"Moth" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... but every one had woollen garments and pieces, and the quilts made of these were of grateful warmth in bleak New England. All kinds of commonplace garments and remnants of decayed gentility were pressed into service in these quilts: portions of the moth-eaten and discarded uniforms of militia-men, worn-out flannel sheets dyed with some brilliant home-dye, old coat and cloak linings, well-worn petticoats. A magnificent scarlet cloak worn by a lord mayor of London and brought to America ...
— Home Life in Colonial Days • Alice Morse Earle
... the apartment in which Monte-Cristo as Sinbad the Sailor had welcomed the Baron Franz d' Epinay years before, but the crimson brocade, worked with flowers of gold, though it still lined the chamber as it did then, was now faded and moth-eaten, while the Turkey carpet in which the Baron's feet had sunk to the instep, as well as the tapestry hanging in front of the doors, was in the same condition. The divan in the recess had been riddled by worms and the silver scabbards ...
— Monte-Cristo's Daughter • Edmund Flagg
... ago in New York. This won't be the original company, of course." The year that Hattie came back wearing a set of skunk everyone thought it was lynx until Hattie drew attention to what she called the "brown tone" in it. After that Old Lady Heinz got her old skunk furs out of the moth balls and tobacco and newspapers that had preserved them, and her daughter cut them up into bands for the bottom of her skirt, and the cuffs of her coat. When Kiser & Bloch had their fall and spring openings the town came ostensibly to see the new styles, ...
— Roast Beef, Medium • Edna Ferber
... got one splendid fellow, a green-winged moth. I'll show him to you in my study after ...
— Parkhurst Boys - And Other Stories of School Life • Talbot Baines Reed
... scarcely dared to breathe. He knew what had happened. The twine had brushed against the sentry's cheek. But then a puff of wind carried it away, and the man went on, brushing at his cheek, thinking, perhaps, a moth had touched it. ...
— The Boy Scouts In Russia • John Blaine
... For the gladness of daybreak is not come yet, nor the pleasure of seeing the way again, the lifting of the darkness leaves heaviness beneath it, and if a rashly early bird flops down upon the grass, he cannot count his distance, but quivers like a moth. ...
— Springhaven - A Tale of the Great War • R. D. Blackmore
... that his features remained contracted, his lips parted, and his eyes fixed. He did not move an inch, nor articulate a sound. Nothing could be heard in that large chamber but the wing-whisper of a little moth, which was fluttering to its death about the candles. Aramis, without even deigning to look at the man whom he had reduced to so miserable a condition, drew from his pocket a small case of black wax; he sealed the letter, and stamped it with a seal ...
— The Man in the Iron Mask • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... I am paddling up to the river, gliding now along by one bank and now by another. A humming-bird moth, that seems to have been just created, for the eye cannot follow its movement in the dusky air, appears suddenly upon the topmost flower of a stachys, and in another moment it has vanished. Upon the broader and more open river the day appears to revive. There ...
— Two Summers in Guyenne • Edward Harrison Barker
... a compliment, he is reminded that his predecessor was accustomed to say the same thing. The relatives of the first wife are gently made aware that their acquaintance is not desired. His manner of life is carefully renovated and his old friendships put away with moth balls and camphor, never ...
— The Spinster Book • Myrtle Reed
... 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 whatever it is, 'The shortness of life! The shortness of life!' I've only one night or one day, and there's this vast dangerous garden, waiting out there, ...
— The Garden Party • Katherine Mansfield
... moonlight. The broad glare of day is so garish and extravagant. Besides, there is a restlessness and a buz no human being, at least no sensible human being, can endure. Everything is on the stir. Every creature, however paltry and insignificant, whether moth, mote, or atom, seems busy. Whereas, one serene soft gaze of the moon appears to allay nature's universal disquiet. The calm and mellow placidity of her look, so heavenly and undisturbed, lulls the soul, and subdues its ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 1 (of 2) • John Roby
... anything indeed—except to be good and kind to a young thing. The men with Philip's manners and Philip's charm—thank goodness, there aren't many of them!—have an abominable responsibility. The poor moth flops into the candle before she knows where she is. But as to marrying her—it has never entered his head for ...
— Helena • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... does well to form a body for sachet powder. Slips of cedar wood are sold as matches for lighting lamps, because while burning an agreeable odor is evolved; some people use it also, in this condition, distributed among clothes in drawers to "prevent moth." On distillation it yields an essential oil that is ...
— The Art of Perfumery - And Methods of Obtaining the Odors of Plants • G. W. Septimus Piesse
... was gossiping in that fashion with Mehitable Moth, a soberly clad person who was always a bit jealous of the gorgeous Betsy. And Mehitable Moth nodded her head to everything that ...
— The Tale of Mrs. Ladybug • Arthur Scott Bailey
... cottage door, and lighting his pipe, sat down on the little rustic seat which was just outside. There was hardly a sound—nothing but the night wind sweeping through the valley, the far-off plash of water, the purring noise of a big moth as it flew past and then hovered a second, attracted by the gleam ...
— Will of the Mill • George Manville Fenn
... little noises of the earth Come with softest rustle; The shy, sweet feet of life; The silky mutter of moth-wings Against my restraining palm; The strident beat of insect-wings, The silvery trickle of water; Little breezes busy in the summer grass; The music of crisp, whisking, scurrying leaves, The swirling, wind-swept, frost-tinted leaves; The crystal splash of summer rain, Saturate ...
— The World I Live In • Helen Keller
... leaves of the tree-tops, far overhead, were quivering and dancing in the sunlight and the breeze. Here Oberon and Titania might sleep beneath a bower of motionless royal Osmunda. Here Puck might have a noon-tide council with Peaseblossom, Cobweb, Moth, and Mustardseed, holding forth to them in whispers, beneath the green and purple sounding-board of a Jack-in-the-Pulpit. Here, even in this age of reason, the mystery of nature wove its magic round ...
— Days Off - And Other Digressions • Henry Van Dyke
... Grandfather May—a usual weekly procedure. Along with him, as was also the invariable custom, ponderous Aunt Timmie drove in her buggy—"her" buggy by adoption after it had been discarded by "de white folks." Whenever she climbed into this moth-eaten vehicle, whose wheels pointed outward and inward all at the same time, she never permitted the child to forget that it was her own sweet willingness thus to risk her life which made these excursions possible. She was in the big house now, inspecting every surface and crevice ...
— Sunlight Patch • Credo Fitch Harris
... Government order the importation of wild animals into Great Britain is forbidden. Allotment holders throughout the country hope the order will be read out to any wireworm or potato-moth that attempts to land at ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 152, May 23, 1917 • Various
... Robert felt that he would have given gladly the treasures of a universe for just the time to think a little while of his own love. So far that great attachment had brought him aberrations, sorrow, and perplexities; all its sweetness had flown, moth-like, into his heart, there to be burnt—burnt yet left unburied: all its happiness had glorified his life against his will; all its beauty had been starved with a pitiless rigour. What then had remained? ...
— Robert Orange - Being a Continuation of the History of Robert Orange • John Oliver Hobbes
... cause of humanity, but rather, if anything, the cause of everything else. At its noblest it meant a sort of mystical identification of our life with the whole life of nature. So a man might wince when a snail was crushed as if his toe were trodden on; so a man might shrink when a moth shrivelled as if his own hair had caught fire. Man might be a network of exquisite nerves running over the whole universe, a subtle spider's web of pity. This was a fine conception; though perhaps a somewhat severe enforcement of the theological conception of the special divinity of man. For ...
— George Bernard Shaw • Gilbert K. Chesterton
... been put to servants' use. Round it were old red valances hanging to the floor, things not given to servants. No sooner was I under the bed, than I saw there were little openings at the seams, and some moth-holes, which permitted me to see through them. At one spot near to my shoulder as I lay crouching and doubled up, was a long slit where the valance had been torn down. By raising myself on my elbow, ...
— My Secret Life, Volumes I. to III. - 1888 Edition • Anonymous
... one now a little.... I think I am by degrees losing many excellent qualities. I lay it to my great love of gayety, and the world.... I am now seventeen, and if some kind and great circumstance does not happen to me, I shall have my talents devoured by moth and rust. They will lose their brightness, and one day they will prove a curse instead of ...
— Lives of Girls Who Became Famous • Sarah Knowles Bolton
... wedged hexagons—reminiscences of the honeycomb of Venus Erycina. His ingenuity plays around the framework of all the noblest things; and yet the brightness of it has a lurid shadow. The spot of the fawn, of the bird, and the moth, may be harmless. But Daedalus reigns no less over the spot of the leopard and snake. That cruel and venomous power of his art is marked, in the legends of him, by his invention of the saw from the serpent's tooth; and his seeking refuge, ...
— Aratra Pentelici, Seven Lectures on the Elements of Sculpture - Given before the University of Oxford in Michaelmas Term, 1870 • John Ruskin
... the voice behind the mist, "this is the text I leave with you: 'Lay not up for yourselves treasures upon earth, where moth and rust doth corrupt, and where thieves break through and steal; but lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust doth corrupt, and where thieves do not break through nor steal.' That text I read in the flood, where the hand of God has written it. All ...
— The Little Minister • J.M. Barrie
... had made excellent improvement of both; it was in vain to try to persuade him that seed-time and harvest were the same thing, and that he had nothing to do but to rest in what he had done; shew his bright colours and flutter like a moth in the sunshine, or sit down like a degenerate bee in the summer time and eat his own honey. The power of action which he knew in himself could not rest without something to act upon. It ...
— Queechy • Susan Warner
... observed by the Rev. A. E. Eaton with respect to insects inhabiting Kerguelen Island. All the species which he found on the island—viz. a moth, several flies, and numerous beetles—he found to be incapable of flight; and therefore, as Wallace observes, "as these insects could hardly have reached the islands in a wingless state, even if there ...
— Darwin, and After Darwin (Vol. 1 and 3, of 3) • George John Romanes
... beauty and this arrow Made out of a wild thought is in my marrow. There's no man may look upon her, no man, As when newly grown to be a woman, Blossom pale, she pulled down the pale blossom At the moth hour and hid it in her bosom. This beauty's kinder yet for a reason I could weep that the old is ...
— In The Seven Woods - Being Poems Chiefly of the Irish Heroic Age • William Butler (W.B.) Yeats
... seen under the microscope. When in June, 1865, Pasteur arrived in the town of Alais, he found these corpuscles without difficulty. He traced them from the worm to the chrysalid, in the cocoon, and thence to the moth; he found worms hatched from the eggs laid by these moths invariably developed the corpuscles. He crushed a corpuscular moth in water, painted a mulberry leaf with it, fed it to a healthy worm, and the corpuscles developed. ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 6 of 8 • Various
... had labored among the hospitals in the field from first to last, and died not long after the close of the historic struggle, a martyr to the cause. He died poor, too, as such men ever die, laying up no treasures upon earth, where moth and rust and thieves are said to lessen treasure there accumulated, yet where its accumulation seems the chief end of man not spiritually constituted as was Davies, who was imposed upon by every ...
— Under Fire • Charles King
... will do, no dishonour to the name of Russell. It is a higher matter to know, at a supreme moment like this, that he had placed his treasure where moth and dust do not corrupt, and his dependence where dependence never fails. May he enjoy the rest, light, and peace of the just until you are permitted to rejoin him. With growing years you will feel more and more that here everything is but a rent, and that ...
— Prime Ministers and Some Others - A Book of Reminiscences • George W. E. Russell
... primarily egoistic and unsocial in the ordinary sense during its entire life-history, until the final reproductive act which has a value to the species. The caterpillar larva devotes all of its energies to feeding and growing, unconcerned with the final duties of the moth with which it is connected just as the indifferent unit of a young Volvox colony is related to a reproducing member of the full-grown organism. Now and then, it is true, species like the so-called tent caterpillar are ...
— The Doctrine of Evolution - Its Basis and Its Scope • Henry Edward Crampton
... distance from mankind, supported me. The cry of a night bird out on the prairie told that it, too, was preying, or being preyed upon; and, as if being stirred by this, a panther sent his wail across the night. I listened for a mate to answer, but she did not. A large, whitish moth flying out of the shadows passed clumsily within a few inches of my face, its wings swishing as a bird's; and it, too, was without ...
— Wings of the Wind • Credo Harris
... but didn't go out. A moth had flown down its chimney, was sizzling, charring, inside ... Paul lifted off the globe. Burnt his hands, but said nothing ... flicked the wingless, blackened body to ...
— Tramping on Life - An Autobiographical Narrative • Harry Kemp
... came upon dear promises Of Christ to man, I read them o'er and o'er, Till in a holy and mysterious way They seemed the whisperings of Pauline to me. Later I learned to lay up for myself 'Treasures in heaven where neither moth nor rust Corrupteth, and where thieves do not break through, Nor steal'—and where my treasures all are laid My heart is, and my spirit longs to go. O friend, if Jesus was but man of man— And if indeed his wondrous miracles Were mythic tales of priestly followers To chain the ...
— The Feast of the Virgins and Other Poems • H. L. Gordon
... carefully killed, and pinned out in boxes lined with camphored cork. These insects the two Zulu boys soon learned to capture with the greatest ease, and after a little teaching they would bring in a handsome butterfly or moth, without crushing and disfiguring it first so that ...
— Off to the Wilds - Being the Adventures of Two Brothers • George Manville Fenn
... Yetta she should close up the flat under the very least two days, Mr. Polatkin," he said. "She must got to fix everything just right, mit moth-camphor and Gott weisst was nach, otherwise she wouldn't go at all. The rugs alone takes a whole day ...
— Elkan Lubliner, American • Montague Glass
... a moth: and from morning even unto the evening they endure not. Because they were not able to help themselves, they perished; he breathed upon them and they died, ...
— The Forbidden Gospels and Epistles, Complete • Archbishop Wake
... little gray moth better than the fine butterfly," returned Jack, who, in spite of his invitation, seemed to find ...
— Kitty's Class Day And Other Stories • Louisa M. Alcott
... mind! Who for all ages writ, and all mankind, Has been to careless printers oft a prey, Nor time, nor moth e'er spoil'd as much as they; Let the right reading drive the cloud away, And sense breaks ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 54, November 9, 1850 • Various
... are we to say of the Great Peacock moth and the Oak Eggar, both of which find their captive female? They come from the confines of the horizon. What do they perceive at that distance? Is it really an odour such as we perceive and understand? I cannot bring myself ...
— Social Life in the Insect World • J. H. Fabre
... linen bandages; and then they sealed it up in a coffin or sarcophagus, which they laid in a chamber hewn in the bowels of the mountain. All these things were done to protect the physical body against damp, dry rot and decay, and against the attacks of moth, beetles, worms and wild animals. But these were not the only enemies of the dead against which precautions had to be taken, for both the mummified body and the spiritual elements which had inhabited it upon earth had to be protected from a multitude of devils and fiends, and from the powers ...
— The Book of the Dead • E. A. Wallis Budge
... have been carefully studied by Lebert, and named by him Panhistophyton; for the reason that in subjects in which the disease is strongly developed, the corpuscles swarm in every tissue and organ of the body, and even pass into the undeveloped eggs of the female moth. But are these corpuscles causes, or mere concomitants, of the disease? Some naturalists took one view and some another; and it was not until the French Government, alarmed by the continued ravages of the malady, and the ...
— Discourses - Biological and Geological Essays • Thomas H. Huxley
... at most in every year, 1150 Were now, in solemn form, laid bare, To take the benefit of air, And, ere they came to be employ'd On this solemnity, to void That scent which Russia's leather gave, From vile and impious moth to save. Each head was busy, and each heart In preparation bore a part; Running together all about The servants put each other out, 1160 Till the grave master had decreed, The more haste ever the worse speed. Miss, with her ...
— Poetical Works • Charles Churchill
... Julie, standing absently before a case of stuffed birds, somewhat moth-eaten, which took up a good deal of space in the little ...
— Lady Rose's Daughter • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... captive—the splendour of the idea of dashing up to hotels in his own automobile dazed him. He beheld himself doing his hundred kilometres an hour and trailing clouds of glory whithersoever he went. To a child a moth-eaten rocking-horse is a fiery Arab of the plains; to Aristide Pujol this cheat of the scrap-heap was a sixty-horse-power thunderer ...
— The Joyous Adventures of Aristide Pujol • William J. Locke
... moth in the flame of the candle. She carried it to the window. "You will come back soon, of course?" her ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science - Vol. XI, No. 27, June, 1873 • Various
... tea," said Mrs. Hand. "'T was 'most a quarter past six by the clock; I thought 't was seven. I 'd thought o' everything, an' I 'd counted, an' I 'd trotted my foot, an' I 'd looked more 'n twenty times to see if there was any more moth-millers." ...
— The Queen's Twin and Other Stories • Sarah Orne Jewett
... orphan, the poor and the simple, in the same fate as the rich and powerful whom they have trusted to their own ruin. And yet we boast of our civilization and of our Christianity; and hardly one, here and there, lays the lesson to heart, but each man, like a moth about a candle, unwarned by the fate of his fellows, fancies that he at least can flutter round the flames and not be burned; that whoever else cannot serve God and Mammon, he can do it; and holds, by virtue of his superior prudence, a special ...
— Westminster Sermons - with a Preface • Charles Kingsley
... Doubleday, Page & Company have been receiving repeated requests for information about the life and books of Gene Stratton-Porter. Her fascinating nature work with bird, flower, and moth, and the natural wonders of the Limberlost Swamp, made famous as the scene of her nature romances, all have stirred much curiosity among ...
— At the Foot of the Rainbow • Gene Stratton-Porter
... Phil?" said Miss Schuyler, absently; adding, to one of her maids, "Take care of that afghan; wrap it in an old linen sheet; it was knitted by a very dear friend, and I do not want it moth-eaten; I had rather lose a camel's-hair shawl." Which evidence or regard seemed very extravagant to the girl who was obeying instructions, but ...
— Prince Lazybones and Other Stories • Mrs. W. J. Hays
... difficulty in propagating these pistache trees. We have five different species of stock on which to grow them, and we ought to learn all the best varieties in the world. But unfortunately some of the best varieties in Sicily are infested with a moth which lays its eggs in the twigs just below the leaf scar and it is impossible for the entomologist to detect these eggs without destroying the buds. That apparently trivial circumstance has made it impossible for us to get these cuttings in from Sicily without sending a ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Report of the Proceedings at the Eleventh Annual Meeting - Washington, D. C. October 7 AND 8, 1920 • Various
... "The moth is a very blundering creature," said Nan quietly. "He makes mistakes sometimes—perhaps imagining a ...
— The Moon out of Reach • Margaret Pedler
... about their plans, and watched them closely. Then he took them out to see his bees. He showed them his ingenious hives and a bee-house which he had built to keep out the moths by drawing chalk-lines about it, for over these lines the wingless grub of the moth could not crawl. Then he showed them a glass hive, in which all the processes of the bees' housekeeping could be observed. After that, he took the boys to the old log-house, and pointed out some holes in ...
— The Hoosier School-boy • Edward Eggleston
... one immediately below me, a moth-eaten desiccated tortoiseshell; its eyes are closed and a red tongue hangs out of the mouth. I drop a small pebble. It wakes up and regards me stoically for a moment. ...
— Alone • Norman Douglas
... clutch of the spendthrift husband. The scene is immensely dramatic, with its accompaniments of blackness and silence, Wildeve's haggard face, the circle of ponies, known as heath-croppers, which are attracted by the light, the death's-head moth which extinguishes the candle, and the finish of the game by the light of glow-worms. It is a glorious bit of ...
— The Bibliotaph - and Other People • Leon H. Vincent
... accept not The worship the heart lifts above And the Heavens reject not, The desire of the moth for the star, Of the night for the morrow, The devotion to something afar From the sphere ...
— Pelham, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... forms of insect pests, two specially stand out into prominence, both of which belong to the moth tribe of insects, viz., Alethia argillacea or Cotton Caterpillar, and the ...
— The Story of the Cotton Plant • Frederick Wilkinson
... Hall; and there was some low talk, from time to time, among the hinds and country people, whether it would not be as well to break into old Bridget's cottage, and save such of her goods as were left from the moth and rust which must be making sad havoc. But this idea was always quenched by the recollection of her strong character and passionate anger; and tales of her masterful spirit, and vehement force of will, were whispered about, ...
— Curious, if True - Strange Tales • Elizabeth Gaskell
... 'Natural Selection,' 1871.) to the Duke's criticisms, making some specially good remarks on those which refer to orchids. He shows how, by a "beautiful self-acting adjustment," the nectary of the orchid Angraecum (from 10 to 14 inches in length), and the proboscis of a moth sufficiently long to reach the nectar, might be developed by natural selection. He goes on to point out that on any other theory we must suppose that the flower was created with an enormously long nectary, and that then by a special act, ...
— The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin, Volume II • Francis Darwin
... fresh nerves a peculiar attractiveness. The lure of great cities is perhaps a consequence of stimulations which act directly upon the reflexes. As a type of human behavior it may be explained, like the attraction of the flame for the moth, ...
— Introduction to the Science of Sociology • Robert E. Park
... see this fellow up here often. Who knows the difference between a butterfly and a moth? No one? Well, that is because most children are going to bed about the time the moth begins to fly. Doesn't any one know? You have all seen moths ...
— Little Busybodies - The Life of Crickets, Ants, Bees, Beetles, and Other Busybodies • Jeanette Augustus Marks and Julia Moody
... the haycocks," I answered very boldly: "the indoor moth cannot abide the presence of ...
— Lorna Doone - A Romance of Exmoor • R. D. Blackmore
... he, alas! can be dirty like the rest, when necessary: but humour he has of the highest quality. 'The Ordinary' is full of it; and Moth, the Antiquary, though too much of a lay figure, and depending for his amusingness on his quaint antiquated language, is such a sketch as Mr. Dickens need not have ...
— Plays and Puritans - from "Plays and Puritans and Other Historical Essays" • Charles Kingsley
... Moth that murmurs 'gainst your pane, Peering at your rest, As, so like its woolly wing, Ceasing scarce its fluttering, Heaves and sinks ...
— Poems • Victor Hugo
... still another, in which the expedition penetrated farther and farther into the forest wild. The officers were delighted, and Doctor Bolter in raptures. He had obtained specimens of the atlas moth, a large flap-winged insect, as large across as a moderate dish; he had shot sun-birds, azure kingfishers, gapers, chatterers, parroquets; and his last achievement had been to kill ...
— Middy and Ensign • G. Manville Fenn
... her dames; For shouts were heard 'mid fire and smoke, And twice ten hundred voices spoke "The playhouse is in flames!" And, lo! where Catharine street extends, A fiery tail its luster lends To every window-pane; Blushes each spout in Martlet Court And Barbican, moth-eaten fort, And Covent Garden kennels sport, A bright ensanguined drain; Meux's new brewhouse shows the light, Rowland Hill's chapel, and the height Where patent shot they sell; The Tennis-Court, so fair and tall, Partakes the ray, ...
— The Humourous Poetry of the English Language • James Parton
... the poet's head Streamed on the page and on the cloth, And twice and thrice there buffeted On the black pane a white-wing'd moth; 'Twas Annie's soul that beat outside And ...
— Green Bays. Verses and Parodies • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... everything gained in sanctity by its age: the moth-eaten furniture was hallowed by tradition. The rheumatic old dog of uncertain breed, to which he had never vouchsafed a caress became now, when banished to the stable, a tried and faithful ...
— The Tyranny of Weakness • Charles Neville Buck
... talk like a little child, Dagaeoga. I teach you the wisdom of the woods, and you forget. The bird may see a worm or a moth or something else that is good to eat, and then he will stop singing to dart for his food. A bird must eat, and his love of music often gives way to his ...
— The Rulers of the Lakes - A Story of George and Champlain • Joseph A. Altsheler
... glimpse of the emu he cried ecstatic, "Look, there's a—," and paused, not knowing what on earth to call it. Then rapidly to cover up his ignorance he pointed confidently to a somewhat similar fowl and said sagely, "And there's another!" The curious moth-eaten and shabby appearance that captive camels always exhibit was accurately recorded in his addressing one of them as "poor old horsie." And after watching the llamas in silence, when he saw them nibble at some ...
— Mince Pie • Christopher Darlington Morley
... must play the green moth. I have stolen her scented rope of flowers, But the women caught me and built a little gaol About my heart with your old playthings. The lover to his lass: I have fallen ...
— The Garden of Bright Waters - One Hundred and Twenty Asiatic Love Poems • Translated by Edward Powys Mathers
... heart beat on. She did not even feel very ill, only weak, with a wiry throbbing of each separate nerve in her head. She had meant to use the quiet hours to decide what must be done next, but always, when she had tried to pin her mind to the question, it had escaped like a fluttering moth, and turned to self-pity, or to calling up pictures of the past which brought ...
— The Second Latchkey • Charles Norris Williamson and Alice Muriel Williamson
... O'er the smooth plantain-leaf, a spacious plain! Thence higher still, by countless steps convey'd, He gains the summit of a shiv'ring blade, And flirts his filmy wings, and looks around, Exulting in his distance from the ground. The tender speckled moth here dancing seen, The vaulting grasshopper of glossy green, And all prolific Summer's sporting train, Their little lives by various pow'rs sustain. But what can unassisted vision do? What, but recoil where ...
— The Farmer's Boy - A Rural Poem • Robert Bloomfield
... he found them sweet: If, with a thousand wine-casks—call the hoard A million rather—in his cellars stored, He drinks sharp vinegar: nay, if, when nigh A century old, on straw he yet will lie, While in his chest rich coverlets, the prey Of moth and canker, moulder and decay, Few men can see much madness in his whim, Because the mass ...
— The Satires, Epistles, and Art of Poetry • Horace
... this mortal flesh, These shrinking nerves, this feeble frame, For ever racked with ailments fresh And scarce from day to day the same — A fly within the spider's mesh, A moth ...
— An Anthology of Australian Verse • Bertram Stevens
... sizes and colours, and well he knows how to suit them to each particular fish. But white or black, every fish takes one fly or the other, and then comes the question—is the fish that has swallowed the big gaudy lure so much worse or more foolish than that which has fallen to the delicate white moth with the same sharp barb ...
— Allan and the Holy Flower • H. Rider Haggard
... fluttering little soul of the shopgirl that existed somewhere deep down in her lovely bosom. His words penetrated the heart whose very lightness was its safest armor. She looked up at him with eyes that saw. And a warm glow visited her cool cheeks. Tremblingly, awfully, her moth wings closed, and she seemed about to settle upon the flower of love. Some faint glimmer of life and its possibilities on the other side of her glove counter dawned upon her. Carter felt the change ...
— The Voice of the City • O. Henry
... day. You understand . . . [He waits as if for some reply] You know what men they are. And what have they to do with such as these? Think of those old as death, in body and heart, Hugging their wretched hoardings, in cold fear Of moth and rust!—While these miraculous ones, Like golden creatures made of sunset-cloud, Go out forever,—every day, fade by With music and wild stars!—Ah, but You know. The hermit told me once. You loved ...
— The Piper • Josephine Preston Peabody
... is not in itself a sufficient stimulus to action. The thing recognised must also be significant, must be felt in some way to matter to us. The stars reappear nightly in the heavens, but, as far as we can tell, no animals but men are stimulated to action by recognising them. The moth is not stimulated by recognising a tortoise, nor the ...
— Human Nature In Politics - Third Edition • Graham Wallas
... elasticity, and seemed to oppress and weigh us down. Presently we saw the dark cloud rise gradually from behind the hills, completely clearing their summits, and then sweeping along until it hung over the valley, in form and appearance like some monstrous night-moth, resting the tips of its enormous wings on the mountains on either side. To our right we still saw the roofs and walls of Quidricovi, apparently ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXLII. Vol. LV. April, 1844 • Various
... thus: digging and rummaging through the heap of mould, guided perhaps by that singular sensibility of the antennae which enables the Hairy Ammophila to discover the Grey Worm (The caterpillar of the Turnip Moth. Cf. "The Hunting Wasps": chapters 18 to 20.—Translator's Note.) underground, the Scolia ends by finding a Cetonia-larva, a good plump one, in the pink of condition, having reached its full growth, just what the grub which is to feed on it requires. Forthwith, the assaulted victim, contracting ...
— More Hunting Wasps • J. Henri Fabre
... engagement of substitutes. He encouraged agriculture by distributing seeds and offering prizes for the destruction of wolves, which were still numerous in his district, and he waged a successful war on a moth that was ravaging the wheat crop. He assisted in the introduction of the manufacture of pottery, still one of the leading industries of Limoges. His reports are among the most valuable material in existence for the study of the ...
— The Eve of the French Revolution • Edward J. Lowell
... Hora. A moth it is to trouble the mindes eye: In the most high and palmy state of Rome, A little ere the mightiest Iulius fell The graues stood tennatlesse, and the sheeted dead Did squeake and gibber in the Roman streets[7] As starres with traines of fier, and dewes of blood Disasters in ...
— The Tragedie of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark - A Study with the Text of the Folio of 1623 • George MacDonald
... off into a clay-colored border. In the centre of each wing there is a long reddish-white spot, and on the tip of each fore-wing is a dark bluish eye. On the head are delicate feathered antennae. Mamma found a picture of the moth in a book. We are sure it belongs to the genus Attacus, and we think it is ...
— Harper's Young People, September 21, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... This is a moth whose larvae (as the caterpillars are called) do so much damage to foliage that the State has spent large sums of money in an attempt to destroy the troublesome pest. The matter has now been brought ...
— The Great Round World and What Is Going On In It, Vol. 1, No. 29, May 27, 1897 - A Weekly Magazine for Boys and Girls • Various
... shall-we torture them for our sport—sport in their destruction?(77) I met a rough officer at his house t'other day, who said he knew such a person was turning Methodist; for, in the middle of conversation, he rose, and opened the window to let out a moth. I told him I did not know that the Methodists had any principle so good, and that I, who am certainly not on the point of becoming one, always did so too. One of the bravest and best men I ever knew, Sir Charles Wager, I have often heard declare he ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole Volume 3 • Horace Walpole
... the worthless dust, For which vain, anxious mortals toil, To treasure up where moth and rust, Doth soon corrupt ...
— Scientific American magazine Vol 2. No. 3 Oct 10 1846 • Various
... food amid even the unproductive flora and meagre fauna of the Coal Measures. With these ancient cockroaches a few locusts and beetles have been found associated, together with a small Tinea,—a creature allied to the common clothes-moth, and a Phasmia,—a creature related to the spectre insects. But the group is an inconsiderable one; for insects seem to have occupied no very conspicuous place in the carboniferous fauna. The beetles appear to have been of the wood and seed devouring kinds, and would probably ...
— The Testimony of the Rocks - or, Geology in Its Bearings on the Two Theologies, Natural and Revealed • Hugh Miller
... and the bushes on the bank became for a moment an acid green as the glare passed. The full moon was climbing up the sky, and so bright that scarcely a star was visible in the blue grey of the heavens. Houses gleamed white a mile away, and ever and again a moth would flutter and hang in the light of the lamps, and then vanish ...
— Mr. Britling Sees It Through • H. G. Wells
... ultimate islands. And I admire and bow my head before the romance of destiny." Does not this sentence read as if it were written in stress of some effusive febrile emotion, as if he wrote while still pursuing his idea? And so it reminds us of a moth fluttering after a light. But however vacillating, the sentence contains some pretty clauses, and it will be remembered though not perhaps in its original form. We shall forget the "laughter and the ...
— Memoirs of My Dead Life • George Moore
... on broad green leaves Below the ripples of the mill, When the white moth is hovering In the dim sky so hushed and still, I watch beneath the pollard ash The greedy trout ...
— Victorian Songs - Lyrics of the Affections and Nature • Various
... could accompany you, but I cannot plead as an excuse my wife's delicacy of constitution. Her health is as uniform as her temper; and even if life and death were at stake, she would not leave her housekeeping in other hands. Neither would she close her doors and turn her locks, lest moth and rust should corrupt, and thieves break in and steal. But pardon me. I have given you no opportunity ...
— Ernest Linwood - or, The Inner Life of the Author • Caroline Lee Hentz
... gifted friend was busy with thoughts in which they had no part. This gave them an impression of distance between them and him. He all of a sudden, seemed to have become remote, as though a chasm, by what power they knew not, had opened between them—making their love for him as "the desire of the moth for the star." They knew that he was more often than ever before working upon his poetical and other compositions, but these were seldom shown, or even mentioned, ...
— The Dreamer - A Romantic Rendering of the Life-Story of Edgar Allan Poe • Mary Newton Stanard
... though thou comest in peace yet thy object is hostile:—for one single moment that my mistress associated with a rival, it went well-nigh to slay me with jealousy. Smiling, she replied: "O Sa'di! I am the torch of the assembly; what is it to me if the moth consume itself?" ...
— Persian Literature, Volume 2, Comprising The Shah Nameh, The - Rubaiyat, The Divan, and The Gulistan • Anonymous
... said Seth. "She spears all the little winds with that peaked sail o' hern. Ain't one on 'em can git by her." They kept company for a while, until in the broad river bay above Riverport bridge the Starlight skimmed far ahead, like a great white moth. Seth mentioned that folks would think they was settin' up a navy up to Tideshead, and just then the Starlight yawed, and the boom threw Seth off his balance and nearly overboard, as much to his own amusement ...
— Betty Leicester - A Story For Girls • Sarah Orne Jewett
... talking together, Parsley, who stood with her ears wide open and had some suspicion of the gossip, overheard all that had passed. And when Night had spread out her black garments to keep them from the moth, and the Prince had come as they had appointed, she let fall her hair; he seized it with both hands, and cried, "Draw up." When he was drawn up she made him first climb on to the rafters and find ...
— Stories from Pentamerone • Giambattista Basile
... A large white moth floated suddenly in and began to beat itself against the lamp-shade. Monck's eyes watched it with a grim concentration. Stella's were half-closed. She seemed to have dismissed him from her mind as an unimportant detail. The silence ...
— The Lamp in the Desert • Ethel M. Dell
... be hoped," I said, sipping the Haut-Brion, whose fine and brittle smack contrasted rarely with the delicious juiciness of the fruit, "that you have laid in a supply of this treasure that neither moth nor rust doth corrupt, before parting with that little ...
— Atlantic Monthly Vol. 3, No. 16, February, 1859 • Various
... passing thro' so many thousand applications, many of them no doubt quite misplaced, as I have seen in Islington Churchy'd (I think) an Epitaph to an Infant who died AEtatis 4 months, with this seasonable inscription appended, Honor thy Fath'r. and Moth'r. that thy days may be long in the Land &c.—Sincerely wishing your children better ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Vol. 5 • Edited by E. V. Lucas
... cries as, notwithstanding the friendly light, a vessel strikes upon the rocks, and the people are tossed into the surging waters. They have visitors too; often in the night the wild sea-birds, fascinated by the light, as the moth is by the candle, come dashing against the lantern with such violence as to break the glass. But whatever happens, close to the tower, or away over the stormy waters, the man knows his duty, and does it, by keeping the light burning ...
— Grace Darling - Heroine of the Farne Islands • Eva Hope
... my borrowed volume has. Of course, I wouldn't have done it for anything, though, so don't think I'm worse than I am. And really, really, I don't believe I'm exactly in love. I hope I'm not so foolish. It's just a kind of infatuated fascination of a moth—not for a candle, but for a great, brilliant motor lamp. I've seen them at night dashing themselves against the glass of our Bleriots once or twice when we've been out late, and I know how hopelessly they smash their soft, silly wings. ...
— Set in Silver • Charles Norris Williamson and Alice Muriel Williamson
... seven wise men of Greece, born at Priene, in Ionia; lived in the 6th century B.C.; many wise sayings are ascribed to him; was distinguished for his indifference to possessions, which moth and rust can corrupt, and thieves ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... not Alfred Russel Wallace who tried to help an emperor-moth, and only harmed it by his ill-considered ministry? He came upon the creature beating its wings and struggling wildly to force its passage through the narrow neck of its cocoon. He admired its fine proportions, eight ...
— Mushrooms on the Moor • Frank Boreham
... full bloom; it had pretty little blue flowers as delicate as the wings of a moth, or even more so. The sun shone, and the showers watered it; and this was just as good for the flax as it is for little children to be washed and then kissed by their mother. They look much prettier for it, and ...
— Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen • Hans Christian Andersen
... Then a large death's head moth advanced from the obscure outer air, wheeled twice round the lantern, flew straight at the candle, and extinguished it by the force of the blow. Wildeve had just thrown, but had not lifted the box to see what he had cast; and now it ...
— The Return of the Native • Thomas Hardy
... vanities, and all is vanity! Let us raise the veil of deception that shrouds the emptiness of human joy. Alvira has now gratified her heart's desires in everything she could have under the sun. She had beauty, wealth, and fame, but she was like the pretty moth that hovers around the flame of the candle, and finds its ruin in the touch of the splendor it loves. Poor Alvira was another child of Solomon that sighed over the emptiness of human joy; for bitter disappointment is the sad tale ...
— Alvira: the Heroine of Vesuvius • A. J. O'Reilly |
