"Peacock" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... was a great Tudor house of mullioned windows, traceries, and battlements; of stately towers, moss-grown balustrades, and statues darkening with the fog that was already hiding the angles and wings of its huge bulk. A peacock spread its ostentatious tail on the broad stone steps before the portal; a flight of rooks from the leafless elms rose above its stacked and twisted chimneys. After all, how little had this stately incarnation of the vested rights and sacred tenures of the past in common with the laughing ...
— Trent's Trust and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... hell, Alton Locke, laddie—a warse ane than any fiend's kitchen or subterranean Smithfield that ye'll hear o' in the pulpits—the hell on earth o' being a flunkey, and a humbug, and a useless peacock, wasting God's gifts on your ain lusts and pleasures—and kenning it—and not being able to get oot o' it for the chains ...
— Daily Thoughts - selected from the writings of Charles Kingsley by his wife • Charles Kingsley
... the turkey company. Seeing himself and his barnyard acquaintances the center of so many eyes, Mr. Peacock was properly vain. He spread his beautiful fan-shaped tail, and would not be driven ...
— The Automobile Girls in the Berkshires - The Ghost of Lost Man's Trail • Laura Dent Crane
... colour of the robe. The long outer robe thrown over the inner garment (uchikaku) in these brilliant colours, in its tamer shades yet harmonized. Taken with the broad sash of the obi it made her rival the peacock in his grandest display. Her hair dressed high, was a bewildering harmony of the costly tortoise shell combs and pins (kanzashi) arrayed in crab-like eccentricity. The gold ornamentation glistened and sparkled amid the dark tresses. Truly Shu[u]zen was puzzled in this claim for priority between ...
— Bakemono Yashiki (The Haunted House) - Tales of the Tokugawa, Volume 2 (of 2) • James S. De Benneville
... man intoning an Ivizan romance. He hesitated from time to time as if undecided, repeating the same verses over and over until he managed to pass on to new ones, uttering at the end of each strophe, according to the custom of the country, a strange screech like a peacock, a harsh and strident trill like that which accompanies the ...
— The Dead Command - From the Spanish Los Muertos Mandan • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... hundred and twenty pounds without his hammer, is lean to scrawniness, and his arms are those of the boys you see at the track meet of Lincoln Grammar School Number Seven. The mutilated derby hat he now wore, a hat that had been weathered from plum colour to a poisonous green—a shred of peacock feather stuck in the band—lent his face ...
— Somewhere in Red Gap • Harry Leon Wilson
... The peacock-purple lizard creeps Along the rail; and deep the drone Of insects makes the country lone With summer where the water sleeps: She hears him singing as he swings His scythe—who thinks of other things Than ...
— Poems • Madison Cawein
... can turn out the whole lot, and get another after it, and another after that, and so on to the end of the chapter, and you can't find men among 'em all that'll stay and have him strutting through 'em, up to his stool and his books, grand as a peacock." ...
— What Answer? • Anna E. Dickinson
... the huge oaken table were placed the various dishes of the feast—a mighty boar's head, decorated with laurel and rosemary, whose approach was often heralded with trumpets as the king of the feast; then came a peacock, stuffed with spices and sweet herbs, and adorned with its gay feathers, and then followed a goodly company of geese, capons, sirloins of beef, pheasants, mince-pies, and plum-porridge. A carol was often sung when the boar's head was brought in; here is one from the collection ...
— Old English Sports • Peter Hampson Ditchfield
... is the premier. Part of the charm of hoeing potatoes lies in anticipating the joys of the potato properly baked. Charles Lamb may write of his roast pig, and the epicures among the ancients may expatiate upon the glories of a dish of peacock's tongues and their other rare and costly edibles, but they probably never knew to what heights one may ascend in the scale of gastronomic joys in the immediate presence of a baked Carmen. When it is broken open the steam ascends like ...
— Reveries of a Schoolmaster • Francis B. Pearson
... chalk. It was to be a pool at the side of which the stranger should seat himself, and discover the air of the place so quiet and enchanted that he could hear no sound of birds or beasts or men; only, perhaps, the melodious drip of the rain-heavy boughs into the clear peacock-green depths of water. And, in fact, the disappointment is that this is precisely what the Silent Pool might be. It is what it used to be, I think; but so many people have heard of it and have come on bicycles and in carriages and motor-cars ...
— Highways and Byways in Surrey • Eric Parker
... (after consideration). And I too. I hate going out on a Sunday as a rule, but I went last week. However, might have been worse fun. Met PEACOCK girls. Rather good form. ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 104, April 1, 1893 • Various
... how could you? You were going on the whole time about cards and premiums and associates. Oh! yes, I know a peacock or a lynx is nothing to you, but how was it possible? Why, I was making talk to Constance all along, and trying to make Dolly speak ...
— The Two Sides of the Shield • Charlotte M. Yonge
... arches. Wooden gates furnished a kind of fence between the atrium and what an old Pompeian would have styled the triclinium. For in the further part a table was laid for supper and lighted with suspended lamps. And here a party of artists and students drank and talked and smoked. A great live peacock, half asleep and winking his eyes, sat perched upon a heavy wardrobe watching them. The outer chamber, where we waited in arm-chairs of ample girth, had its loggia windows and doors open to the air. There ...
— New Italian sketches • John Addington Symonds
... sloop-of-war—on account of its smallness, its quick motion, and its more accurate armament of thirty-two-pound carronades—offered the best test of relative gunnery, and Sir Howard Douglas in commenting upon the destruction of the Peacock and Avon could only say:—"In these two actions it is clear that the fire of the British vessels was thrown too high, and that the ordnance of their opponents were expressly and carefully aimed at and took ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 1 • Charles Dudley Warner
... quite interesting," he confided to the paper-knife, with which he was spearing tiny holes in the blotter of the pad. "Peacock Alley at five—but there are a few matters ...
— The Cab of the Sleeping Horse • John Reed Scott
... a large, noble, motherly-looking woman, who is represented in art as attended by the nymphs and the hours, as well as by Iris. The goose and the cuckoo were as much Juno's birds as the peacock. She was the protectress of young married people and infants, and so ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 8 • Charles H. Sylvester
... prey on the defenceless wealth of Hindostan. A Persian conqueror crossed the Indus, marched through the gates of Delhi, and bore away in triumph those treasures of which the magnificence had astounded Roe and Bernier;—the peacock throne, on which the richest jewels of Golconda had been disposed by the most skilful hands of Europe, and the inestimable Mountain of Light, which, after many strange vicissitudes, lately shone in the bracelet ...
— The Principles of Success in Literature • George Henry Lewes
... the pleasures of what children call "dressing-up." Even the cynic, the man who defiantly wears old and queer clothes, is merely suffering from a perversion of that animal instinct which causes the peacock to swagger in the sun and flaunt the splendour of his train, the instinct that makes the tiger-moth show the magnificence of his damask wing, and also makes the lion erect the horrors of his cloudy mane and paw proudly before his tawny ...
— The Ethics of Drink and Other Social Questions - Joints In Our Social Armour • James Runciman
... don't go back till I get him—not if I stay here a week," he declared, with jocular savagery. "Took half my leader and my pet fly—I got him with a peacock-bodied gray hackle that I revised to suit my own notions—and, by the great immortal Jehosaphat, he looked like a whale when he jumped up clear of the riffle, turned over, and—" His flabby, white hand made a soaring movement to indicate ...
— Good Indian • B. M. Bower
... do it another year on a ten-hour shift. He's been up and down for two years now—the Hogans live neighbors to Laura's school and I've been watching him. Well," and here the Doctor thumped on the floor with his cane, "this Judge—this vain, strutting peacock of a Judge, this cat-chasing Judge that was once my son-in-law, has gone and knocked the law galley west so far as it affects the slag dump. I've just been reading his decision, and I'm ...
— In the Heart of a Fool • William Allen White
... ever see a distinct breed kept up; such breeds as we do sometimes see are almost always imported from some other country, often from islands. Although I do not doubt that some domestic animals vary less than others, yet the rarity or absence of distinct breeds of the cat, the donkey, peacock, goose, &c., may be attributed in main part to selection not having been brought into play: in cats, from the difficulty in pairing them; in donkeys, from only a few being kept by poor people, and ...
— On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection • Charles Darwin
... of Peter marrying rather gave me a shock. It was like being told by some authority in astronomy that your earth was about to collide with Wernecke's Comet. And, vain peacock that I was, I rather liked to think of Peter going through life mourning for me, alone and melancholy and misogynistic for the rest of his days! Yet there must be dozens, there must be hundreds, of attractive girls along the paths which he travels. I found the courage ...
— The Prairie Child • Arthur Stringer
... studio, the famous Pompeian room, on the second floor. I shall never forget the frozen immobility of the three actors in the tragedy. Esther Levenson, wrapped in peacock-blue scarves, stood upright before the black mantel, her hands crossed on her breast. Cecil Grimshaw was lying full length on a brick-red satin couch, his head thrown back, his eyes closed. The dead man sprawled on the floor, face down, between them. ...
— O. Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1921 • Various
... of ninety years would give a shilling for the earliest primrose the boys could find for him in the woods. Some one got him a peacock's feather which had fallen from Beaconsfield's favourites—a real Beaconsfield peacock-feather—which he had set in the centre of a splendid screen of feathers that cost him twenty guineas. The screen ...
— Amaryllis at the Fair • Richard Jefferies
... What he did for the Donner Party is but an instance of his unvarying kindness toward the needy and distressed. During this time he rendered important services to the United States, and notably in 1841, to the exploring expedition of Admiral Wilkes. The Peacock, a vessel belonging to the expedition, was lost on the Columbia bar, and a part of the expedition forces, sent overland in consequence, reached Sutter's Fort in a condition of extreme distress, and were relieved with princely hospitality. Later on he gave ...
— History of the Donner Party • C.F. McGlashan
... animals, and many of the plants, are represented on these monuments in great variety. Among these I have noted the lotus, the papyrus, the leek, the palm, wheat, barley, and millet; the crocodile, the frog, the crane, the flamingo, the ibis, the goose, the owl, the ostrich, the peacock; and of beasts the now famous ancestral ape, Ptolemy's tame lion, the leopard, the gazelle, the hippopotamus, the giraffe, and the wild boar, and many others. But there is not the least perceptible change ...
— Fables of Infidelity and Facts of Faith - Being an Examination of the Evidences of Infidelity • Robert Patterson
... uniformly coloured, but exhibit metallic and other changes of lustre not to be imitated by the highest art. But to fully realize this, I had best refer to a more familiar instance. Let any one examine—as an object very easily procurable in these days—a peacock's feather. No doubt the whole tail when expanded is very brilliant; but look closely at the structure of a single feather; is all this arrangement needed only to make the tail bright or conspicuous? Observe how wonderfully the outer ...
— Creation and Its Records • B.H. Baden-Powell
... latter. Homer, AEschylus, Lucretius, Dante, Shakespeare will always make their own way with all fit readers sooner or later: it is not so with Meleager or Macrobius or Marmontel, with William Langland or with Thomas Love Peacock. ...
— Matthew Arnold • George Saintsbury
... and foolishly, 'I must own that I shall look rather like a crow dressed up in peacock's feathers in the grand gown Sara has chosen for me'; but I was a little taken aback, and felt inclined to laugh, when he asked me, with an air of interest, what it was ...
— Uncle Max • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... floor, thinking of things that would be polite enough to say to a Maharajah. They were so troublesome to think of, that she could not attend to what Sonny Sahib said at all, even when he asked her for the sixth time how you made a peacock with blue glass eyes, like the one on each arm of His Highness's chair. Sonny Sahib grew quite tired of watching the mud-turtle that was paddling about in a pool of the shallow river among the yellow sands down below, and of ...
— The Story of Sonny Sahib • Sara Jeannette Duncan
... broken god. The Greek had spoken of men creeping on the earth, as if clinging to it. Now Man was to tread on the earth as if to subdue it. Christianity thus held a thought of the dignity of man that could only be expressed in crowns rayed like the sun and fans of peacock plumage. Yet at the same time it could hold a thought about the abject smallness of man that could only be expressed in fasting and fantastic submission, in the gray ashes of St. Dominic and the white snows of St. Bernard. When one ...
— Orthodoxy • G. K. Chesterton
... and use their cries for purposes of mutual salutation and recognition. This wailing note is singularly wild, and not unmusical. It is not properly a screech or a scream, like that of the Hawk or the Peacock, but rather a sort of moaning melody, half music and half bewailment. This wailing song is far from disagreeable, though it has a cadence which is expressive of dreariness and melancholy. It might be performed on a small flute, by commencing with D octave and running down by semitones ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 22, Aug., 1859 • Various
... in a day since leaving the prolific banks of the Amazon, and among them were many most rare and beautiful insects, hitherto only known by a few specimens from New Guinea. The large and handsome spectre butterfly, Hestia durvillei; the pale-winged peacock butterfly, Drusilla catops; and the most brilliant and wonderful of the clear-winged moths, Cocytia durvillei, were especially interesting, as well, as several little "blues," equalling in brilliancy and beauty anything the butterfly world can produce. In the other groups of insects ...
— The Malay Archipelago - Volume II. (of II.) • Alfred Russel Wallace
... owre and owre, And a' the nicht owre again; A' the nicht owre and owre The peacock followed ...
— Children's Rhymes, Children's Games, Children's Songs, Children's Stories - A Book for Bairns and Big Folk • Robert Ford
... really a good-natured young man; but he soon went off to Cambridge; and with the rest, or some of them, I continued to wage war for nearly a year. And yet, for a word spoken with kindness, I would have resigned the peacock's feather in my cap as the merest of baubles. Undoubtedly, praise sounded sweet in my ears also. But that was nothing by comparison with what stood on the other side. I detested distinctions that were connected with mortification to others. And, even if I ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Vol 58, No. 357, July 1845 • Various
... the clear, cold, winter weather— Out in the winter air, like wine— Kate with her dancing scarlet feather, Bess with her peacock plumage fine, ...
— Poems Teachers Ask For, Book Two • Various
... over the reflection that Christ and his disciples were poor men and unused to sit at meat in palaces. Great full-fruited orange-trees peep over the wall before which the table is spread, strange birds fly through the air, while a peacock perches on the edge of the partition and looks down on the sacred repast. It is striking that, without any at all intense religious purpose, the figures, in their varied naturalness, have a dignity ...
— Italian Hours • Henry James
... the cardboard box like the noonday phantom in the sunshine, so unexpected and wonderful. His wings, which as he rests are spread open, stretched from one side of the box to the other, hovering over his old home, a beautiful grey tipped with pink, and peacock-eyed, ring within ring. He clung to the piece of heather upon which the caterpillar was found seven months before, and which he had fixed in the threads of his cocoon. The immense dark green caterpillar banded with black and spotted with gold was ...
— Field and Hedgerow • Richard Jefferies
... Injian temples to admire when you see, There's the peacock round the corner an' the monkey up the tree, An' there's that rummy silver grass a-wavin' in the wind, An' the old Grand Trunk a-trailin' like a rifle-sling be'ind. While it's best ...
— Verses 1889-1896 • Rudyard Kipling
... Their organ, the "Indianapolis Journal," poured out upon me an incredible deliverance of vituperation and venom for scattering my heresies outside of my Congressional district, declaring that I had "the temper of a hedgehog, the adhesiveness of a barnacle, the vanity of a peacock, the vindictiveness of a Corsican, the hypocrisy of Aminadab Sleek and the duplicity of the devil." I rather enjoyed these paroxysms of malignity, which broke out all over the State among the Governor's conservative satellites, since my only offense was fidelity ...
— Political Recollections - 1840 to 1872 • George W. Julian
... better than a peacock, as 'ud strut about on the wall and spread its tail when the sun shone if all the folks i' the parish was dying: there's nothing seems to give her a turn i' th' inside, not even when we thought Totty had tumbled into the pit. To think o' that dear cherub! And we found her wi' her ...
— Adam Bede • George Eliot
... tendencies of the author. The very employment of the gods for mere decoration bears this stamp. The remarkable vision, with which the poem opens, tells in good Pythagorean style how the soul now inhabiting Quintus Ennius had previously been domiciled in Homer and still earlier in a peacock, and then in good physicist style explains the nature of things and the relation of the body to the mind. Even the choice of the subject serves the same purpose—at any rate the Hellenic literati of all ages have found an especially suitable handle for their Graeco-cosmopolite tendencies ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen
... others who live after our manner, if we do not receive them into our state, because they are the eulogists of tyranny." [Footnote: Republic.] Few enemies of poets nowadays would go so far as to make a charge like this one, though Thomas Peacock, who locked horns with Shelley on the question of poetry, asserted that poets exist only by virtue of their flattery of earth's potentates. [Footnote: See The Four Ages of Poetry.] Once, it must be confessed, one of the poets themselves brought their name into disrepute. In the heat of his indignation ...
— The Poet's Poet • Elizabeth Atkins
... giant, with broad shoulders and a long, fan-like beard, which hung down like a curtain to his chest. His whole solemn person suggested the idea of a military peacock, a peacock who was carrying his tail spread out on his breast. He had cold, gentle blue eyes, and a scar from a swordcut, which he had received in the war with Austria; he was said to be an honorable man, as ...
— Maupassant Original Short Stories (180), Complete • Guy de Maupassant
... line of Company A. Peacock was lying dead with his hat over his face. The wounded—those disabled—were unrelieved. The men were prostrate in their pits, powder-stained, haggard, battle-worn, and stern. Still shrieked the shells overhead, and yet roared the guns to front and rear—a pandemonium ...
— Who Goes There? • Blackwood Ketcham Benson
... youth in Germany, which is interesting in reference to the problem of his style. And there is more to be said concerning his parentage than the smug propriety of print has revealed while he lived. We know, too, that his marriage with the daughter of Thomas Love Peacock proved unhappy, and that for many years he has resided, almost a recluse, with his daughter, in the idyllic retirement of Surrey. The privacy of Boxhill has been respected; next to never has Meredith spoken in any public ...
— Masters of the English Novel - A Study Of Principles And Personalities • Richard Burton
... it had all been done! He felt strangely calm, and, walking over to the window, opened it, and stepped out on the balcony. The wind had blown the fog away, and the sky was like a monstrous peacock's tail, starred with myriads of golden eyes. He looked down, and saw the policeman going his rounds and flashing the long beam of his lantern on the doors of the silent houses. The crimson spot of a prowling hansom gleamed at the corner, and ...
— The Picture of Dorian Gray • Oscar Wilde
... dark. I hear the sambur-stag belling from the mountain-side, and the monotonous call of the coel, or Indian cuckoo. Afar a peacock calls from a ruined tomb, and through all the jungle concert runs the continuous screech of ...
— McClure's Magazine, Vol. 31, No. 1, May 1908 • Various
... magnificent hall. Many courtiers, in splendid apparel, clustered on either side below the dais which raised the throned monarch above them all. Behind these were numerous slaves, mostly Nubians, richly and gaudily dressed, some of whom held aloft large fans of the peacock's many-tinted plumes. The whole scene was one of gorgeous magnificence, the pomp and glory of the world throwing its false halo of beauty over ...
— Hebrew Heroes - A Tale Founded on Jewish History • AKA A.L.O.E. A.L.O.E., Charlotte Maria Tucker
... most of the other varieties, and is characterized by having a short, slender bill, pendent wings, and naked legs and feet. It has the power of erecting its tail in the manner of a turkey-cock; during which action, especially when paying court to it's mate, it trembles or shakes, like the peacock when moving about with his train expanded and in full display. This power of erecting and spreading the tail is not confined to the male bird alone: the female possesses the same power to an equal ...
— The Book of Household Management • Mrs. Isabella Beeton
... Egg. The combined material becomes thereby gradually black (and is called raven or ravenhead), later white (swan); now a somewhat greater heat is applied and the substance is sublimated in the vessel (the swan flies up); on further heating a vivid play of colors appears (peacock tail or rainbow); finally the substance becomes red and that is the conclusion of the main work. The red substance is the philosopher's stone, called also our king, red lion, grand elixir, etc. The after work is a subsequent elaboration by which the stone is given still more power, ...
— Hidden Symbolism of Alchemy and the Occult Arts • Herbert Silberer
... mortification that the King observed the Queen's adoption of this style of dress: she was never so lovely in his eyes as when unadorned by art. One day Carlin, performing at Court as harlequin, stuck in his hat, instead of the rabbit's tail, its prescribed ornament, a peacock's feather of excessive length. This new appendage, which repeatedly got entangled among the scenery, gave him an opportunity for a great deal of buffoonery. There was some inclination to punish him; but it was ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... drew near and passed it under inspection. "No wonder," she exclaimed, "it looks so handsome! It's verily woven with peacock's feathers." ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book II • Cao Xueqin
... Mrs. Frost called debonnaire—read on for five minutes in silence, insisted on teaching his aunt the cause of the colours in peacock ores, compared them to a pigeon's neck, and talked of old Betty Gervas's tame pigeons; whence he proceeded to memories of the days that he and Mary had spent together, and asked which of their old haunts she had revisited. Had she been into ...
— Dynevor Terrace (Vol. I) - or, The Clue of Life • Charlotte M. Yonge
... happy, instead of two struggling against misery. I would have made the rose-stem downy, and put all the thorns on the thistles. I would have gouged out the jewel from the toad's head, and given the peacock the nightingale's voice, and not set everything so at ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 10, Number 59, September, 1862 • Various
... Chief Examiner of correspondence to the India House, the other two being Peacock and James Mill (secretaries' work, writing ...
— Noteworthy Families (Modern Science) • Francis Galton and Edgar Schuster
... came on like a strutting peacock with his head in air. Behind followed his page with cloak and rapier. In one hand our dandy carried his white gloves, in the other a lace gewgaw heavy with musk, which he fluttered in the face ...
— Heralds of Empire - Being the Story of One Ramsay Stanhope, Lieutenant to Pierre Radisson in the Northern Fur Trade • Agnes C. Laut
... taste. It is impossible to describe the dazzling splendour of the jewels with which their costumes absolutely blazed; especially those in the little golden caps, or salmas, which some of them wore. There were bouquets of roses, jessamine, peacock's-feathers, and butterflies, formed of diamonds, rubies, emeralds, and other precious gems. We do not draw on our imagination here, good reader. It is probable that if a comparison had been instituted, these pirates could have ...
— The Pirate City - An Algerine Tale • R.M. Ballantyne
... in his proper position, marched a noteworthy young lieutenant. He was my old college chum and brother-in-law to be, Nicholas Naranovitsch, head and shoulders over his fellows, straight as a poplar, proud as a peacock, and modest as an untried ...
— In the Track of the Troops • R.M. Ballantyne
... bloodshed, the poet migrated to Nantgwilt in Wales. Here the Shelleys contemplated receiving Godwin and his family, Miss Hitchener with her American pupils; and why not Miss Hitchener's father, reported to have been an old smuggler? Here Shelley first met Thomas Love Peacock. They were unable to remain at Nantgwilt owing to various mishaps, and migrated to that terrestrial paradise in North Devon, Lynmouth. This lovely place, with its beautiful and romantic surroundings loved and exquisitely described by more than one poet, cannot fail ...
— Mrs. Shelley • Lucy M. Rossetti
... of the Moon's surface are the crater mountains: they are very numerous on certain portions of the lunar disc, and give the Moon the freckled appearance which it presents in the telescope, and which Galileo likened to the eyes in the feathers of a peacock's tail. They are believed to be of volcanic origin, and have been classified as follows: 'Walled plains, mountain rings, ring plains, crater plains, craters, craterlets, and crater cones.' Upwards of 13,000 of these mountains have been ...
— The Astronomy of Milton's 'Paradise Lost' • Thomas Orchard
... well made, sensible, and insinuating, and his voice is very agreeable; but he meddles too much with politics, and is too much occupied with seeking favour. The Cardinal de Rohan has a handsome face, as his mother had, but his figure is despicable. He is as vain as a peacock, and fancies that there is not his equal in the whole world. He is a tricking intriguer, the slave of the Jesuits, and fancies he rules everything, while in fact he rules nothing. The Cardinal de Bissi is as ugly and clumsy as a peasant, proud, false and wicked, and yet a most fulsome ...
— The Memoirs of the Louis XIV. and The Regency, Complete • Elizabeth-Charlotte, Duchesse d'Orleans
... me, sweetie. Dook of Alver—and then some, eh? Ain't that just too cutey-cutey for any use? Say, I'm used to these dooks and counts—I've been around Peacock Alley at the Waldorf too long not to know 'em by their checkered pants and them canes! Say, Dook! If you was the Archbishop of Canterbury I'd run yer in and take yer ashore, if yer give me any more of ...
— The Ghost Breaker - A Novel Based Upon the Play • Charles Goddard
... story merely to prove that the monkey's nature and the man's nature are, after all, one and the same. Well: I, at least, have never denied that there is a monkey-nature in man, as there is a peacock-nature, and a swine- nature, and a wolf-nature—of all which four I see every day too much. The sharp and stern distinction between men and animals, as far as their natures are concerned, is of a more modern origin than people fancy. Of old the Assyrian took the eagle, the ox, ...
— Sanitary and Social Lectures and Essays • Charles Kingsley
... There is something also in them that might remind us of the variegated and spotted angel wings of Orcagna, only the Venetian sail never looks majestic; it is too quaint and strange, yet with no peacock's pride or vulgar gayety,—nothing of ...
— The Harbours of England • John Ruskin
... lankness of the tigers of to-day, Sabre-Tooth somewhat resembled them, though, beside him, the largest inmate of the Indian jungle would appear but puny. The creature Ab looked upon that day so long ago was beautiful, in his way. He was beautiful as is the peacock or the banded rattlesnake. There were color contrasts and fine blendings. The stripes upon him were wonderfully rich, and as he came creeping toward the body, he was as splendid as he ...
— The Story of Ab - A Tale of the Time of the Cave Man • Stanley Waterloo
... had provided for Susannah was large and high. On its Brussels carpet immense vases of flowers and peacock's feathers sprawled; stiff and gaudy furniture was ranged round the painted walls; stiff window curtains fell from stiff borders of tasteless upholstery. Susannah, long ignorant of anything but ...
— The Mormon Prophet • Lily Dougall
... them, or too grasping to care for what you cannot turn to other account than mere delight. Remember that the most beautiful things in the world are the most useless; peacocks and lilies for instance; at least I suppose this quill I hold in my hand writes better than a peacock's would, and the peasants of Vevay, whose fields in spring time are as white with lilies as the Dent du Midi is with its snow, told me the hay was none the ...
— The Stones of Venice, Volume I (of 3) • John Ruskin
... did not know her.' If God preserves me in my seven or five senses, or as many as they be, I shall never bring myself into such a quandary. As for your part, spouse, you may go to your governments and islands, and be as proud as a peacock; but as for my daughter and me, by the life of my father! we will not stir one step from the village; for, the wife that deserves a good name, stays at home as if she were lame; and the maid must be still a-doing, that hopes to see the ...
— Wit and Wisdom of Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... Prince, carried away by the flood of melody, sang. His voice displayed itself like a peacock's plumage, and died in spasms ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... one corner of his verandah or on a site somewhat removed from the fairway of traffic; while a continuous stream of people afflicted by the evil-eye flows into the courtyard of the Bara Imam Chilla near the Nal Bazaar to receive absolution from the peacock-feather brush and sword there preserved. Meanwhile in almost every street where a 'tabut' is being prepared elegiac discourses ('waaz') are nightly delivered up to the tenth of the month by a maulvi, who draws from Rs. ...
— By-Ways of Bombay • S. M. Edwardes, C.V.O.
... the habit of coming up from our bunks in the evening. We used to lean over the handrail and watch the wonder of a Mediterranean sunset transform in schemes of peacock-blue and beetle-green, down and down, through emerald, pale gold and lemon yellow, and so to the horizon of the inland sea, in bands of deep chrome and ...
— At Suvla Bay • John Hargrave
... get Indians to be photographed, fie also would insist upon arranging them before the camera. His efforts, however, were directed more toward achieving artistic triumph than scientific truth, and he wanted, for instance, to decorate the Indians with peacock feathers. He yielded, however, to my suggestion that turkey feathers would be more appropriate, and straightway ordered one of his turkeys to be caught and deprived of some of its tail feathers. The only way in which I could show my appreciation of the disinterested ...
— Unknown Mexico, Volume 1 (of 2) • Carl Lumholtz
... insect. It is a "conventionalized" creation, as we say of ornamentation. The theory is that, fly-fishing being a high art, the fly must not be a tame imitation of nature, but an artistic suggestion of it. It requires an artist to construct one; and not every bungler can take a bit of red flannel, a peacock's feather, a flash of tinsel thread, a cock's plume, a section of a hen's wing, and fabricate a tiny object that will not look like any fly, but still will ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... obstinacy,—faults Miss 'Viny trained, instead of eradicating; so that 'Tenty emerged from district-school into the "'Cademy's" higher honors as healthy and happy an individual as ever arrived at the goodly age of fourteen without a silk dress or a French shoe to peacock herself withal. Every morning, rain or shine, she carried her tin pail to Doctor Parker's for milk, hung on the tea-kettle, set the table, wiped the dishes, weeded a bit of the prolific onion-bed, ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 6, No. 37, November, 1860 • Various
... ... with poses that outnumbered the silver eyes in the peacock's tail in multitude ... and yet there was to be found in them a sincerity, a fineness, and a genuine feeling for humanity that "regular" folks never achieve—perhaps because ...
— Tramping on Life - An Autobiographical Narrative • Harry Kemp
... you look, There goeth a bridge, and under that a brook, Upon which brook there stood a flour-mill; And this is a known fact that now I tell. A Miller there had dwelt for many a day; As any peacock he was proud and gay. He could pipe well, and fish, mend nets, to boot, Turn cups with a lathe, and wrestle well, and shoot. A Norman dirk, as brown as is a spade, Hung by his belt, and eke a trenchant ...
— Playful Poems • Henry Morley
... and bringing up the point horizontally; "then, young man," he added solemnly, "you have,—but I won't say what you have to see. I won't say,—no, not if you could cover this table with golden guineas, and exclaim, with the generous ardor so engaging in youth, 'Mr. Peacock, these are yours if you will only say ...
— The Caxtons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... exquisitely in harmony with herself and her white or black horse as the case might be; a rich cloth of gold backdrop carefully suffused with rose. There could be nothing handsomer, for example, than young and graceful trapezists swinging melodically in turquoise blue doublets against a fine peacock background or it might be a rich pale coral—all the artificial and spectacular ornament dispensed with. We are expected to get an exceptional thrill when some dull person appears before a worn velvet curtain to ...
— Adventures in the Arts - Informal Chapters on Painters, Vaudeville, and Poets • Marsden Hartley
... I and Willie, In fortunate parallels! Butterflies, Hid in weltering shadows of daffodilly Or marjoram, kept making peacock eyes: ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 7 • Various
... declared Leveson, beginning to start the muscles of his grand-pianoforte legs with energy; "Rapid as a firework, and vain as a peacock! Ta!" ...
— God's Good Man • Marie Corelli
... a song to sing, O! [HE] Sing me your song, O! [SHE] It is sung with a sigh And a tear in the eye, For it tells of a righted wrong, O! It's a song of a merrymaid, once so gay, Who turned on her heel and tripped away From the peacock popinjay, bravely born, Who turned up his noble nose with scorn At the humble heart that he did not prize; And it tells how she begged, with downcast eyes, For the love of a merryman, moping mum, Whose soul was sad, whose glance was glum, Who sipped ...
— Songs of a Savoyard • W. S. Gilbert
... attend a ball given by the daughter of a barrister friend of my father's. Selina Clarkson was a fine showy girl, with the sort of beauty to inspire boyish admiration, and Griff's had been a standing family joke, even my father condescending to tease him when the young lady married Sir Henry Peacock, a fat vulgar old man who had made his fortune in the commissariat, and purchased a baronetcy. He was allowing his young wife her full swing of fashion and enjoyment. My mother did not think it a desirable acquaintance, and was restless until both the brothers came ...
— Chantry House • Charlotte M. Yonge
... discover why she was so kind. He had never experienced kind treatment in all his life. So it was no wonder that when the little girl entered the fifth boudoir she was followed by the parrot, the lamb, the cat and the dog, who all stood beside her and watched her feed the peacock, which she found strutting around and mewing like a cat for his dinner. Said ...
— Sky Island - Being the further exciting adventures of Trot and Cap'n - Bill after their visit to the sea fairies • L. Frank Baum
... her most soulful, intense way, as if she were asking for important information. "Do you know whether it's true or not? Does a peacock stop strutting if it happens to see its feet? My old nurse told me that, and said that it shows that pride always goes before a fall. I never was where they kept peacocks before I came to Warwick Hall, and I've spent hours watching Madam's ...
— The Little Colonel's Christmas Vacation • Annie Fellows Johnston
... him. With hair cut close, and a complete revolution in his dress, he looks nothing like the "sovereign" of this mighty Republic you have just seen. He feels the change, too; and as he struts up and down, peacock-like, admiring himself, he realizes that hitherto, for many years perhaps, he has not had a new suit from tip to toe all for nothing. It has saved him weary days of toil, and the little personal liberty he has given in exchange is but ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 5, No. 3, March, 1852 • Various
... Alexander Peacock) said that many years ago, when the world rang with the atrocities of Turks, Rev. Dr. Parker startled the whole world when, in a fiery address on those awful atrocities which were visited on the Christians, he cried, 'Dod damn the Sultan.' Now, when they ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. CL, April 26, 1916 • Various
... exception of the fruits, the dishes served were all strange to him, and he was unable even to guess at their nature. Among them was a large bird, which Roger judged to be either a swan or a peacock; but which he was informed was a turkey, a bird common in the country, but of which he had ...
— By Right of Conquest - Or, With Cortez in Mexico • G. A. Henty
... England or Scotland, on account of its absorption in Irish affairs. But he was not writing a formal history, and these points did not appeal to him at all. He drew with inimitable skill a picture of the despised and fantastic Jew, vain as a peacock and absurdly dressed, alien in race and in his real creed, smiling sardonically at English ways, enthusiasms, and institutions, until he became, after years of struggle and obloquy, the idol of what was then the ...
— The Life of Froude • Herbert Paul
... Allah alone is eternal." The eagle: "Let our life be ever so long, yet it must end in death." The hoopoo: "He that shows no mercy, shall not obtain mercy." The kata: "Whosoever can keep silence goes through life most securely." The nightingale: "Contentment is the greatest happiness." The peacock: "As thou judgest, so shalt thou be judged." The pelican: "Blessed be Allah in Heaven and Earth." The raven: "The farther from mankind, the pleasanter." The swallow: "Do good, for you shall be rewarded hereafter." ...
— The Child and Childhood in Folk-Thought • Alexander F. Chamberlain
... we read that the peacock is more guilty of it than any other animal. For it is always contemplating the beauty of its tail, which it spreads in the form of a wheel, and by its cries attracts to itself the gaze of the creatures that surround ...
— The Notebooks of Leonardo Da Vinci, Complete • Leonardo Da Vinci
... will, O singers all Who sing because you want to sing! Sing! peacock on the orchard wall, Or tree-toad by the trickling spring! Sing! every bird on every bough— Sing! every living, loving thing— Sing any song, and anyhow, But Sing! ...
— The Book of Joyous Children • James Whitcomb Riley
... did a forbidding face shine with so winning and amicable an expression as did hers on that merciful occasion. The sun dancing a hornpipe on Easter Sunday morning, or the full moon sailing as proud as a peacock in a new halo head-dress, was a very disrespectable sight, compared to Norah's red beaming face, shrouded in her dowd cap with long ears, that descended to her masculine and substantial neck. Owing to her influence, the whole economy of the school was good; for we were permitted to cuff one another, ...
— The Station; The Party Fight And Funeral; The Lough Derg Pilgrim • William Carleton
... Shaftesbury, early in the eighteenth century, spoke of human nature being "sublimated by a sort of spiritual chemists" and Welton, a little later, of "a love sublimate and refined," while, finally, and altogether in our modern sense, Peacock in 1816 in his Headlong Hall referred to "that enthusiastic sublimation which is the source ...
— Little Essays of Love and Virtue • Havelock Ellis
... Cincirillo follow thee about? Inverting one swart foot suspensively, And wagging his dread jaw at every chirp Of bird above him on the olive-branch? Frighten him then away! 'twas he who slew Our pigeons, our white pigeons peacock-tailed, That fear'd not you and me ... alas, nor him! I flattened his striped sides along my knee, And reasoned with him on his bloody mind, Till he looked blandly, and half-closed his eyes To ponder on my lecture in ...
— Imaginary Conversations and Poems - A Selection • Walter Savage Landor
... like the pigeon," he continued, "and did he but want what they call the crest on the back of his head, and could you see only the back of the bird, he might be thought a pigeon, since he shineth on the back like a peacock in all colors blue and green can make when mixed together. But when he standeth on his somewhat long legs, and thou seest that his under parts be white, why, even a Frenchman would know he was no pigeon, but must be the peewit or lapwing. ...
— A Boy's Ride • Gulielma Zollinger
... "Chinese" Gordon, on account of a brilliant campaign he made in China, for which he was decorated with the yellow jacket and peacock feather by the Emperor of China. He was chosen to go to the aid of the Khedive because he had had long experience in Egypt, having been in the service of the Khedive as Governor-General of the Provinces of the Equator from 1874 to 1876, and of the ...
— The Great Round World and What Is Going On In It, Vol. 1, No. 38, July 29, 1897 - A Weekly Magazine for Boys and Girls • Various
... Avalon citizen who didn't get treated that way would feel insulted, really. Here we are at the landing, and there is the wheelbarrow brigade. It's Murphy, the ice-man, who got married this time. See, he's as proud as a peacock ...
— Tabitha's Vacation • Ruth Alberta Brown
... all, and will disappear as soon as her rosy cheeks fade and her hair grows gray! Now, that sweet old lady over there is just a picture of goodness; and her dear old eyes have a look of love in them that is more beautiful than any shimmer or shine you could show me in those of your friend Miss Peacock." ...
— Dreamland • Julie M. Lippmann
... dark calico dress and sun-bonnet, both made by poor Mrs. McCutchen of the Donner Party, who had to take in sewing for a livelihood; but to the Seminary, I should wear grandpa's gift, a costly alpaca, changeable in the sunlight to soft mingling bluish and greenish colors of the peacock. Its wide skirt reached to my shoetops, and the gathers to its full waist were gauged to a sharp peak in front. A wide open V from the shoulder down to the peak displayed an embroidered white Swiss chemisette. The sleeves, small at the wrist, were trimmed with ...
— The Expedition of the Donner Party and its Tragic Fate • Eliza Poor Donner Houghton
... sides. There also flashed past the purple of the salmonoids, the brilliant majesty of the gold fish, the bluish belly of the sea bream, the striped back of the sheep's head, the trumpet-mouthed marine sun-fish, the immovable sneer of the so-called "joker," the dorsal pinnacle of the peacock-fish which appears made of feathers, the restless and deeply bifurcated tail of the horse mackerel, the fluttering of the mullet with its triple wings, the grotesque rotundity of the boar-fish and the pig-fish, ...
— Mare Nostrum (Our Sea) - A Novel • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... of his detention, and that the famous cell or dungeon ("nine paces by six, and about seven high") was not "the original place of the poet's confinement." It was, as Shelley says (see his letter to Peacock, November 7, 1818), "a very decent dungeon;" but it was not Tasso's. The setting of the story was admitted to be legendary, but the story itself, that a poet was shut up in a madhouse because a vindictive magnate resented his love of independence and impatience of courtly servitude, was ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 2 • George Gordon Byron
... from here alive; yet all is peace; there is no need of such an army.' The remark would be overheard, and would have its educational effect. They soon eased him of his embroidery and purple, by playful allusions to flower and colour. 'Spring is early.'—'How did that peacock get here?'—'His mother must have lent him that shawl,'—and so on. The same with the rest, his rings, his elaborate coiffure, and his table excesses. Little by little he came to his senses, and left Athens very much the better ...
— Works, V1 • Lucian of Samosata
... admiration. Of course, the Stars and Stripes hung highest, with the English lion ramping on the royal standard close by; then followed a regular picture-gallery, for there was the white elephant of Siam, the splendid peacock of Burmah, the double-headed Russian eagle and black dragon of China, the winged lion of Venice, and the prancing pair on the red, white and blue flag of Holland. The keys and miter of the Papal States were a hard job, but up they went at ...
— St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, Vol. 5, May, 1878, No. 7. - Scribner's Illustrated • Various
... before her face a screen of feathers hung,— A moscader, or fan for flies, 'tis called in vulgar tongue; From the feathers of the peacock's wing 't was fashioned bright and fair, And glistened like the heaven above when ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
... towards the appearance of secondary sexual characters (5/41. This term was used by John Hunter for such differences in structure between the males and females, as are not directly connected with the act of reproduction, as the tail of the peacock, the horns of deer, etc.) of which the aboriginal rock-pigeon displays not ...
— The Variation of Animals and Plants under Domestication - Volume I • Charles Darwin
... rubbing them against each other, so the swift current of life rubs off the angles from the human mind. It is obvious that under such influences my mind became that of a civilized being, that can make due allowance for other people's opinions; I do not utter peacock cries when I hear of anything opposed to my views or something utterly new. It may be that such leniency and tolerance of all opinions leads finally to indifferentism and weakens the active principle in the human mind, but I could not be ...
— Without Dogma • Henryk Sienkiewicz
... living was probably more splendid than that of any monarchs of any nation before or since that time. Their extravagance was unbounded. Their love of display has never been surpassed." It is claimed that the Peacock Throne of this Delhi Palace was of sufficient value to pay the debts of a nation. The marble walls are richly adorned with exquisite mosaics. Indeed, they are regarded as incomparable specimens of the art. One can ...
— India, Its Life and Thought • John P. Jones
... Adams printed and sold "The New History of Blue Beard" in both peacock-blue and olive-green paper covers; but Peter Brynberg, also of that town, was still in eighteen hundred and four using quaint wall-paper to dress his toy imprints. Matthew Carey, the well-known printer of school-books for the children of Philadelphia, ...
— Forgotten Books of the American Nursery - A History of the Development of the American Story-Book • Rosalie V. Halsey
... insects, and animals, there are many groups that have special attraction for children. For instance, among the "Birds we read about" are the flamingo, cassowary, condor, and quetzal; the eagle owl is contrasted with the pygmy owl, and the peacock, lyre bird, albatross, ...
— Library Work with Children • Alice I. Hazeltine
... right and left, forming two parallel lines, dwindling into sardars, palace officers, and others of lower rank as they recede from the gaddi. Behind the Chief stand the servants with the emblems of royalty—the peacock feathers, the fan, the yak tail, and the umbrella (now furled). The confidential servant is still whispering into the ear of his master from time to time. This is durbar. No one speaks, unless to exchange a languid compliment with the Chief. Presently essence ...
— Twenty-One Days in India; and, the Teapot Series • George Robert Aberigh-Mackay
... "1533. Stephen Peacock, haberdasher, mayor. "This year, the 29th day of May, the Mayor of London, with the aldermen in scarlet gowns, went in barges to Greenwich, with their banners, as they were wont to bring the Mayor to Westminister; and the bachelor's barge hanged with cloth of gold on the outside with banners and ...
— Froude's Essays in Literature and History - With Introduction by Hilaire Belloc • James Froude
... form of cocks, with their tail feathers spread up to form the handles. The heads have to be removed for drinking. These cups were bequeathed by William Cockayne, in 1598. Another cup is in the form of a peacock, walking with two little chicks of minute proportions on either side of the parent bird. This is inscribed, "The gift of Mary the daughter of Richard Robinson, and wife to Thomas Smith and James Peacock, Skinners." Whether the good lady were ...
— Arts and Crafts in the Middle Ages • Julia De Wolf Addison
... Kebby, the charwoman," said Mr. Peacock, a retired grocer, who owned the greater part of the square. "The house is in such a state that I thought I'd have it ...
— The Silent House • Fergus Hume
... painter is not making the slightest effort to conceive what really happened, but merely repeating and spoiling what he could remember of old design, or himself supply of commonplace for immediate need. The "Noli me tangere," on the right, is spoiled from Giotto, and others before him; a peacock, woefully plumeless and colourless, a fountain, an ill drawn toy-horse, and two toy-children gathering flowers, are emaciate remains of Greek symbols. He has taken pains with the vegetation, but in vain. Yet Taddeo Gaddi was a true painter, a very beautiful designer, and a very amiable ...
— Mornings in Florence • John Ruskin
... One walk'd, reciting by herself, and one In this hand held a volume as to read, And smoothed a petted peacock down with that: Some to a low song oar'd a shallop by, Or under arches of the marble bridge Hung, shadow'd from the heat: some hid and sought In the orange thickets: others tost a ball Above the fountain jets, and back again With laughter: others ...
— A Sweet Girl Graduate • Mrs. L.T. Meade
... who composed Bolivar's Albion Rifles we find the Irish names of Pigott, Tallon, Peacock, Phelan, O'Connell, McNamara, Fetherstonhaugh, French, Reynolds, Byrne, and Haig, and the medical officer was Dr. O'Reilly. We find mention in General Millar's Memoirs of Dr. Moore, an Irishman, who attended Bolivar in most of his campaigns and was devotedly attached to the person of the Liberator. ...
— The Glories of Ireland • Edited by Joseph Dunn and P.J. Lennox
... pistols. These, with the rifle and holster-pistols, are the arms carried by officers and privates. A single bugle (and a sorry one it is) composes the band. Many an embryo Napoleon, in his own conceit, whose martial spirit has been excited to flaming intensity of heat by the peacock-plumage and gaudy trappings of our militia companies, when marching through the streets to the sound of drum, fife, and brass band, if he could have looked upon us, and then consulted the state of the military thermometer within him, would probably have discovered ...
— What I Saw in California • Edwin Bryant
... which had been kept back until the arrival of Don Fernando, was now announced; and such a feast! such unknown dishes and obsolete dainties; with the peacock, that bird of state and ceremony, served up in full plumage, in a golden dish, at the head of the table. And then, as Don Fernando cast his eyes over the glittering board, what a vista of odd heads and head-dresses, of ...
— Wolfert's Roost and Miscellanies • Washington Irving
... was the wife of Jupiter, and queen of the gods. Iris, the goddess of the rainbow, was her attendant and messenger. The peacock was ...
— Bulfinch's Mythology • Thomas Bulfinch
... important part in the chivalric banquets of the Middle Ages (Fig. 95). According to old poets the flesh of this noble bird is "food for the brave." A poet of the thirteenth century says, "that thieves have as much taste for falsehood as a hungry man has for the flesh of the peacock." In the fourteenth century poultry-yards were still stocked with these birds; but the turkey and the pheasant gradually replaced them, as their flesh was considered somewhat hard and stringy. This is proved by ...
— Manners, Custom and Dress During the Middle Ages and During the Renaissance Period • Paul Lacroix
... own peculiar species; other kinds lodge under birds' feathers, and some birds have two or three sorts of parasites. There is one belonging to the turkey, to the peacock, to the sparrow, to the vulture, to the magpie, etc. I don't think there is a bird or animal which does not, like Gringalet, ...
— Adventures of a Young Naturalist • Lucien Biart
... little bit, for example. In the possibility of a woman being something else than a drawing-room peacock, or worse. Do you think she could make you believe that it is possible for a woman to be noble-minded, unselfish, ...
— Sunrise • William Black
... down at either end of the dining-room table, Simmons standing at one side, his yellow eyes gleaming with interested affection and his fly-brush of long peacock feathers waving steadily, even when he moved about with ...
— The Awakening of Helena Richie • Margaret Deland
... frighten the cattle by waving leaves of the basil-plant at them, and then put on fantastic dresses, decorating themselves with cowries, and go round the village, singing and dancing. Elsewhere at the time of the Marhai they dance round a pole with peacock feathers tied to the top, and sometimes wear peacock feathers themselves, as well as aprons sewn all over with cowries. It is said that Krishna and Balaram used to wear peacock feathers when they danced in the jungles of Mathura, but this ...
— The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India - Volume II • R. V. Russell
... individual whose state of preservation leaves nothing to be desired now comes to demonstrate the correctness of Verreaux's, Bonaparte's, and Elliot's suppositions. This bird, whose tail is furnished with feathers absolutely identical with those that the museum possessed, is not a peacock, as some have asserted, nor an ordinary Argus of Malacca, nor an argus of the race that Elliot named Argus grayi, and which inhabits Borneo, but the type of a new genus of the family Phasianidae. This Gallinacean, in fact, which Mr. Maingonnat has given up to the Museum ...
— Scientific American Supplement No. 360, November 25, 1882 • Various
... image. At length she started, like one awakening from a happy dream, and hurriedly coiled the thick, soft tresses about her head. Never before had she lingered so over a toilet, patting each lock into place, twisting her head from side to side like a peacock admiring its image. ...
— Riders of the Silences • John Frederick
... good. Good evening.' Cecil slightly lifted his hat, with the short projection of the head of the stately peacock in its walk, and passed out of the garden. Lord Palmet, deeply disappointed and mystified, went after him, leaving Dr. Shrapnel to shorten his garden walk with enormous ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... is at endless pains to establish his credit as a staunch upholder of the Bourbons, and has tried already to gain admittance into my set. When his wife took Mme. de Langeais' box, she thought that she could take her charm, her wit, and her success as well. It is the old fable of the jay in the peacock's feathers!" ...
— Lost Illusions • Honore De Balzac
... minds be swallowed up with vanity, love of admiration, always longing to be seen and looked at, and wondering what folks will say of them, they too give way to the flesh, and lower themselves to the likeness of animals. As vain as a peacock, says the old proverb. And shame it is to any human being so far to forget his true humanity, as to have that said of him. And what shall we say of them who like the swine live only for eating and drinking, and enjoyment? Or what of those who like the butterflies ...
— True Words for Brave Men • Charles Kingsley
... impossible, if the changes (however caused) that adapt some individuals better than others to the conditions of life were not inherited by, and accumulated in, their posterity. The eyes in the peacock's tail are supposed to have reached their present perfection gradually, through various stages that may be illustrated by the ocelli in the wings of the Argus pheasant and other genera of Phasianidae. Similarly the progress of societies would be impossible ...
— Logic - Deductive and Inductive • Carveth Read
... Peacock, {32} apprised by the magic effluvia, used to come from miles around to visit the recluse in her bell-jar in my study. The dwarf of this evening, that other nocturnal pilgrim, crosses the intricate tangle of the branches without a mistake and makes straight for ...
— The Life of the Spider • J. Henri Fabre
... All Art. The ideals which animate artists are shown: Truth with her glass; Religion typified in the Madonna and child; Beauty, with the peacock; and the Militant Ideal with a flag. Above and below are figures carrying the wreath and the palm, the artist's tokens of success ...
— An Art-Lovers guide to the Exposition • Shelden Cheney
... so soon have forgotten the gift I bought, with the hard earnings of a wheel that turned at night. The tail of yon peacock is not finer than thou then wast—But I will make thee such another garment, that thou mayst go with the trainers to their ...
— The Wept of Wish-Ton-Wish • James Fenimore Cooper
... dunno," said Josh, sourly. "Of course you liked it because he called you a man. He ought to have knowed better, at his time o' life. Lor', Will, what a gashly peacock of a chap you would grow if it ...
— Menhardoc • George Manville Fenn
... government—Australian Labor Party, Robert Hawke; opposition—Liberal Party, Andrew Peacock; National Party, Charles Blunt; Australian ...
— The 1990 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency
... elder or aspen log. A heap of skins filled the third corner, and beside them were numerous stag's horns, and two of the white cow, but none yet of the much dreaded and much desired white bull. A few peacock's feathers were there also, rare and difficult to get, and intended for Aurora. Round one footpost of the bed was a long coil of thin hide, a lasso, and on another was suspended an iron cap, or ...
— After London - Wild England • Richard Jefferies |
