"Owlish" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... this time, and the interior was growing darker by degrees; the fading light, however, seemed to make no difference to those who worked or read. They appeared to be gifted with an owlish vision, able to see with very little light. The father alone did nothing, but still rested on his couch, perhaps indulging in a postprandial nap. At length he roused ...
— A Crystal Age • W. H. Hudson
... were real enough. A flitting vampire bat is real, or a stinging ray in the depths of a blue lagoon. But who could point to a Martian and say, "I have seen you plain, in broad daylight. I have looked into your owlish eyes and watched you go flitting over the sand on your thin, stalklike legs? I know there is nothing mysterious about you. You are like a water insect skimming the surface of a pond in a familiar meadow on Earth. ...
— The Man the Martians Made • Frank Belknap Long
... class. A little later, and another dense throng will emerge from the Old Bowery Theatre, just over the way. It will be a very mixed crowd of men, women, and children,—the street-boys, with their wondrous variety of sharp faces, owlish faces, wicked faces, and ragged clothes, being constant patrons of this popular east-side theatre. Not far from this are the most dangerous corners and lurking-places to be found anywhere in the Bowery. Here thieves and rowdies of the worst description hang about the doors of the ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 121, November, 1867 • Various
... hat and top coat, and evading the dismal band by a shameless manoeuvre, passed through the halls to the entrance to the elevator shaft. He heard a movement behind him and saw that the German was also waiting for the elevator. Standing in the gloom of the corridor, Coleman felt the mournful owlish eyes of the German resting upon him. He took a case from his pocket and elaborately lit a cigarette. Suddenly there was a flash of light and a cage of bronze, gilt and steel dropped, magically from above. ...
— Active Service • Stephen Crane
... Parliamentary populations? That one, in such an enterprise as this of Downing Street, might be invaluable! One noble man, at once of natural wisdom and practical experience; one Intellect still really human, and not red-tapish, owlish and pedantical, appearing there in that dim chaos, with word of command; to brandish Hercules-like the divine broom and shovel, and turn running water in upon the place, and say as with a fiat, "Here shall be truth, ...
— Latter-Day Pamphlets • Thomas Carlyle
... tiny town or place God made the stars especially; Babies look up with owlish face And see them tangled in a tree: You saw a moon from Sussex Downs, A Sussex moon, untravelled still, I saw a moon that was the town's, The ...
— The Napoleon of Notting Hill • Gilbert K. Chesterton
... "Money couldn't buy 'em," he said, with owlish solemnity, "espec—especially after the good supper you're ...
— Ship's Company, The Entire Collection • W.W. Jacobs
... purpose of making a speech. Usually the form of the chief was as firm as the rock on which he stood. At this time, however, it swayed very slightly to and fro, and in his eyes—which were usually noted for the intensity of their eagle glance—there was just then an owlish blink as they surveyed the ...
— The Prairie Chief • R.M. Ballantyne
... be overshadowed by the facile art of Raemaekers (imagine Goya overshadowed by Reynolds!), once represented Unamuno as an owl. A marvellous thrust at the heart of Unamuno's character. For all this vitality and ever-moving activity of mind is shot through by the absolute immobility of two owlish eyes piercing the darkness of spiritual night. And this intense gaze into the mystery is the steel axis round which his spirit revolves and revolves in desperation; the unity under his multiplicity; the one fire under ...
— Tragic Sense Of Life • Miguel de Unamuno
... drawing-master. Bring that book you are always scribbling in. The girl has a kind of passion for art," said Mr. Lovel, rather fretfully; "she is seldom without a pencil in her hand. What are you looking for, Clarissa, in that owlish way? There's your ...
— The Lovels of Arden • M. E. Braddon
... our pursuit of immediate gain, in our absolute indifference to the larger outside movements, the shaping of national destinies, the warring of national interests! I remember that we were quite triumphant, in our little owlish way, that year; for the weight of socialistic and anti-national, anti-responsible feeling had forced a time-serving Cabinet into cutting down our Navy by a quarter at one stroke. The hurried scramblers after money ...
— The Message • Alec John Dawson
... this enable Dick to walk; but, the whole network of his bonds being proportionately loosened, he felt the arm behind his back begin to move more freely, and could hope, with time and trouble, to entirely disengage it. So much he owed already to the owlish silliness and ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 8 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... fairer than all the fair, Taheia, the well-descended, Taheia, heavy of hair. And the soul of Rua awoke, courage enlightened his eyes, And he uttered a summoning shout and called on the clan to rise. Over against him at once, in the spotted shade of the trees, Owlish and blinking creatures scrambled to hands and knees; On the grades of the sacred terrace, the driveller woke to fear, And the hand of the ham-drooped warrior brandished a wavering spear. And Rua folded his arms, and scorn discovered his ...
— Ballads • Robert Louis Stevenson
... voices rang out, their R's smacked of the Middle-West, Mommer and Popper seeing Europe, accompanied by a brace of coltish daughters, a reedy son with enormous spectacles, and the son's two college chums, who looked to be good at football. Farther along sat two Russians who never spoke, one an owlish young man with glassy eyes and damp hair raked smoothly back, his companion a woman much older than himself, with broad cheek-bones and a mouth that was a great blot of scarlet in the ...
— Juggernaut • Alice Campbell
... among the trees. The twins exchanged a meaning glance. Had they not all along suspected the Professor! His black skull cap, and his big hooked nose, and the yellow-leaved, worm-eaten books—of magic: all doubts were now removed—that for hours he would sit poring over through owlish gold-rimmed spectacles! ...
— Malvina of Brittany • Jerome K. Jerome
... feeling a queer sensation of skin in his clothes, the sign of a feverish night; and yawning he went into the air. Leftward the narrow village street led to the footway along which he could make for the mountain-wall. He cast one look at the head of the campanile, silly as an owlish roysterer's glazed stare at the young Aurora, and hurried his feet to check the yawns coming alarmingly fast, ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... an account of the installation to his friend Wharton, says, "Every one, while it lasted, was very gay and very busy in the morning, and very owlish and very tipsy at night. I make no exceptions, from the Chancellor to Blewcoat. Mason's Ode was the only entertainment that had any tolerable elegance, and for my own part, I think it (with some little abatements) ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole, Volume 2 • Horace Walpole
... had come from one of the first-class cabins with certain and determined step. She was dressed from top to toe, and her bonnet strings were tied in a natty bowknot. She was a little old lady, with crimped hair, round, owlish-looking ...
— Jerusalem • Selma Lagerlof
... great owlish brows in a scowl, laid his hand on his revolver and whirled his horse in the direction that Macdonald ...
— The Rustler of Wind River • G. W. Ogden
... a lazy lad till he ha' tried him?—unless it be old Butter. Ha! ha! I ha' just minded me o' th' way he used to treat th' lads that came to Amhurste to hire for under-gardeners. He would stand with 's owlish old visage a-set on 's hoe-handle, for all th' world like a fantastic head carved out o' a turnip and set on a stick, and a would let th' lad go on with 's story o' how Dame This commended him for that, and o' how Dame That commended him for this, ...
— A Brother To Dragons and Other Old-time Tales • Amelie Rives
... stalk into the house, And stand beside the slumber of a child, Think you that gazing on its mimic self, Sleep, beautiful and wondrous, in the crib, His owlish thoughts would not wing suddenly, Through cycles of decay, back to the time When he was one with Sleep, and passing fair; Think you he would not sigh, "Sleep, on! sleep on! Thou copy and thou counterfeit of me, And teach ...
— Poems • Walter R. Cassels
... You want the foot of the Princess Hermonthis," said the dealer with a strange, mocking laugh, staring at me with his owlish eyes. "Ha, ha, ha, for a paper weight! An original idea! an artist's idea! If anyone had told old Pharaoh that the foot of his adored daughter would be used for a paper weight, particularly whilst he was having a mountain of granite hollowed out in which ...
— Humorous Ghost Stories • Dorothy Scarborough
... elsewhere, in quite antipodal contrast with these high-soaring delineations, which we have here cut short on the verge of the inane, "Man is by birth somewhat of an owl. Perhaps, too, of all the owleries that ever possessed him, the most owlish, if we consider it, is that of your actually existing Motive-Millwrights. Fantastic tricks enough man has played, in his time; has fancied himself to be most things, down even to an animated heap of Glass: but to fancy himself a dead Iron-Balance for weighing Pains and Pleasures on, was reserved ...
— Sartor Resartus - The Life and Opinions of Herr Teufelsdrockh • Thomas Carlyle
... minister, Rafael's friend, the only auditor left on the Blue Bench, pressing his huge paunch against the desk, turned his head—an owlish, hairy head with a sharp beak—to smile indulgently on ...
— The Torrent - Entre Naranjos • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... His owlish eyes all expanded with delight through the tortoise-shell spectacles, the fat little man eagerly took hold of the rustling piece of paper and unfolded it, his hands trembling with nervous anxiety to know what the missive contained—and which he had been all ...
— Fritz and Eric - The Brother Crusoes • John Conroy Hutcheson
... mark his words. Not even Winona, to whom they were uttered with the air of owlish, head-snapping wisdom which marked so many of the invalid's best things. She was concerned only with the failure of Wilbur to select a seemly occupation. His working dress was again careless; he reeked with oil, and his hands—hard, knotty hands—seemed to be permanently ...
— The Wrong Twin • Harry Leon Wilson
... read his article in THE GALAXY, I could imagine him giving vent to many a hearty laugh. But he is writing for Catholics and Established Church people, and high-toned, antiquated, conservative gentility, whom it is a delight to him to help you shock, while he pretends to shake his head with owlish density. He is a magnificent ...
— The $30,000 Bequest and Other Stories • Mark Twain
... breakfast-table, picked idly at the preserved figs the owlish butler set before her. Vaguely she wondered at her uncle's apparent hostility to the Cardigans; she was as vaguely troubled in the knowledge that until she should succeed in eradicating this hostility, it must inevitably act as a bar to the further progress of her friendship ...
— The Valley of the Giants • Peter B. Kyne
... tall secretary stared at her with owlish significance. Through that neutral veil where lamplight and shadow meet upon the wall, the engraved portrait of a famous and godly missionary peered down at her out of altered and malicious eyes; the claw-footed, haircloth sofa was a stealthy creature offering to ...
— The Dark Star • Robert W. Chambers
... aping of the devil' in this flippant assumption of our immutability, which strangely combines the pitiful and painful. Oh! if the ne plus ultra which antique Ignorance complacently inscribes on the gates of its world should ever be worn away, let it be replaced by this owlish credo in the ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol I, Issue I, January 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... ye owlish dignitaries! Still, the king was not convinced. "We have discovered much by daring adventure, why not more?" "Stick to the coast, and don't go sailing straight away from all known land into waters unknown and mysterious," ...
— Ten Great Events in History • James Johonnot
... and consulted Captain Hooper, who told him that General Saxton didn't want to spare Mr. G., and that as he had no written orders he had better hold on. The editor of the Free South has been amusing himself by throwing out owlish insinuations to the effect that speculators and others on St. Helena had better take heed of General Hunter's orders, for the prospective profits of a speedy fortune would hardly ...
— Letters from Port Royal - Written at the Time of the Civil War (1862-1868) • Various
... General Gordon,[91] Who girded his sword on, To serve with a Muscovite Master, And help him to polish A nation so owlish, They thought ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Vol. 7. - Poetry • George Gordon Byron
... mass of vulgar stories we cannot help wondering at the reason for their endurance through the centuries, until we feel something of the spirit of the people in all its phases. A true mirror it was of stupidity and injustice, presented by a sprite of owlish wisdom, sporting, teasing and punishing[A] all about. It is a kind of popular satire, with a strong personal element of a human Puck, or an impish Robin Hood, with all the fairy restlessness, mocking at ...
— Symphonies and Their Meaning; Third Series, Modern Symphonies • Philip H. Goepp
... that myself while she was trying to explain. I stared with an owlish stare for about five minutes, until her real idea in all its native wildness, not to say ...
— Set in Silver • Charles Norris Williamson and Alice Muriel Williamson
... look round. Always I have been sensitive to that kind of influence, and often, too, I've tried to make others feel it. I kept turning my head, but could see no one who seemed to be taking an undue interest in me. Presently, however, I caught Tony's eyes, which fixed themselves on mine in an owlish stare. ...
— Secret History Revealed By Lady Peggy O'Malley • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... was the fashion of depicting it in the following of Minerva merely dictated by the presence of these birds on the Akropolis? It seems hardly conceivable that they could so have blundered as to call the owls that we know clever birds; and the alternative assumption that owlish intellect can have appreciably changed in the interval is even less acceptable. It is probable that too much significance need not be attached to such association between the Greek goddess of wisdom and her attendant owls, for ...
— Birds in the Calendar • Frederick G. Aflalo
... not easy for the woman with a snub nose and lips molded with a hard pencil to bleed the milk of human kindness over the frailties of the fruity chalice that contained Miss Drew. She could not know, for instance, if her own gaze was merely owlish and thin-lashed, the challenge of eyes that are slightly too long. Miss Drew did. Simply drooping hers must have stirred her with a none-too-nice sense of herself, like the swell of his biceps can bare ...
— The Vertical City • Fannie Hurst
... approached from round the entrance of the small bay and was already within a few yards ere he caught sight of it. He dived skilfully, and on returning to the surface beheld Mr. Keith smiling upon him, with owlish benevolence, ...
— South Wind • Norman Douglas
... General Feraud ran on, holding up his head, with owlish eyes and rapacious beak. A mere fighter all his life, a cavalry man, a sabreur, he conceived war with the utmost simplicity, as, in the main, a massed lot of personal contests, a sort of gregarious duelling. And here he had in hand a war of ...
— A Set of Six • Joseph Conrad
... prompt expression, and the general delight at hearing of Ebenezer Scrooge's reformation was only checked by the saddening remembrance that with it the last strain of the "carol" was dying away. After the "Trial from Pickwick," in which the speeches of the opposing counsel, and the owlish gravity of the judge, seemed to be delivered and depicted with greater dramatic power than ever, the applause of the audience rang for several minutes through the hall, and when it had subsided, Mr. Dickens, with evidently strong emotion, but in his usual distinct and expressive ...
— Speeches: Literary and Social • Charles Dickens
... delight; Lord Robert drawled out a long owlish laugh; Polly Love said spitefully, "You might give us your friend, the new curate, next, dearest," and then Glory ...
— The Christian - A Story • Hall Caine
... of tablecloth, a buffalo hide, carefully whitened with pipeclay, on the grass before the tent. Here, with ostentatious display, he arranges the teacups and plates; and then, creeping on all fours like a dog, he thrusts his head in at the opening of the tent. For a moment we see his round owlish eyes rolling wildly, as if the idea he came to communicate had suddenly escaped him; then collecting his scattered thoughts, as if by an effort, he informs us that supper ...
— The Oregon Trail • Francis Parkman, Jr.
... echoed away, there came a sharp knock at the door. An owlish head, with dark moustaches, was thrust in, with deprecating and ...
— The Club of Queer Trades • G. K. Chesterton
... short, wabbling individual, with watery eyes that could read print splendidly if it were held within six inches of them, and who, when he did read, moved book or paper back and forth in front of his spectacles in a droll, owlish, improbable way, instead of letting his eyes travel across the lines of print, was skeptical at first. He suspected Bonbright of being a youth scratching the itch of a sudden and transient enthusiasm. But he became interested. Bonbright compelled ...
— Youth Challenges • Clarence B Kelland
... information in every branch of labour which enables us to-day to move forward with discretion and prudence. They were not able to look to the general evidences of commercial security and expansion on which modern politicians can rely. They could not show, as we can show, overwhelming examples of owlish prophets dazzlingly disproved; they could not point, as we can point, to scores of cases where not only increased efficiency, but a positive increase in output has followed the reduction of the hours of labour. The principle was new, the future was vague. But the Parliament of those ...
— Liberalism and the Social Problem • Winston Spencer Churchill
... touch of envy natural to his position as a poet passe. "The man is brushed and shaved, dressed in the fashion of a Royal-Institution-Afternoon Lecturer, the very newest shape in frock-coats and long patent shoes, and altogether in a state of extraordinary streakiness between an owlish great man and a scared abashed self-conscious bounder cruelly exposed. He hasn't a touch of colour in the skin of his face, his head juts forward, and those queer little dark amber eyes of his watch furtively round him for his fame. His clothes fit perfectly and yet sit upon him as though ...
— Twelve Stories and a Dream • H. G. Wells
... him. Instinctively I put my hand to my head to reassure myself that I was not wearing a rakish little soft felt hat with a partridge-feather, and I reflected with some complacency that my rimless pince-nez did not give me the owlish appearance produced by Anastasius Dose's great round, iron-rimmed goggles. From such crumbs of vanity are we sometimes ...
— The Morals of Marcus Ordeyne • William J. Locke
... active, fresh as a stem of white jasmine, and inconsequent as a very restless bird; Philip Gatewood, grave, thin, prematurely saddened by the responsibility of a vast inheritance, consumed by a desire for an artistic career, looking at the world with his owlish eyes through the prismatic colors of ...
— The Firing Line • Robert W. Chambers
... the truth, E'en though it glow and sparkle like a gem On God's outstretched forefinger for all time. These have one argument, and only one, For good or evil, earth or jeweled heaven— The olden, owlish argument of doubt. Ah, he alone is wise who ever stands Armed cap-a-pie with God's eternal truth. Where Grex is Rex God help the hapless land. The yelping curs that bay the rising moon Are not more clamorous, and the fitful ...
— The Feast of the Virgins and Other Poems • H. L. Gordon
... repeated Blaze's name several times; then something stirred. The door of a harness closet opened cautiously, and out of the blackness peered Paloma's father. He looked more owlish than ever behind his big, gold-rimmed spectacles. "What in the world are you doing in ...
— Heart of the Sunset • Rex Beach
... reprove them. During pauses in dictation she had a way of peering near-sightedly over her glasses at the dapper, well-dressed traveling salesman who was rolling off the items on his sale bill. That is a trick which would make the prettiest kind of a girl look owlish. ...
— Stories from Everybody's Magazine • 1910 issues of Everybody's Magazine
... occasion, wherein she was to bear a principal part, and the too-fascinating Master Prout another. Let not the solemn pretender to decorum, who, in proportion to his demureness, is apt to be worse than others, with owlish visage quote, "frailty, thy name is woman," or, "e'er those shoes were old," or whatever musty apothegms besides, as stale and senseless. The name of Frailty is no more woman than man, and old shoes have no business ...
— The Knight of the Golden Melice - A Historical Romance • John Turvill Adams
... from the party ten minutes before her brother and his wife, Margaret was sitting Turk fashion in the big armchair, with her eyes very wide open and owlish. ...
— Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1902 to 1903 • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... might have been in her mind," assented the Chancellor, "or else she—" He left his sentence unfinished, and sat with unseeing eyes fixed in an owlish stare on the open ...
— The Princess Virginia • C. N. Williamson
... qualities, we have effectually contrived to rid ourselves of the humor as well, and with it we have lost one of the safest instincts of our souls. Any book which serves to lower the sum of human gaiety is a moral delinquent; and instead of coddling it into universal notice and growing owlish in its gloom, we should put it briskly aside in favor of brighter and pleasanter things. When Father Faber said that there was no greater help to a religious life than a keen sense of the ridiculous, ...
— Masterpieces Of American Wit And Humor • Thomas L. Masson (Editor)
... in the Press: all the spiteful screamers who had never risked a scratch, themselves, denouncing him as a coward. The local Dogberrys of the tribunals would fire off their little stock of gibes and platitudes upon him, propound with owlish solemnity the new Christianity, abuse him and condemn him, without listening to him. Jeering mobs would follow him through the streets. More than once, of late, she had encountered such crowds made up of shrieking girls and foul- mouthed men, surging round some white-faced ...
— All Roads Lead to Calvary • Jerome K. Jerome
... it almost every kind of stress and extremity. So great was the sway of his rapture that Julio, too, was able to see all that the artist flattered himself into believing that he had put into the owlish eyes. He, also, would paint souls . . ...
— The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... festivities had been made. It was evident also that some parts of the festive libations had been taken in advance, for the head-man had reached the solemnised point of intoxication, and some of his young men the owlish condition. ...
— The Fugitives - The Tyrant Queen of Madagascar • R.M. Ballantyne
... trotting about in Paquin gowns and Doucet models, you'd never think I owed them to three owlish little burros, would you? But it's a fact. When Dad took over the livery-stable, he found he was the proud possessor of three donkeys, as well as some twenty-odd horses, and a dozen or so buggies, buckboards and surries. The burros ate their solemn ...
— Cupid's Understudy • Edward Salisbury Field
... birds, and terns—the first gazing with a stupid yet angry air; the last—one beautiful little snow-white species in particular—hovering only a few feet above the sketchers' heads, while their large black eyes scanned the drawings with the owlish look of wisdom peculiar to connoisseurs. Noddies also were there, and, on the ground, lizards and spiders and innumerable ants engaged in all the varied activities connected with ...
— Blown to Bits - or, The Lonely Man of Rakata • Robert Michael Ballantyne
... and slow heart-break for forty years,—there too is an interval! Venerable Justice herself began by Wild-Justice; all Law is as a tamed furrowfield, slowly worked out, and rendered arable, from the waste jungle of Club-Law. Valiant Wisdom tilling and draining; escorted by owl-eyed Pedantry, by owlish and vulturish and many other forms of Folly;—the valiant husbandman assiduously tilling; the blind greedy enemy too assiduously sowing tares! It is because there is yet in venerable wigged Justice some wisdom, amid such mountains of wiggeries and folly, that ...
— Past and Present - Thomas Carlyle's Collected Works, Vol. XIII. • Thomas Carlyle
... out one day when I asked my landlady, who was a native, to tell me the history of the place. She remembered how as a little girl, full of mischief and greatly daring, she had sometimes climbed over the low front wall to hide under the thick yew bushes and watch to catch a sight of the owlish old man ...
— A Shepherd's Life • W. H. Hudson
... genuine scholarship among members of the race there will be a different attitude assumed towards it. But as long as the Negro prefers to construe owlish looks as wisdom, to bow down to clam like silence as profound philosophy, to stand agape over blatant mouthings as eloquence, and to measure mental calibre by bodily avoirdupois, he not only gives evidence of weakness in a lack of sound discrimination, but he subjects ...
— The Educated Negro and His Mission - The American Negro Academy. Occasional Papers No. 8 • W. S. Scarborough |
