"Elephant" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Edinburgh (now the Northern Club), listening to the performance of a passing piper. There was another episode which he recalled with humorous satisfaction. Fired by his father's tales of the jungle, Yule (then about six years old) proceeded to improvise an elephant pit in the back garden, only too successfully, for soon, with mingled terror and delight, he saw his uncle John[9] fall headlong into the snare. He lost his mother before he was eight, and almost his only remembrance of her was the circumstance of her having ...
— The Travels of Marco Polo Volume 1 • Marco Polo and Rustichello of Pisa
... African trade. In view of this situation the king dispatched Sir Robert Holmes upon a second expedition to Africa in 1663 with orders to protect the company's rights. As a further means of encouragement Charles II ordered all gold imported from Africa by the Royal Company to be coined with an elephant on one side, as a mark of distinction from the coins then prevalent in England.[35] These coins were called "Guineas"; they served to increase the reputation and prestige of the company. Moreover, the king with many of his courtiers made important ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 4, 1919 • Various
... our destination. See! There is the stone kraal, those scattered columns of rock to the south that rise from the jungle. Yes, the old Englishman was right, for yonder lies the Elephant Peak and the ...
— The River of Darkness - Under Africa • William Murray Graydon
... Yea and the last Elephant that euer he sawe, As the beast passed by, he start out of a buske, And een with pure strength of armes pluckt ...
— Roister Doister - Written, probably also represented, before 1553. Carefully - edited from the unique copy, now at Eton College • Nicholas Udall
... which he had been connected his principal performance was "the happy family," in which he brought together in the same cage two lions, several wolves, a couple of bears, a sheep, a small elephant with a monkey on his back. The crowning feature of this was the introduction of the sheep's head into the lion's mouth, which he held open by the upper lip with a strong grip. The sovereignty of the lions was acknowledged ...
— The Galaxy, Volume 23, No. 2, February, 1877 • Various
... person, which, in its ordinary gait seemed so lounging and nerveless, displayed any of those energies, which lay latent in his system, like the slumbering and unwieldy, but terrible, strength of the elephant. The inferior lineaments of his countenance were coarse, extended and vacant; while the superior, or those nobler parts which are thought to affect the intellectual being, were low, ...
— The Prairie • J. Fenimore Cooper
... when the young princes were delivered into the hands of their father's conquerors. On the morning of the 26th of February, twenty days only after the appearance of the British before the walls, the two youthful hostages, each mounted on a richly-caparisoned elephant, left the fort. Soldiers and citizens, stirred by deep sympathy, thronged the ramparts to take one last look at the two boys. Even the stern and cruel Tippoo himself was moved, and found it difficult to repress his emotion as, standing on the bastion above ...
— The Junior Classics • Various
... It won't take long, and you'll feel all the better for having eaten something. They don't set a very good table here. Everyone is too busy thinking about gold mines, to care much about grub. I'd lend you my elephant to get home on, only you can walk faster ...
— The Young Treasure Hunter - or, Fred Stanley's Trip to Alaska • Frank V. Webster
... of remains of animals which ages ago perished from the earth is another circumstance indicative of high antiquity. These embrace the mammoth,—the great hairy elephant of prehistoric times,—an extinct hair-clad rhinoceros, the large and powerful cave-bear and cave-lion, the great Irish elk, and still other animals of whose existence we know only by their bones. Others, which existed in common with men of later date, are the reindeer and the musk-ox, species ...
— Man And His Ancestor - A Study In Evolution • Charles Morris
... ever can demonstrate that the intellect of Man differs from that of the wiser animals, otherwise than in degree? Who has ever done more than to utter nonsense and incoherencies in regard to the difference between the instincts of the dog and the reason of Man? The horse, the dog, the elephant, are as conscious of their identity as we are. They think, dream, remember, argue with themselves, devise, plan, and reason. What is the intellect and intelligence of the man but the intellect of the animal in a higher degree or larger quantity?" In the real explanation of a single ...
— Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry • Albert Pike
... our business is to discover the consideration entertained by the mind which induces us to act, this tells us nothing. It is like the case of the Indian philosopher(23), who, being asked what it was that kept the earth in its place, answered, that it was supported by an elephant, and that elephant again rested on a tortoise. He must be endowed with a slender portion of curiosity, who, being told that uneasiness is that which spurs on the mind to act, shall rest satisfied with this explanation, and does not proceed ...
— Thoughts on Man - His Nature, Productions and Discoveries, Interspersed with - Some Particulars Respecting the Author • William Godwin
... turned over, and kept them laughing by his simple remarks, more often affected than real, I suspect. Now they went through the tangled jungle, and seemed to hear the last mad howl of the dying tiger, as the elephant knelt and pinned him to the ground with his tusks. Now they chased a lordly buffalo from his damp lair in the swamp; now they saw the English officers flying along on their Arabs through the high grass with well-poised spears after the snorting hog. ...
— The Recollections of Geoffrey Hamlyn • Henry Kingsley
... secure these wonderful weapons. For in 1820 when Kendall went home to England for a trip Hongi went with him, and saw with constant wonder the marvels of the great city. The sight of the fine English regiments, the arsenals, the theatres, the big elephant at Exeter Change Menagerie, all impressed deeply the Maori from New Zealand forests. He stayed for a while at Cambridge, assisting a professor to compile a dictionary of the Maori language, and going to church regularly all the time. Then he had an audience from George ...
— History of Australia and New Zealand - From 1606 to 1890 • Alexander Sutherland
... elephant and the rhinoceros Disputing on the light of empire Resolved to end the combat thus— By fighting to their heart's desire. The day was fixed, when it was heard, That the monkey of Sire Jupiter Had been seen in the air, Poised on a cloud like any ...
— Aesop, in Rhyme - Old Friends in a New Dress • Marmaduke Park
... my body was debarred. Now I was the corsair in the pride of freedom on the dark blue sea. Now I wandered in fairy caverns among the bones of primaeval monsters. I fought at the side of Leonidas, and the Maccabee who stabbed the Sultan's elephant, and saw him crushed beneath its falling bulk. Now I was a hunter in tropic forests—I heard the parrots scream, and saw the humming birds flit on from gorgeous flower to flower. Gradually I took a voluntary pleasure in calling up these ...
— Alton Locke, Tailor And Poet • Rev. Charles Kingsley et al
... and let it go. All day it remains aloft, tugging gently at its leash and keeping an eye on the War. In the evening the keepers appear once more, haul it down and lead it home for the night. It reminds me for all the world of a huge docile elephant being bossed about by the mahout's infant family. I always feel like giving the gentle ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 153, October 31, 1917 • Various
... keeping John Ardworth an elephant and a palaquin, Helen could not have been more amused. She clapped her little hands in a delight that provoked Percival, and laughed out loud. Then, seeing her boy-lover's lip pouted petulantly, and his brow was overcast, ...
— Lucretia, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... Repentant deserters. Mohamad Bogharib. Enraged Imbozhwa. An attack. Narrow escape. Renewed attack. A parley. Help arrives. Bin Juma. March from the Imbozhwa country. Slaves escape. Burial of Syde bin Habib's brother. Singular custom. An elephant killed. Native game-laws. Rumour ...
— The Last Journals of David Livingstone, in Central Africa, from 1865 to His Death, Volume I (of 2), 1866-1868 • David Livingstone
... triumph, an unsung hero and martyr of science who deserves his meed of praise—the tiny guinea-pig. He well deserves his niche in the temple of fame; and as other races and ages have worshiped the elephant, the snake, and the sacred cow, so this age should erect its temples to the guinea-pig. From one of the most trifling and unimportant,—kept merely as a pet and curiosity by the small boys of all ages,—he has become, after the horse, the ...
— Preventable Diseases • Woods Hutchinson
... together as the storm swept her light figure before it, and, shrieking, struggled against the black slaves who tried to lift her upon the war elephant which ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... the canal, and bounded on both sides by Sampson Road North and Henley Street. Here the promoters are putting down four air-compressing engines, driven by compound and condensing steam engines and which are to be heated by six sets (four in each set) of elephant boilers. From the delivery branches of the air-compressors a main 30in. in diameter will be laid along Henley Street, and, bifurcating, will be taken through Sampson Road North and Stratford Street at a diameter of 24in. The ...
— Showell's Dictionary of Birmingham - A History And Guide Arranged Alphabetically • Thomas T. Harman and Walter Showell
... the level of the table-cloth, some books were brought in from the Doctor's study, on which he was elevated, and on which he always sat from that time—carrying them in and out himself on after occasions, like a little elephant and castle.' ...
— Dombey and Son • Charles Dickens
... attributes which I possess myself, and your courage never fails you except in this one instance." On hearing this the Lion groaned and lamented very much and, reproaching himself with his cowardice, wished that he might die. As these thoughts passed through his mind, he met an Elephant and came close to hold a conversation with him. After a time he observed that the Elephant shook his ears very often, and he inquired what was the matter and why his ears moved with such a tremor every now and then. Just at that moment a Gnat settled on the head of the Elephant, ...
— Aesop's Fables • Aesop
... which was evidently the day (the Feast of the Assumption) fixed for departure.) It was entirely successful and the news of the fall of Azamor caused great rejoicings both at Lisbon and Rome. The play was evidently touched up afterwards, for it includes the sending of the elephant to Rome (1514) and the marriages of the princesses. It is barely possible that it was written after the victory, in which case the words na partida would be retrospective and the date given in the 1st edition ...
— Four Plays of Gil Vicente • Gil Vicente
... his bell at a distant corner, and little Annie stands on her father's doorsteps trying to hear what the man with the loud voice is talking about. Let me listen too. Oh, he is telling the people that an elephant and a lion and a royal tiger and a horse with horns, and other strange beasts from foreign countries, have come to town and will receive all visitors who choose to wait upon them. Perhaps little Annie would like to go? Yes, and I can see that the pretty child is weary of ...
— Twice Told Tales • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... preserved, hunting is permitted in the forests. To this end, we took with us a complete arsenal. The naturalist carried a Colt's revolver; the Big Boy had a twelve-gauge hammerless, called a "howitzer." We had two twenty-four-gauge shotguns in case we met an elephant or anything similarly large and heavy, and the Little Boy proudly carried, strapped to his saddle, a twenty-two high-power rifle, shooting a steel-jacketed, soft-nose bullet, an express-rifle of high velocity and great alarm to mothers. In addition to this, we had ...
— Tenting To-night - A Chronicle of Sport and Adventure in Glacier Park and the - Cascade Mountains • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... part of these men, I cannot avoid a feeling of contempt mingled with anger, in view of this mass of nonsense, in which the detestable vies with the absurd. It would be a repetition of the story of the elephant in the moon, were it not for the atrocity of the consequences. To seek a rational and legitimate origin of that which is, and ever must be, only robbery, extortion, and plunder—that must be the height of the proprietor's folly; ...
— What is Property? - An Inquiry into the Principle of Right and of Government • P. J. Proudhon
... of both the deities and the Asuras (being as thou art of the form of both Vrihaspati and Sukra). Thou art he who is ever victorious. Thou art he who is ever worshipped by the deities and the Asuras. Thou art he who guides the deities and the Asuras even as the Mahamatra guides the elephant. Thou art the refuge of all the deities and the Asuras. Thou art he who is the chief of both the deities and the Asuras (being as thou art of the form of both India and Virochana). Thou art he who is the leader in battle of both the deities and the Asuras (being as ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 4 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... to its close. Lincoln accumulates powers, responsibilities, and hereafter perhaps curses, sufficient to break the turtle on which stands the elephant ...
— Diary from November 12, 1862, to October 18, 1863 • Adam Gurowski
... at a jog trot; while Tuttle, his fists clenched, his eyes glaring, his cheeks puffed out like toy balloons, galloped over the sacks with all the grace of a frightened elephant. ...
— Rival Pitchers of Oakdale • Morgan Scott
... monstrous spoor. If it were indeed a bird—and what animal could leave such a mark?—its foot was so much larger than an ostrich's that its height upon the same scale must be enormous. Lord John looked eagerly round him and slipped two cartridges into his elephant-gun. ...
— The Lost World • Arthur Conan Doyle
... shivered like reeds, and we fell on with battle-axe and mace. None asked for quarter, and none gave it; friend to friend, cousin to cousin—no, nor brother, O God! to brother. We were the better armed: but numbers were on their side. Fat Carbajal charged our cannon like an elephant, and took them; but Holguin was shot down. I was with Almagro, and we swept all before us, inch by inch, but surely, till the night fell. Then Vaca de Castro, the licentiate, the clerk, the schoolman, the man of books, came down on us with his reserve like a whirlwind. Oh! ...
— Westward Ho! • Charles Kingsley
... nay, a couple of nays; college years are all too brief; hence I shall, by my own original process, extract from them all the sunshine and happiness possible, and by my wonderful musical and vocal powers, bring joy to my colleagues, who—Ouch, Butch—look out for that nail, you inhuman elephant—" ...
— T. Haviland Hicks Senior • J. Raymond Elderdice
... possible in the best of worlds, and he was very satisfactory at last." Satisfactory! No word could be more characteristic on the pen of Lady Dorothy. To be "satisfactory," whether you were the President of the French Republic or Lord Wolseley or the Human Elephant (a pathetic freak in whom she took a great interest), was to perform on the stage of life, in her unruffled presence, the part which you had been called upon by Providence to fill. Even a criminal might be "satisfactory" if he ...
— Some Diversions of a Man of Letters • Edmund William Gosse
... situation it should provoke a holocaust. Yet he felt that in a moment he might need it. Then as he stood, still uncertain, he saw the giant who had until now looked on with detached emotionlessness come elbowing his way through the press, much as an elephant goes through small timber, uprooting obstacles and tossing them ...
— A Pagan of the Hills • Charles Neville Buck
... "An elephant, sir," replied the Hottentot; "it's well that he did not charge you; he would have tumbled you down the precipice, horse and all. There must be a herd here, and we had better stop as soon as we are down the other side ...
— The Mission; or Scenes in Africa • Captain Frederick Marryat
... would have taken them from me, if misfortune had spared them. My poor people whom I loved so well! There is just another die to turn up against me in this run of ill-luck, i. e. if I should break my magic wand in the fall from this elephant, and lose my popularity with my fortune. Then Woodstock and Boney" [his life of Napoleon] "may both go to the paper-maker, and I may take to smoking cigars and drinking grog, or turn devotee and intoxicate ...
— Sir Walter Scott - (English Men of Letters Series) • Richard H. Hutton
... happy to oblige any night by kind permission of the General commanding. The Boers, however, indulge at times in pleasantries that show no bitterness of feeling, but rather a desire to be playfully satirical in a way which is suggestive of the intellectual nimbleness of a humorous elephant. Their inquiries after Sir Redvers Buller have already been mentioned. As to the ostentatious friendliness of our enemies for British soldiers, with whom a temporary truce brings them in contact, some amusing stories are told. One day a field officer ...
— Four Months Besieged - The Story of Ladysmith • H. H. S. Pearse
... king of Siam with an account of Holland, after which his majesty was very inquisitive, amongst other things told him, that water in his country would sometimes get so hard, that men walked upon it; and that it would bear an elephant with the utmost ease. To which the king replied, "Hitherto I have believed the strange things you have told me, because I looked upon you as a sober, fair man; but now ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 12, No. 334 Saturday, October 4, 1828 • Various
... Hubert inquired blandly. "Why not ask for a wedding gown and a pink elephant while you are about it, Babe? Don't be modest. I know what ...
— Teddy: Her Book - A Story of Sweet Sixteen • Anna Chapin Ray
... These natives were only armed by the authorities when the invaders specially selected them for their artillery fire and made raids on their cattle. The variety and sizes of these arms were really laughable. Some niggers had old-fashioned Sniders, others elephant guns, and the remainder weapons with enormously long barrels, which looked as if they dated back to Waterloo. To their owners, however, the maker or the epoch of the weapon mattered little. They were proud men, and stalked gravely along the streets ...
— South African Memories - Social, Warlike & Sporting From Diaries Written At The Time • Lady Sarah Wilson
... rage, the monster abandoned its futile efforts and leaped away. Feigning indifference, the allosaurus picked up a half-gnawed skull with its tiny forelegs; and, while the prisoners watched, it stuffed the head into a maw twice the size of an elephant's and crunched the gruesome tidbit as easily as a boy would a walnut. Presently it shuffled off to rejoin the hideous herd in ...
— Astounding Stories, March, 1931 • Various
... find in America numerous representations of the elephant. We are forced to one of two conclusions: either the monuments date back to the time of the mammoth in North America, or these people held intercourse at some time in the past with races who possessed the ...
— The Antediluvian World • Ignatius Donnelly
... may not have thought it, for I am no scholar, but when I was a gossoon I went to school," said Grady presently, "and they had pictures of bastes hung about the walls, and the queerest baste of all to my fancy, barring the elephant, was the camel. I remember purty well what they told me from the mouth, though I was bad at the reading and the sums and that; and the master he said that a camel with one hump was meant for carrying things, ...
— For Fortune and Glory - A Story of the Soudan War • Lewis Hough
... horrid sight!" he said. "But let us be thankful that the pink-and-green elephant and the feathered hippopotamus are not ...
— Fables For The Times • H. W. Phillips
... courtier of the land, A youth, yet full of counsel wise and true, And ever ready to obey his master's will. The terror of his foes, a hunter bold, He rode the fleetest horse with ease and grace, The wildest elephant his might could tame, And horned bulls knew well his steady grip. Him Chandra wished to wed, and in her breast With silent hope her love for him kept warm. The years sped on, the father fondly dreamt She soon would be the queen of two proud realms, The mother that her future lord would ...
— Tales of Ind - And Other Poems • T. Ramakrishna
... or less space implied that one was the more or less important accordingly! What is it you admire in him, you men? If it is only the weight of his body which fills the children with terror, then we rats, small as we are, consider ourselves not one grain less than the elephant." He would have said more; but the cat, bounding out of her cage, let him see in an instant that a ...
— The Original Fables of La Fontaine - Rendered into English Prose by Fredk. Colin Tilney • Jean de la Fontaine
... strength, for so he did in very deede, and would not take any common souldier to taske at wrastling, or weapon, or in any other actiuitie and feates of armes, which was by the wiser sort mislliked, these were the verses. The Elephant is strong, yet death doeth it subdue, The bull is strong, yet cannot death eschue. The Lion strong, and slaine for all his strength: The Tygar strong, yet kilde is at the length. Dread thou many, that dreadest not any one, Many can ...
— The Arte of English Poesie • George Puttenham
... plateau of dirt, with a few diseased shrubs and an open drain, is as elaborately be-metaphored as an island of the Hebrides, with a wilderness of red-deer, Celts, ptarmigan, and other wild animals upon it. Now, this is out of all rule. An elephant's trunk can raise a pin as well as uproot an oak, but it would be ridiculous to employ the same effort for one as for the other. Robins—with reverence to so great a name, be it spoken—does not attend to this. He has yet to acquire the light and graceful touch ...
— The Bon Gaultier Ballads • William Edmonstoune Aytoun
... explain to her the differences of language in this world, she was embarked on the full tide of another subject. "What do you think, Father? Bhola says there is an elephant in the clouds, blowing water out of his trunk, and that ...
— The Hungry Stones And Other Stories • Rabindranath Tagore
... testudinates from all antiquity. It was the sun-dried and sinew-strung shell of a tortoise that suggested the lyre to Mercury, as he walked by the shore of Nilus. It was on the back of a tortoise that the Indian sage placed his elephant which upheld the world. Under the testudo the Roman legions swarmed into the walled cities of the orbis terrarum. And in that wise old fable which childhood learns, and age too often remembers, sorrowing, it was the tortoise that won the race ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I., No. 3, January 1858 - A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics • Various
... in hand, his election. For a while the audience and the animals were quiet, the former listening, the latter eyeing the speaker with grave intensity. The first burst of applause electrified the menagerie; the elephant threw his trunk into the air and echoed back the noise, while the tigers and bears significantly growled. On went Prentiss, and as each peculiar animal vented his rage or approbation, he most ingeniously wrought in its habits, as a facsimile ...
— The International Weekly Miscellany, Volume I. No. 9. - Of Literature, Art, and Science, August 26, 1850 • Various
... the doorway, which had suddenly been darkened by the vast bulk of Professor Boomly—a figure largely abdominal but majestic—like the massive butt end of an elephant. For the rest, he had a rather insignificant and peevish face and a melancholy mustache that usually ...
— Police!!! • Robert W. Chambers
... Epanchin as her protegee, as she had been thirty-five years ago. She could never put up with the independence and energy of Lizabetha's character. She observed that, as usual, the whole family had gone much too far ahead, and had converted a fly into an elephant; that, so far as she had heard their story, she was persuaded that nothing of any seriousness had occurred; that it would surely be better to wait until something did happen; that the prince, in her opinion, was a very decent young fellow, though ...
— The Idiot • (AKA Feodor Dostoevsky) Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... co-pilot amiably. "I tried it once, for the devil of it. Those things fly with the grace of a lady elephant on ice skates! Did you, by any chance, notice that they haven't got any wings? And did you notice where their control ...
— Space Platform • Murray Leinster
... were still in office, the populace of Rome became excited by prodigies. There was a wolf seen in the city, and a pig that save for its feet resembled an elephant was brought forth. In Africa, too, Petreius and Labienus who had observed that Caesar had gone out to villages after grain, by means of the Nomads drove his cavalry, that had not yet thoroughly recovered strength from its sea-voyage, in upon the infantry; and while ...
— Dio's Rome • Cassius Dio
... sailing Blowing bugle Blowing up a balloon Climbing a steep hill Imitate a steam engine Smell the pretty rose Galloping horses Hammering Rabbits jumping Ducks waddling Skating Raking garden Rowing boat Bouncing ball Throwing snowballs Elephant's walk Giant striding Goose waddle Turkey strutting Indian walking Walk like a dwarf Crow like a rooster Breathe in the fresh air Blow a ...
— Games and Play for School Morale - A Course of Graded Games for School and Community Recreation • Various
... mind earnestly engaged; will talk perpetually, of them. But Dr. Johnson has much of the nil admirari[346] in smaller concerns. That survey of life which gave birth to his Vanity of Human Wishes early sobered his mind. Besides, so great a mind as his cannot be moved by inferior objects: an elephant does not run and skip like lesser animals. Mr. Robertson sent a servant with us, to shew us through Lord Findlater's wood, by which our way was shortened, and we saw some part of his domain, which is indeed admirably laid out. Dr. Johnson did not choose to walk ...
— Life Of Johnson, Volume 5 • Boswell
... through the streets of the same city, his thoughts were so wholly taken up with God, that he perceived not a furious elephant, who, being broken loose, caused a general terror, and every man made haste out of his way. It was in vain to cry out to the Father, that he might avoid him; he heard nothing, and the enraged beast passed very ...
— The Works of John Dryden, Volume XVI. (of 18) - The Life of St. Francis Xavier • John Dryden
... dashing along the road towards the Elephant and Castle, when Bob was attracted by the appearance of the Philanthropic Chapel and School, which his cousin dismissed in a few words, by observing it was the school of reform, which he had alluded to, when last in the ...
— Real Life In London, Volumes I. and II. • Pierce Egan
... of all the Orders of all countries is well worth your knowledge; the subject occurs often, and one should not be ignorant of it, for fear of some such accident as happened to a solid Dane at Paris, who, upon seeing 'L'Ordre du St. Esprit', said, 'Notre St. Esprit chez nous c'est un Elephant'. Almost all the princes in Germany have their Orders too; not dated, indeed, from any important events, or directed to any great object, but because they will have orders, to show that they may; as some of them, ...
— The PG Edition of Chesterfield's Letters to His Son • The Earl of Chesterfield
... madness, as of words, the Cardinal, while pretending much devotion for the King, and much submission to the Church, plainly intimated that he cared for neither. Although this was as the sting of a gnat upon an elephant, the King was horribly piqued at it. He received the letter on the 24th of May, gave it the next day to D'Aguesseau, attorney-general, and ordered him to commence a suit against Cardinal de Bouillon, as guilty of felony. At the same time the King wrote to Rome, ...
— The Memoirs of Louis XIV., His Court and The Regency, Complete • Duc de Saint-Simon
... that falsity is very true, and if he were to put more truth into it it would be a lie, as he will never do a thing which cannot be in itself, nor make a man's hand with ten fingers, nor paint on a horse the ears of a bull or the hump of a camel, nor will he paint the foot of an elephant with the same feeling as for that of a horse, nor in the arm or face of a child will he put the senses of an old man, nor an ear nor an eye out of its place by as much as the thickness of a finger, nor is he even permitted ...
— Michael Angelo Buonarroti • Charles Holroyd
... old, of that disease with a long name that carried off so many horses all over the country: but a great shambling big-boned beast old master swapped a yoke of steers for, over to Skipton Mills. We called him Goliath, he was so tall: strong as an elephant, too: a powerful hand at a horse-rake and mowing-machine. Well, well, how time flies, to be sure! He's been dead and gone these five years, and Tom and Jerry, they were used up long ago—there's a deal of hard work to be done on a farm of this size, I can tell you; and as to Filly, she ...
— Miss Elliot's Girls • Mrs Mary Spring Corning
... rarely omitted from any of Mr Kipling's Indian stories, is that practical men are better for being ready to take the world as they find it. The men who worship the Great God Dungara, the God of Things as They Are, most terrible, One-eyed, Bearing the Red Elephant Tusk—men who are set on saving their own particular business—have no time for saving faces and phrases. They have small respect for a principle. They have seen too many principles break down under the particular ...
— Rudyard Kipling • John Palmer
... issues: overgrazing; soil erosion; deforestation; desertification; wildlife populations (such as elephant, hippopotamus, and lion) threatened because of poaching and habitat destruction natural hazards: recurring droughts international agreements: party to - Endangered Species, Environmental Modification, Nuclear Test Ban, Ozone Layer Protection, Wetlands; signed, but not ratified ...
— The 1995 CIA World Factbook • United States Central Intelligence Agency
... to the domestic animals enumerated below (sec. 8) the fauna is very varied. Elephant and rhinoceros are numerous in certain low-lying districts, especially in the Sobat valley. The Abyssinian rhinoceros has two horns and its skin has no folds. The hippopotamus and crocodile inhabit ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... her little feet nestling in the tame lion's mane, her long black hair flowing over crimson drapery and covered with gems from mines before the flood. Higher up is Shem, leaning his arm over that mouse-colored horse,—his Arab steed. His wife, in pure white linen, feeds the elephant, and plays with his lithe proboscis,—the mother of Terah, Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Joseph, David, and Christ. And yet she looks up, and bows in mild humility, to her of Japheth, seated amid plumed birds, in robes like the sky. Her noble lord, meanwhile, high above all, stands, with folded ...
— Slavery Ordained of God • Rev. Fred. A. Ross, D.D.
... on the Queen's return from the Duchess's, she desired her 'valet de chambre' to bring her billiard cue into her closet, and ordered me to open the box that contained it. I took out the cue, broken in two. It was of ivory, and formed of one single elephant's tooth; the butt was of gold and very tastefully wrought. "There," said she, "that is the way M. de Vaudreuil has treated a thing I valued highly. I had laid it upon the couch while I was talking to the Duchess in the salon; he had the assurance to make use of it, and in a fit of passion ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... was speaking to them the elephant suddenly wheeled round and, trumpeting loudly, tried to force his way back. A scene of wild confusion ensued. The crowd gave way before him, several soldiers were thrust off the bridge into the river, and Malchus and his companions were borne along by the crowd; there was a little cry, and ...
— The Young Carthaginian - A Story of The Times of Hannibal • G.A. Henty
... offensive in their habits, never running from man, as does the Chimpanzee. They are objects of terror to the natives, and are never encountered by them except on the defensive. The few that have been captured were killed by elephant-hunters and native traders, as they came suddenly upon them while passing ...
— A Book of Natural History - Young Folks' Library Volume XIV. • Various
... the Hindoos, was to see the largest of these elephants stand with his four feet on a post fixed into the earth, and standing out of it above two feet, playing and beating time with his trunk to the music. Besides this, he admired another elephant as large as the former, placed upon a plank, laid across a strong beam about ten feet high, with a sufficiently heavyweight at the other end, which balanced him, while he kept time, by the motions of his body and trunk, ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments vol. 4 • Anon.
... exert their utmost ingenuity To discover the secret of this noble game. Let them learn the name of every piece. Its proper position, and what is its movement. Let them make out the foot-soldier of the army, The elephant, the rook, and the horseman, The march of the vizier and the procession of the King. If they discover the science of this noble game, They will have surpassed the most able in science. Then the tribute and taxes which the King hath demanded ...
— National Epics • Kate Milner Rabb
... bones contained in the strata nearest the present surface of the earth, are those of the hippopotamus, the rhinoceros, and the elephant. These remains of animals of warm countries are to be found in all latitudes. Travellers have discovered specimens of them even at Melville Island, where the temperature descends, in the present day, 50 deg. beneath zero. In ...
— Biographies of Distinguished Scientific Men • Francois Arago
... legend—'Sigismundus Pandulphus Malatesta Pan. F. Fecit Anno Gratiae MCCCCL'—occupies every arch and stringcourse of the architecture, and whose coat-of-arms and portrait in medallion, with his cipher and his emblems of an elephant and a rose, are wrought in every piece of sculptured work throughout the building, seems so to fill this house of prayer that there is no room left for God. Yet the Cathedral of Rimini remains a monument of first-rate ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Complete - Series I, II, and III • John Symonds
... of speech or an instrument like the hand by which to place himself in closer relation to the outer world, he would doubtless be on a footing of mental equality with man, according to Mr. Laing. [69] The elephant's trunk accounts for his superior sagacity, and the horse suffers by his hoof-enclosed forefoot. [70] "Given a being with man's brain, man's hand, and erect stature, it is easy to see how intelligence must have been gradually evolved." [71] Now honestly it seems ...
— The Faith of the Millions (2nd series) • George Tyrrell
... very funny, Surely worth the entrance money; At the sight what laughter peals!— 'Tis an Elephant ...
— The Circus Procession • Unknown
... did not grow up elegant, to fit the name. The name grew inelegant to fit her. During her earliest years the witty little children called her Elephant until they tired of the ingenuity and allowed her to lapse indolently from ...
— In a Little Town • Rupert Hughes
... lose yourself, Van," Bob chuckled, "but I am morally certain you'll lose your boots. You will just walk off and leave them in some snow-drift or mud puddle and never miss them. They are big enough for an elephant. Where did ...
— The Story of Sugar • Sara Ware Bassett
... in my capitularies more than four hundred sentences which pass for aphorisms and which include all the tricks which place one word for another. One can read in Livy that Hannibal overcame the Alps by means of vinegar. No elephant ever uttered such a stupidity. Livy? Not at all. Livy was not a beast; it is you who are, foolish instructor of credulous youth! Livy did not say aceto which means vinegar, but ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... than those existing in Africa. Besides the bear and hyena, upwards of a hundred species of extinct animals have been found in the ossiferous caves of Great Britain, among them being those of the elephant and a rhinoceros. Though in Europe bone caves contain the remains of animals very different from those now existing in the same regions, yet in the caves of Brazil extinct species of nearly all the territorial quadrupeds now inhabiting this region occur. The Australian caverns ...
— The Mines and its Wonders • W.H.G. Kingston
... empire magnificent in force and solidity, the actual wedding of East and West; an empire firm on the ground and in the blood of the people, instead of an empire of aliens, that would bear comparison to a finely fretted cotton-hung palanquin balanced on an elephant's back, all depending on the docility of the elephant (his description of Great Britain's Indian Empire). 'And mind me,' he said, 'the masses of India are in character elephant all over, tail to proboscis! servile till they trample you, and not so stupid as they ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... that it was the scraping of the giant body against the branches that had awakened him. That such a tremendous creature could have approached so closely without disturbing him filled Tarzan with both wonderment and chagrin. In the gloom the ape-man at first conceived the intruder to be an elephant; yet, if so, one of greater proportions than any he had ever before seen, but as the dim outlines became less indistinct he saw on a line with his eyes and twenty feet above the ground the dim silhouette of a grotesquely serrated back that gave the impression of a creature whose each and ...
— Tarzan the Terrible • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... his artistic performances, and whose heavy, thick-set form in conjunction with the delicacy and dreaminess of his musical thoughts and execution called to mind Rossini's saying of a celebrated singer, "Elle a l'air d'un elephant qui aurait avale un rossignol." One can easily imagine the surprise and disillusion of the four pupils of Zimmermann—MM. Marmontel, Prudent, A. Petit, and Chollet—who, provided with a letter of introduction by their ...
— Frederick Chopin as a Man and Musician - Volume 1-2, Complete • Frederick Niecks
... were too noisy, too talkative; he, too, loved to chatter and play games at times, but now in the jungle, as the morning light slowly broke through the damp foliage, he wished to be alone and watch nature unfold to the coming day. It seemed to him that the huge elephant ears lifted their dew-weighted leaves and shook themselves in the gentle wind. The monkeys peeped out at him and continued to make their toilet undisturbed. Other travelers startled the little creatures into watchfulness, but Piang ...
— The Adventures of Piang the Moro Jungle Boy - A Book for Young and Old • Florence Partello Stuart
... chariot, one elephant, five foot-soldiers, and three horses form one Patti; three pattis make one Sena-mukha; three sena-mukhas are called a Gulma; three gulmas, a Gana; three ganas, a Vahini; three vahinis together are called a Pritana; three pritanas form a Chamu; three chamus, one Anikini; ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa - Translated into English Prose - Adi Parva (First Parva, or First Book) • Kisari Mohan Ganguli (Translator)
... elephant, tossing about at the end of the bridge— some imposition upon your family. See, the house being in touch, you will lose by the elephant, as letters with many lines mean vexation—strayed or stolen letters—and dead birds are on the ground. The rabbit is some coward. Do not ...
— Cupology - How to Be Entertaining • Clara
... sense that every thing may be said to be a mystery, so also may it be said that every thing is a miracle, and that no one thing is a greater miracle than another. The elephant, though larger, is not a greater miracle than a mite: nor a mountain a greater miracle than an atom. To an almighty power it is no more difficult to make the one than the other, and no more difficult to make a million of worlds than to make one. ...
— The Writings Of Thomas Paine, Complete - With Index to Volumes I - IV • Thomas Paine
... billowy current consisted of blood.[437] And that battle, O king, between the Kurus and the Pandavas, becoming fierce and awful, began to swell the population of Yama's kingdom. Then in that battle Bhima excited with wrath, fell with great impetuosity upon the elephant division (of the Kauravas) and began to send many to the regions of Death. Then, O Bharata, struck with Bhima's shafts, some of those beasts fell down, some were paralysed, some shrieked (in pain), and some ran away in all directions. Huge elephants, their trunks cut off and limbs mangled, ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 2 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... with the eyes not of the scientist or the traveler or the hunter, but of the soldier responsible for the lives and the movements and supplies of large masses of men. It is one thing to follow the track of the elephant or to stalk the lion or antelope or to collect butterflies or other gorgeous things; it is quite a different and, from the point of view of learning geography, certainly a far more enlightening, task to lead a large army over those virgin solitudes, where your ...
— World's War Events, Volume III • Various
... her, and we crowded sail upon her, and we coaxed and bullied and humoured her, till the Three Crows, their fortune only a plain sail two days ahead, raved and swore like insensate brutes, or shall we say like mahouts trying to drive their stricken elephant upon the tiger—and all to no purpose. "Damn the damned current and the damned luck and the damned shaft and all," Hardenberg would exclaim, as from the wheel he would catch the Glarus falling off. "Go on, you old hooker—you tub of junk! My God, ...
— A Deal in Wheat - And Other Stories of the New and Old West • Frank Norris
... Constable Daly, "and be the same token, this win' ud skin a tanned elephant. It's on'y bogged and drenched we'd git. Look at what's comin' up over there. That rain's snow on the hills, every could drop of it; I seen Ben Bawn this mornin' as white as the top of a musharoon, and it's thickenin' wid sleet here this minute, ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 4 • Charles Dudley Warner
... mysteriously disappeared, and how he came riding home on the back of an elephant. It is also related how he broke his leg, and fed a hungry family in a cottage ...
— The Tale of Ferdinand Frog • Arthur Scott Bailey
... sympathetic uncle had discovered his attempt to purloin the brass ring which, with countless blackened duplicates, is plucked from a slot by the brandishing swords of the riders upon the merry-go-round. Truly, its possession had won him another ride—this time upon an elephant with upturned trunk and wide ears—but in his mind the return of that ring still rankled as the only grief in ...
— Little Citizens • Myra Kelly
... and what he shot, will be told in the next volume of this series, to be called: "Tom Swift and His Electric Rifle; or, Daring Adventures in Elephant Land." ...
— Tom Swift and his Sky Racer - or, The Quickest Flight on Record • Victor Appleton
... assure you, from my own observation, M. de la Rochefoucault, that his mirror is a splendid one. I should take it to be nearly three feet high, reckoning the frame, with the Cupid above and the elephant under. I suspected it was the present of some great lady; and indeed I have ...
— Imaginary Conversations and Poems - A Selection • Walter Savage Landor
... problem higher, shall we not be like the Hindus, who put the world upon a tortoise, the tortoise on an elephant, and do not know on what the feet of their elephant may rest? This supreme will, issuing from the contest between God and Matter, this God, this more than God, can He have existed throughout eternity without willing what He afterwards willed,—admitting that Eternity can be divided into two eras. ...
— Seraphita • Honore de Balzac
... reproduce in some geometric ratio, which characterizes all living organisms, means that any species, if left to itself, would soon reach such numbers as to occupy the whole earth. Darwin showed, for example, that though the elephant is the slowest breeding of all animals, if every elephant lived its normal length of life (one hundred years) and to every pair were born six offspring, then, at the end of seven hundred years there would be nineteen million living elephants ...
— Sociology and Modern Social Problems • Charles A. Ellwood
... made like those of Atlas to support a world; pair of dark blue-grey eyes with a laughing devil dancing in them, and a little moist just now from the effects of the toddy, and the man dying of love! He measured five feet thirteen inches in his stockings, with legs that might have belonged to an elephant, and fists calculated ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 57, No. 351, January 1845 • Various |
