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Creeps   /krips/   Listen
Creeps

noun
1.
A disease of cattle and sheep attributed to a dietary deficiency; characterized by anemia and softening of the bones and a slow stiff gait.
2.
A feeling of fear and revulsion.






WordNet 3.0 © 2010 Princeton University








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"Creeps" Quotes from Famous Books



... the earliest bug takes up his permanent abode on the "spile." The squirrels also come timidly down the trees, and sip the sweet flow; and occasionally an ugly lizard, just out of its winter quarters and in quest Of novelties, creeps up into the pan or bucket. Soft maple makes a very fine white sugar, superior in quality, but far less ...
— Winter Sunshine • John Burroughs

... occasionally are seen to go into them, but not by their own choice, while the most careful observer will wait in vain to see the ant come out again. Here at the edge of the grass we see one approaching now—a big red ant from yonder ant-hill. He creeps this way and that, and anon is seen trespassing in the precincts of the unhealthy court. He crosses its centre, when, click! and in an instant his place knows him no more, and a black hole marks the spot where he met his fate, which is now ...
— My Studio Neighbors • William Hamilton Gibson

... leguminous productions also, from want of care. Even as to flowers, you would find it difficult to make up a bouquet, unless of ferns, which here abound. The only cultivated flower, except a few dahlias and sunflowers, are the yellow petals of the lucchini, a kind of vegetable marrow, which creeps and creeps till its twisted tendrils and broad leaves occupy, by continual encroachment, the whole field where they germinate. Besides the fruit of this plant, which we begin to be supplied with about August, its young ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, Number 361, November, 1845. • Various

... any newspaper prospects—nor to the mines, for that matter. Phillips, Howland, and Higbie would seem to have given up by this time, and he was camping with Dan Twing and a dog, a combination amusingly described. It is a pleasant enough letter, but the note of discouragement creeps in: ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine

... house-fly is born in the sink. The egg from which it comes is laid in dirt and rubbish. The grub which creeps out ...
— Dick and His Cat and Other Tales • Various

... Granville Stuart's vigilantes were having their results. The precipitous methods of the "stranglers," as they were grimly called, began to give the most hardened "the creeps." Who the "stranglers" themselves were, nobody seemed to know. It was rumored, on the one hand, that they included the biggest ranch-owners in the Northwest; on the other hand, it was stated that they were bands of lawless Texans driven out of the Panhandle ...
— Roosevelt in the Bad Lands • Hermann Hagedorn

... school, she might feel shocked at the homeliness of home; and 'tis these little things that catch a dainty woman's eye if they are neglected. We, living here alone, don't notice how the whitey-brown creeps out of the earth over us; but she, fresh from a city—why, ...
— The Woodlanders • Thomas Hardy

... thorns (of doubt) to keep his limbs in motion, stands a far better chance of finding his way out of the wilderness than he who lies down on the softest bed of snow, flatters himself that all is well, and dreams of home, whilst the deadly torpor creeps over him. ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 87, January, 1865 • Various

... his dread of the terrible creature, took thought, and answered "Man. In childhood he creeps on hands and knees, in manhood he walks erect, but in old age he ...
— Old Greek Folk Stories Told Anew • Josephine Preston Peabody

... consciousness of our race. The religion of ancient Greece consisted in something more than the fables of Jupiter and Juno, of Apollo and Minerva, of Venus and Bacchus. "Through the rank and poisonous vegetation of mythic phraseology, we may always catch a glimpse of an original stem round which it creeps and winds itself, and without which it can not enjoy that parasitical existence which has been mistaken for ...
— Christianity and Greek Philosophy • Benjamin Franklin Cocker

... famous hollows are burned out of the solid wood, for no Sequoia is ever hollowed by decay. When the tree falls, the brash trunk is often broken straight across into sections as if sawed; into these joints the fire creeps, and, on account of the great size of the broken ends, burns for weeks or even months without being much influenced by the weather. After the great glowing ends fronting each other have burned so far apart that their rims cease to burn, the fire continues ...
— Modern Prose And Poetry; For Secondary Schools - Edited With Notes, Study Helps, And Reading Lists • Various

... eastern sky turns pink, Through the silver sedge at the pond's low brink The little lone field-mouse creeps ...
— The Miracle and Other Poems • Virna Sheard

... very dangerous to most folks; and to seek happiness as a final aim is like loving love as a business—the end is desolation, death. Good health is best secured and retained by those who are not anxious about health. Absolute good can never be known, for always and forever creeps in the suspicion that if we had acted differently a better result might ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great Philosophers, Volume 8 • Elbert Hubbard

... first dawnings of intellect with insolence, cold and nakedness; is originally taught to beg and to steal; is driven from the doors of men by the porter or the house dog; and is regarded as an alien from the family of Adam. Like his kindred worms, he creeps through life in the dust; dies under the hedge, where he is born; and is then, perhaps, cast into a ditch, and covered with earth by some stranger, who remembers that, altho a beggar, he ...
— The world's great sermons, Volume 3 - Massillon to Mason • Grenville Kleiser

... are they who weep, and trembling keep Vigil, with wrung heart in a sighing breast, While slow time creeps, and slow ...
— Poems • Christina G. Rossetti

... I bade ye ask Lysia, . ." and all at once he sat bolt upright, his face crimsoning as with an access of passion.. "Ask Lysia!" he repeated loudly.. "Ask her why the mighty Zephoranim creeps in and out the Sacred Temple at midnight like a skulking slave instead of a King! ... at midnight, when he should be shut within his palace walls, playing the fool among his women! I warrant 'tis not piety that persuades ...
— Ardath - The Story of a Dead Self • Marie Corelli

... notice how soon deceit creeps into the hearts of some children! Of course the urchin fell sitting-wise—babies always do so, as surely as cats fall on their feet. In ordinary circumstances he would have intimated the painful ...
— Deep Down, a Tale of the Cornish Mines • R.M. Ballantyne

... from bed, and I even lay down, wrapped in my dressing-gown, and put out my light. I almost wondered that I felt no greater resentment and rage at Hilyard, yet my sense of justice precluded it. As well blame the tree around which the poison vine creeps and clings. I looked deeper than would the world, which doubtless, judging from the surface, would have condemned him rather than her, had all been known. She of the Madonna face and the angel smile, anything but wronged? Never! The world ...
— A Village Ophelia and Other Stories • Anne Reeve Aldrich

... bride of Death Though in his bed she sleeps, And broidering Myrtle richly green O'er her cold pillow creeps: ...
— Man of Uz, and Other Poems • Lydia Howard Sigourney

... entrances; door on left second entrance; window left; small sofa and armchair towards front; escritoire front, L. Music to take up curtain, "We Won't Go Home Till Morning," played, piano. As curtain rises stage is unoccupied and in semi-darkness, SELWYN opens door at back, L., and quietly creeps across, the collar of his overcoat is up, and his hat is dripping with rain. He goes R. on tiptoe and off third entrance, then returns to fix a paper on door and exit same way. FRED BELLAMY then enters by door at back, L., and executes similar business, holding his muddy ...
— Three Hats - A Farcical Comedy in Three Acts • Alfred Debrun

... centres of festering ugliness? If he has that fancy, let him take a glance at some of the quaint old houses of Southwark. They were clean and beautiful in their day, but the healthy human plant can no longer flourish in them, and the weed creeps in, the crawling parasite befouls their walls, and the structures which were lovely when Chaucer's pilgrims started from the "Tabard" are abominable now. If English folk of gentle and cleanly breeding had lived on in those ...
— Side Lights • James Runciman

... Balaguere as they tell it in the land of olives. To-day the chateau of Trinquelague is no more, but the chapel still stands erect on the summit of Mont Ventoux, in a grove of green oaks. The wind beats its disjointed portal; the grass creeps across its threshold; the birds have built in the angles of the altar and in the embrasures of the high windows, whence the colored panes have long ago vanished. But it appears that every year at Christmas, a supernatural light runs about these ruins, and that, in going to Mass or feast, ...
— In the Yule-Log Glow, Book I - Christmas Tales from 'Round the World • Various

... who watch a serpent crawl And, blackening, sleep within a blossom's heart, Who will not slay, but call their gazing "Peace." Even thus within the bosom of our land Creeps, serpent-like, Sedition, and hath gnawed In silence, while a ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 84, October, 1864 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various

... lies a' day, and whiles a' night, in the cove in the dern hag; but though it's a bieldy eneugh bit, and the auld gudeman o' Corse-Cleugh has panged it wi' a kemple o' strae amaist, yet when the country's quiet, and the night very cauld, his Honour whiles creeps doun here to get a warm at the ingle and a sleep amang the blankets, and gangs awa in the morning. And so, ae morning, siccan a fright as I got! Twa unlucky red-coats were up for black-fishing, or some siccan ploy—for the neb o' them's never out o' mischief—and they just got a glisk ...
— Waverley, Or 'Tis Sixty Years Hence, Complete • Sir Walter Scott

... fawn-colored wide brim of the hat, upon the smooth cheek, on the lips of the short and high curved mouth. As she walked, there was heard the whispering rustle of the Feminine; that sound indefinable, which creeps upon man's unwitting senses and enslaves him, he knows not how ...
— The Law of the Land • Emerson Hough

... Nearer and nearer creeps, with cat-like tread, The watchful Sioux. Above his lowered head The plumy grasses rear a swaying crest; His sinuous motion ripples the broad breast Of this ripe prairie, like a playful wind That leaves its ...
— Indian Legends of Minnesota • Various

... driving to destruction—so wild and so reckless is it. And yet it is not reckless in the strict sense of that word; for there is a stern need-be in the case. Every moment (not to mention minutes or hours) is of the utmost importance in the progress of a fire. Fire smoulders and creeps at first, it may be, but when it has got the mastery, and bursts into flames, it flashes to its work and completes it quickly. At such times, one moment of time lost may involve thousands of pounds—ay, ...
— Fighting the Flames • R.M. Ballantyne

... kindly. "I'll be glad to have you. You'll be company. Some of those dark closets, and the bedrooms with sheeted chairs and things give me the creeps. An old house and old unused rooms are eerie-like. Sometimes I can almost hear whispers, ...
— The Cat in Grandfather's House • Carl Henry Grabo

... swinging tussock the lapwing leaps, Lark's note above plover's swelling, As the crook-backed cotter in silence creeps From his lonely ...
— The Old Willow Tree and Other Stories • Carl Ewald

... juice requiring to be fed: ... Proceeding onward whence the year began, The Summer grows adult, and ripens into man.... Autumn succeeds, a sober, tepid age, Not froze with fear, nor boiling into rage; ... Last, Winter creeps along with tardy pace, Sour is his front, and furrowed is his face. 1610 DRYDEN: Of Pythagorean Phil. From, 15th Book Ovid's ...
— Handy Dictionary of Poetical Quotations • Various

... space from this inaccessible eyrie by an officer of the Peshwa. Viewed from this point the whole plain seems a vast brown sea streaked here and there with green: and the smaller hills rise like islands from it, their feet folded in the mist which creeps across the levels. To the north beyond the larger ranges which encircle the valley the peak of Harischandragad is dimly visible, towering above the Sahyadris; and across the plain to eastward the Suleman range ends in the huge ...
— By-Ways of Bombay • S. M. Edwardes, C.V.O.

... (Creeps unsteadily to the door; standing himself with a hand on the lock; his back is to the room. He speaks in a ...
— Defenders of Democracy • Militia of Mercy

... stands Betwixt the bright and shaded lands, Above the regions it divides And borders with its furrowed sides. The seaward valley laughs with light Till the round sun o'erhangs this height; But then the shadow of the crest No more the plains that lengthen west Enshrouds, yet slowly, surely creeps Eastward, until the coolness steeps A darkling league of tilth and wold, And chills the flocks that ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 104, June, 1866 • Various

... he is a mute figure of wild and fierce eagerness. Meanwhile, the wary tracker stoops to the ground, and with a practised eye pierces the tangled brushwood in search of his colossal feet. Still farther and farther he silently creeps forward, when suddenly a crash bursts through the jungle; the moment has arrived for the ambushed charge, and ...
— The Rifle and The Hound in Ceylon • Samuel White Baker

... at the bottom of this water, I saw here and there patches of a furry sort of ice. I have often watched the freezing of a rapid Scotch stream, where, in the swifter parts, the ice forms first at the bottom and gradually creeps up the larger stones till it appears on the surface, and becomes a nucleus, round which pieces of floating ice collect; and the substance in the glaciere-lake had exactly the same appearance as the Scotch ground-ice. But it could not be the same thing in reality, ...
— Ice-Caves of France and Switzerland • George Forrest Browne

... rally round the flag, boys!" With tears she hears the song, And her thoughts go back to the boys in blue, That army, brave and strong— Then Peace creeps in amid the pain. The dead are as dear as the living, And back of the song is the silence, ...
— Threads of Grey and Gold • Myrtle Reed

... are brushed up, and they wonder why the bits are so tarnished, and she holds his horse's bridle while he goes in to see his patients, and is ready with merry talk or serious questions when he reappears. And one dark night she listens from her window to the demand of a messenger, and softly creeps down stairs and is ready to take her place by his side, and drive him across the hills as if it were the best fun in the world, with the frightened country-boy clattering behind on his bare-backed steed. The moon ...
— A Country Doctor and Selected Stories and Sketches • Sarah Orne Jewett

... leads down from the northward mountains over the tundra which flanks the tide flats, then creeps out upon the salt ice of the river and across to the village. It boasts no travel in summer, but by winter an occasional toil-worn traveller may be seen issuing forth from the Great Country beyond, bound for ...
— The Silver Horde • Rex Beach

... gallic garbage of philosophy,— That nauseous slaver of these frantic times, With which false liberty dilutes her crimes; If thou hast got within thy free-born breast One pulse that beats more proudly than the rest With honest scorn for that inglorious soul Which creeps and winds beneath a mob's control. Which courts the rabble's smile, the rabble's nod, And makes, like Egypt, every ...
— The Idler in France • Marguerite Gardiner

... far as you can follow it; and its unchanging, senseless hurry is strangely tedious to witness. It is a river that a man could grow to hate. Day after day breaks with the rarest gold upon the mountain spires, and creeps, growing and glowing, down into the valley. From end to end the snow reverberates the sunshine; from end to end the air tingles with the light, clear and dry like crystal. Only along the course of the river, but high above it, there hangs far into the noon, one waving ...
— Essays of Travel • Robert Louis Stevenson

... that beats against the shore, the winter winds that make her shrink and tremble; "they are not so unkind as man's ingratitude!" Falling often, rising, struggling on with feverish haste, she makes her way to the very edge of the water; down almost into the sea she creeps, between two rocks, upon her hands and knees, and crouches, face downward, with Ringe nestled close beneath her breast, not daring to move through the long hours that must pass before the sun will rise again. She is so near ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 3 • Various

... shaken to see to whose lot it shall fall to steal up those stairs and stab Washington in his sleep. An hour passes and all in the house appear to be at rest, but the stairs creak slightly as Manheim creeps upon his prey. He blows his candle out and softly enters the chamber on the left. The men, who listen in the dark at the foot of the stair, hear a moan, and the Tory hurries back with a shout of gladness, for the rebel chief is no more and Howe's reward ...
— Myths And Legends Of Our Own Land, Complete • Charles M. Skinner

... end of the burthen borne by himself, while those associated with him do little to keep the wheels moving, he must remember that "a few will have the labor to perform and the honor to share." Then there creeps into his words a grain of doubt, a vague fear lest his young ally should take his hands from the plough and go the way of all men, and here are the words which Paul might have written to Timothy: "I hope you will persevere in your ...
— William Lloyd Garrison - The Abolitionist • Archibald H. Grimke

... of which is smirched with blood and fouled with nameless sins, a record, howsoever brief and inadequate, of human suffering, wherein as "through a glass, darkly," we may behold horrors unimagined; where Murder stalks, and rampant Lust; where Treachery creeps with curving back, smiling mouth, and sudden, deadly hand; where Tyranny, fierce-eyed, and iron-lipped, grinds the nations beneath a bloody heel. Truly, man hath no enemy like man. And Christ is there, and Socrates, and Savonarola—and there, too, is a cross of agony, a bowl of hemlock, and ...
— The Broad Highway • Jeffery Farnol

... all I have for thee. Listen to me, signor: when I look on your face, when I hear your voice, a certain serene and tranquil calm creeps over and lulls thoughts,—oh, how feverish, how wild! When thou art gone, the day seems a shade more dark; but the shadow soon flies. I miss thee not; I think not of thee: no, I love thee not; and I will give myself only ...
— Zanoni • Edward Bulwer Lytton

... as I am able to command. Weakness, backsliding from my purpose to be as cheerful as you wish, you must forgive. If you would have me display an even interest in life, undisturbed by the moaning which creeps into these letters, you know the sure, swift course to take—the fastest express train to New York, and a telegram summoning me to the depot—that ...
— Cupid's Middleman • Edward B. Lent

... it," said Tom. "I confess this place gives me the creeps. Have you got my translation ...
— The Inn at the Red Oak • Latta Griswold

... over-rushed managers nor their subordinates have the time and the patience to keep waste down to the possible minimum. The pressure which depression applies to secure the fullest utilization of all material and labor is relaxed, and in a hundred little ways the cost of business creeps upward."[46] ...
— The Settlement of Wage Disputes • Herbert Feis

... the truth of such a king and kingdom! Under the unsleeping eye of the Sovereign, the planet wheels on its axis with startling velocity, and the insect creeps on the grain of sand. A Russian ...
— Half Hours in Bible Lands, Volume 2 - Patriarchs, Kings, and Kingdoms • Rev. P. C. Headley

... aspect. It has been warm and sunny for the past few days, and the elms and plane-trees across the road are beginning to riot in their green bravery, as if intoxicated with the golden wine of spring. My French window is flung wide open, and on the balcony a triangular bit of sunlight creeps round as the morning advances. My work-table is drawn up to the window. I am busy over the first section of my "History of Renaissance Morals," for which I think my notes are completed. I have a delicious ...
— The Morals of Marcus Ordeyne • William J. Locke

... sunsets,—out of mosses under the feet, mosses and pebbles and grasses,—out of the loveliness of moon and stars, their harmonies and changes,—out of sea-foam, and what sea-foam reveals to us of the rich and strange things beneath the waters far down,—out of sweet human eyes,—out of all these things creeps into our spirits the knowledge that God is Love, and His handiwork the expression of ineffable tenderness and affection. I believe, indeed, that the principle of Beauty, philosophically speaking, pervades all material ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 7, No. 44, June, 1861 • Various

... not fear," said the second Indian, behind whom the other had now retreated, not unlike a dog, who, feeling himself guilty of a misdeed, creeps, with tail between his legs, behind the back of his master. The new-comer surveyed him ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 367, May 1846 • Various

... in a certain sense, he is so; and it is his greatest charm. But incomprehensible!—no. The essence of all artistic poetry is in the perfect blending of matter and form, so that the meaning creeps in upon us, but with a certain vagueness, a certain indefiniteness, which reaches us more in the shade of a dreamy consciousness than through the understanding. May I give you an illustration? We stand upon a low plain and gaze upon a far-off ...
— The New Tenant • E. Phillips Oppenheim

... Fiend O'er bog, or steep, through strait, rough, dense, or rare, With head, hands, wings, or feet, pursues his way, And swims, or sinks, or wades, or creeps, or flies."—Milton. ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown

... it; did ever lover so rejoice in the palpitations of his mistress? O the wine of life! drunk from the cup of murder! Hear how the wretch's voice breaks choking from his throat!—he would beg for mercy, but cannot, shall not! Keep your fingers in his throat; the other hand creeps warily downwards. ...
— Idolatry - A Romance • Julian Hawthorne

... them the way a cat creeps on a mouse. In the daytime a moose is usually lying down. We'd find their tracks and places where they'd been nipping off the ends of branches and twigs, and follow them up. They easily take the scent of men, and we'd have to keep well ...
— Beautiful Joe • Marshall Saunders

... nest with his paw. Then he meets a frog and begins to play with it; when he has tormented the frog he goes on licking himself and meets a beetle; he crushes the beetle with his paw . . . and so he spoils and destroys everything on his way. . . . He creeps into other beasts' holes, tears up the anthills, cracks the snail's shell. If he meets a rat, he fights with it; if he meets a snake or a mouse, he must strangle it; and so the whole day long. Come, tell me: what is the use of a beast like ...
— The Duel and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov

... pleasant evenings we'll saunter down the Mall, When the trout is rising to the fly, the salmon to the fall. The boat comes straining on her net, and heavily she creeps, Cast off, cast off—she feels the oars, and to her berth she sweeps; Now fore and aft keep hauling, and gathering up the clew, Till a silver wave of salmon rolls in among the crew. Then they may sit, with pipes a-lit, and many a joke and 'yarn';— Adieu to Belashanny, and ...
— Sixteen Poems • William Allingham

... mouse in the wall. I'm going to get out of this place. I feel as if there's a ghost in here. It creeps all over me. I can't ...
— Dotty Dimple At Home • Sophie May

... Sheba presides at the preparation of state dinners, and sits by the cradle of baby Grace. She is left, however, most of the time, to her own devices, and often finds her way also to the cemetery to "wisit dat dear little lamb, Hilda," murmuring as she creeps slowly with her cane, "We'se all a-followin' her now, bress ...
— His Sombre Rivals • E. P. Roe

... Torrey's to the right. As the lookout of the photographer was nearer Torrey's than Gray's, the former appears the higher in the picture, while the reverse is really the case. The trail winds through a ravine at the right of the ridge in front; then creeps along the farther side of the ridge above the gorge at Torrey's base; comes to the crest of the ridge pretty well toward the left; then crawls and zigzags back and forth along the titanic wall of Gray's to the summit. In the ...
— Birds of the Rockies • Leander Sylvester Keyser

... sit In gorgeous pomp and state, gaunt poverty Creeps through their sunless lanes, and with sharp knives Cuts the warm throats of children stealthily ...
— The Duchess of Padua • Oscar Wilde

... awe creeps into John's spirit as he writes, and the light flashes out of his eye with the intensity of an old picture surging to the front of his imagination again. There was more than a tent here, more than a man. Out of the ...
— Quiet Talks on John's Gospel • S. D. Gordon

... he said, "I am not worth such feeling, Miss Manette. An hour or two hence, and the low companions and low habits that I scorn but yield to, will render me less worth such tears as those, than any wretch who creeps along the streets. Be comforted! But, within myself, I shall always be, towards you, what I am now, though outwardly I shall be what you have heretofore seen me. The last supplication but one I make to you, is, that you will ...
— A Tale of Two Cities - A Story of the French Revolution • Charles Dickens

... of his crime and thine. For, Hester, his spirit lacked the strength that could have borne up, as thine has, beneath a burden like thy scarlet letter. Oh, I could reveal a goodly secret! But enough. What art can do, I have exhausted on him. That he now breathes and creeps about on earth is owing ...
— The Scarlet Letter • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... the ottoman, Frightens the bird, And sees that the chairs In a medley are stirred; Then creeps on the sofa, And, all in a heap, Drops out ...
— Cole's Funny Picture Book No. 1 • Edward William Cole

... kophos. kai etherapeusen auton, hoste ton tuphlon kai kophon kai lalein kai blepein.] Spiritual dumbness is the incapacity for the praise of God which, in the time when salvation is withheld, so easily creeps in, and which is removed by the bestowal of salvation. The words: "For in the wilderness," &c., state the ground of the leaping and shouting, point to the bestowal of salvation, which forms the cause. The waters are the waters of salvation, compare remarks on chap. xii. ...
— Christology of the Old Testament: And a Commentary on the Messianic Predictions. Vol. 2 • Ernst Hengstenberg

... as a reluctant, outworn wave creeps to a resisting rock. It foamed upon the rock. The archers ceased to shoot and drew their axes. The men-at-arms leapt forward. The battle had joined at last! Breast to breast they wrestled now. Hugh's sword was red, and red was Grey Dick's axe. Fight as they would, the ...
— Red Eve • H. Rider Haggard

... sanctioned by the most authoritative seals of social opinion, they are, when not impoverished or poisoned by any evil interference, warm, precious, and sacred. The strongest preventives of their frequency and the commonest drawbacks from their power are the dullness which creeps over all emotions under the dominion of passive habit, and the tendency to look elsewhere for more vivid attachments, more ...
— The Friendships of Women • William Rounseville Alger

... work, Robert," said the older of the boys as they were poling up the river to a new fishing place. "The old boat creeps over the water ...
— Fifty Famous People • James Baldwin

... plunging about In the midst of the peasants, Now circling above them, Now striking the bushes And earth with her body. And even the fox, too, The cunning old creature, With woman's determined And deep curiosity, Creeps to the firelight 240 And stealthily listens; At last, quite bewildered, She goes; she is thinking, "The devil himself ...
— Who Can Be Happy And Free In Russia? • Nicholas Nekrassov

... to bust hisself, and cuts his stick, while I creeps out full o' prickles, and wi' my breeches torn shameful. Dang un!" cried the keeper, while Tom roared, "he's a lissum wosbird, that I 'ool say, but I'll be up sides wi' he next time I sees un. Whorson fool as I was, not to stop and look at 'n and speak to un! Then I should ha' know'd ...
— Tom Brown at Oxford • Thomas Hughes

... Time! thy jaws devour The suns and slumbers of the broken spheres, Whose knell young stars have heard, whose rounded hour Strikes, and is buried in thy bourneless years. They glow like fevered jewels in the deeps, Like sullen embers in remorseless Night, Like flowers with'ring when the Winter creeps With iron dews their little lives to blight. Since recordless immensities of Time I stand whose ne'er-sealed eyes the birth behold Of worlds dream-born,—their fiery infant clime, Their teeming life, their epochs gray and cold, Peace kiss and blot their tarnished light ...
— The Masque of the Elements • Herman Scheffauer

... the tender grass, whose verdure clads Her universal face with pleasant green; Then herbs of every leaf, that sudden flower, Opening their various colours, and make gay Her bosom, swelling sweet; and, these scarce blown, Forth flourishes the clustering vine, forth creeps The swelling gourd, up stands the corny reed Embattled in her fields, and the humble shrub, And bush with frizzled hair implicit; last Rise, as in dance, the stately trees, and spread Their branches hung with copious fruit, or gem Their blossoms; with high woods the ...
— Callista • John Henry Cardinal Newman

... many of the best minds of these days. They watch what they conceive to be the progress of materialism, in such fear and powerless anger as a savage feels when, during an eclipse, the great shadow creeps over the face of the sun. The advancing tide of matter threatens to drown their souls; the tightening grasp of law impedes their freedom; they are alarmed lest man's moral nature be debased by the increase of ...
— English Prose - A Series of Related Essays for the Discussion and Practice • Frederick William Roe (edit. and select.)

... and the corona has faded away, the moon's disc creeps little by little from the face of the sun, light and heat returns once more to the earth, and nature recovers gradually from the gloom in which she has been plunged. About an hour after totality, the last remnant of moon draws away from the solar disc, and the eclipse is entirely ...
— Astronomy of To-day - A Popular Introduction in Non-Technical Language • Cecil G. Dolmage

... bended head, As I snatched the ball from slippery ground Not half a fling from Wiwst's bound. And the cheat—behold her! for there she stands With the prize that is mine in her treacherous hands. The fawn may fly, but the wolf is fleet; The fox creeps sly on Mag's [10] retreat; And a woman's revenge—it is swift and sweet." She turned to her lodge, but a roar of laughter And merry mockery followed after. Little they heeded the words she said, Little they cared for ...
— Legends of the Northwest • Hanford Lennox Gordon

... folks dyin' and so on. Said she cal'lated she'd have a doll's funeral some time. 'For mercy sakes, what for?' I says. 'Can't you think up anything pleasanter'n that to play? That kind of game would give me the blue creeps!' She, thought that over—she generally thinks about a thing for five minutes afore she talks about it—and says she, 'I know,' she says, 'but a person must go to funerals and so it's better to get used to 'em and know how to behave. I shouldn't want my dolls,' she says, 'to do things at funerals ...
— Mary-'Gusta • Joseph C. Lincoln

... of steam from his tossing head. On such days life becomes a battle to all householders, the ordinary apparatus for defence is insufficient, and the price of caloric is continual vigilance. In innumerable armies the frost besieges the portal, creeps in beneath it and above it, and on every latch and key-handle lodges an advanced guard of white rime. Leave the door ajar never so slightly and a chill creeps in cat-like; we are conscious by the warmest fireside of the near vicinity ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 52, February, 1862 • Various

... in the cool slush, And feels about his spine small eft-things course, 5 Run in and out each arm, and make him laugh; And while above his head a pompion-plant, Coating the cave-top as a brow its eye, Creeps down to touch and tickle hair and beard, And now a flower drops with a bee inside, 10 And now a fruit to snap at, catch and crunch— He looks out o'er yon sea which sunbeams cross And recross till they weave a spider web (Meshes of fire, some great fish breaks at times) And talks to his ...
— Selections from the Poems and Plays of Robert Browning • Robert Browning

... said Pickersgill, "that is a yacht; and you're right there again in your guess—that is the stupid old Active, which creeps about creeping for tubs. Well, I see nothing to alarm us at present, provided it don't fall a dead calm, and then we must take to our boat as soon as he takes to his; we are four miles from him at ...
— Peter Simple and The Three Cutters, Vol. 1-2 • Frederick Marryat

... frequently heard in spoken English in England, and sometimes creeps into standard books, but ...
— An English Grammar • W. M. Baskervill and J. W. Sewell

... there remain autocratic Governments basing themselves on militarism, bitterly hostile to the democratic principle, Europe will never be free of the surcharge of swollen armaments, the nightmare menace of wars like this—the paralysis that creeps on civilizations which adore the god ...
— New York Times, Current History, Vol 1, Issue 1 - From the Beginning to March, 1915 With Index • Various

... struck by some mighty, shrouded Hand of Power, still reverberated, and trailed its still renewing echoes through every fibre of its secret habitation. Nor yet for spring;—a couchant leopard has posed itself with horrid intent; murder glitters in its fixed golden eye, quivers in the tense loins, creeps in the tawny glitter of the skin, clutches the keen claws, that recoil, and grasp, and recoil again from the velvet ball of that heavy foot; murder grins in the withdrawn lip, the white, red-set teeth, the slavering crunch of the jaw: but nothing ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 32, June, 1860 • Various

... you have a good deal of stress and strain, men's nerves are not at their best. I think I can say I always preserve my temper in these days—I hope my wife won't give me away—[laughter]—and I have no doubt that the spirit of unrest creeps into the relations between employer and workmen. Some differences of opinion are quite inevitable, but we cannot afford them now; and, above all, we cannot resort to the ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 2, May, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various

... head of le Feu-Follet the other way. Peste! the lugger is so sharp, and has such a trick of going exactly where she looks, that I am afraid she has been crawling up toward her enemy, as the child creeps into the fire ...
— The Wing-and-Wing - Le Feu-Follet • J. Fenimore Cooper

... it bends all its energies in the vain attempt to alter the capricious attitude of the superior Being who scares and terrifies men. It is, however, a very subtle spirit and one hard to eradicate. It invades our religion even when we are least aware of it: "it enters into our chambers, creeps into our clothes, twines about our secret devotions, and actuates our forms ...
— Spiritual Reformers in the 16th & 17th Centuries • Rufus M. Jones

... ground, and requires a great many heraldic quarterings and facings to set it off. Lay on, and do not spare. No man's merit can be fairly judged of if he is not known; and how can he be known if he keeps entirely in the background?(4) A great name in art goes but a little way, is chilled as it creeps along the surface of the world without something to revive and make it blaze up with fresh splendour. Fame is here almost obscurity. It is long before your name affixed to a sterling design will be spelt out by an undiscerning regardless ...
— Table-Talk - Essays on Men and Manners • William Hazlitt

... telling. K. Edw. Pray thee, let me know it. Y. Mor. But, seeing you are so desirous, thus it is; A lofty cedar tree, fair flourishing, On whose top branches kingly eagles perch, And by the bark a canker creeps me up, And gets unto the highest bough of all; The motto, AEque tandem. K. Edw. And what is yours, my Lord of Lancaster? Lan. My lord, mine's more obscure than Mortimer's. Pliny reports, there is a flying-fish Which all the other fishes deadly hate, And therefore, being ...
— Edward II. - Marlowe's Plays • Christopher Marlowe

... it pushes open the side of the case and creeps out. Then the case springs together again to protect the ...
— The Insect Folk • Margaret Warner Morley

... give me the creeps," said Laura with a little shiver. "Billie, do you think half a dozen middies' would do? We won't want to dress ...
— Billie Bradley and Her Inheritance - The Queer Homestead at Cherry Corners • Janet D. Wheeler

... Bandy-legs, "I'm real glad it wasn't a snake, because they always give me the creeps, you remember, I hate 'em so. Just think what a fine pickle we'd be in now if a monster anaconda or a big boa constrictor or python, broke loose from a show, should climb up on our bridge boat, and start to chasin' ...
— Afloat on the Flood • Lawrence J. Leslie

... should like to beat him, Socrates; for, as I was saying, such a one, even though he have good natural parts, becomes effeminate. He flies from the busy centre and the market-place, in which, as the poet says, men become distinguished; he creeps into a corner for the rest of his life, and talks in a whisper with three or four admiring youths, but never speaks out like a freeman in a satisfactory manner. Now I, Socrates, am very well inclined towards you, and my feeling may be compared with that of Zethus towards Amphion, ...
— Gorgias • Plato

... twilight creeps, the sun has gone, But triumph fills the soldier's breast; He's sewn his back brace-buttons ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, September 16, 1914 • Various

... it's a great big spider, Like that Miss Muffet had beside her; Sometimes it's a bat that flies, Or a baby doll that cries; Sometimes it's a frog that leaps, Or a crocodile that creeps: But whatever toy is shown, For a ...
— London Town • Felix Leigh

... That is not what befalls men who live by earthly joys. For the more poignant, precious, and, as we faithlessly think, indispensable some of these are to us, the more into their sweetest sweetness creeps the dread thought: 'This is too good to last; this must pass.' We never need to think that about the peace and joy that come to us through believing. For they, in their sweetness, prophesy perpetuity. I need not dwell upon the thought that the firmest, most ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: Romans Corinthians (To II Corinthians, Chap. V) • Alexander Maclaren

... at this time on the Fox River of Green Bay,—a stream which owes its name to them.[332] Their chief village seems to have been between thirty and forty miles from the mouth of the river, where it creeps through broad tracts of rushes, willows, and wild rice. In spite of their losses at Detroit in 1712, their strength was far ...
— A Half Century of Conflict - Volume I - France and England in North America • Francis Parkman

... land; And where there's substance for its ground, 105 Cannot but be more firm and sound Than that which has the slightest basis Of airy virtue, wit, and graces; Which is of such thin subtlety, It steals and creeps in at the eye, 110 And, as it can't endure to stay, Steals out again as nice ...
— Hudibras • Samuel Butler

... scarlet shell-fish click and clash In the blue barrow where they slide; The horseman, proud of streak and splash, Creeps homeward from his ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. II, No. 8, June 1858 • Various

... Lais who kept her lovers in the porch, lover on lover waiting (but to creep where the robe brushed the threshold where still sleeps Lais), so she creeps, Lais, to lay her mirror at the feet of her who ...
— American Poetry, 1922 - A Miscellany • Edna St. Vincent Millay

... understood. When the stone-fly nymph is fully grown, it comes out of the water and climbs to some convenient eminence. The cuticle splits open along the back, and the imago, clothed in its new cuticle, as yet soft and flexible, creeps out. The spiracles are now open, and the stone-fly breathes atmospheric air like other flying insects. But throughout its winged life, the stone-fly bears memorials of its aquatic past in the little withered vestiges of gills that can still ...
— The Life-Story of Insects • Geo. H. Carpenter

... the best thing he could do for himself," she says, so sadly that Kit insensibly creeps closer to her; "and as for me, it doesn't matter ...
— Rossmoyne • Unknown

... the case of a red tree different. The fundamental value of red remains, as in every case. But the association of "autumn" creeps in. ...
— Concerning the Spiritual in Art • Wassily Kandinsky

... quiet; talk to me—keep me awake! I don't sleep at night, and in the afternoon a dreadful drowsiness creeps over me." ...
— House of Mirth • Edith Wharton

... bungalow had stood in sun and rain unoccupied, with a watchman and his wife, named Hope, who lived close by. The aptness of his name was that of the little Barbadian mule-tram which creeps through the coral-white streets, striving forever to divorce motion from progress and bearing the name Alert. Hope had done his duty and watched the bungalow. It was undoubtedly still there and nothing had been taken ...
— Edge of the Jungle • William Beebe

... dusty roadside, and that it needs but the magic touch of our own hand to have it brought to the surface. This is a pleasant delusion, which, however, is susceptible of being rudely and roughly dispelled by an impartial experience as we grow older, when this exaggerated tendency creeps into our loves, and it is there it holds the fullest sway, and does the maddest mischief, the danger of a disenchanting awakening is still greater and more hazardous. For when we love in an abstract sense ...
— The Doctor's Daughter • "Vera"

... has no eyes; he is a burrowing mole,' said one tauntingly; 'he creeps about the woods like a serpent, and falls into the trap of the hunters: a beaver is wiser than he. He is very cunning, but he cannot deceive a Sioux: he is very brave, but he is a prisoner, and not a wound shows that he struggled. Go; it is a squaw whom ...
— Tales for Young and Old • Various

... his loll'd tongue he faintly licks his prey; His warm breath blows her flix[44] up as she lies; She trembling creeps upon the ground away, And looks back to ...
— The Poetical Works of John Dryden, Vol I - With Life, Critical Dissertation, and Explanatory Notes • John Dryden

... and not principle, seems to be their universal rule of action. Cold and passionless, incapable of generous emotions, he is necessarily vindictive and cruel. Patient and persevering, bigoted and selfish, eschewing as a crime an honorable resentment, he creeps to his ends like a serpent, with all his ...
— The Memories of Fifty Years • William H. Sparks

... vining brier will crawl across my grave, And you will woo another in my stead. Those tender, foolish names you called me by, Your passionate kiss that clung unsatisfied, The pressure of your hand, when dark night hushed Life's busy stir, and left us two alone, Will you remember? or, when dawn creeps in, And you bend o'er another's pillowed head, Seeing sleep's loosened hair about her face, Until her low love-laughter welcomes you, Will you, down-gazing at her waking eyes, Forget? So have I ...
— Songs, Merry and Sad • John Charles McNeill

... looked back at Tom. "Remember that night on the monorail going into Atom City? That man Bernard who bought dinner for us? He was a boyhood friend of my father's. He didn't recognize me, and I didn't tell him who I was because I didn't want you space creeps to know that much about me. And remember, when I gave Al James the brush in that restaurant in Atom City? He was talking about the old days, and he might have spilled the beans too. It all adds up, doesn't it? I had a reason I told you and it's just this! To make Space Academy ...
— Stand by for Mars! • Carey Rockwell

... is to be afraid of, my lad; but there's something unked about, and the gashly thing's given me the creeps. Come away." ...
— Sappers and Miners - The Flood beneath the Sea • George Manville Fenn

... there creeps gradually into the public consciousness a sense that SOMETHING HAS HAPPENED. Brief notices appear in the press, at first infrequently and then more frequently, and an article or two in the popular monthlies. ...
— Popular Science Monthly Volume 86

... land; they who have passed to that bourne whence no traveller returns? Answer me: Are not theirs the loftiest names inscribed on your marble catalogues of the nations?" He let his voice out startlingly and shouted: "CREEPS there a creature of the earth with spirit so sordid as to doubt it, to doubt who heads those gilded rolls! If there be, then I say to him, 'Beware!' For the names I see written above me to-day on the immemorial canopy of heaven begin with that of ...
— In the Arena - Stories of Political Life • Booth Tarkington

... on hands and knees And crawled by childlike dim degrees Up toward his brother, as a breeze Creeps wingless over sluggard seas When all the wind's heart fails it: so Beneath their mother's eyes had he, A babe that laughed with joy to be, Made toward him standing by her knee For ...
— The Tale of Balen • Algernon Charles Swinburne

... underground Bore up his branching head; scarce from his mould Behemoth, biggest born of earth, upheaved His vastness; fleeced the flocks and bleating rose As plants; ambiguous between sea and land, The river-horse and scaly crocodile. At once came forth whatever creeps ...
— Lectures and Essays • Thomas Henry Huxley

... by at dead of night, And down the chimney creeps—a funny sight; He fills the stockings full of books and toys, But puts in whips ...
— Cole's Funny Picture Book No. 1 • Edward William Cole

... where a stream that lazily creeps through the mossy, oozy ground attracts myriads of insects to its humid neighborhood, this tiny hunter loves to hide in the denser foliage of the upper branches. He has the habit of nervously flitting about from twig to twig of his relatives, ...
— Bird Neighbors • Neltje Blanchan

... longing eye, Homeward he hies, and with his manly brood Of raw-boned cubs enjoys that clean, coarse food, 140 Which, season'd with good-humour, his fond bride 'Gainst his return is happy to provide; Then, free from care, and free from thought, he creeps Into his straw, and till the morning sleeps. Not so the king—with anxious cares oppress'd His bosom labours, and admits not rest: A glorious wretch, he sweats beneath the weight Of majesty, and gives up ...
— Poetical Works • Charles Churchill

... hope always to be a boy; I hope ever to prefer thoughtlessness to heartlessness, imprudence to selfishness, impulse to calculation. It is hard enough to part with all the fiery spirits, the glowing imaginations, the elasticity of mind and body which we lose as age creeps on; but if, with the bright summer weather and cloudless skies of youth, to which we are content to bid farewell, we must lose, too, the "sunshine of the breast"—the "bloom of heart"—then well might the poet count him happy who died in early spring—who knew nothing ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 58, Number 358, August 1845 • Various

... No more ways! One way hast thou trod Already, foul and false and loathed of god! Begone out of my sight; and ponder how Thine own life stands! I need no helpers now. [She turns from the NURSE, who creeps abashed away into ...
— Hippolytus/The Bacchae • Euripides

... See! she creeps up to Nettie's bed, and a heavy frown gathers on her wrinkled face as she spies the letter on her bosom. Now she draws it from between the child's fingers, reads it, mutters something between her closed teeth, and then burns it to cinders in the candle; then she shakes her head, ...
— Little Ferns For Fanny's Little Friends • Fanny Fern

... as the masses of all trees do, in general outline, a resemblance to the specific forms of the leaves of which they are composed. Turn over the page, and look into the weaving of the foliage and sprays against the dark night-sky, how near they are, yet how untraceable; see how the moonlight creeps up underneath them, trembling and shivering on the silver boughs above; note also, the descending bit of ivy on the left, of which only two leaves are made out, and the rest is confusion, or tells only in the moonlight like faint ...
— Modern Painters Volume I (of V) • John Ruskin

... to slay; now shall we taste of the battle." Higher yet and higher, till at length the chief, Pagadi, swathed in war-garments of splendid furs, preceded by runners and accompanied by picked warriors, creeps slowly up. He is old and tottering, and of an unwieldy bulk. Two attendants support him, whilst a third bears his shield, and a fourth (oh bathos!) a cane-bottomed chair. One moment the old man stands and surveys his warriors and listens to the familiar war-cry. As he stands, his ...
— Cetywayo and his White Neighbours - Remarks on Recent Events in Zululand, Natal, and the Transvaal • H. Rider Haggard

... enthusiasm. It is so mournful to know that, when the labour is ended, and a new chaplet encircles my brow, I shall have no one but you to whom I can turn for sympathy in my triumph. If I feel this so keenly now, how shall I bear it when the glow of life fades into sober twilight shadows, and age creeps upon me?" ...
— Macaria • Augusta Jane Evans Wilson

... Youth goes in, and leaves his youth behind; men go in, and leave all strength and hope behind; age goes in, and creeps out—to a grave. Hear me, Barnaby Bright. There is one within there already marked for destruction. Death follows at his heel, for evil begetteth evil, and the sword, the sword. He is already doomed. Listen,—blood! ...
— The Amateur Gentleman • Jeffery Farnol et al

... the first time I've been back here since," he said almost in a whisper, "and, 'pon my word, it gives me the creeps. I swear it isn't fit for a man to live in. I never saw you look ...
— Masterpieces of Mystery, Vol. 1 (of 4) - Ghost Stories • Various

... not hence empty-handed," said Edward fondly. "Thy father's halls sheltered the exile, and the exile forgets not the sole pleasure of a king—the power to requite. We may never meet again, William,—age creeps over me, and who will succeed to my thorny throne?" William longed to answer,—to tell the hope that consumed him,—to remind his cousin of the vague promise in their youth, that the Norman Count should succeed to ...
— Harold, Complete - The Last Of The Saxon Kings • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... certain is that rising than the coming of that day. And I say to you that even here, in the land where now we stand, where today the cries of the wounded and the curses of revenge ring in the air; even here, in this land where man creeps on his belly to wound his fellow in the dark, and where an acre of gold is worth a thousand souls, and a reef of shining dirt is worth half a people, and the vultures are heavy with man's flesh—even here that day shall come. I tell you, Peter Simon Halket, that here on the spot ...
— Trooper Peter Halket of Mashonaland • Olive Schreiner

... peril; not that we should have far to go—Souchez is just there. For six months we have lived and worked in the trenches almost within hail of the village. We have only to climb straight from here on to the Bethune road along which the trench creeps, the road honeycombed underneath by our shelters, and descend it for four or five hundred yards as it dips down towards Souchez. But all that ground is under regular and terrible attention. Since their recoil, the Germans have constantly sent huge shells into ...
— Under Fire - The Story of a Squad • Henri Barbusse



Words linked to "Creeps" :   animal disease, fright, fearfulness, colloquialism, fear



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