"Jackdaw" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Denys impatiently, "will you believe what a jackdaw in a long gown has heard from a starling in a long gown, who heard it from a jay-pie, who heard it from a magpie, who heard it from a popinjay; or will you believe what I, a man with nought to gain by looking awry, nor ...
— The Cloister and the Hearth • Charles Reade
... home or goes out, when in a word she believes she is alone, your wife will exhibit all the imprudence of a jackdaw and will tell her secret aloud to herself; moreover, by her sudden change of expression the moment she notices you (and despite the rapidity of this change, you will not fail to have observed the ...
— Analytical Studies • Honore de Balzac
... his hands in his pockets, and fell to gazing into the street. Before his eyes stretched an immense waste, bounded by a grey fence beside which ran a perfect forest of last year's burdocks. Beyond the waste ground was a dark, deserted factory, with windows boarded up. A belated jackdaw was flying round the chimney. This dreary, lifeless scene was beginning to be veiled in the dusk ...
— The Horse-Stealers and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... case of the peculiar New York disease of wanting to see and know. At 6 o'clock each day life begins with him. He follows rigidly the conventions of dress and manners; but in the business of poking his nose into places where he does not belong he could give pointers to a civet cat or a jackdaw. He is the man who has chased Bohemia about the town from rathskeller to roof garden and from Hester street to Harlem until you can't find a place in the city where they don't cut their spaghetti with a knife. Your 'Man About Town' has done that. He is always on the scent of something new. He ...
— The Four Million • O. Henry
... Hector Ernescliffe discovered a jackdaw's nest in the chimney, whereupon the whole train rushed off to investigate, leaving the two doctors and Ethel standing together in the empty parlour, Dr. May pressing, Dr. Spencer raising desultory objections; but so evidently against his own wishes, ...
— The Daisy Chain, or Aspirations • Charlotte Yonge
... Britain, commonly called Great Britain, is to dictate to Petersburg and Bengal and cover Constantinople under those wings that reach from the North Pole to the farthest East! I am mighty sorry for it, and hope we shall not prove a jackdaw that pretends to dress himself in the ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole, V4 • Horace Walpole
... found as monks keeping dogs, or even birds, in the cloister, Peckham denounces these breaches of decorum as grave offences, which were not to be passed over and not to be allowed. What! a black monk stalking along with a bull-pup at his heels, and a jackdaw, worse than the Jackdaw of Rheims, using bad words in the garth, and showing an evil example to the chorister boys, with his ...
— The Coming of the Friars • Augustus Jessopp
... were eating out of the bowl with a wooden spoon, a tame jackdaw who had been sitting on an old stool by the fireside, hopped over and perched himself ...
— The Magic Soap Bubble • David Cory
... look around me I found that the hall was indeed simply full of animals. It seemed to me that almost every kind of creature from the countryside must be there: a pigeon, a white rat, an owl, a badger, a jackdaw—there was even a small pig, just in from the rainy garden, carefully wiping his feet on the mat while the light from the candle glistened on his wet ...
— The Voyages of Doctor Dolittle • Hugh Lofting
... roadway for the Kirghiz post-drivers. But in the spring and autumn its arid surface is clothed, as if by enchantment, with verdure and prairie flowers. Both flowers and birds are gorgeously colored. One variety, about half the size of the jackdaw which infests the houses of Tashkend and Samarkand, has a bright blue body and red wings; another, resembling our field-lark in size and habits, combines a pink breast with black head and wings. But already this springtide splendor was beginning to disappear beneath ...
— Across Asia on a Bicycle • Thomas Gaskell Allen and William Lewis Sachtleben
... time afterwards told Nellie in confidence that, just then, the old gentleman so comically resembled 'Blinkie,' a dissipated old tame jackdaw they had at home, in the way he cocked his head on one side, with his ruffled hair and all, that he couldn't have helped laughing, if he had ...
— Bob Strong's Holidays - Adrift in the Channel • John Conroy Hutcheson
... jackdaw that certainly did; for he hopped and hopped along after the master with the saddest expression I ever saw bird wear. But the master took no notice. On and on he wandered, seemingly unconscious of the presence even of ...
— The Humourous Story of Farmer Bumpkin's Lawsuit • Richard Harris
... widowed cat, was decked out in all the gay and gaudy trappings of a field officer on parade, and, what is more to the point, he was seemingly quite aware that he was looking smart. I suppose "Sailor" can never have read the "Jackdaw of Rheims," but he certainly looked the words of that conceited bird as he strutted proudly along before the admiral; and I feel assured that, though the commander-in-chief may not have thought much about the matter, there was no doubt in pussy's ...
— In Eastern Seas - The Commission of H.M.S. 'Iron Duke,' flag-ship in China, 1878-83 • J. J. Smith
... to the further side of the room And flecked the canvas with daubs of mud; He wiped it down with a housemaid's broom, And gummed in the middle a jackdaw's plume And ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, May 13, 1914 • Various
... have been improved by a little more soap and water, and a good stiff broom, that did not really matter, as he was generally sitting outside on a bench beside a beehive, with a black-and-white Manx cat upon his knee, and a tame jackdaw hanging in a wicker cage by the window, exactly like a coloured frontispiece in a ...
— The Madcap of the School • Angela Brazil
... is ivery man who has grounnds for his opinin. D'ye think, because Dockers Short, an' Bist, an' Kinyon, an' Cuckoo, an' Jackdaw, an' Starling, an' Co., don't know the dire effecks of calomel an' drastics on the buddy, I don't know't? Her eye, her tongue, her skin, her voice, her elastic walk, all tell me she has not been robbed of her vital resources. ...
— Hard Cash • Charles Reade
... more of lesser degree,— In sooth, a goodly company; And they served the Lord Primate on bended knee. Never, I ween, was a prouder seen, Read of in books, or dreamt of in dreams, Than the Cardinal Lord Archbishop of Rheims! In and out through the motley rout, That little Jackdaw kept hopping about: Here and there, like a dog in a fair, Over comfits and cates, and dishes and plates, Cowl and cope, and rochet and pall, Miter and crosier! he hopped upon all. With a saucy air, he perched on the chair Where, in state, the great Lord ...
— Standard Selections • Various
... that ease and self-possession which can only be acquired by long habitual intercourse with well-bred persons, this surely is the wisest course that could be adopted, and a hundred degrees above that fidgety, jackdaw-like assumption of nonchalance with which the ill-bred amongst ourselves seek to ...
— Impressions of America - During the years 1833, 1834 and 1835. In Two Volumes, Volume I. • Tyrone Power
... edge of the forest, was worth noticing, and was watched long through the glasses; namely, two or three large trees, from which dangled a multitude of the pendant nests of the Merles: {209} birds of the size of a jackdaw, brown and yellow, and mocking- birds, too, of no small ability. The pouches, two feet long and more, swayed in the breeze, fastened to the end of the boughs with a few threads. Each had, about half-way down, an opening into the round sac below, in and ...
— At Last • Charles Kingsley
... uncertain steps next bring me under a plane, and I am forced to admire it; I do not like planes, but this is so straight of trunk, so vast of size, and so immense of height that I cannot choose but look up into it. A jackdaw, perched on an upper bough, makes off as I glance up. But the trees constantly afford unexpected pleasure; you wander among the timber of the world, now under the shadow of the trees which the Red Indian ...
— Nature Near London • Richard Jefferies
... opening. The first two iron bars were so placed that it was only necessary to remove one to make room for my body. Further up there were others, more close together. The fire had not been lighted for many years; there was no soot in the passage. There was a jackdaw's nest high up. I could see the old jackdaw looking down at me. Up above her head was a little square of sky. I did not doubt that when I got to the top I should be able to scramble out of that square on ...
— Martin Hyde, The Duke's Messenger • John Masefield
... and good all round. He will not starve in the desert. No wholesome food comes amiss to him—grub, slug, or snail, fruit, eggs, a live mouse or a dead rat, and he can deal with them all. Such are the magpie, the crow, the jackdaw, and all of that ilk; and these are the birds that are found in all countries and climates, and ...
— Concerning Animals and Other Matters • E.H. Aitken, (AKA Edward Hamilton)
... course the Jackdaw descends into the plains of the North-west Punjaub, is very numerous near the foot of the hills, and has been found in cis-Indus as far east as Umballa, and south at Ferozpoor, Jhelum, and Kalabagh. In Trans-Indus it extends unto the Dehra Ghazi ...
— The Nests and Eggs of Indian Birds, Volume 1 • Allan O. Hume
... she was so busy with herself, that, although close to him, she never sees he—always remembering that the night was dark. So Poll turned her eyes up, for all the world like a dying jackdaw." ...
— Jacob Faithful • Captain Frederick Marryat
... I will tell somebody that's awake. I dreamed that a jackdaw came in and flew off with that thin paper thing that was on the chest of drawers with the gilt button at the corner, and then I dreamed I got up and found this roll of paper up the chimney. And when I woke ...
— Oswald Bastable and Others • Edith Nesbit
... Crane Hamlin Garland The Crow William Canton To the Cuckoo John Logan The Cuckoo Frederick Locker-Lampson To the Cuckoo William Wordsworth The Eagle Alfred Tennyson The Hawkbit Charles G. D. Roberts The Heron Edward Hovell-Thurlow The Jackdaw William Cowper The Green Linnet William Wordsworth To the Man-of-War-Bird Walt Whitman The Maryland Yellow-Throat Henry Van Dyke Lament of a Mocking-bird Frances Anne Kemble "O Nightingale! Thou Surely Art" William ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 4 (of 4) • Various
... began to improve in looks with unusual rapidity, just as a flower bud, that but yesterday was almost dying, suddenly unfolds after a plentiful and warm rain. The freckles ran off her soft face, and the uncomprehending, troubled expression, like that of a young jackdaw, had disappeared from the dark eyes, and they had grown brighter and had begun to sparkle. The body grew stronger and filled out; the lips grew red. But Lichonin, seeing Liubka every day, did not notice this and did not believe those compliments ...
— Yama (The Pit) • Alexandra Kuprin |
