"Insect" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... kill me for just one little bite; what will you do to yourself now, for the heavy smack you have just given yourself?" "Oh, for that blow I bear no grudge," he replied, "for I never intended myself any harm; but as for you, you contemptible insect, who live by sucking human blood, I'd have borne a good deal more than that for the satisfaction of dashing the ...
— Aesop's Fables • Aesop
... conspicuous. The bubbles were slightly viscid, and in nearly every case there was a small fly pressed into the front end of the balloon, apparently as food for the Empis. In all cases they were dead. The balloon appears to be made while the insect is flying in the air. Those flying highest had the smallest balloons. The bubbles are probably produced by some modification of the anal organs. It is possible that the captured fly serves as a nucleus to begin the balloon on. One case of ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 3 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... at the dinner table he was subjected to annoyance similar to that which teased Uncle Toby—namely, the hovering of a bee about his head. To relieve himself from the tiny tormentor, he laid down his knife and fork, and attempted to beat off the insect with his hands. It soon flew out at the window; but behold! the laird's knife and fork had disappeared. They were searched for all over the table, and under the table; nowhere could they be found; but when their owner ...
— Chronicles of Strathearn • Various
... four Arabs who made a human ladder for a comrade to mount the wall. The man at the top fell. The next mounted, to be shot by Nevill from a watch-tower. The bullet pierced the fellow's leg, which was what Nevill wished, for he, who hated to rob even an insect of its life, aimed now invariably at arms or legs, never at any vital part. "All we want," he thought half guiltily, "is to disable the poor brutes. They must obey the marabout. We've no spite ...
— The Golden Silence • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... birds have been cited in support of the various flying theories that the house fly, as an example has been disregarded. We are prone to overlook the small insect, but it is, nevertheless, a sample which is just as potent to show the efficiency of wing surface as ...
— Aeroplanes • J. S. Zerbe***
... next Descried our woman under breathless noon, Bathing in a clear lane of gliding water Whose banks seem lonely as the path of light Crossing mid ocean south of Capricorn. Her son steals warily after a butterfly And is as hushed with hope to capture it As are the birds with heat. An insect hum Circles the spot as round a cymbal's rim, Long after it has clanged, tingles a throb Which in a dream forgets the parent sound, Oppressed by this protracted and awe-filled pause, She hardly dares to wade the stream and moves ...
— Miscellany of Poetry - 1919 • Various
... have accepted the fact and begun to take an interest in the flight of flies or counting the warder's steps along the passage with particular attention to variations of tread and so on. But as it is, I'm like an insect that's flown into a room of its own accord. I dash against the walls, dash against the windows, flop against the ceiling, do everything on God's earth, in fact, except fly out again. And all the while I'm thinking, like that moth, or that butterfly, or ...
— The Garden Party • Katherine Mansfield
... I remember the night when on seeing the sudden glow of a firefly there flashed on my mind the idea of the ease and naturalness with which, after all, this fleshly body of ours may become immortal and glorious. If an insect like that can transform itself at pleasure into a little star, who can say what latent power may be lodged in the body of a glorified saint? Truly, "it doth not yet appear what we shall be." No; but we have hints of it that may well fill us with ...
— Love's Final Victory • Horatio
... and after a few minutes got up and put on a thin jacket. On deck it was very hot and he felt the warmth of the iron plates through his slippers. In West Africa one puts on slippers as soon as one gets out of bed, for fear of the jigger insect that bores into one's foot. A gentle land breeze blew across the lagoon and the air was hot and damp like steam. Lister smelt river ...
— Lister's Great Adventure • Harold Bindloss
... amount of latent torment there is in boys, ready to come out the moment an object presents itself. It is not exactly cruelty. The child that tears the fly to pieces does not represent to himself the sufferings the insect undergoes; he merely yields to an impulse to disintegrate. So children, even ordinarily good children, are ready to tease any child who simply looks teasable, and so provokes the act. Now the Bruces were not good children, as was natural; and they ...
— Alec Forbes of Howglen • George MacDonald
... Switzerland which is thrust westward between Germany and France there are a lot of hills and mountains which were unfamiliar to me. The flora resembled that of the Vosges—so did the bird and insect life except on the ...
— In Secret • Robert W. Chambers
... wooded to the peak, the lawns And winding glades high up like ways to Heaven, The slender coco's drooping crown of plumes, The lightning flash of insect and of bird, The lustre of the long convolvuluses That coil'd around the stately stems, and ran Ev'n to the limit of the land, the glows And glories of the broad belt of the world, All these he saw; but what he fain had seen He could not see, the ...
— English Critical Essays - Nineteenth Century • Various
... theme. When she found he was an entomologist, and that it was not so much mountains as insects which interested him, she shifted her ground, but treated it with equal felicity. Strange, but nature is never so powerful as in insect life. The white ant can destroy fleets and cities, and the locusts erase a province. And then, how beneficent they are! Man would find it difficult to rival their exploits: the bee, that gives us honey; the worm, that gives us silk; the cochineal, that supplies ...
— Endymion • Benjamin Disraeli
... in the heart of July—meaning thereby that any place is a wilderness which is empty of one's self and one's associates. That she had written by return of post; then, two days later, her mind had caught an impression—a wandering insect that the flimsy web of a spider clutches by chance. He had gone down to Apsley before this, many a time. She knew that he had a lingering fondness for the place which no amount of gluttony of Bohemianism could ...
— Sally Bishop - A Romance • E. Temple Thurston
... fundamental principles of physiology must be understood before the study of Bionomics can begin. We must know the essential nature of the process of respiration before we can appreciate the different modes of respiration in a whale and a fish, an aquatic insect and a crustacean. The more we know of the physiology of reproduction, the better we can understand the sexual and parental habits of different ...
— Hormones and Heredity • J. T. Cunningham
... forgetful of the past, save in brief gleams and flashes,—even they were a comfort now. The world to him was full of happiness; in every tree, and plant, and flower, in every bird, and beast, and tiny insect whom a breath of summer wind laid low upon the ground, he had delight. His delight was hers; and where many a wise son would have made her sorrowful, this poor light-hearted idiot filled her ...
— Barnaby Rudge • Charles Dickens
... however," laughed Dave. "Don't be impatient. Think what a very small insect on shipboard a youngster ...
— Dave Darrin's First Year at Annapolis • H. Irving Hancock
... still given by the Bedouins of Sinai to the sweet gum which exudes from the Tamarix mannifera. It is the result of the puncture of an insect, and occurs chiefly in May. By many it is supposed to be ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... thought possibly by hurrying she could remain unseen and yet warn the girl that a stranger was coming. As she approached the bridge, she caught a sapling and leaned over the water to call Elnora. With her lips parted to speak she hesitated a second to watch a sort of insect that flashed past on the water, when a splash from the man ...
— A Girl Of The Limberlost • Gene Stratton Porter
... foundations of religion; you cut off at one blow the merit of our faith, the comfort of our hope, and the motives of our charity. In denying the immortality of the soul, you degrade human nature, and confound man with the vile and perishable insect. In denying both, you overturn the whole system of religion, whether natural or revealed; and in denying religion, you deprive the poor of the only comfort which supports them under their distresses and afflictions; ...
— Irish Wit and Humor - Anecdote Biography of Swift, Curran, O'Leary and O'Connell • Anonymous
... tosses great branches to and fro; but the Muse was not favourable. A few birds scattered here and there at wide intervals on either side of the valley sang the little broken songs of late autumn; and there was a great stir of insect life in the grass at my feet. The path up to this coign of vantage, where I think I shall make it a habit to ensconce myself a while of a morning, is for a little while common to the peasant and a little clear brooklet. It is pleasant, in the tempered grey daylight of the olive shadows, to see ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 23 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... clung to the dimpling water, there was a flash of a bronze body—a streak of light along the surface of the pool—and two widening circles showed where the master of the hole had leaped for some insect prey. ...
— Hiram The Young Farmer • Burbank L. Todd
... hunter-naturalist was not in Assuncion, but some twenty miles out in the "campo." He rarely visited the capital, except on matters of business. For a business he had; this of somewhat unusual character. It consisted chiefly in the produce of his gun and insect-net. Many a rare specimen of bird and quadruped, butterfly and beetle, captured and preserved by Ludwig Halberger, at this day adorns the public museums of Prussia and other European countries. But for the dispatch and shipment of these he would never have cared to show ...
— Gaspar the Gaucho - A Story of the Gran Chaco • Mayne Reid
... spinning, was endeavoring, as is the fashion of that creature, to swing itself from one beam in the roof to another, for the purpose of fixing the line on which it meant to stretch its web. The insect made the attempt again and again without success; at length Bruce counted that it had tried to carry its point six times, and been as often unable to do so. It came into his-head that he had himself fought just ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 5 • Charles Sylvester
... enemies of both ova and fry is the Dytiscus marginalis, whether this insect be in the larval or adult stage. I think that I should hardly be wrong in going even further and saying that D. marginalis is very dangerous to trout early in their yearling stage. The accompanying illustration shows a larva of Dytiscus which has caught a young trout. This illustration ...
— Amateur Fish Culture • Charles Edward Walker
... as tiny as an insect, and they taught me difficult tricks, to dance on the tight-rope and to perform on the slack-rope.... I was beaten as if I had been a bit of plaster, and I more frequently had a piece of dry bread to gnaw, than a slice of meat. But I remember that one day ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume II (of 8) • Guy de Maupassant
... platform, and faced the roomful of children. "Dear boys and girls," she began, "I have had some papers sent me from Boston, giving some facts about the killing of our birds, and I want to state a few of them to you: You all know that nearly every tree and plant that grows swarms with insect life, and that they couldn't grow if the birds didn't eat the insects that would devour their foliage. All day long, the little beaks of the birds are busy. The dear little rose-breasted gross-beak carefully examines the potato plants, ...
— Beautiful Joe - An Autobiography of a Dog • by Marshall Saunders
... The spring morning broke very beautifully, as it can only after a storm. On the grass hung large pearls, and the leaves of the trees were full of diamonds as the sun shone on them. Everything sang praises to the Creator—every bird, every insect, and fly. The vapor rose like the smoke from a great sacrifice. No wonder then that Palko, leading their expedition, began to sing. Petrik gave a sigh, glanced at the doctor, thinking, "What will he say to that?" Ondrejko joyfully joined him, with his clear ...
— The Three Comrades • Kristina Roy
... only world to which all else in the firmament were obsequious attendants, but a mere insignificant speck among the host of heaven! Man no longer the centre and cynosure of creation, but, as it were, an insect crawling on the surface of this little speck! All this not set down in crabbed Latin in dry folios for a few learned monks, as in Copernicus's time, but promulgated and argued in rich Italian, illustrated by analogy, ...
— Pioneers of Science • Oliver Lodge
... and fierce (like everything else in these parts), and goes down headlong. Run to fetch your hat—and it's night. Wink at the right time of black night—and it's morning. Everything is in extremes. There is an insect here that chirps all day. There is one outside the window now. The chirp is very loud: something like a Brobdingnagian grasshopper. The creature is born to chirp; to progress in chirping; to chirp louder, louder, louder; till it gives one tremendous chirp and bursts itself. That is ...
— The Life of Charles Dickens, Vol. I-III, Complete • John Forster
... poverty of vision which could not see at a glance that fly and insect were one and the same, is, as you say, enough to account for its being the writer's only sonnet (there is one more ...
— Recollections of Dante Gabriel Rossetti - 1883 • T. Hall Caine
... deftly hither and thither, and called together the whole army of his fellows. "Have pity," he cried, "nimble scholars of the Earth, Mother of all things!—have pity upon the wife of Love, and hasten to help her in her perilous effort." Then, one upon the other, the hosts of the insect people hurried together; and they sorted asunder the whole heap of seed, separating every grain after its kind, and so departed quickly ...
— Marius the Epicurean, Volume One • Walter Horatio Pater
... expand, the child, left at liberty to exercise his activities, ought to find in his surroundings something organized in direct relation to his internal organization which is developing itself by natural laws, just as the free insect finds in the form and qualities of flowers a direct correspondence between form and sustenance. The insect is undoubtedly free when, seeking the nectar which nourishes it, it is in reality helping the reproduction of the plant. There is nothing more ...
— Spontaneous Activity in Education • Maria Montessori
... would not have left it—he managed to make the circuit of his prison, which he found rather spacious, and by no means uninhabited; for the walls and floor were covered with fat, black beetles, whole families of which interesting specimens of the insect-world he crunched remorselessly under foot, and massacred at every step; and great, depraved-looking rats, with flashing eyes and sinister-teeth, who made frantic dives and rushes at him, and bit at his jack-boots ...
— The Midnight Queen • May Agnes Fleming
... dull, eternal, fadeless, fruitless clime! Was this the dungeon of my sinning sore— A gentle hell of loneliness, foredoomed For such as I, whose love was yet the core Of all my being? The brown shadow gloomed Persistent, faded, warm. No ripple ran Across the air, no roaming insect boomed. "Alas," I cried, "I am no living man! Better were darkness and the leave to grope Than light that builds its own drear prison! Can This be the folding of ...
— Poetical Works of George MacDonald, Vol. 2 • George MacDonald
... haven't so much to show you there. Of course, it's a dog-gone good thing to get familiar with these diseases and see what you are up against, because all through the history of nut culture, and so forth, one of the basic defects has been the failure to appreciate the importance of insect and disease factors. And we are very much in need of more basic research along those lines, but I agree with Dr. Crane that at present we have a limited amount to show ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Incorporated 39th Annual Report - at Norris, Tenn. September 13-15 1948 • Various
... drum," answered Jim, easily. "Come back here, Tintoretto. Don't you touch that skinny little critter with the shakes. I wouldn't let you eat no such a sugar-coated insect." ...
— Bruvver Jim's Baby • Philip Verrill Mighels
... loaded with grapes. Near the sea-shores, the pine, both black and white, becomes exceedingly common, while the smaller plains and hills are covered with that peculiar species of the prickly pear upon which the cochineal insect feeds. All round the extinguished volcano, and principally in the neighbourhood of the hill Nanawa Ashta jueri e, the locality of our settlement upon the banks of the Buonaventura, the bushes are covered with a very superior quality of the ...
— Monsieur Violet • Frederick Marryat
... the following anecdote by observing that in America nearly the whole of the insect tribe are classed under the general name of bug; the unfortunate cosmopolite known by that name amongst us is almost the only one not included in this term. A lady abruptly addressed me with, "Don't you ...
— Domestic Manners of the Americans • Fanny Trollope
... different parts of the room other manipulators began to report. Every plagued one of those five Ouija boards was calling me by name! I felt my ears grow crimson, purple, maroon. My wife was looking at me as though I were some peculiar insect. The squeak of Ouija boards and the murmur of conversation rose louder and louder, and then I felt my face twitch in the spasm of that idiotic grin. I tried to straighten my wretched features into their usual semblance of ...
— Humorous Ghost Stories • Dorothy Scarborough
... the stalks of the trees, and a vast population of insects filled the air. We find a few stray wings in the Silurian, and a large number of wings and fragments in the Devonian, but it is in the Coal-forest that we find the first great expansion of insect life, with a considerable development of myriapods, spiders, and scorpions. Food was enormously abundant, and the insect at least had no rival in the air, for neither bird nor flying reptile had yet appeared. Hence we find ...
— The Story of Evolution • Joseph McCabe
... lie all day Gray on its rocks of lichen-gray; And, insect-Ariels of the sun, The butterflies make bright its way, Its ...
— Poems • Madison Cawein
... as Vye strained to catch a betraying noise that he was first conscious of what he did not hear. In the plains there had been squeaking, humming, chitterings, the vocalizing of myriad grass dwellers. Here, except for the sighing of the wind and a few insect sounds—nothing. All inhabitants bigger than a Jumalan fly might have long ago been routed ...
— Star Hunter • Andre Alice Norton
... does the author show how the outlaw comes to the Emperor's aid? By comparing him with the chamois, the insect, and the squirrel. This man combines in himself all ...
— Ontario Teachers' Manuals: Literature • Ontario Ministry of Education
... such a view will be to many women. But the mother, through her closer connection with the child, must bear the deeper responsibility for its birth, a responsibility that can be traced back and back to the very lowest forms of life. The insect mother does not fail to place her offspring—the children she will never see—in a position chosen most carefully to ensure their future protection, and to achieve this good frequently she sacrifices her life. Shall the human mother, then, be held guiltless when she shows no forethought ...
— Women's Wild Oats - Essays on the Re-fixing of Moral Standards • C. Gasquoine Hartley
... pretty intimate with many of the owls. The owl I know least is a little Scops owl, kept alone in the insect-house. He has for next-door neighbour a sad old reprobate—Cocky, the big Triton cockatoo—who abuses him horribly. The fact is, they both occupy a recess which once Cocky had all to himself, and now Cocky bullies the intruder up hill and down dale; although ...
— The Strand Magazine, Volume V, Issue 30, June 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... telegram describing storm havoc in the cotton belt of the United States of America. When a curious blight fell upon the coffee plantations of Ceylon, a six-hundred-word cablegram describing the habits and characteristics of the minute insect which caused the blight reached Saul Arthur Mann at two o'clock in the afternoon, and by three o'clock the price of ...
— The Man Who Knew • Edgar Wallace
... know!" said the fair girl, brightening. "You, who cannot bear the sight of pain in even an insect, or any disagreeable sound, or unpleasant smell even, will not long cause pain ...
— The Return of the Native • Thomas Hardy
... those left were men such as the Duke of Wellington praised when he said, "He could take his Peninsular Army anywhere and do anything with it." It is true that when Wellington's veterans did get back to barracks their bodies had to have insect lotion and their clothing had to be burnt, but they were all men the Empire could be ...
— A Soldier's Life - Being the Personal Reminiscences of Edwin G. Rundle • Edwin G. Rundle
... Kaempfer describes two kinds by the names of angurek warna and katong'ging; the first of which I apprehend to be the anggrek bunga putri (Angraecum scriptum, R.) and the other the anggrek kasturi (Angraecum moschatum, R.) or scorpion-flower, from its resembling that insect, as the former does the butterfly. The musky scent resides at the extremity of ...
— The History of Sumatra - Containing An Account Of The Government, Laws, Customs And - Manners Of The Native Inhabitants • William Marsden
... not tell his friend that a question of so great magnitude to him had been decided by the last sting which he had received from an insect so contemptible as Mr. Bonteen, but he expressed the feeling as well as he knew how to express it. "Oh, I shall be with you. I know what you are going to say, and I know how good you are. But I could not stand it. Men are beginning already to say things which almost make me get ...
— Phineas Finn - The Irish Member • Anthony Trollope
... ripening—the blossom. A small fly establishes itself in the interior of the wild fig, escaping in great numbers when the fruit is ripe. This happens before the ripening of the improved fig, and the fly is supposed to carry the wild pollen to the flowers of the latter. A single insect, say the Kabyles, will perfect ninety-nine figs, the hundredth becoming its tomb. Some varieties of figs do not need caprification, but they are said to be unsuitable for ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, October, 1877, Vol. XX. No. 118 • Various
... their cultivation. Many Apiarians, and men of the highest literary attainments, as well as experience, have nearly exhausted their patience, in examining the peculiar nature and habits of this insect; and have tried various experiments to devise some means of preventing its depredations. But, after all that has been done, the spoiler moves onward with little molestation, and very few of our citizens are willing to engage in the enterprize of cultivating this most useful and ...
— A Manual or an Easy Method of Managing Bees • John M. Weeks
... calls of hunger, and Silas, in his solitude, had to provide his own breakfast, dinner, and supper, to fetch his own water from the well, and put his own kettle on the fire; and all these immediate promptings helped to reduce his life to the unquestioning activity of a spinning insect. He hated the thought of the past; there was nothing that called out his love and fellowship towards the strangers he had come amongst; and the future was all dark, for there was no Unseen Love that cared ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol IV. • Editors: Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton
... the Rishi, the king, with his ministers, felt the desire of eating those fruits. The particular fruit, within which Takshaka had entered, was taken by the king himself for eating. And when he was eating it, there appeared, O Saunaka, an ugly insect out of it, of shape scarcely discernible, of eyes black, and of coppery colour. And that foremost of kings, taking that insect, addressed his councillors, saying, 'The sun is setting; today I have no more tear from poison. Therefore, let ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 1 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... no possibility now of regular schooling. Nature hasn't provided as providently for the human grub as for the insect one. A human grub isn't born upon a food-plant that is a house as well, nor is nature his tailor and his shoemaker. Peter wasn't blood kin to anybody in Riverton, so there was no home open to him. He was deeply sensible ...
— The Purple Heights • Marie Conway Oemler
... What could it be? Scavengers? The web gives us a complete census on everything inside it. The only animals inside the ring are more wart-hogs and, despite their appearance, they aren't carnivorous. Strictly grass-eaters. Besides, no animal, no insect, no process of decay could completely consume animals without a trace. There are no bones, no ...
— The Planet with No Nightmare • Jim Harmon
... the forest and the river, like millions of nothings flowing and flowing on. No birds here, no creatures hopping about, but if I turn up a stone, I may find some insect under it. ...
— Wanderers • Knut Hamsun
... balustrade, became filtered and strained to delicate streaks and bars of light which crossed and recrossed their cloth, their hands, their faces—what was noisy below was here no more than a soft insect bustle, a ...
— The Happy Foreigner • Enid Bagnold
... in the constellation Taurus in April, when the warmth of his rays begins to impart new life and activity to the insect world after their long ...
— The Astronomy of Milton's 'Paradise Lost' • Thomas Orchard
... a common snake, found all over the United States east of the Rocky Mountains. It is small in size, about a foot long and slender, and hides under stones, where it probably feeds on the worms and forms of insect life that live ...
— Pathfinder - or, The Missing Tenderfoot • Alan Douglas
... leopards darted among the trees. But the country—whether forest, mud-flat, or prairie—was always damp and feverish: a wet land steaming under a burning sun and humming with mosquitoes and all kinds of insect life. ...
— The River War • Winston S. Churchill
... "On the Fertilisation of British Orchids by Insect Agency," in the "Entomologist's Weekly Intelligencer" viii., and "Gardeners' Chronicle," June 9th, 1860, should be inserted ...
— More Letters of Charles Darwin - Volume I (of II) • Charles Darwin
... and religion stands apart in one important respect from all, or nearly all, the ordinary scientific studies. A man can understand astronomy only by being an astronomer; he can understand entomology only by being an entomologist (or, perhaps, an insect); but he can understand a great deal of anthropology merely by being a man. He is himself the animal which he studies. Hence arises the fact which strikes the eye everywhere in the records of ethnology and folk-lore—the fact that the same frigid and detached spirit which leads to success ...
— Heretics • Gilbert K. Chesterton
... The insect pests of Honduras, as in all tropical countries, are annoying and dangerous. Therefore it was imperative to sleep ...
— Tom Swift in the Land of Wonders - or, The Underground Search for the Idol of Gold • Victor Appleton
... cowls and capes, and midmost glimmers one Like tarnished gold, and what they say is doubt, And what they think is fear, and what suspends The breath in them is not the plaster-patch Time disengages from the painted wall Where Rafael moulderingly bids adieu, Nor tick of the insect turning tapestry To dust, which a queen's finger traced of old; But some word, resonant, redoubtable, Of who once felt upon his head a hand Whereof the head now ...
— An Introduction to the Study of Browning • Arthur Symons
... more reserved and less frivolous, keep their glamour and prestige for a much longer time. For the rest, the latter seem to me to rejoice without being vain in their advantages. And at bottom, what should any insect ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... sent home a portrait on which he was engaged. It was one of his best pictures; and the person for whom it was painted, lost for a while in admiration of its beauty, noticed at last that a fly, which had settled upon the forehead, remained there motionless. He stepped up to brush the insect away, and found that it was a part of the picture. This story has, since Holbein's time, been told of many painters,—among others, of Benjamin West. Such a piece of mere imitation should have added nothing to the reputation of a painter of Holbein's powers; but ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, Issue 17, March, 1859 • Various
... effective aids to the farmer and the florist in checking the increase of noxious insects that destroy the fruits of labor. A single pair will destroy hundreds of worms, grubs, moths or beetles in a single day; and when they are present in sufficient numbers no insect or creeping thing escapes their sharp little eyes or their exceeding quickness of motion. As they multiply rapidly, there is no reason why every one of our fruit trees, every shrub and vine, should not have its nest of birdlings. This would be the solution of the dreadful curculio ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 20, August 1877 • Various
... at this fearful moment? Watch the hardy mountaineer! He binds his crampons on his feet,—he is making his perilous way towards his failing Emperor;—now bounding like a hunted chamois; now creeping like an insect; now clinging like a root of ivy; now dropping like a squirrel:—he reaches the fainting monarch just as he relaxes his grasp on the jutting rock. Courage, Kaiser!—there is a hunter's hand for thee, ...
— The Ontario Readers: Fourth Book • Various
... faculty of his being was strained and concentrated in the one sense of hearing; sounds so faint as to be imperceptible reverberated in his ears like the crash of thunder; the plash of a distant waterfall, the rustling of a leaf, the movement of an insect in the grass, were like the booming of artillery. Was that the tramp of cavalry, the deep rumbling of gun-carriages driven at speed, that he heard down there to the right? And there on his left, what was that? was it not the sound of stealthy whispers, ...
— The Downfall • Emile Zola
... the hour when he stood near the corpse of his daughter, joined with the silent smoke of the censer, which rose like light mist in the air. How petty he appeared at that juncture, crushed, as it were, by some giant hand—not a demi-god in any sense, or a Titan, but rather an insect, pushing into some narrow cranny to hide from a bird of prey. Kranitski had seen Darvid then, for, on hearing of the misfortune, no power on earth or in hell could have stopped him from running, from flying to the house where it ...
— The Argonauts • Eliza Orzeszko (AKA Orzeszkowa)
... His care as if beside Nor man nor angel lived in Heaven or earth; Thus sunbeams pour alike their glorious tide, To light up worlds, or wake an insect's mirth." ...
— When the Holy Ghost is Come • Col. S. L. Brengle
... contrivances are less perfect. Can we consider the sting of the wasp or of the bee as perfect, which, when used against many attacking animals, cannot be withdrawn, owing to the backward serratures, and so inevitably causes the death of the insect by tearing ...
— Evolution and Ethics and Other Essays • Thomas H. Huxley
... Willow trees planted at the water's edge and kept about five to six feet high form admirable protection from bad weather and winged vermin, and also give welcome shelter from the heat of the sun, whilst they undoubtedly add to the amount of insect life in the run. ...
— Wild Ducks - How to Rear and Shoot Them • W. Coape Oates
... Redhand and the Indian, they wandered about in sympathetic silence, broken ever and anon by the old trapper passing a remark on some interesting peculiarity of a leaf, an insect, or a flower. It has been said, that as men grow older they find deeper pleasure in the contemplation of the minute things of nature, and are less desirous than they were wont to expatiate on the striking and the grand. What truth there is in the remark we cannot tell; but, ...
— The Wild Man of the West - A Tale of the Rocky Mountains • R.M. Ballantyne
... clear evening sky. I believe its very peculiar note is uttered sitting, and never on the wing. I have seen it on a stack of turf with its throat nearly touching the turf, and its tail elevated, and have heard it in this situation utter its call, which resembles the birr of the mole-cricket, an insect very abundant in this neighbourhood. I have almost been induced to think this noise serves as a decoy to the male mole-cricket, this being occasionally found in the craw of these birds when shot. Those who may not be acquainted with the cry of the bird ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 20, - Issue 566, September 15, 1832 • Various
... earth's narrow limits, how vast the work of Providence! How soon is the mind lost in contemplating it! How great that Being whose hand paints every flower, and shapes every leaf; who forms every bud on every tree; who feeds each crawling worm with a parent's care, and watches like a mother over the insect that sleeps away the night in the bosom of a flower; who throws open the golden gates of day, and draws around a sleeping world the dusky curtains of the night; who measures out the drops of every shower, the whirling snowflakes, and the sands of man's eventful life; who determines ...
— Life and Literature - Over two thousand extracts from ancient and modern writers, - and classified in alphabetical order • J. Purver Richardson
... gossamer. So, too, doth spread, To summer airs, his silken gleaming thread, The water-spider fleet, free sailor true That in the sunshine floats, beneath the blue, Glad skies. And through the deep, all sparkling, slip A thousand insect-swarms, that, rippling, dip Amid the merry waves. Bright voyagers That roam the sultry seas! Look, the wind stirs Our creaking sails! Thy pinnace flying o'er The ocean's swell, fast leaves the fading shore; Yet faster still the Nautilus sails by, And darts the spider ...
— Lilith - The Legend of the First Woman • Ada Langworthy Collier
... persevering a servant, he would entrust Sen with a mission of exceptional importance, which would certainly tend greatly to his remunerative benefit. In the district of Yun, in the north-western part of the Province, said the crafty and treacherous King-y-Yang, a particular kind of insect was greatly esteemed on account of the beneficent influence which it exercised over the rice plants, causing them to mature earlier, and to attain a greater size than ever happened in its absence. In recent years this creature had rarely been seen in the ...
— The Wallet of Kai Lung • Ernest Bramah
... as for men. They ought not to be fed with stale or bad corn, but of the best, and now and then with a little buck-wheat; with cabbage, mangold-wurzel leaves, and parsley, which should be chopped fine. Where they are likely to be stinted for insect food, small pieces of meat chopped up should occasionally be ...
— The Book of Sports: - Containing Out-door Sports, Amusements and Recreations, - Including Gymnastics, Gardening & Carpentering • William Martin
... and all. The Burgomaster was heartily glad to see the poor devil get it. It was the first time in the principality of Haslau that the tears of a school-master and teacher-of-the-church had been metamorphosed, not like those of the Heliades into light amber, which incased an insect, but like those of the goddess Freya, into gold. Glanz congratulated Flachs, and gayly drew his attention to the fact that perhaps he, Glanz, had helped to move him. The rest drew aside, by their separation accentuating ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. IV • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... sweet disdain on all, Who listens less to Collins than St. Paul. Atheists have been but rare; since nature's birth, Till now, she-atheists ne'er appear'd on earth. Ye men of deep researches, say, whence springs This daring character, in timorous things? Who start at feathers, from an insect fly, A match for nothing—but the Deity. But, not to wrong the fair, the muse must own In this pursuit they court not fame alone; But join to that a more substantial view, "From thinking free, to be free agents too." They strive ...
— The Poetical Works of Edward Young, Volume 2 • Edward Young
... the unwelcome note That stays them from the quarry's bursting throat?— Famine and Pestilence and Earthquake dire, Torrent and Tempest, Lightning, Frost and Fire, The soulless Tiger and the mindless Snake, The noxious Insect from the stagnant lake (Automaton malevolences wrought Out of the substance of Creative Thought)— These from their immemorial prey restrained, Their fury baffled and their ...
— Shapes of Clay • Ambrose Bierce
... The insect can be divided, because it has limbs with which to move; and an intelligence higher than man can doubtless see emanations from those particles of light. But a monad is indivisible! Think of each cubic inch of this great earth containing a million grains of sand, and those countless ...
— Town and Country, or, Life at Home and Abroad • John S. Adams
... by inch, the enormous elevator, that would crush out Locke's life as though he were an insect, continued to descend. ...
— The Master Mystery • Arthur B. Reeve and John W. Grey
... cathedral, the most interesting building in Sebenico is the insect-powder factory. It is a large factory and does a thriving business, the need for its product being Balkan-wide. If, for upward of five months, you had fought nightly engagements with the cimex lectularius, you would understand ...
— The New Frontiers of Freedom from the Alps to the AEgean • Edward Alexander Powell
... the beautiful environs of Cambridge he used to take those long walks which furnished him with such a fund of accurate observation of the sights and sounds of the natural world. No man has a keener eye for a bird than he, nor a quicker ear to distinguish between their songs; and no unusual sound of insect life escapes his scrutiny,—he is keenly alert to know what is going on under his feet as well as over his head. The most modest flower does not escape his eye, nor any peculiarly marked leaf, nor any rich bed of leafy mould. He sees everything with his poet's ...
— Home Life of Great Authors • Hattie Tyng Griswold
... the chase, however, for the lights were continually moving and frequently went out. While groping in the growing darkness, they came upon a brown object about the size of a small dog and close to the ground. It flew off with a humming insect sound, and as it did so it showed the brilliant phosphorescent glow they ...
— A Journey in Other Worlds - A Romance of the Future • John Jacob Astor
... had become excited, Ned Hinkley was not impatient. With a cautious hand he conducted the fly down the stream with the flickering, fidgety motion which the real insect would have employed. The keen-nosed trout turned with the movements of the fly, but philosophically kept aloof. Now he might be seen to sink, now to rise, now he glided close under the rock where the angler reclined, and, even in the ...
— Charlemont • W. Gilmore Simms
... shoved off and settled to the oars. The river was low, and sluggish from the long drought with consequently easy passage to the opposite bank. It took but a short five minutes to reach the jetty, crawling like some gigantic, damaged, many-legged insect out ...
— Deadham Hard • Lucas Malet
... shower-bath; well, some of you rage at him from the other side of the rock, while I climb up the rope-ladder and close with him! Then some of you prehistoric pachyderms ascend, and we'll chuck that pestersome insect into ...
— T. Haviland Hicks Senior • J. Raymond Elderdice
... taking some bearings, the party was suddenly surprised, and, beating a hasty retreat, the theodolite stand and Cunningham's insect net were left behind, and immediately ...
— The History of Australian Exploration from 1788 to 1888 • Ernest Favenc
... wondered how Mrs. Marston did it. No one ever saw her hurried or busy, yet the proofs of her industry were here. She worked like the coral insect, in the dark, as it were, of instinct unlit by intellect, and, like the coral insect, she raised a monumental structure that ...
— Gone to Earth • Mary Webb
... insect, obeying the blind instinct of its nature, adds particle to particle, and builds a house for itself at the same time that it helps to construct a continent; so we, obeying the voice of God, in every little duty, performed not grudgingly, but with ...
— The Elements of Character • Mary G. Chandler
... regarded as actually ornamental, and even attractive. If with her angles she will also renounce some hundreds of other equally harassing absurdities of attire, she may consider her position assured, and her claim to masculine toleration reasonably well grounded. A Wingless Insect. ...
— The Fiend's Delight • Dod Grile
... as a rule, but I cannot help thinking that my wholesale massacre of this obnoxious insect has something to do with my misfortunes by ...
— Lazy Thoughts of a Lazy Girl - Sister of that "Idle Fellow." • Jenny Wren
... "Our insect friends the aphides, or plant-lice, are very fond of the willow," continued Miss Harson, "and in hot, dry weather great masses of them gather on the leaves and drop a sugary juice, which the country-people call 'honey-dew,' ...
— Among the Trees at Elmridge • Ella Rodman Church
... And the plants had repaid her with a riot of blossoms. A breeze set the gray moss to swaying from the branches of the oak. And a green grasshopper crossed the terrace in four great leaps, almost scraping Satan's ear in a fashion which might easily have been fatal to the insect. Val sighed and slipped down lower in his chair. ...
— Ralestone Luck • Andre Norton
... the procession was formed of animals familiar to everybody, and among them were cages of monkeys (concerning whose educational development Cosmo Versal had theories of his own) and a large variety of birds, together with boxes of insect ...
— The Second Deluge • Garrett P. Serviss
... nature from the subjection of time and space; he is no longer a "puny insect shivering at a breeze"; he is the glory of creation, formed to occupy all time and all extent; bounded, during his residence upon earth, only to the boundaries of the world, and destined to life and immortality in brighter regions, when ...
— Orations • John Quincy Adams
... Francos: did not God design That e'en the insect should his life enjoy? Indeed, his joyous song of gratitude Doth only cease that he may puncture make To meet requirements which God hath ordained. Hence it were well to nature's laws obey, For e'en this insect, as it ...
— 'A Comedy of Errors' in Seven Acts • Spokeshave (AKA Old Fogy)
... cloak which covered up her convent uniform, she looked, as compared with the gay girls around her, like a poor sombre night-moth, dazzled by the light, in company with other glittering creatures of the insect race, fluttering with graceful movements, transparent wings and ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... dipping in a water solution of a reliable coal tar disinfectant. This should not be practised during cold weather, as the fleece does not dry out. Insect powder may be dusted into the fleece when it is impossible to ...
— Common Diseases of Farm Animals • R. A. Craig, D. V. M.
... made some years ago by sending a malarial mosquito by mail from Italy to England, where an enthusiast allowed himself to be bitten by the insect. He had had no trace of malaria before, but a week after the mosquito's bite he came down with the disease. It has also been noted that in such parts of the country as Greenland and Alaska, where mosquitoes are as thick as in the far-famed ...
— Rural Hygiene • Henry N. Ogden
... no less in love than she. I frequently encountered them walking through the unfrequented by-paths of the Retiro, at a respectable distance from her mother, who lingered opportunely to examine the first opening buds of flowers or some curious insect. Mothers, at this critical period of courtship, are under an obligation to be admirers of the works of nature. The young pair of turtle-doves would pause when they caught sight of me and greet me blushingly. I cannot conceal from you that, however much I felt the loss to art, I was ...
— First Love (Little Blue Book #1195) - And Other Fascinating Stories of Spanish Life • Various
... dignified proceeding had lost her the walk. They were all gone. The house was very still, early summer sweetness was drifting through wide-opened windows and doors; the long day was slowly declining. In the woods close to the door a really summery hum of insect life was stirring. Hong, in dull minor gutturals, jabbered somewhere in the far distance to a friend. Anne peeped into the deserted living room, softened through all its pleasant shabbiness into real beauty by the shafts of sunset red that came in through the casement windows; and was deliberating ...
— Sisters • Kathleen Norris
... honey, bee-like buzzing here and there impatiently from a knowledge of what is to be aimed at; but let us open our leaves like a flower and be passive and receptive—budding patiently under the eye of Apollo and taking hints from every noble insect that favours us with a visit—sap will be given us for meat and dew for ...
— The Enjoyment of Art • Carleton Noyes
... live insect or fly enters the ear a number of safe methods may be developed. If the ear is immediately turned to a bright light the insect may come out of its own accord. It may be floated out with salt water, or it may be smothered with ...
— The Eugenic Marriage, Volume IV. (of IV.) - A Personal Guide to the New Science of Better Living and Better Babies • Grant Hague
... selection, though an imperfect one, from the catalogue of the flying leaves and small cheap journals, political and satirical, that sprung into existence after the revolution, mostly in Berlin and Vienna; not more than three or four of them now exist. The insect world was a favorite source of names for the satirist, the sting of whose production was frequently only in the title: every week produced the Hornet, the Wasp, the Gadfly, and their plurals, the Wasps ...
— International Weekly Miscellany Vol. I. No. 3, July 15, 1850 • Various
... Anthony who preached to the fishes, of St. Raymond who put up his cowl and floated from Spain to Africa like a nautilus, of St. Nicolas who raised three boys from the dead after they had been killed and cut up and salted in a tub by a cruel man that wanted to eat them, and of that strange insect called a Praying Mantis which alighted upon St. Francis' sleeve and sang the Nunc ...
— The Altar Steps • Compton MacKenzie
... swarmed with the winged pests, and their nocturnal assaults are proverbial for their pertinacity and severity. Their thirst for blood overcomes every other instinct, and pennyroyal often ceases to have any effect. Our Adirondack guide, in narrating his experience with these insect vampires, even says that on a certain night, becoming exasperated at their indomitable perseverance, and, getting tired of the monotonous occupation of spreading ointment, he arose, lit his candle, and drove ...
— Camp Life in the Woods and the Tricks of Trapping and Trap Making • William Hamilton Gibson
... from the American press is Episodes of Insect Life, by ACHETA DOMESTICA, just reprinted by J. S. Redfield. The natural history and habits of insects of every class are delineated by a close observer with remarkable minuteness, and in a style of unusual felicity; and the peculiar illustrations of the book are more spirited and highly ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 2, May, 1851 • Various
... insect meshed in the web in which thou hast entangled limbs and wings! Thou hast not only inhaled the elixir, thou hast conjured the spectre; of all the tribes of the space, no foe is so malignant to man,—and thou hast lifted the veil from ...
— Zanoni • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... the individual like a thread passing through a gem. As a thread, again, may lie within gold or pearl or a coral or any object made of earth, even so one's soul, in consequence of one's own acts, may live within a cow, a horse, a man, an elephant, or any other animal, or within a worm or an insect. The good deeds an individual performs in a particular body produce rewards that the individual enjoys in that particular body. A soil, apparently drenched with one particular kind of liquid, supplies to each different kind of herb or plant that grows on it the sort ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 3 - Books 8, 9, 10, 11 and 12 • Unknown
... pasture or common. There is in this case a risk of wireworm and black bot; but if the turf is provided in good time and is laid up in the yard ready for use, it will be searched by the small birds and pretty well cleansed of the insect larvas that may have lurked in it when first removed. Lay the turves out in a frame, grass side downwards, and give them a soaking with water in which a very small quantity of salt has been dissolved. This will cause ...
— The Culture of Vegetables and Flowers From Seeds and Roots, 16th Edition • Sutton and Sons
... cheapest. But there are a long centerpiece of hemstitched crash and crash doilies, and there are "real" napkins, and at each plate a birch bark napkin ring with a number on it. Mrs. Worldly looks at her napkin ring as though it were an insect. One or two of the others who have not been there before, ...
— Etiquette • Emily Post
... curious and half disgusted, I held at arm's length on a bit of fennel-stalk, and dropped in an old ribbon-box Aunt Susan provided for the purpose, the great green worm that, after various stages of insect life, turned into just such a beautiful creature as you see flying about among the flowers. Since then I ...
— Miss Elliot's Girls • Mrs Mary Spring Corning
... the beach and lies a shapeless mass of gelatinous substance on the sand, or is seen floating on the surface of the water. The name gives no idea of the animal as it exists in full life and activity. When we speak of a Bird or an Insect, the mere name calls up at once a characteristic image of the thing; but the name of Jelly-Fish, or Sun-Fish, or Sea-Blubber, as the larger Acalephs are also called, suggests to most persons a vague idea of ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 10, Number 59, September, 1862 • Various
... when another tore through the apples on the pommel. And he winced and ducked even lower when a third bullet, fired low, struck a stone between his horse's legs and ricochetted off through the air, buzzing and humming like some incredible insect. ...
— The Night-Born • Jack London
... their worship, a core of seeds and fringe of petals representing their best effort to mimic the flaming disc and far-flung corona of the sun. Man seeks less ardently, and so more ineffectively in his will and imagination to image God. In the reverent study of insect and animal life we gain some hint of what we have been and what we may become—something corresponding to the grub, a burrowing thing; to the caterpillar, a crawling thing; and finally to the ...
— Architecture and Democracy • Claude Fayette Bragdon
... it, sir," replied the Woggle-Bug, and drawing a book from its pocket the strange insect turned its back on the company and sat down in a corner ...
— Dorothy and the Wizard in Oz • L. Frank Baum.
... the entire winter. In the summer there are two varieties of these insects. The night-musquito is similar to the insect which disturbs our slumbers in Northern latitudes. The day-musquito relieves his comrade at sunrise and remains on duty till sunset. He has no song, but his bite is none the less severe. He disappears at the approach of winter, but his tuneful brother remains. ...
— Camp-Fire and Cotton-Field • Thomas W. Knox
... possible that future study may tell man enough about insects to enable him to eradicate them. This, however, is more than can be reasonably expected, for the more we cultivate the earth the better we make conditions for these enemies. The insect thrives on the work of man. And having made conditions ideal for the insect, with great expanses of cultivated food fitted to his needs, it is an optimist who can believe that at the same time we can make other conditions which will be so unfavorable ...
— Astounding Stories, April, 1931 • Various
... bit, mouth, body—everything was as it should be. The saddle and saddle-cloth were innocent of bur or sticker; the back was smooth and unbroken. They searched for sign of snake-bite and sting of fly or insect, but ...
— Moon-Face and Other Stories • Jack London
... eggs, she seems to take great care of her little ones, and defends them from their many enemies by hiding them out of sight in the singular manner I have just told you. This love of offspring, my dear child, has been wisely given to all mothers, from the human mother down to the very lowest of the insect tribe. The fiercest beast of prey loves its young, and provides food and shelter for them; forgetting its savage nature to play with and caress them. Even the spider, which is a disagreeable insect, fierce and unloving to ...
— In The Forest • Catharine Parr Traill
... this favourite article of elegance, or the manner in which it was produced, By some, silk was supposed to be a fine down adhering to the leaves of trees or flowers; others imagined it to be a delicate species of wool or cotton; and even those who had learned that it was the work of an insect, show by their description that they had no distinct idea of the manner in which it was formed. A circumstance concerning the traffic of silk among the Romans merits observation. Contrary to what usually takes place in the operations of trade, the more general use ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, - Volume 12, No. 329, Saturday, August 30, 1828 • Various
... when she was at her worst, all the materiality—if there be such a word—which circumstances and innate tendency had woven about her as a garment, seemed to melt away, and she became aware of something vast in which she floated like an insect in the atmosphere—some surrounding sea which she ...
— Love Eternal • H. Rider Haggard
... put down her needlework. "Miss," she whispered with a smile, "you came upon me so unawares that you gave me quite a start! You don't know, Miss, that though there be no flies or mosquitoes there is, no one would believe it, a kind of small insect, which penetrates through the holes of this gauze; it is scarcely to be detected, but when one is asleep, it ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book II • Cao Xueqin
... little piece of wood Mr. Spikky Sparrow stood: Mrs. Sparrow sate close by, A-making of an insect-pie For her little children five, In the nest and all alive; Singing with a cheerful smile, To amuse them all the while, "Twikky wikky wikky wee, Wikky bikky ...
— Nonsense Books • Edward Lear
... of some irritable insect it positively trembled. Here was that woman moving—actually going to get up—confound her! He struck the canvas a hasty violet-black dab. For the landscape needed it. It was too pale—greys flowing into lavenders, and one star or a white gull suspended just so—too pale as usual. ...
— Jacob's Room • Virginia Woolf
... mountains, is the multitudinous murmur of little lives, awakened by the darkness, exaggerated and intensified by the stillness of the air and the great dark: but here and now the silence seemed unbroken even by the turn of a leaf, the movement of a twig, the note of night bird or insect. I could hear the blood beat through my veins; and the crushing of the grass under our feet as we advanced with hesitating steps sounded like the ...
— Black Spirits and White - A Book of Ghost Stories • Ralph Adams Cram
... "this will make you believe me somewhat your friend. Let me put it on that finger. See, the swelling goes down. While you wear this, no insect can ever trouble you. Had you been ugly with me, I should not have given you this. But you can have your choice between it and your own blue ring. Which ...
— The Princess Idleways - A Fairy Story • Mrs. W. J. Hays
... could thereafter only listen, breathless, straining my senses to catch some natural sound, however faint. Far away in the dim distance, in some blue pasture, a cow was lowing, and the recurring sound passed me like the humming flight of an insect, then fainter still, like an imagined sound, until it ceased. A withered leaf fell from the tree-top; I heard it fluttering downwards, touching other leaves in its fall until the silent grass received it. Then, as I listened for another leaf, suddenly from overhead came the brief gushing ...
— A Crystal Age • W. H. Hudson
... have watched one of those bird-men out of sight I come back to earth with an odd feeling of being merely a crawling insect. Anne," he said, turning to his wife, "do you remember the first time I took you for a buggy ride in Avonlea—that night we went to the Carmody concert, the first fall you taught in Avonlea? I had out little black mare with the white star on her forehead, and a ...
— Rilla of Ingleside • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... present we have to do. The cocoons to be used for reeling, i.e., all but those which are reserved for reproduction, are in the first place "stifled," that is to say, they are put into a steam or other oven and the insect is killed. The cocoons are then ready for reeling, but those not to be used at once are allowed to dry. In this process, which is carried on for about two months, they lose about two-thirds of their weight, representing the water ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 620, November 19,1887 • Various
... of nations! earth Thy footstool, heaven Thy throne! Thine the greatness, power, and glory, Thine the kingdom, Lord, alone! Life and death are in Thy keeping, and Thy will ordaineth all: From the armies of Thy heavens to an unseen insect's fall. ...
— Quiet Talks on the Crowned Christ of Revelation • S. D. Gordon
... ominous text, Their foot shall slide in due time. "The God that holds you over the pit of hell" runs an oft-quoted passage from this powerful denunciation of the wrath to come, "much as one holds a spider or some loathsome insect over the fire, abhors you, and is dreadfully provoked.... You are ten thousand times more abominable in his eyes than the most hateful venomous serpent is in ours.... You hang by a slender thread, with the flames of divine wrath flashing about it.... If you cry ...
— Brief History of English and American Literature • Henry A. Beers
... microcosm; rudiment; vanishing point; thinness &c 203. dwarf, pygmy, pigmy^, Liliputian, chit, pigwidgeon^, urchin, elf; atomy^, dandiprat^; doll, puppet; Tom Thumb, Hop-o'-my-thumb^; manikin, mannikin; homunculus, dapperling^, cock-sparrow. animalcule, monad, mite, insect, emmet^, fly, midge, gnat, shrimp, minnow, worm, maggot, entozoon^; bacteria; infusoria^; microzoa [Micro.]; phytozoaria^; microbe; grub; tit, tomtit, runt, mouse, small fry; millet seed, mustard seed; barleycorn; pebble, grain of sand; molehill, button, bubble. ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... and a general smell of dampness were the abiding peculiarities of the apartment. The eyes of the owner had become possessed of a microscopic power of discovering the minutest speck that might have been envied by any scientific observer of insect life. ...
— Little Tora, The Swedish Schoolmistress and Other Stories • Mrs. Woods Baker
... one! Illustrious what we name space, sphere of unnumber'd spirits, Illustrious the mystery of motion in all beings, even the tiniest insect, Illustrious the attribute of speech, the senses, the body, Illustrious the passing light—illustrious the pale reflection on the new moon in the western sky, Illustrious whatever I see or hear or ...
— Leaves of Grass • Walt Whitman
... agricultural operations and could not be placated until a shrine was built in its honour; that in the time of the Emperor Kogyoku, the people of the eastern provinces devoted themselves to the worship of an insect resembling a silkworm, which they regarded as a manifestation of the Kami of the Moon; that the Emperor Keiko (A.D. 71-130) declared a huge tree to be sacred; that in the days of the Empress Suiko (A.D. 593-628), religious rites were performed before cutting down a tree supposed to ...
— A History of the Japanese People - From the Earliest Times to the End of the Meiji Era • Frank Brinkley and Dairoku Kikuchi
... and I study it alive; you turn it into an object of horror and pity, whereas I cause it to be loved; you labour in a torture-chamber and dissecting-room, I make my observations under the blue sky, to the song of the Cicadae (The Cicada Cigale, an insect akin to the Grasshopper and found more particularly in the south of France.—Translator's Note.); you subject cell and protoplasm to chemical tests, I study instinct in its loftiest manifestations; you pry into death, I pry into life. And why should I not complete my thought: the boars ...
— The Wonders of Instinct • J. H. Fabre |
