"Poisonous" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... emptied itself into the river. There is still the sound of rushing waters by the Steam-Packet Wharf, at London Bridge; but how different to the "brawling brook" of former days is the "evil odour" which arises from the poisonous sewers of to-day. ...
— Dickens' London • Francis Miltoun
... he said, "are already corrupt, not knowing it, with the poisonous breath of that damnable Hussite heresy, which is blowing from the east like wind of the pestilence, and ye may have doubts concerning the verity of this ...
— A Monk of Fife • Andrew Lang
... in which Kees made himself useful. Whenever they came across any fruits or roots with which the Hottentots were unacquainted, they waited to see whether Kees would taste them. If he threw them down, the traveller concluded they were poisonous or ...
— Minnie's Pet Monkey • Madeline Leslie
... upon another sofa and coiled himself under the pillow. My brother had only just risen from this sofa, and was sitting at the table watching the movements of his uninvited bedfellow. I soon poked him out with a stick, and cut off his head with a hunting-knife. This snake was of a very poisonous description, and was evidently accustomed to lodge behind the pillow, upon which the unwary sleeper might have received a fatal bite. Upon taking possession of an unfrequented rest-house, the cushions of the sofas and bedsteads should always be examined, as they are great ...
— The Rifle and The Hound in Ceylon • Samuel White Baker
... serpents alive, and they were tied by the feet and had a cord around their snouts, so that they could not open their mouths, as is done (in Europe) with mastiff-dogs so that they may not bite: they were of such savage aspect that none of us dared to take one away, thinking that they were poisonous: they are of the bigness of a kid, and in length an ell and a half: their feet are long and thick, and armed with big claws: they have a hard skin, and are of various colors: they have the muzzle ...
— Great Epochs in American History, Volume I. - Voyages Of Discovery And Early Explorations: 1000 A.D.-1682 • Various
... will only look and see! Let no reluctance to entertain religious ideas, no fear of contact with the Unseen, no shrinking from the thought of Christ as a Kill-joy keep you from seeing Him as He draws near to you in your troubles. And let no sly, mocking Mephistopheles of doubt, nor any poisonous air, blowing off the foul and stagnant marshes of present materialism, make you fancy that the living Reality, treading on the flood there, is a dream or a fancy or the projection of your own imagination on ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. John Chapters I to XIV • Alexander Maclaren
... very existence of intellectual good faith. Destroy credit, and you ruin commerce; destroy all faith in religious honesty and you ruin something of infinitely more importance than commerce; ideas should surely be preserved as carefully as cotton from the poisonous influence of a varnish intended to fit them for public consumption. "The time is come," says Mr. Mill in his autobiography, "in which it is the duty of all qualified persons to speak their minds about popular ...
— Prose Masterpieces from Modern Essayists • James Anthony Froude, Edward A. Freeman, William Ewart Gladstone, John Henry Newman and Leslie Steph
... question of doctrine. Since then he had led a roving existence in the four corners of the earth, exploring, botanizing, shooting big game, and searching for big diamonds and rubies. He had written books on all sorts of out-of-the-way subjects, such as "The Flora of Chatham Islands," "Poisonous Spiders (genus Latrodectua) of Sardinia," "Fossil Reptilia and Moa Remains of New Zealand," and "Seals of the Antarctic." But his chief and greatest hobby was precious stones, of which he was a ...
— The Hand in the Dark • Arthur J. Rees
... originally in the city; but at an early date we moved to a beautiful house in a green dingle, musical with splashing water, and surrounded on almost every side by twenty miles of poisonous and rocky desert. The city was thirty miles away; there was but one road, which went no further than my father's door; the rest were bridle-tracks impassable in winter; and we thus dwelt in a solitude inconceivable to ...
— The Dynamiter • Robert Louis Stevenson and Fanny van de Grift Stevenson
... afflicted be proud and of noble instincts, the passion becomes a kind of religion to the heart—sacred, and worthy to be guarded from the eyes of the world; or, finally, again, where it finds vanity the dominant characteristic of the being in whom it has grown, it draws a poisonous life from the unhealthy soil on which it is fed, and the tender seed of love shoots and puts forth evil leaves and blossoms, and grows to be a most venomous tree, which ...
— Saracinesca • F. Marion Crawford
... still streaming wildly down the canyon. We got away at last, leaving behind us that sad little meadow and its gruesome lakes, and began the slow and toilsome descent over slippery ledges of rock, among endless rows of rotting carcasses, over poisonous streams and through desolate, fire-marked, and ghastly forests of small pines. Everywhere were the traces of the furious flood of humankind that had broken over this height in the early spring. Wreckage ...
— The Trail of the Goldseekers - A Record of Travel in Prose and Verse • Hamlin Garland
... mystery—these are the attributes of the desert. True, it has its softer phases—veiled dawns and dusks, rainbow hues, moon and stars. But these are but tender blossoms from a spiked, poisonous stalk, like the flowers of the cactus. They are brief and evanescent; the ...
— The Desert Valley • Jackson Gregory
... manna from the nests above. May is the dry season, and the low water of the swamp accounted in a measure for the unusual number of snakes to {212} be seen. Exercising a fair amount of caution, I slew that morning fourteen poisonous reptiles, one of which measured more than five feet in length and had a girth I was just able to encompass with ...
— The Bird Study Book • Thomas Gilbert Pearson
... else that is known to me, I always discharge day and night, without idleness of any kind. Having with my whole heart recourse to humility and approved rules I serve my meek and truthful lords ever observant of virtue, regarding them as poisonous snakes capable of being excited at a trifle. I think that to be eternal virtue for women which is based upon a regard for the husband. The husband is the wife's god, and he is her refuge. Indeed, there is no other refuge for her. How ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 1 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... course I have other reasons for thinking so—dozens of exiguous threads which lead vaguely up towards the centre of the web where the poisonous, motionless creature is lurking. I only mention the Greuze because it brings the matter within the range of your ...
— The Valley of Fear • Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
... means of nourishment left to the unfortunate adventurers were such shell-fish as they occasionally picked up on the shore, or the bitter buds of the palm-tree, and such berries and unsavoury herbs as grew wild in the woods. Some of these were so poisonous, that the bodies of those who ate them swelled up and were tormented with racking pains. Others, preferring famine to this miserable diet, pined away from weakness and actually died of starvation. Yet their resolute leader ...
— The History Of The Conquest Of Peru • William H. Prescott
... he lay there—so still in his heavy lassitude that life itself seemed to have left him—one of the long green lizards, common to Italy, crawled over his shoulder. He seized the animal—doubtful for the moment whether it might not be of the poisonous species—and examined it. At the first glance he discovered that it was of the harmless order of its race, and would have flung it carelessly from him, but for something in its appearance which, in the wayward irritability of his ...
— Antonina • Wilkie Collins
... wholesome and clean materials—meat from animals free from disease; fruit and vegetables free from decay; milk, butter, etc., free from harmful bacteria. The dangers are the transference to the human body of encysted organisms like trichina; of the absorption of poisonous substances as toxins or ptomaines; of the lodgment of germs of disease along with dust on berries, rough peach skins, crushed-open fruits; of dirt clinging to lettuce, celery, and such ...
— Euthenics, the science of controllable environment • Ellen H. Richards
... will continue to keep our lives simple. Consider our diet. Could anything be simpler or better? We are not even tempted by the poisonous victuals wherewith mankind destroys itself. The very first sound law of life is to look to the belly; for it is what goes into a man that ruins him. By avoiding murderous food, we may hope to become centenarians. And why not? The golden streets will not be ...
— The Life and Letters of Walter H. Page, Volume II • Burton J. Hendrick
... the trail into the woods, but she came back a minute or two later with a bundle under her arm that she had retrieved from some hiding-place. After that she took a bypath leading downhill in the direction of that poisonous little brook which runs through those meadows ...
— The Monk of Hambleton • Armstrong Livingston
... given by Ibn Batuta, Chardin, A. Hamilton, Tavernier, Thevenot, etc.; and the first of these travellers speaks specially of its prevalence in the desert near Hormuz, and of the many graves of its victims; but I have met with no reasonable account of its poisonous action. I will quote Chardin, already quoted at greater length by Marsden, as the most complete parallel to the text: "The most surprising effect of the wind is not the mere fact of its causing death, but its operation ...
— The Travels of Marco Polo Volume 1 • Marco Polo and Rustichello of Pisa
... complacently taken away from their owners without even Juarez script in payment. The question of arms proved more troublesome, but the answer at last was even more satisfactory. For the besieged at Queretero, Driscoll's troop later became some unfamiliar dragon hissing an incessant flame of poisonous breath. This was due to a strange and mystical weapon which not only carried a ball farther than any rifle known before, but sixteen of them, one after the other. The strange and mystical weapon multiplied a lone man into a very genii of death, until the Missourian's ...
— The Missourian • Eugene P. (Eugene Percy) Lyle
... Elizabeth would even permit any further preparations to be made, and the supplies took some time collecting. The crews would have been starved had not the officers so divided the rations as to make them last six weeks. The men died in scores from dysentery brought on by the sour and poisonous beer issued to them, and Howard and Drake ordered wine and arrow-root from the town for the use of the sick, and had to pay for it ...
— By England's Aid • G. A. Henty
... triumphant adversary—the jibes and laughter of his companions—the hootings of the mob—to be again repeated with fantastic exaggeration in the dreams which troubled and perplexed his broken sleep. No wonder that the demons of Revenge and Hate, by whom he was thus goaded, should have withered by their poisonous breath the healthful life which God had given—have blasted with premature old age a body rocker with curses to unblessed repose! It seemed, by his after-confessions, that he had really loved Elizabeth Gainsford with all the energy of his violent, moody nature, and ...
— The Experiences of a Barrister, and Confessions of an Attorney • Samuel Warren
... inhabitants of a village in Sikhim suffering greatly from having eaten arum-roots (9/5. Dr. Hooker has given me this information. See also his 'Himalayan Journals' 1854 volume 2 page 49.), which they had pounded and left for several days to ferment, so as partially to destroy their poisonous nature; and he adds that they cooked and ate many other deleterious plants. Sir Andrew Smith informs me that in South Africa a large number of fruits and succulent leaves, and especially roots, are used in times of scarcity. The natives, indeed, know the ...
— The Variation of Animals and Plants under Domestication - Volume I • Charles Darwin
... with which these half-breeds and more than half-Indians swallowed cup after cup of the blackest and bitterest tea, proved beyond question their appreciation of the article, and afforded presumptive evidence at least that tea is not in their case as poisonous as we are ...
— The Buffalo Runners - A Tale of the Red River Plains • R.M. Ballantyne
... proves," said Socrates, "that undiluted draughts of it are of a hurtful and poisonous nature, and require to be tempered with somewhat of objective truth, before it is safe to use them-at least in the case ...
— Phaethon • Charles Kingsley
... it is our intention to banish from Mexico, would take up their abode in the Southern Confederacy, in which Secession would do its perfect work. Such things are the natural fruits of the Secession tree, which is as poisonous as the upas and as productive as the palm. You we shall have no occasion to fear, as, once cut down, Europe would never again permit you to endanger the integrity of the possessions of any of her countries ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IX., March, 1862., No. LIII. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics, • Various
... the data!" exclaimed the judge. "I'm for getting him back into the Amidon state and respectability, data or no data, before some one else tolls him off into the poisonous swamp of popularity. Why, I tell you, Professor—hark! There they come! ...
— Double Trouble - Or, Every Hero His Own Villain • Herbert Quick
... lay like poisonous snow at his feet, he had sprung across the room to his prie-dieu, and fallen there in ...
— Lord of the World • Robert Hugh Benson
... of air. The more the better, so long as a proper temperature is kept up, as that counteracts the effect of the more or less poisonous atmosphere of living-rooms kept closed during winter. Beware of drafts blowing across the plants, but ...
— Gardening Indoors and Under Glass • F. F. Rockwell
... realised. With these views, shrewd and sagacious men established themselves early in Missouri, Kentucky, Indiana, Illinois and other States, and put the machinery in motion. The order sprung up in various sections of the country, and treason flourished well, as poisonous plants often show the greatest vitality. This plan was a success. Men high in rank and station—men from every profession and walk in life, embraced the principles of the order, and soon it could boast of legislators, judges of the higher courts, clergymen, doctors, ...
— The Great North-Western Conspiracy In All Its Startling Details • I. Windslow Ayer
... of pluck when, finding himself recovering, he resolutely swallowed some more of the poisonous weed and soon became so prostrated that he really believed his last hour was at hand. He was in great danger, for the nicotine threatened the seat of life, and Otto lost interest in every thing, feeling that it would be a relief to perish ...
— Footprints in the Forest • Edward Sylvester Ellis
... both walked out into the pouring rain. Oh, why was the Count of Monte-Cristo far away? Why had he spared the wretch, when the sea cast him up? Why had he prevented Bertuccio from crushing the head of the poisonous reptile? ...
— The Son of Monte-Cristo, Volume II (of 2) • Alexandre Dumas pere
... Beryl turned up the wick of the lantern, and with a small brush attached to a silver wire, finally succeeded in cauterizing and removing a portion of the poisonous growth that was rapidly narrowing the avenue of breath. The spasm of coughing that ensued was Nature's auxiliary effort, and temporarily ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson
... poisonous wave, And in its gulf a fitting grave For him who thence could solace bring To his lone imagining— Whose solitary soul could make An Eden of that ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 5 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... advantage of the appearance is soon learnt, and the necessity of avoiding the appearance of the contrary. But appearances cannot be long sustained without some touch of the reality. At all events there results a control over our actions; some good may be produced, and many a poisonous or offensive fruit will be prevented. Courtesy, urbanity, gallantry, munificence; the outward influence of the law shall I call it, or rather fashion of honour—these are the handsome hypocrisies that spring from the desire of distinction. I ask not the genius of a Machiavel, a Tacitus, or a Swift;—it ...
— Literary Remains (1) • Coleridge
... most was the utter absence of damp or miasma. After a blazing day, instead of hurrying in out of reach of poisonous vapours as the tropic-dweller must needs do, we could linger bare-headed, lightly clad, out of doors, listening to the distant roar of a river, or watching the exquisite tints of the evening sky. I dwell ...
— Station Amusements • Lady Barker
... after my friends, and travelled about Italy in his usual way. Three years later he paid for his British bravado with his life. He committed the wild imprudence of traversing the Maremma in August, and was killed by the poisonous exhalations. ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... brought on board from the Kent's oil-house; he wanted to be secreted until we sailed, as he wished to make his escape; for, he said, his master wanted to cut his head off, or to make him chop nut, i.e. to oblige him to eat a poisonous nut, which produces speedy death, because he had free-mason (meaning witchcraft), and that his master had been sick ever since ...
— A Voyage Round the World, Vol. I (of ?) • James Holman
... however, to feel in this case any very compassionate concern. On the contrary, he rather congratulated himself that the Professor's stroke and his elaborate and limping walk would make it easy to escape from him and leave him miles behind. For Syme thirsted first and last to get clear of the whole poisonous atmosphere, if only for an hour. Then he could collect his thoughts, formulate his policy, and decide finally whether he should or should ...
— The Man Who Was Thursday - A Nightmare • G. K. Chesterton
... she had loved so tenderly and loyally touched the very springs of her life. She could have shared any other burden with them, and borne it with an unbroken spirit and an uncrushed heart. But such a sin as this, so full of woe and bewilderment to them all, entangled her soul also in its poisonous web. ...
— Cobwebs and Cables • Hesba Stretton
... source from which modern literature takes its inspiration," continued the old lady; "and this poisonous stream not only dries up the thoughts which would expand toward heaven, but also withers all that is noble in human sentiment. To-day, people are not content to deny God, because they are not pure enough to comprehend Him; they disown even the weakness ...
— Gerfaut, Complete • Charles de Bernard
... nation will suffer a bastard to govern it? Lucien! Lucien! you would ruin your brother! This is dreadful! Wretched should I be, were any one to suppose me capable of listening, without horror, to your infamous proposal! Your ideas are poisonous; your language horrible!'—'Well, Madame,' retorted he, 'all I can say to that is, that I am really ...
— Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte, Complete • Louis Antoine Fauvelet de Bourrienne
... means the least of its devilish capacities was that of automatically reloading and firing itself at the interval of every ten seconds, its muzzle rising, falling, or veering slightly from side to side with each discharge, thus causing the shells to fall at wide distances. The poisonous nature of the immense volumes of gas poured out by the mastodon when in action necessitated the withdrawal of its crew to a safe distance. But once set in motion it needed no attendant. It had been tested ...
— The Man Who Rocked the Earth • Arthur Train
... growing hazy and then disappearing after another; although sometimes there was none of this fore-running haze, but the whole opaque white ocean gave a start and swallowed a piece of mountain at a gulp. It was to flee these poisonous fogs that I had left the seaboard, and climbed so high among the mountains. And now, behold, here came the fog to besiege me in my chosen altitudes, and yet came so beautifully that my first thought was ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition - Vol. 2 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... was not wide-awake enough to play the like comedy with Madame d'Etampes. That evening, when she heard the whole course of events from the King's own lips, it bred such poisonous fury in her breast that she exclaimed with anger: "If Benvenuto had shown me those fine things of his, he would have given me some reason to be mindful of him at the proper moment." The King sought to ...
— The Autobiography of Benvenuto Cellini • Benvenuto Cellini
... not,' answered the other; 'for those meadows are full of swamps and quagmires, the groves filled with snakes, and many of the fruits poisonous. You might have got yourself into such troubles that not even I could have helped you out ...
— Forgotten Tales of Long Ago • E. V. Lucas
... as man was in his. The plant world gave her the best returns for the effort which she could make. She beat out the seeds of plants, digged out the roots and tubers which the monkeys and pigs were seen to grub for most eagerly,[174] strained the poisonous juices from the cassava and made bread of the residue, and it was under her attention that a southern grass was developed into what we know as Indian corn. Looking back on this process, we call it the domestication of plants, and ...
— Sex and Society • William I. Thomas
... groans, and the wind which rushed through the passage. Mary was petrified; but soon assuming more courage, approached the bed, and, regardless of the surrounding nastiness, knelt down by the poor wretch, and breathed the most poisonous air; for the unfortunate creature was dying of a putrid fever, the consequence of ...
— Mary - A Fiction • Mary Wollstonecraft
... every trace of free trade that would enable the poor fisherman to sell his fish in the highest market and buy his provisions in the lowest, so in China the British in 1838 insisted on forcing the Chinaman to buy the poisonous opium of India, although in 1834 the China government had warned the British of their intention to prohibit the infamous traffic. The war that England thereupon proclaimed against China was one of the most ...
— Newfoundland and the Jingoes - An Appeal to England's Honor • John Fretwell
... and the instances in which people have been seized with intermittents by a single exposure in a place infested by malaria in the season of fevers gives, I think, a strong support to something like a poisonous material existing in the atmosphere in such spots; but I merely offer doubts. I hope the progress of physiology and of chemistry will at no very distant time solve this important problem." Ambrosio now came forward, and bowing to the stranger, ...
— Consolations in Travel - or, the Last Days of a Philosopher • Humphrey Davy
... had both so often reproached him with. Questions he might have decided in half an hour he prolonged, sometimes from weakness, sometimes from that miserable desire to set people at loggerheads, and that poisonous maxim which occasionally escaped him or his favourite, 'divide et impera'; often from his general mistrust of everybody and everything; nothings became hydras with which he himself afterwards was much embarrassed. His familiarity and ...
— The Memoirs of Louis XIV., His Court and The Regency, Complete • Duc de Saint-Simon
... escaped. I can't tell you how we lived—I would not if I could. The burrows had been dug by the pig-like animals that the trees live upon, and they led, eventually, to the shore, where there was water—horrible, bitter stuff, but not salty, and apparently not poisonous." ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science September 1930 • Various
... betray these weaknesses to Voltaire," said the king, laughing; "he would mock at me, and I should suffer from his poisonous satire, as I have done more than once. Voltaire is miserly; that displeases me. Covetousness is a rust which will obscure and at last destroy the finest metal! The miser loves nothing but himself. I fear that Voltaire ...
— Berlin and Sans-Souci • Louise Muhlbach
... co-eternal with Ormazd, engaged in a perpetual warfare with him. Whatever good thing Ormazd creates, Ahriman corrupts and ruins it. Moral and physical evils are alike at his disposal. He blasts the earth with barrenness, or makes it produce thorns, thistles, and poisonous plants; his are the earthquake, the storm, the plague of hail, the thunderbolt; he causes disease and death, sweeps off a nation's flocks and herds by murrain, or depopulates a continent by pestilence; ferocious wild beasts, ...
— The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 7. (of 7): The Sassanian or New Persian Empire • George Rawlinson
... into contact with sin. In some way all too deep for definition He is to be "made sin."[23] The language used to describe His emotions is so strong that no adequate English words seem available for its full expression. An indescribable horror, a chill of terror, a frenzy of fright seizes Him. The poisonous miasma of sin seems to be filling His nostrils and to be stifling Him. And yonder alone among the trees the agony is upon Him. The extreme grips Him. May there not yet possibly be some other way rather than this—this! A bit of that prayer comes to us in tones strangely altered ...
— Quiet Talks on Prayer • S. D. (Samuel Dickey) Gordon
... transmission of the active principle to the tubers immediately descended from it. During the early years of their existence these revitalized tubers contain so much solanin that they are not only injurious, but more or less poisonous, to man, and it is only after they have been cultivated, and have produced further generations of tubers from tubers, that they become eatable, showing that in the tuber condition the plant gradually ...
— Grain and Chaff from an English Manor • Arthur H. Savory
... the photographer, and published in the Moniteur de la Photographie a series of papers which were afterward translated into English and published by Messrs. Piper & Carter, of London. In them the worthy author has considered the action on the economy of the various poisonous substances which pass daily through the hands of our readers, and the best ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 312, December 24, 1881 • Various
... which he was himself the great portrayer: "I often call that a celestial infernal phenomenon, the most memorable in our world for a thousand years; on the whole, a transcendent revolt against the devil and his works, (since shams are all and sundry of the devil, and poisonous and unendurable to man.)" Now, the French Revolution was an extraordinary outbreak of passionate feeling and physical violence on the part of the French Nation, both at home and abroad; and it led on to the Napoleonic wars, which were ...
— The New York Times Current History of the European War, Vol. 1, January 9, 1915 - What Americans Say to Europe • Various
... up and down, and as he came to the letter he spurned it with his foot, like a poisonous adder, too loathsome to touch. "I have deserved this punishment," cried he, laughing aloud ...
— The Merchant of Berlin - An Historical Novel • L. Muhlbach
... as "Creechy," although less noisy, was the enemy's 1-pound Maxim. A very loud hammering, quickly repeated, and almost simultaneously a whirring in the air, followed by four quick explosions, and then we knew this poisonous devil was at work. The shells were little gems in their way, and when they did not burst, which was often the case, were tremendously in request as souvenirs. Not much larger than an ordinary pepper-caster, when ...
— South African Memories - Social, Warlike & Sporting From Diaries Written At The Time • Lady Sarah Wilson
... passion pursuing him to speedy ruin. But that Power which strikes the luminaries of the world with sudden darkness and extinction, by awakening them to too exquisite a perception of its influences, dooms to a slow and poisonous decay those manner spirits that dare to abjure its dominion. Their destiny is more abject and inglorious as their delinquency is more contemptible and pernicious. They who, deluded by no generous error, instigated by no sacred thirst of doubtful knowledge, duped ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley Volume I • Percy Bysshe Shelley
... sight of Sydney was like the sudden breaking out of sunshine through a bank of stormy cloud to the man whose whole mind had been filled for days with poisonous thoughts. He beamed upon Melissa and ...
— A Tar-Heel Baron • Mabell Shippie Clarke Pelton
... goes on upon its curative mission. So it is with the novel. It is taken because of its jam and honey. But, unlike the honest simple jam and honey of the household cupboard, it is never unmixed with physic. There will be the dose within it, either curative or poisonous. The girl will be taught modesty or immodesty, truth or falsehood; the lad will be taught honour or dishonour, simplicity or affectation. Without the lesson the amusement will not be there. There are novels which certainly can teach nothing; but then ...
— Thackeray • Anthony Trollope
... great leaves and snowy cups of the water-lily float on the surface, there is deep water which scours the weeds and mud away; in other places duckweed forms a green carpet on the top, and on this floating velvet cowers the poisonous water-fungus in the form of a turnip-radish, blue and round, and swelled like a puff ball—deadly poison to every living thing. When Timar's oar struck one of these polyp-like fungi, the venomous dust shot out like a blue flame. The roots of this plant live in a fetid slime which ...
— Timar's Two Worlds • Mr Jkai
... after them to see what they died of. The instant I inhale a fly it acts as an emetic. And if Nature abhors a vacuum, she, or at least my nature, abhors these wretches more, for the moment I swallow one a vacuum is instantly produced. Their bodies are full of poisonous matter, and they have a most disgusting flavour, though they taste sweet. They also cause great pains and discomfort to our eyes, which are always full of them. Probably, if the flies were not here, we might think we were overrun with ants; but the flies preponderate; ...
— Australia Twice Traversed, The Romance of Exploration • Ernest Giles
... revenge Shakespeare got rid of some of the perilous stuff which his friend's traitorism had bred in him. In "Othello" he gave deathless expression to the madness of his jealous rage and so cleared his soul, to some extent, of that poisonous infection. But passion in Shakespeare survived hatred of the betrayer and jealousy of him; he had quickly finished with Herbert; but Mary Fitton lived still for him and tempted him perpetually—the lust of the flesh, ...
— The Man Shakespeare • Frank Harris
... according to the experiments of Thiersch, Burdon-Sanderson, and Macnamara, are not virulent and poisonous for the first twenty-four hours; on the second day eleven per cent. of those who swallow them will suffer; on the third day, thirty-six per cent.; on the fourth day, ninety per cent.; on the fifth day, seventy-one per ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 458, October 11, 1884 • Various
... however, he did not voluntarily exchange imprisonment for exile; racks were shown him; and by the act of banishment was placed a poisonous draught. This report gains considerable credit when it is remembered that, immediately after his condemnation, Moreau furnished his apartments in the Temple in a handsome manner, so as to be lodged well, if not comfortably, with his wife and child, whom, ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... committed the felony, in like manner every assign ought to be barred from defending the right to tenements which have come from the hands of felons; and it is found by the Inquest that Geoffrey was seised after the felony was committed. And inasmuch as felony is such a poisonous thing that it spreads poison on every side, the Court adjudges that William [the lord, who had brought a writ of escheat] do recover his seisin, and that John be in mercy for ...
— The Customs of Old England • F. J. Snell
... the poisonous element which Pasteur strove to attain by art, is already provided by nature in the cow-pox. The cow-pox is nothing else than small-pox modified in character, diminished in severity by passing through the system of the animal; ...
— The Mother's Manual of Children's Diseases • Charles West, M.D.
... little table and the diminutive chair blazed gallantly, and with such a volleying of poisonous fumes that Cobb could scarce hold his ground to do battle. Louise out of the way, he at once became cool and resourceful. Before a flame could reach the window he had rent down the flimsy curtains and flung them ...
— The Paying Guest • George Gissing
... for Venice was devoid of landscape and surrounded only by sea; Milan lay in a flat stretch of monotonous plain; Florence might boast her hills, but they made her winter climate frigid, while Rome was afflicted by unwholesome winds from Africa and such poisonous exhalations from the surrounding marshes that few of her citizens lived to old age. Such, to eyes sensitive to Nature's charms and to a mind conscious of historical significance, was the prize that had fallen ...
— De Orbe Novo, Volume 1 (of 2) - The Eight Decades of Peter Martyr D'Anghera • Trans. by Francis Augustus MacNutt
... quoted passage is from the works of Cornelius Agrippa, a well-known professor of occult philosophy, and is indeed introductory to a treatise upon it. The writer is quite aware that his work may be scandalizing, hurtful, and even poisonous to narrow minds, but is sure that readers of a superior understanding will get no little good, and plenty of pleasure from it; and he concludes by claiming indulgence on the score of his youth, in case he should have given even ...
— A Handbook to the Works of Browning (6th ed.) • Mrs. Sutherland Orr
... facts of life that the world's machinery is kept in motion. The inexpressible, unwearying tenderness of this mother for her son, the love of this boy for his mother, grew with the passage of time—grew into something so significant, so vital and so deep, that even the poisonous atmosphere of the alley could ...
— The Mystics - A Novel • Katherine Cecil Thurston
... enough to know that all physicians do not avoid incompatibles in their prescriptions, and that occasionally a combination falls into the prescription clerk's hands, which, if made up as he reads it would produce a poisonous compound, or perhaps even an explosive mixture. Two heads are better than one, and if my physician ever makes a mistake of this kind I look to my pharmacist to see that it shall ...
— A Librarian's Open Shelf • Arthur E. Bostwick
... man from the ape," has lately been confirmed in an interesting and unexpected way from the side of the experimental physiology of the blood. The experiments of Hans Friedenthal at Berlin have shown that human blood, mixed with the blood of lower apes, has a poisonous effect on the latter; the serum of the one destroys the blood-cells of the other. But this does not happen when human blood is mixed with that of the anthropoid ape. As we know from many other experiments that the mixture of two different kinds ...
— The Evolution of Man, V.1. • Ernst Haeckel
... on three sides, the ocean on the fourth. It was alive with lions and leopards and poisonous snakes. Its untouched mazes of matted jungle had as yet invited no hardy pioneer from the human ...
— Tarzan of the Apes • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... words. Yet how is one to know which of the forms that beckon us we may trust. Must we learn the lesson by sad betrayals, by dark catastrophes? I have wandered, it seems, along a flowery path—and yet I have not gathered the poisonous herbs of sin; I have loved innocence and goodness; but for all that I have followed a phantom, and now that it is too late to retrace my steps, I find that I have ...
— The Altar Fire • Arthur Christopher Benson
... Lo! Beauty withers in your void embrace, And with the glittering of an idiot's toy Did Fancy mock your vows. Nor let the gleam Of youthful hope that shines upon your hearts, Be chill'd or clouded at this awful task, To learn the lore of undeceitful Good, 390 And Truth eternal. Though the poisonous charms Of baleful Superstition guide the feet Of servile numbers, through a dreary way To their abode, through deserts, thorns, and mire; And leave the wretched pilgrim all forlorn To muse at last, amid the ghostly gloom Of graves, and hoary vaults, and cloister'd ...
— Poetical Works of Akenside - [Edited by George Gilfillan] • Mark Akenside
... souls confined there are in mortal peril. Those who are best acquainted with the mine do not think that many of them have been destroyed by the ruin, but they tell me these explosions let loose poisonous gases, and so now those poor souls are all exposed to three deadly perils—choke-damp, fire-damp, ...
— A Perilous Secret • Charles Reade
... kinds of eucalyptus, fit for the ordinary purposes of building. A species of Cycas, described by captain Cook (Hawkesworth, III. 220, 221) as a third kind of palm found by him on this coast, and bearing poisonous nuts, was not scarce in the neighbourhood of West-arm Hill. We found three kinds of stone here: a greyish slate, quartz and various granitic combinations, and a soft, whitish stone, saponaceous to the touch; the two first were often found intermixed, ...
— A Voyage to Terra Australis Volume 2 • Matthew Flinders
... of the room was what I might call electric. The Colonel was positively bristling; he stood with his back to the fire, fingering an unlit black cigar, his face flushed, his being obviously roused and ready for action. He hated this mystery. It was poisonous to his nature, and he longed to meet something face to face—something he could gauge and fight. Dr. Silence, I noticed at once, was sitting before the map of the estate which was spread upon a table. I knew by his expression the state of his mind. He was in the thick of it all, ...
— Three John Silence Stories • Algernon Blackwood
... as I have said, a pit, with sharply-sloping walls and a level bottom about twenty feet across. This bottom was littered with great gobbets of flesh, most of which was in the last state of putridity. The atmosphere was poisonous and horrible. After tripping and stumbling over these lumps of decay, I came suddenly against something hard, and I found that an upright post was firmly fixed in the center of the hollow. It was so high that I could not reach the top of it with my ...
— The Lost World • Arthur Conan Doyle
... attribute the crime to Indians, much was said about the party having poisoned a spring and caused the death of Indians and their cattle. Forney found that one ox did die near their camp, but that its death was caused by a poisonous weed. Whitney, the church historian, who of course acquits the church of any responsibility for the massacre, draws a very black picture of the emigrants, saying, for instance, that at Cedar Creek "their customary proceeding of burning ...
— The Story of the Mormons: • William Alexander Linn
... acceptable vehicle of public information in many places not sufficiently supplied with it,—this also is a certain truth." What was this but an acknowledgment of the essential truth of the charge brought against Jefferson and himself? Not that he might not devoutly hope for an antidote to the poisonous doctrines of monarchy and aristocracy, though in very truth the existence of any such poison was only one of the maggots which, bred in the muck of party strife, had found a lodgment in his brain; not that it was not a commendable ...
— James Madison • Sydney Howard Gay
... sumptuosity, calling it that of the Diers together. For all those that said they would die with Antony and Cleopatra gave in their names, for the present passing their time in all manner of pleasures and a regular succession of banquets. But Cleopatra was busied in making a collection of all varieties of poisonous drugs, and, in order to see which of them were the least painful in the operation, she had them tried upon prisoners condemned to die. But, finding that the quick poisons always worked with sharp pains, and that the less painful were ...
— Plutarch's Lives • A.H. Clough
... in me an ardent desire to do what little I could as a dramatist to counteract what seemed to me the poisonous influences of these hidden forces: to write a play which might throw some light on the goal of destruction to which these influences inevitably lead, whenever the agitation between capital and labour ...
— Representative Plays by American Dramatists: 1856-1911: Paul Kauvar; or, Anarchy • Steele Mackaye
... Platten Lakes, and in grottos and other water-filled subterranean cavities in southern Europe. It is remarkable that the European species are considered uneatable, and even regarded with such loathing that the fishermen throw them away as soon as caught because they consider them poisonous, and fear that their other fish would be destroyed by contact with it. They also consider it an affront if one asks them for dog-fish.[268] If we had known thus we should not now have been able to certify that Dallia delicatissima, SMITT, ...
— The Voyage of the Vega round Asia and Europe, Volume I and Volume II • A.E. Nordenskieold
... about to drink a glass of brandy, said, "Don't drink that poisonous stuff! brandy is the worst enemy you have." "I know that," answered Charles, "but we are commanded to love ...
— The Book of Anecdotes and Budget of Fun; • Various
... only one of Hawthorne's preparatory sketches given to the public—in which we see his genius in the "midmost heat of composition"—supposes a household in which an old man keeps a crab- spider for a pet, a deadly poisonous creature; and in the same family there is a boy whose fortunes will be mysteriously affected in some manner by this dangerous insect. He did not proceed sufficiently to indicate for us how this would turn out, but he closes the sketch with the significant remark, "In person and figure Mr. Alcott"; ...
— The Life and Genius of Nathaniel Hawthorne • Frank Preston Stearns
... talk, came from between decks, and from the capstan called out to know why a man that is fasting, bit by a serpent also fasting, is in greater danger of death than when man and serpent have eat their breakfasts;—why a man's fasting-spittle is poisonous ...
— Gargantua and Pantagruel, Complete. • Francois Rabelais
... their books. These children may most truly be called the riches of their father, and many of them have with true filial piety fed their parent in his old age; so that not only the affection but the interest of the author may be highly injured by those slanderers whose poisonous breath brings his book to ...
— Hours in a Library, Volume I. (of III.) • Leslie Stephen
... belongs to the family of Apocynaceae, which contains many poisonous species. It is often cultivated for the beauty of its flowers; the leaves are considered a valuable cathartic, in moderate doses, especially in the cure of painter's colic; in large doses they are violently emetic. It is a native ...
— Catalogue of Economic Plants in the Collection of the U. S. Department of Agriculture • William Saunders
... unerring virtue and wisdom, they were even depicted as under the dominion of furious and unbridled passions. It was an age of wild effervescence; the hand of social order had not as yet brought the soil of morality into cultivation, and it yielded at the same time the most beneficent and poisonous productions, with the fresh luxuriant fulness of prolific nature. Here the occurrence of the monstrous and horrible did not necessarily indicate that degradation and corruption out of which alone, under the development of law and order, they could arise, and which, ...
— Lectures on Dramatic Art - and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel trans John Black
... them. We became very fond of this little tuber: and I dare say the feast of Allamurr with Eooanberry's and Minorelli's tribe will long remain in the recollection of my companions. They brought us also a thin grey snake, about four feet long, which they put on the coals and roasted. It was poisonous, and was called "Yullo." At nightfall, after filling their koolimans with water, there being none at their camp, they took their leave, and retired to their camping place on the opposite hill where a plentiful dinner awaited them. They were very urgent in inviting us to accompany them, ...
— Journal of an Overland Expedition in Australia • Ludwig Leichhardt
... a healthy berry, dried and used for making pies, especially mixed with some other fruit. The blossoms are much used as medicine for small children. The common sweet elder is the only kind cultivated. The earlier red are offensive and poisonous. They are easily grown on rough waste land, or in any situation you prefer. Of this berry is made a wine, superior in flavor and effect to any port wine now to be obtained in market; it has had the preference among the best judges in the country;—it ...
— Soil Culture • J. H. Walden
... orders, from Bombay and Calcutta came numerous vessels which here deposited their poisonous cargoes, and returning for another freight, left it to be distributed by swift-sailing and armed clippers, throughout the dominions of an empire whose laws they had signed a solemn compact to respect, which laws made ...
— Kathay: A Cruise in the China Seas • W. Hastings Macaulay
... them. The setting sun flashed his ruddy beams caressingly over her brow, and whispering winds lifted tenderly the clustering folds of jetty hair; but nature's pure- hearted darling had stood over the noxious tarn, whence the poisonous breath of a corrupt humanity rolled upward, and the once sinless child inhaled the vapor until her soul was a great ...
— Beulah • Augusta J. Evans
... only these harassed and haggard horsemen remained, haunting the forest purlieus of their former kingdoms with hatred in their hearts, and their hands red with murder. Truly, the Red Beast we hunted these three years through was a most poisonous thing, that it should belch forth such pests as Lord George Germaine, and Loring, and Cunningham, and turn the baronets and gentry of County Tryon ...
— The Hidden Children • Robert W. Chambers
... When they had sated their anger a little and the traitor had lost most of his clothes and the thumb of his right hand, they dragged him to the junction where the Danube meets the Sava and held him under the gray waters with long poles, as if he was some poisonous reptile. ...
— The Mightiest Man • Patrick Fahy
... relieved of the boy's presence than for his good. And there, being unused to the society of his equals, he had been much flouted and despised for his feeble frame; till a certain bitter ambition sprang up in his mind, like a poisonous flower, to gain power and make himself a name; and he had determined that as he could not be loved he might still be feared; so he bided his time in bitterness, making great progress in his studies; then, when those days were over, he departed eagerly, ...
— Paul the Minstrel and Other Stories - Reprinted from The Hill of Trouble and The Isles of Sunset • Arthur Christopher Benson
... in every respect," said the fat detective, pompously. "House is full of Indian curiosities. Thaddeus brought this up, and if this splinter be poisonous Thaddeus may as well have made murderous use of it as any other man. The card is some hocus-pocus,—a blind, as like as not. The only question is, how did he depart? Ah, of course, here is a hole in the roof." With great activity, considering his ...
— The Sign of the Four • Arthur Conan Doyle
... said lightly, "you are smoking a great many poisonous and highly expensive cigarettes. Also I wish to ...
— The Street of Seven Stars • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... they were vraised, for whatever you heard them blamed, and so excite them to run more extremely into any little error which you think will be most displeasing to their employers; watching an opportunity to pour your poisonous lies into their unsuspecting ears, when there is no third person to bear witness of your iniquity; making your victims believe, it is all out of your sincere regard for them; assuring them (as Betty says in the ...
— The Cook's Oracle; and Housekeeper's Manual • William Kitchiner
... look as though we are ever going to find out—he's sure a bear-cat!" replied Seaton, as the karlon, unable to ascend further, dropped in a slanting dive toward the lowlands of Kondal—the terrible, swampy region covered with poisonous vegetation and inhabited by frightful animals and even more frightful savages. The monster neared the ground with ever-increasing speed. Seaton, keeping close behind it, ...
— The Skylark of Space • Edward Elmer Smith and Lee Hawkins Garby
... of abominable desolation that hung over the world. The red eastern sky, the northward blackness, the salt Dead Sea, the stony beach crawling with these foul, slow-stirring monsters, the uniform poisonous-looking green of the lichenous plants, the thin air that hurts one's lungs: all contributed to an appalling effect. I moved on a hundred years, and there was the same red sun—a little larger, a little duller—the ...
— The Time Machine • H. G. (Herbert George) Wells
... keep still and listen. The coarse grass and herbage were so rank you could scarcely see the ground. It looked decidedly snaky, Chicken Little reflected dubiously. And water moccasins were abundant along the creek, and poisonous, as her father had often warned her. Chicken Little was usually plucky when she actually saw a snake, but the snakes she feared she might see ...
— Chicken Little Jane on the Big John • Lily Munsell Ritchie
... says (Contra Vigil.): "Although they," namely religious, "are sorely smitten by thy poisonous tongue, about whom you argue, saying; 'If all shut themselves up and live in solitude, who will go to church? who will convert worldlings? who will be able to urge sinners to virtue?' If this holds true, if all are fools with thee, who can be wise? ...
— Summa Theologica, Part II-II (Secunda Secundae) • Thomas Aquinas
... him to avoid, above all things, the vice of intoxication, which he likened unto the filthy habits of swine, and to those poisonous and baleful drugs which being chewed in the mouth, are said to filch away the memory. At this point of his discourse, the reverend and red-nosed gentleman became singularly incoherent, and staggering to and fro in the excitement of his eloquence, was fain to catch at the ...
— The Pickwick Papers • Charles Dickens
... loftily as she opened the door, "I thought, if it was poisonous, remedies might be used in time. Because," she added suddenly, abandoning her lofty manner, and wildly rushing to the corner with a frantic embrace of the unconscious Baby, "because, if any nasty stuff should turn its booful hair a horrid green, or a naughty ...
— Tales of the Argonauts • Bret Harte
... the existence of a very large number of people who WILL have stimulants of some kind. In such cases common sense would seem to dictate that, in the case of those who persist in using distilled liquors, something ought to be done to substitute those which are pure for those which are absolutely poisonous and maddening; and, in the case of those who merely seek a mild stimulant, to substitute for distilled liquors light fermented beverages; and, in the case of those who seek merely recreation after toil, to substitute for beverages which ...
— Volume I • Andrew Dickson White
... miners being shut in by accident and poisoned with foul air, or rescued at the point of death. He knew that his own situation was a critical one. He knew that, with the shaft crowded full of wreckage and giving no passage to the air, the entire mine would eventually become filled with poisonous gases. He knew that his present physical condition was due to the foulness of the atmosphere he was breathing. He felt that the situation was becoming rapidly more alarming. The only question now was as to how long this vitiated air would support life. Still, his courage did not give way. He had ...
— Burnham Breaker • Homer Greene
... the great man of the South is the same inexpressible melancholy which is obvious in those of our own man of sorrows, the beloved Lincoln. Bolivar was insulted and slandered as was Lincoln, and if Lincoln was assassinated by a man, Bolivar escaped the weapon of the assassin only to sink under poisonous treachery and ingratitude. It is true that Bolivar was quick-tempered, at times sharp in his repartee; his intellectual aptness had no patience with stupidity, and occasionally his remarks hurt. But when the storm had ...
— Simon Bolivar, the Liberator • Guillermo A. Sherwell
... which were to have been the ground stories of palaces, a few ragged children play in the sun, a lean donkey crops the thistles, or if near to a few occupied dwellings, a wine seller makes a booth of straw and chestnut boughs and dispenses a poisonous, sour drink to those who will buy. But that is only in the warm months. The winter winds blow the wretched booth to pieces and increase the desolation. Further on, tall facades rise suddenly up, the blue sky gleaming through their windows, the green moss already growing upon their naked stones ...
— Don Orsino • F. Marion Crawford
... very efficacious." If the word is quite new to him, and there is nothing in the clause preceding or following to indicate its meaning, it is not at all unlikely that he may suppose it to mean "poisonous." If, however, from the context, he finds that a person who had been sick, was made suddenly well, and this statement followed by the remark, that "the drug was very efficacious," he will probably get the idea that the word ...
— In the School-Room - Chapters in the Philosophy of Education • John S. Hart
... a great heap of money. The coins were black as ink; he picked up a handful and went on. Hitherto Felix had accepted all that he saw as something so strange as to be unaccountable. During his advance into this region in the canoe he had in fact become slowly stupefied by the poisonous vapour he had inhaled. His mind was partly in abeyance; it acted, but only after some time had elapsed. He now at last began to realize his position; the finding of the heap of blackened money touched a chord ...
— After London - Wild England • Richard Jefferies
... said Herr Oehmchen at last—"Our beloved Frau Marianne!" His voice sounded rather poisonous. Heaven only knew whether he had ever taken any advantage of the kindness and readiness of his benefactress—but he wished to be the one to choose or to reject, not she. He was the injured one. Herr Leinhose's conduct was very similar; he also felt himself a lord of creation, ...
— The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries - Masterpieces of German Literature Vol. 19 • Various
... merely subjoin one, which appears in the last Tralee paper: 'A man would hardly dig in a day, as much sound potatoes as himself would consume. But that is not the worst of it. Common cholera has set in among the people of the town, owing to the use of potatoes, which contain a large quantity of poisonous matter. A professional gentleman in this town, of considerable experience and unquestioned integrity, assures me, that he has attended, within the last fortnight, in this town and neighbourhood, more than 12 cases of common cholera, and that ...
— Gossip in the First Decade of Victoria's Reign • John Ashton
... Armstrong stirred not from the house, as long as the sun remained above the horizon. The golden sunshine deepened his mental gloom. Nor to his eyes was it golden. It was a coppery, unnatural light. It looked poisonous. It seemed as if the young leaves of spring ought to ...
— The Lost Hunter - A Tale of Early Times • John Turvill Adams
... late this pestilential Clime shall work you harm—beware! Even you shall likewise find it Foul and poisonous grave-yard air. ...
— Modern Italian Poets • W. D. Howells
... seized Dick with the other hand and dragged him on. Their companion had disappeared. In vain they shouted for him, while they anxiously waited for the return of the corve to carry them up. To go back into the passages already full of poisonous air, would have been madness. Dick, notwithstanding, was eager to go back to try and find his father and brother. Had not the viewer prevented him, he would have made the attempt and perished. Even where they were, it was with difficulty they ...
— Taking Tales - Instructive and Entertaining Reading • W.H.G. Kingston
... Frigga called to her the trees; and wide-spreading oak trees, with tall ash and somber firs, came rushing up the hill, and Frigga raised her hand, and said, "Swear that you will not hurt Baldur"; and they said, "We swear," and went. After this Frigga called to her the diseases, who came blown by poisonous winds on wings of pain, and to the sound of moaning. Frigga said to them, "Swear"; and they sighed, "We swear," then flew away. Then Frigga called to her all beasts, birds, and venomous snakes, who came to her and swore, and disappeared. After this she stretched out her hand to Baldur, ...
— Types of Children's Literature • Edited by Walter Barnes
... a method: one that Colney Durance advocated. The girl's intelligence and sweet blood invited a trial of it. Since, as he argued, we cannot keep the poisonous matter out, mothers should prepare and strengthen young women for the encounter with it, by lifting the veil, baring the world, giving them knowledge to arm them for the fight they have to sustain; and thereby preserve them further from the spiritual ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... of the cup are poisonous, nevertheless calmly takes it from her hand and puts it to his lips. But ere he has drunk half the potion, Ysolde snatches it from his grasp and greedily drains the rest. Instead of the ice-cold chill of death which ...
— Stories of the Wagner Opera • H. A. Guerber
... a little, and curled up in her neck. The next she knew, the sun was shining. She jumped up frightened and puzzled, and then she remembered where she was, and began to think of breakfast. But there were no berries but the poisonous dog-wood, and nothing else to be seen but leaves and grass and bushes. Hungry snapped up a few grasshoppers, and looked longingly at an unattainable squirrel, who was flying from tree-top to tree-top; then ...
— The Junior Classics • Various
... rejoice the fancy of an abbot; sharks swarm there, and chiefly round the passages, to feast upon this plenty, and you would suppose that man had only to prepare his angle. Alas! it is not so. Of these painted fish that came in hordes about the entering Casco, some bore poisonous spines, and others were poisonous if eaten. The stranger must refrain, or take his chance of painful and dangerous sickness. The native, on his own isle, is a safe guide; transplant him to the next, and he is as helpless as yourself. For ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 18 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... eatable in its original state; and that any part of the cultivated plant, if accidentally left exposed to the action of the air and light, becomes tough, and so strong in flavour as to be extremely unpleasant to the taste. Celery, also, in its native state, is poisonous; and it is only the parts that are blanched that are perfectly fitted for the table. Though colour is generally supposed to depend principally on the plant's being exposed to the light, some portion of colouring matter appears to be occasionally ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 20, - Issue 572, October 20, 1832 • Various
... tents, where the little girls had only just arrived. But it was many minutes ere we could tell the frightful scene going on above. We clung together and all drew within the tent, while Smart went to summon the captain. The poisonous breath of the monstrous creature made Serena and myself the victims of successive fainting fits, we had the greatest difficulty in swallowing anything, and only revived under the influence of strong salts, and constant fanning. Our features ...
— Yr Ynys Unyg - The Lonely Island • Julia de Winton
... invariably with offenders, and Joyce thought her rather too fond of the society of men. Meredith feared and disliked her. The fear was on his wife's account, lest she should be contaminated. "I have no use for a woman of her type," he would say. "She has made a mess of her own life and is a poisonous ...
— Banked Fires • E. W. (Ethel Winifred) Savi
... walked to the address which Fritz had given me. As I stood on the doorstep, with the bell handle still in my hand, the door was suddenly opened. It was Delora himself who appeared! He shrank away from me as though I were something poisonous. I laid my hand on his shoulder, firmly determined that this time there ...
— The Lost Ambassador - The Search For The Missing Delora • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... expression of art and design, and, on provocation, a ferocity tempered by caution, which nature had made obvious to the most ordinary physiognomist, perhaps with the same intention that she has given the rattle to the poisonous snake. As if to compensate him for these disadvantages of exterior, Rashleigh Osbaldistone was possessed of a voice the most soft, mellow, and rich in its tones that I ever heard, and was at no loss for language of every sort ...
— Rob Roy, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... grandmother know anything about them? she wondered. She tried in many ways to draw Mrs. Crawford out, but was unsuccessful, for there were now too much pain and bitterness connected with the diamonds for Mrs. Crawford to speak to her of them. The poisonous breath of gossip had been at work ever since Harold went away, quietly aided and abetted by Mrs. Tracy, who never failed to roll her eyes and shrug her shoulders when Harold's name was mentioned, and openly ...
— Tracy Park • Mary Jane Holmes
... actively evolving air bubbles. That is gas,—gas manufactured by the process of fermentation. This is exactly the process that goes on in the stomach or bowel of a dyspeptic, and it is this collection of foul, poisonous gas that causes the distress and bloated feeling which every dyspeptic suffers from after eating,—if it is this "flatulent" type of indigestion which ...
— The Eugenic Marriage, Vol 2 (of 4) - A Personal Guide to the New Science of Better Living and Better Babies • W. Grant Hague
... his life agreeable to the actions of it. There is also another report about his end, viz. that he recovered of that stroke, and that a surgeon, who was sent by Antigonus to heal him, filled the wound with poisonous ingredients, and so killed him; whichsoever of these deaths he came to, the beginning of it was glorious. It is also reported that before he expired he was informed by a certain poor woman how Herod had escaped out of their hands, and that he said thereupon, "I now die with comfort, since I leave ...
— The Wars of the Jews or History of the Destruction of Jerusalem • Flavius Josephus
... feature of revolutions is that they purify the atmosphere from the thick, poisonous ...
— Mother Earth, Vol. 1 No. 1, March 1906 • Various
... oily within and oily without. He oozed oil on the community that he was demoralizing with his poisonous whiskey ...
— Joyce of the North Woods • Harriet T. Comstock
... upon him great hosts of the smaller winged people, who also had been provided with sharp and poisonous weapons. Against these his Elder Brother had forgotten to warn him; but now he was told in haste to strike two flints together and to catch the spark that should come in the dry fallen leaves. Soon a great cloud of smoke and flames arose toward heaven, not ...
— Wigwam Evenings - Sioux Folk Tales Retold • Charles Alexander Eastman and Elaine Goodale Eastman
... she passed through Rouen, to go herself to the lending-library and represent that Emma had discontinued her subscription. Would they not have a right to apply to the police if the librarian persisted all the same in his poisonous trade? The farewells of mother and daughter-in-law were cold. During the three weeks that they had been together they had not exchanged half-a-dozen words apart from the inquiries and phrases when they met at table and in the evening before ...
— Madame Bovary • Gustave Flaubert
... her by the sleeve. But she shook his hand off as though it were a poisonous insect. "For God's sake, think what you're doing! Have ...
— Maurice Guest • Henry Handel Richardson
... treasure which, if Timon had retained his old mind, was enough to have purchased him friends and flatterers again; but Timon was sick of the false world, and the sight of gold was poisonous to his eyes; and he would have restored it to the earth, but that, thinking of the infinite calamities which by means of gold happen to mankind, how the lucre of it causes robberies, oppression, injustice, briberies, violence, and murder, ...
— Tales from Shakespeare • Charles Lamb and Mary Lamb
... it exists in this country, is a morbid political condition, a social disease, which stands in the way of the natural course of social evolution. In this law, therefore, is written the doom of slavery. The enlightened world will not always permit it to blast the fair field of civilization by its poisonous presence. ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 3 No 2, February 1863 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... has the reputation of being the most poisonous of New England plants. The treacherous beauty of its autumn leaves is a source of grief to collectors. Many are seriously affected, without actual contact, by the exhalation of vapor from the leaves, ...
— Handbook of the Trees of New England • Lorin Low Dame
... the proudest grandee in his palace at Seville or Madrid." If he condemned superstition, he yet thought it possibly "founded on a physical reality"; he regarded the moon as the true "evil eye," and bade men "not sleep uncovered beneath the smile of the moon, for her glance is poisonous, and produces insupportable itching in the eye, and not infrequently blindness." If he believed in the immortality of the soul, he did not disdain to know the vendor of poisons who was a Gypsy. If he stayed three weeks in Badajoz because he knew he should never ...
— George Borrow - The Man and His Books • Edward Thomas |
