with mournful grace, A stainless white dream she floats on While fairies beat a ...
— Georgian Poetry 1916-17 - Edited by Sir Edward Howard Marsh • Various
... a lot of swindling. The Greeks are just like the Armenians or gipsies. They sell you a sponge or a goldfish and all the time they are looking out for a chance of getting something extra out of you. Let's ...
— Plays by Chekhov, Second Series • Anton Chekhov
... much esteemed them, and Pliny relates that they sent slaves from Ostia to Rome, who carried on their heads fish which he calls the mulus, and which, from the description, must probably be the goldfish. It was also considered a luxury to have them alive, it being an amusing sight to see them die, for, when dying, they change color three or four times, and like the rainbow when it disappears, pass through all the prismatic ...
— The Count of Monte Cristo • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... several miles my men bowled me into a tea-house, where they ate and smoked while I sat in the garden, which consisted of baked mud, smooth stepping-stones, a little pond with some goldfish, a deformed pine, and a stone lantern. Observe that foreigners are wrong in calling the Japanese houses of entertainment indiscriminately "tea-houses." A tea-house or chaya is a house at which you can obtain tea and other refreshments, rooms to ...
— Unbeaten Tracks in Japan • Isabella L. Bird
... pairs of black lines, white gobies from the genus Eleotris with curved caudal fins and violet spots on the back, wonderful Japanese mackerel from the genus Scomber with blue bodies and silver heads, glittering azure goldfish whose name by itself gives their full description, several varieties of porgy or gilthead (some banded gilthead with fins variously blue and yellow, some with horizontal heraldic bars and enhanced ...
— 20000 Leagues Under the Seas • Jules Verne
... and animals, cardboard boxes, articles of feminine attire, a zinc bath, two cats, a cage with white mice, a pile of books resting in a dazzling pyramid on the very edge of the table, two glass jars containing minute fish of the new variety, and a bowl with goldfish. There were many other things, ...
— The Golden Scarecrow • Hugh Walpole
... not prepared to call it life, I suppose," he answered. As he spoke he plucked a solitary goldfish squirming and twisting out of its globe. "We'll send this one after the other—wherever that is," he said. There was feverish excitement in his voice. A dull weight of fever lay on my limbs and on my brain as I followed him ...
— The King In Yellow • Robert W. Chambers
... street, some rich men had got together and left unguarded all the gold, diamonds, and rubies of the East; but when you came near you saw that this treasure was only a gathering of goldfish in glass globes—yellow, white, and red fish, with from three to five forked tails apiece and eyes that bulged far beyond their heads. There were wooden pans full of tiny ruby fish, and little children with nets dabbled and shrieked ...
— Letters of Travel (1892-1913) • Rudyard Kipling
... happy to say the goldfish seem all alive and merry. The continual dropping of fresh water has no doubt saved them—they were never hermetically sealed in like ...
— Hugh - Memoirs of a Brother • Arthur Christopher Benson
... them bent upon pleasure. Her streets and plazas became a surging mass of struggling humanity, bright with the gay costumes of men and women. In her market-booths were displayed innumerable commodities; animals, fruit, vegetables, fowl—flowers, goldfish, caged finches, canaries—jewelry, rugs, stamped leathers and drawn-linen work—bright cloths, blankets, baskets and pottery—wines, laces, ...
— When Dreams Come True • Ritter Brown
... brass-handled bell at a garden-gate, surmounted by a holly-bush with the top cut into the shape of a fox, announced their arrival to the inhabitants of "Rosalinda Castle," and on entering they discovered young Nosey in the act of bobbing for goldfish, in a pond about the size of a soup-basin; while Nosey senior, a fat, stupid-looking fellow, with a large corporation and a bottle nose, attired in a single-breasted green cloth coat, buff waistcoat, with drab shorts ...
— Jorrocks' Jaunts and Jollities • Robert Smith Surtees
... peaches behind a net As fine as her veil, and fat Goldfish a-gape, who lazily met For her crumbs—I grudged them that! A squirrel, some rabbits with long lop ears, And guinea-pigs, tortoise-shell—wee; And I told her that eloquent truth ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 4 (of 4) • Various
... shining glass. Across the sun-flooded back of the house were Alice's little bedroom, nunlike in its rigid austerity, her nurse's room adjoining, and a square sun-room, giving glimpses of roofs and trim back-gardens, full of flowers, with a little fountain and goldfish, a floor of dull pink tiling, and plants in great jars of Chinese enamel. Christopher had planned this delightful addition to Alice's domain only a few years ago, and, with that knowledge of her secret heart that only ...
— The Beloved Woman • Kathleen Norris
... and east by the House itself, and on the west by the cliff and the sea. There is a stone balustrade to divide the garden from space. In the middle of the square is a stone basin with becalmed water-lilies and of course goldfish. Round the basin the orderly ranks of little clipped box hedges manoeuvre. The untamed elements in the garden are the climbing things, they sing in gold and yellow and orange and red from the walls. ...
— This Is the End • Stella Benson
... charm of music; for Floracita's talk went as trippingly as a lively dance, and the sweet modulations of Rosabella's voice so softened English to Italian sound, that her words seemed floating on a liquid element, like goldfish in the water. Indeed, her whole nature seemed to partake the fluid character of music. Beauty born of harmonious sound "had passed into her face," and her motions reminded one of a water-lily undulating on its ...
— A Romance of the Republic • Lydia Maria Francis Child
... was sinister after one had left Poperinghe and passed through the skeleton of Vlamertinghe church, beyond Goldfish Chateau... For a long time Poperinghe was the last link with a life in which men and women could move freely without hiding from the pursuit of death; and even there, from time to time, there were shells from long-range guns and, later, night-birds dropping high-explosive ...
— Now It Can Be Told • Philip Gibbs |
