"Bird" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... our joint debates. I have now encountered the 'Eagle Orator' upon every stump in the State, and come out of the contest with no flesh of mine in his claws—no blood of mine upon his beak." To which Henry instantly replied: "The eagle—the proud bird of ...
— Something of Men I Have Known - With Some Papers of a General Nature, Political, Historical, and Retrospective • Adlai E. Stevenson
... of an itinerant Methodist evangelist, who wound up a burst of rhapsodical patriotism with this, climax: 'If this glorious Union is dissolved, what will become of the American Eagle, that splendid bird with 'E Pluribus Unum' in his bill, the shafts of Peace in his talons, and 'Yankee Doodle' ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I, No. V, May, 1862 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... five this bright August day we are on the deck of the little steamer, to find a scene of indescribable liveliness and bustle. All kinds of merchandise were being stowed away—bedding, fruit, bicycles, bird-cages, passengers' luggage, cases, and packages ...
— The Roof of France • Matilda Betham-Edwards
... less, dependent on civil law. But it must be felt particularly in that connection, which of all others is the most forced and arbitrary—the connection between master and slave. Liberty is a natural instinct. The caged bird is not surer to fly through the parted wires than the slave, in his ordinary condition, from the broken chain—and the chain must be broken when the civil law, which alone gives it strength, passes away. There are men who ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol V. Issue III. March, 1864 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... a quick glance to his companion, who, however, had handed his gun to the keeper a short time before, and shook his head deprecatingly. Brian lifted his gun. It seemed to him that something was moving amongst the branches beyond the bird, and for a moment he hesitated—then pulled the trigger. And just as he touched it, Archie sprang forward with ...
— Under False Pretences - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant
... be exacting about words with me, never say that I said so and so, or so and so. Shall I tell you more about birds? There is a wicked bird that is called a rat-hawk: as you may know by its name, it lives on rats. But as it is an evil bird it has hard work to catch the rats. Because it can say only one single word, and that a noise such as a cat makes when it says "miau." Now when the rat-hawk says ...
— Plays: Comrades; Facing Death; Pariah; Easter • August Strindberg
... lilacs in the garden is wafted in with delicious, heavy, unwholesome sweetness. And she herself, caught by an eddy of her feigned passion, is swept into a wave of sensual recollection. She is in the Rothenwald again on a spring morning—overhead a bird sings a ...
— A German Pompadour - Being the Extraordinary History of Wilhelmine van Graevenitz, - Landhofmeisterin of Wirtemberg • Marie Hay
... He attends to all the necessities of these strange favourites himself, and he has taught the creatures to be surprisingly fond of him and familiar with him. The cockatoo, a most vicious and treacherous bird towards every one else, absolutely seems to love him. When he lets it out of its cage, it hops on to his knee, and claws its way up his great big body, and rubs its top-knot against his sallow double chin in the ...
— The Woman in White • Wilkie Collins
... jolly well please," said Bob wrathfully. "Who's she, I'd like to know, to tell us what to say? And she kept you there all the afternoon, when she knew you were due to meet me!—my hat, she is a venomous old bird! And now it's half-past four, and what time ...
— Back To Billabong • Mary Grant Bruce
... carry dry-goods, groceries, boots and shoes and drugs, paints and oils,—and certainly the ravens have been bringing those things to the Wards for eight years now, and they're all paid for,—the blessed bird can hump itself a little and bring some furniture, ...
— A Certain Rich Man • William Allen White
... 'carried off his poultry,' and Tom had already reaped a harvest of dimes from the whiskey drinking. 'Why, bless ye,' he said to me, 'I should be broke, clean done up, if it warn't fur the drinks; I haint got more'n a bit, or three fips, fur nary a fowl; the fust shot allers brings down the bird; they're all cocksure on the trigger—ary man on 'em kin hit a turkey's eye at a hundred paces.' This was true; and in such schools were trained the unerring marksmen who are now 'bringing down' the bravest youth of our country, like fowls at a ...
— The Continental Monthly , Vol. 2 No. 5, November 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... birds, however monstrous, will have profound relations with the true. He may be an ignorant man, and little acquainted with the laws of nature; he is certainly a busy man, and has not much time to watch nature; but he never saw a serpent cross his path, nor a bird flit across the sky, nor a lizard bask upon a stone, without learning so much of the sublimity and inner nature of each as will not suffer him thenceforth to conceive them coldly. He may not be able to carve plumes ...
— The Stones of Venice, Volume III (of 3) • John Ruskin
... some persuasion before she ventured in, the wheels crunching on the gravel, her fetlocks splashing the slow-moving, chocolate-coloured water. On the opposite bank we reached a sort of plateau, seen vaguely in the light. I "let a bawl out of me." It was like the cry of some lonely, lost bird on the wing. The Friar shook with laughter. I could feel the little rock of his body on the springs of the car. A figure came suddenly out of the darkness and silently took the mare by the head. The car moved on across the vague back meadow. Patch Keetly was piloting us to a light ...
— Waysiders • Seumas O'Kelly
... at home and in the field, men of natural taste and real cultivation, of broad and sane outlook, of warm heart and deep sympathies. There was Virgil, whom he calls the half of his own being. There was Plotius, and there was Varius, bird of Maeonian song, whom he ranks with the singer of the Aeneid himself as the most luminously pure of souls on earth. There was Quintilius, whose death was bewailed by many good men;—when would incorruptible Faith and Truth find his equal? There ...
— Horace and His Influence • Grant Showerman
... to say something very generous of Frederick Armstrong were wont to observe, that he was not such a fool as he looked. Nor, in the ordinary attributes of a country gentleman, was the master of Hale Castle behind his compeers. He rode like Assheton Smith, never missed his bird in the open, and had a manly scorn of battues; was great in agriculture, and as good a judge of a horse as any man in Yorkshire. His literary attainments were, perhaps, limited to a comprehensive knowledge of the science of farriery, ...
— The Lovels of Arden • M. E. Braddon
... continual motion. I bathed frequently in the R. du Rempart, walked out every fine day, and in a few weeks my former health was in a great measure recovered. Those who can receive gratification from opening the door to an imprisoned bird, and remarking the joy with which it hops from spray to spray, tastes of every seed and sips from every rill, will readily conceive the sensations of a man during the first days of ...
— A Voyage to Terra Australis Volume 2 • Matthew Flinders
... rewarded him, and their walk was so uneventful that they saw nothing more than another rattlesnake, the valley being so solitary and deserted that, with the exception of a large hawk, they did not even see a bird. ...
— The Silver Canyon - A Tale of the Western Plains • George Manville Fenn
... givin' us orders to that effect, we began to creep about an' whisper. Things got stiller and stiller, till they was as still as—mushrooms! Then the bugler let off the 'Dead March' from the upper bridge. He done it to cover the remarks of a cock-bird bein' killed forrard, but it came out paralysin' in its tout ensemble. You never heard the 'Dead March' on a bugle? Then the pipes went twitterin' for both watches to attend public execution, an' we came up like so many ghosts, the 'ole ship's company. Why, ...
— Traffics and Discoveries • Rudyard Kipling
... night. And in the morning he arose, and when he went forth, behold, a shower of snow had fallen the night before, and a hawk had killed a wild-fowl in front of the cell. And the noise of the horse scared the hawk away, and a raven alighted upon the bird. And Peredur stood and compared the blackness of the raven, and the whiteness of the snow, and the redness of the blood, to the hair of the lady whom best he loved, which was blacker than the raven, and to her skin, which was whiter than the snow, ...
— Selections from the Prose Works of Matthew Arnold • Matthew Arnold
... time together in the middle of the boat, getting out of snarls. And at last, drifting away down to the outlet, they seemed to have given up fishing for the more interesting occupation. The clouds drifted on; the fish leaped; the butcher-bird called from the shore; the sun was purpling Lafayette. There were kinks in the leader that would not come out, the lines were inextricably tangled. The cook made the signals for dinner, and sent his voice echoing over the lake time and again before these devoted anglers ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... home to Viterbo, ask the old Gentleman pardon, and be receiv'd to Grace again, you to the Embraces of the amiable Octavio, and I to St. Teresa's, to whistle through a Grate like a Bird in a Cage,—for I shall have little heart to sing.—But come, let's leave This sad talk, here's Men—let's walk and gain new Conquest, I love it dearly— [Walk ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn, Vol. II • Aphra Behn
... gasped Gerty, already moving in the direction of her bedroom, "I dine at Ninety-first Street, and I must get into a gown that laces in the back." She darted out with a bird-like flutter; and running quickly down the staircase, he hurried from the house and into a passing cab. During the short drive to his rooms his thoughts were exclusively engrossed with the necessity of making a rapid change and framing a suitable apology for his hostess. The annoyance ...
— The Wheel of Life • Ellen Anderson Gholson Glasgow
... a whole lot of birds that thinks they are wise and always trying to pull off something on somebody but once in a wile they pick out the wrong bird to pull it on and then the laugh is on the ...
— The Real Dope • Ring Lardner
... present state one of frequent red-faced forays down into a packing-case. But there was that in her eyes which witchingly bespoke the conquered, but not the conqueror. Hers was actually the titillating wonder of a bird which, captured, closes its wings, that surrender can ...
— Gaslight Sonatas • Fannie Hurst
... enjoyable time I have spent in the earth. For rousing, tingling, rapturous pleasure there is no holiday trip that approaches the bird-flight down the Himalayas in a handcar. It has no fault, no blemish, no lack, except that there are only thirty- five miles of ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... in the sun in the still morning hours. Willibald had chosen for himself a shady place upon the bank, and gave himself up, with as much perseverance as comfort, to the delights of angling, while the impatient Hartmut wandered here and there, now scaring a bird, now breaking off a branch for the blossoms, and at last, after a series of gymnastic performances, seating himself on the trunk of an old tree which lay half in the water. "Can you never be quiet in any place? You frighten the fish away every time," ...
— The Northern Light • E. Werner
... his wide realms the slow-subsiding flood Left the rich treasures of organic mud; While with quick growth young Vegetation yields Her blushing orchards, and her waving fields; Pomona's hand replenish'd Plenty's horn, And Ceres laugh'd amid her seas of corn.— Bird, beast, and reptile, spring from sudden birth, Raise their new forms, half-animal, half-earth; 410 The roaring lion shakes his tawny mane, His struggling limbs still rooted in the plain; With flapping wings assurgent eagles toil To rend their talons from the adhesive soil; The ...
— The Temple of Nature; or, the Origin of Society - A Poem, with Philosophical Notes • Erasmus Darwin
... "There is a bird that restores and reproduces itself; the Assyrians call it the Phoenix. It feeds on no common food, but on the choicest of gums and spices; and after a life of secular length (i.e., a hundred years) it builds in a high ...
— Our Catholic Heritage in English Literature of Pre-Conquest Days • Emily Hickey
... oval-shaped islands,—all slumbering in the evening calm. He was looking for the weak point in the ramparts, the place where he might make a breach and put up his scaling ladders. For his plan was to take Orleans by assault. William Glasdale said to him, "My Lord, look well at your city. You have a good bird's-eye ...
— The Life of Joan of Arc, Vol. 1 and 2 (of 2) • Anatole France
... minutes the scene struck Phoebe as pretty and amusing; but this impression was quickly followed by a sensation of sadness. A number of rational and immortal beings were gathered together, and all they could find to do was to look pretty and be amusing. Why, a bird, a dog, or a monkey, could have done ...
— The Maidens' Lodge - None of Self and All of Thee, (In the Reign of Queen Anne) • Emily Sarah Holt
... the kid, and he was on the same train. Mrs. Conyers had been living with her brother, and they'd watched the boy always, as her husband had tried to steal him before. I judge that man was worse than a street railway promoter. It seems he had spent her money and slugged her and killed her canary bird, and told it around that she ...
— Rolling Stones • O. Henry
... playmates, Waking them up from all corners before it is morning. We call them in bird songs, Beckon them in nodding branches. We spread our spell for them in the ...
— The Cycle of Spring • Rabindranath Tagore
... she drew her mantle closer, and, moving to the wayside, ascended the hill. The silver and green of the olives closed around her, and with them the branching dates. Above, a star left by the morning glimmered feebly. In a myrtle a bird began to sing, and a lizard that had come out to intercept the sun scurried as she passed. Upward and onward still she went, and, the summit reached, for a moment she ...
— Mary Magdalen • Edgar Saltus
... as she watched the flight of the bird. How free of the cares and responsibilities of the world the winged creatures seemed. She turned to the bench once more and was in the act of picking up her basket, when her attention was suddenly arrested by the sound of footsteps close at hand, and wheeling around, she came face ...
— When Dreams Come True • Ritter Brown
... with innumerable flowers, and the breeze which blew from it was laden with the most delightful perfume, Evidently it was all a howling wilderness, for we could not detect the slightest vestige of human dwellings or cultivation. We did not even observe any signs of bird or beast. A profound stillness brooded over the solitude, and was scarcely broken by the drowsy murmur of ...
— A Trip to Venus • John Munro
... south as the river Tungabhadra, "the vicinity of the fortress of Adoni." Ala-ud-din died at the age of sixty-seven on Sunday, February 2, A.D. 1358,[39] and was succeeded by Muhammad Shah. The Raya of Vijayanagar had presented Ala-ud-din with a ruby of inestimable price, and this, set in a bird of paradise composed of precious stones, the Sultan placed in the canopy over his throne; but some say that this was done by Muhammad, and that the ruby was placed above his umbrella ...
— A Forgotten Empire: Vijayanagar; A Contribution to the History of India • Robert Sewell
... use of Walrave's Plate; usually had Walrave, Nussler, and other principal figures to dinner. Walrave's Plate, every piece of it, was carefully marked with a RAVEN on the rim,—that being his crest ["Wall-raven" his name]: Old Dessauer, at sight of so many images of that bird, threw out the observation, loud enough, from the top of the table, 'Hah, Walrave, I see you are making yourself acquainted with the RAVENS in time, that they may not be strange to you at last,'"—when they come to eat you on the gibbet! (not a soft tongue, the ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XIII. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... in whenever we want, but it took time to get everything set up this way. Now we can follow the Nipe wherever he goes, so long as he stays in those tunnels. If he went out through the one open-air exit up in the northern part of the island, we could have him followed by bird-robots. But"—he shrugged wryly—"I'm afraid the underwater problem still has us stumped. We can't get the carrier wave for the remote-control impulses to go very ...
— Anything You Can Do ... • Gordon Randall Garrett
... winter wind, the North wind, My snow-bird, where art thou gone? O, O, the wailing wind the night wind, The cold nest; I am ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... the pair were driving along country lanes in the very midst of all the burgeoning beauty of the season, and Georgiana was like a captive bird let loose. Her companion as well responded to the call of Nature at her loveliest, and the tireless worker of the study seemed changed at a word to a bright-eyed idler of the most carefree sort. The two gave themselves ...
— Under the Country Sky • Grace S. Richmond
... but Poll was sent to a bird shop. Little Dot's mother stayed in the city with Dot's father and the cat family to keep them ...
— Five Little Friends • Sherred Willcox Adams
... days later he wrote to the Department, "I had presumed that the enemy would confide in the strength of his position and venture an action, by which an opportunity would be afforded to cut off his retreat."[52] This guileless expectation, that the net may be spread not in vain before the eyes of any bird, provoked beyond control such measure of equanimity as Armstrong possessed. Probably suspecting already that his correct design upon Kingston had been thwarted by false information, he retorted: "I cannot disguise from you the surprise ...
— Sea Power in its Relations to the War of 1812 - Volume 2 • Alfred Thayer Mahan
... on their devious ways through the hilly land of youth. There were bird-songs and flowers; there were bright paths, and dark ones; there were sunny by-paths, which ended in dreamy forests; there were pitfalls in unexpected places; there was often sorrow where they looked for joy, and failure where they expected success. And the one listened oft to the ...
— Almost A Man • Mary Wood-Allen
... selections for the present month include some of them. The most beautiful specimen of all, which is as rich in color and "sun-sparkle" as the most polished gem to which he owes his name, the Ruby-throated Humming Bird, cannot sing at all, uttering only a shrill mouse-like squeak. The humming sound made by his wings is far more agreeable than his voice, for "when the mild gold stars flower out" it ...
— Birds, Illustrated by Color Photography, Vol. II, No 3, September 1897 • Various
... the day before; in consequence of this irregular motion the brain is disturbed, it only represents to itself confused ideas that want connection. When in a dream, he believes he sees a Sphinx, a being supposed by the poets to have a head and face like a woman, a body like a dog, wings like a bird, and claws like a lion, who put forth riddles and killed those who could not expound them; either, he has seen the representation of one when he was awake, or else the disorderly motion of the brain is such that it causes it to ...
— The System of Nature, Vol. 1 • Baron D'Holbach
... and of a species Talbot had never before laid eyes on. The bird stood on the crumbling rim of the mining shaft and regarded him with golden eyes. Its body was as large as that of a buzzard, and its head had a flat, reptilian look, unpleasant to see. Nor was that the only odd thing. The feathers ...
— The Seed of the Toc-Toc Birds • Francis Flagg
... merry with the claim that the tariff had been reduced, by reading to his friend Mr. Hennessy the "necessities of life" which had been placed on the free-list and which included curling stones, teeth, sea-moss, newspapers, nuts, nux vomica, Pulu, canary bird seed, divy divy ...
— The United States Since The Civil War • Charles Ramsdell Lingley
... certainly has fire in his belly, yes and brains in his head, too! Think of it! He thought it all out up there in the raw all-day mists, thought it all out, and he works towards his purpose like a pattern diplomat, like a born general, like a Scipio, like a cat after a bird! Has himself sold as a slave, bides his time, puts himself in the pink of condition, ...
— The Unwilling Vestal • Edward Lucas White
... poultry, which may perhaps be considered to have formed the staple of the entertainment—for there was a turkey at the top, a pair of ducks at the bottom, and two fowls in the middle—disappeared as rapidly as if every bird had had the use of its wings, and had flown in desperation down a human throat. The oysters, stewed and pickled, leaped from their capacious reservoirs, and slid by scores into the mouths of the assembly. The sharpest pickles vanished, whole cucumbers at once, like sugar-plums, ...
— Life And Adventures Of Martin Chuzzlewit • Charles Dickens
... princess wept her woes, The bird of night complains; And sighing trees the tale disclose They ...
— Spare Hours • John Brown
... girls going on such excursions. I wish I might have gone to school to Agassiz just to get my eyes opened. If I had, I'd probably assign to my pupils such subjects as the evolution of a snowflake, the travels of a sunbeam, the mechanism of a bird's wing, the history of a dewdrop, the changes in a blade of grass, and the evolution of a grain of sand. If I could only take them away from books for a month or so, they'd probably be able to read the books to better advantage when they ...
— Reveries of a Schoolmaster • Francis B. Pearson
... his face aroused him with a start and a cry of agony. The great bird of carrion, startled in its inspection, flew clumsily off and settled fearlessly on ...
— Murder in Any Degree • Owen Johnson
... movements, as the cat watches the mouse. In the first place her reefs were shaken out, as the ship's bows fell off far enough to get the sea on the right side of them, and her top-sails appeared to me to be mast-headed by instinct, or as the bird extends its wings. The fore and main-top-gallant sails were fluttering in the breeze at this very moment,—it blew rather too fresh for the mizen,—and then their bosoms were distended, and their bow-lines hauled. How the ...
— Miles Wallingford - Sequel to "Afloat and Ashore" • James Fenimore Cooper
... stood, apparently listening with profound attention and sympathy, but the movement of her fan almost gave her away, for it grew rapid now and again, and when Lord Turfleigh came up beside her, his hawklike eyes glancing sharply, like those of a bird of prey, from their fat rims, she shot an angry and ...
— Nell, of Shorne Mills - or, One Heart's Burden • Charles Garvice
... although many are of much larger size. They are seldom found on the lower, or recent river terrace, but are common on the upper terrace, and are often built upon the high bluffs bordering the streams, where a wide stretch of country is exposed to view. Black-bird, an Omaha chief, who died about the year 1800, desired to be buried on a high bluff overlooking the Missouri, so that he might see the boats passing up and down the river. Perhaps from a similar superstitious wish the Mound Builders sometimes chose the ...
— The Prehistoric World - Vanished Races • E. A. Allen
... their cruel scars. And so with servants. "Who ate up the three pigeons which went down in the pigeon-pie at breakfast this morning?" "O dear me! sir, it was John, who went away last month!"—or, "I think it was Miss Mary's canary-bird, which got out of the cage, and is so fond of pigeons, it never can have enough of them." Yes, it WAS the canary-bird; and Eliza saw it; and Eliza is ready to vow she did. These statements are not true; but please don't call them lies. This is not lying; this is voting with your ...
— Roundabout Papers • William Makepeace Thackeray
... the two-horned rhinoceros, hitherto unknown, the gnu—an animal in form something between the horse and the ox—the gazelle, the baboon, and the hippopotamus, the habits of which were previously imperfectly known, Sparrman describes a curious bird, of great service to the natives, ...
— Celebrated Travels and Travellers - Part 2. The Great Navigators of the Eighteenth Century • Jules Verne
... Isabella, would rival in public acceptance her Juliet, Viola, or Rosalind, was not to be expected: it was too much a passive condition—delicate and elusive—and too little an active effort. She woke into life the sleeping spirit of a rather repellant drama, and was "alone the Arabian bird." ...
— Shadows of the Stage • William Winter
... liquid sky; A two-form'd bard, no more to bide Within the range of envy's eye 'Mid haunts of men. I, all ungraced By gentle blood, I, whom you call Your friend, Maecenas, shall not taste Of death, nor chafe in Lethe's thrall. E'en now a rougher skin expands Along my legs: above I change To a white bird; and o'er my hands And shoulders grows a plumage strange: Fleeter than Icarus, see me float O'er Bosporus, singing as I go, And o'er Gastulian sands remote, And Hyperborean fields of snow; By Dacian horde, that masks its fear Of Marsic steel, shall I be known, And furthest ...
— Odes and Carmen Saeculare of Horace • Horace
... one long sweeping ascent, passing through drifting clouds till the machine soared like a bird above the blue sea. ...
— The Clue of the Twisted Candle • Edgar Wallace
... This bird house was designed and built to make a home for the American martin. The house will accommodate 20 families. All the holes are arranged so they will not be open to the cold winds from the north which often kill the birds which come in the early spring. Around each opening is an extra ring of ...
— The Boy Mechanic: Volume 1 - 700 Things For Boys To Do • Popular Mechanics
... opposite a visitor, who was requested to carve the dainty. He did so, and sent a portion of it to his host. The reverend gentleman looked at the plateful sent him attentively, and then said with a sigh, "I will trouble you to exchange this for part of the other bird. This was a peculiar favorite, and I always fed it myself. I put a mark on the breast after it was picked, for I could not bear to eat the ...
— Our Farm of Four Acres and the Money we Made by it • Miss Coulton
... fierce passions, and uncontrollable daring, expend healthily that energy which threatened daily to plunge him into recklessness, if not into sin, upon hunting out and collecting, through rock and bog, snow and tempest, every bird and egg of the neighbouring forest. I have seen the cultivated man, craving for travel and for success in life, pent up in the drudgery of London work, and yet keeping his spirit calm, and perhaps his morals all the more righteous, ...
— Glaucus; or The Wonders of the Shore • Charles Kingsley
... around) Seems funny to think of a bird here. But she must have had one, or why would she have a cage? I ...
— Plays • Susan Glaspell
... plain education at a Quaker school at Ackworth, and grew up a genuine country lad, scouring the lanes on his famous grey pony, Peter Scroggins, the acknowledged leader of the village lads in bird-nesting and rat-hunting expeditions, and taking his full share of the work on his father's little farm. Long afterwards he used to say that every scene in and about Heanor was photographed with absolute distinctness on his brain, and he loved to recall the long days that he ...
— Little Memoirs of the Nineteenth Century • George Paston
... there can scarcely be a doubt that Sarracenia and Darlingtonia may be added to this class, though the fact can hardly be considered as yet fully proved. There is a third class of plants which feed, as is now generally admitted, on the products of the decay of vegetable matter, such as the bird's-nest orchis (Neottia), &c. Lastly, there is the well-known fourth class of parasites (such as the mistletoe), which are nourished by the juices of living plants. Most, however, of the plants belonging to these four classes obtain part of their ...
— Insectivorous Plants • Charles Darwin
... and her other guests were forced to do the talking, for Bertha had not only warned Mart against reminiscence, but had determined to keep a tight hold on her own tongue; and though she listened with the alertness of a bird, she answered only in curt phrase, making "yes" and "no" do their full duty. She perceived that the people round her were of intellectual companionship to the Crego and Congdon circles, and these young men, so easy and graceful of manner, reminded ...
— Money Magic - A Novel • Hamlin Garland
... blood in his body mounting to his face, manifestly to the great detriment of his legs, which, deprived of their usual portion, trembled beneath him. When they stopped to gather a hedge flower, or listen to a bird, Nathaniel Pipkin stopped too, and pretended to be absorbed in meditation, as indeed he really was; for he was thinking what on earth he should ever do, when they turned back, as they inevitably must in time, and meet him face to face. But though he was afraid to make up to them, ...
— The Pickwick Papers • Charles Dickens
... Greip and Gialp rushed out and kept hold of the falcon. As the Giant held him in his hands and looked him over he knew that this was no bird-creature. The eyes showed him to be of Alfheim or Asgard. The Giant took him and shut him in a ...
— The Children of Odin - The Book of Northern Myths • Padraic Colum
... speaking a bird flew on his right hand—an eagle with a great white goose in its talons which it had carried off from the farm yard—and all the men and women were running after it and shouting. It came quite close up to them and flew away on their right hands in front of the horses. When they saw it ...
— The Odyssey • Homer
... Dakin to back him up. Then the six would fight, hate with a fury of hatred, and flee home in terror. Paul never forgot, after one of these fierce internecine fights, seeing a big red moon lift itself up, slowly, between the waste road over the hilltop, steadily, like a great bird. And he thought of the Bible, that the moon should be turned to blood. And the next day he made haste to be friends with Billy Pillins. And then the wild, intense games went on again under the lamp-post, surrounded by so much darkness. Mrs. Morel, going into her parlour, ...
— Sons and Lovers • David Herbert Lawrence
... side view of herself which gave a sort of lawyer's comment to her words. The chevalier, who, you must know, was a sly old bird, lowered his right eye on the grisette, still holding the razor at his ...
— An Old Maid • Honore de Balzac
... both much too small for him; so that his large red hands and wrists swollen with chilblains hang listlessly far below the end of his sleeves; and his long, thin ankles, and large unshapely feet are so far below the end of his trowsers, as to give the appearance of the legs and feet of a bird. He is whistling a sort of jig tune, and beating time with one of his heels. Poor boy!—I dare say he would be very glad to work if he had an opportunity. A girl, of about twelve, stands on one side of him. She is so scantily clad as to be scarcely decent. Her shoulder-blades ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Vol. 3, July, 1851 • Various
... they both were his 'Twas my Son's Bird; and neat and trim He kept it: many voyages This Singing-bird hath gone with him; When last he sailed he left the Bird behind; As it might be, perhaps, ...
— Biographia Literaria • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... decision is but slow; and so numerous were the meetings, the canvassings, the debates, the discussions, the harangues, and the variety of objections raised by the grandees of the country, that at the age of eighteen the beauteous bird of paradise, still unmated, warbled her virgin strain in the loneliness ...
— The Pacha of Many Tales • Frederick Marryat
... disappeared. A little cloud of dust rose in the hollow toward Turkey Run. It was undoubtedly big Jack Whittlesey, the sheriff. The idea of one man hunting another was repugnant to Phil to-day, in this bright, wakened world of green fields, cheery bird song and laughing waters. She ran down the hill to escape from the very thought of sheriffs and prisons, and set off for the creek, following the Montgomery-Holton fence toward the Holton barn, whither the music had ...
— Otherwise Phyllis • Meredith Nicholson
... Fluttering bird! oh how sweet tastes the ripe fruit to thy bill! Noise there is none to disturb thee, still less ...
— The Poems of Goethe • Goethe
... eyes that indescribable expression seen in the eyes of a bird placed in a cobra's den—met the Chinaman's gaze. This gaze was no different from that which habitually he directed upon the people of the catacombs. His yellow face was set in the same mirthless smile, and his eyebrows were raised interrogatively. ...
— The Yellow Claw • Sax Rohmer
... like a startled deer. She dropped the pan of feed to the ground and fairly flew to meet them, and then before Kit could even detach herself from these clinging arms, the big front door swung open, and there in the lamplight was the Mother Bird and Helen. ...
— Kit of Greenacre Farm • Izola Forrester
... is to say that all witnesses would have seen them like any other event. A man rising into the air would be an objective miracle if it were admitted that this levitation was as real as the flight of a bird, and very strong evidence would be necessary to make us believe that such a movement had really been executed. But the case is different if we are dealing with the conviction of an enthusiast that he rose aloft or even with the conviction of his disciples, that they, being in an ecstasy, ...
— Hinduism and Buddhism, Vol I. (of 3) - An Historical Sketch • Charles Eliot
... was otherwise declared to have died of small-pox; of this disease there was not the least sign; but as some mineral poisons tend to render bodies adipocere, here was some evidence in support of the former allegation. I made particular inquiries at the time of Mr. Bird, churchwarden, a respectable and judicious man; and he gave me good assurance that this coffin had always been looked upon as the one containing the Cock Lane woman. Since that time the vault has been set in order, and the above-mentioned coffin, ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds • Charles Mackay
... loved a lady, and pursued her with a great deal of under-age protestation, whom some three or four gallants that have enjoyed would with all their hearts have been glad to have been rid of. 'Tis just like a summer bird-cage in a garden: the birds that are without despair to get in, and the birds that are within despair and are in a consumption for fear they shall never get out. Away, away, my lord. [Exit Brachiano as ...
— The White Devil • John Webster
... power. In dreams, through camp and court, he bore The trophies of a conqueror; In dreams his song of triumph heard; Then wore his monarch's signet-ring, Then pressed that monarch's throne—a king; As wild his thoughts, and gay of wing, As Eden's garden bird. ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 8 • Charles H. Sylvester
... great storm arose, and when the hermit saw that his hut was unsafe, his mute friend seemed to beckon him to come up among the branches. Gathering a few crusts, he went up into the tree where, with hundreds of bird companions, his life was saved, though his hut was destroyed. Just as he thought he should die of hunger, Mary, the vine-dresser's daughter, came to see her old friend and took him to her home. Then ...
— Great Artists, Vol 1. - Raphael, Rubens, Murillo, and Durer • Jennie Ellis Keysor
... meanwhile in the nursery at Atherstone. Vic, the much-beloved, the stoat pursuer, the would-be church-goer, Vic was dead, and Molly's soul refused comfort. In vain nurse conveyed a palpitating guinea-pig into the nursery in a bird-cage, on the narrow door of which remains of fur showed an unwilling entrance; Molly could ...
— The Danvers Jewels, and Sir Charles Danvers • Mary Cholmondeley
... that is something of an oversight. But you hardly thought that I was so simple as to catch a bird without having a ...
— Home Lights and Shadows • T. S. Arthur
... is admirable. However the men may long to return, they accept none the less heroically the vicissitudes of the situation. Their courage, infinitely less 'literary' than mine, is so much the more practical and adaptable; but each bird has its cry, and mine has never been a war-cry. I am happy to have felt myself responsive to all these blows, and my hope lies in the thought that they will have forged my soul. Also I place confidence in God and whatever He holds in ...
— Letters of a Soldier - 1914-1915 • Anonymous
... subject, madam," he said calmly; "I spoke too thoughtlessly. See that lovely humming-bird around the honeysuckle, ...
— The Youth of Jefferson - A Chronicle of College Scrapes at Williamsburg, in Virginia, A.D. 1764 • Anonymous
... trailing shrublet, sometimes seen on high mountains in New England, and known to botanists as Andromeda of the heathworts. It had pretty blue-purple flowers, and was growing quite plentifully in sheltered nooks. Not a bird nor an animal was to be seen. Half an hour's climbing took us to the brown, weather-beaten summit of the peak. From this point eleven small islands were in sight, none of them more than a few miles in extent; and, at a distance of seven or eight leagues, the high mountains of the ...
— Left on Labrador - or, The cruise of the Schooner-yacht 'Curlew.' as Recorded by 'Wash.' • Charles Asbury Stephens
... of John's slumbers being dreamless. A child can afford to sleep without dreaming, he has plenty of dreams without sleeping. No need to tell what days, weeks, months, of sunlit, forest-shaded, bird-serenaded, wide-awake dreaming passed over this one's wind-tossed locks between the ages of eight ...
— John March, Southerner • George W. Cable
... cliffs is washed by the frigid tide, but there is scarcely a sound, for the pebbles cannot be moved by the weightless waves, and an occasional murmur is all that is heard. Great rocks of ice reflect the light of the grey moons, and never a leaf falls or a bird sings. With the exception of the mournful ripples, the planet is silent as the grave. The animal and plant kingdoms do not exist; only the mineral and spiritual worlds. I say spiritual, because there are ...
— A Journey in Other Worlds • J. J. Astor
... day he brought his bride home to it the island became more than ever his sufficing world. He knew a thousand small things concerning it—secrets of the soil, of the tides, of the sand drift—voices of the wind, varying colours of the sea, and what weather they foretold—where this moss grew, that bird nested—in what week the wild duck arrived, on what wind the geese might be looked for, and what feeling in the spring air announced that the guillemots were due. He had learnt these things unconsciously, and was quite unaware of his knowledge, having never an occasion ...
— Major Vigoureux • A. T. Quiller-Couch
... a single room, with bare floor and mud wall; and little Geordie grew up in his own unkempt fashion without any schooling whatever, not even knowing A from B when he was a big lad of seventeen. At an age when he ought to have been learning his letters, he was bird's-nesting in the fields or running errands to the Wylam shops; and as soon as he was old enough to earn a few pence by light work, he was set to tend cows at the magnificent wages of twopence a day, in the village of Dewley Burn, close by, to which ...
— Biographies of Working Men • Grant Allen
... period of gestation.... and the Seceding States have now constituted themselves a nation[105] ..." At the other end of the scale in newspaper "tone," the London Press jeered at the Northern American eagle as having "had his tail pulled out and his wings clipped—yet the meek bird now holds out his claws to be pared, with a resignation that would be degrading in the most henpecked of domestic fowls[106]." Having now veered about to expressions of confidence in the permanency of the Southern Confederacy the ...
— Great Britain and the American Civil War • Ephraim Douglass Adams
... treasure of nuts and ripe blackberries—a wild dessert which it was her morning's pleasure to collect in a little basket, and cover with green leaves and fresh blossoms, and her afternoon's delight to administer to Moore, berry by berry, and nut by nut, like a bird feeding ...
— Shirley • Charlotte Bronte
... sounds of busy urgent life that were filling the warm sweet air, he heard the new and unaccustomed song of a bird. At least not new and not unaccustomed, but new and unaccustomed there, in this sylvan retreat. The notes poured out, now shrill, now mellow, now bubbling like musical water, but always rich with the joy of life, the fulness of happiness. Where had ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, July 1, 1914 • Various
... Lily, placing her hand on his arm, and drawing him towards what she thought the best light for the picture; "it is Blanche's first sight of a bird. Look well at her face; don't you see a sudden surprise,—half joy, half fear? She ceases to play with the reel. Her intellect—or, as Mr. Braefield would say, 'her instinct'—is for the first time aroused. From that moment Blanche ...
— Kenelm Chillingly, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... and the effect upon Helen was peculiar. From the pugnacious attitude of an outraged canary, ready to do battle, she was transformed into the sweetest, meekest love-bird imaginable. A veritable little preening, posing, oh-do-admire-me creature, and at Polly's last words she jumped from the box and clasping ...
— Peggy Stewart at School • Gabrielle E. Jackson
... in their assembly of three and a bird, whose leg Dawtie had put in splints, what became of the creatures when they died. They concluded that the sparrow that God cared for must be worth caring for; and they could not believe He had made it to last only such a little while ...
— The Elect Lady • George MacDonald
... proclaim the duty, and the motives, of the perilous enterprise. Fear is the first principle of a despotic government; and his menaces were expressed in the Oriental style, that the fugitives and deserters, had they the wings of a bird, [53] should not escape from his inexorable justice. The greatest part of his bashaws and Janizaries were the offspring of Christian parents: but the glories of the Turkish name were perpetuated by successive adoption; and in the ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 6 • Edward Gibbon
... did not want to hurt the bird, she was really speaking in fun. But all the same she aimed at it, and—oh, sad and strange to say—she hit it! a quiver of the little wings, and the tiny head dropped, and then—in a moment it had fallen to the foot of the high wall on which it had perched so happily ...
— The Thirteen Little Black Pigs - and Other Stories • Mrs. (Mary Louisa) Molesworth
... and he was shut in by the gray concrete walls where the guards looked down from the towers. He could not trust himself now outside of the yard, his nerve was gone and he would head for Pinal like a homing bird to its mate. And then it came, quicker than he had ever thought or hoped for, though he had offered the Silver Treasure in return for it—a full pardon from the Governor, with his citizenship restored and a letter expressing confidence in his innocence. ...
— Silver and Gold - A Story of Luck and Love in a Western Mining Camp • Dane Coolidge
... we'll come up and take a look-see [stick up the periscope], and if we see the bird, and we're in a good position to send him a fish [torpedo], we'll let him have one. If there is something there, and we're not in a good position, we'll manoeuvre till we get into one, and then let him have it. If there isn't anything to be seen, we'll ...
— World's War Events, Volume III • Various
... leave one to feel a strange sense both of deprivation and loneliness. But he who will fly as an eagle does into the higher levels where cloudless day abides, and live in the sunshine of God, must consent to live a comparatively lonely life. No bird is so solitary as the eagle. Eagles never fly in flocks: one, or at most two, and the two, mates, being ever seen at once. But the life that is lived unto God, however it forfeits human companionship, knows divine fellowship, and the child ...
— George Muller of Bristol - His Witness to a Prayer-Hearing God • Arthur T. Pierson
... Thus the song's returned again— Coo! Coo! Coo! Through the shady glen; But there I wandered lone and sad, While every bird around was glad. Coo! Coo! Coo! Thus so fondly murmured they, Coo! Coo! Coo! While my love was away. And yet the song to lovers, Though sad, is sweet to hear, From birds within the covers, In the spring-time ...
— Handy Andy, Vol. 2 - A Tale of Irish Life • Samuel Lover
... with delight; she, who is always so melancholy, was singing like a bird. Besides, your highness knows how much she detests going out, and also that her character has a spice of wildness ...
— The Vicomte de Bragelonne - Or Ten Years Later being the completion of "The Three - Musketeers" And "Twenty Years After" • Alexandre Dumas
... was once a man, can imagine himself a bird, or a fish, or an animal—or even an insensate graven stone—at their command. When he is no more fit to be studied he will imagine himself to be a mugger, and will hurry into the tank with the other reptiles, and that will be the end of ...
— Caves of Terror • Talbot Mundy
... nations of seafaring men. The whole day long the tumult followed us, and seemed to culminate at last in the screams of a parrot, who thought it fine to cry, "Piove! piove! piove!"—"It rains! it rains! it rains!"—and had, no doubt, a secret interest in some umbrella-shop. This unprincipled bird dwelt somewhere in the neighborhood of the street where you see the awful tablet in the wall devoting to infamy the citizens of the old republic that were false to their country. The sight of that pitiless stone recalls with a thrill the picturesque, unhappy past, with all the wandering, half-benighted ...
— Italian Journeys • William Dean Howells
... over to the far bank, and sat on the stern seat, side by side under the trees where the water was stained deep green by the high woods. If they talked, it was but a word of love now and then, or to draw each other's attention to a fish, a bird, a dragon-fly. What use making plans—for lovers the chief theme? Longing paralysed their brains. They could do nothing but press close to each other, their hands enlaced, their lips meeting now and then. On Noel's face was a strange fixed stillness, ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... everything was still—the very air was motionless, not a leaf stirred. The silence was weird, oppressive, and awe-inspiring; and when, at more or less lengthened intervals, a dry twig snapped, a withered leaf crackled, when the soft wafting of the wings of some nocturnal bird was heard among the branches overhead, or the sudden, brief rustling which betrayed the presence of some wild creature smote upon the ear, the effect upon the nerves was startling in the extreme. Through these alternate stretches of gloom and brief illuminated spaces the ...
— The Missing Merchantman • Harry Collingwood
... fervent prayer that God would crown it with honor, protect it from treason, and send it down to our children, with all the blessings of civilization, liberty and religion. Terrible in battle, may it be beneficent in peace. Happily, no bird or beast of prey has been inscribed upon it. The stars that redeem the night from darkness, and the beams of red light that beautify the morning, have been united upon its folds. As long as the sun endures, or the stars, ...
— The Flag Replaced on Sumter - A Personal Narrative • William A. Spicer
... canto of "Gierusalemme Liberata." In the "Shah-Nameh," also, Zal, the father of the Persian hero Rustan, being born with white hair, is exposed by his father Sam on the mountain of Elborz, where he is preserved and brought up by the giant-bird Simorgh.] ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine—Vol. 54, No. 333, July 1843 • Various
... them books done it," Aunt Haicey said. "Thick books, and no pictures in them. I knew it'd make trouble." She plucked at the faded hand-embroidered shawl over her thin shoulders, a tiny bird-like woman with bright ...
— It Could Be Anything • John Keith Laumer |
