"Parrot" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... 1820) there is an understanding and characteristic picture of the men (and some women) of the tribe of the Tecunas moving in procession through the woods mostly naked, except for wearing animal heads and masks—the masks representing Cranes of various kinds, Ducks, the Opossum, the Jaguar, the Parrot, etc., probably ...
— Pagan & Christian Creeds - Their Origin and Meaning • Edward Carpenter
... Anna liked the parrot very well. She was fond of cats too and of horses, but best of all animals she loved the dog and best of all dogs, little Baby, the first gift from her friend, ...
— Three Lives - Stories of The Good Anna, Melanctha and The Gentle Lena • Gertrude Stein
... summoned, brought in first some dry biscuits in deep tin boxes, those crisp, insipid English cakes which seem to have been made for a parrot's beak, and soldered into metal cases for a voyage round the world. Next she fetched some little gray linen doilies, folded square, those tea-napkins which in thrifty families never get washed. A third time she came in with the sugar basin and cups; then she departed ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume VIII. • Guy de Maupassant
... number, not counting the parrot, and all male. There was Pa Tuxton, an old feller with a beard and glasses; a fat uncle; a big brother, who worked in a bank and was dressed like Moses in all his glory; and a little brother with a snub nose, that cheeky you'd have ...
— The Man Upstairs and Other Stories • P. G. Wodehouse
... hotel in which we stayed on our first visit there was a green-and-yellow parrot which was very tame. His accomplishments included the saying "Marietta, padrona, and hello" quite clearly, singing and laughing. Its mistress made it flirt with a highly coloured young lady on a poster in ...
— The Shores of the Adriatic - The Austrian Side, The Kuestenlande, Istria, and Dalmatia • F. Hamilton Jackson
... the mind; Which, having found an equal flame, Unites, and both become the same, In different breasts together burn, Together both to ashes turn. But women now feel no such fire, And only know the gross desire. Their passions move in lower spheres, Where'er caprice or folly steers, A dog, a parrot, or an ape, Or some worse brute in human shape, Engross the fancies of the fair, The few soft moments they can spare, From visits to receive and pay, From scandal, politics, and play; From fans, and flounces, and brocades, ...
— Poems (Volume II.) • Jonathan Swift
... of his brain that fought him. It kept telling him, like a parrot, that it was a tress of Marette's hair about Kedsty's throat, and that it was the hair that had choked him. But Marette would explain that, too. He was sure of it. In the face of the facts below he was illogical and unreasonable. ...
— The Valley of Silent Men • James Oliver Curwood
... girls! Passel o' girls!" screamed the parrot, as we lifted the latch and walked up the little bricked pathway, bordered with lady-slippers and prince's feather, to the porch, which was ...
— Holiday Stories for Young People • Various
... many years of utter devotion, to her grandson, who adored her; then the Great War and the Battle of the Falkland Islands, which left her absolutely bereft, with the care of the boy's greatest treasure, even the grey parrot, ...
— The Hawk of Egypt • Joan Conquest
... lie bare and exposed to the sun. Here and there in the crystal pools among the rocks, fish have been left by the tide, and as you step over the congewoi, whose teats spurt out jets of water to the pressure of your foot, large silvery bream and gaily-hued parrot-fish rush off and hide themselves from view. But tear off a piece of congewoi, open it, and throw the sanguinary-coloured delicacy into the water, and presently you will see the parrot-fish dart out eagerly, and begin to ...
— By Rock and Pool on an Austral Shore, and Other Stories • Louis Becke
... three words I had, parrot-like, learned by heart, astonished that such sounds could mean anything, astonished, too, at their being understood. We started, he running at full speed, I dragged along and jerked about in his light chariot, wrapped in oilcloth, shut up as if ...
— Madame Chrysantheme Complete • Pierre Loti
... been absently watching while the cook turned his treasures out upon his bunk, and pawed them over with trembling hands. There were innumerable little things, besides a stiff white shirt, a cheap shiny Bible, a stuffed parrot and several wads of clothes. And among the mess Jim caught sight of a piece of stitched canvas ...
— The Stolen Singer • Martha Idell Fletcher Bellinger
... returned to my bedroom. "Intolerable," I heard myself repeating like a parrot that knew no other word. A bath was just what I had needed. Could I have lain for a long time basking in very hot water, and then have sponged myself with cold water, I should have emerged calm and brave; comparatively so, at any rate. I should have looked less ghastly, and have had less of a headache, ...
— Seven Men • Max Beerbohm
... return I found them still slumbering, so I again lay down to think over our situation. Just at that moment I was attracted by the sight of a very small parrot, which Jack afterwards told me was called a paroquet. It was seated on a twig that overhung Peterkin's head, and I was speedily lost in admiration of its bright-green plumage, which was mingled with other gay colours. While I looked I observed ...
— The Coral Island • R.M. Ballantyne
... of disaster. When a drive has been badly foozled, the readiest and most usual explanation is that the eye has been taken off the ball, and the wise old men who have been watching shake their heads solemnly, and utter that parrot-cry of the links, "Keep your eye on the ball." Certainly this is a good and necessary rule so far as it goes; but I do not believe that one drive in a hundred is missed because the eye has not been kept on the ball. On the other hand, I believe that one of the most fruitful ...
— The Complete Golfer [1905] • Harry Vardon
... DEC and contributed greatly to the design of the PDP-10 model KL10. 2. The name of the company formed by Dave Poole, one of the principal Super Foonly designers, and one of hackerdom's more colorful personalities. Many people remember the parrot which sat on Poole's shoulder and was a regular companion. 3. Any of the machines built by Poole's company. The first was the F-1 (a.k.a. Super Foonly), which was the computational engine used to create the graphics in the movie "TRON". The F-1 was the fastest PDP-10 ever built, but only ...
— The Jargon File, Version 4.0.0
... his aunt. "I should hope not! A monkey would be worse than a dog, a cat or a parrot. I hope you don't think of bringing ...
— Bunny Brown and His Sister Sue at Aunt Lu's City Home • Laura Lee Hope
... in passing in and out; and poor old Sol, when Walter was not there, would come and lean against the doorpost, resting his weary wig as near the shoe-buckles of the guardian genius of his trade and shop as he could. But no fierce idol with a mouth from ear to ear, and a murderous visage made of parrot's feathers, was ever more indifferent to the appeals of its savage votaries, than was the Midshipman to these marks ...
— Dombey and Son • Charles Dickens
... kicks, and thumps he awoke. When asked his name and where he came from, he made some sounds, which were at last understood to be, 'Want to be a soldier, as father was;' 'Don't know;' and 'Horse home.' These sentences he repeated over and over again like a parrot, and at last the captain decided to send his new recruit to the police office. Here he was asked his name, where he came from, &c., &c., but the result of the police inspector's questioning was the same: the ...
— The True Story Book • Andrew Lang
... learning things by rote, and reciting them parrot-like in the schoolroom, rested on the truth that a thing merely read or heard, and never verbally reproduced, contracts the weakest possible adhesion in the mind. Verbal recitation or reproduction is thus a highly important kind of reactive ...
— Talks To Teachers On Psychology; And To Students On Some Of Life's Ideals • William James
... and expect an A. One of them came to me yesterday, when I had given him a C, and whined around my desk until I finally told him I did not consider his performance remarkable in a young man of eighteen, however much so it might be in a poll parrot ...
— Tutors' Lane • Wilmarth Lewis
... there was a parrot—a great green and red parrot that at that moment was hanging by its claws to the roof of its cage and was still emitting the raucous squawks that sounded like the talking of a hundred pirates all ...
— Billie Bradley on Lighthouse Island - The Mystery of the Wreck • Janet D. Wheeler
... bearing great resemblance to them, may be added logicians and sophisters, fellows that talk as much by rote as a parrot; who shall run down a whole gossiping of old women, nay, silence the very noise of a belfry, with louder clappers than those of the steeple; and if their unappeasable clamorousness were their only fault ...
— In Praise of Folly - Illustrated with Many Curious Cuts • Desiderius Erasmus
... with nodding to the auctioneer; and the lips of the latter had barely parted to parrot the bid when Victor sprang to his feet, his features working, his limbs shaking so that the legs of the chair beside him, whose back he seized, chattered on the floor, while the high-pitched voice broke ...
— Red Masquerade • Louis Joseph Vance
... back to the hall. The house was exhaling a frightful stench—the odor of cheap kerosene, of things that passed there for food, of animals human and lower, of death and decay. On her way out she dropped a dollar into the lap of the little girl with the mange. A parrot was shrieking from an upper window. On the topmost fire escape was a row of geraniums blooming sturdily. Her taxicab had moved up the street, pushed out of place by a hearse—a white hearse, with polished mountings, the horses caparisoned in white ...
— Susan Lenox: Her Fall and Rise • David Graham Phillips
... goin' to do to-day, Triny?" he asked, briskly. "When you goin' over to see the Deerings' parrot? There ain't another such bird in America. You go over there this morning and see that parrot. Don't loll about the house. Don't be lazy!" Whereupon, with less profanity, but as much of autocracy as was ever displayed by an Irish boss whipping into shape the lowliest of his Italian gang, Mr. McBride ...
— Golden Stories - A Selection of the Best Fiction by the Foremost Writers • Various
... the commotion among dealers and their sensali or jackals. These latter are versed in intrigue and mystification, with enough intelligence to tell a good picture from a bad one, and a parrot-like acquaintance with names and schools. They are of all classes, from the decayed gentleman and artist, to shopkeepers, cobblers, cooks, and tailors, who find in the large commissions gained a temptation to forsake their petty legitimate callings ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 6, No. 37, November, 1860 • Various
... coasts, above, Where silver ripples break the stream's Long blue, from some roof-sheltering grove A hidden parrot scolds ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 3 (of 4) • Various
... before The goddess Venus, and to Bacchus fell A willing victim; while his babbling mouth Did spew dire boastings of official pull, While Folly's goblet filled unto the brim Slopped over, when in wordy contest, he With green-winged parrot did engage, and fain Its neck would there have wrung because its hue Proclaimed not sympathy with those who bear The orange flag when they procession make! The guardsmen of the peace should ever soar On wings of probity and moral worth As Erin's Isle had furnished ...
— 'A Comedy of Errors' in Seven Acts • Spokeshave (AKA Old Fogy)
... every family owns a pericos, kept as American children keep canary birds. The pericos is about the size and color of a Crow, but has a hard white hood that entirely covers its head. The people teach it but one phrase, which it repeats continually, parrot fashion. The words are, "Comusta pari? Pericos tao." (How are you, father? Parrot-man.) "Pari" means padre or priest. The people address the pericos as "pari" because its white head, devoid of feathers, seems to resemble the shaven crowns of ...
— Philippine Folklore Stories • John Maurice Miller
... he sat in her theatre box Between the acts, "What beastly weather! How like a parrot the lover talks— And the lady is tame, and the villain stalks— I ...
— The Kingdom of Love - and Other Poems • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... to-night, if you please, and in case the housecleaning man gets all the ice cream up from under the sitting-room matting, and makes a snowball of it for the poll parrot to play horse with, I'll tell you next about Bully and ...
— Bully and Bawly No-Tail • Howard R. Garis
... much—the smell of violets, of good tobacco, of fragrant coffee; the gleaming damasks, china and silver of the breakfast table; the trim, fresh-looking maid, with her white cap, apron, and cuffs, who came and went; the thoroughbred setter dozing in the sun, and the parrot dozing and chuckling to himself on his perch upon ...
— The Pit • Frank Norris
... no need o' bein' so surprised," she said in that peculiar tone with which one who has spent another's money always defends his purchase,—"it's a stuffed parrot ...
— Susan Clegg and Her Friend Mrs. Lathrop • Anne Warner
... serpent I loaded one of my barrels with small shot, that I might kill a bird for my supper, the pangs of hunger warning me that I should not get on at all without eating. I very soon knocked over a pea-fowl and a parrot. Of the latter I had frequently eaten pies during our journey. I was thus in no fear of starving, and I thought that if I could have had Solon with me I should have had no cause to fear. As it was, I felt very solitary, ...
— My First Voyage to Southern Seas • W.H.G. Kingston
... one nor the other. Yet she had a keen eye for dress—too keen an eye indeed. Only last night she had spent an hour anxiously cutting old Peter's hair and beard, and Mr. Muller could not but remember that he was a handsome young fellow, and do what she would with Peter, he was old and beaked like a parrot. "Besides, he is only her stepfather," he reasoned, "and I am to be her husband: she ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Volume 11, No. 26, May, 1873 • Various
... a centered cross of three equal bands-the vertical part is yellow (hoist side), black, and white-the horizontal part is yellow (top), black, and white; superimposed in the center of the cross is a red disk bearing a sisserou parrot encircled by 10 green five-pointed stars edged in yellow; the 10 stars represent the ...
— The 1998 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... should be so near. Life has no sense of kinship with death. This is why, no doubt, a sort of mechanical instinctive hope is forever springing up afresh in us, troubling our reason, and casting doubt on the verdict of science. All life is tenacious and persistent. It is like the parrot in the fable, who, at the very moment when its neck is being wrung, still repeats with its ...
— Amiel's Journal • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... overhead with the lines of their jutting balconies, chimneys, and cornices; and now glancing toward the canal, where he could see the noiseless black boats meeting and passing. There was no sound in the calle save his own footfalls and the harsh scream of a parrot that hung in the sunshine in one of the loftiest windows; but the note of a peasant crying pots of pinks and roses in the campo came softened to Don Ippolito's sense, and he heard the gondoliers as they hoarsely jested together and gossiped, with the canal between ...
— A Foregone Conclusion • W. D. Howells
... not agree with him. Some of them remained about, smiling; others went away. The diminutive Pee-wee seemed to amuse them quite as much as the diminutive parrot, but all were agreed (as they continually remarked to each other) that ...
— Tom Slade at Temple Camp • Percy K. Fitzhugh
... PARROT.—This is a sign of foreign travel, the making of many friends, and much mental energy; sometimes it gives a hint that there is an inclination ...
— Telling Fortunes By Tea Leaves • Cicely Kent
... friend, who has a mania for testing his wife's fidelity, and who accomplishes one of Paul's favourite fairy-tale or rather pantomime endings by coming down with fifteen thousand francs for an old mistress (she has lost her beauty by the bite of a parrot, and is the mother of the extraordinarily virtuous Marie); a scapegrace "young first" or half-first; a superior ditto, who is an artist, who rejects the advances of Marie's mother, and finally marries Marie herself, etc. etc. You might change over ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 2 - To the Close of the 19th Century • George Saintsbury
... trip, Mister Kirby?" Stein peered at him over a pair of old-fashioned, steel-bowed spectacles which perched on his sharp parrot's beak ...
— Rebel Spurs • Andre Norton
... Shakespeare, and yet Valentine, as we shall see, is a far better portrait of the master than Biron. This untimely blindness of the critics is, evidently, due to the fact that Coleridge has hardly mentioned "The Two Gentlemen of Verona," and they have consequently been unable to parrot his opinions. ...
— The Man Shakespeare • Frank Harris
... these words (of the king), the Muni controlling his outer senses entered into meditation, sitting in the shade of that very mango tree where he was. And there fell upon the lap of the seated Muni a mango that was juicy and untouched by the beak of a parrot or any other bird. That best of Munis, taking up the fruit and mentally pronouncing certain mantras over it, gave it unto the king as the means of his obtaining an incomparable offspring. And the great Muni, possessed also of extraordinary wisdom, addressing the monarch, ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Part 2 • Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa
... big Abbe Le Blanc, the hypocrite Batteux. The big abbe is only spiteful before he has had his dinner; his coffee taken, he throws himself into an arm-chair, his feet against the ledge of the fireplace, and sleeps like an old parrot on its perch. If the noise becomes violent he yawns, stretches his arms, rubs his eyes, and says: "Well, well, what is it?" "It is whether Piron has more wit than Voltaire." "Let us understand; is it wit that you are talking about, or is it taste? For as to ...
— Diderot and the Encyclopaedists - Volume II. • John Morley
... a parrot in your fez and cabaja, and it does my heart good to see the little black shadow turned into a rainbow," said Uncle Alec, surveying the bright figure ...
— Eight Cousins • Louisa M. Alcott
... their blossoming time I mentioned the paroquets which occasionally visited us but had their breeding-place some distance away. This bird was one of the two common parrots of the district, the other larger species being the Patagonian parrot, Conarus patagonus, the Loro barranquero or Cliff Parrot of the natives. In my early years this bird was common on the treeless pampas extending for hundreds of miles south of Buenos Ayres as well as in Patagonia, and bred in holes it excavated ...
— Far Away and Long Ago • W. H. Hudson
... The privilege of having a pannikin of hot water when the gangs came in from field labour in the evening has been withdrawn. The shepherds, hut-keepers, and all other prisoners, whether at the stations of Longridge or the Cascades (where the English convicts are stationed) are forbidden to keep a parrot or any other bird. The plaiting of straw hats during the prisoners' leisure hours is also prohibited. At the settlement where the "old hands" are located railed boundaries have been erected, beyond which no prisoner must pass unless to work. Two days ago Job Dodd, a negro, let his jacket ...
— For the Term of His Natural Life • Marcus Clarke
... of an imported Malaga jackass," he said between his teeth, "I'd have you know that I'm related on my mother's side to Carbine, winner of the Melbourne Cup, and where I come from we aren't accustomed to being ridden over roughshod by any parrot-mouthed, pig-headed mule in a pop-gun ...
— The Jungle Book • Rudyard Kipling
... a number of other things; but on account of limited time, we went back home. The sail up the breezy and sparkling river was a charming experience, and would have been satisfyingly sentimental and romantic but for the interruptions of the tug's pet parrot, whose tireless comments upon the scenery and the guests were always this- worldly, and often profane. He had also a superabundance of the discordant, ear-splitting, metallic laugh common to his breed—a machine-made laugh, a Frankenstein laugh, with ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... they form no feature in the country, and are only interesting to the naturalist. There is the kiwi, or apteryx, which is about as large as a turkey, but only found on the West Coast. There is a green ground parrot too, called the kakapo, a night bird, and hardly ever found on the eastern side of the island. There is also a very rare and as yet unnamed kind of kaka, much larger and handsomer than the kaka itself, of which ...
— A First Year in Canterbury Settlement • Samuel Butler
... get a good dish of mutteel, carp, or a small fish called "flatties." I have never seen any of the salmon tribe, or any fish like a sea or river trout. Wild swans—both black and white—quails, snipes, cranes, and water-hens, are everywhere abundant, and in the Bush, the varieties of the parrot kind are out of number. Kangaroos, opossums, and flying-squirrels, are common near the town, and afford plenty of amusement to the sportsman. No game license required! Sunday used to be the tradesman's day ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 55, No. 340, February, 1844 • Various
... consider this invitation from all sides before he gave his reply, cocking his head on one side like a parrot as he ...
— Mr. Wicker's Window • Carley Dawson
... breakers, like the hollow of a shell. For weeks he let them perish, gave never a helping sign, But sat on his oiled platform to commune with the divine, But sat on his high terrace, with the tikis by his side, And stared on the blue ocean, like a parrot, ruby-eyed. Dawn as yellow as sulphur leaped on the mountain height: Out on the round of the sea the gems of the morning light, Up from the round of the sea the streamers of the sun; - But down in the depths of the valley the day was not begun. In the blue of the woody twilight burned red the ...
— Ballads • Robert Louis Stevenson
... and round again, and where it passed the air was warm. Then it perched on the fender. The children looked at each other. Then Cyril put out a hand towards the bird. It put its head on one side and looked up at him, as you may have seen a parrot do when it is just going to speak, so that the children were hardly astonished at all when it said, 'Be careful; I ...
— The Phoenix and the Carpet • E. Nesbit
... again examined me, and decided that, as I did not walk on four legs, I must be a new kind of featherless parrot. Thereupon I was given a pole to perch on, instead of a nice warm bed to lie in; and every day the queen's fowler used to come and whistle tunes for me to learn. In the meantime, however, I improved my knowledge of the language, and at last I spoke ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol. I • Various
... his gun with the intention of shooting a specimen of the lovely Blue Mountain parrot or lory, and this he meant to skin and preserve. He had seen the birds in flocks when out without his gun, and stood entranced at the beauty of the little creatures, with their breasts gleaming with scarlet, crimson, ...
— First in the Field - A Story of New South Wales • George Manville Fenn
... was in the lobby of the cottage, and then he discovered,—on the words "walk in" being reiterated very gruffly,—that it was a grey parrot which had been thus taught to use the language of hospitality! Will laughed, and was about to turn on his heel when he observed a female reclining on a couch in one of the rooms. She looked up quickly on hearing his step and laugh, and Will, hesitating for a ...
— Over the Rocky Mountains - Wandering Will in the Land of the Redskin • R.M. Ballantyne
... piece of waste ground outside the town, and all Orte flocked out there as the sun went down, shouting and cheering for me as though Pipistrello were a king or a hero. The populace is always thus—the giddiest-pated fool that ever screamed, as loud and as ignorant as a parrot, as changeful as the wind in March, as base as the cuckoo. The same people threw stones at me when they brought me to this prison—the same people that feasted and applauded me then, that first day of my return to ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 26, July 1880. • Various
... stronger against Tasso's 'Gierusalemme': it is true he has very fine and glaring rays of poetry; but then they are only meteors, they dazzle, then disappear, and are succeeded by false thoughts, poor 'concetti', and absurd impossibilities; witness the Fish and the Parrot; extravagancies unworthy of an heroic poem, and would much better have become Ariosto, who ...
— The PG Edition of Chesterfield's Letters to His Son • The Earl of Chesterfield
... 'And the parrot said to the falling tree, Wait, brother, till I fetch a prop!' said Gobind with a grim chuckle. 'God has given me eighty years, and it may be some over. I cannot look for more than day granted by day and as a favour at this ...
— Life's Handicap • Rudyard Kipling
... to Tooni, who could not understand it; but Sonny Sahib perversely refused to talk in his own tongue. She did all she could to help him. When he was a year old she cut an almond in two, and gave half to Sonny Sahib and half to the green parrot that swung all day in a cage in the door of the hut and had a fine gift of conversation; if anything would make the baby talk properly that would. Later on she taught him all the English words she remembered ...
— The Story of Sonny Sahib • Sara Jeannette Duncan
... the anachronistic and clandestine Eudo's lair, we used to hear the coughing parrot. That old bird, worn threadbare, and of a faded green hue, never ceased to imitate the fits of coughing which two years before had torn Adolphe Piot's lungs, who died in the midst of his family under such sad circumstances. Those days we would return with our ears full of the obstinate clamor ...
— Light • Henri Barbusse
... most amazing features in the appearance of London at the present time is surely the absence of the signs of widespread mourning. The windows of the shops are full of all the colours of the parrot. The hats are as bright as a scrap-book. The confectioners' shops are making a desperate effort to look as if nothing had happened. The death of a single monarch would have darkened Christmas in Regent Street more effectually than the ...
— The Pleasures of Ignorance • Robert Lynd
... his rural home, called Wheatland, near Lancaster, Pa. He used to visit Washington frequently, and was always welcomed in society, where he made an imposing appearance, although he had the awkward habit of carrying his head slightly to one side, like a poll-parrot. He always attempted to be facetious, especially when conversing with young ladies, but when any political question was discussed in his presence, he was either silent, or expressed himself with great circumspection. From his first entry into the ...
— Perley's Reminiscences, Vol. 1-2 - of Sixty Years in the National Metropolis • Benjamin Perley Poore
... parrot," Hassan replied. "I hear, and I repeat. For four years I was houseboy to an American family, from USIS, what you call ...
— The Egyptian Cat Mystery • Harold Leland Goodwin
... was to say their tongues are hung in the middle he'd be only tellin' half the truth. Not that you ain't popular with me, James. You are. I think the world of you. How can I help it when you remind me all the time of my aunt's pet parrot in yore face and language. Except you ain't the right colour. If yore whiskers ...
— The Heart of the Range • William Patterson White
... will catch him! These west-country yokels, to fancy that they can do Tom Thurnall! It's adding insult to injury, as Sam Weller's parrot has it." ...
— Two Years Ago, Volume I • Charles Kingsley
... varieties are very numerous. Of the parrot tribe alone I could, while I am writing, count up from memory fourteen different sorts. Hawks are very numerous, so are quails. A single snipe has been shot. Ducks, geese and other aquatic birds are often ...
— A Complete Account of the Settlement at Port Jackson • Watkin Tench
... that horrible parrot. Benis insists on keeping it. Some soldier friend of his left it to him. A really terrible bird. And its language is disgraceful. It doesn't know anything but slang. Not even 'Polly wants a cracker.' You'll hardly believe me, but it says, 'Gimme ...
— The Window-Gazer • Isabel Ecclestone Mackay
... glad to see that story of Colonel Gregg in No. 19, for he was one of our ancestors. We have a parrot from the Isle of Pines, which seems to be a very smart bird. I would like to know if there is any particular way by which we can teach ...
— Harper's Young People, March 30, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... thought it a very extraordinary thing. Sam, on the other hand, was of the opinion that the "properiator" was playing some "imperence" with them. "Not content," he said, "vith writin' up Pickwick, they puts 'Moses' afore it, vich I call addin' insult to injury, as the parrot said ven they not only took him from his native land, but made him talk the English ...
— The Inns and Taverns of "Pickwick" - With Some Observations on their Other Associations • B.W. Matz
... standard of the faith even of the members of the Bonaparte family. Two days before this Christian circle at Madame Napoleon's, Madame de Chateaureine, with three other ladies, visited the Princesse Borghese. Not seeing a favourite parrot they had often previously admired, they inquired what was become ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... trick he has just played on the boastful but craven Falstaff, and the bustle and hilarity of the scene never flags for a moment. Even Francis, the drawer, whose vocabulary is limited to "Anon, anon, sir"—the fellow that had "fewer words than a parrot, and yet the son of a woman"—and the host himself, as perplexed as his servant when two customers call at once, contribute to the movement of the episode in its earlier stages. But the pace is, increased furiously ...
— Inns and Taverns of Old London • Henry C. Shelley
... but two subjects upon which one may discourse with a free imagination, and without the possibility of being controverted. You may talk of your dreams; and you may tell what you heard a parrot say. Both Morpheus and the bird are incompetent witnesses; and your listener dare not attack your recital. The baseless fabric of a vision, then, shall furnish my theme—chosen with apologies and regrets instead of the more limited field of ...
— The Four Million • O. Henry
... nine o'clock when we halted upon the outskirts of the dark forest. Hardly a ray of the hot sun penetrated the woods; all was gloomy and silent. Occasionally a parrot upon the borders of the forest uttered a shrill scream, and then spreading its gaudy wings sought shelter upon the bough of a tall tree, from whence it could watch ...
— The Gold Hunter's Adventures - Or, Life in Australia • William H. Thomes
... Admiralty being held at the Old Bailey, in May 1701, Capt. Kidd, Nicholas Churchill, James How, Robert Lumly, William Jenkins, Gabriel Loff, Hugh Parrot, Richard Barlicorn, Abel Owens and Darby Mullins, were arraigned for piracy and robbery on the high seas, and all found guilty except three; these were Robert Lumly, William Jenkins and Richard Barlicorn, ...
— The Pirates Own Book • Charles Ellms
... merry mime was Jacko! He could wink, and whiff tobacco, Like a man (an artful homo) and a brother. And the Parrot—ah! for patter, And capacity for chatter On—no matter much what matter, That gave scope for clitter-clatter, The world could hardly furnish such another. The Parrot was a bird That could talk great bosh with gravity; The Ape ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 104, January 28, 1893 • Various
... the giant perch, king, bonito, rhoombah, sweet-lips, parrot-fish, sea-mullet, and the sting-rays (brown and grey)—a harpoon and long line are used. When iron is not available a point is made of one of the black palms, the barb being strapped on with fibre, the binding being made impervious to water by a liberal coating ...
— Tropic Days • E. J. Banfield
... parrot's speech, the intonation so remarkable a copy of old Parrish's that Jim was flabbergasted. Nevertheless it was evident that Cain knew he ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, May, 1930 • Various
... as a crow now, and I want my breath to talk. I say, we have been sharp set. We began to feel like the talking parrot who was plucked by the monkey, ready to say, 'Oh, we have been having such a time!' Those Dwats ...
— Fix Bay'nets - The Regiment in the Hills • George Manville Fenn
... case referred to a small green parrot which George had been holding in both hands. In some way it had wriggled loose from his grasp and twisting its head around had taken a good sized bit of flesh out of the back of his hand. This was the cause of George's pain and his ...
— The Go Ahead Boys and the Treasure Cave • Ross Kay
... makes a little noise in its throat. But if it is silent, there are numbers of parrots, and cockatoos, to fill the air with their screams. In England, these birds are thought a great deal of, but in Australia, they are killed to make into pies, or into soup. Parrot-pie and cockatoo-soup, are common dishes there. However, many of the parrots and cockatoos, are caught by the blacks, and sold to the English, who send them to England in ...
— Far Off • Favell Lee Mortimer
... him, and he exclaimed in a harsh, croaking voice, 'One eye!' Thereupon two or three queer people poked their heads out of the coach window. There was one old woman with false teeth, in an unpleasant state of decay, and a voice like a parrot. 'One eye!' she shrieked, as she gazed on me with an eye as stony as the coachman. A pale, simpering miss smirked in my face, and cried, 'One eye!' and a military gentleman, with a ghastly frown, hissed forth the same ...
— The Three Brides, Love in a Cottage, and Other Tales • Francis A. Durivage
... followed to the letter, produced no little agitation at the breakfast table. Jennie simply announced her intention of immediate departure; all questions as to her health, happiness, and possible reasons were met only with a parrot-like repetition of the fact. Upon closer pressing she gave way to hysterical tears, Dorothea the while assisting the scene with round, innocent eyes and the bewildered air of one suddenly made aware ...
— Stories from Everybody's Magazine • 1910 issues of Everybody's Magazine
... totally different from the one I know, and the narrowness of the escape makes me feel tolerant towards the young people who give up typewriting and book-keeping, and go out into an unfriendly world determined to be Mary Pickfords and Charlie Chaplins. A boy boards a ship merely to get a parrot, and his friend, who brought it from Burma, has gone to Leadenhall Street; there is a long interval, with those books lying in a bunk. Such a trivial incident—something like it happening every week ...
— Waiting for Daylight • Henry Major Tomlinson
... a parrot market in every port, however, and this is a popular place of resort. Here are cool trees and drinking stands, or booths, where cocoanut milk and ...
— A Little Journey to Puerto Rico - For Intermediate and Upper Grades • Marian M. George
... little heart! Miss, why so impatient? Hav'n't you as genteel a parlour as any lady in the land could wish to sit down in?—The bed's turn'd up in a chest of drawers that's stain'd to look like mahogany:—there's two poets, and a poll parrot, the best images the jew had on his head, over the mantlepiece; and was I to leave you all alone by yourself, isn't there an eight day clock in the corner, that when one's waiting, lonesome like, for any body, keeps going tick-tack, ...
— John Bull - The Englishman's Fireside: A Comedy, in Five Acts • George Colman
... in surprise, toward this querulous "child" as the girls fancied it, though the Judge was already smiling his understanding of the matter. Then there appeared in the doorway a parrot, of wonderful plumage and exaggerated awkwardness; who waddled from side to side, climbed one side of its mistress's gown to her shoulder and walked head-first down the other, rolling its eyes and emitting the most absurd moans till the two ...
— Dorothy's Travels • Evelyn Raymond
... dixit coloris, ille deformis contendit. Hoc contradictionis studium, quod ubique in hisce exercitationibus se prodit, sophista dignius est, quamque philosopho."—Bayle: Article "Cardan." (Sir Thomas Browne, in one of his Commonplace Books, observes—"If Cardan saith a parrot is a beautiful bird, Scaliger will set his wits on work to prove it ...
— Jerome Cardan - A Biographical Study • William George Waters
... you next about Buddy helping Sammie Littletail, that is if the man comes to cut our grass and lets our puppy dog hide under the door-mat to scare the parrot next door. ...
— Buddy And Brighteyes Pigg - Bed Time Stories • Howard R. Garis
... on the highway, met a huge elephant, bearing his royal master and his suite, and also his favorite cat and dog, and parrot and monkey. The great beast and his attendants were followed by an admiring crowd, taking up all of the road. "What fools you are," said the Rat to the people, "to make such a hubbub over an elephant. Is it his great ...
— Aesop's Fables - A New Revised Version From Original Sources • Aesop
... to his castle he caught a young parrot, which, after a long time, he taught to speak and to call him by his name. It was so long since he had heard any voice, that it was a comfort to listen even to a ...
— Young Folks Treasury, Volume 3 (of 12) - Classic Tales And Old-Fashioned Stories • Various
... eagerness, takes it, bears it away. At nine o'clock he is in the bosom of his family, flings a jest to his wife, snatches a loud kiss from her, gulps down a cup of coffee, or scolds his children. At a quarter to ten he puts in an appearance at the Mairie. There, stuck upon a stool, like a parrot on its perch, warmed by Paris town, he registers until four o'clock, with never a tear or a smile, the deaths and births of an entire district. The sorrow, the happiness, of the parish flow beneath his pen—as the essence of the Constitutionnel traveled before ...
— The Girl with the Golden Eyes • Honore de Balzac
... gratified the old gentleman extremely; he hails it as an auspicious omen of the revival of falconry, and does not despair but the time will come when it will be again the pride of a fine lady to carry about a noble falcon, in preference to a parrot or ...
— Bracebridge Hall, or The Humorists • Washington Irving
... pet animals may be studied, using the same order and general method of treatment: pigeon, cat, canary, guinea pig, white mouse, raccoon, squirrel, parrot. ...
— Ontario Teachers' Manuals: Nature Study • Ontario Ministry of Education
... he laughed softly, or gazed and gazed at her, and then glanced towards the others. She did not talk much, but every word that she uttered aroused his admiration. But he was most of all captivated when she sat quietly apart, heedless of every one: at such times he resembled an old parrot expectant of sugar. ...
— Absalom's Hair • Bjornstjerne Bjornson
... borrow every changing shape To find expression... dance, dance Like a dancing bear, Cry like a parrot, chatter like an ape. Let us take the air, in a tobacco trance— Well! and what if she should die some afternoon, Afternoon grey and smoky, evening yellow and rose; Should die and leave me sitting pen in hand With the smoke coming down above the housetops; Doubtful, for quite a while Not ...
— Poems • T. S. [Thomas Stearns] Eliot
... thicket my heart's bird! Slight and small the lovely cry Came trickling down, but no one heard. Parrot and cuckoo, crow, magpie Jarred horrid notes and the jangling jay Ripped the fine threads of song away, For why should peeping chick aspire To challenge their loud ...
— Country Sentiment • Robert Graves
... here to close this chapter; but finding that, as the parrot, which other while useth the form of a man's voice, yet being beaten and chaffed, returneth to his own natural voice, so some of our opposites, who have been but erst prating somewhat of the language of Canaan against us, finding themselves ...
— The Works of Mr. George Gillespie (Vol. 1 of 2) • George Gillespie
... Something new, eh? He has all the names for them. Yesterday it was "apports"—flowers that fell down from nowhere and hit you on the nose. He talks like a medium's parrot. He has only to close his eyes and along comes the parade. Spooks! Spooky spooks! And now he wants me to settle my worldly affairs and join in ...
— The Return of Peter Grimm • David Belasco
... of Arezzo, With the grave-clothes garb and swaddling barret (Why purse up mouth and beak in a pet so, You bald old saturnine poll-clawed parrot?) Not a poor glimmering Crucifixion, Where in the foreground kneels the donor? If such remain, as is my conviction, The hoarding it does you ...
— Introduction to Robert Browning • Hiram Corson
... hard word. There is no better time than his reading lesson in which to teach a child that the hard things of life are to be grappled with and overcome. A mistake also, I think, is that toilsome process of explanation which I sometimes find teachers following, under the impression that it will be "parrot work" (as the stock phrase of the "institutes" has it) for the pupils to read anything which they do not clearly and fully comprehend. Teachers' definitions, in such cases, I have often noticed, are no better than dictionary definitions, and surely everybody knows that few more fruitless things ...
— Birds and Bees, Sharp Eyes and, Other Papers • John Burroughs
... are as fond of creatures as I am," cried Miss Folly, turning her goggle eyes upon her parrot; "I have a fancy, I may say a passion, for them! I keep a regular 'happy family' at home—dogs, cats, mice, parrots, and pigeons, and a little pet alligator, the dearest duck of an alligator, that I've taught to eat out of my hand! You ...
— The Crown of Success • Charlotte Maria Tucker
... on our course, there was a large plain of about eight miles in breadth; but immediately at the foot of the hill, which was very abrupt (being the terminating point of a sandy ridge of which it was the northern extremity), there was a polygonum flat. We there saw a beautiful parrot, but could not procure it. The plain we next rode across was evidently subject to floods in many parts; the soil was a mixture of sand and clay. There was a good deal of grass here and there upon it, ...
— Expedition into Central Australia • Charles Sturt
... mention the fact that their ancestors left their totem signatures at certain points in their wanderings. The Patki people say that you will find on the rocks of Palatkwabi, the "Red Land of the South" from which they came, totems of the rain-cloud, sun, crane, parrot, etc. If we find these markings in the direction which they are thus definitely declared to exist, and the Hopi say similar pictures were made by their ancestors, there seems no reason to question such circumstantial ...
— Archeological Expedition to Arizona in 1895 • Jesse Walter Fewkes
... keep up a longer lookout, reentered, and was surprised to find a nice-looking young man by her side. He wore a heavy yellow watchguard, yellow kid gloves, and a moustache to match, patent-leather boots, a poll-parrot scarf, and a brilliant breast-pin. Ann Harriet was delighted to have such a companion; and her wish that he would enter into conversation ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 3, No. 1 January 1863 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... Miller. "You know how these Honduranian places are built, if a parrot scratches his feathers in the patio you can hear it in every room in the house. Well, she was reading on the balcony, and when her brother began to rage around and swear he'd have your blood, she heard him, and opened the shutters and came in. She didn't stay long, and she didn't ...
— Captain Macklin • Richard Harding Davis
... I awoke to find a quantity of beautiful, fresh flowers lying upon me and beside me! I sprang up, but could see nothing unusual, except that in the house above me there was a window filled with fragrant shrubs and flowers, behind which a parrot talked and screamed incessantly. I picked up the scattered flowers, tied them together, and stuck the nosegay in my button-hole. Then I began to discourse with the parrot; it amused me to see him get up and down in his gilded cage with all sorts of odd twists and turns of his ...
— The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries: - Masterpieces of German Literature Translated into English, Volume 5. • Various
... That fellow dressed like a buffoon, with the parrot on his wrist,—for what purpose is he introduced ...
— A Wanderer in Venice • E.V. Lucas
... I was murmuring a few words of regret at her bad luck," continued Ella, "a sharp voice called out from a back room, 'Almiry! Almiry! come here.' It sounded very like a cross parrot, but it was the old lady, and while I put on my hat I heard her asking who was in the shop, and what we were 'gabbin' about.' Her daughter told her, and the old soul demanded to 'see the gal;' so I went ...
— A Garland for Girls • Louisa May Alcott
... a sudden jerk of his body that might have been intended for a bow. Before Keep could interrupt him, like a parrot reciting its lesson, ...
— The Red Cross Girl • Richard Harding Davis
... saw that he should not in the least discover Mrs. Farrinder's real opinion, and her dissimulation added to his impression that she was a woman with a policy. It was none of his business whether in her heart she thought Verena a parrot or a genius; it was perceptible to him that she saw she would be effective, would help the cause. He stood almost appalled for a moment, as he said to himself that she would take her up and the girl would be ruined, would force her note and become a screamer. But he quickly ...
— The Bostonians, Vol. I (of II) • Henry James
... I repeated. "Yes! I can remember that; but I shall be talking like a poll-parrot for I shan't have the least idea ...
— The Great Secret • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... all the crew were seized with colic, vomiting, and violent pains in the head and back. Two large fish had been caught and eaten by them, possibly whilst they were under the influence of the narcotic mentioned above. In every case, ten days elapsed before entire recovery. A parrot and dog which had also eaten of the fish died next day. Quiros' companions had suffered in the same way, and since Cook's voyage similar symptoms of poisoning have been noticed ...
— Celebrated Travels and Travellers - Part 2. The Great Navigators of the Eighteenth Century • Jules Verne
... quite aware of that," said the late passenger somewhat sharply, "but if people choose to make unjust and oppressive rules I don't mean to submit to them. Just think of a parrot, a horrid shrieking creature that every one acknowledges to be a nuisance, being allowed to travel free, or a baby, which is enough to drive one distracted when it squalls, as it always does in a railway carriage, while ...
— The Iron Horse • R.M. Ballantyne
... dress bordered with flowers, and a hat with a large parrot perched among bows of red and blue ribbons. The dust of the journey mingling with the rice powder on her cheeks, exaggerated her wrinkles; as when we saw her at Manila, she had given her ...
— An Eagle Flight - A Filipino Novel Adapted from Noli Me Tangere • Jose Rizal
... my Archy? 95 He mocks and mimics all he sees and hears, Yet with a quaint and graceful licence—Prithee For this once do not as Prynne would, were he Primate of England. With your Grace's leave, He lives in his own world; and, like a parrot 100 Hung in his gilded prison from the window Of a queen's bower over the public way, Blasphemes with a bird's mind:—his words, like arrows Which know no aim beyond the archer's wit, Strike sometimes what eludes philosophy.— 105 [TO ARCHY.] Go, sirrah, ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley Volume I • Percy Bysshe Shelley
... has been much writing and much talking on the science and art of teaching. But it must be confessed that, while this is desirable and in fact indispensable, much of it may be little more than a mere whitewash; much of it is simply parrot-like imitation; much of it is only "words, words, words." Far be it from me to underestimate the value of this professional and pedagogical phase of the teacher's equipment. Nevertheless, when all is said and duly considered, it is personality ...
— Rural Life and the Rural School • Joseph Kennedy
... hours without waking. Then he began to dream that he was once more fighting a duel, that the antagonist standing facing him was Herr Klueber, and on a fir-tree was sitting a parrot, and this parrot was Pantaleone, and he kept tapping with ...
— The Torrents of Spring • Ivan Turgenev
... an ignorance whose frankness redeemed it from offensiveness, vulgar with a vulgarity that expressed itself in such metaphors and similes as would have made its peace with the most implacable refinement. He drank hard, gambled high, swore like a parrot, scoffed at everything, was openly and proudly a rascal, did not know the meaning of fear, borrowed money abundantly, and squandered it with royal disregard. Desiring one day to go to Mobile, but reluctant ...
— The Collected Works of Ambrose Bierce • Ambrose Bierce
... scum of the seas," he bawled to the mate, and the crew gathered around the gun. "Lug up a case of ammunition and we'll shell that bush until even a parrot won't be ...
— Captain Scraggs - or, The Green-Pea Pirates • Peter B. Kyne
... brigands of our world means lower wages or less of the necessities and luxuries for all the people, and especially for the farmer. You know that it is habit with us of Wall Street to gloat over the doctrine of the 'System,' which the people parrot among themselves, the doctrine that the people at large are not affected by our gambling, because they, the people, having no surplus to gamble with, never come into Wall Street. And yet, knowing all this, you never thought, with all your wisdom and cynicism, that ...
— Friday, the Thirteenth • Thomas W. Lawson
... smite not again; for when a young Englishman, bearing an honorable name, vented his rage at losing by breaking a rake at Baden-Baden over the croupier's head, he merely turned round and beckoned to the attendant gendarme to remove him and the pieces, and then went on with his parrot-like "rouge ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 5, No. 3, March, 1852 • Various
... name is spelled variously, Ethelney, AEthelney, Ethelingay, &c. It was in Somersetshire, between the rivers Thone and Parrot.] ...
— King Alfred of England - Makers of History • Jacob Abbott
... of a young girl after having purchased a parrot? Is it not to fasten it up in a pretty cage, from which it ...
— The Physiology of Marriage, Part II. • Honore de Balzac
... who dispenses what in London is called milk, and is consequently a milk-maid, in a note pitched at the very top of her voice, is crying, "Be-louw!" While a ballad-singer dolefully drawls out The Ladie's Fall, an infant in her arms joins its treble pipe in chorus with the screaming parrot, which is on a lamp-iron over her head. On the roof of an opposite house are two cats, performing what an amateur of music might perhaps call a bravura ...
— The Works of William Hogarth: In a Series of Engravings - With Descriptions, and a Comment on Their Moral Tendency • John Trusler
... remembered how when I was a child a green parrot got out of its cage in one of the rich people's houses and wandered about the town for a whole month, flying from one garden to another, homeless and lonely. And Maria Victorovna reminded me ...
— The House with the Mezzanine and Other Stories • Anton Tchekoff
... take care of me all the time. I was very tired, and my eyes went shut on the pillow after that, before they had time to cry home-sick tears. And next day there were so many new things to see; two little puppies to make friends with, beside the parrot ...
— My Young Days • Anonymous
... memory, that, without learning, she could tell in what chapter any text of scripture was contained: on account of this singular property, one Gregory Basset, a rank papist, said she was deranged, and talked as a parrot, wild without meaning. At length, having tried every manner without effect to make her nominally a catholic, they condemned her. After this, one exhorted her to leave her opinions, and go home to her family, as she was poor and illiterate. "True, (said she) though ...
— Fox's Book of Martyrs - Or A History of the Lives, Sufferings, and Triumphant - Deaths of the Primitive Protestant Martyrs • John Fox
... clearing the snow from the horses' hoofs. The driver, stupid or dazed, sat on the box, helpless as a parrot ...
— Warlock o' Glenwarlock • George MacDonald
... It is a bullfinch. It is real pretty, and whistles like a boy. It likes potatoes and corn very much, and eats them out of my mouth and hand. When it whistles it says "Pretty Poll" just as plain as a parrot, and when it bathes ...
— Harper's Young People, February 17, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... which had lived with a tribe of American Indians, and learnt scraps of their language; the tribe totally disappeared; the parrot alone remained, and babbled words in the language which no living human being ...
— The Story of Alchemy and the Beginnings of Chemistry • M. M. Pattison Muir
... stone after stone into the lovely pool of Jerry's thoughts, which broke the colorful reflections into smaller images, but did not change them. And when he was gone the pool was as before he came. Jerry listened politely as he did to all his masters and learned like a parrot what was required of him, but made no secret of his missing interest and enthusiasm. I watched furtively, encouraging Jerry, as my duty was, to do his tasks as they were set before him. But I knew then what I had suspected before, that they would never make a bond-broker of Jerry. ...
— Paradise Garden - The Satirical Narrative of a Great Experiment • George Gibbs
... fun; if not, that was funnier still! Her husband, for all his serious manner, had a real boy's love of a lark, and he aided and abetted her in all sorts of whimsical devices. They owned a dog who was only less dear than the baby, a cat only less dear than the dog, a parrot whose education required constant supervision, and a hutch of ring-doves whose melancholy little "whuddering" coos were the delight of Rose the less. The house seemed astir with young life all over. The only elderly thing in it was the cook, who ...
— What Katy Did Next • Susan Coolidge |
