"Thistledown" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... beautiful driving horses, shying playfully against each other, coming to a stop at the curb. Their harness was the lightest that could be devised—no blinders, no breeching, slender, well-oiled straps; the rig they drew shone and twinkled with bright varnish, and seemed as delicate and light as thistledown. On the narrow seat sat a young man of thirty, covered with an old-fashioned linen duster, wearing the wide, gray felt hat of the country. He was a keen-faced, brown young ...
— The Rules of the Game • Stewart Edward White
... such a cynicism on, except only a vague sense of oppression, the foreboding remembrance of the inert invincible power in the background, to whom optimistic plans and love-making and youth are as chaff and thistledown. We came back, silent, in the last light. Seaton's aunt was there—under an old brass lamp. Her hair was as barbarously massed and curled as ever. Her eye-lids, I think, hung even a little heavier in age over their slow-moving inscrutable pupils. We filed in softly out of the ...
— The Best British Short Stories of 1922 • Edward J. O'Brien and John Cournos, editors
... summer time what are you saying, What are ye seeking, and what do you miss? Locks like the thistledown floating and straying, Cheeks like the budding rose, ...
— Yesterdays • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... to district, it receives additions and alterations, and becomes the property of a score of provinces. Meanwhile the poet from whose soul it blossomed that first morning like a flower, remains contented with obscurity. The wind has carried from his lips the thistledown of song, and sown it on a hundred hills and meadows, far and wide. After such wise is the birth of all truly popular compositions. Who knows, for instance, the veritable author of many of those mighty German chorals which sprang ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Complete - Series I, II, and III • John Symonds
... were the growths which yet how smooth, Along the hedgerows of this journey shed, Lie by Time's grace till night and sleep may soothe! Even as the thistledown from pathsides dead Gleaned by a girl in autumns of her youth, Which one new year makes soft ...
— The House of Life • Dante Gabriel Rossetti
... you have seen a fox loping along in that way, you have seen the poetry there is in the canine tribe. It is to the eye what a flowing measure is to the mind, so easy, so buoyant; the furry creature drifting along like a large red thistledown, or like a plume borne by the wind. It is something to remember with pleasure, that a muskrat sought my door one December night when a cold wave was swooping down upon us. Was he seeking shelter, or had he lost his reckoning? The dogs cornered him in the very doorway, and set up a great hubbub. ...
— Squirrels and Other Fur-Bearers • John Burroughs
... which most artists require of nature he can renounce. He leaves the ready-made glory of the Swiss mountains that he may reflect glory on a mouldering leaf. He loves best to watch the floating thistledown, because of its hint at an unseen life in the air. Coleridge's temperament, aei en sphodra orexei, with its faintness, its grieved dejection, could never have been ...
— Appreciations, with an Essay on Style • Walter Horatio Pater
... primarily, our great hope, our great confidence is not in material forces, but in spiritual. That is the point to which we as a nation must get back, and when we do, the hosts of German militarism will become but as thistledown. That is the call of God in these days, that is what this war should do for our country, it should bring us back to realities, bring us to God. Is it doing ...
— "The Pomp of Yesterday" • Joseph Hocking
... slowly. Lawrence waited, convinced that if he tried to seize her she would be gone, such a vague thistledown grace there was in her slender immaturity. He waited and Isabel came to him, drifted into his arms, was lying for a moment on his breast, and then, "Let me go: dearest, ...
— Nightfall • Anthony Pryde
... fall to, with craning eyes Fearfully daring; next, since it moved not, Stooping, to handle, to stroke, to peer upon Closely, nosing its tender length, Doglike snuffing—at last to kiss In reverence wonderful, lightlier far Than thistledown falls, brushing the Earth. But the child awoke and, watching him, cried not, Cruddled visage, choppy hands, Blinking eyes, red-litten, astare, Horns and feet—nay, crowed and strained To reach this wonder. As one a glass ...
— Helen Redeemed and Other Poems • Maurice Hewlett
... strong breeze, under a sky like a Della Robbia background. And up against the glorious blue of it, some laughing, invisible god was blowing small, rounded clouds of pure cotton, as children blow thistledown. ...
— The Conquest of Canaan • Booth Tarkington
... that it span her round, right round upon her toes, and she faced her watchers again. The committee jumped, for the blind ran up, and outside the window, at the end of a strange perspective of street, the trees of some far square were as soft as thistledown against a lemon-coloured sky. A ...
— Living Alone • Stella Benson
... aimlessly upon certain tiny bits of feathery fluff that flecked the floor here and there like floating fragments of thistledown. In a second, her keen instinct divined what they meant. Without one word she rose silently and noiselessly, and opened the lower drawer, where the boa usually reposed among the furs and feathers. One glimpse ...
— What's Bred In the Bone • Grant Allen
... garden and the faint odour of mignonette and lavender came with every wandering wind. White butterflies and thistledown floated in the air, bees hummed drowsily, and the stately hollyhocks ...
— Lavender and Old Lace • Myrtle Reed
... all other disease-germs, while incredibly tiny and infinitesimal, they have a definite weight of their own, and are subject to the law of gravity. They do not flit about hither and thither in the atmosphere, thistledown fashion, but rapidly fall to the floor of whatever room or receptacle they may be thrown in. And the problem of their transference is not that of direct carrying from one victim to the next, but the intermediate ...
— Preventable Diseases • Woods Hutchinson
... name's my own invention. Mademoiselle Volauvent, I mean—the little bit of whirligig thistledown from Devonshire, Oswald's sister, ...
— Philistia • Grant Allen
... gaily painted wings hovered tenderly overhead, and tiny silver thistledown balls sailed across the blue sky spaces, like little wayward balloons without anybody in charge ...
— The Tale of Lal - A Fantasy • Raymond Paton
... Series.—Any two of the following; viz.:— Little Folks Astray. Prudy Keeping House. Aunt Madge's Story. Little Grandmother. Little Grandfather. Miss Thistledown. ...
— The Nursery, January 1877, Volume XXI, No. 1 - A Monthly Magazine for Youngest Readers • Various
... the little thistledown of hope that he should have plenty of time to cram it before the form were called up. But another temptation waited him. No sooner was he seated than Graham whispered, "Williams, it's your turn to write out the Horace; I did ...
— Eric, or Little by Little • Frederic W. Farrar
... The thistledown was in the breeze, With birds of passage homeward flying: His fortune called him o'er the seas, And on the shore he left ...
— The Galaxy - Vol. 23, No. 1 • Various
... have followed the flight of a brilliant bird. Then, as in sheer youth, as one who during a night of refreshing sleep has been steeped body and soul in the elixir that is youth's own, she yielded her young body up to an extravagant dance, whirling away as light as thistledown across the meadow. Hands clapped after her; voices, men's voices, filled her ears with a clamour of praise as extravagant as her own dancing; the guests went trooping gaily after her. King seized his chance ...
— The Everlasting Whisper • Jackson Gregory
... fifty feet could have been caught on a moving-picture film, Charlie Chaplin would have had an arthropod rival. It hooked on stems and pulled its bearer off his feet, it careened and ensnared the leaves of other ants, at one place mixing up with half a dozen. A big thistledown became tangled in it, and well-nigh blew away with leaf and all; hardly a foot of his path was smooth-going. But he persisted, and I watched him reach the nest, after two hours of tugging and falling ...
— Edge of the Jungle • William Beebe
... chrysalis all the butterfly nature within her is given wing, inward and outward restraints drop from her almost as inevitably as her cold weather clothing, and she lets herself dance along on the soft breeze of sentiment with the lightness and freedom of a bit of thistledown. ...
— Fighting the Traffic in Young Girls - War on the White Slave Trade • Various
... heavenly body of blazing green rose over the basaltic undulations of the distant hills, and the monstrous hill-masses about him came out gaunt and desolate, in green light and deep, ruddy black shadows. He became aware of a vast number of ball-shaped objects drifting as thistledown drifts over the high ground. There were none of these nearer to him than the opposite side of the gorge. The bell below twanged quicker and quicker, with something like impatient insistence, and several lights moved hither and thither. The ...
— The Country of the Blind, And Other Stories • H. G. Wells
... sinewy hands on the back of which the wiry red hairs stand out like prickles. There is falling what in the south we should reckon as a very respectable pelt of rain, but the Inverness Wool Fair heeds rain no more than thistledown. Hardly a man has thought it worth his pains to envelop his shoulders in his plaid, but stands and lets the rain take its chance. There is a perfect babel of tongues; no bawling or shouting, however, but ...
— Camps, Quarters, and Casual Places • Archibald Forbes
... like a tiger's, and its upper jaw was armed with two long, yellow, saber-like tusks, projecting downwards below the lower jaw. This appalling monster started after Bawr with a swift, crouching rush, as silent, for all its weight, as if its feet were shod with thistledown. ...
— In the Morning of Time • Charles G. D. Roberts
... of silk from a spider's web, a coat of thistledown, a hat made from the leaf of an oak, tiny shoes made from a mouse's skin, ...
— The Beacon Second Reader • James H. Fassett
... sleep that thou may'st arise Strong for to-morrow's struggle." And I feel Her shadowy fingers pressing on my eyes: Like thistledown I float to the Ideal— The Slumberland, made beautiful and bright As death, by dreams of loved ones gone from sight, O food for soul's, sweet dreams of pure delight, How beautiful ...
— Maurine and Other Poems • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... Odysseys of the early drifts of men. Heavens, before I was of the flaxen-haired Aesir, who dwelt in Asgard, and before I was of the red-haired Vanir, who dwelt in Vanaheim, long before those times I have memories (living memories) of earlier drifts, when, like thistledown before the breeze, we drifted south before the face ...
— The Jacket (The Star-Rover) • Jack London
... the milkmaids clapped their hands, and little Joan, running to the Well-House, with a touch like thistledown drew from the weeper's yellow hair a yellow primrose. She brought it to the gate and ...
— Martin Pippin in the Apple Orchard • Eleanor Farjeon
... meaning dawned upon Betty, and the color flamed into her face. Then, light as thistledown, her lips brushed his cheek and she was gone, closing the door ...
— The Outdoor Girls in Army Service - Doing Their Bit for the Soldier Boys • Laura Lee Hope
... us have felt that acutely these last few years; all of us should have learned that whatever progress is wrought out upon this planet will be sternly fought for and hardly won. Belief in the idea of progress does not mean that this earth is predestined to drift into Paradise like thistledown before an inevitable wind. ...
— Christianity and Progress • Harry Emerson Fosdick
... blue, and the sun so bright, that an eternal summer seemed to reign over this prospect. Thistledown floated round them, enraptured by the serenity, of the ether. The heat danced over the corn, and, pervading all, was a soft, insensible hum, like the murmur of bright minutes holding revel between ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... skirt covered with a fantastic tracery of mingled gold and fire, she was a vision of almost startling loveliness. She gave a little happy laugh. "Dear old Farmer!" she said, "he likes to see me fine. I think this will please him." And light as a thistledown, the girl floated downstairs and danced into the kitchen just as Farmer Hartley entered it from ...
— Queen Hildegarde • Laura Elizabeth Howe Richards |
