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Prey   Listen
noun
Prey  n.  
1.
Anything, as goods, etc., taken or got by violence; anything taken by force from an enemy in war; spoil; booty; plunder. "And they brought the captives, and the prey, and the spoil, unto Moses, and Eleazar the priest."
2.
That which is or may be seized by animals or birds to be devoured; hence, a person given up as a victim. "The old lion perisheth for lack of prey." "Already sees herself the monster's prey."
3.
The act of devouring other creatures; ravage. "Hog in sloth, fox in stealth,... lion in prey."
Beast of prey, a carnivorous animal; one that feeds on the flesh of other animals.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Prey" Quotes from Famous Books



... Sure to hate most the men from whom they learned So modern pothecaries taught the art By doctors bills to play the doctor's part. Bold in the practice of mistaken rules Prescribe, apply, and call their masters fools. Some on the leaves of ancient authors prey, Nor time nor moths e'er spoil so much as they. Some dryly plain, without invention's aid, Write dull receipts how poems may be made These leave the sense their learning to display, And those explain ...
— An Essay on Criticism • Alexander Pope

... truly King of England, and was able to enjoy a short visit from the Duke of Normandy, who came to see him, and probably then first conceived the hope of obtaining the crown of the ill-governed and divided country that seemed ready to fall a prey to ...
— Cameos from English History, from Rollo to Edward II • Charlotte Mary Yonge

... eagle can detect the movement of either, and she flies, or rather drops, straight down upon the poor fowl, and with her powerful foot kills it at a blow, or breaks the back of the pretty lamb with same terrible weapon. Then, she rises upward with her prey, to feed the little ones she has left in ...
— Pages for Laughing Eyes • Unknown

... unto me," answered Clutterbuck, "how detrimental the vermin race are; they seem to have noted my poor possessions as their especial prey; remind me that I write to Dr. ...
— Pelham, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... entertainment he had shown himself to be a man of few words, yet an attentive listener. He was of middle age, of a mild dignity of mien, and of robust physique, as befitted one accustomed to long journeys through regions infested with robbers or with beasts of prey. ...
— Tales of Destiny • Edmund Mitchell

... tired of farming and thought he would go back to what he called the 'wild West.' Jake Marpole, lured by Otto's stories of adventure, decided to go with him. We did our best to dissuade Jake. He was so handicapped by illiteracy and by his trusting disposition that he would be an easy prey to sharpers. Grandmother begged him to stay among kindly, Christian people, where he was known; but there was no reasoning with him. He wanted to be a prospector. He thought a silver mine was ...
— My Antonia • Willa Cather

... equally confident. In time I grew used to the fellow, but I will admit that at first I accepted his services with some honest trepidation. As I watched him going ahead of me, crouching behind bushes, springing from hummock to hummock, silent and alert, quivering like an animal in search of prey, my attention was centered on him rather ...
— The Four Pools Mystery • Jean Webster

... her. Occupation did not seem to come easily to him as it did when she was there to suggest it. Sometimes he would loaf up and down on the esplanade; and sometimes he would take strenuous swims in the sea. He became the prey of the bores who haunt every seaside place at home and abroad, lurking for lonely and polite people upon whom ...
— Kimono • John Paris

... a Dutch artist, who noticed what funny fellows kings were, and how they liked to have all sorts of beasts and birds of prey, and sea creatures that devour, on their banners. There were dragons, two-headed eagles, boars with tusks, serpents with fangs, hawks, griffins, wyverns, lions, dragons and dragon-lions, besides horses with wings, mermaids with scaly ...
— Dutch Fairy Tales for Young Folks • William Elliot Griffis

... both, the robbed was permitted not only to retake his property by force, if he could, but to strip the robber of all he had. This apparently acted as a restraint in favor only of the strong, leaving the weak a prey to the plunderer; but here the tie of family and clan intervened to aid him. Relatives and clansmen espoused the quarrel of him who ...
— The Jesuits in North America in the Seventeenth Century • Francis Parkman

... this talk was of punishment for crime. He had managed to escape so far! Finally he stood on the shore. He heard a cry from the water. He understood it. It came from his pursuer, who was now near enough to see that his prey had escaped him. He ...
— The Son of Monte Cristo • Jules Lermina

... who another's property or life desires to have. Seldom a sluggish wolf gets prey, or ...
— The Elder Eddas of Saemund Sigfusson; and the Younger Eddas of Snorre Sturleson • Saemund Sigfusson and Snorre Sturleson

... has mangled the maiden Orberosia, the fairest of the Penguins with his teeth. There is not a village in which he does not emit his poisoned breath and which he has not filled with desolation. A prey to this terrible scourge, we come, O Mael, to pray thee, as the wisest, to advise us concerning the safety of the inhabitants of this island lest the ancient race ...
— Penguin Island • Anatole France

... rose from the ground, And Saturn reign'd with Golden plenty crown'd, How bold Prometheus (whose untam'd desire, Rival'd the Sun with his own Heavenly Fire) Now doom'd the Scythian Vulturs endless prey Severely pays ...
— De Carmine Pastorali (1684) • Rene Rapin

... O, the personage is your excuse! And I can tell you, child, that when George Austin was playing Florizel to the Duchess's Perdita, all the maids in England fell a prey to green- eyed melancholy. It was the TON, you see: not to pine for that Sylvander was to resign from ...
— The Plays of W. E. Henley and R. L. Stevenson

... you? I knew it wasn't; I only said that to draw you. However, have a little more tea, or some iced coffee, it's so much more refreshing I always think. My dear Willie, I was only chaffing you. I knew perfectly well it wasn't either of the people I suggested. The point is, it seems to prey on your mind, and worry you, and ...
— Tenterhooks • Ada Leverson

... their different shapes, and to help her by showing her that this was like a little horn, or that like a bird's bill, she would suddenly exclaim in a joyful voice, "That is a goat!" "That is a bird of prey!" For the tutor's descriptions suggested all kinds of pictures to her mind, but left her still incapable of the alphabet. In the later afternoons Heidi always sat with Clara, and then she would give the latter many and long descriptions of the mountain and of her life upon it, ...
— Heidi • Johanna Spyri

... or seventy of them, and they clustered together, looking over the side of their vessel at their expected prey. ...
— The Penang Pirate - and, The Lost Pinnace • John Conroy Hutcheson

... bristling with sword blades rather than be beaten in the one department in which he has been brought up to consult his own honor. As a Sportsman (and war is fundamentally the sport of hunting and fighting the most dangerous of the beasts of prey) he feels free. He will tell you himself that the true sportsman is never a snob, a coward, a duffer, a cheat, a thief, or a liar. Curious, is it not, that he has not the same confidence in ...
— A Treatise on Parents and Children • George Bernard Shaw

... that he could follow the soul as, in the spirit world, it tracked its foe, fell upon him and exacted its terrible revenge. At times he imagined that he could actually see the enraged thoughts issue from the body as if it were a den or cave, and they, living beasts of prey ranging abroad by day and night, and returning with their booty to devour it; or, if they had failed to take it, to brood over the failure of ...
— The Redemption of David Corson • Charles Frederic Goss

... the young amphibian ranges the waters, the terror of his insect contemporaries, not only are the nutritious particles supplied by its prey, by the addition of which to its frame, growth takes place, laid down, each in its proper spot, and in such due proportion to the rest, as to reproduce the form, the colour, and the size, characteristic of the parental stock; but even the wonderful powers of ...
— Darwiniana • Thomas Henry Huxley

... its prey escaping, surged about us with a roar. For a moment things looked very ugly. Van Hee ...
— Fighting in Flanders • E. Alexander Powell

... that they had fire arms, strengthened the supposition; and combining this with the appearance of the vessels, I set them down for piratical Ladrones who secreted themselves here from pursuit, and issued out as the season permitted, or prey invited them. Impressed with this idea, we tacked to work up for the road; and our pendant and ensign being hoisted, each of them hung out a small white flag. On approaching, I sent lieutenant Flinders in an armed boat, to learn who they were; and soon afterward we came to an anchor in 12 fathoms, ...
— A Voyage to Terra Australis Volume 2 • Matthew Flinders

... two mortars, their wounded and their equipages; and numbers of them were taken prisoners. But Staremberg, having all the night to himself, succeeded in retiring in good order with seven or eight thousand men. His baggage and the majority of his waggons fell a prey to the vanquisher. Counting the garrison of Brighuega, the loss to the enemy was eleven thousand men killed or taken, their ammunition, artillery, baggage, and a great number ...
— The Memoirs of Louis XIV., His Court and The Regency, Complete • Duc de Saint-Simon

... the hostile natives of the interior; that want of water or exposure to tropical climate were even but a few of the many evils to which you had rendered yourself liable, and to the influence of some one or more of which it was but too probable you had fallen a prey. Two parties successively went out with the hope of overtaking you, or at least of ascertaining some particulars of your fate. The result of these efforts was, however, fruitless, and but few were so sanguine as to believe in the possibility of ...
— Journal of an Overland Expedition in Australia • Ludwig Leichhardt

... conquered by a king or ruled by chiefs, who are irresistible, whose words cannot be gainsaid. Therefore this Pepi is irresistible; he can neither be conquered by a king nor ruled by chiefs. The enemies of Pepi cannot triumph. Pepi lacketh nothing. His nails do not grow long [for want of prey]. No debt is reckoned against Pepi. If Pepi falleth into the water Osiris will lift him out, and the Two Companies of the Gods will bear him up on their shoulders, and Ra, wheresoever he may be, will give him his hand. If Pepi falleth ...
— The Literature of the Ancient Egyptians • E. A. Wallis Budge

... habits and instincts. It is a physiological peculiarity which leads the Greyhound to chase its prey by sight—that enables the Beagle to track it by the scent—that impels the Terrier to its rat-hunting propensity—and that leads the Retriever to its habit of retrieving. These habits and instincts are all the results of physiological differences ...
— Darwiniana • Thomas Henry Huxley

... ga'le-room, and burst into a violent fit of weeping. For such depravity she was not prepared. What a terrible curse hung over her family! Surely they were all reprobate from the womb, not one elected for salvation from the guilt of Adam's fall, and therefore abandoned to Satan as his natural prey, to be led captive of him at his will. She threw herself on her knees at the side of the bed, and prayed heart-brokenly. Betty heard her as she limped past the door on her way back ...
— Robert Falconer • George MacDonald

... distance, and then stood with his lean neck outstretched and his head turned in the direction where the Superior had disappeared. The whole attitude of the man, with his acute glittering eye, might remind one of a serpent making an observation before darting after his prey. ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, Issue 49, November, 1861 • Various

... silence in the barroom. Men turned their eyes towards each other and then flashed them away again. It is not good that one who has the eyes and the tongue of a man should take water from another—even from a Jerry Strann. And even Jerry Strann withdrew his eyes slowly from his prey, and shuddered; the sight of the most grisly death is not so horrible ...
— The Night Horseman • Max Brand

... work against the French. The Bristowe merchants had suffered great losses from the depredations made on their ships by French corsairs. Many a vessel loaded with a rich freight of sugar, or tobacco, or other produce of the colonies, had fallen a prey to the enemy, who swooped out of St. Malo or Brest, as Woodrow said, and snapped up our barques almost within sight of their harbor. 'Twas not to be wondered at that those who had suffered in ...
— Humphrey Bold - A Story of the Times of Benbow • Herbert Strang

... in our graves, Than live in slavery to slaves; Worse than the anarchy at sea, Where fishes on each other prey; Where every trout can make as high rants O'er his inferiors, as our tyrants; And swagger while the coast is clear: But should a lordly pike appear, Away you see the varlet scud, Or hide his coward snout in mud. Thus, if a gudgeon meet a roach, He dares not venture ...
— Poems (Volume II.) • Jonathan Swift

... much a prey to a sort of foppery of expression and love of animal spirits as to be properly subject to the satire the play provides for them? Are the women more sane in this respect, despite their ...
— Shakespeare Study Programs; The Comedies • Charlotte Porter and Helen A. Clarke

... the spaniel struck, Stiff, by the tainted gale, with open nose, Outstretched and finely sensible, draws full, Fearful and cautious, on the latent prey. ...
— The World's Best Poetry — Volume 10 • Various

... way, so that the whole train stood upright, like some huge steeple. This dreadful structure had become a great funeral pile, the altar of a black pagan idol whose fiery tongues were greedily thrusting upward to devour their prey. ...
— Dr. Dumany's Wife • Mr Jkai

... hares, is well known. One day the Prince of Powis chased a hare, which took refuge under the robe of the virgin Melangell, who was engaged in deep devotion. The hare boldly faced the hounds, and the dogs retired to a distance howling, and they could not be induced to seize their prey. The Prince gave to God and Melangell a piece of land to be henceforth a sanctuary. The legend of the hare and the saint is represented in carved wood on the gallery in the church of Pennant. Formerly it belonged to the screen. ...
— Welsh Folk-Lore - a Collection of the Folk-Tales and Legends of North Wales • Elias Owen

... carefull that the Churches and houses of religion there should be kept inuiolate, which was accordingly performed, through his appointment of guarders and keepers for those places: but the rest of the towne eyther for want of the former inhibition, or for desire of spoyle and prey, was rifled, and ransacked by the souldiers and mariners, who scarcely left any house vnsearched, out of which they tooke such things as liked them, as chestes of sweete wood, chaires, cloth, couerlets, hangings, bedding, apparell: and further ranged ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques, and Discoveries of The English Nation, v. 7 - England's Naval Exploits Against Spain • Richard Hakluyt

... three of Spain's proudest colonial cities, and had come home unfought with. The Catholic conspirators had to recognise that they had a worse enemy to deal with than Puritan controversialists or spoilt Court favourites. The Protestant English mariners stood between them and their prey, and had to be encountered on an element which did not bow to popes or princes, before Mary Stuart was to wear Elizabeth's crown or Cardinal Allen be enthroned at Canterbury. It was a revelation to all parties. Elizabeth herself had ...
— English Seamen in the Sixteenth Century - Lectures Delivered at Oxford Easter Terms 1893-4 • James Anthony Froude

... shall I let her go? shall her Commands, Though they have power to take my Life away, Have force to suffer me to injure her? Shall she be made a prey, and I permit it, Who only have the interest to forbid it? —No, let me be accurst then. ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn, Vol. III • Aphra Behn

... similarly a transformation from a feudal to a modern state; the process takes place everywhere and all but simultaneously. But, under this new system as beneath the ancient, the weak is always the prey of the strong. Woe to those (nations) whose retarded evolution exposes them to the neighbor suddenly emancipated from his chrysalis state, and is the first to go forth fully armed! Woe likewise to him whose ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 1 (of 6) - The Ancient Regime • Hippolyte A. Taine

... that is often true. But there are important exceptional cases becoming more and more numerous, where the parents have cultivated what they and their friends consider fine feelings so assiduously that the poor child is born helplessly weak and nervous, and a prey to every vibration in the ...
— Girls and Women • Harriet E. Paine (AKA E. Chester}

... injury short of maiming or death, which their fellow men may choose to inflict. They suffer all that can be inflicted by wanton caprice, by grasping avarice, by brutal lust, by malignant spite, and by insane anger. Their happiness is the sport of every whim, and the prey of every passion that may, occasionally, or habitually, infest the master's bosom. If we could calculate the amount of wo endured by ill-treated slaves, it would overwhelm every compassionate heart—it would move even the obdurate to sympathy. There is also a vast sum of suffering inflicted ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society

... for some time been off the western shore of the bay, and several whales had been taken—every one was actively engaged, for when the operation of flensing was not going on, the boats were generally away in chase of their prey. ...
— Archibald Hughson - An Arctic Story • W.H.G. Kingston

... intercourse, failed to give other and more immediate evidence of its existence. Of all the women whom I have ever known, she, the outwardly calm, the ever-placid Ligeia, was the most violently a prey to the tumultuous vultures of stern passion. And of such passion I could form no estimate, save by the miraculous expansion of those eyes which at once so delighted and appalled me—by the almost magical melody, modulation, distinctness and placidity of her very low voice—and ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 3 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe

... down again to their ships an old man approached them— for he was walking nigh to the men of Bui— and unto them said he, 'Not as warriors go ye here, driving neat and calves down to the shore; better prey would it be for ye to take the bear since ye have come so ...
— The Sagas of Olaf Tryggvason and of Harald The Tyrant (Harald Haardraade) • Snorri Sturluson

... tempests like the sea, and as violent, and men are ship-wrack't upon pillars like great rocks." And at the end after "could not"—"ffinally it is used for a church of these two only, sharkes and cut purses, the one comes thither to fast, the other to prey." ...
— Microcosmography - or, a Piece of the World Discovered; in Essays and Characters • John Earle

... with them. But, so far, in spite of her white dress, which made her an easy prey, she had not been caught. The boys who had taken their turns at the wheel had caught other boys whom she did not know; and had always managed to find and, with much struggling, kiss the particular girls ...
— The Biography of a Prairie Girl • Eleanor Gates

... the throng, so that no one was so disabled by the shots as to prevent his forcing his way in with the rest. And now the sounds came veiled by the walls as of some raging ravening beast growling over his prey; the noise came and went—once utterly ceased; and Daniel raised himself with difficulty to ascertain the cause, when again the roar came clear and fresh, and men poured into the yard again, shouting and rejoicing over the rescued victims of the press-gang. Daniel hobbled up, and shouted, and ...
— Sylvia's Lovers, Vol. II • Elizabeth Gaskell

... a wicked glance. It had finished its meal and sat with its head slightly ducked, fixing Maya with its eyes and looking like a beast of prey about to pounce. The little bee was quite calm now. Where she got her courage from she couldn't have told, but she was no longer afraid. She set up a very fine clear buzzing as she had once heard a sentinel do when a wasp came near the entrance of ...
— The Adventures of Maya the Bee • Waldemar Bonsels

... exist in the same measure in Asia. What stands in the way of freedom of Asiatic populations is not their lack of intelligence, but only their lack of military prowess, which makes them an easy prey to our lust for dominion. This lust would probably be in temporary abeyance on the morrow of a Socialist revolution, and at such a moment a new departure in Asiatic policy might be taken with permanently beneficial results. I do not mean, of course, that we should force upon India that ...
— Proposed Roads To Freedom • Bertrand Russell

... on shore, I saw a multitude of small birds of prey. They keep in flocks, like our sparrows, hopping about everywhere, and perching on the hedges and house-tops. I anxiously wished for an opportunity to make myself better acquainted with one of them. Presuming ...
— Travels in Peru, on the Coast, in the Sierra, Across the Cordilleras and the Andes, into the Primeval Forests • J. J. von Tschudi

... the letters in one's speech. Another way is to deliver art from the clutches of its worshippers, and by worshippers I mean the idolaters and the commercialists of art. By the idolaters I mean those whose reverence for art is beyond their knowledge of it. By the commercialists I mean those who prey upon the ignorance of the unsophisticated, with pictures created by the esthetic habit of, or better to say, through the banality of, "artistic" temperament. Art is at present a species of vice in America, and it sorely and conspicuously needs ...
— Adventures in the Arts - Informal Chapters on Painters, Vaudeville, and Poets • Marsden Hartley

... his soul become the prey of the tempter. But from the first, in the scorn of Faust for this poor fiend and all he has to bestow, we read the failure of the plot. Faust may sign a hundred such bonds in his blood with little fear. He knows well enough that a spirit such as his can never be satisfied with ...
— Among Famous Books • John Kelman

... thought of the creation I saw an eternal chain of evil linked one to the other—from the great whale who in the sea swallows & destroys multitudes & the smaller fish that live on him also & torment him to madness—to the cat whose pleasure it is to torment her prey I saw the whole creation filled with pain—each creature seems to exist through the misery of another & death & havoc is the watchword of the animated world—And Man also—even in Athens the most ...
— Mathilda • Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley

... havin' the time of my life kiddin' Alex, when one day as we are walkin' along Third Avenue in search of his prey, he grabs me by the arm, yells, "I got him!" and starts across the street on the run. They is a big truck standin' there and a husky on the back of it is engaged in coaxin' pig iron off of it on to the street. He stood about six foot three ...
— Alex the Great • H. C. Witwer

... Claudia maddened him. In one respect, at least, Darco, in his treatment of women, was chivalry incarnate; he would speak no scandal—no, nor listen to it. Paul tossed and tumbled throughout the night—a prey to shame and passion and cold doubt. Darco, who had so well deserved his gratitude, had accused him of the contrary—the one vice of all others which had seemed most repugnant to his nature. Darco was right, and ...
— Despair's Last Journey • David Christie Murray

... then throw themselves into the sea, and flocks of the great eagles called griffins, thinking that they are really oxen, will descend and bear them on their wings to some mountain or valley, there to devour their prey. Immediately on reaching land the man will kill the eagle with his knife, and leaving the skin, will walk towards the nearest habitation; many people," he adds, "have ...
— Celebrated Travels and Travellers - Part I. The Exploration of the World • Jules Verne

... his own countrymen, and I wish that all English and American tourists, who think themselves the sole victims of publican rapacity and deceit in Italy, could have heard our honest man's talk. The truth is, these ingenious people prey upon their own kind with an avidity quite as keen as that with which they devour strangers; and I am half-persuaded that a ready-witted foreigner fares better among them than a traveller of their own nation. Italians will always pretend, ...
— Italian Journeys • William Dean Howells

... their first taking on orbicular shape, and when it might be supposed their hardness and acidity would repulse all save elephantine tusks and ostrich stomachs, they were the prey of roaming children." ...
— The Wit of Women - Fourth Edition • Kate Sanborn

... the shore, where the water is not more than three or four feet deep, with a clear, sandy bottom, the torches light everything up so that one could almost have seen a pin among the grains of sand. The craw-fish are an easy prey, and we used soon to get a load of them. The other fish were more difficult to catch, yet we frequently speared a number of them, of various kinds and sizes. The Pilgrim brought us a supply of fish-hooks, which we had never had before on the beach, and for several days ...
— Two Years Before the Mast • Richard Henry Dana

... He felt that his days would be few upon the earth, and that his Mary would soon follow him; but their darling Jennie would be sheltered and taught, and that by a true disciple of their Lord and Master. No more anguish lest his precious child should become a prey to the wary and dissolute; no more grief at her withered, cheerless youth; no more sorrowings for the wants that he could not appease. "Oh! too much! too much mercy and goodness hast thou shown toward Thine unworthy servants, my Saviour and my God!" murmured ...
— The Elm Tree Tales • F. Irene Burge Smith

... had recognized the existence of the war with Mexico my attention was directed to the danger that privateers might be fitted out in the ports of Cuba and Porto Rico to prey upon the commerce of the United States, and I invited the special attention of the Spanish Government to the fourteenth article of our treaty with that power of the 27th of October, 1795, under which the citizens ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various

... Philip could report to Mr. Bolton only progress, and this was not a cheerful message for him to send to Philadelphia in reply to inquiries that he thought became more and more anxious. Philip himself was a prey to the constant fear that the money would give out before ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain

... thou to such a horrible place? Hearest thou the roar of the angry beasts calling for their prey? Art thou ...
— Saronia - A Romance of Ancient Ephesus • Richard Short

... gunwale, and two boys were all but shot out the other way. And now the fun began. The boys loosed their hold of the gaffs, and sprang apart to give the creature room. There it lay raging, the great black beast of prey, with its sharp threatening snout and wicked red eyes ablaze. The strong tail lashed out, hurling oars and balers overboard, the long teeth snapped at the bottom-boards and thwarts. Now and again it would leap high up in the air, only to fall back again, writhing furiously, ...
— The Great Hunger • Johan Bojer

... likely to be found. As they looked over the side, many polypi, medusae, and squid were observed floating on the surface; and occasionally a covey of flying-fish, rising from the water, darted rapidly over it, quickly again, as their brilliant wings dried, to sink down and become the prey of their enemies, the dolphin or bonito. A seaman had just hauled a bucket of water on deck. Within it was a gelatinous-looking mass. The mate and his ...
— The Voyage of the "Steadfast" - The Young Missionaries in the Pacific • W.H.G. Kingston

... abused the love of Christ! as one that presumed upon his lusts, this world, and all manner of naughtiness, because the love of Christ to pardon sins was so great! What an unthinking, what a disingenuous one wilt thou be counted at that day! yea, thou wilt be found to be the man that made a prey of love, that made a stalking-horse of love, that made of love a slave to sin, the devil and the world, and will not that ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan

... accomplished in stealthy silence, as wild animals creep upon their prey, nor did any among them take seats until the old war-chief—he who had led the assault in the gulch—made signal to that end. Responding to a second gesture, we were driven roughly forward by our guard, until permitted to sink down ...
— Prisoners of Chance - The Story of What Befell Geoffrey Benteen, Borderman, - through His Love for a Lady of France • Randall Parrish

... with the planes of the rival forces and the hum of the motors of the giant birds of prey was continuous. They fought not only in single combat but in sauacfrons, and the sight of one or more whirling down in flames was so common that it scarcely ...
— Army Boys in the French Trenches • Homer Randall

... archbishop; who has spurned For sixty years the ladder which the Empire Upreared to scale his walls? Hast heard that he Shelters the brave—the flaunting rich man strips— Of master makes a slave? That here, above All dukes, aye, kings, eke emperors—in the eyes Of Germany to their fierce strife a prey, He rears upon his tower, in stern defiance, A signal of appeal to the crushed people, A banner vast, of Sorrow's sable hue, Snapped by the tempest in its whirlwind wrath, So that kings quiver as the jades at whips? Hast heard, he touches now his hundredth year— And that, ...
— Poems • Victor Hugo

... who has been wounded, learns, though late, to beware; But the unfortunate Actaeon always presses on. The chaste virgin naturally pitied: But the powerful goddess revenged the wrong. Let Actaeon fall a prey to his dogs, An example to youth, A disgrace to those that belong to him! May Diana live the care of Heaven; The delight of mortals; The security of those that belong ...
— Travels in England and Fragmenta Regalia • Paul Hentzner and Sir Robert Naunton

... ice splintering like broken glass; to pyramid, to spray the whole nether world with ice and snow and scattering rock; then to settle, a jumbled conglomerate mass of destructiveness, robbed of its prey. ...
— The White Desert • Courtney Ryley Cooper

... Turning to him, searching him, they saw, as it seemed to them, a new being divested of vagueness—dominant, commanding, remorseless. Sitting rigid, his thin, hairy neck stretched outward, he suggested some sinister bird of prey. Thus poised for an instant he regarded the two men whom he ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1917 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various

... jack-rabbit or a slinking coyote or a bird; not even a buzzard, that all but ubiquitous, heat-defying bundle of dry feathers and bones, hung in the sky. Why should a rabbit come hither where there was no herbage? Why a coyote when his prey shunned these wastes? Why even the winged scavenger when all animal life fled the Bad Lands? The man's spirit was oppressed and drooped under the weariness ...
— The Desert Valley • Jackson Gregory

... always close to her side, ready to creep under her wing, or bring her a plump bug when the poor biddy's appetite failed her. They were very happy together till Thanksgiving drew near, when a dreadful pestilence seemed to sweep through the farm-yard; for turkeys, hens, ducks, and geese fell a prey to it, and were seen by their surviving relatives featherless, pale, and stiff, borne away to some unknown place whence no fowl returned. Blot was waked one night by a great cackling and fluttering in the hen-house, and peeping down from ...
— Aunt Jo's Scrap-Bag • Louisa M. Alcott

... larger half of the Warsaw population still are. He was a typical Jew (all Jews are typical), though all are not so thin as was Beninsky. His eyes were sunk in sockets deepened by the sharpness of his bird-of-prey beak; a single corkscrew ringlet dropped tearfully down each cheek; and his one front tooth seemed sometimes in his upper, sometimes in his lower jaw. His skull-cap and his gabardine might have been heirlooms from the Patriarch Jacob; and his poor hands seemed made ...
— Tracks of a Rolling Stone • Henry J. Coke

... all, and this fact was further impressed upon me an hour or so later by an enterprising office-seeker, to whom, in my enfeebled state, I fell an easy prey—I endorsed his application ...
— The Statesmen Snowbound • Robert Fitzgerald

... a thought. "It would appear, Strokor, that it be not so much of an effort for beings to live, there on Jeos, as here. Perchance 'tis the greater amount of vegetation; at all accounts, the animals need not prey upon one another so generally; and that, then, would explain why some have energy enough to waste in the care ...
— The Lord of Death and the Queen of Life • Homer Eon Flint

... miles broad, now belongs to Chili. It was discovered in 1563 by Juan Fernandez. As it was unoccupied it was a favourite resort of the buccaneers throughout the seventeenth century, as well as of English squadrons despatched like those of Dampier and Anson, to prey on Spanish commerce, and needing to refit and water after the long voyage round Cape Horn. The Spaniards at last occupied it in 1750, in self-defence. It was here that Alexander Selkirk was put ...
— Anson's Voyage Round the World - The Text Reduced • Richard Walter

... withdraw from Europe our solicitude; its hostility should not deprive us of our high mission of saving order and restoring rest to the nations; we ought to teach them to obey authority as we do. It is for us to introduce the saving principle of order into a world that has fallen a prey to anarchy. Russia ought not to abandon that mission which has been entrusted to her by the heavenly ...
— Russia • Donald Mackenzie Wallace

... system, Mr. Travers, is man's servile imitation of the blind tyranny of what in our ignorance we call 'Natural Laws,' a mechanical something through which the world is ruled by the cruelty of General Principles, to the utter disregard of individual welfare. By Natural Laws creatures prey on each other, and big fishes eat little ones upon system. It is, nevertheless, a hard thing for the little fish. Every nation, every town, every hamlet, every occupation, has a system, by which, somehow or other, the pond swarms with fishes, of which a great many inferiors contribute to increase ...
— Kenelm Chillingly, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... This is not the first case of wilful murder and supine justice; our court records are full of similar ones. The time has come to say whether we shall tolerate these outrages further or whether we shall set aside the verdict of an infamous and perjured jury and cleanse our city of the ghouls which prey upon it. I ask you to consider this question fairly. You have been assembled, not behind closed doors, nor under the cloak of darkness, but in the heart of the city, in the broad light of day, to take such action as honest ...
— The Net • Rex Beach

... made known his resolution not to pay a porter, and consequently not to deal with a nameless agent. Such care had been taken to make them public, that they were sent at once to two booksellers; to Curll, who was likely to seize them as a prey, and to Lintot, who might he expected to give Pope information of the seeming injury. Lintot, I believe, did nothing, and Curll did what was expected. That to make them public was the only purpose may be reasonably supposed, ...
— Lives of the English Poets: Prior, Congreve, Blackmore, Pope • Samuel Johnson

... repress criticism on this unhappy phraseology. We will trust it escaped him without thought. But to confine ourselves to the argument from duration; how obvious the reply! Is injustice changed into justice by the practice of the ages? Is my victim made a righteous prey because I have bowed him to the earth till he cannot rise? For more than two hundred years heretics were burned, and not by mobs, not by lynch law, but by the decrees of the councils, at the instigation of theologians, and with the sanction of the laws and religions of nations; ...
— Public Speaking • Clarence Stratton

... Dick & Co. wandered up on to Main Street, a prey to suspense. Some hours must pass ere they could hope to know the result of their young leader's ...
— The High School Boys in Summer Camp • H. Irving Hancock

... complained of being hungry, and I felt the need of food myself. With her customary promptness she set out to discover food, leaving me alone, a prey to sad misgivings. In a short time, however, she returned and asked me if I'd seen a piece of ...
— More Tish • Mary Roberts Rinehart

... in moderating and checking the emotions I name bondage: for, when a man is a prey to his emotions, he is not his own master, but lies at the mercy of fortune: so much so, that he is often compelled, while seeing that which is better for him, to follow that which is worse. Why this is so, and what is good ...
— Ethica Ordine Geometrico Demonstrata - Part I: Concerning God • Benedict de Spinoza

... so to see that child, a prey among those vultures, that in my foolish rage and burning I stood up and shouted to them leaping on a rock, and raving out of all possession. Two of them turned round, and one set his carbine at me, but the other said it was but a pixie, and bade him keep his powder. Little they knew, and less thought ...
— Lorna Doone - A Romance of Exmoor • R. D. Blackmore

... hardly necessary to say so, for with men, women, children, and animals all crowded together in such surroundings, and the morbid craving for excitement to which people who have no comfort or wholesome interest in life fall a prey, immorality is inevitable. It was the boast of the place that there were no illegitimate children; it would have been a better sign if there ...
— The Beth Book - Being a Study of the Life of Elizabeth Caldwell Maclure, a Woman of Genius • Sarah Grand

... heard him not. He wrestled with his bodily anguish till the perspiration stood in large drops on his forehead. He raised himself, gasping for breath, and glared about him like a trapped beast of prey. ...
— Thelma • Marie Corelli

... Egyptian dynasties sent for acacia wood, and Englishmen in the Campaign of the Cataracts fought and died; deserted now, with houses dead and decayed, their windows staring like the eye-sockets of skulls; and the black, tortured mountain-shapes behind, lurking in the background as hyenas lurk to prey. More temples, and many sakkeyehs (no shadoofs here, on the Upper Nile) but few boats. The spacious times were past, when loads of pink granite, honey-coloured sandstone, fragrant woods, and spices from the Land of Punt, went floating down ...
— It Happened in Egypt • C. N. Williamson & A. M. Williamson

... anxious Dread From my cheer'd heart, on sullen pinion, fled. But now, the spell dissolv'd, th' Enchantress gone, Ceaseless those cruel Fiends infest my day, And sunny hours but light them to their prey. Then welcome Midnight shades, when thy wish'd boon May in oblivious dews my eye-lids steep, THOU CHILD OF NIGHT, AND SILENCE, ...
— Original sonnets on various subjects; and odes paraphrased from Horace • Anna Seward

... whether the water queen below wished to compliment the earthly queen above,—we know that ladies are prone to be polite to each other—or that some truant fish remained behind to become an easy prey to the enemy, suffice it to say that Mistress Ulrica was generally fortunate; but she did not—as she might have done—make use of her advantage, as she herself would say, "to cause her husband ...
— The Home in the Valley • Emilie F. Carlen

... the bodies of the Matabili were left where they had fallen, to be stripped of their flesh by the beasts of prey. ...
— The Giraffe Hunters • Mayne Reid

... its subject-matter in some measure from its real context and transfers it to a represented and secondary world, the world of logic and reflection. Concretions in existence are subsumed, when named, under concretions in discourse. Grammar lays violent hands upon experience, and everything becomes a prey to wit and fancy, a material for fiction and eloquence. Man's intellectual progress has a poetic phase, in which he imagines the world; and then a scientific phase, in which he sifts and ...
— The Life of Reason • George Santayana

... to note that of all the manners of death which may bring them fortune, men like suicide the least; a man would prefer to inherit a property through his father falling a prey to a disease that tortured him for months rather than he should blow his brains out. If he were to sound his conscience, his conscience would tell him that his preference resulted from consideration ...
— Mike Fletcher - A Novel • George (George Augustus) Moore

... wolves that still in darkness prowl; This coward brood, which mangle, as their prey, By hellish instinct, ...
— The Works of Lord Byron: Letters and Journals, Volume 2. • Lord Byron

... he going to do?' I asked myself, utterly astounded, pressing close against a house-wall. It was not long before a man came along with fluttering plumes and jingling spur, singing and gaily humming an air. Like a tiger leaping upon his prey, Cardillac burst out of his lurking-place and threw himself upon the man, who that very same instant fell to the ground, gasping in the agonies of death. I rushed up with a cry of horror; Cardillac was stooping over the man, who ...
— Weird Tales, Vol. II. • E. T. A. Hoffmann

... 1775 armed vessels were fitted out in several of the ports of New England to prey on the commerce of Nova Scotia. Many of these carried no proper commissions and were manned by hands of brutal marauders whose conduct was so outrageous that even so warm a partizan as Col. John Allan sent a remonstrance to congress regarding their behaviour: "Their horrid crimes," ...
— Glimpses of the Past - History of the River St. John, A.D. 1604-1784 • W. O. Raymond

... of the liver. The fable of Prometheus, on whose liver a vulture was said to prey constantly, as a punishment for his stealing fire from heaven, was intended to illustrate the painful effects of ardent spirits upon that ...
— Select Temperance Tracts • American Tract Society

... any attention; but it was rather undiscerning to him to suppose that he could find out the fact. Grandcourt had a delusive mood of observing whatever had an interest for him, which could be surpassed by no sleepy-eyed animal on the watch for prey. At that moment he was plunged in the depth of an easy chair, being talked to by Mr. Vandernoodt, who apparently thought the acquaintance of such a bridegroom worth cultivating; and an incautious person ...
— Daniel Deronda • George Eliot

... world, and availed themselves of man's sensuous side to draw him away from the contemplation of the divine and lead him to the earthly.[445] The results of this temptation appeared in the facts that humanity as a whole fell a prey to error, was subjected to the bonds of the sensuous and of the demons, and therefore became doomed to death, which is at once a punishment and the natural consequence of want of knowledge of God.[446] Hence it ...
— History of Dogma, Volume 2 (of 7) • Adolph Harnack

... was alone in one of the rooms of his palace, sank in despair on the floor; he heard the mingling clash of arms, the roar of musketry, and the cries and groans of the combatants; ruin seemed no longer to threaten his kingdom, but to have pounced at once upon her prey. At every renewed volley which followed each pause in the firing, he expected to see his palace gates burst open, and himself, then indeed made a willing sacrifice, immolated to the ...
— Thaddeus of Warsaw • Jane Porter

... webbed feet, which enable it to swim; and it can also dive down in the deep water, where it finds fish and mussels, and perhaps the roots of some water-plants to eat. It makes very little motion or disturbance in the water when it goes down in search of its prey. Its coat is thick, and formed of two kinds of hair; the outer hair is long, silky, and shining; the under part is short, fine, and warm. The water cannot penetrate to wet them,—the oily nature of the fur throws off the moisture. They dig large holes with their claws, which are ...
— Lady Mary and her Nurse • Catharine Parr Traill

... singular and plural) and 4 municipalities* (krong, singular and plural) provinces: Banteay Mean Cheay, Batdambang, Kampong Cham, Kampong Chhnang, Kampong Spoe, Kampong Thum, Kampot, Kandal, Kaoh Kong, Krachen, Mondol Kiri, Otdar Mean Cheay, Pouthisat, Preah Vihear, Prey Veng, Rotanah Kiri, Siem Reab, Stoeng Treng, Svay Rieng, Takev municipalities: Keb, Pailin, Phnum Penh (Phnom Penh), Preah ...
— The 2008 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.

... make a quarry/With thousands] Why a quarry? I suppose, not because he would pile them square, but because he would give them for carrion to the birds of prey. ...
— Notes to Shakespeare, Volume III: The Tragedies • Samuel Johnson

... of this state pretty well," Professor Kelton was saying, "but I can see one or two gentlemen on both sides of the fence trying to play that game. I don't believe the people of Indiana will submit to it. The bosses need big cities to prey on and we aren't big enough for them to work in and hide in. We all live in the open and we're mostly seasoned American stock who won't be driven like a lot of foreign cattle. This city isn't a country town any longer, ...
— A Hoosier Chronicle • Meredith Nicholson

... grate upon the margin, Felt him strand upon the pebbles, Knew that Nahma, King of Fishes, Lay there dead upon the margin. Then he heard a clang and flapping, As of many wings assembling, Heard a screaming and confusion, As of birds of prey contending, Saw a gleam of light above him, Shining through the ribs of Nahma, Saw the glittering eyes of sea-gulls, Of Kayoshk, the sea-gulls, peering, Gazing at him through the opening, Heard them saying to each other, "'T ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

... of great trepidation as I entered my Residense, because how was I to capture my prey unless armed to the teeth? Little did Carter Brooks think that he carried in his pocket, not a Revolver or at least not merely, ...
— Bab: A Sub-Deb • Mary Roberts Rinehart

... subject to the primary difficulty of evading blockades of the coast, and of escaping subsequent capture by the very great number of British cruisers, which watched all seas where British commerce went and came, and most of the ports whence hostile ships might issue to prey upon it. The principal trammel which now rests upon the movements of vessels destined to cripple an enemy's commerce—the necessity to renew the motive power, coal, at frequent brief intervals—did ...
— Sea Power in its Relations to the War of 1812 - Volume 1 • Alfred Thayer Mahan

... a beak and talon as ever struck—as strong a wing as ever beat, belonged to Swift. I am glad, for one, that fate wrested the prey out of his claws, and cut his wings and chained him. One can gaze, and not without awe and pity, at the lonely eagle chained behind ...
— Henry Esmond; The English Humourists; The Four Georges • William Makepeace Thackeray

... the moon gleamed out again, he was still frantically groping for it on the stones. The roar of the sea was terrible and imminent, like the roar of a destroying monster racing upon its prey, and from the caves there came a hollow groaning as of chained spirits ...
— The Tidal Wave and Other Stories • Ethel May Dell

... those of passionate love, but of undissembled hatred. Bitter reproaches had been uttered on one side, angry menaces on the other. Ever since the fatal order had been wrested from the Countess, her peace of mind had been entirely destroyed, and she had become a prey to all the horrors of remorse. Perceiving the change in her sentiments towards him, Lord Roos strove, by the arts which had hitherto proved so successful, to win back the place he had lost in her affections; but failing in doing so, and irritated ...
— The Star-Chamber, Volume 2 - An Historical Romance • W. Harrison Ainsworth

... in India, a savage, hungry Tiger, with stealthy steps and a yellow, striped skin, came padding into a defenceless native village, to seek for prey. In the early morning he had slunk out of the Jungle, with soft, cushioned paws that showed no signs of the fierce nails they concealed. All through the long, hot day he had lain hidden in the thick reeds by the riverside; but at ...
— A Book of Quaker Saints • Lucy Violet Hodgkin

... you, for a hypocritical, psalm-singing, canting rogue in disguise," said Mason scornfully. "By the life of Washington! it worries an honest fellow to see such voracious beasts of prey ravaging a country for which he sheds his blood. If I had you on a Virginia plantation for a quarter of an hour, I'd teach you to worm the tobacco with ...
— The Spy • James Fenimore Cooper

... Face; this have I learn't 530 Tending my flocks hard by i'th hilly crofts, That brow this bottom glade, whence night by night He and his monstrous rout are heard to howl Like stabl'd wolves, or tigers at their prey, Doing abhorred rites to Hecate In their obscured haunts of inmost bowres. Yet have they many baits, and guilefull spells To inveigle and invite th' unwary sense Of them that pass unweeting by the way. This evening late by then the chewing flocks 540 Had ta'n their ...
— The Poetical Works of John Milton • John Milton

... spreading over those fertile plains, with whose resources and whose extent they are not yet accurately acquainted. Three or four thousand soldiers drive the wandering races of the aborigines before them; these are followed by the pioneers, who pierce the woods, scare off the beasts of prey, explore the courses of the inland streams, and make ready the triumphal procession ...
— American Institutions and Their Influence • Alexis de Tocqueville et al

... the general cry is raised, 'Look out for the blue pointer.' . . . These are high swimming fishes, and may be readily seen when about pushing their pursuits; the beautiful azure tint of their back and sides, and independent manner they have of swimming rapidly and high among the boats in search of prey, are means of easy recognition, and they ...
— A Dictionary of Austral English • Edward Morris

... abruptly round. Again the old woman is before me ... but she sees! She gazes at me with large, evil eyes which bode me ill ... the eyes of a bird of prey.... I bend down to her face, to her eyes.... Again there is the same film, the same blind, dull visage ...
— A Reckless Character - And Other Stories • Ivan Turgenev

... sons are taking their part in introducing civilization into Africa, under the aegis of the flag, and in preserving the Pax Britannica among the teeming millions of India and southeastern Asia, those peoples kindred to ourselves, who for centuries before had been the prey of successive spoilers. Think of the horizon that this opens up, and remember that in building a state we must think not of the ...
— The Ontario High School Reader • A.E. Marty

... three days we were fairly seated in our new abode. However, as we had not time to carry away our poultry, we left them upon the hill till the place we had appropriated for them was completed. It was fenced on all sides, and covered with a large net, to prevent the birds of prey taking away our little chickens, and we had no fear in leaving them during the night. On the evening of the next day, my sister, accompanied with the children, went to feed the various inhabitants of the poultry-yard; but on approaching it she saw the frame of reeds half fallen, ...
— Perils and Captivity • Charlotte-Adelaide [nee Picard] Dard

... by if not by wot they are? They jest come along a-yowlin', an' a-shootin' off'n their guns an' things, same as they allus do when they's on the war-path. Scalps, that's wot they's after. Scalps, no more an' no less. An' to think o' me at my time o' life a-fallin' a prey to Injuns, as you might say. Oh, if on'y my pore George D. Ransford was alive! He'd 'a' give 'em scalps. He was a man, sure, even though he did set around playin' poker all night when I was in labor with my twins. He was a great fighter ...
— The Golden Woman - A Story of the Montana Hills • Ridgwell Cullum

... of nations or of men, show, by their want of shade, how little the eye, without knowledge, is to be depended upon to discover truth. The eye of a Red Indian, keen enough to find the trace of his enemy or his prey, even in the unnatural turn of a trodden leaf, is yet so blunt to the impressions of shade, that Mr. Catlin mentions his once having been in great danger from having painted a portrait with the face in half-light, ...
— Modern Painters Volume I (of V) • John Ruskin

... whose quick eye had descried that ancient opening in the wall, perceived by neither of his companions, was standing just within the wall gazing about for some clue to his prey's location. ...
— The Panchronicon • Harold Steele Mackaye

... replied; "he would not catch much prey that way. There are three other ways out of the valley. That winding path you see there leads up to Santona. That road on the other side leads out on to the plain, and thence to Vittoria; while the footpath over the brow opposite leads right down into the wide valley through which the main north ...
— The Young Buglers • G.A. Henty

... upon this point is becoming so diluted that we can scarcely discern any longer a vestige of the good old landmarks of their sacramental character. Instead of walking in them, Christians are now falling a prey to a latitudinarian spirit of the most destructive kind. They are, in leaving these old landmarks, falling into the clutches of rationalism and radicalism, which will ere long leave ...
— The Christian Home • Samuel Philips

... blood He wrote that blissful bill Upon the cross, as general acquittance To ev'ry penitent in full creance;* *belief And therefore, Lady bright! thou for us pray; Then shalt thou stenten* alle His grievance, *put an end to And make our foe to failen of his prey. ...
— The Canterbury Tales and Other Poems • Geoffrey Chaucer

... of the cliff in safety, attacked the guards, all unsuspicious, and gained an entrance to the city. The gates were opened to the Persians, and Croesus with all his vast store of treasure became the prey of the conqueror. The fall of Sardis and the Lydian monarchy was followed by the subjection of the Greek cities of Asia Minor, a task which Cyrus left to the hands of Harpagus, while he himself turned eastward to pursue his conquests in Upper Asia and in Assyria. ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 1 of 8 • Various

... had amused her. At last he had taken her hand and had asked her to marry him. There had been something strange in his manner. Something had struck her at the time, but the impression passed in the pride of seeing him fall a prey to her enchantment. ...
— Celibates • George Moore

... is used to express the horns, hoofs, beak, or talons of any beast or bird of prey, when borne of a different tincture from those of ...
— The Manual of Heraldry; Fifth Edition • Anonymous

... hand so freely scatters gold, Led many a northern shield to war Against the town upon the shore. The wolves soon gathered on the sand Of that sea-shore; for Harald's hand The Scottish army drove away, And on the coast left wolves a prey." ...
— Heimskringla - The Chronicle of the Kings of Norway • Snorri Sturluson

... given by a knowledge of weakness, I can honestly say that in particular points I have improved a little. I am not generous or noble-hearted now; but I have not lost these qualities, for I never had them. As a boy and a young man I distinctly preferred Advantage to Honour; I was the prey of Expediency, and seldom gave Virtue a thought. But since I have known more of men, I have come to know that these fine powers, Honour and Virtue, do bloom in some men's souls, and in the hearts of many women. I have perceived their fragrance; I have seen Honour raise its glowing ...
— The Upton Letters • Arthur Christopher Benson

... this relationship was once, not merely in respect of etymology, but also of significance, a passage like this will prove: "Perchance, as vultures are said to smell the earthiness of a dying corpse; so this bird of prey [the evil spirit which personated Samuel, 1 Sam. xxviii. 41] resented a worse than earthly savor in the soul of Saul, as evidence of his death at hand". (Fuller, The Profane State, b. 5, ...
— English Past and Present • Richard Chenevix Trench

... word to this explanation, but took his hat and walked out to join the search for the missing girl, while the baroness remained in her rooms, a prey ...
— The Lost Lady of Lone • E.D.E.N. Southworth

... them, as it is by us, as a material and unconscious satisfaction of their wants; these grasses, grains, and leaves appear to animals to be living powers which it is necessary to conquer, animated subjects endowed with life, but for the most part inoffensive, and which, unlike the living prey of carnivora, offer ...
— Myth and Science - An Essay • Tito Vignoli

... Jay The Limberlost lies at the foot and was, when I settled near it, EXACTLY AS DESCRIBED IN MY BOOKS. The process of dismantling it was told in, Freckles, to start with, carried on in 'A Girl of the Limberlost,' and finished in 'Moths of the Limberlost.' Now it has so completely fallen prey to commercialism through the devastation of lumbermen, oilmen, and farmers, that I have been forced to move my working territory and build a new cabin about seventy miles north, at the head of the swamp in Noble county, where there are many lakes, miles of unbroken marsh, and a far ...
— At the Foot of the Rainbow • Gene Stratton-Porter

... of black basalt, girdled with snow. On the other a threaded waterfall. The red morning-tint that shone in the drops had a strange look,—one would say the cliff was bleeding;—perhaps she did not mean it. Below, a stretch of sand, and a solitary bird of prey, with his wings spread over some unseen object.—And on the very next page a procession wound along, after the fashion of that on the title-page of Fuller's "Holy War," in which I recognized without difficulty every boarder at our table in all the glory ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)

... and fully armed from the brain of its creator. The Antigone, produced in 440, discusses one of the deepest problems of civilised life. On the morning after the defeat of the Seven who assaulted Thebes Polyneices' body lay dishonoured and unburied, a prey to carrion birds before the gates of the city which had been his home. His two sisters, Antigone and Ismene, discuss the edict which forbids his burial. Ismene, the more timid of the two, intends to obey it, but Antigone's stronger ...
— Authors of Greece • T. W. Lumb

... once to become endowed with human reason, or a likeness of it, which was so horrible that even the Kaiser and his two chiefs could hardly repress a shudder. It rose very slowly, circled among the floating models about two feet under the surface and then, like an animal smelling out its prey, it made a dart at the ship which the Kaiser had indicated, and struck it from underneath. They saw a green flash stream through the water, and the next moment the model had ...
— The World Peril of 1910 • George Griffith

... thousand fears desiring To engulf their helpless prey? One faint hope, his grace inspiring, Is a mightier ...
— A Brief Memoir with Portions of the Diary, Letters, and Other Remains, - of Eliza Southall, Late of Birmingham, England • Eliza Southall

... booming of the main motor stopped. Only a quiet purring from the wings took its place. The helicopter-plane hovered almost motionless, quiet and deadly like a sinister bird of prey. It began to drop straight down through the ...
— Raiders Invisible • Desmond Winter Hall

... south, Saul, indeed, punished them, as Romans and Turks have punished them since; but the lesson is remembered only for a short while: when the strong hand is removed, the "sons of the desert" return again like the locusts to their prey. ...
— Patriarchal Palestine • Archibald Henry Sayce

... and keep stores properly. But for all that, as it would seem in a most ingenious manner, loss and waste are contrived. Raw sugar is kept in the paper until it rots through it. Macaroni, rice, and such things are left a prey to mice or insects. The vinegar and sauce bottles stand without the corks. Delicate things, which soon lose their fine aroma, as tea, coffee, and spices, are kept in uncovered canisters: the lid is first left off, then mislaid. ...
— Nelson's Home Comforts - Thirteenth Edition • Mary Hooper

... thousands in this very transaction," ejaculates Honeyman. "A heartless West End tradesman hearing of my misfortune—all these people a linked together, my dear Pendennis, and rush like vultures upon their prey!—Waddilove, the tailor, has another writ out for ninety-eight pounds; a man whom I have made by my recommendations! Tobbins, the bootmaker, his neighbour in Jermyn Street, forty-one pounds more, and that is all—I give you my word, all. In a few months, when my pew-rents ...
— The Newcomes • William Makepeace Thackeray

... are without an escort, and you would consequently still find that travellers may "fall among thieves" between Jerusalem and Jericho; besides that, on descending to the plain of Jericho you would certainly become the prey of other Arabs of real tribes, ever passing about there—including most probably the 'Adwan, to whose hospitality, however, we were now about to commit ourselves. To all this must be added, that no other Arabs dare undertake to convoy travellers upon that road; the Taamra ...
— Byeways in Palestine • James Finn

... finesse of negociation, the American pursues them according to the instincts of a less refined nature, and the dictates of a less sublimated policy. He seeks his enemy before he expects him, and thus renders him his prey." ...
— Great Indian Chief of the West - Or, Life and Adventures of Black Hawk • Benjamin Drake

... to deal with. It was on this that the first great schism or heresy arose in what was heretofore the catholic faith of protoplasm. The schism still lasts, and has resulted in two great sects—animals and plants. The opinion that it is better to go in search of prey is formulated in animals; the other—that it is better on the whole to stay at home and profit by what comes—in plants. Some intermediate forms still record to us the long struggle during which the schism was not ...
— Selections from Previous Works - and Remarks on Romanes' Mental Evolution in Animals • Samuel Butler

... being our hero was clear of the snake, but he felt far from comfortable. He perched himself on the limb and watched the reptile closely. It whipped this way and that over the ground as if in high anger over missing its intended prey. ...
— Jack North's Treasure Hunt - Daring Adventures in South America • Roy Rockwood

... creeps after her prey, Anna Goddard stole across that spacious apartment and concealed herself among the voluminous folds of the draperies, where she found that she could easily hear all ...
— The Masked Bridal • Mrs. Georgie Sheldon

... Apparently the chief function of these lighting-plants within the living bodies is not to provide light in the sense that the human being uses it predominantly. That is, these wonderful light-sources seem to be utilized more for signaling, for luring prey, and for protection than for strictly illuminating-purposes. Much study has been given to the production of light by animals, because the secrets will be extremely valuable to mankind. As one floats over tide-water on a balmy ...
— Artificial Light - Its Influence upon Civilization • M. Luckiesh

... before the days of American copyright, and English books were usually regarded as fair prey by the mass of American publishers. Among the exceptions to this practical rule were the firm of D. Appleton & Co., who made it a point of honour to treat foreign authors as though they were legally entitled to some equitable rights. On their behalf an arrangement ...
— The Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley Volume 1 • Leonard Huxley

... sands are heated, parched and dreary, The tigers rend alive their quivering prey In the near Jungle; here the kites rise, weary, Too gorged with living food to ...
— India's Love Lyrics • Adela Florence Cory Nicolson (AKA Laurence Hope), et al.

... reaches them in an hour by way of rugged and slippery paths where the very goats do not willingly venture. Once arrived, one might fancy oneself a thousand leagues from any human being, so numerous are the birds of prey which live ...
— Life of St. Francis of Assisi • Paul Sabatier

... the crew. Words cannot describe their sufferings while they held on for dear life; the waves, which had hurried away so many of their companions, continually rising, as if in a malicious endeavour to secure them also for their prey. While strength remained, they cried and screamed for help, though even as they did so, their hearts sank within them, for it seemed utterly vain to hope that their shrieks would be heard above the awful clamour of the winds ...
— Grace Darling - Heroine of the Farne Islands • Eva Hope

... returned with new adventures to Eurystheus; but the latter would not give him credit for the task because Hercules had demanded a reward for his labor. He sent the hero forth upon a sixth adventure, commanding him to drive away the Stymphalides. These were monster birds of prey, as large as cranes, with iron feathers, beaks and claws. They lived on the banks of Lake Stymphalus in Arcadia, and had the power of using their feathers as arrows and piercing with their beaks even bronze coats of mail. Thus they brought destruction to both animals and men ...
— Famous Tales of Fact and Fancy - Myths and Legends of the Nations of the World Retold for Boys and Girls • Various

... heart, again. Why shouldst thou languish, With earthly pain? The husk shall slumber, Bedded in clay Silent and sombre, Oblivion's prey! But, Spirit immortal, Thou at Death's portal, Tremblest with fear. If he caress thee, Curse thee or bless thee, Thou must draw near, From him the worth of thy ...
— The Poems of Emma Lazarus - Vol. II. (of II.), Jewish Poems: Translations • Emma Lazarus

... when, upon his denunciation, his cashier had been arrested, the banker, this active, energetic man of business, had been a prey to the most gloomy melancholy, and absolutely refused to take any interest in his ...
— File No. 113 • Emile Gaboriau

... by this trivial circumstance, reflecting how many little brown boys like this there must be in various countries called civilised, who, for want of a refuge where love and light are predominant, remain the outcasts of the streets, and become the prey ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 426 - Volume 17, New Series, February 28, 1852 • Various

... off? And how in the world did I find my way to this house? My dear girl, I have been occupied, since we last saw each other, in slightly modifying my old professional habits. I have shifted from Moral Agriculture to Medical Agriculture. Formerly I preyed on the public sympathy, now I prey on the public stomach. Stomach and sympathy, sympathy and stomach—look them both fairly in the face when you reach the wrong side of fifty, and you will agree with me that they come to much the same thing. However that may be, here I am—incredible ...
— No Name • Wilkie Collins

... while Rover, the spaniel, a great devotee of the garbage-can, would occasionally be sick at mid-day instead of after the evening meal. But, with these exceptions, there was a uniformity about the course of life in the Mariner household which began to prey on Jill's nerves as early as ...
— The Little Warrior - (U.K. Title: Jill the Reckless) • P. G. Wodehouse

... of West Point" was, like most cubs, irritable when thwarted. And having been balked of his prey, the deserter, and possibly chaffed by his comrades for his profitless invasion of Wynyard's Bar, he had persuaded his commanding officer to give him permission to effect a recapture. Thus it came about that at dawn, filing along the ridge, on the ...
— The Bell-Ringer of Angel's and Other Stories • Bret Harte

... Vendramin, waving his hand in the direction of San Marco. "Can you see a single pinnacle or spire that stands straight? Do you not perceive that the sea is claiming its prey?" ...
— Massimilla Doni • Honore de Balzac

... of the whip. Her next place of refuge was a horse-pond, which she tried to swim, but got stuck in the ice midway, and was sinking, when the huntsman went in after her. It was a novel sight to see huntsman and hare being lifted over a wall out of the pond, the eager pack waiting for their prey behind the wall."—Local paper, ...
— The Mahatma and the Hare • H. Rider Haggard



Words linked to "Prey" :   fauna, victim, predate, fair game, feed, animate being, brute, animal, bird of prey, exploit, beast, target, quarry, forage, work



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