"Bird" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Had not the noble bird been grievously wounded he would have defied the utmost exertions of the little spaniel, but as it was, he could only get for a moment out of the reach of his pursuer by a violent effort, which only left him more exhausted. And now ...
— The Bushman - Life in a New Country • Edward Wilson Landor
... thick with lilies of the valley, Petrushka and Tatiana walked in the woods and picked the last white violets, and later again they sought the alleys of the landlord's property, where the lilac bushes were a mass of blossom and fragrance, and there they listened to the nightingale, the bird of spring. Then came the summer, the fragrance of the beanfields, and the ripening of corn and the wonderful long twilights, and July, when the corn, ripe and tall and stiff, changed the plains into a vast ...
— Orpheus in Mayfair and Other Stories and Sketches • Maurice Baring
... Agriculture.' Well, so far as I can see, it ain't so terrifyin'. That last means raisin' things, like beets an' turnips an' so on, an' as for th' forest part, why, if he stays up in his 'fringe o' pines' I guess we ain't got no call to kick. Don't you worry, Tharon, about this new bird." ...
— Tharon of Lost Valley • Vingie E. Roe
... bird, let me at eve, Thus wandering all alone, Thy tender counsel oft receive, Bear witness to thy pensive airs, And pity Nature's common cares, ...
— Poetical Works of Akenside - [Edited by George Gilfillan] • Mark Akenside
... resulted in the most curious and unlooked for deformities in the embryo, some being not alone peculiar to the bird, but being similar to those which have been recognized in many other animals, and even in the human species. The data obtained have been deemed so important that M. Dareste has recently received the Lacaze prize for physiology from the French ...
— Was Man Created? • Henry A. Mott
... bird appearing head-foremost and with body horizontally foreshortened beneath a wave of drapery flying open like wings, astonishes us by its sublime boldness; if it is possible for the brush of a human being to give a countenance to divinity, certainly Titian has succeeded. Unlimited power ...
— Great Pictures, As Seen and Described by Famous Writers • Esther Singleton
... replied Charles Bramble. "It was some bird perhaps, among these branches. But why do ...
— The Sea-Witch - or, The African Quadroon A Story of the Slave Coast • Maturin Murray
... the case there must be something wrong with our social system. You may be sure that the female cat or canary bird is just as efficient in her department as the male in his. Speaking from my own experience among the London poor, I should say that the father is often a mere parasite on ...
— South Wind • Norman Douglas
... high reputation." No wonder. When the great Cham declares it to be the finest poem published since the time of Pope, we are irresistibly forced to think of the Essay on Man. What a contrast there is between that tedious and stilted effort, and this clear burst of bird-song! The Traveller, however, did not immediately become popular. It was largely talked about, naturally, among Goldsmith's friends; and Johnson would scarcely suffer any criticism of it. At a dinner ...
— Goldsmith - English Men of Letters Series • William Black
... hundred years ago.' We forget that a hundred years ago we should not have been the same; that we should not have had the same ideas, the same tastes, nor the same requirements. It is almost the same as imagining that you could think like a bird ...
— Cosmopolis, Complete • Paul Bourget
... the other side, and at last allowed her eyes to move, without hurry, in the direction of the Hermiston pew. For a moment, they were riveted. Next she had plucked her gaze home again like a tame bird who should have meditated flight. Possibilities crowded on her; she hung over the future and grew dizzy; the image of this young man, slim, graceful, dark, with the inscrutable half-smile, attracted and repelled her like a chasm. "I wonder, ...
— Weir of Hermiston • Robert Louis Stevenson
... returned from early Mass. I lingered long after the office was ended, watching, pondering how in the world one could help a small bird which had flown into the church but could find no way out again. I suspect it will remain there, fluttering round and round distractedly, far up under the arched roof till it dies exhausted. I seem to have heard of a writer who likened man's life to a bird passing just ...
— Imaginary Portraits • Walter Pater
... in the lands where they were born. Then, as true classicists to stamp us, Each College has its separate Campus, And we have Senators whose mien Might well have turned old BRENNUS green. Why even the Bird that proudly soars In majesty to guard our shores Before migrating to these regions Was followed by the Roman legions. But we have writ enough to show What everybody ought to know, That, spite of hustle and skyscrapers, And Tammany and yellow papers, ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 152, March 7, 1917. • Various
... lifted his finger, a cry caused him to turn his head; and all heard the voice of Ko-Ngai sounding sharply sweet as a bird's song above the great thunder of the fires,—"For thy sake, O my Father!" And even as she cried, she leaped into the white flood of metal; and the lava of the furnace roared to receive her, and spattered monstrous flakes of ...
— Some Chinese Ghosts • Lafcadio Hearn
... ear, penetrated by sounds of melody issuing from wind, wave, or bird, the rapt mind in strange and pleasing wonder contemplating the new and charming harmonies,—then it was that man received his first impressions, and took his first lessons ...
— Music and Some Highly Musical People • James M. Trotter
... thought she heard a bird sing in a far off, dreamy way, and for a moment she made mud pies in the back yard of the hut on the mountain, under the black-oak in the yard, with the glint of soft sunshine over everything and the murmur of green leaves in the trees ...
— The Bishop of Cottontown - A Story of the Southern Cotton Mills • John Trotwood Moore
... undisputed fact that the early bird gets the worm," Matt Peasley replied brightly, "and I was the early bird. I was in New York a few days before the war became general, and for a week thereafter everybody was so blamed interested in the fighting ...
— Cappy Ricks • Peter B. Kyne
... cut short, and sinking into an appalling groan, rose from the fatal spot; while the white robes of the victim, like the ruffled pinions of some struck bird, came fluttering to the ground. The deed was done and the spirit of the beauteous and unfortunate Jane McRea had left its mangled tenement and fled forever! [Footnote: From the various published accounts ...
— The Rangers - [Subtitle: The Tory's Daughter] • D. P. Thompson
... discarded. A medium course, which is the best, is observed in the church, and so long as Mr. Firth remains at the place there will be nothing bedizened or foolish in its ceremonies. A small memorial place of worship, which will operate as a "chapel of ease" for Christ Church, has been built in Bird-street. Belonging to Christ Church there are some good day and Sunday schools. They are numerously attended, and well supervised. Adults have a room to themselves on a Sunday, and they go through the processes of instruction patiently, benignly, and without thrashing. At one time ...
— Our Churches and Chapels • Atticus
... use the world, as not abusing it. Seeing all its worth is to be esteemed from the end of it, eternity, never ending; then certainly whatsoever in time doth not reach that end, and hath no connection with it, we should give it but such entertainment, as a passing bird, that is pleasant to the eye, gets of a beholder, while it is in its flight. The shortness of the day should make us double our diligence, and push on the harder in our walk or race, that so we may come in ...
— The Works of the Rev. Hugh Binning • Hugh Binning
... so long away from the world that, for all I know, this ancient British type, this "grim, ungainly, ghastly, gaunt, and ominous bird of yore," may have become extinct, like another, but less unprepossessing bird—the dodo; whereby our state is the ...
— Peter Ibbetson • George du Marier et al
... old woman's small, pale eyes twinkled with a tiger's bloodthirsty greed. Her broad, flat nose, with nostrils expanded into oval cavities, breathed the fires of hell, and resembled the beak of some evil bird of prey. The spirit of intrigue lurked behind her low, cruel brow. Long hairs had grown from her wrinkled chin, betraying the masculine character of her schemes. Any one seeing that woman's face would ...
— Cousin Betty • Honore de Balzac
... in his Rambler[728], against the notion that the brute creation is endowed with the faculty of reason: 'birds build by instinct; they never improve; they build their first nest as well as any one they ever build.' GOLDSMITH. 'Yet we see if you take away a bird's nest with the eggs in it, she will make a slighter nest and lay again.' JOHNSON. 'Sir, that is because at first she has full time and makes her nest deliberately. In the case you mention she is pressed to lay, and must therefore make ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 2 • Boswell
... with bare floor and mud wall; and little Geordie grew up in his own unkempt fashion without any schooling whatever, not even knowing A from B when he was a big lad of seventeen. At an age when he ought to have been learning his letters, he was bird's-nesting in the fields or running errands to the Wylam shops; and as soon as he was old enough to earn a few pence by light work, he was set to tend cows at the magnificent wages of twopence a day, in the village of Dewley Burn, close by, to which his ...
— Biographies of Working Men • Grant Allen
... intolerable piping. At last his patience failed him and he swore unchristian words. "Deil rax the birds' thrapples," he cried. At this all the noise was hushed and in a twinkling the moor was empty. Only one bird was left, standing on tall legs before him with its head bowed upon its breast, and ...
— The Moon Endureth—Tales and Fancies • John Buchan
... multum in parvo! A bird's-eye view, as one may say,—and not entertaining, certainly. What other branches have you pursued? Drawing, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume V, Number 29, March, 1860 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... that a candle could be shot through a board from a gun. He dropped a lighted candle in his gun, and of course it exploded. It came up through the floor and made a large spot of grease upon the ceiling of my room, nearly scaring me to death and filling my legs full of bird-shot." ...
— Elbow-Room - A Novel Without a Plot • Charles Heber Clark (AKA Max Adeler)
... some variations, and without saying when or where it occurred. 2 See the 說苑, 卷十九, p. 13. 3 Ana. VII. xiii. 4 Some of these are related in the 'Narratives of the School;'— about the burning of the ancestral shrine of the sovereign 釐, and a one-footed bird which appeared hopping and flapping its wings in Ch'i. They are plainly fabulous, though quoted in proof of Confucius's sage wisdom. This reference to them is more than enough. 5 家語, 卷二, 六本. 6 Ana. XII. xi. 7 Ana. XIII. iii. ...
— THE CHINESE CLASSICS (PROLEGOMENA) Unicode Version • James Legge
... there no hope?" I moaned. "So strong, so fair! Our Fowler, whose proud bird would brook erewhile No rival's swoop in all our western air! Gather the ravens, then, in funeral file, For him, life's morn-gold bright ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, Issue 49, November, 1861 • Various
... turned his eyes to the window and discovered something there which interested him still more, for in a wicker cage above the doctor's head there was a lively little jackdaw. He was a smart active bird with glossy plumage, and looked strangely out of place amongst the quiet old brown books and dusty objects in the room. Ambrose gazed at him with satisfaction. He had a jackdaw at home, and when he saw this one he felt at once that ...
— Penelope and the Others - Story of Five Country Children • Amy Walton
... of the dawn, when I could get my bearings, I slung myself ashore. A private in my regiment discharged for disability, begged to accompany me. With weapons ready for instant use, we pushed along, afraid of our own shadows, looking for a lurking foe behind every bush, and when some startled bird suddenly broke from its cover, the heart of one at least stood still for a moment and then throbbed away like a steam engine. If a man was seen, however distant, we dropped to cover and watched him out of sight before we dared move. ...
— The Twenty-fifth Regiment Connecticut Volunteers in the War of the Rebellion • George P. Bissell
... roses throb as in a bygone day, As they were wont, the tall proud lilies sway. Each bird that lights ...
— Poems of Paul Verlaine • Paul Verlaine
... August—were destined to establish themselves in his memory as a season of pleasant things. The ambassador went away and Peter had to wait for his own holiday, which he did during the hot days contentedly enough—waited in spacious halls and a vast, dim, bird-haunted garden. The official world and most other worlds withdrew from Paris, and the Place de la Concorde, a larger, whiter desert than ever, became by a reversal of custom explorable with safety. The Champs Elysees were dusty and ...
— The Tragic Muse • Henry James
... Josephus's and Eusebius's copies of the fourth century were just like the present in this clause, which we have no distinct evidence of, the following words, preserved still in Eusebius, will not admit of any such exposition: "This [bird] [says Eusebius] Agrippa presently perceived to be the cause of ill fortune, as it was once of good fortune, to him;" which can only belong to that bird, the owl, which as it had formerly foreboded his happy deliverance from imprisonment, Antiq. B. XVIII. ch. 6. sect. 7, so ...
— The Antiquities of the Jews • Flavius Josephus
... himself of this wise and friendly counsel, by which he might yet have been preserved. Leicester, who watched all his motions, was at length satisfied that his purpose was effected,—the victim was inveigled beyond the power of retreat or escape, and it was time for the decoy-bird to ...
— Memoirs of the Court of Queen Elizabeth • Lucy Aikin
... writers give? I cannot understand why M. de Viette[51] should be called Viete, because his Latin name is Vieta. It is difficult to restore Buteo; for not only now is butor a blockhead as well as a bird, but we really cannot know what kind of bird Buteo stood for. We may be sure that Madame Fine was Denise Blanche; for Dionysia Candida can mean nothing else. Let her shade rejoice in the fame which Hubertus Sussannaeus ...
— A Budget of Paradoxes, Volume I (of II) • Augustus De Morgan
... She is bound to want to 'save him,' to bring him to his senses, and lift him up and draw him to nobler aims, and restore him to new life and usefulness—well, we all know how far such dreams can go. I saw at once that the bird was flying into the cage of herself. And I too made ready. I think you are frowning, Rodion Romanovitch? There's no need. As you know, it all ended in smoke. (Hang it all, what a lot I am drinking!) Do you know, ...
— Crime and Punishment • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... from the high road, in Black's Lane, at the head of the town. You came to it by a row of tall elms standing up along Mr. Hancock's wall. Behind the last tree its slender white end went straight up from the pavement, hanging out a green balcony like a bird ...
— Life and Death of Harriett Frean • May Sinclair
... been, says he, since the existence of time, two or three atheistical, vile, senseless individuals, whose eyes and ears deceive them, and who are maimed in their very soul, an irrational and barren species, as monstrous as a lion without courage, an ox without horns, or a bird without wings, yet out of these you will be able to understand something of God. For they know and confess him whether ...
— A Portraiture of Quakerism, Volume II (of 3) • Thomas Clarkson
... said to coo, a sound well imitating the note of the bird; but, by the intervention of the metaphor broods, the affections are called in by the imagination to assist in marking the manner in which the bird reiterates and prolongs her soft note, as if herself delighting to listen to it, and participating ...
— Prefaces and Prologues to Famous Books - with Introductions, Notes and Illustrations • Charles W. Eliot
... diagonally from upper hoist-side corner; the upper triangle is red with a soaring yellow bird of paradise centered; the lower triangle is black with five white five-pointed stars of ...
— The 1995 CIA World Factbook • United States Central Intelligence Agency
... was doing its best. It sank to despair, it leaped to lyric passion, it caressed a low note of ecstatic pain, and then, like a dew-delighted bird, it fled up and hovered on a timid note of appeal. The girl giggled. As the voice died on a long, soft note, she laughed aloud, and swallowed. She looked around and caught my eye. It seemed that she had something about which she ...
— Nights in London • Thomas Burke
... don't want to know. As far as I can judge, t' knowledge of t' world is only an acquaintance wi' all sorts o' evil and unjust things. But come thy ways, Eltham, and let's hev a bit of a walk through t' park. I hear t' cuckoos telling their names to ivery tree, and ivery bird in them, and there's few sounds I like better, if ...
— The Hallam Succession • Amelia Edith Barr
... whistle sounded. A night bird's call answered. Soon afterwards, another form appeared, and Tom, peering anxiously, was sure that he recognized the man whom he expected ...
— The Young Engineers in Colorado • H. Irving Hancock
... occurred, which has favoured the conversation of the clubs, and thrown the west end into condolence and confusion for the last twenty-four hours. Colonel O'Kelly's famous parrot is dead. The stories told of this surprising bird have long stretched public credulity to its utmost extent. But if even the half of what is told be true, it exhibited the most singular sagacity. Not having seen it myself, I can only give the general report. But, ...
— Blackwoods Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 366, April, 1846 • Various
... motives, of the perilous enterprise. Fear is the first principle of a despotic government; and his menaces were expressed in the Oriental style, that the fugitives and deserters, had they the wings of a bird, [53] should not escape from his inexorable justice. The greatest part of his bashaws and Janizaries were the offspring of Christian parents: but the glories of the Turkish name were perpetuated by successive adoption; and in the gradual change ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 6 • Edward Gibbon
... establish a newspaper, the Chronotype, in opposition to the Government policy. He began this enterprise almost without help, but soon obtained assistance from leading Free-soilers like John A. Andrew, Dr. S. G. Howe, and especially Frank W. Bird, the most disinterested of politicians, who gave several thousand dollars in support of the Chronotype. The object of the paper, stated in Mr. Wright's own words, was "To examine everything that is new and some things that are old, without fear or favor; to promote good nature, good ...
— Cambridge Sketches • Frank Preston Stearns
... a bird," he repeated, fondly reminiscent over his high-ball—"and I myself am the real ornithological thing—the species that Brooklyn itself would label 'boid' ... She has such pretty, ...
— The Common Law • Robert W. Chambers
... that had been fired, and, before Nat could ask what the matter was he saw a plump bird fall to the ground, as the result of the ...
— Jack Ranger's Western Trip - From Boarding School to Ranch and Range • Clarence Young
... civilization to those parts, but the landscape was nevertheless getting desolate as we proceeded farther north. Except in the immediate vicinity of habitations, one felt the absolute lack of animal life. Only rarely did we see a black bird of extraordinary elongated form dash frightened across the railway line, much too fast for me to identify to ...
— Across Unknown South America • Arnold Henry Savage Landor
... NO. 2.—Cut up one chicken, put into a stewpan two quarts of cold water, a teaspoonful of salt, and one pod of red pepper; when half done add two desert spoonfuls of well washed rice: when thoroughly cooked, remove the bird from the soup, tear a part of the breast into shreds (saving the remainder of the fowl for a salad), and add it to the soup with ...
— Fifty Soups • Thomas J. Murrey
... himself to live off the country, as he had before; but the principal game here was the wild turkey, and the wild turkey proved itself a shy and elusive bird. It was not occupied with meditations concerning literary masterpieces; and so it had a great advantage over Thyrsis, who would forget that he had a gun with him after the first half-hour ...
— Love's Pilgrimage • Upton Sinclair
... a troubled sigh; Hilda put wings to her feet, and with the lightness and grace of a bird sped toward the house. ...
— A Young Mutineer • Mrs. L. T. Meade
... is smeared with bird-lime; and the verses suggest that the insect is preventing the man from using his pole, by persistently getting in the way of it,—as the birds might take warning from seeing the butterfly limed. Jama suru ...
— Kwaidan: Stories and Studies of Strange Things • Lafcadio Hearn
... religious persons feed on these birds, because they are not fish, nor to be regarded as flesh meat. And who can marvel that this should be so? When our first parent was made of mud, can we be surprised that a bird should ...
— Notes & Queries 1849.12.22 • Various
... payable pagar, to pay pagare, promissory note, note of hand pagina, page paila, tacho, pan (sugar manuf.) pais, country (nation) pajaro, bird palabra, word palacio, palace palas, shovels, spades palmera, date-palm palo de mesana, mizzen mast palo mayor, main mast pan, bread, loaf pana, velveteen pana acordonada, cords, corduroy pano, cloth, suiting panol, carbonera, bunker pantalones, trousers panuelo, handkerchief ...
— Pitman's Commercial Spanish Grammar (2nd ed.) • C. A. Toledano
... that 'a bird in the hand is worth two in the bush', and if this is true I think we'd better stay ...
— The Trail of a Sourdough - Life in Alaska • May Kellogg Sullivan
... bird, thy gentle strain "Can't cool my brow, or cool my brain;" But yet, thou hast a magic pow'r To lull me in a fev'rish hour; Thy pleasant notes, so sweet and clear, Come soft and mellow'd to my ear. And when my head is rack'd with pain, Burning my brow, throbbing my brain,— ...
— Withered Leaves from Memory's Garland • Abigail Stanley Hanna
... up in that quiet corner of the garden, near the hedge, and the cherry tree was in bloom and showered its delicate blossoms down upon them with every puff of air that stirred the branches; while, in the hedge nearby, a little brown bird was putting the finishing touch to a new nest. The boy's shepherd dog, who sat up when you told him, was the minister; and all the dollies were there, dressed in their finest gowns. The little girl was very serious and ...
— Their Yesterdays • Harold Bell Wright
... Lahoma were not thus affected. The somethingness of man had never to them been so thrillingly evident. They saw and heard that which was not, except for those having eyes and ears to apprehend—roses in the sand, bird-song in the desert. And when the rude cabins and hasty tents of the last stage-station in Greer County showed dark and white against the horizon of a ...
— Lahoma • John Breckenridge Ellis
... blood do bathe, They, gaining courage,[122] with fierce noise awake The force which Nature in them seated hath, And from their necks the broken chains do shake; Then he that tamed them first doth feel their rage, And torn in pieces doth their fury slake. The bird shut up in an unpleasing cage, Which on the lofty trees did lately sing, Though men, her want of freedom to assuage, Should unto her with careful labour bring The sweetest meats which they can best devise, ...
— The Theological Tractates and The Consolation of Philosophy • Anicius Manlius Severinus Boethius
... only hope you will be able to persuade him," said John, rising to go away, "for whatever you may think, you are a country bird, and ...
— The Marriage of Elinor • Margaret Oliphant
... marvellous chapter on "A Bird's-eye view of Paris," an amazing restoration by a poet, in which archaeology itself, in spite of the progress it has made, would find it difficult to discover a flaw. Well, what Victor Hugo has done for mediaeval ...
— The Works of Theophile Gautier, Volume 5 - The Romance of a Mummy and Egypt • Theophile Gautier
... Christian era. The fact remains that tradition says he was able to fly in the air. Pythagoras is said to have had the same power, or rather the same faculty came upon him. He was lifted up, with no will or conscious exertion of his own. Now, our evidence as to the power of Pythagoras to be "like a bird, in two places at once," is exactly as valuable as that about Abaris. It rests on the tradition repeated by superstitious philosophers who lived eight hundred years after his death. "To Pythagoras, ...
— Lost Leaders • Andrew Lang
... a man frightened at an animal darting out of a thicket, while a bird sings on. The coward has not the ...
— Our Fathers Have Told Us - Part I. The Bible of Amiens • John Ruskin
... him at his right hand was an immense bird, whose body seemed almost as big as that of a horse. Its wide-open, curving beak was set with rows of pointed teeth, and the talons held against its breast and turned threateningly outward were more powerful and dreadful than a ...
— The Master Key - An Electrical Fairy Tale • L. Frank Baum
... fore-hold, whence, of a dark night, he would sometimes emerge to chat with the sailors on deck. I never liked the man's looks; I protest it was a mere accident that gave me the honour of his acquaintance, and generally I did my best to avoid him, when he would come skulking, like a jail-bird, out of his den into the liberal, open air of the sky. Nevertheless, the anecdote this holder told me is well worth preserving, more especially the extraordinary frankness evinced in his narrating such a thing ...
— White Jacket - or, the World on a Man-of-War • Herman Melville
... Woden when he bears the hero over seas; the cock is a bird of sorcery the world over; the black fowl is the proper gift to the Underground powers—a heriot really, for did not the Culture god steal all the useful beasts out of the underground world for ...
— The Danish History, Books I-IX • Saxo Grammaticus ("Saxo the Learned")
... Bird reports a compound comminuted fracture of the left temporal region, with loss of bone, together with six drams of brain-substance, which, however, was followed by recovery. Tagert gives an instance ...
— Anomalies and Curiosities of Medicine • George M. Gould
... was a long time recovering from the birth of our second child. She was a normal and healthy woman, but Nature has a way in these matters of introducing the unnatural; science, too, mistook the ABCs of the case for the XYZs; and our rooms were for many, many weary weeks like a cage in which the bird has ceased to sing. I did what I could. She was not without books, magazines, and delicacies; but I had to attend to my business; so that time hung about her much like a millstone, and she would say: "All's well with me, Michael, but ...
— The Spread Eagle and Other Stories • Gouverneur Morris
... but it's an uphill pull. The old man is a crafty old bird. Those papers you got from the safe had been cunningly prepared for anybody who sought to obtain information. The consequence is that we've shown our hand, and heavily ...
— The House of Whispers • William Le Queux
... wind all safe from off the main: Unless my parents learned me erst of soothsaying to wot But idly. Lo there twice seven swans disporting in a knot, Whom falling from the plain of air drave down the bird of Jove From open heaven: strung out at length they hang the earth above, And now seem choosing where to pitch, now on their choice to gaze, As wheeling round with whistling wings they sport in diverse ways And with their band ring round the pole and cast abroad their song. ...
— The AEneids of Virgil - Done into English Verse • Virgil
... the impression that his framework all ran straight up and down, like the wires in a bird cage, with barely enough perches extending across from side to side to keep him from caving in and crushing the canaries to death. On second thought I judge I had better make this comparison in the singular number —there would not have been room in ...
— Europe Revised • Irvin S. Cobb
... late, culpably late. But Mrs. Downey was proud of that too, as arguing that the poor bird of passage had stayed to smooth her ruffled plumage. Mrs. Downey approved of all persons who thus voluntarily acknowledged the high ceremonial character of the Dinner. She was glad that Mr. Rickman would appear to-night in full evening dress, to rush ...
— The Divine Fire • May Sinclair
... the bird was flown a warrant from the lord chief justice arrived to take her up, the messenger of which returned with the news of her flight, highly to the satisfaction of Amelia, and consequently of Booth, and, indeed, not greatly to ...
— Amelia (Complete) • Henry Fielding
... the season advanced, Lib had no words for us. She had always been a fragile, puny little creature, and this year she seemed to grow weaker, thinner, more waxen white, each day. She had a wonderful voice, shrill, far-reaching, but strangely sweet and clear, with a certain vibrating, reedy, bird-like quality, which even yet thrills ...
— Story-Tell Lib • Annie Trumbull Slosson
... Dicky Brown was too old a bird for that sort of chaff," said Tempest; "he twigged it at once—and he's a day boy. Hand me that cane out of the cricket box, there's a good fellow, and hold out your hand. Don't ...
— Tom, Dick and Harry • Talbot Baines Reed
... near Ballybrosna. Some people, it is true, said that she was "just a fairy of a crathur, and too little for anythin'," and she was, no doubt, diminutive in size. Nor had she any brilliancy of colouring to make amends in a humming-bird's fashion for the insignificance of her proportions, resembling rather, with her dark eyes and hair, one of those filmy white blossoms which look the paler and frailer for their knots of ebon stamens, or the delicate moth who shows fine black ...
— Strangers at Lisconnel • Barlow Jane
... be calculated to run at least 1200 miles; during all which passage, through such a vast extent of country, it does not receive a single stream in addition to what it derives from its sources in the Eastern mountains."—"One tree, one soil, one water, and one description of bird, fish, or animal, prevails alike for ten miles, and for 100." There were, however, tracks, especially where the limestone formation prevailed, of great beauty and fertility; but these were comparatively rare and of small extent. Level, bare, sandy wastes, destitute of water, or morasses ...
— Robert Kerr's General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 18 • William Stevenson
... series of six little Nature books, it is the author's intention so to present to the child reader the facts about each particular flower, insect, bird, or animal, in story form, as to make delightful reading. Classical legends, myths, poems, and songs are so introduced as to correlate fully with these lessons, to which the excellent illustrations ...
— The Little Colonel's Christmas Vacation • Annie Fellows Johnston
... fifty brace on the Eastern Shore; but I believe they shot with unusually "straight powder." There is a good show of woodcock at certain seasons; but it sounds strange to English ears when they speak of the season opening in June; the bird is much smaller than ours, weighing, I believe, about seven or eight ounces, and it is found much oftener in comparatively open ground ...
— Border and Bastille • George A. Lawrence
... 1534. The vessel which carried him weighed only sixty tons and carried a crew of sixty-one men. At the end of only twenty days, so favourable was the voyage, Cartier discovered Newfoundland at Cape Bonavista. He then went northwards as far as Bird Island, which he found surrounded by ice, all broken up and melting, but on which he was able, nevertheless, to lay in a stock of five or six tons of guillemots, puffins, and penguins, without reckoning those which were eaten fresh. He ...
— Celebrated Travels and Travellers - Part I. The Exploration of the World • Jules Verne
... too, I assure you. You see I speak of her in the past sense, for she has left us; and her friends are sure she is not less an angel now than she was ten days ago. Very certain I am, that if a natural sweetness of disposition can scale Heaven's walls, she went over like a bird. But I believe we must leave her and all the rest of our departed friends to be sentenced by ...
— Memoirs of Aaron Burr, Complete • Matthew L. Davis
... just in time. By the light of the bit of candle that John held, she saw Saunders sitting on the stair, the shadow of his huge frame thrown black on the white wall; she saw him stoop suddenly, as a bird pounces; she heard an exclamation—then a sound ...
— Bessie Costrell • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... gone to ask Mr. Manisty whether he could receive this gentleman—and meanwhile the stranger stood there twisting his long bony hands, and glancing about him with the shyness of a bird. ...
— Eleanor • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... noiselessly as a cat in search of her prey, till he was past them all. He was surprised to find how cool and self-possessed he was, how clear his brain, and how wide awake were all his faculties. He was as light-hearted as a bird in spring-time, for even in the darkness, while he was dimly discerning what was around him, he saw Azalia, as he last beheld her in the gravelled walk before her home, waving him on! At daybreak he reached the lines once more. The Colonel heard his story, ...
— Winning His Way • Charles Carleton Coffin
... public acceptance her Juliet, Viola, or Rosalind, was not to be expected: it was too much a passive condition—delicate and elusive—and too little an active effort. She woke into life the sleeping spirit of a rather repellant drama, and was "alone the Arabian bird." ...
— Shadows of the Stage • William Winter
... tending the poultry and the cattle, working in a garden of his own, and helping every one. He was known to every bird and beast about the place, and had a name for every one. Never was there a lighter-hearted husbandman, a creature more popular with young and old, a blither and more ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook, Vol. 3 • E. Cobham Brewer
... investigator of my own aerial race, who pointed out to me on the wing that at a spot some 900 miles to the west of the Portuguese coast, just opposite the place where your mushroom city of Lisbon now stands, the water of the ocean, as seen in a bird's-eye view from some three thousand feet above, formed a distinct greenish patch such as always betokens shoals or rising ground at the bottom. Flying out at once to the point he indicated, and poising myself above it on my broad pinions at a giddy altitude, I saw at ...
— Science in Arcady • Grant Allen
... Planchet, delightedly; "it is exactly my own case. I was so melancholy at first that I could do nothing but make the sign of the cross all day, and the chants were like nails being driven into my head; but now, the chants lull me to sleep, and no bird I have ever seen or heard can sing better than those which are to be met ...
— The Vicomte de Bragelonne - Or Ten Years Later being the completion of "The Three - Musketeers" And "Twenty Years After" • Alexandre Dumas
... was in a moment, and clasped hands in greeting, as well as they could with the one, and the other receiving bird-cages, handbags, umbrellas, and rugs from Agatha, whom, however, Lance relieved of them with a courteous, "Miss Prescott! You have come in for the arrival of my Australian sister! What luggage have you?" ...
— Modern Broods • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... impossible even for another man to have done it, unless the Indian had been creeping on all fours. When he was able to speak, however, he explained the mystery. While running through a rough part of the wood after a wounded bird, he stumbled and fell on all fours. The gun, which he was carrying over his shoulder, holding it, as the Indians usually do, by the muzzle, flew forward, and turned right round as he fell, so that the mouth of it was presented towards him. Striking against the stem of ...
— The Young Fur Traders • R.M. Ballantyne
... go his hold, the sheet was drawn aft, and away sped the boat. No sooner did Mulford cause the little craft to keep away than it almost flew, as if conscious it were bound to its proper home, skimming swiftly over the waves, like a bird returning eagerly to its nest. An hour later the party breakfasted. While at this meal, Jack Tier pointed out to the mate a white speck, in the south-eastern board, which he took to be the brig coming through the passage, on her ...
— Jack Tier or The Florida Reef • James Fenimore Cooper
... reading at the safe, jolly table; she planned, when she was done, to ignore the man near her and go in the opposite direction, but while she planned she was aware that she would do no such thing. The bird and the snake know this force, so do the ...
— The Shield of Silence • Harriet T. Comstock
... he finished sketches by day, and wrote sonnets for magazines, and frivolous articles for dailies, by night. And, strange to say, though there were times when success seemed very hard to grasp, and when he was obliged to forestall quarter-day, and even to borrow money from Rainham—when that bird of passage was within reach—he sold sketches from time to time; he obtained commissions for portraits; and the editors occasionally read and retained ...
— A Comedy of Masks - A Novel • Ernest Dowson and Arthur Moore
... to the docks to get a passage for Dr. Munro, who is going home for money. A German Taube flew overhead and men were firing rifles at it. An Englishman hit it, and down it came like a shot bird, so that was the end of a brave man, whoever he was, and it was a long drop, too, through the still autumn air. Guns have begun to fire again, so I suppose we shall have to move on once more. One does not unpack, and it is dangerous to part with ...
— My War Experiences in Two Continents • Sarah Macnaughtan
... for bait. They were to divide the large sum which they expected to get from me in case they caught a bear before I did, and very likely my fired assistant had a contingent interest in the enterprise. Mateo was the only member of the syndicate on deck when I arrived, and deeming a bird in his hand worth a whole flock in the syndicate bush, he made the best bargain he could and left the others to whistle for dividends. Ten years afterward I met the cattleman who furnished the capital and the beef, and from his strenuous remarks about his Mexican partner ...
— Bears I Have Met—and Others • Allen Kelly
... these weeks was like the face of a man lost in a trackless desert, seeking vainly for some sign of road to save his life. Sickness and death were as foreign to the young, vital, irrepressible currents of his life, as if he had been a bird or an antelope. But it was not now with him the mere bewildered grief of a sensuous animal nature, such as I should have anticipated that his grief would be. He dimly felt the truth, and was constantly terrified by it. He came into Annie's presence more and more reverently each day. He ...
— Saxe Holm's Stories • Helen Hunt Jackson
... general type of mythical hero tales. Often he journeys to the heavens to seek some gift of his ancestors, the ingenious fancy keeping always before it an objective picture of this heavenly superstructure—bearing him thither upon a cloud or bird, on the path of a cobweb, a trailing vine, or a rainbow, or swung thither on the tip of a bamboo stalk. Arrived in the region of air, by means of tokens or by name chants, he proves his ancestry and often substantiates his claim in tests of power, ability ...
— The Hawaiian Romance Of Laieikawai • Anonymous
... from the garden Mhor had firm hold of his hand and was telling him a long story about a "mavis-bird" that the cat ...
— Penny Plain • Anna Buchan (writing as O. Douglas)
... been making some research among our British poets, as to the character of the nightingale's song, I was much struck with the great quantity and diversity of epithets that I found applied to the bird. The difference of opinion that has existed with regard to the quality of its song, has of course led the poetical adherents of either side to couple the nightingale's name with that very great variety of adjectives which ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 182, April 23, 1853 • Various
... Indians where Philip was; they came up with them, and killed some of his special Friends; Philip himself was next to his Uncle, that was shot down, and had the Soldier had his Choice which to shoot at, known which had been the right Bird, he might as well have taken him as his Uncle, but 'tis said that he had newly cut off his Hair, that he might not be known: the Party that did this Exploit were few in Number, and therefore not being able to keep altogether close in the Reer, that ...
— Great Epochs in American History, Vol. II - The Planting Of The First Colonies: 1562—1733 • Various
... Castelfranco had pointed out was the one into which they could unhesitatingly pour their whole inclination. The instinct for colour was in their very blood. They turned to it with the heart-whole delight with which a bird seeks the air or a fish the water, and foremost among them, to create and to consolidate, was ...
— The Venetian School of Painting • Evelyn March Phillipps
... that what he had said would henceforward bind the thought of the old Oxford Fellow closely up with the most precious things of his heart, yet he would not be forced into any expression of what he felt towards Margaret. He was no mocking-bird of praise, to try because another extolled what he reverenced and passionately loved, to outdo him in laudation. So he turned to some of the dry matters of business that lay between Mr. Bell and him, ...
— North and South • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... around that they'd had in years, he declared. Captain Ames' cranberry bog was buried so deep in sand you couldn't see a blossom or a leaf. And there was sand drifted all over the garden. It had whirled clear over the wall, till the bird pool was ...
— Georgina of the Rainbows • Annie Fellows Johnston
... driving south. Then the water clears and his sails swing to the wind, and he is off to the north, along that steel-gray shore of rampart rock, between the white-slab islands and the reefy coast. Birds are in such flocks off Funk Island that the men go ashore to hunt, as the fisher folk anchor for bird shooting to-day. ...
— Canada: the Empire of the North - Being the Romantic Story of the New Dominion's Growth from Colony to Kingdom • Agnes C. Laut
... white hawk (Astur Novae Hollandiae, Cuv.), erroneously called an albino by Mr. Gould, once very abundant, is now becoming rare, having been nearly extirpated for the sake of its skin by the zeal of bird collectors. The other raptorial birds possess little to distinguish them ...
— The History of Tasmania, Volume I (of 2) • John West
... learned, no doubt, but he always spoke slightingly of the sun and the pretty flowers, because he had never seen them. Tiny was obliged to sing to him, "Lady-bird, lady-bird, fly away home," and many other pretty songs. And the mole fell in love with her because she had such a sweet voice; but he said nothing yet, for he was very cautious. A short time before, the mole had dug a long passage under the earth, which led from the dwelling of the field-mouse ...
— Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen • Hans Christian Andersen
... had little presents given them. So they grew into objects of affection. But, out of several, some, of course, took ill and died. I cannot tell you what grief it caused me. Then this has happened several times, after the death of one or other of my little favourites:—a bird has flown into the hall, and into my sitting-room, and has hovered near me, and, after a while, has flown away. For a few days it has regularly returned, and then finally disappeared. I thought it was tenanted by the spirit ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 61, No. 378, April, 1847 • Various
... with the din of bird song in his ears. Jill opened her eyes at almost the same instant. She smiled at him and tried to get up. She was stiff and sore from the hardness of the ground on which she'd slept. But it was a new day, and there was breakfast. It was porcupine ...
— Operation Terror • William Fitzgerald Jenkins
... Officer.—... So let me repeat and impress upon you, men, that the rifle is an effete weapon—extinct as the—what-you-call-it bird. It played its part, a good part, in the South African War, but we who observed what the machine gun did then and foretold its immense development [he was just nine years old at that time] knew that the rifle would soon be in the museums along with the bows and arrows. Pay attention, ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 152, April 25, 1917 • Various
... personal god, it has become so much waste paper now that your personal god is beginning to be felt as an absurdity. Thus in a religion with a personal god, heresy always kills two birds with one stone. But once the bird morality is killed, it takes a new civilisation and a new culture to hatch another one. Man can survive without a belief in a personal god; he cannot survive ...
— Too Old for Dolls - A Novel • Anthony Mario Ludovici
... finds an old hen or turkey straying about with a brood of chicks, then the tactics are altogether different. Creeping up like a cat, the fox watches an opportunity to seize a chick out of sight of the mother bird. That done, he withdraws, silent as a shadow, his grip on the chick's neck preventing any outcry. Hiding his game at a distance, he creeps back to capture another in the same way; and so on till he has enough, or till he is discovered, or some half-strangled chick finds breath ...
— Ways of Wood Folk • William J. Long
... her mind, But other feelings, not so well defined; She then reluctant grew, and thought it hard To sit and ponder o'er an ugly card; Rather the nut-tree shade the nymph preferr'd, Pleased with the pensive gloom and evening bird; Thither, from company retired, she took The silent walk, ...
— Crabbe, (George) - English Men of Letters Series • Alfred Ainger
... air, a burst of applause went up, and, "encore, encore," the forestieri shouted, "encore!" And other gondolas came gliding up, and the spreading fan stretched in ever widening compass, divided now, like the pinions of a great sable bird studded with dots of light. Then, while the flowing moonlight brightened, and a perfumed breeze came wafted over the water from the rose gardens of the Giudecca, the sweet voice again took up the simple and ...
— A Venetian June • Anna Fuller
... fell somebody: it was a wooden bird, the popinjay used at the shooting-matches at Prastoe. Now he said that there were just as many inhabitants as he had nails in his body; and he was very proud. "Thorwaldsen lived almost next door to me.* Plump! ...
— A Christmas Greeting • Hans Christian Andersen
... nor extortioners shall inherit the kingdom of God. And such were some of you." Look at that tall, sallow-faced Greek: he has wallowed in the mire of Circe's swine-pens. Look at that low-browed Scythian slave: he has been a pickpocket and a jail-bird. Look at that thin-nosed, sharp-eyed Jew: he has been a Shylock, cutting his pound of flesh from the gilded ...
— The Life of St. Paul • James Stalker
... green. Lovely and silent and serene. So it had been when he was a boy and so it would be when he was dead. Countless trees had been cut down but others had risen in their stead. Now and then he could hear a bird warbling. ...
— His Family • Ernest Poole
... must be permitted. This time it is no embroidered conceit, but one of those lyrics of pure nature music, of which the Renaissance poets were so lavish, touched with the fire of Spring, with the light of hope, bird-notes untroubled by doubt, unconscious of pessimism, which are therefore all the more charming for us who dwell amid sunsets of intense colouring, who can see nothing but the hectic splendours of autumn. ...
— John Lyly • John Dover Wilson
... from the officer overhead. Mechanism, the pure mechanical action of obedience at the guns. Pure mechanical action at the guns. It left the soul unburdened, brooding in dark nakedness. In the end, the soul is alone, brooding on the face of the uncreated flux, as a bird on a dark sea. ...
— England, My England • D.H. Lawrence
... ASIDE]. 'Slight, that is a new business! I understood you, a tame bird, to fly Twice in a term, or so, on Friday nights, When you had left the office, for a nag ...
— The Alchemist • Ben Jonson
... of light blue (hoist side), white, and light blue with the coat of arms centered in the white band; the coat of arms includes a green and red quetzal (the national bird) and a scroll bearing the inscription LIBERTAD 15 DE SEPTIEMBRE DE 1821 (the original date of independence from Spain) all superimposed on a pair of crossed rifles and a pair of crossed swords ...
— The 2004 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency
... companion did not move. A bird sang in the tree above us and the wind sent a shower of pink petals over the green mound. Then, stooping, he picked a white Castilian rose from a tangle of shrubbery and laid it at the base of the granite shaft. "In memory of the lovely Rafaela," he said softly; ...
— The Lure of San Francisco - A Romance Amid Old Landmarks • Elizabeth Gray Potter and Mabel Thayer Gray
... and jumped overboard, then another died, then another, and I thought that Bill would die too, when down came a shower, and with the help of our sail we filled an empty breaker which we had in the boat. Then we knocked down a bird which came near us, and that gave us a little more strength. Then three flying-fish came aboard, which kept us for three days more, and after that we caught a small shark, but the water came to an end, and we were both so well-nigh ...
— The Mate of the Lily - Notes from Harry Musgrave's Log Book • W. H. G. Kingston
... rejoiced, poor fellow, he's so much better than I expected; and it's all for the best that I find the bird flown, which spares me the vexation of confessing to him the blunder I made in my calculations this morning, which he must have found out ...
— Blackwoods Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 365, March, 1846 • Various
... different in the flood of morning sunshine. Mr. Murray's cheery, inspiriting tones are heard in the hall below, Cecil's bird-like treble, Mr. Haviland's slow but not unmelodious tone, and Pauline's witching mockery. Her father has been teazing her, and when Violet comes down, she stands in the hall, golden crowned and rose-red, slim and tall, and is the embodiment ...
— Floyd Grandon's Honor • Amanda Minnie Douglas
... remembered the car flying up the ascents, swooping down long slopes and skimming like a bird across the levels, that morning when she had ...
— The Power and the Glory • Grace MacGowan Cooke
... is carried away by the charm of his magnificent style with its royal sweep and its supple, coloured, undulating phrase, as stormy as the winds that sweep over virgin forests, as brilliant as the neck of a humming-bird, and as soft as the light of the moon shining through the ...
— Over Strand and Field • Gustave Flaubert
... by the fire, because he could not trust himself to move. Her shoulders, which he had always admired for their line and wonderful whiteness, rose in quick jerks and subsided with a quiver; she shook with the abandonment of a bird ...
— The Education of Eric Lane • Stephen McKenna |
