"Bird" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... tiller in my hand, and stared at my wife in some consternation. This was not the tame pigeon, the rosy, humble, domestic creature who was to make me a home and rear me children. A sea bird with broad white wings swooped down upon the water, now dark and ridged, rested there a moment, then swept away into the heart of the gathering storm. She was liker such an one. Such birds were caught at times, but ...
— To Have and To Hold • Mary Johnston
... mean a dead spirit but a living one! I saw the vision of a book I mean to do. It came to me suddenly, magnificently, swooped down on me as that big white moon swooped down on the black landscape, tore at me like a great white eagle-like the bird of Jove! After all, imagination WAS the eagle that ...
— The Custom of the Country • Edith Wharton
... melody. The chant was determined by curious signs printed under the words, and the signs that made nice music were rather rare, and the nicest sign of all, which spun out the word with endless turns and trills, like the carol of a bird, occurred only a few times in the whole Pentateuch. The child, as he listened to the interminable incantation, thought he would have sprinkled the Code with bird-songs, and made the Scroll of the Law warble. But he knew this could not be. For the Scroll was stern ...
— Dreamers of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... world in preventing C—— from launching forth upon his flying machine from that stupendous pier into mid air, and quite as infallibly mid ocean. With infinite entreaties they finally persuaded him to send forth his machine, unfreighted with human life, on its experimental trip. He did so, and his bird, turning ignominious somersaults on its way, at length found a perch, and folded its wings on a hoary rock-anchored tree that stretched out an arm of succor to it above the abyss, and there, perhaps, it still ...
— Records of Later Life • Frances Anne Kemble
... said a clear, manly voice, and the speaker entered the door; "so my little bird has become restive since her taste of city life, and longs ...
— Woman As She Should Be - or, Agnes Wiltshire • Mary E. Herbert
... always curious to the point of their undoing came out and investigated our tracks as soon as the noise of the stragglers had ceased. The Armenians took no notice of the wild life; persecuted people seldom do, having their own hard case too much in mind; but Fred knew the name of nearly every bird and animal that showed itself, and even ceased smoking as ...
— The Eye of Zeitoon • Talbot Mundy
... suspected of, and never would show, that first summer at Hollywell, and a very touching vision of his fair young mother. Except a translation or two, some words written to suit their favourite airs (a thing that used to seem to come as easily to him as singing to a bird), and a few lively mock heroic accounts of walks or parties, which had all been public property, there was no more that she could believe to have been composed till last year, for he was more disposed to versify in sorrow ...
— The Heir of Redclyffe • Charlotte M. Yonge
... to acknowledge that Birmingham is any worse than other large towns in the matter of crime and criminals, and the old adage respecting the bird that fouls its own nest has been more than once applied to the individuals who have ventured to demur from the boast that ours is par excellence, a highly moral, fair-dealing, sober, and superlatively honest community. ...
— Showell's Dictionary of Birmingham - A History And Guide Arranged Alphabetically • Thomas T. Harman and Walter Showell
... very birds guilty of the crime of being extinct. There are belated attempts on the part of our governors to read us pious homilies about disinterested love of learning, while the old machinery goes on working, whose product is not education but certificates. It is good to remind the fettered bird that its wings are for soaring; but it is better to cut the chain which is holding it to its perch. The most pathetic feature of the tragedy is that the bird itself has learnt to use its chain for its ornament, ...
— Creative Unity • Rabindranath Tagore
... convulsively with her nails. Such was the intensity of the situation that she left her beloved sister in that piteous state, and even hoped she would faint dead away, and so hear no more. She came back white, and told Camille it was only a bird got into the tree. "And to think you should be wounded," said she, to divert his attention ...
— White Lies • Charles Reade
... with a face like a young saint in some old picture, she thought. She often wondered how her wild, sparkling sister Kate dared to be so familiar with him. She had ventured the thought once when she watched Kate dressing to go out with some young people and preening herself like a bird of Paradise before the glass. It all came over her, the vanity and frivolousness of the life that Kate loved, and she spoke ...
— Marcia Schuyler • Grace Livingston Hill Lutz
... did not love the birds. It was useless to pretend. Whatever one may say about other birds a cuckoo is a low detestable cad of a bird. ...
— Soul of a Bishop • H. G. Wells
... is an easy bird to begin with, and readily obtained at any poulterer's. Draw out the tail feathers and place them quite flat in some paper till required. Do the same with the right wing and the left, keeping each separate and putting a mark on the papers that you ...
— Golden Days for Boys and Girls, Vol. XII, Jan. 3, 1891 • Various
... a fish. I cannot quite make out what it is. It makes curious, devilish noises when not satisfied, and says "goo-goo" when it is. It is not one of us, for it doesn't walk; it is not a bird, for it doesn't fly; it is not a frog, for it doesn't hop; it is not a snake, for it doesn't crawl; I feel sure it is not a fish, though I cannot get a chance to find out whether it can swim or not. It merely lies around, and mostly on its back, with its feet up. ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... and the formation of pens or enclaves into which the attenuated roving bands of Boers were to be herded and dealt with severally and severely. The work of extension was taken in hand in July, 1901. The Boers in the veld watched it with the detachment and unconcern of a wild bird on the branches looking down upon the fowler laying his ...
— A Handbook of the Boer War • Gale and Polden, Limited
... eyes with her handkerchief, and bit her lips until they were red again. "If you're nothing but a bird of omen," she said to herself, "at least you needn't show it! Oh, this world!" then, "What if he ...
— Lewis Rand • Mary Johnston
... nose. Scattered boulders seemed to move gently. He closed his eyes for an instant. When he opened them he thought he saw a movement in the brush below. The heat burned into his back, and he shrugged his shoulders. A tiny bird flitted past and perched on the dry, dead stalk of a yucca. Again Waring thought he saw a ...
— Jim Waring of Sonora-Town - Tang of Life • Knibbs, Henry Herbert
... the scene appears devoid of life, but suddenly the call of a jay bird is heard faintly and far up the trail that leads to the right among the rocks. It is repeated nearer at hand, perfectly imitated but with a nuance that advises of human origin, and two or three half-naked Indians are seen to be making their way toward the bottom ...
— The Arrow-Maker - A Drama in Three Acts • Mary Austin
... above the heads of the vast concourse a flock of birds was allowed to escape from the cages in which they had been brought to the spot. In return for a few copecks charitably offered by some good people, the bird-fanciers opened the prison doors of their captives, who flew out in hundreds, uttering ...
— Michael Strogoff - or, The Courier of the Czar • Jules Verne
... land, we were visited by the local chapmen, whose goods appeared rather mixed—polished cowhorns and mildewed figs, dolls in costume and corrosive oranges; by the normal musical barber, who imitates at a humble distance bird and beast; and by the vendor of binoculars, who asks forty francs and who takes ten. The captain noted his protest at the Consulate, and claimed by way of sauvetage 200l. The owners offered 200 lire—punds Scots. Briefly, noon had struck before we ...
— To the Gold Coast for Gold - A Personal Narrative in Two Volumes.—Vol. I • Richard F. Burton
... there may be something ... lying in the woods. Hidden under a bush, with two feet just showing. Perhaps one high heel catching the sunlight, with a bird perched on the end of it; and the other—a stockinged foot, with blood ... that's dried into the openwork stocking. And there's a man walking about somewhere, and talking, like us; and he woke up this morning, and looked at the weather. ... And he killed her.... (Smiling, looking ...
— Night Must Fall • Williams, Emlyn
... sketch! A multum in parvo! A bird's-eye view, as one may say,—and not entertaining, certainly. What other branches have you pursued? ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume V, Number 29, March, 1860 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... pure pen-holder of a man, melancholy and mild, who taught the most complicated flourishes—great scrolls of them met our view in the form of surging seas and beaked and beady-eyed eagles, the eagle being so calligraphic a bird—while he might just have taught resignation. He was not at all funny—no one out of our immediate family circle, in fact almost no one but W. J. himself, who flowered in every waste, seems to have struck me as funny in those years; but he was to remain with me a picture of ...
— A Small Boy and Others • Henry James
... surprise," Sheila said presently, "do you think we could go down to see my father in his studio, after we have shopped? I feel like seeing my father to-day. Sometimes I wake up in the morning and I think of Hitty and my breakfast, and the canary bird, and of you, Miss Dear, fast asleep where I can hear you breathing in your room—if I listen to it—and then other mornings I wake up thinking only of my father, and how he looks in his shirt-sleeves and necktie. I was thinking of him this morning like that. ...
— Outside Inn • Ethel M. Kelley
... the woods yesterday, where boys should not be on Sundays, and, in climbing a tree after a bird's nest, ...
— Now or Never - The Adventures of Bobby Bright • Oliver Optic
... lone bird at day's departing hour Sings in the sunbeam of the transient shower, Forgetful though its wings are wet ...
— Queechy • Susan Warner
... "No native intelligence on a hunting world, Gentlehomo. That is assured before the planet is listed for a safari. However, a bird or flying thing, perhaps with metallic plumage or scales to catch the sunlight, might under the right circumstances seem a flash of light. That ...
— Star Hunter • Andre Alice Norton
... fact that people really believe no part of a partridge is ever taken away after being set before him. Neither bones nor sinews remain: so fond is he of the brown bird. Having eaten the breast, and the juicy leg and the delicate wing, he next proceeds to suck the bones; for game to be thoroughly enjoyed should be eaten like a mince-pie, in the fingers. There is always one bone with a sweeter ...
— Round About a Great Estate • Richard Jefferies
... be one or the other, you know, or you'll be like the bat in the fable who was neither bird nor beast, and so was out of all the fun on both sides. I may be prejudiced, but I advise you to be a cadets' lady. And you'd better decide ...
— Lady Betty Across the Water • Charles Norris Williamson and Alice Muriel Williamson
... months almost without ceasing, and then I told myself that if I would be strong and resist I must weep no more. If a bird in a cage once takes to pining he is sure not to live long. There are few of us here the news of whose death would not give pleasure to those who shut us up, and I for one resolved that I would ...
— Bonnie Prince Charlie - A Tale of Fontenoy and Culloden • G. A. Henty
... noble instinct, chant their seraphic music, and angels with tails hold their most holy councils? Don't you see? And, while monarchs and potentates become a prey to moths and worms, to have the honor of receiving visits from the royal bird of Jove. Moritz, Moritz, Moritz! beware of ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... the bird that carries the soul to the object in which his mind is immersed, and thus his ...
— Cosmic Consciousness • Ali Nomad
... Queen for destroying them. These new travels are simple, and do tell you a little more than late voyagers, by whose accounts one would think there was nothing in Spain but muleteers and fandangos. In truth, there does not seem to be much worth seeing but prospects; and those, unless I were a bird, I would never visit, when the accommodations ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole, V4 • Horace Walpole
... inland bird First by the seaworn sailor heard; And like road sheltered from life's sea Thine honest heart ...
— New Poems • Robert Louis Stevenson
... This bird's-eye view and lack of information about the details do less than justice to the crucial battle, which Maud'huy under Foch's general direction waged against the Germans round Arras and both they and the French regard as one of the decisive incidents in the ...
— A Short History of the Great War • A.F. Pollard
... swept over the ocean and the stars were beginning to pale before the pink glory flung broadcast through the sky by the yet invisible sun, the sailor was aroused by the quiet fluttering of a bird about to settle on the rock, but startled by ...
— The Wings of the Morning • Louis Tracy
... indigo bunting, that tiny bird of blue so intense that the very skies look pale beside it and among all the blue flowers of our land only the fringed gentian can rival it. With no attempt to hide his gorgeous self he perched in full view on a branch of the tree and began to sing in rapid notes. What the song lacked ...
— Amanda - A Daughter of the Mennonites • Anna Balmer Myers
... Brigslade, with no lookings back towards Monkhaven; for, indeed, their greatest wish was to leave it as quickly as possible far behind them. They were a good way off fortunately before clever Superintendent Boyds and his assistants found out that their bird was flown, and when they did find it out they went after him in the wrong direction; and it was not till three days after the children had been safe at home that formal information, which doubtless would have been very cheering to poor Grandpapa, came to him that the police at Monkhaven ...
— "Us" - An Old Fashioned Story • Mary Louisa S. Molesworth
... "Of course I am not afraid. But"—he eyed the large aeroplane dubiously—"but a man was not made to fly about in the air like a bird, particularly a man of my weight. Besides, I do not like great height. If I stand upon a precipice, I am immediately struck with the notion that I must jump off. If I jumped from an aeroplane I might ...
— The Boy Allies with the Cossacks - Or, A Wild Dash over the Carpathians • Clair W. Hayes
... to win her. A jongleur arrived with stories of the courts where love was the only ruler; where the knights willingly suffered grief and want, if by so doing they could serve their lady; where the lover, in the shape of a beautiful blue bird, nightly slipped through the barred windows into the arms of his mistress. But the jealous husband had drawn barbed wire across the window, and the lover, flying away at dawn, bled to death before the eyes of his grief-stricken lady. The jongleur would tell of the knight who had ...
— The Evolution of Love • Emil Lucka
... carefully replaced it on his head, and then flew aloft out of sight. Tanaquil is said to have joyfully welcomed this omen, being a woman well skilled, as the Etruscans generally are, in celestial prodigies, and, embracing her husband, bade him hope for a high and lofty destiny: that such a bird had come from such a quarter of the heavens, and the messenger of such a god: that it had declared the omen around the highest part of man: that it had lifted the ornament placed on the head of man, to restore it to him again, by direction of the ...
— Roman History, Books I-III • Titus Livius
... the Owl, That bird of solemn phiz, That truly awful-looking fowl, To represent her wis- Dom, little recked the goddess of The time when she would howl To see a Peanut set on ...
— The Wit of Women - Fourth Edition • Kate Sanborn
... into her modest room, which was bright and sunny with a flowered paper on the walls, potted plants and a bird-cage. She then began a recital of the interview she had had with Susy. This threw no fresh light upon the case and ...
— A Royal Prisoner • Pierre Souvestre
... the sea lions, the honk of the wild geese, the skulking coyote who knows that each beast is his enemy and has not even a flea to help him "forget that he is a dog," the leap of the salmon, the ecstasy of the mocking-bird and bobolink, the nesting of the field-mice, the chatter of the squirrel, the gray lichen of the oak, the green moss on the log, the poppies of the field and the Mariposa lilies of the cliff—all these and ten thousand more pictures which could be ...
— Life's Enthusiasms • David Starr Jordan
... least, that you must make it your own by thoroughly understanding both the nature and the art you are dealing with. If you do not heed this, I do not know but what you may not as well turn to and draw laborious portraits of natural forms of flower and bird and beast, and stick them on your walls anyhow. It is true you will not get ornament so, but you may learn something for your trouble; whereas, using an obviously true principle as a stalking-horse for laziness of purpose and lack of invention, will but injure art all round, ...
— Hopes and Fears for Art • William Morris
... she rejoined quickly. 'See how I can gallop. Now, Pansy, off!' And Elfride started; and Stephen beheld her light figure contracting to the dimensions of a bird as she sank into ...
— A Pair of Blue Eyes • Thomas Hardy
... generally very direct, steering for the densest, most impenetrable places,—leading you over logs and through brush, alert and expectant, till, suddenly, she bursts up a few yards from you, and goes humming through the trees,—the complete triumph of endurance and vigor. Hardy native bird, may your tracks never be fewer, or your visits to the birch-tree ...
— In the Catskills • John Burroughs
... a kind of outcast among the birds. I think they regard him as a half reptile, who has not yet climbed high enough in the bird scale to deserve recognition; so they let him severely alone. Even the goshawk hesitates before taking a swoop at him, not knowing quite whether the gaudy creature is dangerous or only uncanny. I saw ...
— Secret of the Woods • William J. Long
... completely to rights. He intended to be gone a year, but returned at the end of six weeks, fulminating abuse of European cooking. Nearly his entire time had been spent in Paris; but of this sojourn he had brought back but two souvenirs, an electro-plated bill-hook and an empty bird cage which had tickled his ...
— The Octopus • Frank Norris
... might look through the bunch of letters it contained addressed in English, and I was made glad by receiving an epistle from the little woman who has since taken my name upon her for life. After reading my letter, I went out and walked up the mountain side far enough to get a bird's-eye view of the city, and it was a fine sight the rich growth of green trees presented in contrast with the brown earth all around. Returning to the city, I walked about the streets, devoting some of my time to the bazaars, ...
— A Trip Abroad • Don Carlos Janes
... with his wine glass in a nervous kind of way—"you want money, and you think I'm sure to give it, because it wouldn't be pleasant just now to have discreditable stories going about concerning the future Mrs. Ascott's relatives. You're quite right, it wouldn't. But I'm too old a bird to be caught with chaff for all that. You must rise very early in the ...
— Mistress and Maid • Dinah Craik (aka: Miss Mulock)
... room a powerful and delicious fragrance. She inhaled the odour, she laved her temples with the liquid, and suddenly her life seemed to spring up from the previous faintness,—to spring, to soar, to float, to dilate upon the wings of a bird. The room vanished from her eyes. Away, away, over lands and seas and space on the rushing desire flies ...
— Zanoni • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... within sight of the German lines. From a wooded spur of the hills he looked down upon the enemy's left flank and beyond to the British lines. His position gave him a bird's-eye view of the field of battle, and his keen eyesight picked out many details that would not have been apparent to a man whose every sense was not trained to the highest point of perfection as were the ape-man's. He noted machine-gun ...
— Tarzan the Untamed • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... interest for the crack of the revolver that would put a period to the quarrel between Soapy Stone and young Flandrau. It was known that Curly had refused to leave town, just as it was known that Stone and that other prison bird Blackwell were hanging about the Last Chance and Chalkeye's Place drinking together morosely. It was observed too that whenever Curly appeared in public he was attended by friends. Sometimes it would be Maloney and Davis, sometimes his uncle Alec ...
— Crooked Trails and Straight • William MacLeod Raine
... and prayed at night—prayed for the time which she hoped was dawning now! There were some trifles there, which she would have liked to take away, but that was impossible. She wept bitterly to leave her poor bird behind, until the idea occurred to her that it might fall into the hands of Kit, who would keep and cherish it for her sake. She was calmed and comforted by this thought, and went to ...
— Ten Girls from Dickens • Kate Dickinson Sweetser
... and retire a few rods behind the shelter of a log-house." On the adjacent hill stood one Blodget, who seems to have been a sutler, watching, as well as bushes, trees, and smoke would let him, the progress of the fight, of which he soon after made and published a curious bird's-eye view. As the wounded men were carried to the rear, the wagoners about the camp took their guns and powder-horns, and joined in the fray. A Mohawk, seeing one of these men still unarmed, leaped over the barricade, tomahawked the nearest Canadian, snatched his gun, ...
— Montcalm and Wolfe • Francis Parkman
... other part was a pagan Grandones, Son of Capuel, the king of Capadoce. He sate his horse, the which he called Marmore, Never so swift was any bird in course; He's loosed the reins, and spurring on that horse He's gone to strike Gerin with all his force; The scarlat shield from's neck he's broken off, And all his sark thereafter has he torn, The ensign blue clean through his body's gone, Until he flings him dead, on a ...
— The Song of Roland • Anonymous
... do not allow you to forget them, even if one desired to forget a bird that is so intimately connected with the city and with a great ceremony of that ancient republic which has passed away. They belong so entirely to the place, and especially to the great square; they have made their homes for so many generations among the carvings ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume 7 - Italy, Sicily, and Greece (Part One) • Various
... knowledge of Heraldry and the Peerage must be aware that the noble family of which, as we know, Helen Pendennis was a member, bears for a crest, a nest full of little pelicans pecking at the ensanguined bosom of a big maternal bird, which plentifully supplies the little wretches with the nutriment on which, according to the heraldic legend, they are supposed to be brought up. Very likely female pelicans like so to bleed under the selfish little beaks of their young ones: it is certain ...
— The History of Pendennis • William Makepeace Thackeray
... heart of the old Apostle was stirred by that soul in suffering, which, like a bird in a cage, was struggling toward air and the sun; hence, stretching his hand to Vinicius, he said,—"Whoso knocketh, to him will be opened. The favor and grace of God is upon thee; for this reason I bless thee, thy soul and thy love, in the name of ...
— Quo Vadis - A Narrative of the Time of Nero • Henryk Sienkiewicz
... droop each little head, Nor let your wings with joy be spread, My Lesbia's favourite bird is dead, Which dearer than her eyes she lov'd: For he was gentle and so true, Obedient to her call he flew, No fear, no wild alarm he knew, But lightly o'er ...
— Fugitive Pieces • George Gordon Noel Byron
... outside and stood gazing over the autumn-tinted country. A stray bird twitted among the trees, but the great silence was settling down every hour as the feathered immigrants mounted from copse and dell into the blue ...
— Colorado Jim • George Goodchild
... victims of amorous heat, as quails, for instance, or partridges, which, at the cry of the hen-bird, with lust and expectation of such joys grow wild, and lose their power of computing dangers: on they rush, and fall into the ...
— The Memorabilia - Recollections of Socrates • Xenophon
... in its kind must pass out beyond and transcend its kind. It must be an inimitable something of another and a higher nature. In many of its tones the nightingale is only a bird; then it rises up above its class, and seems as if it would teach every feathered ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. II • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... in the blood; the fevers of the brain; the creeping paralysis of nerve-exhaustion; above all, we must be able even now from a few bare facts, to re-create a man and make him live and love again for the reader, just as the biologist from a few scattered bones can reconstruct some prehistoric bird or fish or mammal. ...
— The Man Shakespeare • Frank Harris
... had fancied! This dragon, which was to devour the Hopes, seems a pretty harmless creature. Why he looks a mere boy, and with hair so light, one can't see it without spectacles. What will he do with himself in my mother's good house? Fanny Grey's bird-cage would suit him better;—and then he might hang in Rowland's hall, and be always ready for use when the children are ill. I must have out what I mean to say to him, however; and, from his looks, I should fancy I may do what I please with him. ...
— Deerbrook • Harriet Martineau
... a long winter for Annie Hempstead. Letters did not come very regularly from Tom Reed, for it was a season of heavy snowfalls and the mails were often delayed. The letters were all that she had for comfort and company. She had bought a canary-bird, adopted a stray kitten, and filled her sunny windows with plants. She sat beside them and sewed, and tried to be happy and content, but all the time there was a frightful uncertainty deep down within her heart as to whether or not she was doing right. She knew that her sisters were ...
— The Copy-Cat and Other Stories • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... She stood superior to them all, Hath swept the marble where her feet Gleam'd whiter than the mountain sleet Ere from the cloud that gave it birth It fell, and caught one stain of earth. The cygnet nobly walks the water; So moved on earth Circassia's daughter— The loveliest bird of Franguestan! As rears her crest the ruffled Swan, And spurns the waves with wings of pride, When pass the steps of stranger man Along the banks that bound her tide; Thus rose fair Leila's whiter neck:— Thus arm'd with beauty would she check Intrusion's glance, till Folly's ...
— My Recollections of Lord Byron • Teresa Guiccioli
... and has gone," Max thought; and an instant later assured himself that she had done so, for the pegs at the back of the tent had been pulled out of the sand. The bird had flown, but Max feared that it might only be from one danger to another. In spite of the friendly reception given to the caravan at Dardai, a young woman straying from camp into the oasis would not be safe for an instant if seen; and in the desert beyond Sanda might be terrified by jackals or ...
— A Soldier of the Legion • C. N. Williamson
... kept them covered with their rifles, Selim ran to the gate, uttering the shrill cry of a night bird. There was a rush of feet inside the walls, subdued exclamations, and then a ...
— The Man From Brodney's • George Barr McCutcheon
... wish I did know where Charlie Gray is!" said Dotty, looking through the open window at a bird flying far ...
— Dotty Dimple's Flyaway • Sophie May
... said Downy, I should like To sail on yonder sea, And with that pretty milk-white bird, Skim o'er ...
— Home Lyrics • Hannah. S. Battersby
... few days the keeper's existence was enlivened by visits from what appeared to be a most enthusiastic bird's-nester. By no other theory could he account for it. Only a boy with a collection to support would run ...
— The Politeness of Princes - and Other School Stories • P. G. Wodehouse
... direct dependence of sexual pigmentation on the primary sexual glands is well illustrated by a true hermaphroditic adult finch exhibited at the Academy of Sciences of Amsterdam (May 31, 1890); this bird had a testis on the right side and an ovary on the left, and on the right side its plumage was of the male's colors, on the ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 5 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... philanthropist on the largest scale, yet is so selfish that he would willingly see the world perish, if he could but secure paradise to himself. Indeed he can think of no other being; and his child, his canary bird, his cook-maid, or his cat, are the most extraordinary of God's creatures. This is the only consistent trait in his character. In the same sentence, he frequently joins the most fulsome flattery and some insidious question; that asks the person, whom he addresses, if he do not confess himself ...
— The Adventures of Hugh Trevor • Thomas Holcroft
... the gift of advancing, without bias or unsteadiness, throughout their search, from premise to conclusion, from text to doctrine; that they have sought aright, and no one else, who does not agree with them; that they alone have found out the art of putting the salt upon the bird's tail, and have rescued themselves from being the slaves of circumstance and the creatures of impulse. It is undeniable, then, if the popular feeling is to be our guide, that, high and mighty as the principle of private judgment is in religious inquiries, ...
— Prose Masterpieces from Modern Essayists • James Anthony Froude, Edward A. Freeman, William Ewart Gladstone, John Henry Newman and Leslie Steph
... remarks, Lady Merthyr Tydvil had been gazing rather fixedly at Austin, with her head on one side like an enquiring old bird, and a puzzled ...
— Austin and His Friends • Frederic H. Balfour
... our privilege—said at least to be so—to look before and after? I am not sure, however, that I always think this a privilege. I long sometimes to be any bird of the air, that I might live for ...
— Deerbrook • Harriet Martineau
... was a change. Opposite her seat was the door, upon which her eyes presently became riveted like those of a little bird upon a snake. For, on a peg at the back of the door, there hung a hat; such a hat—surely, from its peculiar make, the actual hat—that had been worn by Charles. Conviction grew to certainty when she saw a railway ticket sticking up from the band. Charles had put the ticket ...
— Victorian Short Stories, - Stories Of Successful Marriages • Elizabeth Gaskell, et al.
... triumph, as a social nomad camping on the No Man's Land of society, at the thought of the justification of the human against the conventional, in his scaling of the giddy heights of superiority, and, on one of its topmost peaks, taking from her nest that rare bird in the earth, a landed and titled marchioness. But such thoughts were only changing hues on the feathers of his love, which itself was a mighty bird with great ...
— The Marquis of Lossie • George MacDonald
... invariably found a hopeless tangle of the rankest tropical vegetation, with humidity so high that trees were draped with ferns, orchids, and thick moss, and dripping with moisture. However, I knew that the mere presence of pine and oak trees would mean the occurrence of special bird species feeding upon their seeds, ...
— The Philippines: Past and Present (vol. 1 of 2) • Dean C. Worcester
... was a little two-storied house, whose four rooms looked exactly, as four rooms are represented in section on the stage, the front wall having been blown clean away, and the furniture and inmates swept out; the very fender and fire-irons had been carried away: a bird-cage, a clock, and a grate were left hanging to the ...
— Put Yourself in His Place • Charles Reade
... Dished. Where's Long Pole Wellesley?[602] Diddled. Where's Whitbread? Romilly? Where's George the Third? Where is his will?[603] (That's not so soon unriddled.) And where is "Fum" the Fourth, our "royal bird?"[604] Gone down, it seems, to Scotland to be fiddled Unto by Sawney's violin, we have heard: "Caw me, caw thee"—for six months hath been hatching This scene of royal ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 6 • Lord Byron
... distinguished a part to the remote village of Burnham Thorpe;" but the interest seems by their account to be limited to the energy with which he dug in the garden, or, from sheer want of something to do, reverted to the bird-nesting of his boyhood. His favorite amusement, we are told, was coursing, and he once shot a partridge; but his habit of carrying his gun at full cock, and firing as soon as a bird rose, without bringing the piece to his shoulder, made him a dangerous companion in a shooting-party. His own ...
— The Life of Nelson, Vol. I (of 2) - The Embodiment of the Sea Power of Great Britain • A. T. (Alfred Thayer) Mahan
... it very wrong,' said the Teakettle- he was the kitchen singer, and half brother to the Tea Urn-'that that rich and foreign bird should be listened to. Is that patriotic? ...
— The Junior Classics, Volume 1 • Willam Patten
... Frankfort, and this afternoon we have been driving out to see the lions, and in the first place the house where Goethe was born. Over the door, you remember, was the family coat of arms. Well, while we were looking I perceived that a little bird had accommodated the crest of the coat to be his own family residence, and was flying in and out of a snug nest wherewith he had crowned it. Little fanciful, feathery amateur! could nothing suit him so well as Goethe's coat of arms? I could fancy the little thing to be the ...
— Sunny Memories of Foreign Lands V2 • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... is no rest for our hearts but on the bosom of some one that is dear to us, and in whom we can confide. But ah, brother! every tree in which the dove nestles is felled down sooner or later, and the nest torn to pieces, and the bird flies away. But if we turn ourselves to the undying Christ, the perpetual revelation of the eternal God, then, then our love and our faith will bring us rest. There will be peace in trusting Him whom we never can trust and be put to shame. There ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ephesians; Epistles of St. Peter and St. John • Alexander Maclaren
... would undertake that with the aid of two active men to hold the ropes for us. We have both done plenty of bird- nesting in the woods of Hedingham, and are ...
— By England's Aid • G. A. Henty
... the Van Diemen we saw some well constructed huts of the natives; they were made of branches arched over in the form of a bird-cage, and thatched with grass and the bark of the drooping tea-tree. The place where we encamped had been frequently used by the natives for the same purpose. Our attention was particularly attracted by a large heap of chaff, from which the natives ...
— Journal of an Overland Expedition in Australia • Ludwig Leichhardt
... many writers of these tracts the playwright of Nuremberg, Hans Sachs, took a prominent place. In 1523 he published his poem on "the Nightingale of Wittenberg, whose voice sounds in the glorious dawn over hill and dale." This bird is, of course, Luther, and the fierce lion who has sought his life is Leo. [Sidenote: Hans Sachs] The next year Hans Sachs published no less than three pamphlets favoring the reform. They were: 1. A Disputation between a Canon and a Shoemaker, defending the Word of God and ...
— The Age of the Reformation • Preserved Smith
... because his mouth was full of coal dust. While he was spluttering, William, who had just discovered that his bird had ...
— More William • Richmal Crompton
... Boy, thus, when his Sparrow's flown, The Bird in Silence eyes; But soon as out of Sight 'tis gone, Whines, whimpers, ...
— The Beggar's Opera - to which is prefixed the Musick to each Song • John Gay
... the author could so far unbend as to outline his experience in this business. Whereupon the Head Examiner proceeded with his writing and left the author, in a state of coma, facing an expectant assistant examiner, who resembled some predatory bird only waiting for life to be extinct before falling upon the victim. Somewhat to his own surprise, however, the victim showed signs of returning animation, and began to utter strange, semi-articulate noises. The Head Examiner wrote on with increasing speed; the assistant examiner, ...
— An Ocean Tramp • William McFee
... — N. traveler, wayfarer, voyager, itinerant, passenger, commuter. tourist, excursionist, explorer, adventurer, mountaineer, hiker, backpacker, Alpine Club; peregrinator[obs3], wanderer, rover, straggler, rambler; bird of passage; gadabout, gadling[obs3]; vagrant, scatterling[obs3], landloper[obs3], waifs and estrays[obs3], wastrel, foundling; loafer; tramp, tramper; vagabond, nomad, Bohemian, gypsy, Arab[obs3], Wandering ...
— Roget's Thesaurus • Peter Mark Roget
... Mrs. Fisher disliked more than having to look on while sensible, intelligent men, who the moment before were talking seriously and interestingly about real matters, became merely foolish and simpering—she had seen them actually simpering—just because in walked a bit of bird-brained beauty. Even Mr. Gladstone, that great wise statesman, whose hand had once rested for an unforgettable moment solemnly on her head, would have, she felt, on perceiving Lady Caroline left off talking sense and horribly ...
— The Enchanted April • Elizabeth von Arnim
... the mountain! lyre of bird and tree! Pomp of the meadow! mirror of the morn! The soul of April, unto whom are born The rose and jessamine, ...
— Nature Mysticism • J. Edward Mercer
... cedar bird, busy in the near-by shrubbery, wakened her with a care-free note. She started up and gazed out with that sudden wonder and terror which at times seize upon us when we awake in strange environment. Youth and vitality resumed sway. ...
— The Purchase Price • Emerson Hough
... have originated with Petherton. Petherton, in spite of his meek old-fashioned manners, is as sharp an old bird as you'll find in London! He fastened at once on what Bassett Oliver said to that fisherman, Ewbank. A keen nose for a scent, Petherton's! And he 's determined to find out who it was that Bassett Oliver met in ...
— Scarhaven Keep • J. S. Fletcher
... here after this, or if other words were added to these by the hostess or the guest, there is no report. But I can imagine that in such an hour, even between these two, little could be said. Yesterday I saw on a monument a little bird perched, quite content, and still, so far as song went, as the dead beneath him and around me. He was throbbing from far flight; silence and rest were all he could now endure. But by-and-by he shook his wings and was off again, and nobody that saw him could tell where in the sea of air the voyager ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 77, March, 1864 • Various
... they had wandered. Near them was a grove of oleander bushes, loaded with beautiful blossoms. Every branch was adorned by the presence of two or more beautiful green sugar-birds,—the certhia (Nectarinia) famosa. Nothing in nature can exceed in splendour the plumage of the sugar-bird. The little vale in which the hunters had encamped seemed a paradise, bathed in golden sunlight; and even the cattle appeared to leave it with ...
— The Giraffe Hunters • Mayne Reid
... not in my line. Pick this bone of chicken," says Mr. Brummell, trifling with a skeleton bird before him. ...
— Roundabout Papers • William Makepeace Thackeray
... drudging at exercises and laboring at scales. Canaries, indeed, are trained to sing, and even young birds to fly. Yet the training is but showing them how to give themselves free play. To express entire facility we say that an act is done as naturally as a bird sings. Not less naturally does Cecilia play. You listen, and the song which you knew seems to sing itself, but enveloped with a richness and fulness of flowing accompaniment which is like the harping of aerial choirs. Then with others she plays the great music, concerted Bach or Beethoven, Chopin, ...
— From the Easy Chair, vol. 1 • George William Curtis
... not be as long as Ethel's," said the doctor, yielding with a half-reluctant smile. "My story is of a humming-bird, a little creature that loved its master with all its strength, and longed to do somewhat for him. It was not satisfied with its lot, because it seemed merely a vain and profitless creature. The nightingale sang praise, and the woods sounded with the glory of its strains; the fowl was valued for ...
— The Daisy Chain, or Aspirations • Charlotte Yonge
... morphia he abandons the drug entirely. In my Harper's Magazine article I have fully depicted the sufferings which now ensue—as fully, at least, as they can be depicted on paper—though that at the best must he a mere bird's-eye view. During the period of diminution he has endured considerable uneasiness and distress, but these have been trifling to compare with the suffering which he must endure for the first few days and nights, at least, after total ...
— The Opium Habit • Horace B. Day
... knowledge of their duties, and real good feeling towards the farmers and cultivators of their districts. For this better tone of feeling the Western Provinces are, I believe, chiefly indebted to Mr. R. M. Bird, of the Revenue Board, one of the most able public officers now in India. A settlement for twenty years is now in progress that will leave the farmers at least 35 per cent. upon the gross collections from ...
— Rambles and Recollections of an Indian Official • William Sleeman
... bending over their prie-Dieu. At mass on Sundays, when she looked up, she saw the gentle face of the Virgin amid the blue smoke of the rising incense. Then she was moved; she felt herself weak and quite deserted, like the down of a bird whirled by the tempest, and it was unconsciously that she went towards the church, included to no matter what devotions, so that her soul was absorbed and all ...
— Madame Bovary • Gustave Flaubert
... groves of bamboo at the back of some of the houses, and pine-apple plantations luxuriating in the dark damp shady nooks. Then there are large fields of the most vivid hues; the bird's-eye pepper and tumeric are found growing like common weeds; while the piper betel, the leaf of which is chewed with ripe or green pieces of the areca-nut, is a most graceful plant, especially when loaded with its ...
— Mark Seaworth • William H.G. Kingston
... softly, behind Faith's chair, then turned and went back into the house; not caring, as it seemed, to spread the vexation. Then after a little interval of bird music, the gate opened to admit Reuben Taylor. He held a bunch of water lilies—drooping their fair heads from his hand; his own head drooped a little too. Then he raised it and came ...
— Say and Seal, Volume I • Susan Warner
... Drew regarded a circling bird in the section of sky above her head—"some day I hope I'll discover just what kind of a no-account Hunt Rennie was, to make his son so unacceptable. Most of the Texans I've ridden with in the army haven't been so bad; some of them are ...
— Ride Proud, Rebel! • Andre Alice Norton
... while not an official symbol, the Kiwi, a small native flightless bird, represents ...
— The 2007 CIA World Factbook • United States
... safe distance while they sallied forth and in a neighboring street discovered an early-bird bakery. Here they were able to purchase rolls steaming from the oven, fresh pats of golden butter wrapped in clean lettuce leaves, and milk in twin bottles; all of which they prosaically carried with them back to the station, lacking leisure as they did ...
— The Black Bag • Louis Joseph Vance
... steadily while speaking, and looked at Calvert. He saw that they were full of tears. The mask was down again. There was an humbled, shamed expression on that lovely face usually so imperious. The look of appeal and distress went to his heart like a knife. She made him think of some brilliant bird cruelly wounded. ...
— Calvert of Strathore • Carter Goodloe
... Twins. "While I'm throwing the cakeen together do you get some potatoes from the bag, Eileen, and put them down in the ashes, and you, Larry, stir up the fire a bit, and keep the kettle full. Sure, 'tis singing away like a bird this instant minute! Put some water in it, avic, and then shut up the hens ...
— The Irish Twins • Lucy Fitch Perkins
... intercourse that I have wonderingly lost. I learned at that hour in any case what "acclamation" might mean, and have again before me the vast high-piled auditory thundering applause at the beautiful pink lady's clear bird-notes; a thrilling, a tremendous experience and my sole other memory of concert-going, at that age, save the impression of a strange huddled hour in some smaller public place, some very minor hall, under dim lamps and again in my mother's ...
— A Small Boy and Others • Henry James
... anything yet, the note of the range of the immeasurable town and sweeping away, as by a last brave brush, his usual landmarks and terms. It was in the garden, a spacious cherished remnant, out of which a dozen persons had already passed, that Chad's host presently met them while the tall bird-haunted trees, all of a twitter with the spring and the weather, and the high party-walls, on the other side of which grave hotels stood off for privacy, spoke of survival, transmission, association, a strong indifferent ...
— The Ambassadors • Henry James
... a chill ran down his back, for a raven perched on the black doll and pecked so fiercely at it with its hard beak, that bird and image swayed to and fro like ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... London, in the house of some high-born patroness,—that friendless shadow of a friend which the jargon of society calls "companion." And she was looking on the bright storm of the world as through prison bars. Poor bird, afar from the greenwood, she had need of song,—it was her last link with freedom and nature. The patroness seems to share in her apprehensions of the boy suitor, whose wild rash prayers the fugitive had resisted; but to fear lest the suitor ...
— My Novel, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... Rose cocked her head on one side, like a pretty bird. "Well, now, I have a plan!" she said gaily, "I suggest that Cliff take his car, and we take ours, and the Ellises theirs, and we all go—children and all! Just a ...
— Martie the Unconquered • Kathleen Norris
... element of danger, in which all the activities of War must live and move, like the bird in the air or the fish in the water. But the influences of danger all pass into the feelings, either directly—that is, instinctively—or through the medium of the understanding. The effect in the ...
— On War • Carl von Clausewitz
... They wanted to find the treasure and away. Not a sound broke the stillness but bird calls and their own footsteps. Yet they knew that, from some place among the trees, scouts were stealing toward them. They went out in a wide circle, worked in, ...
— Don Strong, Patrol Leader • William Heyliger
... COWARDICE, a man frightened at an animal darting out of a thicket, while a bird sings on. The coward has not the ...
— Our Fathers Have Told Us - Part I. The Bible of Amiens • John Ruskin
... nevertheless! There are thousands of them that roost among the hills in that quarter. I know the place thoroughly. The heights are the greatest that we have in the surrounding country. The distance from this spot is about five miles. He, no doubt, has some fish, or bird now within his talons, with which to feed his young. He will feed them, and they will grow strong, and will finally use their own wings. Shall he continue to feed them after that? Must they never seek their ...
— Charlemont • W. Gilmore Simms
... thinking mind the question often recurs, What makes the fragrant flower so different from the dead soil from which it grows? the trilling bird, so vastly superior to the inert atmosphere in which it flies? What subtle power paints the rose, and tunes the merry songster's voice? To explain this mystery, philosophers of olden time supposed the existence of a certain peculiar force which is called life, or vital force, or vitality. ...
— Plain Facts for Old and Young • John Harvey Kellogg
... have the warm glow of a realised salvation in our hearts, sorrows that are but for a moment will not silence the voice of praise, though they may cast it into a minor key. The praise that rises from a sad heart is yet more melodious in God's ear than that which carols when all things go well. The bird that sings in a darkened cage makes music to its owner. 'Songs in the night' have a singular pathos and thrill the listeners. When we 'take the cup of salvation' and call on the name of the Lord, we shall offer to Him the sacrifices of thanksgiving, though He may ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Isaiah and Jeremiah • Alexander Maclaren
... been brought to a stop, he leaped nimbly out, clutching his geological hammer in one hand and his precious sack of specimens in the other. He rushed up to the wall and stood for a minute with his head on one side, like an inquisitive bird. ...
— The Boy Inventors' Radio Telephone • Richard Bonner
... thrilling to get something out of that bird's nest besides bills, fertilizer and incubator circulars, and the bulletins of the Department of Agriculture. Thank you very much. But if, after conferring with your aunts, you find that they don't approve of me, it will ...
— Otherwise Phyllis • Meredith Nicholson
... this hyar road through my land," he said solemnly, "I'll be teetotally ruinationed. The cattle-thievin' that'll go on, with the woods so open an' the road so convenient, an' yit no travel sca'cely, will be a scandal ter the jay-bird. I won't hev so much lef' ez the horn of ...
— The Mystery of Witch-Face Mountain and Other Stories • Charles Egbert Craddock
... that watched the hanging body of Cleomenes, saw a large snake winding about his head, and covering his face, so that no bird of prey would fly at it. This made the king superstitiously afraid, and set the women upon several expiations, as if he had been some extraordinary being, and one beloved by the gods, that had been slain. And the Alexandrians made ...
— Plutarch's Lives • A.H. Clough
... dipper is "a boy." Not infrequently the object or idea thus personified is given a title of respect; thus, "Corporal Black" is the night. Akin to personification is bold metaphor and association. In this there may or may not be some evident analogy; thus a crawfish is "a bird," the banca or canoe is "rung" (like a bell.) Not uncommonly the word "house" is used of anything thought of as containing something; thus "Santa Ana's house," "San Gabriel's house;" this use is particularly used in speaking of fruits. "Santa Ana's house is full of bullets" ...
— A Little Book of Filipino Riddles • Various
... so?" cried Karlsefin energetically, glancing round among the trees. "Come, clear yourself in this matter. See you yonder little bird on the topmost branch of that birch-tree that overhangs the stream? It is a plain object, well defined against the sky. ...
— The Norsemen in the West • R.M. Ballantyne
... making the barren mountains a wonderland of deep purple and black and silvery gray and brown, a coyote yapped a falsetto message and was answered by one nearer at hand—his mate, it might be. In a bush under the bank that made of it a black blot in the unearthly whiteness of the sand, a little bird fluttered uneasily and sent a small, inquiring chirp into the stillness. From somewhere farther up the arroyo drifted a faint, aromatic odor ...
— The Heritage of the Sioux • B.M. Bower
... the night that surrounded them was rent asunder, they fled as at the approach of a storm and their eyes, filled with dread of Erik, showed them, before they disappeared, high up above them, an immense night-bird that stared at them with its blazing eyes and seemed to cling to ...
— The Phantom of the Opera • Gaston Leroux
... of such an article of food as bird's-nest soup? Well, this soup does not take its name from its looks, as bird's-nest pudding gets its title, but it is actually made ...
— St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, Vol. 5, January 1878, No. 3 • Various
... eye fondly. The National Capital is a great place for buzzards, and I make the remark in no double or allegorical sense either, for the buzzards I mean are black and harmless as doves, though perhaps hardly dovelike in their tastes. My vulture is also a bird of leisure, and sails through the ether on long flexible pinions, as if that was the one delight of his life. Some birds have wings, others have "pinions." The buzzard enjoys this latter distinctions. There is something in the sound of the word that suggests that easy, ...
— Winter Sunshine • John Burroughs |
