"Killer" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Credhe herself, having three times fifty women with her, came out to speak with them. "It is to ask you in marriage we are come," said Finn. "Who is it is asking for me?" said she. "It is Cael, the hundred-killer, grandson of Nemhnain, son of the King of Leinster in the east." "I have heard talk of him, but I have never seen him," said Credhe. "And has he any poem for me?" she said. "I have that," said Cael, and he rose up ...
— Gods and Fighting Men • Lady I. A. Gregory
... Tom steered their craft in a deadly game of tag with the sub-killer. Gradually the missile appeared to ...
— Tom Swift and The Visitor from Planet X • Victor Appleton
... natural—though, of course, depraved—taste for stories: yes, we will say that this fondness is irrepressible. But, what we really must insist on, is, that in gratifying that fondness, you give them true stories. Where is the carefully trained and upright soul that would not reject "JACK, the Giant-killer," or "Goody Two-shoes," if it could substitute (say, from "New and True Stories for Children,") a tale ...
— Punchinello Vol. 1, No. 21, August 20, 1870 • Various
... his fingers relaxed. An ague of weakness crept through his limbs. A vertiginous faintness brought him half tumbling and half rolling back into his chair, wheezing and moist with sweat. He sat there looking about him, like a sheep killer looking up from the ...
— Never-Fail Blake • Arthur Stringer
... friend to have the opportunity of pointing out to me (as he would, wouldn't he?) that I lacked any real essential, as the child tried to satisfy Longfellow that his shelves were not complete without a copy of the undying romance of Jack the Giant-killer. ...
— The Book-Collector • William Carew Hazlitt
... Gr. [Greek: Ouararanes] or [Greek: Ouraranes], the younger form of the old Verethragna, the name of a Persian god, "the killer of the dragon Verethra"), the name of five ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 2 - "Baconthorpe" to "Bankruptcy" • Various
... an earthenware pot, covered with parchment or bladder, through which a stick was moved up and down (plates 24 and 25). Rembrandt's etchings reproducing tramps and street-types, like his rat-killer, are no doubt so familiar to our readers that we need not recall them by means ...
— Rembrandt's Amsterdam • Frits Lugt
... A killer arranged by Beldman? It would be natural for Beldman or Stout to take a chance and fight back the direct way. But there was no evidence. How could either of them have decided who to blame or who ...
— The Man Who Staked the Stars • Charles Dye
... who disliked Waring had said recently that no man was quick enough to get an even break with the gunman, which tentatively placed him as a "killer," whereas he had never given a thought to the hazard when going into a fight. He had always played the game to win, odds either way. The men he sought would be mounted. He would be on foot. This time the fugitives would have more than a fair chance. They would blunder down the pitch into ...
— Jim Waring of Sonora-Town - Tang of Life • Knibbs, Henry Herbert
... writers have celebrated start to the memory in scores—Bill Sykes's white shadow, which refused to be separated from its master even by death; Rab, savagely devoted; the immortal Bob, "son of battle"—true souls all, with hardly a villain among them for artistic contrast. Even Red Wull, the killer, we admire for his courage ...
— The Dog's Book of Verse • Various
... have liked to give her some warning sign, as though she were near to him through some tie of blood, or some old established friendship that might warrant his right to do so. The defiant, half gallant way in which Verus, the dissipated lady-killer, had spoken to her had enraged him and filled him with anxiety, and long after the illustrious visitors had left Lochias he had thought of her again and again, and had resolved, if it were possible, ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... and immediate success, the reader will doubtless have concluded, in the first place, that Gustavus Adolphus had not a very violent affection for Mrs. Cat; in the second place, that he was a professional lady-killer, and therefore likely at some period to resume his profession; thirdly, and to conclude, that a connection so begun, must, in the nature of things, ...
— Catherine: A Story • William Makepeace Thackeray
... individualistic animal was a mighty hunter of field mice but showed little or no interest in the birds flying about above her. They have built their nests for years in arbor and summer house unmolested. But a real killer of birds is hard to dissuade. One can of course remove the bird from its jaws and administer a sound whipping but it is by no means certain that anything much is accomplished by so doing. One cannot argue with a cat. He is the one animal man has not been able to ...
— If You're Going to Live in the Country • Thomas H. Ormsbee and Richmond Huntley
... gravity of an owl. It mattered not a straw to him that Dick took comparatively small mouthfuls, and nearly choked on them too for want of liquid to wash them down. Had Dick eaten none at all he would have uncomplainingly disposed of the whole. Jack the Giant-Killer's feats were nothing to his; and when at last the bowl was empty, he stopped short like a machine from which the steam had been suddenly cut off, and laid down his ...
— The Dog Crusoe and His Master - A Story of Adventure in the Western Prairies • Robert Michael Ballantyne
... that of jealousy. The young officer was one of the elegant gentlemen of the service—a professed lady killer—a fellow, who, notwithstanding his well-known deficiency of brains, was ever welcome among women. She seemed to press closely to him as they whirled around, while her head rested languishingly upon his shoulder. She appeared to be contented ...
— The War Trail - The Hunt of the Wild Horse • Mayne Reid
... society is as open as that of a savage on the war-path. The law officer has no advantage whatever over these men save what his own prowess may—or may not—give him. Such a man was Billy the Kid, the notorious man-killer and desperado of New Mexico, who was himself finally slain by a friend of mine, Pat Garrett, whom, when I was President, I made collector of customs at El Paso. But the ordinary criminal, even when murderously inclined, feels just ...
— Theodore Roosevelt - An Autobiography by Theodore Roosevelt • Theodore Roosevelt
... I should advise aconite, instead of Dover's powder; Cockle's pills, in lieu of blue mass; Warburg's Drops, in addition to quinine; pyretic saline and Karlsbad, besides Epsom salts; and chloral, together with chlorodyne. "Pain Killer" is useful amongst wild people, and Oxley's ginger, with the simple root, is equally prized. A little borax serves for eye-water and alum for sore mouth. I need not mention special medicines like the liqueur Laville, and the invaluable Waldol (oil ...
— The Land of Midian, Vol. 1 • Richard Burton
... stared in incredulous amazement at the sight of this love-sick man in his intense pursuit of a girl who was able to twist him around her little finger and make him follow her about as if he were a green and callow youth. Palgrave, the lady-killer; Palgrave, the egoist; Palgrave, the superlative person, who, with nonchalant impertinence, had picked and chosen. Was ...
— Who Cares? • Cosmo Hamilton
... perceiving the effect it had on him, I immediately waived the story, and, passing to other matters, we had much conversation touching giants. He said, so far from killing any, he had never seen one alive; that he believed those actions were by mistake recorded of him, instead of Jack the giant-killer, whom he knew very well, and who had, he fancied, extirpated the race. I assured him to the contrary, and told him I had myself seen a huge tame giant, who very complacently stayed in London a whole winter, at the special request ...
— From This World to the Next • Henry Fielding
... they are in a fair way to make the whole world into a paradise of the present. Only through training their minds could they have broken away from an outworn past. In this time of readjustment there must be many mistakes and many tragedies.[26] The fool-killer will gather a rich harvest, but if we are open-minded and eager to see the truth, each martyr will teach her sisters, and the future generations of women will conserve the values of the past and add to them new treasures and new ...
— Woman in Modern Society • Earl Barnes
... earth in those days"—a passage which we had often heard read in the days of our youth, when we wished it had gone further and told us something about them; but Cornwall had been a veritable land of giants. The stories of Jack the Giant-Killer were said to have emanated from this county, and we now heard of the Giant Tregeagle, whose spirit appeared to pervade the whole district ...
— From John O'Groats to Land's End • Robert Naylor and John Naylor
... To them I add, "Bob, Son of Battle," which the author of "Alice For Short," discovered late in life. It is the greatest animal-human story ever written, for Owd Bob is nobly human, and the Black Killer devilishly human, and yet they are dogs; not fabulous dogs, invented by clever writers. A great book! It is too thrilling; it reminds of "Wuthering Heights"; I shall, therefore, read this evening some of Henry Van Dyke's ...
— Confessions of a Book-Lover • Maurice Francis Egan
... located one would-be killer behind a mass of splintered planking that once had been a wall. He set the wood afire by a blaster-bolt and then viciously sent other bolts all around the man it had sheltered when he fled from the flames. He could have killed him ten times over, but it was more desirable to open ...
— Pariah Planet • Murray Leinster
... newspapers should give them more space. We have detailed one of our corps for the purpose with the following result. It (s)Eames to us that the officers of the Marine Corps are Muse-ing on an exhibition of their Zeal in the invention of a patent Payne-killer, in proof that they have not leaned upon a broken Reed. Some one may call us Palmer (H)off of bad puns, but we have not given A(u)lick amiss. No wonder the Marine Corps, in hourly dread of annihilation, ...
— As I Remember - Recollections of American Society during the Nineteenth Century • Marian Gouverneur
... went away without doing them harm, only warning them that another vessel which was becalmed near at hand was a "killer," and the people were so uneasy about her that Mr. Brooke went on board, and was taken by the captain for a maker of cocoa-nut oil. He was a Scotchman, from Tanna, where he had settled, and was in search of labourers; a good-natured friendly kind of person on ...
— Life of John Coleridge Patteson • Charlotte M. Yonge
... dredged up shark teeth so large that it was judged that the owner must have been 80 to 90 feet long. The Greynurse shark of the South Seas is the most dreaded of all its tribe; it fears nothing but the Killer, a savage little whale which will attack and whip any shark living, and will not hesitate to tackle even a sperm whale. Shark stories are common and every traveller has many horrible ones to recount. Yet the greatest and best authorities assert that sharks ...
— Ranching, Sport and Travel • Thomas Carson
... drank each other's coffee; they had a fanatical passion for liberty—for themselves. But the representative cowboy was a reliable hand, hanging through drought, blizzard, and high water to his herd, whereas the bona fide bad man lived on the dodge. Between the killer and the cowboy standing up for his rights or merely shooting out the lights for fun, there was as much difference as between Adolf Hitler and Winston Churchill. Of course, the elements were mixed in the worst of the bad men, as they are in the best of all good men. No matter what deductions ...
— Guide to Life and Literature of the Southwest • J. Frank Dobie
... food, too, if it wasn't too hot—they went into the living room. He remembered having seen a bolt and nut in the desk drawer when he had been putting the wooden prawn-killer away, and he got it out, showing it to Little Fuzzy. Little Fuzzy studied it for a moment, then ran into the bedroom and came back with his screw-top bottle. He took the top off, put it on again and then screwed the nut off the ...
— Little Fuzzy • Henry Beam Piper
... minutes later, deploring the cuts but pleased with himself for having broken all records at shaving. The big New Yorker had a way with him; he could interest children as well as their mothers and grown sisters. Phoebe was telling him about "Jack the Giant Killer" when her father ...
— What's-His-Name • George Barr McCutcheon
... same wonderful miracle of the soil's fertility takes place, in the one case by the birth of the boy-Tages, in the other by the marvellous growth of the twisting beanstalks which in one night reach up—up—up to the land of the gods and giants. "Jack the Giant Killer," a similar legend but from a Celtic source, was known in France in the twelfth century, and at that period translated into Latin by Geoffrey of Monmouth. Both "Jack and the Beanstalk" and "Jack the Giant Killer" are found in the ...
— A History of Nursery Rhymes • Percy B. Green
... countries. But it is equally certain that even the rude legislators of former days soon perceived that the death of one man may be occasioned by another, without the slayer himself being the proper object of the lex talionis. Such an accident may happen {p.211} either by the carelessness of the killer, or through that excess and vehemence of passion to which humanity is incident. In either case, though blamable, he ought not to be confounded with the cool and deliberate assassin, and the species of criminality attaching itself to those acts has been ...
— Memoirs of the Life of Sir Walter Scott, Volume I (of 10) • John Gibson Lockhart
... Lord out o' Rickity Tickle, in the days of his pride, when I was a lad o' the place; an' he cotched his load, down north, lean seasons or plenty, in a way t' make the graybeards an' boasters blink in every tickle o' the Shore. A fish-killer o' parts he was: no great spectacle on the roads o' harbor, though—a mild, backward, white-livered little man ashore, yieldin' the path t' every dog o' Rickity Tickle. 'I gets my fish in season,' says ...
— Harbor Tales Down North - With an Appreciation by Wilfred T. Grenfell, M.D. • Norman Duncan
... theologian is an intellectual mummy, and excites attention only as a curiosity. Supernatural religion has outlived its usefulness. The miracles and wonders of the ancients will soon occupy the same tent. Jonah and Jack the Giant Killer, Joshua and Red Riding Hood, Noah and Neptune, will all go into the collection of the ...
— The Works of Robert G. Ingersoll, Volume VIII. - Interviews • Robert Green Ingersoll
... large class, does humanity, or justice, or good sense require that they should be registered and called to vote upon their own restoration? Why, Mr. Chairman, it might as well be said that Jack the Giant Killer ought to have gravely asked the captives in the ogre's dungeon whether they wished to be released. It must be assumed that men and women wish to enjoy their natural rights, as that the eyes wish light or the lungs an atmosphere. Did we wait for emancipation ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume II • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... is right, Fred!" Cleveland called, as the two scientists separated to go to their respective laboratories. "If it is, we'll make a perfect lady out of this unmanageable man-killer yet!" ...
— Triplanetary • Edward Elmer Smith
... little Billy has killed an Indian stone-dead—too dead to skin," said one of the men, who had approached nearer than the rest, and had almost stumbled over the corpse. From that time forward I became a hero and an Indian killer. This was, of course, the first Indian I had ever shot, and as I was then not more than eleven years of age, my exploit created quite ...
— The Great Salt Lake Trail • Colonel Henry Inman
... lunge beyond thy length; Lend no rotten bough thy strength. Gauge thy gape with buck or goat, Lest thine eye should choke thy throat After gorging, wouldst thou sleep? Look thy den be hid and deep, Lest a wrong, by thee forgot, Draw thy killer to the spot. East and West and North and South, Wash thy hide and close thy mouth. (Pit and rift and blue pool-brim, Middle-Jungle follow him!) Wood and Water, Wind and Tree, Jungle-Favour go ...
— Songs from Books • Rudyard Kipling
... the naughty child, who is therefore more attractive than the good and stodgy. Even among fairy-tales we may select. "Beauty and the Beast" and "The Sleeping Beauty" and "Snow-white and Rose-red" are distinctly preferable to "Jack the Giant Killer" or "Puss in Boots," while "Bluebeard" cannot be told. It seems to me that children can often safely read for themselves stories the adult cannot well tell. The child's notion of justice is crude, bad is bad, and whether embodied in an ogre or in Pharaoh of Egypt, it must be got rid of, put out ...
— The Child Under Eight • E.R. Murray and Henrietta Brown Smith
... silly way of talking, sir. He would say, 'Tomlinson, if you tell the pater what time I came home last night I'll stab you to the heart.' When there was a bit of a family squabble he would threaten to mix a gallon of weed-killer and drink every drop. Everything was rotten, or beastly, or awfully ripping. He was not so well educated as he ought to have been—Mrs. Fenley's fault entirely; and ...
— The Strange Case of Mortimer Fenley • Louis Tracy
... the prisoners, and the little cavalcade went off towards Moelk. As we went along, the corporal, at my orders, questioned the three Austrians, and I learnt with satisfaction that the camp whence I had brought them away belonged to the very division, General Killer's, the position of which the Emperor was so anxious to learn. There was, therefore, no further doubt that that general had joined the archduke on the other side of the Danube. There was no longer any question of a battle ...
— The Red True Story Book • Various
... were told of these various Bears of the new breed. The swiftest was Reelfoot, the Placerville cattle-killer that could charge from a thicket thirty yards away and certainly catch a steer before it could turn and run, and that could even catch ponies in the open when they were poor. The most cunning of all was Brin, ...
— Monarch, The Big Bear of Tallac • Ernest Thompson Seton
... me for advice, not for sentiment," he observed presently. "Perhaps I am a bad adviser, but that is the worst you can say of me. I daresay I do not understand women. I have known a few pretty well, but that is all. I am not a lady killer, and I certainly never wished to marry. You must not expect much of me—but what little there is to expect will be practical. Perhaps Ghisleri could advise you better than I. He is a queer fellow. If ...
— Taquisara • F. Marion Crawford
... powerful workman approached the group. "Have you got your killer with you, Eriksen?" cried one, and Eriksen turned on the staircase ...
— Pelle the Conqueror, Complete • Martin Andersen Nexo
... thinks Blue Beard is a type of the castle-lords in the days of knight-errantry. Some say Henry VIII. (the noted wife-killer) was the "academy figure." Others think it was Giles de Retz, marquis de Laval, marshal of France in 1429, who (according to Mezeray) murdered six of his seven wives, and was ultimately ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama, Vol 1 - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook • The Rev. E. Cobham Brewer, LL.D.
... renders him destructive to the passing animals. The Spaniards in the Oroonoque positively affirm that he grows to the length of seventy or eighty feet and that he will destroy the strongest and largest bull. His name seems to confirm this: there he is called "matatoro," which literally means "bull-killer." Thus he may be ranked amongst the deadly snakes, for it comes nearly to the same thing in the end whether the victim dies by poison from the fangs, which corrupts his blood and makes it stink horribly, or whether his body be crushed to mummy, and ...
— Wanderings In South America • Charles Waterton
... ever before. He was a killer, a thing that preyed, living on the things that lived, unaided, alone, by virtue of his own strength and prowess, surviving triumphantly in a hostile environment where only the strong survived. Because of all this he became ...
— The Call of the Wild • Jack London
... who hated, as he said, to read books through, made an exception in favor of the Pilgrim's Progress. That work, he said, was one of the two or three which he wished longer. In every nursery the Pilgrim's Progress is a greater favorite than Jack the Giant-killer. Every reader knows the strait and narrow path as well as he knows a road in which he has gone backward and forward a hundred times. This is the highest miracle of genius—that things which are not should be as though they were, that the imaginations of one mind should become the personal ...
— The Riches of Bunyan • Jeremiah Rev. Chaplin
... me, Sopolis; he is manifestly moon-struck; persons duly pia-matered he accounts beside their five wits; he might come from Samos and call Mnesarchus father; for he enjoins silence and linguinanity. But by the unabashed Athene, by Heracles the beast-killer, no jot or tittle of notice shall he have from me. 'Tis my foreboding that I fall not in with him again. For his censures, I void ...
— Works, V2 • Lucian of Samosata
... native cunning inherited from his father, the great white wolf from the frozen land beyond the frozen sea—partly, too, this cunning was the result of the careful training of 'Merican Joe, who had taught the wolf-dog to strike only those animals that were separated from their fellows. For had the killer rushed blindly in, slashing right and left the herd would have bunched for defence, and later have travelled far into the hills, or struck ...
— Connie Morgan in the Fur Country • James B. Hendryx
... have, and many too,—three who attack us in the water, and several more that men use against us. The killer, the sword-fish, and the thrasher trouble us at home. The killer fastens to us, and won't be shaken off till he has worried us to death; the sword-fish stabs us with his sword; and the thrasher whips us to death with his own slender, but strong and heavy body. Then, men harpoon us, shoot ...
— Aunt Jo's Scrap-Bag VI - An Old-Fashioned Thanksgiving, Etc. • Louisa M. Alcott
... and pains to effectuate it. He was by the French called the Interpreter, because he understood several of the North American languages; but the other name which I have mentioned was given him by his own nation, and signifies the killer of pain and fatigue. This name was indeed most justly applicable to him; for, to satisfy his curiosity, he had made light of the most dangerous and painful journeys, in which he had spent several years of his life. He stayed two or three days with me; and upon my desiring ...
— History of Louisisana • Le Page Du Pratz
... me de leg must come off, an' ax me to get a letter from de priest (I'm Cat-o-lic, me) telling it was all right to cut him. I get de letter and bring my leg to Bompas. He cut 'im off wid meat-saw. No, I tak' not'in', me. I chew tobacco and tak' one big drink of Pain-killer. Yas, it hurt wen ...
— The New North • Agnes Deans Cameron
... aside, thou by whose prowess dies The monsters, knights and giants in all lands, The killer of weak women thee defies." This said, he turned to his fighting bands, And bids them all retire. "Forbear," he cries, "To strike this knight, on him let none lay hands; For mine he is, more than a common foe, By challenge new and ...
— Jerusalem Delivered • Torquato Tasso
... this cruel, suave killer of men flashed into the girl's brain. "Get some water," she cried, and dropping to her knees began to unbutton MacNair's ...
— The Gun-Brand • James B. Hendryx
... ever better killing weapons. All his days, down all the past, have been spent in killing. And from the fear-stricken, jungle-lurking, cave-haunting creature of long ago, he won to empery over the whole animal world because he developed into the most terrible and awful killer of all the animals. He found himself crowded. He killed to make room, and as he made room ever he increased and found himself crowded, and ever he went on killing to make more room. Like a settler clearing ...
— The Human Drift • Jack London
... P.) Root Juice Calder's Dentine Carmichael's Gray Hair Restorer Carmichael's Hair Tonic Celery-Vesce Chavett Diphtheria Preventive Chavett Solace Chocolates and Bon Bons Coe's Cough Balsam Consumers Company Corsets Coupons Crane's Lotion Crown Headache Powders Daisy Fly Killer "Dead Stuck" for Bugs Delatone Dennos Food Digesto Dissolvene Rubber Garments Downs' Obesity Reducer Drosis Duponts Hair Restorative Dyspepsia Remedy, Graham's Elastic Stockings El Perfecto Veda Rose Rouge Empress Hair Color Restorer Empress Shampoo Soap Euca-Scentol Femaform ...
— The Handy Cyclopedia of Things Worth Knowing - A Manual of Ready Reference • Joseph Triemens
... infection of the eye vigilance and cleanliness are indispensable. After the diseases are advanced, after the germ colonies have taken title, some antiseptic or germ killer more violent than water is needed,—kerosene for the hair or strong green oil soap; for the eye, only what a ...
— Civics and Health • William H. Allen
... in his bedigree when I giddim. You bed your life I gif him nod such names—robber, killer, Frenchman!" ...
— Bunker Bean • Harry Leon Wilson
... over this thrilling young lady-killer? It was a pity to see such a gay butterfly broken on a wheel. Was there something good in him, after all, that had been touched? He was in fact madly in love ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... must tell me for the last time the story about the wicked German baby killer who was turned into a pig. The man of the guns must tell it, and the fat man of the infantry shall hide beneath the bed and make pig shrieks—many pig shrieks—at the ...
— War and the Weird • Forbes Phillips
... he might have been the giant-killer in the old nursery tale, carrying poor little Jack, by the way he took up his burden, and struck away for the boundary of the park; a curt "No, thank you," ringing back over his shoulder in ...
— The Heiress of Wyvern Court • Emilie Searchfield
... darkies call it the mule-killer, and believe it has power to bring snakes to life. It's all nonsense. They are not only harmless to human beings but also very useful, for they eat flies and mosquitoes at a great rate. Once upon a time I fed a dragon-fly forty house flies in two hours. And they eat beetles and spiders ...
— Little Busybodies - The Life of Crickets, Ants, Bees, Beetles, and Other Busybodies • Jeanette Augustus Marks and Julia Moody
... female killer happens to be dramatical-minded that she will use a pistol. Mme Weissmann-Bessarabo, who, with her daughter, shot her husband in Paris (August 1920), is of this kind. She and the daughter, Paule-Jacques, seem to have seen ...
— She Stands Accused • Victor MacClure
... the first germ of the nursery tale of Jack the Giant Killer is found in this poem, for Corineus, having chosen Corinea (Cornwall) as his own province, defeated there the giant Goemagot, who was twelve cubits high and pulled up an oak as if it were but a weed. Corineus, after a famous wrestling ...
— Legends of the Middle Ages - Narrated with Special Reference to Literature and Art • H.A. Guerber
... betters and had never so much as heard of local colour, could not explain her chattering with this backward child; and to them she seemed a very homely lady and far from beautiful: the most famous man-killer of the age appealed ...
— Essays of Travel • Robert Louis Stevenson
... and the computer were; and the sleeping quarters. Beyond, nose high, stood the silver scout ship that had brought the advance exploratory party of scientists and technicians to Waiamea three days before. Except for a few of the killer robots rolling slowly around the camp site on their quiet treads, there was no ...
— Survival Tactics • Al Sevcik
... straight course. He could not cut down her speed, unless he went to each one of the hull-enclosed engine stations, and more urgent work awaited before he could afford to do that—work of sending out an S.O.S. before the weird, unseen killer and wrecker came to ...
— Raiders Invisible • Desmond Winter Hall
... pretending to be conning the lesson all the while." Borrow calls Hickathrift his countryman; the legend is that Tom Hickathrift ridded the Fenland between Lynn and Wisbech, of a monstrous giant, by slaying him with the axle-tree of his cart. I gave the full story of this Norfolk giant-killer in the Gentleman's Magazine, for January, 1896. The boy's genius for story telling was quite exceptional, and when he was at Norwich Grammar School, as his schoolfellow Dr. Martineau informed me, "He used to gather ...
— Souvenir of the George Borrow Celebration - Norwich, July 5th, 1913 • James Hooper
... are common in folk tales. Giants are often represented as not only big but also stupid, and as easily overcome by keen-witted human foes like "Jack the Giant-killer." It may be that traditions of pre- historic peoples have sometimes given birth to legends of giants. Another source of stories concerning them has been the discovery of huge fossil bones, such as those of the mammoth or mastodon, which were formerly supposed to be ...
— EARLY EUROPEAN HISTORY • HUTTON WEBSTER
... tusks, that red fierce eye, the wolves fled yelping, tumbling over each other, frantic with terror; and I behind them, a wild cat for leaping, a giant for strength, a devil for ferocity; a madness and gladness of lusty, unsparing life; a killer, a champion, a boar who could ...
— Irish Fairy Tales • James Stephens
... for the bread which no Reis dares refuse them. Bubastis' cats are still fed in the Cadi's court at public expense in Cairo, and behave with singular decorum when 'the servant of the cats' serves them their dinner. Among gods, Amun Ra, the sun-god and serpent-killer, calls himself Mar Girgis (St. George), and is worshipped by Christians and Muslims in the same churches, and Osiris holds his festivals as riotously as ever at Tanta in the Delta, under the name of Seyd el Bedawee. The fellah women offer sacrifices to the Nile, ...
— Letters from Egypt • Lucie Duff Gordon
... is a[.m]sala, strong, or 'from the shoulder' (?). In III. 4. 1. 2 one cooks an ox or a goat for a very distinguished guest, as a sort of guest-sacrifice. So the guest is called 'cow-killer' ...
— The Religions of India - Handbooks On The History Of Religions, Volume 1, Edited By Morris Jastrow • Edward Washburn Hopkins
... already betrayed itself in occasional clumsy efforts. In 'My First Literary Venture', he narrates his experiences, amongst others how greatly he increased the circulation of the paper, and incensed the "inveterate woman-killer," whose poetry for that week's paper read, "To Mary in H—l" (Hannibal). Mark added a "snappy foot—note" at the bottom, in which he agreed to let the thing pass, for just that once; but distinctly warning Mr. J. Gordon Runnels that the paper had a character to sustain, ...
— Mark Twain • Archibald Henderson
... the revenue officers rewarded by the Government as are navy officers, while public knowledge and admiration for the service is vastly less than for the navy. It is a curious phenomenon, and yet one as old at least as the records of man, that the professional killer—that is to say, the officer of the army or navy—has always been held in higher esteem socially, and more lavishly rewarded, than the man whose calling it is to ...
— American Merchant Ships and Sailors • Willis J. Abbot
... Saul, frightened-like at her. "I'm not denying that he is a great fish killer, Mary Snow, and that we haven't shared some big trips with him; but it is like his religion, I'm telling you, to be able to say how he allowed no man ever he crossed tacks with to work to wind'ard of him. He's that vain he'd drive vessel, himself, and all hands to ...
— The Trawler • James Brendan Connolly
... replied Mr. Marshal, "if you will oblige me. Will you tell me honestly whether, now that you find this Mr. O'Neill is neither a dog-killer nor a puller-down of bark-ricks, you feel that you could forgive him for being an Irishman, if the mystery, as you call it, of the hole under the ...
— Murad the Unlucky and Other Tales • Maria Edgeworth
... the man the street car ran, And the driver did never grin. "O killer of men, pray tell me when Your laughter ...
— Shapes of Clay • Ambrose Bierce
... couldn't wind up a top for his life. He knows no more of Jack the Giant Killer or of Sinbad the Sailor than he knows of the people in the stars. He could as soon play at leap- frog or at cricket as change into a cricket or a frog himself. But he is so much the better off than his sister that on ...
— Bleak House • Charles Dickens
... replied Mr. Marshal, "if you will oblige me. Will you tell me honestly whether now that you find this Mr. O'Neill is neither a dog-killer nor a puller down of bark ricks, you feel that you could forgive him for being an Irishman, if the mystery, as you call it, of the hole under the cathedral was cleared up?" "But that is not cleared up, I say, sir," cried Mr. Hill, striking his walking-stick forcibly ...
— Tales & Novels, Vol. 2 • Maria Edgeworth
... greater spirit and elegance because he could define an oxymoron or an aposiopesis? I am not joking, but writing quite seriously, when I say that I would much rather order a hundred copies of Jack the Giant-killer for our schools than a hundred copies of any grammar of rhetoric or ...
— Life and Letters of Lord Macaulay • George Otto Trevelyan
... remained in Hull in 'The Man of the World,' 'Richelieu,' and 'Macbeth.' On July 29th, 1865, I made my debut in London, at the Haymarket, as Ophelia to the Hamlet of Walter Montgomery. Poor Montgomery! He was what you would call a 'lady-killer'—very conceited, but, withal, very kind. He once wrote a letter to my father, and added a postscript, saying: 'Keep this letter. Should poverty fall upon you or yours, your great-grand-children may be able to sell it for a good sum of money!' I was ...
— The Strand Magazine, Volume V, Issue 27, March 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... chevalier d'industrie; damn away. But live, live, live! That will be the keenest punishment. Live! O, my brave killer of boys, you thought to play with me as a cat with a mouse, eh? Eh, Captain Urquijo-Beauvais-and-What-is-your-name?" He pressed the point here, there, everywhere. "You were too confident. Pardon me if I appear to brag, but ...
— The Puppet Crown • Harold MacGrath
... thin, ye brave man,' sings out O'Toole, comin' up. 'Go it, owld gal, give it to him. 'Tis a leddy-killer he is fer sure, 'pon me whurd, fer a fact. Claw him, bite him, even though he's as tough as nails. Yell him deaf, owld leddy. Do it fer his mether's sake, th' scand'lous owld rake he is. Get his year in yer teeth an' hold on, fer 'tis a leddy-killer ye have in yer hands at last. Whang ...
— Mr. Trunnell • T. Jenkins Hains
... do it, if you'll b'lieve my racket. My powder are not good powder, gentlemen; I bought it thum (from) Zeb Daggett, and gin him three-quarters of a dollar a pound for it; but it are not what I call good powder, gentlemen; but if old Buck-killer burns it clear, the boy you call Hiram Baugh eat's paper, or comes mighty ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume IV. (of X.) • Various
... Killer of thieves (i.e., passions), means one who conquered his passions. It means, secondly, one who is exempted from birth, or one who is free from transmigration. Thirdly, it means one deserving worship. So the Arhat is the highest sage who has attained ...
— The Religion of the Samurai • Kaiten Nukariya
... Ayden, N. C., claims he is the champion rat killer of the State. With the aid of a wire trap, and a dog he killed an even thousand of the rodents last year. He has killed in the neighborhood of 10,000 in the past fifteen years. He will kill rats in any house at the rate of ...
— Owen Clancy's Happy Trail - or, The Motor Wizard in California • Burt L. Standish
... and when he immediately sought safety in numbers among the Indians, cowboys, and troopers in the exchange, he was in time to see Cahill enter it from the other store, wrapping up a bottle of pain-killer for Mrs. Stickney's cook. But Clancey was not deceived. He observed with satisfaction that the soles and the heels of Cahill's boots were wet with the black mud of ...
— Ranson's Folly • Richard Harding Davis
... below-stairs in the House Beautiful at the idea of Delaford taking up with Mrs. Frost's little kitchen-maid—Delaford, the lady's-maid killer par excellence, wherever Lady Conway went, and whose coquetries whitened the cheeks of Miss Conway's poor Marianne, the object of his attentions whenever he had no one else in view. He had not known Charlotte to be a kitchen-maid when he first beheld her, and her fair beauty and retiring ...
— Dynevor Terrace (Vol. I) - or, The Clue of Life • Charlotte M. Yonge
... masters under the table, which it could not be doubted that we had done, as Temple modestly observed while we sauntered off the grounds under the eyes of the establishment. We had done it fairly, too, with none of those Jack the Giant-Killer tricks my grandfather ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... are crumbs on the plates out in the world just the same as there are here; and if here you teach yourself to see nothing but crumbs, you will see nothing but crumbs out there. In short, dissatisfaction with everyday living is the same joy-killer whether in town or city, farmhouse or palace. Oh, I 'm preaching, I know, dear," went on Mrs. Howland hurriedly, as she saw the angry light in the other's eyes, "but—I had to speak—you don't know ...
— The Tangled Threads • Eleanor H. Porter
... be; or like singers with only a single song. All lives are necessarily finite and exclusive; every choice of an interest or ideal very possibly precludes some other. A man cannot be all things at once; "the philosopher and the lady-killer," as James merrily remarks, "could not very well keep house in the same tenement of clay." But a strong character need not necessarily mean a narrow one, nor need a determined will be the will of a ...
— Human Traits and their Social Significance • Irwin Edman
... call in the cats!—By the way, Miss Ra ... Ra ... Rambotham, are you aware that this son of mine is a professed lady-killer?" ...
— The Getting of Wisdom • Henry Handel Richardson
... were seven-leagued boots, like Jack the Giant Killer's, then it would be easy to run errands all the time. Now, I hate to keep trotting, and I don't like new shoes, and I ...
— The Louisa Alcott Reader - A Supplementary Reader for the Fourth Year of School • Louisa M. Alcott
... a 'new hand,' none other than JOHN TENNIEL the 'Cartoonist' par excellence, whose work henceforth was to be—as happily it still is—the pride of Mr. Punch and the delight of the British Public. TENNIEL's first Cartoon, 'Lord JACK the Giant-Killer,' graced Mr. Punch's 499th Number, he having taken, at short notice, the place of RICHARD DOYLE, who after many years of excellent work had voluntarily withdrawn from the Table, owing to certain religious scruples, ...
— Punch, Volume 101, Jubilee Issue, July 18, 1891 • Various
... exclaimed, "has been on his Tennessee purchase. These Christmas times there's no getting through the snow in the Cumberland Gap. He's stopped off thaw to shoot the—ahem!—the wild torkey—a great passion with the Jedge. His half-uncle, Gineral Johnson, of Awkinso, was a torkey-killer of high celebrity. He was a Deshay on his Maw's side. I s'pose you haven't the torkey in the ...
— Tales of the Chesapeake • George Alfred Townsend
... of children of all ages; and there are probably few, in the background of whose childish imagination the astonishing Munchausen has not at one time or another, together with Robinson Crusoe, Jack-the-Giant-Killer, and the Pied Piper of Hamelyn, assumed proportions at once ...
— The Surprising Adventures of Baron Munchausen • Rudolph Erich Raspe
... thousand: whom Bruce had taught to show themselves at that place and time. The Earl of Gloucester, commanding the English horse, made a last rush to change the fortune of the day; but Bruce (like Jack the Giant-killer in the story) had had pits dug in the ground, and covered over with turfs and stakes. Into these, as they gave way beneath the weight of the horses, riders and horses rolled by hundreds. The English were completely routed; all their treasure, stores, and engines, were ...
— A Child's History of England • Charles Dickens
... because there is nothing whatever to provoke this display of ferocity. Finally he stops in front of the footlights, strikes an attitude, and delivers himself thus: "For to-day, Scapin, I am willing to let my man-killer here have a little rest, so that there may be an opportunity to get all its recent victims decently buried, in the cemeteries I contribute so largely towards filling. When a man has performed such feats of courage and carnage as ...
— Captain Fracasse • Theophile Gautier
... well aware of that, for Lorenzo Merli, like all Italians, was a great gossip, and quite a lady-killer in the servants' hall. He was a dark-haired, good-looking young man whose character was excellent, and who had served me most faithfully. His father was farm-bailiff to an Italian marquis I knew, and with ...
— Hushed Up - A Mystery of London • William Le Queux
... talked of the day's sport, and compliments of all kinds were showered on Lord Steepleton, who looked very much pleased, and drank a good deal of wine. Ghyrkins and the little magistrate expressed their opinion that he would make a famous tiger-killer one of these days, when he had learned to wait. Every one was hungry and rather tired, and after a somewhat silent cigar, we parted for the night, Miss Westonhaugh rising first. Isaacs went to his quarters, and I remained alone in a long chair, by the deserted ...
— Mr. Isaacs • F. Marion Crawford
... content and submissive. Captives taken on head-hunting expeditions are held as slaves until human sacrifices are wanted.[708] The souls of all those who are put to death at the death of a Dyak rajah become his servants in the other world. In this world the killer can command, as his fetich, the soul of the killed. On the death of a great man his debtor slaves are bound to the carved village post, which indicates the glory of head-hunting, and are tortured to death.[709] "Slavery is greatly practiced" ...
— Folkways - A Study of the Sociological Importance of Usages, Manners, Customs, Mores, and Morals • William Graham Sumner
... said the Idol, looking at Father like he was Jack, the Giant-Killer, and just about as much interested as if it was not his own tremendous fortune Father was telling about ...
— Phyllis • Maria Thompson Daviess
... appear as a gypsy; she had made her too proud and serious. A more proper part for her was that of a heroine, a queenly heroine,—that of Theresa of Hungary, for example; or, better still, that of Brynhilda the Valkyrie, the beloved of Sigurd, the serpent-killer, who incurred the curse of Odin, because, in the tumult of spears, she sided with the young king, and doomed the old warrior to die, to whom Odin had ...
— The Romany Rye • George Borrow
... and wrath. No golden dog this, ears flattened and tongue laughing in the arms of the lady-god, no Sing Song Silly chanting ancient memories in the cloud-entanglement of her hair; but a four-legged creature of battle, a fanged killer ripe to ...
— Jerry of the Islands • Jack London
... nothing but what was true, banished fairy tales from her nursery. But the children evolved from their own imagination fictions which were so appalling that she was glad to divert them with Jack-the-Giant-Killer." ...
— The Task of Social Hygiene • Havelock Ellis
... needed as a time-killer, so I spun him a yarn about the lovely life me an' Kid Porter was livin'. We jerked out his trunk just before the train left, bought a month's grub, an' came along out to our shack. His name was William Sinclair Hammersly, an' the' never was a squarer boy on the face o' the earth, after he'd ...
— Happy Hawkins • Robert Alexander Wason
... But the good lady-killer had posted about devoted attendants, who, without knowing what was going on, closed the hotel, barricaded the doors, and in this mansion, so large that it equalled a fourth of Paris, the Lady d'Hocquetonville was as in a desert, with no other ...
— Droll Stories, Volume 2 • Honore de Balzac
... paid his expenses while he trailed Overland and Collie. They had even guaranteed him protection from the law—such as it was on the Mojave. He had every reason to be grateful to them, but he was just a step or two above them in criminal artistry. He had been a "killer." Like the lone wolf that calls the pack to the hunt, he turned instinctively to Gophertown, a settlement in the hills not unknown to a few of the authorities, but unmolested by them. The atmosphere of Gophertown was not ...
— Overland Red - A Romance of the Moonstone Canon Trail • Henry Herbert Knibbs
... an enemy.] But the Mikumwess, seeing this, steered straight to meet the monster, and, coming to him, said, "I am the great hunter of beavers; lo, I am their butcher; many a one has fallen by my hand." [Footnote: This is oddly like the speech of the beaver-killer in The Hunting of the Snark.] Now the Beaver had placed himself under water, with his tail out of it and rising upwards, that he might sink the canoe with a blow thereof; for the Beaver strikes mightily in such wise, as is his wont. But he of the magic power, with ...
— The Algonquin Legends of New England • Charles Godfrey Leland |
