"Minnow" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... a line down straight in a pasture through snow and through ice, and pull up a bright, slippery, dumb, subterranean silver or golden fish! It is curious, also, to reflect how they make one family, from the largest to the smallest. The least minnow that lies on the ice as bait for pickerel, looks like a huge sea-fish cast up on the shore. In the waters of this town there are about a dozen distinct species, though the inexperienced ...
— A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers • Henry David Thoreau
... for prey the Merrimac came back next morning. The captain expected an easy victory, but to his surprise he found this queer little cheesebox between him and his victims. He would soon do for the impertinent little minnow, he thought, and he opened fire. But his shells might have been peas for all the effect they had, and the Monitor steamed on unhurt, until she was close to ...
— This Country Of Ours • H. E. Marshall Author: Henrietta Elizabeth Marshall
... six inches of water, on the very edge of the ford road, great tails and back-fins are showing above the surface, and swirling suddenly among the tufts of grass, sure sign that the large fish are picking up a minnow-breakfast at the same time that they warm their backs, and do not mean to look at a fly for many ...
— Prose Idylls • Charles Kingsley
... became fast and furious, for there were plenty of fish, and the conditions seemed just right for them to jump at every sort of lure, from an artificial fly to a copy of an insect, or a phantom minnow such as Jimmy usually patronized, he not being equal to handling a fly ...
— Boy Scouts on Hudson Bay - The Disappearing Fleet • G. Harvey Ralphson
... enclosed the dragon of Solomon. The phial is microscopic, the dragon immense. A formidable condensation, awaiting the gigantic hour of dilation! Ennui consoled by the premeditation of explosion! The prisoner is larger than the prison. A latent giant! how wonderful! A minnow in which is contained a hydra. To be this fearful magical box, to contain within him a leviathan, is to the dwarf both a torture ...
— The Man Who Laughs • Victor Hugo
... head would be filled with the birds that came thither to listen, the thickets around her would be crowded with beasts, and the waters rolling beside her would be alive with fishes, all attracted by the sweet sounds. From the minnow to the porpoise, from the wren to the eagle, from the snail to the lobster, from the mouse to the mole—all hastened to the spot to listen to the charming songs of ...
— Childhood's Favorites and Fairy Stories - The Young Folks Treasury, Volume 1 • Various
... minnow's waves that rock The cradled lily leaves. From a far field some farmer's song, Singing among his sheaves, Comes mellow to you where you sit, Each man with boatman's poise, There, in the shimmering water ...
— Songs, Merry and Sad • John Charles McNeill
... Minnow. Minnow's second favourite, as perhaps you know. It would delight Lambson-Bowles to see me 'go under'; and as I'm so certain of Black Riot that I've mortgaged every stick and stone I have in the world to back her, I should go under if anything happened to the mare. That would suit Lambson-Bowles ...
— Cleek: the Man of the Forty Faces • Thomas W. Hanshew
... calm, we found ourselves surrounded by quantities of fish, about the size of the mackerel, and apparently in pursuit of a number of small and almost transparent members of the finny tribe, not larger than the minnow. ...
— Discoveries in Australia, Volume 1. • J Lort Stokes
... not pretend to compare myself with Mr. Winthrop in any way. It would be like the minnow claiming fellowship ...
— Medoline Selwyn's Work • Mrs. J. J. Colter
... the pike, are indigenous, I believe, only to the rivers, English or continental, on the eastern side of the Straits of Dover; while the rivers on the western side were originally tenanted, like our Hampshire streams, as now, almost entirely by trout, their only Cyprinoid being the minnow—if it, too, be not an interloper; and I might ask you to consider the bearing of this curious fact on the former junction of ...
— Scientific Essays and Lectures • Charles Kingsley
... forms Imatra, joins this fishing water with the famous Ladoga, the largest lake in Europe, which again empties itself into the sea by the Neva. This is not a fishing-book, or pages might be written of happy hours spent with grayling or trout with a fly, or spinning from a boat with a minnow. ...
— Through Finland in Carts • Ethel Brilliana Alec-Tweedie
... will be in straits to get our living if the Kingdom be delayed in its coming, for what good are fishermen except along the sea coast or where there is a lake or a river, and here there isn't enough water for a minnow to swim in. Our wives and our children are better off than we are, for they'll be getting someone to fish for them, and will stand at the doors at Capernaum waiting for the boats to return, praying that the nets weren't let down in vain; but we aren't as sure of the Kingdom as we were of a great ...
— The Brook Kerith - A Syrian story • George Moore
... the icy water, and moving out into the shadow with no more noise than a chub's swirl or a minnow's spatter-leap when a great chain-pike ...
— The Hidden Children • Robert W. Chambers
... a small Roach, Dace, Loach, Minnow, Smelt, small Trout, or Pearch, cutting off the Finns on the back, or small Eels well scoured in Wheat-Bran, which will keep them better and longer, taking a way the slime and watery substance, that causes them to rot or ...
— The School of Recreation (1696 edition) • Robert Howlett
... for the difficulties in the way of giving to both of us the only kind of places which it would be worth our while to accept. If these are insuperable, I will give a hearty support to any Government which is thoroughly liberal in its measures; but I am not going to play the part of a Radical Minnow among ...
— The Life of the Rt. Hon. Sir Charles W. Dilke V1 • Stephen Gwynn
... will furnish fish that are beautiful or interesting to watch, e.g., killies, sunfish, cat-fish, carp, shiners, blacknosed dace, minnows—the mud minnow that seems to stand on his tail—darters, etc. If you get your supply from dealers, buy gold fish, of which there are several varieties, fan-tailed, comets, fringe tails and telescope eyed. Mirror carp are lively. Paradise fish are as ...
— Boy Scouts Handbook - The First Edition, 1911 • Boy Scouts of America
... the children, was like a voyage of discovery, and there was a general airing of geography, each little bay, point, and gulf receiving some noted name. At last we reached a deep, shaded pool, which was eventually dubbed "Bobsey's Luck;" for he nearly fell into it in his eagerness to take off a minnow that had managed to fasten itself to ...
— Driven Back to Eden • E. P. Roe
... once," said Anthony, "a frog. He wasn't much of a frog, as frogs go. In fact, with the exception that he had no home and no friends, he was a very ordinary frog indeed. One day when he was sick and tired of being alone, he went out and bought a tame minnow. Considering how poor he was, it was very reckless, because it meant that there were now two mouths to feed instead of one, but the minnow and the frog became such great friends that that didn't seem to matter. At last, sure enough, the day of reckoning arrived. ...
— Anthony Lyveden • Dornford Yates
... suppose you think that other boat was hiding behind the rock ready to jump out at you the way a pickerel starts for a minnow." ...
— Go Ahead Boys and the Racing Motorboat • Ross Kay
... up the river for about a mile beyond Courbevoie. moored our boat to a friendly willow, put our fishing-tackle together, and composed ourselves for the gentle excitement that waits upon the gudgeon and the minnow. ...
— In the Days of My Youth • Amelia Ann Blandford Edwards
... a large inlet. He was so tall that he could straddle the inlet, and he used to stand that way every morning and wait for the whales to pass beneath him. As soon as one came along he used to scoop it up just as easily as other men scoop up a minnow. And he ate the whole whale just as other ...
— A Treasury of Eskimo Tales • Clara Kern Bayliss
... mull she was brewing, I stood over her, to all intent watching the process but ready for anything. And not without need, for her dirty husband crept softly out after her, thinking to catch me unawares. I flashed at him like a jack at a minnow, wrenched a wretched old blunderbuss out of his hands, and with the butt of it knocked him sprawling ...
— The Yeoman Adventurer • George W. Gough
... our talk today, I am going to place on the drawing paper the picture of a fish. [Draw Fig. 80, complete.] It looks like a very large fish, but, as a matter of fact, it is a very greatly enlarged picture of a very little fish. In reality, it is a minnow only about three inches long, the kind which the bigger fish like for dessert, and which, therefore, are usually pretty careful where ...
— Crayon and Character: Truth Made Clear Through Eye and Ear - Or, Ten-Minute Talks with Colored Chalks • B.J. Griswold
... consume valuable hours, (yet also I hope not altogether wasted)—videlicet, Alice and Charles, and the honourable Viscount—in endeavouring to catch the finny tribe, yet seldom with much success. But whatever was the result of their industry—yea, though it was but a minnow—it was brought and presented to my Waller by the honourable hands of the young man, with so loving an air, that it was easy to behold how gladly he would have consented, if she had been the companion of their sports, if by any ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 55, No. 344, June, 1844 • Various
... phases, on this our little fraction of a Planet, is partially known to us: but who knows what deeper courses these depend on; what infinitely larger Cycle (of causes) our little Epicycle revolves on? To the Minnow every cranny and pebble, and quality and accident, of its little native Creek may have become familiar: but does the Minnow understand the Ocean Tides and periodic Currents, the Trade-winds, and Monsoons, and Moon's Eclipses; by all which the condition ...
— Sartor Resartus, and On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and the Heroic in History • Thomas Carlyle
... the sharp streams, and the gravel, and there tubs off these worms or lice; and then as he grows stronger, so he gets him into swifter and swifter streams, and there lies at the watch for any fly or minnow that comes near to him; and he especially loves the May-fly, which is bred of the cod-worm or caddis; and these make the trout bold and lusty, and he is usually fatter and better meat at the end of that month (May) than at any ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to prose. Volume III (of X) - Great Britain and Ireland I • Francis W. Halsey
... 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
... the bank, could not feel a respect for intelligence and the refinement of a book-loving nature. "You may think me rude," said Lyman, "but I should not regard dining at his house a great privilege. Leaving out the respect I have for the young woman, it would not be as inspiring a meal as a canned minnow on a baize table." ...
— Old Ebenezer • Opie Read
... celebrated; his vanity was wounded. He sought, then, for "most aggravating and impudent matter" to wound them in turn who had vicariously wounded him. He "learned" them to be toads, or celebrities, or tried to. But his love of little jokes betrayed him. He, a sort of minnow, thought to trouble the pool where the great fish were oaring at ease by flirting the surface with his tail. It seemed to him that he was throwing up a fine volume of water; but the great fish held their way unconscious ...
— In a Green Shade - A Country Commentary • Maurice Hewlett
... call the fish up, The fish from the stream. Allie calls, Allie sings, Up they all swim. First there came Two gold fish, A minnow and a miller's thumb, Then a pair of loving trout, Then the ...
— Country Sentiment • Robert Graves
... bream each as large and as thick as your hand, and eels three feet in length are sometimes caught in the basin at night. Two miles away, in the direction of the "run," there are on Woodboo plantation two similar basins connected by a shallow streamlet, and with no outlet which a minnow could navigate: one of them is large enough for a little skiff to float on, and the gray rock slopes down to a centre depth of ten feet. Just where the sides meet is a long, irregular fissure, out of which huge bass, pike, jack ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 17, - No. 97, January, 1876 • Various
... Though I may have written fiction, among many other sins,—as a nice old lady told me once,—now I have to deal with facts; and foul scorn would I count it ever to make believe that I caught that fish. My length at that time was not more than the butt of a four-jointed rod, and all I could catch was a minnow with a pin, which our cook Lydia would not cook, but used to say, "Oh, what a shame, Master Richard! they would have been trout in the summer, please God! if you would only a' let 'em grow on." She is living now, and will bear me ...
— Crocker's Hole - From "Slain By The Doones" By R. D. Blackmore • R. D. Blackmore
... money like a dog for bones, and then in his heart he said there is no God. Once, to relieve the pain of his soul's woe, he asked aloud, who is God, anyway, and then laughed as he thought that the bass nibbling at his minnow would soon think he, John Barclay, was God. The analogy pleased him, and he thought that his own god, some devilish fate, had the string through his gills at that moment and was preparing to cast him into the fire. Up in the office in the city, they went on making senators and governors, and slipping ...
— A Certain Rich Man • William Allen White
... line of the receding tide to snap up imprudent snails and the numerous minute crustaceae which drift about in these brackish waters. The familiar kingfisher was also there, coming down with an occasional arrowy dash on some unsuspecting minnow, and then flapping away leisurely for a quiet meal in the shady recesses of ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 30, April, 1860 • Various
... not aspire to the presumptuous hope that any one may say "Well, I see this man Cobb is doing for Miss Ashford's second book what Barrie did for her first one." I have no such ambition. A minnow always errs when he undertakes to swim in the company of a whale. If he tries to swim alongside he is unnoticed; if he swims in the wake he is swamped. He makes other minnows jealous or contemptuous as the case may be, and he is properly ignored by ...
— Daisy Ashford: Her Book • Daisy Ashford
... up quite a number of fish frozen in the ice—the larger ones about the size of a herring and the smaller of a minnow. We imagined both had been driven into the slushy ice by seals, but to-day Gran found a large fish frozen in the act of swallowing a small one. It looks as though both small and large are caught when one is ...
— Scott's Last Expedition Volume I • Captain R. F. Scott
... where the Gauls had long lived in security, and reports were everywhere heard of villages harried by wild horsemen, with short double-headed battle-axes, and a horrible short pike covered with iron and with several large hooks, like a gigantic artificial minnow, and like it fastened to a long rope, so that the prey which it had grappled might be pulled up to the owner. Walled cities usually stopped them, but every farm or villa outside was stripped of its valuables, set on fire, the cattle driven off, and the ...
— The Junior Classics • Various
... realized," McAllen remarked by way of explanation. His lips twitched in the shadow of a smile. "At such times I find nothing quite so soothing as to drop a line into water for a while. I've got some thinking to do, too. So let's get down to the dock. There ought to be a little bait left in the minnow pail." ...
— Gone Fishing • James H. Schmitz
... fell from the boat, for there was a great swirl in the water where his minnow was spinning along, a broad tail came out and hit the water with a tremendous splash, and he struck but did not hook the fish, which, however, he ...
— The Junior Classics Volume 8 - Animal and Nature Stories • Selected and arranged by William Patten |
