"Beak" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... powers of speed to escape from an enemy so formidable. Plying his almost unequalled strength of wing, he ascended high and higher in the air, by short gyrations, that the hawk might gain no vantage ground for pouncing at him; while his spiked beak, at the extremity of so long a neck as enabled him to strike an object at a yard's distance in every direction, possessed for any less spirited assailant all the terrors of a ...
— The Betrothed • Sir Walter Scott
... the stuffed parroquet on her birthday, and Mamma had given her the Bible and the two grey china vases to make up, with a bird painted on each. A black bird with a red beak and red legs. She had set them up on the chimney-piece under the picture of the Holy Family. She put the Bible in the middle and the parroquet on the top of the Bible and the vases ...
— Mary Olivier: A Life • May Sinclair
... deposit the will at the Tribunal, after showing it to the President.' So at that, I told him to ask M. Villemot to come here as soon as he could.—Be easy, my dear sir, there are those that will take care of you. They shall not shear the fleece off your back. You will have some one that has beak and claws. M. Villemot will give them a piece of his mind. I have put myself in a passion once already with that abominable hussy, La Cibot, a porter's wife that sets up to judge her lodgers, forsooth, and insists that you have filched the money from the heirs; you locked M. Pons up, she says, and ...
— Poor Relations • Honore de Balzac
... an Italian of very low degree; a man of crouched stature, and of an uncomely physiognomy, being yellow-skinned and black-haired, with a beak-nose, and little quick eyes of a free and familiar glance, but shrewd withal, and possessed of a pleasant way of winning facetiously on the ladies, to the which his singular skill in all manner of melodious music helped not ...
— Ringan Gilhaize - or The Covenanters • John Galt
... Had Aswatthaman more than marked the birds, When, lo! there fell out of the velvet night, Silent and terrible, an eagle-owl, With wide, soft, deadly, dusky wings, and eyes Flame-coloured, and long claws, and dreadful beak; Like a winged sprite, or great Garood himself; Offspring of Bharata! it lighted there Upon the banian's bough; hooted, but low, The fury smothering in its throat;—then fell With murderous beak and claws upon those crows, Rending the ...
— Indian Poetry • Edwin Arnold
... bird or fiend!" I shrieked, upstarting— "Get thee back into the tempest and the Night's Plutonian shore! Leave no black plume as a token of that lie thy soul hath spoken! Leave my loneliness unbroken!—quit the bust above my door! Take thy beak from out my heart, and take thy form from off my door!" Quoth the ...
— Edgar Allan Poe's Complete Poetical Works • Edgar Allan Poe
... swallow stopt as he hunted the bee, The snake slipt under a spray; The wild hawk stood with the down on his beak, And stared, with his foot on the prey; And the nightingale thought, 'I have sung many songs, But never a one so gay; For he sings of what the world will be When ...
— A Hero and Some Other Folks • William A. Quayle
... but the nipping of a red ant. Apollo might speed among them his silver arrows, which erst heaped the Phrygian shores with hecatombs of Argive slain, and they would but complain of the mosquito's beak. Your female reformer goes smashing through society like a tipsy rhinoceros among the tulip beds, and all the torrent of brickbats rained upon her skin is shed, as globules of mercury might be supposed to run off the back ...
— The Fiend's Delight • Dod Grile
... bosh these "poets" write, about this humbug pet! Firstly, they're not true "Robins," but a base, inferior set; Second, there is no music in their creaking, croaking shriek; Third, they are slow and stupid—common birds from tail to beak! Tis said, "they come so early." Well, I'd rather they'd come late. They're simply made for pot-pies, and deserve no ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, Issue 10 • Various
... stand by Atkinson till he dozes. Atkinson is a fine, big fellow, and when he squats down his head is in a convenient position for observation. Presently he gapes; then his eyes shut, and his beak droops—just a very little. Then the beak droops a little more, and signs of insecurity appear about the neck. Very soon a distinct departure from the vertical is visible in that neck; it melts down ruinously till almost past ...
— The Strand Magazine, Volume V, Issue 25, January 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... the wary Wisbich walks and breathes His active body, and in fury wreathes His comely crest, and often with a sound, He whets his angry beak upon the ground. This done, they meet, not like that coward breed Of Aesop; these can better fight than feed: They scorn the dunghill; 'tis their only prize TO DIG FOR PEARLS WITHIN EACH ...
— The Gaming Table: Its Votaries and Victims - Volume II (of II) • Andrew Steinmetz
... rising—it is so short, now in June, that it will not hide a hare—and on coming near there was a cock chaffinch perched on the top, a fine bird in full colour. He did not move though I was now within three yards, nor till I could have almost touched him did he fly; he had a large caterpillar in his beak, and no doubt his nest or the young from it were in the hedge. In feeding the young birds the old ones always perch first at a short distance, and after waiting a minute proceed to their fledgelings. Should a blackbird come at full speed across ...
— The Toilers of the Field • Richard Jefferies
... such a tremendous upheaval as followed. The man, believing that possibly the "devil-bird" had broken out of its cage and was about to carry him off in its gigantic beak, gave a shrill scream of terror, and bouncing up, broke the slender hold Frank had secured ...
— The Aeroplane Boys on the Wing - Aeroplane Chums in the Tropics • John Luther Langworthy
... C. cakes, and one I ate myself, and gave the others to my brothers, or Susan, or my cousin. Often I put them in my satchel to carry them into the woods with me, and give them to my Cousin Gotz's favorite hound or his cross-beak; for he himself did not care for sweets. I shall have many things to tell of him and the forest; even when I was very small it was my greatest joy to be told that we were going to the woods, for there dwelt the dearest and most faithful of all our kinsmen: my uncle Waldstromer and his ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... no session of the Chamber that day,—Marianne was seated in her little salon. She was warming the tips of her slippers, that furtively peeped from beneath the lace of her skirt as a little bird might protrude its beak from a nest, her right leg crossed over the other, and she appeared to be musing, her chin resting on ...
— His Excellency the Minister • Jules Claretie
... was a man of middle age, very tall and well made, broad-shouldered, with lofty bearing, a forehead stern and haughty, a nose like the beak of a bird of prey, a head carried high and slightly backwards, large, wide open gray eyes which shot glances at once piercing and restless, an expressive face regularly cut, in which Gilbert found little to criticise except ...
— Stories of Modern French Novels • Julian Hawthorne
... would fain have had him in another guise, so mortified am I that I am not able to serve you, that I doubt I shall never know peace of mind more." In witness whereof he had the feathers and feet and beak of the bird brought in ...
— The Decameron, Vol. II. • Giovanni Boccaccio
... the stern springing On to the stem, where swords were ringing From his sea-raven's beak of gold Deals death around—the brave! the bold! The earl's housemen now begin To shrink and fall: their ranks grow thin— The king's luck thrives—their decks are cleared, Of fighting men no more appeared. The ...
— Heimskringla - The Chronicle of the Kings of Norway • Snorri Sturluson
... passage to the equator, Sterna solida and Dysporus Sula alighted frequently on our vessel, and allowed themselves to be taken. The latter, when old, has a blue beak and red feet; when young, a red bill and flesh-coloured legs. The exterior nostrils are entirely wanting; but in every part are air-cells between the skin ...
— A New Voyage Round the World, in the years 1823, 24, 25, and 26, Vol. 2 • Otto von Kotzebue
... and left the island. The male birds, at the time that the females first laid their eggs, tried their wings in short flights in circles; and then flew away out to sea. I thought that they were gone; but I was deceived, for they returned in about a quarter of an hour, each with a fish in its beak, which they laid down before their mates. I was much pleased at this, and I resolved that in future they should supply their own food, which they did; and not their own food only, but enough for the seal ...
— The Little Savage • Captain Frederick Marryat
... being touched. They were marked across the back with alternate striae of silver, and various shades of brown and black, though there were scarce two marked exactly alike. They had a transparent dorsal and two pectoral fins, which were all I observed, and a long thin snout or beak; the mouth was just at the end of it, on the top: some of them were thorny on the back; we caught also some crabs; a very minute blue fish; a black and red insect resembling a flea; a species of Diphyes; a very small kind of polypus; and one or two ...
— Journals Of Two Expeditions Of Discovery In North-West And Western Australia, Vol. 2 (of 2) • George Grey
... The bird snapped his beak again, and Bully jumped back. As he did so the marbles in his pocket rattled, and the ...
— Bully and Bawly No-Tail • Howard R. Garis
... telling you,' said the giant, soothingly. 'The great she-eagle has got it for a nest-egg. She sits on it night and day, and thinks she will bring the greatest eagle out of it that ever sharpened his beak on the rocks of Mount Skycrack. I can warrant no one else will touch it while she has got it. But she is rather capricious, and I confess I am not easy about it; for the least scratch of one of her claws would do for me at ...
— Adela Cathcart, Vol. 3 • George MacDonald
... bands of green (hoist side), white, and red; the coat of arms (an eagle perched on a cactus with a snake in its beak) is ...
— The 1996 CIA Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... eagle, sharp by fast, Tires with her beak on feathers, flesh and bone, 56 Shaking her wings, devouring all in haste, Till either gorge be stuff'd or prey be gone; Even so she kiss'd his brow, his cheek, his chin, And where she ends she ...
— Venus and Adonis • William Shakespeare
... favor me). I {only} stipulate that she may be mine, {if} preserved by my valor." Her parents embrace the condition, (for who could hesitate?) and they entreat {his aid}, and promise as well, the kingdom as a dowry. Behold! as a ship onward speeding, with the beak fixed {in its prow}, plows the waters, impelled by the perspiring arms[83] of youths; so the monster, moving the waves by the impulse of its breast, was as far distant from the rocks, as {that distance} in the mid space of air, which a Balearic string can pass with the whirled plummet ...
— The Metamorphoses of Ovid - Vol. I, Books I-VII • Publius Ovidius Naso
... contorted serpents hung, And drops of gore seem'd rolling on his tongue. The northern glens pour forth the Vulture-race; Brown tufts of quills their shaded foreheads grace; The claws branch wide, the beak expands for blood, And all the armor imitates the god. The Condor, frowning from a southern plain, Borne on a standard, leads a numerous train: Clench'd in his talons hangs an infant dead, His long bill pointing where ...
— The Columbiad • Joel Barlow
... hellish humor that in another moment might have broken into something like a laugh, if the bird, which I had failed to observe up to this moment, had not waked in its high cage, and, thrusting its beak between the bars, shrilled out in the most alarming of tones: 'Remember Evelyn!' That startled the old man even more than the sight on the floor had done. He turned round, and I saw his fist rise as if against some menacing intruder, but it quickly ...
— The Circular Study • Anna Katharine Green
... at Thermopyl. Look in your map of the Archipelago, or gean Sea, as it was then called, for the great island of Negropont, or by its old name, Euboea. It looks like a piece broken off from the coast, and to the north is shaped like the head of a bird, with the beak running into a gulf, that would fit over it, upon the main land, and between the island and the coast is an exceedingly narrow strait. The Persian army would have to march round the edge of the gulf. They could not cut straight across the country, ...
— The Junior Classics • Various
... attracted all eyes in the castle, for on the deck stood a noble youth, with a heron's plume waving from his cap, and he held a tame sea-gull upon his hand, which from time to time flew off and dived into the water, bringing up all sorts of fish, great and small, in its beak, with which it immediately flew ...
— Sidonia The Sorceress V1 • William Mienhold
... thereupon began to crow merrily, in order to make it known that he had something nice to invite to, and as two neat grey-speckled hens sprang towards him, he let first one grain of corn and then another fall out of his beak, of which, agreeably to a clever hen-instinct, they availed themselves without ceremony or compliments. How easily ...
— Strife and Peace • Fredrika Bremer
... our free-and-easy community, is allowed to poison the river, supplied him with dead alewives in abundance. I used to watch him making his periodical visits to the salt-marshes and coming back with a fish in his beak to his young savages, who, no doubt, like it in that condition which makes it savory to the Kanakas and ...
— My Garden Acquaintance • James Russell Lowell
... who are not so fortunate as to obtain entrance, or reserved seats, cling to the outside of the trunk with their claws, and keep their position through the night chiefly by hooking the tip of the upper mandible of the beak into the bark of the tree. The backwoodsmen confidently assert that they have found as many as twenty eggs of a greenish white in a single hollow of a cypress-tree; and as it is generally supposed, judging ...
— Four Months in a Sneak-Box • Nathaniel H. Bishop
... Western Australia Cray-fish. ASTACUS QUINQUE-CARINATUS, t. 3. f. 3.—Carapace smooth, rather convex, and with three keels above; the beak, longly produced, ending in a spine, simple on the side and produced into a keel on each side behind; the central caudal lobe rather narrow, indistinctly divided in half, and like the other lobes flexile at the end, the lateral ...
— Journals Of Expeditions Of Discovery Into Central • Edward John Eyre
... holds a position in bird-lore intermediate between that of the phoenix and that of the pelican fed upon the blood of its mother whose beak is tipped with red, or that of the barnacle goose, of which the name suggests the mollusc,[1] the barnacle, and which was said to proceed from the mollusc or that of the bird of paradise, the feet of which ...
— Essays on early ornithology and kindred subjects • James R. McClymont
... with awful speed the monster seized the largest and most gaily decorated plane in his hundred-foot tentacles just as the Skylark came within sighting distance. In four practically simultaneous movements Seaton sighted the attractor at the ugly beak, released all its power, pointed the main bar of the Skylark directly upward, and advanced his speed lever. There was a crash of rending metal as the thing was torn loose from the plane and jerked a hundred miles into the air, struggling so savagely in that invisible and incomprehensible grip ...
— The Skylark of Space • Edward Elmer Smith and Lee Hawkins Garby
... which is of a brown color and provided with a hard, shining skin, that is 0.4 inch long, 0.3 inch wide, and 0.2 inch thick. It is oval in form, with quite a prominent beak at the hilum (Fig. 4). The margin is blunt and the two convex sides are provided in the center with a gibbosity limited by a line parallel with the margin, and this has given the plant its specific name of biglobosa. The mean weight of each seed is 41/2 grains. ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 613, October 1, 1887 • Various
... Should a tame duck's duckling get into mortal trouble, its mother will just signify her sorrow by an extra "quack," or so, and a flapping of her wings; but touch a wild duck's little one if you dare! she will buffet you with her broad wings, and dash boldly at your face with her stout beak. If you search for her nest amongst the long grass, she will try no end of manoeuvres to lure you from it, her favourite ruse being to pretend lameness, to delude you into the notion that you have only to pursue her vigorously, and her ...
— The Book of Household Management • Mrs. Isabella Beeton
... gallant was our galley from her carven steering-wheel To her figurehead of silver and her beak of hammered steel; The leg-bar chafed the ankle, and we gasped for cooler air, But no galley on the water with our ...
— Kipling Stories and Poems Every Child Should Know, Book II • Rudyard Kipling
... King of Birds, Rex Avium, looketh at the Sun, intuetur Solem, as indeed he could hardly avoid doing, since in the "cut" the sun was within a hairsbreath of his beak, while his claws were almost touching a crow (Corvus) perched on a dead horse, to exemplify how ...
— Love and Life • Charlotte M. Yonge
... down with Jack and a pipe to keep off the Tory mosquitos, while I fell to reading the letter. The same buzzing Tories were busy about me also with bugle and beak, but when, as I glanced at the letter, I caught Darthea's name on the second page, I forgot them and hesitated. "Still," thought I, "others have read it, and it may be well that I should do so." It was no longer private. I went ...
— Hugh Wynne, Free Quaker • S. Weir Mitchell
... clear, minute lines of black and white showed us the scene. There, on Mount Ida, with a castellated rock in the distance, the charger of Paris browses beneath some stunted larches; the Trojan knight's helmet, with its monstrous beak and plume, lies on the ground; and near it reclines Paris himself, lazy, in complete armour, with frizzled fashionable beard. To him, all wrinkled and grinning with brutal lust, comes another bearded knight, ...
— Euphorion - Being Studies of the Antique and the Mediaeval in the - Renaissance - Vol. I • Vernon Lee
... at a distance of two or three miles. The female is dusky-green; but the adult male is a beautiful white, excepting the extraordinary structure with which we are at present concerned. This is a tube about three inches long, which rises from the base of the beak. It is jet black, and dotted over with small downy feathers. The tube is closed at the top, but its cavity communicates with the palate, and thus the whole admits of being inflated from within, when, of course, it stands erect as represented ...
— Darwin, and After Darwin (Vol. 1 and 3, of 3) • George John Romanes
... returned after leaving it as a poor and unknown artizan. Let it be enough for us to know that he was above the medium height, robust, with sandy hair, a face elongated, flushed and freckled, vivid light gray eyes, the nose shaped like the beak of an eagle, and that he always was dressed like a monk. (Bernaldez, Oviedo, Las Casas, and the author of the Libretto, all eye-witnesses.)—H. Harrisse's "Columbus, and the Bank of St. George, ...
— Christopher Columbus and His Monument Columbia • Various
... when they fall asleep one of them, usually the male, covers the other with its wing. The couples of the golden woodpeckers and doves live in perfect unison. Brehm records the case of a male woodpecker who, after the death of his mate, tapped day and night with his beak to recall the absent one, and when at last discouraged, he became silent and never recovered his gaiety.[58] According to some estimates monogamy prevails among ninety per cent of birds.[59] This is explained by the steady co-operation of both sexes in forming ...
— The Truth About Woman • C. Gasquoine Hartley
... and he had a long, measured stride and an erect carriage which made him seem something like a soldier, although he was short and rather ungainly in figure. He had a curved nose which reminded one a little of the beak ...
— Autobiography of Seventy Years, Vol. 1-2 • George Hoar
... to the bees, there occurs in the Nuttall Codex 4 (Pl. 3, fig. 4) a curious representation of an insect with a pointed beak-like structure and a spine at the posterior extremity of its human-like body. It is engaged in apparent conflict with a man and may ...
— Animal Figures in the Maya Codices • Alfred M. Tozzer and Glover M. Allen
... party of us embarked in a sort of light boat called a caique, than which no species of vessel, save the gondola, cuts more softly and noiselessly through the waters. It is a narrow wooden canoe, with a long beak; the outside is painted black, with a strip of bright red inside the stern piece; and is ornamented with carvings of flowers, and a thousand other devices. A Persian carpet, or a piece of oil cloth, covers the part on which the foot ...
— Journal of a Visit to Constantinople and Some of the Greek Islands in the Spring and Summer of 1833 • John Auldjo
... yelled the slangy bird, as he fastened his beak in Tim's ear. "Waow! Whoop her up, boys! ...
— Jack Wright and His Electric Stage; - or, Leagued Against the James Boys • "Noname"
... getting at right angles to her, ordered his engineer to stuff the fires with oiled waste and keep the throttle open. "All hands, lie down!" shouted Roe, as the throbbing engines drove his vessel to the charge. Then came an earthquake shock: the Sassacus crashed her bronze beak into the Albemarle's side. Both vessels were disabled; a shell from the Albemarle burst the boilers of the Sassacus, scalding the engineers. But the rest fought off the attempt made by the Albemarles to board. Presently the furious opponents drifted apart; ...
— Captains of the Civil War - A Chronicle of the Blue and the Gray, Volume 31, The - Chronicles Of America Series • William Wood
... discovered that they might also aptly be termed limpet-pickers, for they seemed to take these shell fish as their staple food. The modus operandi of feeding is to pounce down upon a rock which the receding tide has left bare, and with a single sharp blow with its beak, detach a limpet, and turning it mouth upward, pick out the fish at its leisure. If it failed to detach the limpet at once it would go on to another, knowing that when once disturbed the limpet requires great force to detach it. Oysters lie in deep waters where they are inaccessible to ...
— Jethou - or Crusoe Life in the Channel Isles • E. R. Suffling
... face to face with Goethe at Weimar, he tells us that he felt as if Goethe must be Jupiter, and that he involuntarily glanced aside to see whether the eagle was not there with the thunderbolt in his beak. He almost addressed him in Greek, but, finding he "understood German," he made the profound remark that the plums on the road were delicious. And now, hear how Heine draws the contrast between the Hellenic Teuton and himself, the Teutonic Hebrew: "At bottom ...
— Platform Monologues • T. G. Tucker
... the stone project over it in a roll, cutting the recess deeper above. These two changes are made in e: e is the type of dripstones; the projecting part being, however, more or less rounded into an approximation to the shape of a falcon's beak, and often reaching it completely. But the essential part of the arrangement is the up and under cutting of the curve. Wherever we find this, we are sure that the climate is wet, or that the builders have been bred in a wet country, and that the rest of the building will be ...
— The Stones of Venice, Volume I (of 3) • John Ruskin
... will that they should go up against the Halakazi. If there was any man there who would gainsay his will, let him stand forward and do battle with him, and he who conquered should order all things. To this there was no answer, for there were few who cared to face the beak of Groan-Maker, and so it came about that it was agreed that the People of the Axe should make war upon the Halakazi, and Umslopogaas sent out messengers to summon every fighting-man ...
— Nada the Lily • H. Rider Haggard
... confirmation of the fact, however, the lugger hoisted a small square flag at the end of her main-yard, on which were painted, or wrought, two large wings, as they are sometimes delineated in heraldry, with the beak of a galley between them; giving the whole conceit something very like the appearance that the human imagination has assigned to those heavenly beings, cherubs. This emblem seemed to satisfy the minds of the observers, who were too much accustomed to the images of art, not to ...
— The Wing-and-Wing - Le Feu-Follet • J. Fenimore Cooper
... her when some danger lies O'er her young brood, and, with wild eyes, Straight at the sudden foe she flies, Her full soul spurred To battle with the gnashing beak— A roaring tiger is more meek; And somehow one is bound to speak Well ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 146, February 18, 1914 • Various
... place and threw a rose—just one—into the painted poop of the Christ Church wherry. That was all: but it was enough. Trevyllyan saw the action where he sat: one final, magnificent, unswerving stroke—those who saw it thought it would never end!—and with a muttered "Habet!" he sent the brazen beak of his Eight crashing in among the shattered oars of ...
— The Casual Ward - academic and other oddments • A. D. Godley
... or art; the sedulous and largess-loving garcons, the music wisely catering to all with its raids upon the composers; the melange of talk and laughter—and, if you will, the Wuerzburger in the tall glass cones that bend to your lips as a ripe cherry sways on its branch to the beak of a robber jay. I was told by a sculptor from Mauch Chunk that the ...
— The Four Million • O. Henry
... came out. Mahomet came to the mountain. I liked his face less than ever. It wore an angry scowl now; his dark eyes glittered balefully under the close-knit eyebrows, his lips were drawn down, and the curved nose was like the aggressive beak of ...
— The Passenger from Calais • Arthur Griffiths
... strike one another with all their weapons. And amongst those that guarded the Soma was Brahmana (the celestial architect), of measureless might, effulgent as the electric fire and of great energy. And after a terrific encounter lasting only a moment, managed by the lord of birds with his talons, beak, and wings, he lay as dead on the fields. And the ranger of the skies making the worlds dark with the dust raised by the hurricane of his wings, overwhelmed the celestials with it. And the latter, ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 1 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... and full of play put forth claw, and sting, and tooth, and tusk. Birds whet their beak for prey. Clouds troop in the sky. Sharp thorns shoot up through the soft grass. Blastings on the leaves. All the chords of that great harmony are snapped. Upon the brightest home this world ever saw our first parents turned their back and led forth on a path of sorrow the broken-hearted ...
— The Wedding Ring - A Series of Discourses for Husbands and Wives and Those - Contemplating Matrimony • T. De Witt Talmage
... at dinner very smartly, with wonderful accuracy of observation. He described old John, the clothes that were drying, the clogs in the hall, the drawing-room, and its furniture and pictures;—"Old man with a beak and bald head—feu Pendennis I bet two to one; sticking-plaster full-length of a youth in a cap and gown—the present Marquis of Fairoaks, of course; the widow when young in a miniature, Mrs. Mee; she had the gown on when we came, or a dress made the year after, and the tips cut off the fingers ...
— The History of Pendennis • William Makepeace Thackeray
... with which they nourish themselves. Further, the dove feeds the brood of other birds. This refers to the gift of counsel, with which the saints, by teaching and example, feed men who have been the brood, i.e. imitators, of the devil. Again, the dove tears not with its beak. This refers to the gift of understanding, wherewith the saints do not rend sound doctrines, as heretics do. Again, the dove has no gall. This refers to the gift of piety, by reason of which the saints are free from unreasonable anger. Again, the dove builds its nest in the cleft of ...
— Summa Theologica, Part III (Tertia Pars) - From the Complete American Edition • Thomas Aquinas
... females—swam closely about the latter, but more in attendance upon them than as actively pursuing them, for the females seemed themselves almost as active agents in the sport of being wooed as were their lovers in wooing them. The male bird first dipped down his head till his beak just touched the water, then raised it again in a constrained and tense manner,—the curious rigid action so frequent in the nuptial antics of birds,—at the same time uttering his strange haunting note. The air became filled with it; every moment one or other of the birds—sometimes several ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 3 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... they poked it from behind with their knives. It was a vicious-looking brute, and had a huge horny beak, with which it bit off young trees that stood in its way as though they had been blades of grass. They were passing through a valley about half a mile wide, bordered on each side by woods, when Bearwarden suddenly exclaimed, "Here we have it!" and, looking forward, they unexpectedly saw ...
— A Journey in Other Worlds - A Romance of the Future • John Jacob Astor
... of deep waters. There was a berth in the ship set apart for Shibli Bagarag, and one for the captain. Shibli Bagarag, when he entered his berth, beheld at the head of his couch a hawk; its eyes red as rubies, its beak sharp as the curve of a scimitar. So he called out to the captain, and the captain came to him; but when he saw the hawk, he plucked his turban from his head, and dashed it at the hawk, and afterward ran to it, trying to catch it; and the hawk flitted from corner ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... a crooked beak And eyes like live coals set in its head, A gray breast dappled with glowing red— DABBLED—not dappled, I should have said, From a fancy it has of ...
— The New Penelope and Other Stories and Poems • Frances Fuller Victor
... fete. Still, they're distinctive, and show off your leg to advantage, better than those abominable Cossack things,—and I doat upon a good leg—" But here she broke off and turned to greet the Countess,—a large, imposing, bony lady in a turban, with the eye and the beak of ...
— The Amateur Gentleman • Jeffery Farnol et al
... yet linger there. Enter not Bourdeaux, O Friends! Bloody Convention Representatives, Tallien and such like, with their Edicts, with their Guillotine, have arrived there; Respectability is driven under ground; Jacobinism lords it on high. From that Reole landingplace, or Beak of Ambes, as it were, Pale Death, waving his Revolutionary Sword of sharpness, ...
— The French Revolution • Thomas Carlyle
... especial sheen or iridescence, and when I finally analyzed it, I found it to be a delicate calamine blue. It actually had the appearance of a too strong color, as when a glistening surface reflects the sun. From beak to tail it threw off this glowing hue, except for its chin and throat, which were a limpid amaranth purple; and the effect on the excited rods and cones in one's eyes was like the power of great music or some majestic passage in the Bible. You, who ...
— Edge of the Jungle • William Beebe
... she arrested?" said the man, thrusting his beak-like nose closer to Armand's face. Evidently the piece of silver had done its work well; he meant to be ...
— El Dorado • Baroness Orczy
... I had of it was the sudden blotting out of the sunlight from above, and as I glanced quickly up, I saw a most terrific creature swooping down upon me. It must have been fully eighty feet long from the end of its long, hideous beak to the tip of its thick, short tail, with an equal spread of wings. It was coming straight for me and hissing frightfully—I could hear it above the whir of the propeller. It was coming straight down toward the muzzle of the ...
— The People that Time Forgot • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... upon a tree. For a moment she thought she would go back and eat the Owl—he was the most useless creature she had seen; but on second thought she didn't fancy he would be nice: besides that, his claws were sharp and his beak too. Presently, however, as she sauntered down the path, she came on a little open patch of green, in the middle of which a fine fat Rabbit was sitting. There was no escape. The path ended there, and the bushes were so thick on each side that he couldn't get away ...
— Short Studies on Great Subjects • James Anthony Froude
... an opportunity of addressing him. But when he came almost within touching distance, he found himself face to face with a dark-looking gipsy, fiery-eyed and dangerous in appearance. He had a lean, cruel face, a hawk's beak for a nose, and black, black hair streaked with grey; but what mostly attracted Cargrim's attention was a red streak which traversed the right cheek of the man from ear to mouth. At once he recalled John's description—'A military-looking gentleman with a scar on the right cheek.' He thought, ...
— The Bishop's Secret • Fergus Hume
... a great company of storks, half a thousand of them at least, apparently resting on their travels, for they were all standing motionless, with necks drawn in, as if dozing. They were very stately, handsome birds, clear gray in color, with a black collar on the neck, and red beak and legs. My approach did not disturb them until I was within twenty yards of the nearest—for they were scattered over an acre of ground; then they rose with a loud, rustling noise of wings, only to settle again at a ...
— A Crystal Age • W. H. Hudson
... terrestrial mammal adapted for that purpose. The original meaning of adaptation in animals and plants, of organic adaptation to use another term, is the relation of a mechanism to its action or of a tool to its work. A hammer is an adaptation for knocking in nails, and the woodpecker uses its head and beak in a similar way for making a hole in the bark of trees. The wings and the whole structure of a bird's body form a mechanism for producing one of the most difficult of mechanical results, namely, flight. Then, again, there are stationary conditions, ...
— Hormones and Heredity • J. T. Cunningham
... cobwebs, were knotted close to his body, and it was long before one could feel the least motion in them. Finally, to our great joy, we felt a brisk little kick, and then a flutter of wings, and then a determined peck of the beak, which showed that there was some bird left in him yet, and that he meant at any rate to find out where ...
— Our Young Folks, Vol 1, No. 1 - An Illustrated Magazine • Various
... Owen came out of his tent he saw an Arab take the latchet of a bird's hood in his teeth and pull the other end with his right hand. "A noble and melancholy bird," he said, and he stood a long while admiring the narrow, flattened head, the curved beak, so well designed to rend a prey, and the round, clear eye, which appeared to see through him and beyond him, and which in a few minutes would search the blue air ...
— Sister Teresa • George Moore
... one of the ship's boats. I seized the gunwale and said, 'Steady her, please, while I climb in,' but had no answer. The boat, apparently, had torn loose from her davits and gone voyaging alone. But as I made to climb in I was fiercely attacked in the face by the wings, beak, and claws of Jaffray's graceless parrot. In the first surprise and discomfiture I let go and sank. Coming up, choking with brine and fury, I overcame resistance with a backhanded blow, and tumbled over the gunwale into the boat. And presently I was aware that ...
— The Spread Eagle and Other Stories • Gouverneur Morris
... on their hind legs, frightening some of the women into fits by hiding under their gowns, and making young footmen drop trays of coffee cups. The last importation is a toucan,—a South American bird, with a beak like a banana, and a voice like an old sheep in despair. But Tommy, the scarlet macaw, remains prime favourite, and I must say he is clever and knows ...
— The Rosary • Florence L. Barclay
... and saw in a hole of the low roof a little bluish-gray bird with a white crown sitting on a nest; and presently her mate came with his red tail wagging, bringing an insect in his beak. ...
— Woodside - or, Look, Listen, and Learn. • Caroline Hadley
... the four winds. With one sharp excited yelp he flew at the defiant bird. For a few moments there was a thrilling race, and Ba-ree's sharp little teeth buried themselves in the jay's feathers. Swift as a flash the bird's beak began to strike. The jay was the king of the smaller birds. In nesting season it killed the brush sparrows, the mild-eyed moose-birds, and the tree-sappers. Again and again it struck Ba-ree with its powerful beak, but the son of Kazan had now reached the age of battle and the ...
— Kazan • James Oliver Curwood
... which lived about loose and had no cage, but did exactly what it liked. Its name was Lorrito. It was a very human bird; I saw it eat some bread and milk from its tin one day and then sidle along a pole to a place where there was a towel hanging. It took a corner of the towel in its claw, wiped its beak with it, and then sidled back again. It would sometimes come and see me at breakfast; it got from a chair-back on to the table by dropping its head and putting its round beak on to the table first, ...
— Alps and Sanctuaries of Piedmont and the Canton Ticino • Samuel Butler
... in the bay are about 120 tons burthen, 100 feet long, with an extreme beam, far aft, of twenty-five feet. The bow is long, and curves into a lofty stem, like that of a Roman galley, finished with a beak head, to secure the forestay of the mast. This beak is furnished with two large, goggle eyes. The mast is a ponderous spar, fifty feet high, composed of pieces of pine, pegged, glued, and hooped together. ...
— Unbeaten Tracks in Japan • Isabella L. Bird
... of horn pierced with seventeen round holes arranged round the edge in an unfinished circle, into which fit the bamboo pipes. The pipes are cylindrical as far as they are visible above the plate, but the lower end inserted in the wind reservoir is cut to the shape of a beak, somewhat like the mouthpiece of the clarinet, to receive the reed. The construction of the free reed is very simple: it consists of a thin plate of metal—gold according to the Jesuit missionary Joseph ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 1 - "Chtelet" to "Chicago" • Various
... calm, and deliberate, every motion being made in the most solemn fashion, one of them the root of whose beak itched scratching it with a claw in a gracefully ...
— First in the Field - A Story of New South Wales • George Manville Fenn
... (somewhere he defends the snob in an essay): rich food ("half-mourning" [artichoke hearts and truffles], "filet of reindeer," a cygnet in its plumage bearing an orchid in its beak, "heron's eggs whipped with wine into an amber foam," "mashed grasshoppers baked in saffron"), rich clothes, rich people interest him. There is no poverty in his books. His creatures do not toil. They ...
— The Merry-Go-Round • Carl Van Vechten
... and sunny day The Crows to one-another say, "CAW! CAW! our nests now let us build." Away they fly: each beak is fill'd With little sticks of beechen wood, With which they build their houses good: When all is done, with joy they see The work ...
— CAW! CAW! - The Chronicle of Crows, A Tale of the Spring-time • RM
... jest: "Once the jays sent a message Unto the eagle's nest:— Now yield thou up thine eyrie Unto the carrion-kite, Or come forth valiantly, and face The jays in deadly fight.— Forth looked in wrath the eagle; And carrion-kite and jay, Soon as they saw his beak and claw, Fled screaming ...
— Lays of Ancient Rome • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... there are good points," says Roth, "such as the blending of the two bell forms into the common handle, the happy tapering of the ornamentation into the Normian bird's beak; the increasing size of the side cups as they rise to correspond to the enlarged opening of the bell form; the truthfulness to nature in an essential like the bust of the Negro, all of which betoken a fair amount of artistic feeling. ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 6, 1921 • Various
... vultures fly, Cruel of beak and heavy of wing. Thus it was written that she should die. Inshallah! Death ...
— India's Love Lyrics • Adela Florence Cory Nicolson (AKA Laurence Hope), et al.
... the smiter Ilmarinen The eternal artist-forgeman, In the furnace forged an eagle From the fire of ancient wisdom, For this giant bird of magic Forged he talons out of iron, And his beak of steel and copper; Seats himself upon the eagle, On his back between the wing-bones Thus addresses he his creature, Gives the bird of fire this order. Mighty eagle, bird of beauty, Fly thou whither ...
— Reviews • Oscar Wilde
... had the prophet sight," went on Dona Jocasta. "They make their eagle on the standard and they put the serpent there of the reason that some day a thing of poison would crawl to the nest of the eagle of Mexico to comrade there. It has crawled over the seas for that, Padre, and the beak and claws and wing of the eagle must all do battle to kill the head and the heart of it;—for the heart of a serpent dies hard, and they breed and hatch their eggs everywhere in the soil of Mexico. Senor Padre, the Indian women ...
— The Treasure Trail - A Romance of the Land of Gold and Sunshine • Marah Ellis Ryan
... seated, on the spring he ruminates, And solemn as a sophi,[124] moves nor hand, Nor eye, till haply some more venturous bird, (The crumbs exhausted that he lately strewed 320 Upon the groundsill,) with often dipping beak, And sidelong look, as asking larger dole, Comes hopping to his feet: and say, ye great, Ye mighty monarchs of this earthly scene, What nobler views can elevate the heart Of a proud patriot king, than thus to chase The bold rapacious spoilers ...
— The Poetical Works of William Lisle Bowles, Vol. 1 • William Lisle Bowles
... be tempted, and must escape too. "With the temptation." As sure as Satan is licensed, so sure he is limited; and when Satan has ended all the temptation, he shall depart from thee (Luke 4:13). "He will with the temptation"—by such a managing of it as shall beak its own neck. God can admit Satan to tempt, and make the Christian wise to manage the temptation ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... sight of Kanaris with his fat thighs and interminable moustache, and of Bobelina and the blackbird. For fully five minutes all present preserved a complete silence—the only sound audible being that of the blackbird's beak against the wooden floor of the cage as the creature fished for grains of corn. Meanwhile Chichikov again surveyed the room, and saw that everything in it was massive and clumsy in the highest degree; as also that everything was curiously in keeping with ...
— Dead Souls • Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol
... on the historic view, We saw the subtle spider throw his cord Over an eagle tangled in the web. The eagle fought, not mildly overcome, And spread his wings, and darted his sharp beak. At last the spider caught him by the neck, With his serrated claws that grew like horns, And killed him; then plucked the vanquished plumes, And sucked the warm blood from the sundered ends. From this we knew the monster brought us here ...
— Stories in Verse • Henry Abbey
... of New Amsterdam. This great dignitary was called Mynheer William Beekman, or rather Beck-man, who derived his surname, as did Ovidius Naso of yore, from the lordly dimensions of his nose, which projected from the center of his countenance like the beak of a parrot. He was the great progenitor of the tribe of the Beekmans, one of the most ancient and honorable families of the province; the members of which do gratefully commemorate the origin of their dignity, nor as your noble families in England ...
— Knickerbocker's History of New York, Complete • Washington Irving
... external compulsion. They may have the appearance of being vaguely purposive, although we would never attribute purpose to the creature making them. The infant that cries and struggles, when tormented by the intrusive pin, the worm writhing in the beak of a bird,—these act blindly, but it does not appear meaningless to say that they act. ...
— A Handbook of Ethical Theory • George Stuart Fullerton
... and printing with vague step Irregular the shining sands, on strode Toward his cold home, alone; and saw by chance A little bird light-perched, that, being sick, Plucked from the fissured sea-cliff grains of sand; And, noting, said, "O bird, when beak of thine From base to crown hath gorged this huge sea-wall, Then shall that man of Creed and Rite make null The strong rock of my will!" Thus Milcho spake, Feigning the peace ...
— The Legends of Saint Patrick • Aubrey de Vere
... Who says it, knows not God, nor love, nor thee; For love is large as is yon heavenly dome: In love's great blue, each passion is full free To fly his favorite flight and build his home. Did e'er a lark with skyward-pointing beak Stab by mischance a level-flying dove? Wife-love flies level, his dear mate to seek: God-love darts straight into the skies above. Crossing, the windage of each other's wings But speeds them both upon ...
— The Poems of Sidney Lanier • Sidney Lanier
... his orders? Aesop, in his very first fable, (as arranged by good Archdeacon Croxall,) has inculcated but a mean opinion of the cock who forbore to crow lustily when he turned up a jewel of surpassing richness, in the course of his ordinary scratching, and under his own very beak; why, then, should we render ourselves liable to the same depreciatory moral? Something, at least, must be pardoned to the certaminis gaudia of this new-found contest with the secrets of Nature,—and though the fact we have stated be a startling one, the ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 13, No. 79, May, 1864 • Various |
