"Bat" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... swift familiar of the sun Where aye before God's face his trumpets run? Or have we but the talons and the maw, And for the abject likeness of our heart Shall some less lordly bird be set apart?— Some gross-billed wader where the swamps are fat? Some gorger in the sun? Some prowler with the bat? ...
— Gloucester Moors and Other Poems • William Vaughn Moody
... position at the wicket. Little Mr. Bouncer, who was bowling, delivered the ball with a swiftness that seemed rather astonishing in such a small gentleman. The first ball was "wide;" nevertheless, Verdant (after it had passed) struck at it, raising his bat high in the air, and bringing it straight down to the ground as though it were an executioner's axe. The second ball was nearer to the mark; but it came in with such swiftness, that, as ...
— The Adventures of Mr. Verdant Green • Cuthbert Bede
... may take his paragraph on the wombat as an example. Bass was much interested in the wombats he saw, and with his surgeon's anatomical knowledge gave a description of it which the contemporary historian, Collins, quoted, enunciating the opinion that "Bass's womb-bat seemed to be very oeconomically made"—whatever that may mean. Flinders' description, which must be one of the earliest accounts of ...
— The Life of Captain Matthew Flinders • Ernest Scott
... there again, somewhere under the hedge, stealthily kindling a fire of sticks under a kettle. He had a small face, yellowish eyes, hair coming down to his eyebrows, a sharp nose, large transparent ears, like a bat's, and a beard that looked as if it were a fortnight's growth, and never grew more nor less. This, then, was Styopushka, whom I met on the bank of the Ista in ...
— A Sportsman's Sketches - Works of Ivan Turgenev, Vol. I • Ivan Turgenev
... being still extant; and the same writer reproduces as a frontispiece to his "opusculum" an old engraving bearing date 1743, in which the wicket appears as a skeleton hurdle about two feet wide by one foot high, while the bat is the Saxon crec or crooked stick, with which the game was originally played, and from which the name cricket was ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Volume 11, No. 26, May, 1873 • Various
... the first-class game—at least, I remember that a full toss on the leg side went to Mr. W. G. Grace when he had made ninety-six towards his hundredth hundred; and quite right too. When it comes, however, to throwing down one's bat and flinging the ball at a batsman (as George did), there is no excuse to be offered. I have omitted the end of the story, in which Mr. Danvers condescends to take a hand at the game, in a match against George ...
— Forgotten Tales of Long Ago • E. V. Lucas
... but it'll wash off," he replied. "Well, we're shy a good woodsman and a cook, and I'll miss 'em both. But it might be worse. Here's where you go to bat, Stella. Get on your apron and lend me a hand in the kitchen, like a good girl. We have to eat, ...
— Big Timber - A Story of the Northwest • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... over the telephone. And we have no nonsense about charity, we don't worry about the poor who fester in our city slums; because poverty is a product of Mortal Mind, and we offer to all men a way to get rich right off the bat. You may; come to our marble churches and hear people testify how through the power of Divine Mind they were enabled to anticipate a rise in the stock-market. If you don't avail yourself of the opportunity, the fault is yours, and yours also ...
— The Profits of Religion, Fifth Edition • Upton Sinclair
... weary: I will laugh, ho, ho, hoh! And make me merry. Make a ring on this grass With your quick measures: Tom shall play, I will sing For all your pleasures. The moon shines fair and bright, And the owl hollos, Mortals now take their rests Upon their pillows: The bat's abroad likewise, And the night-raven, Which doth use for to call Men to Death's haven. Now the mice peep abroad, And the cats take them, Now do young wenches sleep, Till their dreams wake them. Make a ring on the grass With your quick measures: ...
— The Sources and Analogues of 'A Midsummer-night's Dream' • Compiled by Frank Sidgwick
... of all dead animals, even such as have died of disease; and among such numbers of cattle and flocks, many animals must die almost continually. Bat in summer, when they have plenty of cosmos, or mares milk, they care little for any other food. When an ox or horse happens to die, they cut its flesh into thin slices, which they dry in the sun ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 1 • Robert Kerr
... came in the chapel the Leivers's pew was always empty. He was anxious for fear she would not come: it was so far, and there were so many rainy Sundays. Then, often very late indeed, she came in, with her long stride, her head bowed, her face hidden under her bat of dark green velvet. Her face, as she sat opposite, was always in shadow. But it gave him a very keen feeling, as if all his soul stirred within him, to see her there. It was not the same glow, happiness, and pride, that he felt in having his mother in ...
— Sons and Lovers • David Herbert Lawrence
... note, the only call he has besides a few squeaks, is far from a song; farther still is the empty-barrel-bung-hole sound made by the air in the rushing wings as the bird swoops in his fall. The night-hawk, alias "bull-bat," does not sing. What a name bull-bat would be for a singing bird! But a "voice" was never intended for the creature. Voice, beak, legs, head—everything but wings and maw was sacrificed for a mouth. What a mouth! The bird can almost swallow ...
— Roof and Meadow • Dallas Lore Sharp
... Prodigious Bat! Go start the walls Of Hell with horror ringing, Say "In the greenwood of his soul There was a goldfinch ...
— A Cluster of Grapes - A Book of Twentieth Century Poetry • Various
... new scholar had been thrust among us but did not belong to the like of us. Sister Margaret, though of a noble house herself, had forgot what was due to us and our families, and had taken in this grey bat out of pity. Her father was a simple clerk in the Chancery office and was accountant to the convent for some small wage. His name was Veit Spiesz, and she had heard her father say that the scribe was the son of a simple lute-player and could hardly earn ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... la mort! surtout si celle que l'on aime est la pour vous encourager, pour vous benir.... Ah! comtesse, quand je fais de tels reves, avec vous pour temoin, mon coeur bat, ma tete s'exalte.... ...
— Bataille De Dames • Eugene Scribe and Ernest Legouve
... sleeked flat and wet where Jane had licked it. His eyes were buttoned up tight. Then they opened. He crawled feebly on the floor after Jane, or hung on to her little breasts, pressing out the milk with his clever paws. Then Jerry got older. Sometimes he went mad and became a bat or a bird, and flew up the drawing-room curtains as ...
— The Tree of Heaven • May Sinclair
... his own chagrin? Die, O ye envious, that ye may get a deliverance; for this is such an evil that you can get rid of it only by death. Men soured by misfortune anxiously desire that the state and fortune of the prosperous may decline; if the eye of the bat is not suited for seeing by day, how can the fountain of the sun be to blame? Dost thou require the truth? It were better a thousand such eyes should suffer, rather than that the light ...
— Persian Literature, Volume 2, Comprising The Shah Nameh, The - Rubaiyat, The Divan, and The Gulistan • Anonymous
... invisible to any one standing upright. Snakes glide about there, lithe, quick, with narrow heads uplifted on swanlike necks. Great turtles crawl slowly forward, hares and water-rats flee before preying beasts, and a fox bounds after a bat, which is chasing mosquitos by the river. It seems as if every tuft has come to life. But through it all the little birds sleep on the waving rushes, secure from all harm in that resting-place which no enemy can approach, without the water splashing ...
— Invisible Links • Selma Lagerlof
... was drawn thro dark cadaverous with the sound of gabbling dead. Where we heard them hoot palaverous Drivel learned beneath unsavorous Moulds, and saw a glutton's head Grin to a hissing bat, That scraped ...
— Nirvana Days • Cale Young Rice
... a glance that this eccentricity is equal to unity, must be blind as a bat!" exclaimed Barbican, fast losing ...
— All Around the Moon • Jules Verne
... coming, and lamp in hand went round the house to secure hasps and catches; then stood at the window to watch the storm's approach. In one half of the sky the stars were still peacefully alight; the other was hidden by a dense cloud, which came racing along like a giant bat with outspread wings, devouring the stars in its flight. The storm broke; there was a sudden shrill screeching, a grinding, piping, whistling, and the wind hurled itself against the house as if to level it ...
— Australia Felix • Henry Handel Richardson
... out into space. We were wondering how to hide!" That is a quick-talking one, as small as a child. He looks as if he might have descended from a bat—gray silken fur on his pointed face, big night-seeing eyes, and big sensitive ears, with a humped shape on the back of his air suit which might be folded wings. "We were trying to conceal where we ...
— The Carnivore • G. A. Morris
... a flash, a sharp report, a piercing scream as the lithe Mexican girl sprang forth from behind the blanket and hurled herself on Blake, a panther-like leap of the accused man under cover of the flash and smoke, a thwack like the sound of the bat when it meets a new baseball full in the middle, and Loring's fist had landed full on Higgins' jowl and sent him like ...
— A Wounded Name • Charles King
... Joshua, that virtue was preferable to vice, considering this life only; and that a man would be virtuous were it only to preserve his character: and that he expressed much wonder at the curious formation of the bat, a mouse with wings; saying, that 'it was almost as strange a thing in physiology, as if the fabulous ...
— The Life Of Johnson, Volume 3 of 6 • Boswell
... man is on his feet, for he knows that Shock is about to lead the "screw" and before the scrimmage is well formed the McGill stone wall is broken, and Campbell is boring through it with the bat, gaining a good ten feet and by a ...
— The Prospector - A Tale of the Crow's Nest Pass • Ralph Connor
... face was one of complete comprehension. But before I could guess what he had comprehended, he had dropped the trap-door into place, closing the lazarette. Then I understood. He thought he had me inside. Also, he was blind, blind as a bat. I watched him, breathing carefully so that he should not hear me. He stepped quickly to his state-room. I saw his hand miss the door-knob by an inch, quickly fumble for it, and find it. This was my chance. I tiptoed across the cabin and to the top of the stairs. He came back, dragging a heavy ...
— The Sea-Wolf • Jack London
... rooster as woke me, an' by that time it was half past four, an' I could hear all the other chickens stirrin' so I got up an' began to stir again myself. I opened the front door an' looked out an' that did n't bring me no good luck either, for as I looked out a bat flew in an' just as the bat flew in he managed to hook himself right in my hair. Well, Mrs. Lathrop, I tell you I was mad then. I don't know as I ever was madder than I was then. I was so mad that I can't tell you how mad I was. The bat held ...
— Susan Clegg and a Man in the House • Anne Warner
... semaine La longue roideur de ma veine, Pour neant rouge et bien en point, Bat ma chemise et ...
— The Carmina of Caius Valerius Catullus • Caius Valerius Catullus
... in your bunch, doubtless when you got to knowing him every one of you would want him for a chum. He was the kind of fellow that real boys like: not a braggart and not a "sissy," but generally when it came to his turn to bat he smashed the ball for a clean hit. Or if he should happen to strike out, he didn't slam the stick to the ground, but with a smile stepped back and turned a handspring and lit on his feet rooting for the next man up. Of course, you know there ...
— "Say Fellows—" - Fifty Practical Talks with Boys on Life's Big Issues • Wade C. Smith
... autonomous republics (avtomnoy respubliki, singular - avtom respublika); Abkhazia (Sokhumi), Ajaria (Bat'umi) note: the administrative centers of the autonomous republics are included in parentheses; there are no oblasts - the rayons around T'bilisi ...
— The 1996 CIA Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... it to last. You wouldn't look for a girl like Vee, who'd never had any trainin' for that sort of thing, to start a new line and make a go of it right off the bat. But, so long as she wasn't investin' ...
— The House of Torchy • Sewell Ford
... the rush of the cavalcade, the scene would have been still and soothing. Overhead a cloud of rooks were winging their garrulous flight to the ancestral avenue of an ancient mansion to the right; the bat was on the wing; the distant lowing of a herd of kine saluted the ear at intervals; the blithe whistle of the rustic herdsman, and the merry chime of waggon bells, rang pleasantly from afar. But these cheerful sounds, which ...
— Rookwood • William Harrison Ainsworth
... The Bat is on the wing, And Gnats, what reels they run! In wide or narrow ring, An atmosphere of fun. Then let us to the dance, ...
— The Verner Raven; The Count of Vendel's Daughter - and other Ballads • Anonymous
... the chapel; he was a brave and generous enemy; and on an old head board, the following inscription is still to be seen: "JOHN MARJORIBANKS, Esqr. late major to the 19th regt. inf'y and commanding a flank bat'n. of his majesty's army. Obiit. ...
— A Sketch of the Life of Brig. Gen. Francis Marion • William Dobein James
... question, by saying, that they did so, because they did not understand the meaning of the books they quoted. But it has been answered by some learned Christians, that Jesus and the apostles did not quote in the manner they did through caprice or ignorance bat according to certain methods of interpretation, which were in their times of established ...
— The Grounds of Christianity Examined by Comparing The New Testament with the Old • George Bethune English
... heavy festoons of spiders' webs gray with dust covered the windows, which were destitute of glass or sash; they had been boarded up with rough planks which had themselves become rotten with age, and admitted through their holes and crevices pallid rays of light and chilly draughts of air. A bat, disturbed by these rays or by my own movement, detached himself from his hold on a remnant of moldy tapestry near me, and after circling dizzily around my head, wheeled the flickering noiselessness of his flight into a darker corner. As I arose unsteadily from the heap of miscellaneous ...
— David Poindexter's Disappearance and Other Tales • Julian Hawthorne
... one of his most favourite sports; and it was wonderful, considering his lameness, with what speed he could run. "Lord Byron (says Miss ——, in a letter, to her brother, from Southwell) is just gone past the window with his bat on his shoulder to cricket, which he is as fond of ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. I. (of VI.) - With his Letters and Journals. • Thomas Moore
... (words of three), O so dam-na-bly cle-ver (words of a devil of a number of syllables). I have written fifteen in a fortnight. I have also written some beautiful poetry. I would like a cake and a cricket-bat; and a pass-key to Heaven if you please, and as much money as my friend the Baron Rothschild can spare. I used to look across to Rothschild of a morning when we were brushing our hair, and say—(this is quite true, only we were on the ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 23 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... cricket bat and a tennis racket, not to mention cameras, butterfly nets, collecting-boxes, and botanical cases, they arrived at their respective hostels and unpacked their possessions. Marjorie was the last comer in No. 9, and found Chrissie with her cubicle already neatly ...
— A Patriotic Schoolgirl • Angela Brazil
... woolly head became as white as his face was black; and Jacko—poor little Jacko—lived so long, that he became big, but he did not become less amiable, or less addicted to thieving. He turned grey at last and became as blind as a bat, and finally crawled about the house, enfeebled by old age, and wrapped in ...
— The Red Eric • R.M. Ballantyne
... found, however, that I could not wield it long for lack of breath. The elevation was close to ten thousand feet and the air at that height was thin and rare. After each series of lusty strokes I had to rest. R.C., who could handle an axe as he used to swing a baseball bat, made fun of my efforts. Whereupon I relinquished the tool to him, and chuckled ...
— Tales of lonely trails • Zane Grey
... when we are asleep? Sometimes the stars, sometimes the moon, sometimes the clouds, sometimes the wind, sometimes the snow, sometimes the frost, sometimes all of them together, are busy. Sometimes the owl and the moth and the beetle, and the bat and the cat and the rat, are all at work. Sometimes there are flowers in bloom that love the night better than the day, and are busy all through the darkness pouring out on the still air the scent they withheld ...
— Gutta-Percha Willie • George MacDonald
... cat and the squeaking mouse, The howling dog by the door of the house, The bat that lies in bed at noon, All love to be out by the light of ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 14 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... was headed straight for the bars and a bran mash. Can't yuh realize the kind uh deal you're up against? Here's cattle that's got you skinned for looks, old girl, and they know it's coming blamed tough; and you just bat your eyes and peg along like yuh enjoyed it. Bawl, or something, can't yuh? Drop back a foot ...
— Rowdy of the Cross L • B.M. Sinclair, AKA B.M. Bower
... stream. But the most striking feature of these animals was the tail. This appendage was entirely without hair, of a dark colour, and looking as though it was covered with the well-known substance shagreen. It was about a foot in length, several inches broad and thick, and not at all unlike a cricket bat—except that it appeared heavier and more oval-shaped at the end. The animals were somewhat larger than otters, not so long, but much thicker and heavier ...
— The Desert Home - The Adventures of a Lost Family in the Wilderness • Mayne Reid
... no easy matter when one has torn oneself and one's past to shreds, as she had done. No doubt she was making quite a nice little income by teaching; and, in increasing admiration, he walked round the dusty inn and the triangular piece of grass in front of it. A game of bat-and-trap was in progress, and he conceived a love for that old English game, though till now he thought it stupid and vulgar. The horse-pond appealed to him as a picturesque piece of water, and, standing back from it, he admired the rows of trees on the further bank—pollards ...
— Sister Teresa • George Moore
... It has been defended by Alciat, and a name less advocate, (most probably James Capellus.) Their various treatises are collected by Duker, (Opuscula de Latinitate veterum Jurisconsultorum, Lugd. Bat. 1721, in 12mo.) Note: Gibbon is mistaken with regard to Valla, who, though he inveighs against the barbarous style of the civilians of his own day, lavishes the highest praise on the admirable purity of the language of the ancient writers on civil law. (M. Warnkonig quotes a long passage of Valla ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 4 • Edward Gibbon
... anything on the matter, it would be a prejudiced judgment. Even the ordinary civilised little boy, the nice little gentleman who is as much at home in the drawing-room as at his desk in the school-room or with a bat in the playing-field—even that harmless little person seems somehow unnatural, or denaturalised to my primitive taste. A result, I will have it, of improper treatment. He has been under the tap, too thoroughly ...
— A Traveller in Little Things • W. H. Hudson
... puts on a hundred hideous forms; twining as an adder about her bosom, dancing as a frog upon her stomach, anon like a bat, sharp-snouted, covering her scared mouth with dreadful kisses. What is it he wants? To drive her into a corner, so that conquered and crushed at last, she may yield and utter the word "Yes." Still she is resolute to say ...
— La Sorciere: The Witch of the Middle Ages • Jules Michelet
... boomed the Bee. "All must prepare to exhibit their best skill; the Toad, who can neither fly nor run, his brother the Bullfrog, with his band of musicians, and even the Flying-squirrel with the rest. Tanagela, the Humming-bird, will be the judge of beauty, and the Bat will judge your skilful performance in the air. That wise medicine-man, the Serpent, will also ...
— Wigwam Evenings - Sioux Folk Tales Retold • Charles Alexander Eastman and Elaine Goodale Eastman
... off de bat I wuz sorry I said dat. He look' at me kinder mad an' he said: 'Whut you talkin' 'bout, boy? You mus' be ...
— The Winning Clue • James Hay, Jr.
... an exultant mood. That morning his horse had stumbled and later, while dressing for the evening, a bat flitted in and out of his room through the open window. The fact that these two signs of ill omen did not affect a mind ordinarily subject to the influence of superstition, showed the state of his confidence. He drank freely of the wine and laughed and talked incessantly. ...
— When Dreams Come True • Ritter Brown
... hound; But horn that vo'k do buy to smell o' Is hart's-horn. J. Is it? What d'ye tell o' How proud we be, vor ben't we smart? Aye, horn is horn, an' hart is hart. Well here then, Anne, while we be at it, 'S a ball vor you if you can bat it. On dree-lags, two-lags, by the zide O' vower-lags, woonce did zit wi' pride, When vower-lags, that velt a prick, Vrom zix-lags, het two lags a kick. An' two an' dree-lags vell, all vive, Slap down, zome dead an' ...
— Poems of Rural Life in the Dorset Dialect • William Barnes
... back we should only have to bowl for old Eely. Everybody has to bowl for him, and he thinks he's such a dabster with the bat, but he's a regular muff. Never carried the bat out in ...
— Burr Junior • G. Manville Fenn
... had committed—or ought to have committed, to afford a just scapegoat for his senior's wrath. As Marryat said, it made little difference: if he did not think of something he had not been told, he was asked what his head was for; if he did something off his own bat, the question arose what business he had to think. In either case he went to the mast-head. Of course, at a certain age one "turns to mirth all things of earth, as only boyhood can;" and the contemporary records of the steerage brim over with ...
— From Sail to Steam, Recollections of Naval Life • Captain A. T. Mahan
... would not be the least objection to my availing myself of your assistance in getting up the river," he said, blinking behind his spectacles like an old bat who has unexpectedly emerged into the sunlight. "I have only two canoes and as I carry my own attendant I shall ...
— The Boy Aviators in Africa • Captain Wilbur Lawton
... gradual she was hauled: Then one the tiller took, And chewed, and spat upon his hand, and bawled; And one the canvas shook Forth like a mouldy bat; and one, with nods And smiles, lay on the bowsprit end, and called And cursed the ...
— Adventures in Criticism • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... trapping these wary creatures, had listened in the stillness of the solitudes to the battering of those wonderful tails upon the mud walls of their dams and forts, and had named the little river after its most marked characteristic, the constant "chug, chug" of those cricket-bat caudals. ...
— Starlight Ranch - and Other Stories of Army Life on the Frontier • Charles King
... the village during the holidays had plenty of sport, outdoor and indoor, which kept out the cold by wholesome exercise and recreative games. Many a hard battle was fought with snowballs, or with bat-and-ball on the ice; the barns were the scenes of many a wrestling match or exciting game at skittles; and in the evenings they played such romping games as blind-man's-buff, hunt the slipper, and others of a similar character. ...
— Old English Sports • Peter Hampson Ditchfield
... on for over a week at the Bat and Belfry Inn, as we all called it, and so, strange to say, did the duodenal couple, whom, indeed, we left there, special-dieting to their ...
— The Best British Short Stories of 1922 • Edward J. O'Brien and John Cournos, editors
... broken them in. Still, I admit, it was a job. Why, that same Seldom Helward I ironed and ran up on the fall of a main-buntline. We were rolling before a stiff breeze and sea, and he would swing six feet over each rail and bat against the mast in transit; but the dog stood it eight hours before he stopped cursing us. Then he was unconscious. When he came to in the forecastle, he was ready to begin again; but they stopped him. They're keeping a log, I learn, and are going to law. Every time a man gets ...
— "Where Angels Fear to Tread" and Other Stories of the Sea • Morgan Robertson
... a bat, which, applied to either side of the bung, causes it to start out. Also, a soubriquet for the captain of the hold. Also, a name given to the master's assistant serving his apprenticeship for ...
— The Sailor's Word-Book • William Henry Smyth
... of the Night Hawk, also known as "Bull-bat," "Mosquito Hawk," "Will o' the Wisp," "Pisk," "Piramidig," and sometimes erroneously as "Whip-poor-will," being frequently mistaken for that bird, is an extensive one. It is only a summer visitor throughout the United States and Canada, generally arriving from its winter haunts ...
— Birds Illustrated by Color Photography [May, 1897] - A Monthly Serial designed to Promote Knowledge of Bird-Life • Various
... the wrinkled little bat once went on a journey together. When it came toward night a storm arose, and the two companions sought everywhere for a shelter. But all the birds were sound asleep in their nests and the animals in their holes and dens. They could find ...
— Good Stories For Great Holidays - Arranged for Story-Telling and Reading Aloud and for the - Children's Own Reading • Frances Jenkins Olcott
... ting'd, and a deep radiance lay Full on the ancient ivy, which usurps Those fronting elms, and now, with blackest mass Makes their dark branches gleam a lighter hue 55 Through the late twilight: and though now the bat Wheels silent by, and not a swallow twitters, Yet still the solitary humble-bee Sings in the bean-flower! Henceforth I shall know That Nature ne'er deserts the wise and pure; 60 No plot so narrow, be but Nature there, No waste so vacant, but may well employ Each faculty ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Vol I and II • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... A bat flew in at the open window, and then quietly flew out again. It had stopped raining. You could still hear the water trickling and splashing down the leaders and in the pipes. There was something heavy, portentous, in the air ...
— The Goose Man • Jacob Wassermann
... became more marked, and he walked with a sliding gait. Seeing this, a woman who stood there halted and limped a few paces by his side, and pretending not to see him, shouted with a mocking laugh, "What is it—a man or a bat?" ...
— A Son of Hagar - A Romance of Our Time • Sir Hall Caine
... exclaimed, 'how rude he'll think me!' And he rubbed something out of his eyes. He gave one long, yearning glance at the spangled sky where an inquisitive bat darted zigzag several times between himself and the Pleiades, that bunch of star-babies as yet unborn, as the blue-eyed guard ...
— A Prisoner in Fairyland • Algernon Blackwood
... artist who is fastidious as to his tools; the bungling beginner can bungle with anything. The fiddle-bow, however, affords only one example of a rule which is equally well exemplified by many humbler tools. Quarryman's peck, coachman's whip, cricket-bat, fishing-rod, trowel, all have their intimate relation to the skill of those who use them; and like animals and plants, adapting themselves each to its own place in the universal order, they attain to beauty by force of being fit. That law of adaptation which ...
— Progress and History • Various
... rising to quit the room, and speaking hurriedly as if the words were forced from her, "you are as blind as a bat; Ruth would cut off her right hand for you ...
— The Gilded Age, Part 6. • Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens) and Charles Dudley Warner
... part of my knowledge that lads in a college, and made play one and all with a bat and a ball, Come often to harm with a knock on the arm, and their hands get as hard as the hands ...
— Three Wonder Plays • Lady I. A. Gregory
... quivered Coranna or Bechuan Hath rarely crossed with his roving clan: A region of emptiness, howling and drear, Which man hath abandoned from famine and fear; Which the snake and the lizard inhabit alone, With the twilight bat from the yawning stone; Where grass, nor herb, nor shrub takes root, Save poisonous thorns that pierce the foot; And the bitter melon, for food and drink, Is the pilgrim's fare by the salt-lake's brink; A region of drought, where no river glides, Nor rippling brook with osiered sides; ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 3 (of 4) • Various
... "Blind as a bat these twelve year'," replied Mrs. Chilton; "it fell on her as a judgment for rebelling when Evy, her onliest little gal, was took. She died of the breast-complaint; some calls it the ...
— Sight to the Blind • Lucy Furman
... them to the combats of Achilles and Hector. These are no mere trifles below the dignity of history; they help to explain the extraordinary hold Henry obtained over popular imagination. Suppose there ascended the throne to-day a young prince, the hero of the athletic world, the finest oar, the best bat, the crack marksman of his day, it is easy to imagine the enthusiastic support he would receive from thousands of his people who care much for sport, and nothing at all for politics. Suppose also that that prince were endowed with the iron will, the instinctive insight into the hearts ...
— Henry VIII. • A. F. Pollard
... of thunder-clap. As we-all is cirklin' the little herd, an' singin' to 'em to restore their reason with sounds they saveys, thar comes a most inord'nate flash of lightnin', an' a crash of thunder like a mountain fallin'; it sort o' stands us up on our hocks. It makes the pore cattle bat their eyes, an' almost ...
— Wolfville Days • Alfred Henry Lewis
... mole," said Hawker; "good night, old bat, old parchment skin, old sixty per cent. Ha, ha! If a wench brings a brat to thee, old lad, chuck it out o' window, and her after it. Thou can only get hung for it, man. They can only hang thee once, and that is better than to keep it and foster it, and have it turn ...
— The Recollections of Geoffrey Hamlyn • Henry Kingsley
... is not true that the air-population, as a whole, is "lower" or less "complex" than the land-population. On the contrary, every beginner in the study of animal morphology is aware that the organisation of a bat, of a bird, or of a pterodactyle presupposes that of a terrestrial quadruped; and that it is intelligible only as an extreme modification of the organisation of a terrestrial mammal or reptile. In the same way winged insects (if they are to be counted among ...
— The Interpreters of Genesis and the Interpreters of Nature - Essay #4 from "Science and Hebrew Tradition" • Thomas Henry Huxley
... asked the girl, "did you notice all morning how he didn't even bat an eye when you spoke to him, if the camera was still turning? Not like a beginner that'll nearly always look up and get ...
— Merton of the Movies • Harry Leon Wilson
... enemy was before him, Barney was, nevertheless, strongly imbued with superstitious feelings; and the conflict between his physical courage and his mental cowardice produced a species of wild exasperation, which, he often asserted, was very hard to bear. Scarcely had he resumed his work when a bat of enormous size brushed past his nose so noiselessly that it seemed more like a phantom than a reality. Barney had never seen anything of the sort before, and a cold perspiration broke out upon him, when ...
— Martin Rattler • R.M. Ballantyne
... more, but sat on in the warm twilight until at last they could scarcely distinguish each other's faces. They were not so much thinking as lost in a smooth, still quiet of the mind. A bat flitted by. ...
— The History of Mr. Polly • H. G. Wells
... And having bagged his bat, up he got, and on he went; while all the people ran, being in none the better humour for having their temple smashed for the sake of three obscure species of Podurella, and ...
— The Water-Babies - A Fairy Tale for a Land-Baby • Charles Kingsley
... said the old postman, "I do see that you have been in these parts before; had you not, you would not know of the Plant de Bat." ...
— Wild Wales - Its People, Language and Scenery • George Borrow
... blind as a bat!' commented Elizabeth. 'Can't you see she's doin' that to 'ide 'er feelings—so that you'll never guess 'ow 'er 'eart is ...
— Our Elizabeth - A Humour Novel • Florence A. Kilpatrick
... Airedale at her side protecting her from the terrors of a million years ago. I can visualize the entire scene—the apelike Grimaldi men huddled in their filthy caves; the huge pterodactyls soaring through the heavy air upon their bat-like wings; the mighty dinosaurs moving their clumsy hulks beneath the dark shadows of preglacial forests—the dragons which we considered myths until science taught us that they were the true recollections of the first man, handed down through countless ages by word of mouth from father ...
— The People that Time Forgot • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... wench!" exclaimed the King, with assumption of wounded dignity. "My heart a ball for women to bat about!" ...
— Mistress Nell - A Merry Tale of a Merry Time • George C. Hazelton, Jr.
... of the rapids. Neewa and Miki were too absorbed to hear him. Miki's four paws were paddling the air again, but this time his sharp teeth were firmly fixed in the loose hide under Neewa's neck, and with his paws he continued to kick and bat in a way that promised effectively to pummel the wind out of Neewa had not the thing happened which Challoner feared. Still in a clinch they rolled off the prow of the canoe into the swirling current of ...
— Nomads of the North - A Story of Romance and Adventure under the Open Stars • James Oliver Curwood
... are less conceited than I thought you were," he said, with a light laugh, "or else you are blind—blind as a bat, old man! Take my advice,—don't lose any more time about it. Make the 'king's daughter of Norroway' happy, . . ." and a brief sigh escaped him. "You are the man to do it. I am surprised at your density; Sigurd, the lunatic, has more perception. He sees which way the ...
— Thelma • Marie Corelli
... a BIRD or no, is not a question, Whether a bat be another thing than indeed it is, or have other qualities than indeed it has; for that would be extremely absurd to doubt of. But the question is, (i) Either between those that acknowledged themselves to have but imperfect ideas of one or ...
— An Essay Concerning Humane Understanding, Volume II. - MDCXC, Based on the 2nd Edition, Books III. and IV. (of 4) • John Locke
... little remark requires some explanation. Mr. Radley, the assistant house-master at Bramhall House, was a hard master, who would have been hated for his insufferable conceptions of discipline, had he not been the finest bat in the Middlesex team. Just about this time there was a libel current that he made a favourite of Edgar Doe because he was pretty. "Doe," I had once said, "Radley's rather keen on you, isn't he?" And Doe had turned red and scoffed: "How absolutely silly—but, I say, do you ...
— Tell England - A Study in a Generation • Ernest Raymond
... freedom of speech with one who he considered to be an enemy to his Lord. He calls Mr. Fowler 'a brutish, beastly man,' 'this thief,' 'a blasphemer,' 'horribly wicked,' 'a learned ignorant Nicodemus,' 'one that would fling heaven's gates off the hinges,' 'a bat,' 'an angel of darkness.' Such epithets sound strangely in our more refined age; but they were then considered essential to faithful dealing. The Bishop in his reply, called 'Dirt wiped off,' beat the tinker in abusive language; he calls Bunyan 'A wretched scribbler,' 'grossly ignorant,' 'most unchristian ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... Hence the chariot-drawing dolphins of Spenser, softly swimming along the shore lest they should hurt themselves against the stones and gravel. Hence Shakespeare's Ariel, living under blossoms, and riding at evening on the bat; and his domestic namesake in the Rape of the Lock (the imagination of the drawing-room) saving a lady's petticoat from the coffee with his plumes, and directing atoms of snuff into a coxcomb's nose. In the Orlando Furioso ...
— English Critical Essays - Nineteenth Century • Various
... cowpuncher lost a beat, but he did not bat an eye. "What journey? The same one that Holcomb took?" ...
— Steve Yeager • William MacLeod Raine
... it out quietly it 'ud be better," said George in a calm, as we climbed like a bat above them all. "But some skippers will navigate without enough lift. What does that Tad-boat ...
— With The Night Mail - A Story of 2000 A.D. (Together with extracts from the - comtemporary magazine in which it appeared) • Rudyard Kipling
... life since entering the cave," the officer reported. "Gnawed bones at the entrance and some bat droppings. It looks like ...
— Deathworld • Harry Harrison
... through walls? We eat and digest like coarse animals, we are slaves to our digestive tube: may there not be worlds in which a nutritive atmosphere enables its fortunate inhabitants to dispense with this absurd process? The least sparrow, even the dusky bat, has an advantage over us in that it can fly through the air. Think how inferior are our conditions, since the man of greatest genius, the most exquisite woman, are nailed to the soil like any vulgar caterpillar before its metamorphosis! Would it be a disadvantage ...
— Astronomy for Amateurs • Camille Flammarion
... where doors were left unlocked at night and the windows of the mind were always open,—men who were always kind to the weak and unprotected, even if they did have hoofs and horns, men like William B. (Bat) Masterson and Wyatt Earp. They and their kind made the frontier, that Great West which we can now look back upon as the most romantic ...
— Injun and Whitey to the Rescue • William S. Hart
... before; all that was new to him now was that they stood in the vivid light of a new interpretation. Ah! the father's cruelty, the irritable self-love, the incapacity to recognise any form of life but his own, it was of God,—not a high manifestation: the bat is lower than the bird, and yet it is of God. Bart saw now the one great opportunity of life! He saw that the whole of the universe goes to develop character, and the one chief heavenly food set within reach of the growing character for its nourishment is the opportunity to embrace ...
— The Zeit-Geist • Lily Dougall
... The boy at the bat had struck a ball to the extreme boundary of the field. The fielder at that point didn't go so fast as Jim, who was pitcher, thought satisfactory, and he called out in a ...
— Hector's Inheritance - or The Boys of Smith Institute • Horatio Alger
... I know I need more work at the bat. I've improved some, but I'm not satisfied with ...
— The Chums of Scranton High Out for the Pennant • Donald Ferguson
... with the stiff climb, I fell into a delicious slumber, notwithstanding the noise, about nine o'clock, to be awakened shortly after by a soft, cold substance falling heavily, with a splash, upon my face. Striking a match, I discovered a large bat which the smoke from our fire (there was no chimney) had evidently detached from ...
— A Ride to India across Persia and Baluchistan • Harry De Windt
... and glanced from the fluttering signal to his idle bat, that lay with slate and book and other boyish property upon a table in the room. And then he laid him softly down once more, and asked if the little girl were there, for he could ...
— The Old Curiosity Shop • Charles Dickens
... the way back and give her a whole dollar. He sat, chin in hand, gazing out on the field, quite satisfied with himself, and suddenly some one back by the plate struck a fine clean ball with a click and threw the bat with a resounding ring on the hard ground as he made for a home run. Billy started and looked keenly at the bat, for somehow the ring of it as it fell sounded curiously like the tinkle of silver. Who said thirty pieces of silver? Billy threw a ...
— The City of Fire • Grace Livingston Hill
... in Athen, Der minder, weil man ihn bezhalte, Als weil er Ehre suchte, malte, Liess einen Kenner einst den Mars im Bilde sehn, Und bat sich seine Meinung aus. Der Kenner sagt ihm fiei heraus, Dass ihm das Bild nicht ganz gefallen wollte, Und dass es, um recht schon zu sein, Weit minder Kunst verrathen sollte. Der Maler wandte vieles ein; Der Kenner stritt mit ihm aus Grunden, Und konnt ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XX. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... "it did not touch me; and now, if I chose, I could pin you to the wall like a bat; but that would be repugnant to me, though you did waylay me to take my life, and besides, you have really amused me with ...
— Captain Fracasse • Theophile Gautier
... showed above the window, shoved through and now rested on the ledge; and behind it arose an enormous log. From the loop-holes in the court-house the gun was raked with buck-shot, but all the work was done from below and no one stood exposed. Once a hand, like a black bat, was seen upon the gun, but instantly it flew away, leaving a blotch of blood. And now the old bell, so quiet all the morning, began to strike—one, two, ten, thirty—slowly, ...
— An Arkansas Planter • Opie Percival Read
... only. On the ground it was discovered that the players fell short of the required number, and facile Thomas was persuaded to assist in making up the complement. At a certain appointed time, he was roused from peaceful slumber in a dry ditch, and placed before three wickets with a bat in his hand. Opposite to him, behind three more wickets, stood one of his bosom friends, filling the situation (as he was informed) of bowler. No words can describe Mr. Idle's horror and amazement, when he saw this young man—on ...
— The Lazy Tour of Two Idle Apprentices • Charles Dickens
... said the owl. "If you stay here, you'll turn to an owl or a bat. Be quick. The Sleepy-heads are his cousins—he doesn't ...
— Queer Stories for Boys and Girls • Edward Eggleston
... in Germany of a bird which has been given the name of "Lizard-tailed," because it has a tail with vertebrae, from each joint of which feathers spring. Three claws are attached to the ends of the wing-bones, like the single claw of the bat. What is left of this specimen, which is thought to have been about the size of a rook, is to be seen in the Natural History branch of the South Kensington Museum. I mention this in case you should have a chance ...
— Twilight And Dawn • Caroline Pridham
... to deliver the last ball of the day the very trees round the ground seemed to stop whispering. It was a good length ball, very fast and pitched slightly to the off. The batsman raised his bat, expecting it to fly past the wicket. To his horror it nipped in. Down came the bat in frantic haste. Heaven be praised! Just in time! The bat just snicked the ball off. It missed the wicket by an eighth of an inch ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 146, June 24, 1914 • Various
... in first, and Charlie himself went to the bat. The pitcher was Godfrey. He was really a fair pitcher, and considered himself very superior. Charlie finally succeeded in hitting the ball, but rather feebly, and narrowly escaped losing his first base. ...
— Only An Irish Boy - Andy Burke's Fortunes • Horatio Alger, Jr.
... He road in, an' farder in, Till he came to the chine; An' he road in, an' farder in, Bat never mare ...
— Ballads of Scottish Tradition and Romance - Popular Ballads of the Olden Times - Third Series • Various
... rocks which have caused this part of the river to be called the Gorge of Hell. Here human beings in perpetual terror of their own kind cut themselves holes in the face of the precipice, and lived where now the jackdaw, the hawk, the owl, and the bat are the only inhabitants. In the Middle Ages the English companies turned the side of the rock into a stronghold which was the terror of the ...
— Two Summers in Guyenne • Edward Harrison Barker
... thinking beings, noise of every kind would not be so universally tolerated, as indeed the most horrible and aimless form of it is.[12] If Nature had intended man to think she would not have given him ears, or, at any rate, she would have furnished them with air-tight flaps like the bat, which for this reason is to be envied. But, in truth, man is like the rest, a poor animal, whose powers are calculated only to maintain him during his existence; therefore he requires to have his ...
— Essays of Schopenhauer • Arthur Schopenhauer
... mental expansion. Let their first desire be to show themselves good, useful, hardy, serviceable citizens or subjects, and they will do much to remove the stigma from their profession. Let them be acquainted with the feeling of a bat or racket in the hands, or a saddle between the knees; let them know the rough path over the mountains, or the diving-pool amongst the rocks, and their mentality will not be found to suffer. A winter's "roughing it" in the Theban necropolis or elsewhere would do much to banish the desire for perpetual ...
— The Treasury of Ancient Egypt - Miscellaneous Chapters on Ancient Egyptian History and Archaeology • Arthur E. P. B. Weigall
... his head and glanced from the fluttering signal to his idle bat, that lay, with slate, and book, and other boyish property, upon the table in the room. And then he laid him softly down once more, and again clasped his little arms around the old man's neck. The two old friends and companions—for such they were, though they were man and child—held ...
— McGuffey's Sixth Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey
... the ancestral fir, The cheering rustics and the sweet old Rector Welcoming back "our brave parishioner;" And since the lad was shy We made him get some simple phrases pat To thank them for the Presentation Bat, While Maud stood near (the Adjutant did that), So overcome that she could ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 153, Aug 8, 1917 • Various |
