"Nocturnal" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... at the start, those ninety nocturnal minutes thrice a week must be the most important minutes in the ten thousand and eighty. They must be sacred, quite as sacred as a dramatic rehearsal or a tennis match. Instead of saying, "Sorry I can't see you, old chap, but I have to run off to the tennis ...
— How to Live on 24 Hours a Day • Arnold Bennett
... the island. The late Mr. C. Barlow says that it is found in deserted rabbit burrows and in all probability often excavates its own burrows. It also nests among the cliffs placing its eggs among the rocks in any crevice or tunnel which may offer a dark retreat during the day for they are nocturnal in their habits. The single egg which they lay is dull white in color, the inside of the shell being a pale green, which color can only be seen by holding the egg to the light. They are generally slightly nest stained. Size ...
— The Bird Book • Chester A. Reed
... for a philosopher,' thought Arbaces, 'that lead one like me just new from the bed of death, and lapped even in health amidst the roses of luxury, across such nocturnal paths as this; but Passion and Vengeance treading to their goal can make an Elysium of a Tartarus.' High, clear, and melancholy shone the moon above the road of that dark wayfarer, glossing herself ...
— The Last Days of Pompeii • Edward George Bulwer-Lytton
... straight to the dance hall, closed at this hour to its nocturnal patrons, where she knew she would find Tom Martin in the office back of the main room. He was there as she expected—a keen-eyed, sharp-featured little cockney whose history from the time he disappeared ...
— The Monk of Hambleton • Armstrong Livingston
... same devilish, schoolboy spirit that actuates the truant to filch fruit or melons from orchards of others, while he had abundance at home, caused the soldier oftentimes to make "raids," as they called these nocturnal visits to the farm houses outlying the army's track. I have known men who at home was as honorable, honest, upright, and who would scorn a dishonest act, turn out to be veteran foragers, and rob and steal anything they could get their hands on from the citizens, friend ...
— History of Kershaw's Brigade • D. Augustus Dickert
... were celebrated with festivity, with noisy music, with illuminations, and with license. There were mysteries, which were not, in Egypt at least, initiations into any thing different from the popular religion; but merely representations—celebrated amidst nocturnal gloom—of the sufferings of Osiris. If strangers in Egypt underwent painful initiation, it was an initiation into the knowledge of the priests, and not into their mysteries. The Egyptians believed ...
— The International Magazine, Volume 2, No. 3, February, 1851 • Various
... longings. His ideal was less northern in character. Ideally he felt himself attracted by those courtesans of the sixteenth century, over whose faces there would appear to be drawn some indefinable veil of sorcery, some transparent mask of enchantment, some divine nocturnal spell. ...
— The Child of Pleasure • Gabriele D'Annunzio
... those lovely, enquiring eyes. And, by the way, it is strange, is it not, that Miss Wycliffe should have eyes similar to those of my young guide in Assisi? As far as I know, she is of pure New England ancestry, and one does not meet very often in this climate a glance that suggests nocturnal mystery. No, no. The women here are different, as a rule. I remember her mother; she was something like, ...
— The Mayor of Warwick • Herbert M. Hopkins
... Abu Bakr because he bore truthful witness to the Apostle's mission or, others say, he confirmed the "Mi'raj" or nocturnal journey ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 2 • Richard F. Burton
... who pass their days in plenty and security, could visit for an hour the dismal receptacles to which the prostitute retires from her nocturnal excursions, and see the wretches that lie crowded together, mad with intemperance, ghastly with famine, nauseous with filth, and noisome with disease; it would not be easy for any degree of abhorrence to harden them against compassion, or to repress the desire ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson - Volume IV [The Rambler and The Adventurer] • Samuel Johnson
... immaterial ones who lay about her. Some change had taken place among the stars: they were paler, nearer, as though they had grown tired of eminence and wanted commerce with the earth. The great quiet had failed before the encroachment of little sounds as of burrowing, nocturnal hunting, and the struggles of a breeze ...
— Moor Fires • E. H. (Emily Hilda) Young
... But playing a one-stringed violin at fairs and public-houses could not be more than a relaxation to a man of Peace's active temper, who had once tasted what many of those who have practised it, describe as the fascination of that particular form of nocturnal adventure known by the unsympathetic name of burglary. Among the exponents of the art Peace was at this time known as a "portico-thief," that is to say one who contrived to get himself on to the portico of a house and from that point of vantage make ...
— A Book of Remarkable Criminals • H. B. Irving
... messenger—a fairly intelligent muleteer, and honest, but new to the business. We met in the garden at the rear of his cottage, conveniently approached by way of the ill-kept cemetery which stood at the end of the village. If surprised, I was to act the nocturnal lover, and he the angry defender of his sister's reputation—a foolish but not ill-looking girl, to whom I had confided nothing beyond a few amorous glances, so that her evidence (if unluckily needed) might carry all the weight of an obvious ...
— The Laird's Luck • Arthur Quiller-Couch
... the marble-columned lobby, now crowded with a typical early-autumn throng in quest of dinner and the various nocturnal amusements which the city offers at all times to the frequenters ...
— The Dark Star • Robert W. Chambers
... particular taste. I find that this mosquito much resembles the creature which Dr. Howard calls Stegomyia fasciata, or Culex fasciatus: and that its habits are the same as those of the Stegomyia. For example, it is diurnal rather than nocturnal and becomes most troublesome in the afternoon. And I have discovered that it comes from the Buddhist cemetery,—a very old cemetery,—in ...
— Kwaidan: Stories and Studies of Strange Things • Lafcadio Hearn
... exuberant animal spirits of Antony occasionally found vent in roaming the streets of Alexandria at dead of night, rushing into houses and pulling people out of bed, and then absconding before they were well awake. In these nocturnal pranks, Cleopatra often attended him, dressed like a boy. Once they both got well pummeled, and deservedly, but they stood the drubbing rather than ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 7 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Eminent Orators • Elbert Hubbard
... departure intensified the strain and went far to make faint many a heart that had until then remained stout. The guns were fired with longer intervals between the shots; the shells did not follow on the top of one another as in the day; but one nocturnal projectile excited as much terror as did ten when the sun was shining. Far into the night—for hours after midnight—the war was waged, and sleep denied the pleasure of steeping our "senses in forgetfulness." To sleep ...
— The Siege of Kimberley • T. Phelan
... Sahwah's nocturnal journey the camp was thrown into consternation by the discovery that Nyoda's sweater was gone. The last time she remembered having it was coming home from Blueberry Island, when she had given it to Sherry to hold while she unpacked ...
— The Camp Fire Girls in the Maine Woods - Or, The Winnebagos Go Camping • Hildegard G. Frey
... business was still confused and grotesque. As I drove home to my house in Kensington I thought over it all, from the extraordinary story of the red-headed copier of the "Encyclopaedia" down to the visit to Saxe-Coburg Square, and the ominous words with which he had parted from me. What was this nocturnal expedition, and why should I go armed? Where were we going, and what were we to do? I had the hint from Holmes that this smooth-faced pawnbroker's assistant was a formidable man—a man who might play a deep game. I tried to puzzle it out, but gave it up in despair, and set ...
— The Lock And Key Library - Classic Mystery And Detective Stories, Modern English • Various
... rattlesnakes, and I found that a whole brood were collected under the stone. As they are slow-moving creatures, I was able to kill every one of them before they could escape. They would have been somewhat unpleasant companions to me during my nocturnal slumbers. Scarcely had I despatched my rattle-tailed enemies than, turning over with my foot some smaller stones near the big one, out wriggled a number of other snakes, black, brown, and yellow, twisting and turning amid the grass, many making directly towards me. To be surrounded, even in daylight, ...
— Dick Onslow - Among the Redskins • W.H.G. Kingston
... Dominican friar, (Voyages du P. Labat, tom. i. p. 10,) who lodged at Cadiz in a convent of his brethren, soon understood that their repose was never interrupted by nocturnal devotion; "quoiqu'on ne laisse pas de sonner pour ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 3 • Edward Gibbon
... smiled over old Indian legends, but Yukon men are still puzzling over the nocturnal rambles of the ghost of a murdered man in the Forty Mile District. Following the excitement of the discovery of Bonanza Bar and the sensational riches of Franklin Gulch came the murder of an old Frenchman named La Salle. Tanana Indians committed the crime in 1886. They crossed ...
— A Woman who went to Alaska • May Kellogg Sullivan
... a rainy November night. A soft continuous downpour was soaking the London streets, without, however, affecting their animation or the nocturnal brightness of the capital, for the brilliance of the gas-lamps was flashed back from innumerable patches of water, and every ray of light seemed to be broken by the rain into a hundred shimmering reflections. It was the hour when all the society of ...
— Miss Bretherton • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... father's elevation, was sent to the army, where he distinguished himself in nocturnal debauches and adventures such as we have related, and where, thanks to his father's influence, he shortly rose ...
— Rabbi and Priest - A Story • Milton Goldsmith
... remembering Fontenoy's nocturnal incursion upon him, and its apparent object. Who would have imagined that the preacher of that occasion had ever given one serious thought to woman and woman's arts—least of all that he was the creation and slave of ...
— Sir George Tressady, Vol. I • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... so-called simple eye, or ocellus. These have been historically derived from one and the same organ. In order to exercise the function of sight the facets need a greater pencil of light rays by night than by day. To obtain the same result we dilate the pupil. But nocturnal insects are dazzled by the light of day, and diurnal insects cannot see by night, for neither possess the faculty of accommodation. Insects are specially able to perceive motion, but there are only very few insects that ...
— The World's Greatest Books - Volume 15 - Science • Various
... accessible until one who is practiced in introspection can raise the number of his remembered dreams from one in two or three nights to five, ten, or even fourteen in a single night. Even at this maximum of remembrance one feels that but a fraction of the mind's nocturnal activity is recalled. Images emerge in consciousness and fall back into obscurity before the waking thought can grasp them. Or it may be more accurate to say that upon awakening consciousness rises from level to level. It sometimes happens ...
— The Journal of Abnormal Psychology - Volume 10
... world," she thought as she listened to the unfamiliar nocturnal sounds of the city. They crept through the open window like a sigh from afar, stirring the leaves in the garden and ...
— Mother • Maxim Gorky
... increasing, as there have been several hunts started within the last six years. There can well be many more, as, according to the opinion of that excellent authority, the late Rev. "Otter" Davies, as he was always called, there are otters on every river; but, owing to the nocturnal and mysterious habits of the animals, their whereabouts or existence is seldom known, or even suspected. Hunting them is a very beautiful sport, and the question arises as to whether the pure Otterhounds should not be more generally used than they are at present. It is often asserted ...
— Dogs and All About Them • Robert Leighton
... hen's egg. I have known an owl of this species live a full year without any water. Perhaps the case may be the same with all birds of prey. When owls fly they stretch out their legs behind them as a balance to their large heavy heads; for as most nocturnal birds have large eyes and ears they must have large heads to contain them. Large eyes I presume are necessary to collect every ray of light, and large concave ears to command the smallest degree of sound ...
— The Natural History of Selborne • Gilbert White
... Germanus with the soldiers and citizens: he feared, he threatened, but he delayed to strike; the patrician fled to the sanctuary of the church; the people rose in his defence, the walls were deserted by the guards, and the lawless city was abandoned to the flames and rapine of a nocturnal tumult. In a small bark, the unfortunate Maurice, with his wife and nine children, escaped to the Asiatic shore; but the violence of the wind compelled him to land at the church of St. Autonomus, [44] near Chalcedon, from whence he despatched Theodosius, he ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 4 • Edward Gibbon
... in streets, clubs, bars, and strange houses, or in the heat and fume of Fleet Street offices. But what nights they were! What things have we seen done—not at The Mermaid—but in every tiny street and alley of nocturnal London! ...
— Nights in London • Thomas Burke
... of human being too tender to go on living? I stuck for a time as one does on these nocturnal occasions at the word "hypersensitive," going round it and ...
— The Passionate Friends • Herbert George Wells
... meet her," said Mr. Sachs. Upon which enigmatic warning he departed, and was lost in the immense glittering nocturnal silence of Wilkins's. ...
— The Regent • E. Arnold Bennett
... elf-candles, dead-lights, wraiths, apparitions, cantrips, giants, enchanted towers, dragons, and other trumpery. This cultivated the latent seeds of poetry, but had so strong an effect upon my imagination that to this hour, in my nocturnal rambles, I sometimes keep a sharp ...
— Outlines of English and American Literature • William J. Long
... forget the mystery and excitement of that night. I know nothing in life more fascinating than the nocturnal ascent of an unknown river, leading far into an enemy's country, where one glides in the dim moonlight between dark hills and meadows, each turn of the channel making it seem like an inland lake, and cutting you off as by ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 90, April, 1865 • Various
... exasperate their ill-wishers by more imperious airs to them, and a closer attendance to the gentlemanly sports of the country, but still they gave no tangible cause to quarrel broadly with them. While matters were going on in this way, they received a nocturnal anonymous letter, ordering them to send a few of their abundant stock of arms to a certain lonely place, for the benefit, of the popular legislators of that turbulent county. This summons the Bolands answered by a letter of defiance, and a challenge ...
— The Tithe-Proctor - The Works of William Carleton, Volume Two • William Carleton
... thought poverty an essential part of virtue. The preamble disposed of, he proceeds to the more serious charge of magic. He has, so the indictment says, fascinated a child; he has bought poisons; he keeps something uncanny in his handkerchief, probably some token of sorcery: he offers nocturnal sacrifices, vestiges of which of a suspicious character have been found; and he worships a little skeleton he has made and which he always carries about with him. His answer to these charges is as follows:—the child was epileptic and ...
— A History of Roman Literature - From the Earliest Period to the Death of Marcus Aurelius • Charles Thomas Cruttwell
... our first nocturnal glimpse of the charming creatures you can imagine that my companions and I were most eager to see more of them. During the entire next day not one of "les belles sauvages" was visible. It was next to ...
— The Cruise of the Kawa • Walter E. Traprock
... heart and mind of the poet. The moon is endowed with life and will, "stooping", "riding", "wand'ring", "bowing her head", not as a frigid personification, and because the ancient poets so personified her, but by communication to her of the intense agitation which the nocturnal spectacle rouses in the poet's ...
— Milton • Mark Pattison
... chanced that the same inflexible landlady ruled at Number 5 Exeter Place, and remembering his former experience, Mr. Watson felt something must be done to stifle the shouting he foresaw he would be compelled to do at that nocturnal hour. So he gathered together all the blankets and rolled them into a sort of cone and to the small end of this he tied his telephone. Then he crept into this stuffy, breathless shelter, the ancestor of our sound-proof telephone booth, and for nearly three hours shouted to Mr. Bell in New York—or ...
— Ted and the Telephone • Sara Ware Bassett
... following version I have taken liberty to omit a good many of the introductory stanzas of the famous Coplas de Calainos. The reader will remember that this ballad is alluded to in Don Quixote, where the Knight's nocturnal ...
— Mediaeval Tales • Various
... Isabel's mysterious behaviour, his doubts now gave place to that perfect confidence which candour and virtuous simplicity ever impart to congenial minds. But in proportion as he revered the holy fortitude, which evidently supported her in these nocturnal adventures, so were his fears roused by a sense of the danger, with which, as she admitted, they were attended. She had pointed out Morgan as an enemy whom she dreaded. Sedley recollected the civilities ...
— The Loyalists, Vol. 1-3 - An Historical Novel • Jane West
... of a general character about it. It is the story of a certain Payn Peveril (for we meet many familiar names), who seems to have been a real person though wrongly dated here, and has one of those nocturnal combats with demon knights, the best known examples of which are those recounted in Marmion and its notes. Peveril's antagonist, however—or rather the mask which the antagonist takes,—connects with the oldest legendary history of the island, for he reanimates the body of Gogmagog, ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 1 - From the Beginning to 1800 • George Saintsbury
... nocturnal chill, Bowed down and closed, when the sun whitens them, Uplift themselves all open ...
— Divine Comedy, Longfellow's Translation, Hell • Dante Alighieri
... and many Turks work every night on trenches, redoubts and entanglements. Not one single living soul has been seen, since the engagement of our Marines at the end of February, although each morning brings forth fresh evidences of nocturnal activity, in patches of freshly turned up soil. All landing places are now commanded by lines of trenches and are ranged by field guns and howitzers, which, thus far, cannot be located as our naval seaplanes are too heavy ...
— Gallipoli Diary, Volume I • Ian Hamilton
... a kind of nocturnal lizard. Its eyes are large, and the pupil is extremely contractile. It hides itself during the day, and is lively only at nights. It haunts rooms, especially kitchens, in Egypt, where it finds the ...
— The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 5. (of 7): Persia • George Rawlinson
... magnificent rock-tomb with galleries, halls, and deep pits, the walls being decorated with representations of the Voyage of the Sun through the regions which he traverses during the twelve hours of his nocturnal course. ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 5 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... to the dark belt of woodland that the first Hewishes had planted, a darkness unvisited by moonlight, where their feet rustled a carpet of dead leaves, and shy, nocturnal creatures made another rustling beside them. At the edge of the wood a bird flew out of a thorn tree. "It's a brown owl," cried Radway; but when its wings caught the moonlight they saw the band of white. "It's a magpie," she said. "One for sorrow ...
— The Tragic Bride • Francis Brett Young
... bag, and put it in your pocket; there is nothing in it but a few milk-can pebbles.[39] When you have given birth to your first child, throw a pebble into the well, and I will come to see you. When the child is baptized, I will be the sponsor. Let no one know of our nocturnal meeting. For the present I say farewell." At these words the wonderful stranger vanished from the girl's eyes as suddenly as if she had sunk into the ground. Very likely the girl might have thought that this adventure was a dream too, if the bag in her hand had not testified to ...
— The Hero of Esthonia and Other Studies in the Romantic Literature of That Country • William Forsell Kirby
... swiftly to her riding-togs, took up her little black emergency kit, which would lend an air of business urgency to her nocturnal ride with Norton, and stepped out ...
— The Bells of San Juan • Jackson Gregory
... which the young man stood was a long lane of dazzle, wherefore the nocturnal shadows offered no concealment. He cast his eyes up and down the avenue in search of a tramp motor-hack cruising in search of a fare. He had only a moment or two to wait before one of the bright yellow variety came racketing ...
— Officer 666 • Barton W. Currie
... daisies trim, 120 Their merry wakes and pastimes keep: What hath night to do with sleep? Night hath better sweets to prove; Venus now wakes, and wakens Love. Come, let us our rights begin; 'Tis only daylight that makes sin, Which these dun shades will ne'er report. Hail, goddess of nocturnal sport, Dark-veiled Cotytto, to whom the secret flame Of midnight torches burns! mysterious dame, 130 That ne'er art called but when the dragon womb Of Stygian darkness spets her thickest gloom, And makes one blot of all the air! Stay ...
— Milton's Comus • John Milton
... and a time at last came when, to his relief, Sir Walter could open his morning journal and find no mention of Chadlands therein. Architects examined the room a second time, and the authorities also gave permission to certain notable spiritualists to make further nocturnal and diurnal vigils therein, though no solitary watcher was permitted. Three came and passed a day and a night in the Grey Room. They were ...
— The Grey Room • Eden Phillpotts
... who, having been detained late by a supper in the city, was making her way slowly homewards, hanging on the arm of a lover, by the shortest possible route. Madame de Chevreuse had been too well accustomed to nocturnal political intrigues to be ignorant that a minister never denies himself, even at his own private residence, to any young and beautiful woman who may chance to object to the dust and confusion of a public office, or to old women, ...
— Louise de la Valliere • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... is exclusively nocturnal, and so large a place in it is taken by huge and portable candlesticks that it might be called the Tragedy of the Candelabra. Through the windows, on the landward side, a procession of mysterious visitors go by in the moonlight, ...
— Henrik Ibsen • Edmund Gosse
... with ever-increasing heat, and as nothing happened I began to find my watchful waiting dull. Crusoe, worn out perhaps by some private nocturnal pig-hunt, slept heavily where the drip of the spring over the brim of old Heintz's kettle cooled the air. Aunt Jane's sobs had ceased, and only a low murmur of voices came from the cabin. I began ...
— Spanish Doubloons • Camilla Kenyon
... terror and amazement; whilst the person to be admitted, overwhelmed with dread, and sweating through fear, heard, trembling, the mysterious volumes read to him, if in such a condition he was capable of hearing at all. These nocturnal rites gave birth to many disorders, which the severe law of silence, imposed on the persons initiated, prevented from coming to light, as St. Gregory Nazianzen observes.(65) What cannot superstition effect upon the mind of man, when once his imagination is heated? The ...
— The Ancient History of the Egyptians, Carthaginians, Assyrians, • Charles Rollin
... exile sat none the more lightly as the days went on, turned out of the Strand into one of the theatres. He had been gloomily pushing his way through the various London densities—the November fog, the nocturnal darkness, the jostling crowd. He was too restless to do anything but walk, and he had been saying to himself, for the thousandth time, that if he had been guilty of a misdemeanor in succumbing to the attractions of the admirable girl who showed to such advantage in letters ...
— Confidence • Henry James
... Humane Society has at last taken action, looking to the destruction of improper, immoral and friendless cats, and agents are at work capturing the nocturnal prowlers, and turning them over to the proper authorities of the society, who ...
— Peck's Sunshine - Being a Collection of Articles Written for Peck's Sun, - Milwaukee, Wis. - 1882 • George W. Peck
... history. All the inscriptions which recalled the glory or the beneficence of France were conscientiously erased. It was even proposed to do away with the lighting of the streets, not only because they threw too strong a light upon certain nocturnal matters, but because they dated from the time of Miollis and De Tournon. Even now, in 1859, the fleur-de-lis points out what is French property. A marble table in the church of San Luigi dei Francesi promises indulgence to those who will pray for the king of France. The French ...
— The Roman Question • Edmond About
... but it was a vision of beauty compared to its occupants. These were none other than Slats Corbett, imperial head of Barrel Alley, and his official staff, consisting of Skinny Mattenburg and Spider McCurren. Such nocturnal excursions were not ...
— Pee-Wee Harris Adrift • Percy Keese Fitzhugh
... the scene, at the nocturnal prowlers and promenaders, at the solitary veiled and seated figure, and he smiled. In ...
— The Return of the Prodigal • May Sinclair
... to apologise to our cat for having recently upbraided him rather too freely for his nocturnal habits and general lack of discipline, not having considered the shock of such ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 146, February 18, 1914 • Various
... makes the still, vapour-laden atmosphere vibrate. The sound reminded me strikingly of that which is heard when pneumatic hammers are driving home rivets through steel beams. There were other frogs whose louder and deeper-pitched tones could be distinguished through the main nocturnal song. These seemed always to be ...
— In The Amazon Jungle - Adventures In Remote Parts Of The Upper Amazon River, Including A - Sojourn Among Cannibal Indians • Algot Lange
... wilderness, but, the roads being rough and our load heavy, we made very slow progress. By 9 o'clock we had not reached the half-way mark, but by way of encouragement to the horses, and in consideration of the tired, hungry children, we came to a halt and improvised a nocturnal picnic. It was cold, very cold, there was no shelter, no light but the camp-fire, and yet there was an attempt at cheerfulness, and the entertainment passed off with some degree ...
— 'Three Score Years and Ten' - Life-Long Memories of Fort Snelling, Minnesota, and Other - Parts of the West • Charlotte Ouisconsin Van Cleve
... numerous evidences of his supernatural power, and any native will tell you how he walks abroad of a night, and visits the homes where his image is enshrined, a tremendous undertaking, as hardly a nipa shack on the island but boasts its picture or statue of Cebu's patron saint. On returning from these nocturnal tramps, the Holy Child is wont to bring back with him food and drink for his own consumption, the evidence of these midnight feasts being found on many a morning in the shape of crumbs scattered over the altar, a touch of nature which makes him indeed kin to the natives, who, we ...
— A Woman's Journey through the Philippines - On a Cable Ship that Linked Together the Strange Lands Seen En Route • Florence Kimball Russel
... disturbance. However, I went to bed, grumbling against Tenterden Street,[102] and all its works. If there was no entrance but the keyhole, I should warrant myself against the ghosts. We have a set of idle fellows called workmen about us, which is a better way of accounting for nocturnal noises than any that is to be found in ...
— Memoirs of the Life of Sir Walter Scott, Volume V (of 10) • John Gibson Lockhart
... to ride to Hatiheu on a moonless night. He borrowed a lantern, sat a long while nerving himself for the adventure, and when he at last departed, wrung the Cascos by the hand as for a final separation. Certain presences, called Vehinehae, frequent and make terrible the nocturnal roadside; I was told by one they were like so much mist, and as the traveller walked into them dispersed and dissipated; another described them as being shaped like men and having eyes like cats; from none could I obtain the smallest clearness as ...
— In the South Seas • Robert Louis Stevenson
... this revolt was attributed to the introduction of the Slave Registry Bill into the British Parliament, and it was discovered that several free men of colour, who had for several months previous attended nocturnal meetings of slaves on the estates where the insurrection began, had told the slaves that a law was being passed in England to make them free, and that as the King was giving them their freedom the King's troops would not ...
— The History of the First West India Regiment • A. B. Ellis
... self-preserving laws, severe in show, May guard their fences from the invading foe. Where birth has placed them, let them safely share The common benefit of vital air. Themselves unharmful, let them live unharm'd; Their jaws disabled, and their claws disarm'd: 300 Here, only in nocturnal howlings bold, They dare not seize the hind, nor leap the fold. More powerful, and as vigilant as they, The Lion awfully forbids the prey. Their rage repress'd, though pinch'd with famine sore, They stand aloof, and tremble at his roar: Much is their hunger, ...
— The Poetical Works of John Dryden, Vol I - With Life, Critical Dissertation, and Explanatory Notes • John Dryden
... to my breakfast in the Boar's coffee-room, I found Mr. Pumblechook conversing with the landlord. Mr. Pumblechook (not improved in appearance by his late nocturnal adventure) was waiting for me, and addressed ...
— Great Expectations • Charles Dickens
... Monastery "degli angeli," in Florence, so loudly commended by Vasari and others who had seen them. They have long been broken up and dispersed, and it is not improbable that cuttings from them were among those bought by Ottley, Rogers, and other amateurs. A fragment of an Antiphonary of Nocturnal Services, now in the Laurentian Library at Florence, finished in 1370, shows the style of work to be of the kind just described. Other great choir books of the earlier period are preserved in the Academy at Pisa. But the number of MSS. to which reference might ...
— Illuminated Manuscripts • John W. Bradley
... customs. We must bear in mind that there was no policeman on beat at that time, and, considering how much one may get reconciled to by the force of habit, it is quite possible that the people of the Georgian era slept the more soundly for these nocturnal interruptions—rested more peacefully upon the assurance which was thus conveyed, however indistinctly, to their minds, that while they slept their town and property were safe from the marauder, and safe from fire so far as ...
— Fragments of Two Centuries - Glimpses of Country Life when George III. was King • Alfred Kingston
... an Australian opossum, a female, with two young ones. This class of animal was formerly supposed to be peculiar to America, from whence its name is derived. Being nocturnal in their habits, nothing is to be seen of them in the daytime, unless you can catch a glimpse of one at noontide, sleeping soundly in the hollow of a tree. When night comes, they leap from bough to bough with the greatest animation, especially if it be moonlight. ...
— Captain Cook - His Life, Voyages, and Discoveries • W.H.G. Kingston
... pinews, through which the pin can be passed. When the air is calm and the night obscure, they can be easily taken by means of torches, for it is sufficient to place a light in a low and open place to attract a multitude of phalenes and other nocturnal insects. But to have handsome lepidopters, it is best to obtain caterpillars, feed them with the leaves of the plant on which they are found, and pierce the butterfly as soon as he has undergone his change, for the specimens caught in ...
— Movement of the International Literary Exchanges, between France and North America from January 1845 to May, 1846 • Various
... such nocturnal promenades announce great agitation. I arrive at my story: just now, I went in to get some signatures. At the moment I placed my hand on the lock, I thought I heard some one speak. I stopped, and distinguished two or three dull cries, ...
— Mysteries of Paris, V3 • Eugene Sue
... one which shall supply them with an unbounded quantity of provisions, in the quality of which they are not particularly chary. Nor are these roosting-places attractive to the Indians only, for the settlers near them also pay them nocturnal visits. They come with guns, clubs, pots of suffocating materials, and every other means of destruction that can well be imagined to be within their command, and procure immense quantities of the birds in a very short time. These ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII. No. 3. March 1848 • Various
... dimly and red through the heat haze and vapours from the Thames. The air was very windless, and the river lay like a sheet of grey steel at her feet, save where a little spreading feather of black ripple showed the course of some water-rat. Bats wheeled and dipped like some company of nocturnal swallows, pursuing their minute prey, and uttering their little staccato cries so high in the scale that none but the acute ...
— Daisy's Aunt • E. F. (Edward Frederic) Benson
... did not cease to be rare with us, or rather were confined to certain circumscribed limits. Thus, the Noctuellae, with the exception of a few species abundant everywhere, were almost wanting, and I know of no other country where the dearth of common species of nocturnal butterflies was so great. But during the winter of 1878 there supervened a radical change. Persistent winds from the northwest, driving back the currents of warm air from the south, brought on an intense cold that froze everything; or, when some ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 492, June 6, 1885 • Various
... see a few examples of this mass movement of rats. I saw a lemming migration in Norway, but that was different," explained Rastell. "It seems to me that if we actually saw one of these nocturnal attacks, we might learn why ...
— The Rat Racket • David Henry Keller
... fall of this pipe was a common incident in the captain's nocturnal history, but he had got used to it, from long habit, and regarded the event each time it occurred with the philosophic composure of one who sees and makes up his mind to endure an ...
— The Lighthouse • Robert Ballantyne
... I was straining to catch a repetition of the sound from below. Time was slipping rapidly away, and to sit on meant inevitable discovery. The watch might waken or the mate appear to surprise me in converse with my nocturnal visitor. It would be folly to attempt to conceal his presence and I despaired of getting him back to shore while his present mood held, although I remembered that the small boat, which had been lowered after we went aground, was still ...
— O. Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1920 • Various
... her name upon the geyser will always remain the great event in Maw's life. When she makes down her bedquilt bed in the pine woods, from which she can hear the music of the hotel orchestra when the nocturnal dance has begun, and can see the searchlight playing on the towering pillar of Old Faithful, once more in its twenty-four daily essays from the bowels of the mysterious earth shooting up into the mysterious blackness of the night sky, Maw on her hands ...
— Maw's Vacation - The Story of a Human Being in the Yellowstone • Emerson Hough
... declared it would take more than "de shoutings," or any other religious service, to improve the moral condition of the blacks. They openly accused the colored preachers of disturbing the nocturnal rest of their hens and turkeys; and as to hog-stealing and cow-killing, "Why, we won't have any critters left ef this carpet-bag government lasts ...
— Voyage of The Paper Canoe • N. H. Bishop
... all sorts of things that had come to him in that vast gulf of nocturnal thinking was some vivid self-examination. At last he got to that. He had been dragged down to very elemental things indeed by the manifest completeness of Lady Harman's return to her husband. He had had at last to look at himself starkly for the ...
— The Wife of Sir Isaac Harman • H. G. (Herbert George) Wells
... generally come storms and bad weather. They revel in storms, and the fiercer the gale and the higher the waves, the more merry are they. This preference of the petrel is explained by the fact that he is more than half nocturnal in his habits, and greatly dislikes the glare of sunshine. But when black clouds and gloomy mists hang low over the ocean, the semi-darkness just suits him, and through it may he be seen skimming the angry billows many leagues ...
— Harper's Young People, October 12, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... their places within a short time, those lamps speedily lighted up thy army. Indeed, all the troops, thus made radiant by the foot-soldiers with oil-fed lamps in their hands, looked beautiful like clouds in the nocturnal sky illumined by flashes of lightning. When the Kuru host had thus been illuminated, Drona, endued with the effulgence of fire, scorching everything around, looked radiant, O king, in his golden armour, like the midday sun of blazing ray. The light ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 2 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... on the hard ground—with no springs, as in our beds at home—is to get sore and wakeful; while Robert was intently conscious of every sound and if you sleep in a field you hear thousands of them—all the rustlings of the little shy nocturnal animals, tiny squeakings and shrillings in the grass, as well as the cries of the birds of prey. Now and then, too, a spider ran over his face and made him jump, and very early the strong light poured into the mouth of the tent and made it seem absurd ...
— The Slowcoach • E. V. Lucas
... practicing doctor has seen this, not once, but hundreds of times, and in the vast majority of instances he can say with truth that the frightful result is a consequence of overwork—too often associated with nocturnal dissipation. The man who works during the day, and devotes his nights to alcohol and gay company when he should be sleeping, will assuredly, sooner or later—and usually sooner—suffer ...
— Health on the Farm - A Manual of Rural Sanitation and Hygiene • H. F. Harris
... get ready," thought Mollie, starting up. "Dear, dear! it's highly romantic and highly sensational, this nocturnal appointment with a masked man, and that man one's mysterious husband. I can't say much for the place; there's precious little romance around the Maison Dore. Does it still rain, ...
— The Unseen Bridgegroom - or, Wedded For a Week • May Agnes Fleming
... one, for his hair is grizzled. But we will form ourselves into a court of inquiry in the morning, with Mr. Aylett as presiding officer—have in the nocturnal wanderer, and hear what account he can give of himself. Who knows what romantic history we may hear—one that may become a Christmas legend ...
— At Last • Marion Harland
... the Long-Eared Owl are nocturnal. He is seldom seen in the light of day, and is greatly disturbed if he chance to issue from his concealment while the sun is above the horizon. The facial disk is very conspicuous in this species. It is said that the use of this circle is to collect the rays of light, ...
— Birds Illustrated by Color Photograph [March 1897] - A Monthly Serial designed to Promote Knowledge of Bird-Life • Various
... cured of his nocturnal visits to the "Black Horse," and his love of whisky toddy. Some months afterwards he espoused the temperance cause, and I've heard him tell the tale myself, many a time, and laugh heartily at the figure ...
— The Lights and Shadows of Real Life • T.S. Arthur
... sleepless drew him alertly to his feet, and showed him all his companions standing about the lawn in similar attitudes of expectancy. There was no need to ask what they were expecting. They were waiting to hear the nocturnal experiences, comic or commonplace or whatever they might prove to be, of that eccentric friend, whose experiment (whether from some subconscious fear or some fancy of honor) they had not ventured to interrupt. Hour followed hour, and still nothing stirred in the wood save an occasional bird. The ...
— The Trees of Pride • G.K. Chesterton
... rest of the day on business so urgent that I had not leisure to think much on the nocturnal adventure to which I had plighted my honour. I dined alone, and very late, and while dining, read, as is my habit. I selected one of the volumes of Macaulay's Essays. I thought to myself that I would take the book with me; there ...
— Pausanias, the Spartan - The Haunted and the Haunters, An Unfinished Historical Romance • Lord Lytton
... now," mocked Dozia, abusing language to make comedy. She swung the velveteen folds about her and spun around to wind them tighter. "Like this? Do I resemble a movie queen? That's what brought me, Janie. This nocturnal visit is consequent upon a disaster. My hammer, the one I put my queens up with, fell through the mirror. Silly little hammer. You know how this house staff ...
— Jane Allen: Junior • Edith Bancroft
... therefore impossible for the Duc de Richelieu to mistake the Marquise de Prie (Madeleine Brohan) for Mademoiselle de Belle-Isle (Sarah Bernhardt) in the irreverent nocturnal rendezvous given by the Marquise to the Duc, who thinks he embraces the ...
— My Double Life - The Memoirs of Sarah Bernhardt • Sarah Bernhardt
... to the Church to inflict excommunication, both on men and women who have recourse to charms, and who believe they go in the night to nocturnal assemblies, there to pay homage to the devil. The Capitularies of the kings[141] recommend the pastors to instruct the faithful on the subject of what is termed the Sabbath; at any rate they do not command that ...
— The Phantom World - or, The philosophy of spirits, apparitions, &c, &c. • Augustin Calmet
... wraiths, apparitions, cantraips, giants, enchanted towers, dragons, and other trumpery. This cultivated the latent seeds of poetry; but had so strong an effect on my imagination that to this hour in my nocturnal rambles I sometimes keep a sharp lookout in suspicious places; and though nobody can be more sceptical than I am in such matters, yet it often takes an effort of philosophy to shake ...
— Stories of Achievement, Volume IV (of 6) - Authors and Journalists • Various
... found opportunity to look into the people's houses along the way, where, he tells us, he "could see and was astonished to observe signs of comfort, and even signs of taste—armchairs, sofas, side-boards with cut-glass upon them, engravings and coloured prints upon the walls." As a result of this nocturnal examination, a vol d'oiseau, he has written paragraph upon paragraph about the people's character [49] and prospects in the island of Grenada. To read the patronizing terms in which our historian-traveller has seen fit to comment on Grenada ...
— West Indian Fables by James Anthony Froude Explained by J. J. Thomas • J. J. (John Jacob) Thomas
... Chance was favoring him. The newcomers were garbed in that debonair and "cultured" modishness so dear to the hearts of magazine illustrators. Faces, weak with sunken cheek lines, strong in creases of selfishness, darkened by the brush strokes of nocturnal excesses and seared, all of them with the brand mark of inbred rascality, identified them to Shirley as members of that shrewd class of sycophants who feast on the follies of the more amateurish moths of the ...
— The Voice on the Wire • Eustace Hale Ball
... thought, to have been night, even in the sixty-fifth parallel of latitude; but still the nocturnal illumination did not surprise me. For in Iceland, during the months of June and July, ...
— A Journey to the Centre of the Earth • Jules Verne
... their devotion prostrated and mutilated, and their rage knew no bounds. It was not long before the wool-carder was apprehended. His religious sentiments were no secret, and he had been seen returning from the scene of his nocturnal exploit. He promptly acknowledged his guilt, and was rescued from the infuriated populace only to undergo a more terrible doom at the hands of the public executioner (July 22, 1525). His right hand was cut off ...
— The Rise of the Hugenots, Vol. 1 (of 2) • Henry Martyn Baird
... rejoicings with which very inferior triumphs are constantly attended. Cannon, indeed, as usual, announced the intelligence, but their sound conveyed a deep melancholy to the heart; the bells were rung, but their peals inspired no hilarity, and seemed little less than the mournful knells of death; nocturnal illuminations were displayed, but the transparencies which they discovered, amidst the gloom, presented only so many sad memorials of the universal loss, expressed by ingenious devices to the hero's memory, which ...
— The Life of the Right Honourable Horatio Lord Viscount Nelson, Vol. II (of 2) • James Harrison
... companion was a wrinkled old woman, that would not trouble the peace of mind of the most jealous lover in Christendom. Perhaps it was not just the thing to hover aloof and listen; but he could not for the life of him help it; and stand and listen he accordingly did. Who knew but this nocturnal conversation might throw some light on the dark mystery he was anxious to see through, and, could his ears have run into needle-points to hear the better, he would have had the operation then and there performed. There was a moment's ...
— The Midnight Queen • May Agnes Fleming
... smells everywhere prevailed;—and by the aid of that ghastly light which, even at midnight, never fails to emanate from a vapory and pestilential at atmosphere, might be discerned lying in the by-paths and alleys, or rotting in the windowless habitations, the carcass of many a nocturnal plunderer arrested by the hand of the plague in the very perpetration of ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 3 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... Nocturnal enuresis (bed wetting) usually is found to "run in families." It is seldom the case to find that both the father and the mother escaped bed wetting during childhood when the ...
— The Mother and Her Child • William S. Sadler
... a hundred yards perhaps in width, the footpath on either side shaded with high trees and lit softly with orange glowlights; while down the centre the tramway of the road will go, with sometimes a nocturnal tram-car gliding, lit and gay but almost noiselessly, past. Lantern-lit cyclists will flit along the track like fireflies, and ever and again some humming motor-car will hurry by, to or from the ...
— A Modern Utopia • H. G. Wells
... pass during some nocturnal blackness, mothy and warm, When the hedgehog travels furtively over the lawn, One may say, "He strove that such innocent creatures should come to no harm, But he could do little for them; and now ...
— Moments of Vision • Thomas Hardy
... plentifully, this soft-hearted man could bear it no longer; he uncovered his head and threw himself on her neck. Oh the worthless man! (for what else can I call him? there is no more suitable expression for me to use,) was it for this that you disturbed the city by nocturnal alarms, and Italy with fears of many days' duration, in order that you might show yourself unexpectedly, and that a woman might see you before she hoped to do so? And he had at home a pretence of love; ...
— The Orations of Marcus Tullius Cicero, Volume 4 • Cicero
... eleven. I don't know whether you think that a respectable hour for a young lady's evening ride. May I ask the motive of this nocturnal expedition?" ...
— Vixen, Volume II. • M. E. Braddon
... deciding all questions of war, peace, foreign alliances, and the like. In the year 245 B.C. Aratus was elected STRATEGUS of the league, and again in 243. In the latter of these years he succeeded in wresting Corinth from the Macedonians by another nocturnal surprise, and uniting it to the league. The confederacy now spread with wonderful rapidity. It was soon joined by Troezen, Epidaurus, Hermione and other cities; and ultimately embraced Athens, Megara, AEgina, Salamis, and the whole ...
— A Smaller History of Greece • William Smith
... roof which he could see from a distance was what he noticed first. In his two nocturnal visits this had not been apparent. Now that he saw it he stood stock-still. It was something like a gash within himself, a gash in his courage perhaps, or a gash in the dream of a reconstituted self. He knew vaguely that his father had refused ...
— The Side Of The Angels - A Novel • Basil King
... hour of the night, and, having first expanded with a sense of difference from the mass of civilised mankind, who are dreamwrapt and disregardful of all such proceedings at this time, long and quietly watch your stately progress through the stars. After such a nocturnal reconnoitre it is hard to get back to earth, and to believe that the consciousness of such majestic speeding is derived ...
— Far from the Madding Crowd • Thomas Hardy
... other tropical region, making entomology one of their chief pursuits, it would well repay them to carry a small framed verandah, or a verandah-shaped tent of white canvas, to set up in every favourable situation, as a means of making a collection of nocturnal Lepidoptera, and also of obtaining rare specimens of Coleoptera and other insects. I make the suggestion here, because no one would suspect the enormous difference in results that such an apparatus would produce; and because I consider it one of the curiosities of a collector's ...
— The Malay Archipelago - Volume I. (of II.) • Alfred Russel Wallace
... room that was in the inn at Randsfjord where we spent our first night out! Vast, bare, primitive, with eight windows to admit the persistent nocturnal twilight; a sea-like floor of blue-painted boards, unbroken by a single island of carpet; and a castellated stove in one corner: an apartment for giants, with two little beds for dwarfs on opposite shores of the ocean. There was no telephone; ...
— Fisherman's Luck • Henry van Dyke
... whole, she was pleased. Tete-a-tetes with Humfrey were dreadfully embarrassing, and she felt life so flat without her nocturnal romance that she was very glad to have some one who would care to talk to her of the Queen. In point of fact, such conversation was prohibited. In the former days, when there had been much more intercourse between the Earl's household and the neighbourhood, ...
— Unknown to History - A Story of the Captivity of Mary of Scotland • Charlotte M. Yonge
... now give my own experience. I arrived with my husband and daughter on September 17, having been duly warned by my friends of the nocturnal disturbances. We were put in rooms adjoining, at the end of the new wing. I kept a light in my room, but the first night all was still. Next night, about 2 A.M., a succession of thundering knocks came from the end of our passage, re-echoing through the house, ...
— The Alleged Haunting of B—— House • Various
... stranger might have overheard a long conversation between them without coming to any more disparaging conclusion in regard to him than that the hunchback was peculiar in mind as well as in body. But his nocturnal excursions continuing to cause her apprehension, and his representations of the delights to be gathered from Nature while she slept, at the same time alluring her greatly, Phemy had become, both for her own pleasure and ...
— Malcolm • George MacDonald
... orangeries, and lofty covered arbours in different parts of the garden, capable of containing a thousand people. Here the cyprian nymphs hold their nocturnal revels; but intrigue is attended with great danger, as the stilletto is in general use, and assassination frequent, the men being of a jealous sanguinary turn, and the women fond of gallantry, who never appear in public unveiled. When Bougainville, ...
— Voyage of H.M.S. Pandora - Despatched to Arrest the Mutineers of the 'Bounty' in the - South Seas, 1790-1791 • Edward Edwards
... (pointing to SOMERS) and I have been up to town to get the costumes, wigs, etc., to-day. I've got them up-stairs—knee-breeches, stockings, buckled shoes, and all that sort of thing. It's a rare chance. If you wait a bit, I'll give you a full dress rehearsal, entitled "Jerry Bundler, or the Nocturnal Stranger." ...
— The Ghost of Jerry Bundler • W. W. Jacobs and Charles Rock
... away from the town into the great forest. At last she grew calmer, and asked me to set her down, and, striking a narrow track between the dark trees, we marched along silently and quickly, stopping now and then to listen if we were being followed. We heard nothing but the crackling tread of some nocturnal beast of prey, or the cry of some animal in the agony of death. On coming to an opening in the forest I made a shelter for the night. Atala then threw herself at my feet, and clasped my knees, and again begged me ...
— The Worlds Greatest Books - Vol. II: Fiction • Arthur Mee, J. A. Hammerton, Eds.
... too by a presentiment of something wrong, and apprehensive on the score of Ralph's safety—a curiosity not, surely, under these circumstances, discreditable, to know what was going on, determined her to ascertain something more of the character of the nocturnal visitation. She felt secured from the strangeness of the occurrence, that evil was afoot, and solicitous for its prevention, she was persuaded to the measure solely with the ...
— Guy Rivers: A Tale of Georgia • William Gilmore Simms
... Goudar's, to which I was weak enough to consent, made me dine with these miserable women in a tavern on the borders of London. The rascally Goudar made them drunk, and in this state they told some terrible truths about their pretended father. He did not live with them, but paid them nocturnal visits in which he robbed them of all the money they had earned. He was their pander, and made them rob their visitors instructing them to pass it off as a joke if the theft was discovered. They gave him the stolen articles, but he never said what he did with them. ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... taking a neighboring cowboy named Pete Marlow along as witness, "for the Marquis is a hard man to deal with," remarked Merrifield. To Pete it was all the gayest sort of adventure. He confided the object of the nocturnal expedition to the first man ...
— Roosevelt in the Bad Lands • Hermann Hagedorn
... home, the Dean and Miss Daphne stepped out on the broad veranda. Every evening about nine-thirty passers-by might have seen the flickering glow of the Dean's good-night cigar. He was not an habitual smoker, but the evening cigar was a sort of nocturnal ceremonial. It gave him an excuse to step out into the fragrant darkness of the garden walk for a quiet little stroll before bedtime, and usually Miss Daphne would try ...
— Kit of Greenacre Farm • Izola Forrester
... Ainger calls attention to the fact that there is here a parallel, possibly a reminiscence, from the 'Nocturnal Reverie' ...
— The Poetical Works of William Wordsworth - Volume 1 of 8 • Edited by William Knight
... oppressed, as I before observed to your highness, with this fit of melancholy, despatched Mesrour for his chief vizier, Giaffar Bermukki, who, not unaccustomed to this nocturnal summons, speedily presented himself before the commander of the faithful. "Father of true believers! descendant of the Prophet!" said the minister, with a profound obeisance, "thy slave waits but to hear, and ...
— The Pacha of Many Tales • Captain Frederick Marryat
... be remarked that all bookshops that are open in the evening are busy in the after-supper hours. Is it that the true book-lovers are nocturnal gentry, only venturing forth when darkness and silence and the gleam of hooded lights irresistibly suggest reading? Certainly night-time has a mystic affinity for literature, and it is strange that the Esquimaux have created no great books. Surely, ...
— The Haunted Bookshop • Christopher Morley
... Monday night was a very stylish jam. He is a small, puny-built man, with gold rings in his ears, and a face of genteel ugliness, but touchingly lugubrious in its expression. With his violin at his shoulder, he has the air of a husband undergoing the nocturnal penance of walking the room with 'the child'—and performing it, too, with unaffected pity. He plays with the purest and coldest perfection of art, and is doubtless more learned on the violin than either of the rival performers [Ole Bull and Artot], but there is a vitreous ...
— Famous Violinists of To-day and Yesterday • Henry C. Lahee
... consequence of the present uncivilised state of Ireland is, that very little English capital travels there. The man who deals in steam-engines, and warps and woofs, is naturally alarmed by Peep- of-Day Boys, and nocturnal Carders; his object is to buy and sell as quickly and quietly as he can, and he will naturally bear high taxes and rivalry in England, or emigrate to any part of the Continent, or to America, rather than plunge into the tumult of Irish politics ...
— Peter Plymley's Letters and Selected Essays • Sydney Smith
... to be allowed in this field at night," declared Miss Gibbs. "I shall speak to Mr. Cox, and ask to have him put in another pasture. We can't close our tent doors, or we should be suffocated. I hope we shan't have any other nocturnal visitors! It's a good thing we have no valuables with us. I don't trust ...
— The Madcap of the School • Angela Brazil
... sleep? Night hath better sweets to prove, Venus now wakes, and wak'ns Love. Com let us our rights begin, 'Tis onely day-light that makes Sin Which these dun shades will ne're report. Hail Goddesse of Nocturnal sport Dark vaild Cotytto, t' whom the secret flame Of mid-night Torches burns; mysterious Dame 130 That ne're art call'd, but when the Dragon woom Of Stygian darknes spets her thickest gloom, And makes one blot of all the ayr, Stay thy cloudy Ebon ...
— The Poetical Works of John Milton • John Milton
... came to be very annoying to the Hermit. On warm summer nights the man slept in a hammock swung between two trees in front of his cabin. Ringtail, returning from his nocturnal hunting, would run along the low branch of one of these trees until he stood directly above the sleeper. Then he would let go and fall with a thud, sometimes into the springy hammock, but more often upon ...
— Followers of the Trail • Zoe Meyer
... eating the bread of his last supper in the midst of youths and old persons, I see where the strong divine young man the Hercules toil'd faithfully and long and then died, I see the place of the innocent rich life and hapless fate of the beautiful nocturnal son, the full-limb'd Bacchus, I see Kneph, blooming, drest in blue, with the crown of feathers on his head, I see Hermes, unsuspected, dying, well-belov'd, saying to the people Do not weep for me, This is not my true country, I have lived banish'd from my true country, I ...
— Leaves of Grass • Walt Whitman |
