"Chameleon" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... society,—he went a willing victim, with no affectation of martyrdom. The few who met him in Edinburgh drawing-rooms found him prodigal of tongue, somewhat puzzling with his wholesale enthusiasms, absurd flights of fancy, theories he had to propound, and ever ready to change like a chameleon to tone with his surroundings. The spritish, fantastic youth impressed those he encountered, even when he was one of the unfledged eaglets hatched in the ancient eyrie of his precipitous city, whom Browning tells us are not counted "till there is a rush of wings, and lo! they are flown," "What ...
— Robert Louis Stevenson • E. Blantyre Simpson
... Harlequin performs his Lazzi—imagining he holds a hatful of cherries, he seems eating them, and gaily flinging the stones at Scapin; or with a rueful countenance he is trying to catch a fly, and with his hand, in comical despair, would chop off the wings before he swallows the chameleon game. These, with similar Lazzi, harmonise with the remonstrance of Scapin, and re-animate it; and thus these "Lazzi, although they seem to interrupt the progress of the action, yet in cutting it they slide back into it, and connect or tie the whole." These Lazzi are in ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. II (of 3) - Edited, With Memoir And Notes, By His Son, The Earl Of Beaconsfield • Isaac D'Israeli
... the only physician now," said the padre, "and must have my medicines nearer home." In walking over the rocks the visitors noticed, to their surprise, that, instead of being barren, they were covered with the thick growth of a short plant, which, like the chameleon, had made itself invisible by turning gray like the rock. In answer to their inquiries they learned that it was the absinthe plant, belonging to the same family as the Swiss plant from which the liquor is made that is eating up the brains ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, December, 1885 • Various
... you don't suppose that every one can live, chameleon-like, on air, or worse still, on false quantities. Ha, ha, ha! And those pictures too. That snow is more violet ...
— A Mere Accident • George Moore
... strangest thing," she mused. "I must be a sort of chameleon, the way I change with my surroundings. It doesn't seem possible that only last week I was scrambling around with my head tied up in a towel, scrubbing and cleaning and dragging furniture around at a break-neck speed. I could ...
— The Little Colonel's Chum: Mary Ware • Annie Fellows Johnston
... familiar enough to the company, and known in Simpson's Bar as "The Old Man." A man of perhaps fifty years; grizzled and scant of hair, but still fresh and youthful of complexion. A face full of ready, but not very powerful sympathy, with a chameleon-like aptitude for taking on the shade and color of contiguous moods and feelings. He had evidently just left some hilarious companions, and did not at first notice the gravity of the group, but clapped the shoulder of the nearest man jocularly, and ...
— Mrs. Skaggs's Husbands and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... buck from gazing at red cloth, so there was no object that could so much allure the wavering eyes of this Thracian called Acestes, as the surpassing beauty of the Princess Lydia, yea, so deeply he doted, that as the Chameleon gorgeth herself with gazing into the air, so he fed his fancy with staring on the heavenly face of his Goddess, so long dallying in the flame, that he scorched his wings and in time consumed his whole body. Being thus passionate, having none so familiar as he durst make his confidant he fell ...
— A History of English Literature - Elizabethan Literature • George Saintsbury
... to hide itself among the numerous corners and crevices which are found among the timbers of a vessel's hold? It might procure sustenance in the bilge-water, or in the ballast rubbish, or perhaps, like the chameleon, crabs could exist ...
— The Boy Tar • Mayne Reid
... age of the soul of man? As she hath the virtue of the chameleon to change her hue at every new approach, to be gay with the merry and mournful with the downcast, so too is her age changeable as her mood. No longer is Leopold, as he sits there, ruminating, chewing the cud of reminiscence, that staid agent ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce
... all sides. Her head, which bore itself as if quite unaware that a suit for three hundred and fifty thousand francs damages was suspended over it like the sword of Damocles, was covered with a mass of rich auburn-colored hair. She is as changeable as a chameleon in the matter of her hair: I never see her twice with the ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 26, September 1880 • Various
... the most shy and withdrawn of all our frogs and toads is the tree-toad,—the creature that, from the old apple or cherry tree, or red cedar, announces the approach of rain, and baffles your every effort to see or discover it. It has not (as some people imagine) exactly the power of the chameleon to render itself invisible by assuming the color of the object it perches upon, but it sits very close and still, and its mottled back, of different shades of ashen gray, blends it perfectly with the ...
— The Writings of John Burroughs • John Burroughs
... laughed and waved his hand. "Oh, ma'am, you are a chameleon. The other day you desired nothing better than monsieur's demise. Now at the news of it you grow venomous. I vow I cannot keep pace with your changes. I must withdraw from your intimacy. 'Tis too exacting for my poor vigour. Madame, your ...
— The Highwayman • H.C. Bailey
... mobility; instability, unstable equilibrium; vacillation &c. (irresolution) 605; fluctuation, vicissitude; alternation &c. (oscillation) 314. restlessness &x. adj. fidgets, disquiet; disquietude, inquietude; unrest; agitation &c. 315. moon, Proteus, chameleon, quicksilver, shifting sands, weathercock, harlequin, Cynthia of the minute, April showers[obs3]; wheel of Fortune; transientness &c. 111[obs3]. V. fluctuate, vary, waver, flounder, flicker, flitter, flit, flutter, shift, shuffle, shake, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... inward Life and Power which are always the mark of true religion. These "mimical Christians" reform their looks, instruct their tongues, take up the fitting set of duties and system of opinions, underprop their religion with sacred performances; "chameleon-like, they even turn their insides to whatever hue and colour" is demanded of religion; they "furnish this domestick Scene of theirs with any kind of matter which the history of religion affords ...
— Spiritual Reformers in the 16th & 17th Centuries • Rufus M. Jones
... "our house" undergone since first dear Alice pictured it as a possibility to me! It has passed through every character, form, and style of architecture conceivable. From five rooms it has grown to fourteen. The reception parlor, chameleon-like, has changed color eight times. There have duly loomed up bewildering visions of a library, a drawing-room, a butler's pantry, a nursery, a laundry—oh, it quite takes my breath away to recall and recount the possibilities which ...
— The House - An Episode in the Lives of Reuben Baker, Astronomer, and of His Wife, Alice • Eugene Field
... understanding as you do a certain quality of the chameleon in Mr. Brumley's moral nature, you will understand that he worked through a considerable variety of moods. Sometimes he worked with disinterested passion and sometimes he was greatly sustained by this thought that here was something that ...
— The Wife of Sir Isaac Harman • H. G. (Herbert George) Wells
... lizards are found, but the most remarkable is the chameleon, which is often seen on the branches of trees. This animal can change its colour. When in the sun, it is generally a bright green, in the shade, it is brown in colour, and when dead, its body becomes ...
— Children of Borneo • Edwin Herbert Gomes
... Almost everybody in French history began with an "M," like the things that were drawn by the three little girls in the well), and even with the younger PITT. I have heard him spoken of as a charlatan, as a chameleon, as a chatterbox, and, by a man who had hoped that the KAISER would be hanged in Piccadilly Circus, as a chouser. Almost all of these estimates are thoroughly fallacious. Let us take, for instance, MACCHIAVELLI. ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 159, November 10, 1920 • Various
... Sons of Belial,—which latter indeed are second-oldest, but yet a very unvenerable order. This, truly, seems the likeliest hypothesis of all. Names and appearances alter so strangely, in some half-score centuries; and all fluctuates chameleon-like, taking now this hue, now that. Thus much is very plain, and does not change hue: Landlord Edmund was seen and felt by all men to have done verily a man's part in this life-pilgrimage of his; and benedictions, ...
— Past and Present - Thomas Carlyle's Collected Works, Vol. XIII. • Thomas Carlyle
... I said, and was sorry to see her looking purposely puzzled at that, but thankful when the reckless light outshone all the rest in those chameleon ...
— Mr. Justice Raffles • E. W. Hornung
... beautiful daughter of Rappaccini plucked one of the richest blossoms of the shrub, and was about to fasten it in her bosom. But now, unless Giovanni's draughts of wine had bewildered his senses, a singular incident occurred. A small orange-colored reptile, of the lizard or chameleon species, chanced to be creeping along the path, just at the feet of Beatrice. It appeared to Giovanni,—but, at the distance from which he gazed, he could scarcely have seen anything so minute,—it appeared to him, however, that a drop or two of moisture from the broken ...
— Mosses from an Old Manse and Other Stories • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... But nothing of this kind in him appears; He, like a thorough true-bred spaniel, licks The hand which cuffs him, and the foot which kicks; He fetches and he carries, blacks my shoes, Nor thinks it a discredit to his Muse; 330 A creature of the right chameleon hue, He wears my colours, yellow or true blue, Just as I wear them: 'tis all one to him Whether I change through conscience, or through whim. Now this is something like; on such a plan A bard may find a friend in a great man; But this proud coxcomb—zounds, ...
— Poetical Works • Charles Churchill
... your conversation to the people you are conversing with: for I suppose you would not, without this caution, have talked upon the same subject, and in the same manner, to a minister of state, a bishop, a philosopher, a captain, and a woman. A man of the world must, like the chameleon, be able to take every different hue; which is by no means a criminal or abject, but a necessary complaisance; for it relates only to manners ...
— The PG Edition of Chesterfield's Letters to His Son • The Earl of Chesterfield
... show to the landlady of the Inn, a Mrs. Nature, if I understood him aright. This person was still comely, though of uncertain age, wore cherry ribbons, smiled rather vacantly from vague, wonderful, indescribable eyes that seemed to change colour, like the chameleon, according to that they ...
— Henry Brocken - His Travels and Adventures in the Rich, Strange, Scarce-Imaginable Regions of Romance • Walter J. de la Mare
... resembles Ocypoda in having these brushes composed of non-setiform, delicate hairs, indeed even more delicate and more regularly constructed than in Ocypoda.* (* This smaller Gelasimus is also remarkable because the chameleon-like change of colour exhibited by many Crabs occurs very strikingly in it. The carapace of a male which I have now before me shone with a dazzling white in its hinder parts five minutes since when I captured it, at present it shows a dull ...
— Facts and Arguments for Darwin • Fritz Muller
... Territories wherever it is needful to assert the right of citizens.... I have heard many a siren's song on this doctrine of non-intervention; a thing shadowy and fleeting, changing its color as often as the chameleon."[785] ...
— Stephen A. Douglas - A Study in American Politics • Allen Johnson
... other explanations have, however, been suggested: first, that the prevalent white of the arctic regions directly colours the animals, either by some photographic or chemical action on the skin, or by a reflex action through vision (as in the chameleon); secondly, that a white skin checks radiation and keeps the animals warm. But there are some exceptions to the rule of white colouring in arctic animals which refute these hypotheses, and confirm the author's. The sable remains brown throughout the winter; ...
— Logic - Deductive and Inductive • Carveth Read
... with a precise detail. Everything about him was conspicuously correct in the English fashion. But the man was not English. One could not say from what race he came. Among the races of Southern Europe he could hardly have been distinguished. There was a chameleon quality strongly dominant ...
— The Sleuth of St. James's Square • Melville Davisson Post
... of chameleon-like girl whose vagaries and "sweet uncertainties" form the theme of many short stories, in most of which she is pictured as ...
— How to Analyze People on Sight - Through the Science of Human Analysis: The Five Human Types • Elsie Lincoln Benedict and Ralph Paine Benedict
... impatient imagination a building, a dome of crystal, across the translucent surface of which flushes of the most glorious and pure prismatic colours pass and fade and change. In the centre of this transparent chameleon-tinted dome is a circular white marble basin filled with some clear, mobile, amber liquid, and in this plunge and float strange ...
— Certain Personal Matters • H. G. Wells
... me criminal—a robber, perhaps-a murderer it may be! I will tell you what I am: I am a son of Fortune, an adventurer; I live by my wits—so do poets and lawyers, and all the charlatans of the world; I am a charlatan—a chameleon. 'Each man in his time plays many parts:' I play any part in which Money, the Arch-Manager, promises me a livelihood. ...
— Night and Morning, Volume 2 • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... brown and copper colour, from two inches to two feet and a half long, are ever and anon rustling among the fallen leaves and crossing the path before you, whilst the chameleon is busily employed in chasing insects round the trunks of the ...
— Wanderings In South America • Charles Waterton
... obeying. He possessed exquisite tact in appreciating the characters of those far above him in rank and beneath him in intellect. He could accommodate himself with great readiness to the idiosyncrasies of sovereigns. He was a chameleon to the hand which fed him. In his intercourse with the King, he colored himself, as it were, with the King's character. He was not himself, but Philip; not the sullen, hesitating, confused Philip, however, but Philip endowed with eloquence, ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... Sprudell closed his office door, he locked this adamantine, quibbling, frankly penurious, tyrannical man of business inside, and the chameleon does not change its color with greater ease than Sprudell took on another and distinct personality. On the instant he became the "good fellow," his pink face and beaming eyes radiating affability, conviviality, an all-embracing fondness for mankind, also a susceptible ...
— The Man from the Bitter Roots • Caroline Lockhart
... lodgings at the beginning of each quarter of the year, so traversing till doomsday, being impotent of staying in one place, and finding some ease by so purning [journeying] and changing habitations. Their chameleon-like bodies swim in the air near the earth with bag and baggage; and at such revolution of time, seers, or men of the second sight (females being seldom so qualified) have very terrifying encounters with them, ...
— Folk-Lore and Legends - Scotland • Anonymous
... in his "Symbolical Painting of the Four Elements," represents the sea by fishes, the earth by moles, fire by a salamander, and air by a camel! Evidently he mistook the chameleon (which traditionally lives on ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama, Vol 1 - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook • The Rev. E. Cobham Brewer, LL.D.
... and crests of the coast-hills in Southern California heighten these chameleon effects of the spring verdure; they are like nothing in nature except the glitter of a brilliant lizard in the sun or the iridescent sheen of ...
— Ramona • Helen Hunt Jackson
... now, evidently; he relinquished my unwilling hand coldly—on which he had, doubtless, missed the conspicuous ring, significant of my engagement. His chameleon eyes seemed to emit sparks of phosphorescent fire, as if every one of the dull-yellow sparks therein had become suddenly ignited. I saw then, for the first time, what his ire could be, and what reason I ...
— Miriam Monfort - A Novel • Catherine A. Warfield
... has grown the self-consciousness, the uneasy vanity, the "touchiness" which has made Germany of late years the despair of the diplomats all over the world. She has become a chameleon-like menace to peace everywhere in the world. What she wants, what will offend her dignity, when she will feel hurt, what amount of consideration will suffice, when she will change color to match ...
— Germany and the Germans - From an American Point of View (1913) • Price Collier
... you," he said. "On the Pennsylvania line we cornered you; but you changed garb and shape and speech, almost under our eyes—as a chameleon changes color, matching the leaf it hides on.... I halted at that squatter's house—sure of you at last—and the pretty squatter's daughter cooked for us while we hunted you in the hills—and when I returned she gave me her bed to ...
— Special Messenger • Robert W. Chambers
... a guessing contest—impulsive today, he has to be repressed; phlegmatic tomorrow, he has to be stimulated; and he may be sanguine the next day. There never was a pleasanter boy to work with, but like the chameleon you are ...
— The Boy and the Sunday School - A Manual of Principle and Method for the Work of the Sunday - School with Teen Age Boys • John L. Alexander
... the human race, had souls, Then two artistic spirits live within The Chameleon mind of Autumn—these, The Poet's mentor and the Painter's guide. The myriad-thoughted phases of the mind Are truly represented by the hues That thrill the forests with prophetic fire. And what could ...
— Hesperus - and Other Poems and Lyrics • Charles Sangster
... proved Mr. Bull-and-book-baked had come [by dilligence] to Liege (sixty-three miles) and got the governor to give him notice, by means of my passport, when we came. Of course I sat,—the likeness—like all other pictures you have seen of my chameleon face—has a vastly live-like look,—the compliment is none the less, and, provided the artist does not mean to serve me up as a specimen of American wild beasts, I shall thank him for it. To be followed twelve posts by a first-rate artist, who is in favor ...
— James Fenimore Cooper • Mary E. Phillips
... so thoroughly understood the feminine mind and temperament, to have given to this subtle chameleon its various hues, to have portrayed woman with her many charms and caprices, and to have described woman in her various classes and at all ages, he must have observed her, or rather, he must have known her. He very justly says in ...
— Women in the Life of Balzac • Juanita Helm Floyd
... fastnesses. This army, scattering over the plain, is swelled by Moslem, Sikh, Hindu, Parsee, and Buddhist allies, until its millions hold India's domain. The perspective becomes confused, outlines jumble, figures are inverted, lights and shadows intermingle their chameleon hues, until under widened folds of British and Russian canvas "Lion" and "Bear" divide the "foray," still regarding each other with "rolling eyes ...
— Oswald Langdon - or, Pierre and Paul Lanier. A Romance of 1894-1898 • Carson Jay Lee
... waning as black as the burnt coal; so Euphues, which at the first increasing of our familiarity was very zealous, is now at the last cast become most faithless." Besides the fish Scolopidus, the favorite animals of Lyly's menagerie are such as the chameleon, which, "though he have most guts draweth least breath;" the bird Piralis, "which sitting upon white cloth is white, upon green, green;" and the serpent Porphirius, which, "though he be full of poison, yet having no teeth, hurteth none ...
— Brief History of English and American Literature • Henry A. Beers
... very wicked Roman donzella, Lorenza Feliciani by name; and the worthy couple, combining their various talents, and regarding the world as their oyster, at once proceeded to open it in the most scientific style. I cannot follow this wonderful human chameleon in all his transformations under his various names of Fischio, Melissa, Fenice, Anna, Pellegrini, Harat, and Belmonte, nor state the studies and processes by which he picked up sufficient knowledge of physic, chemistry, the hidden properties of numbers, astronomy, ...
— The Humbugs of the World • P. T. Barnum
... look-out; and if you don't do your duty, I will blow you up also." Foaming and roaring with rage, Bombay said he would not stand being thus insulted. I then gave him a dig on the head with my fist. He squared up, and pouted like an enraged chameleon, looking savagely at me. I gave him another dig, which sent him staggering. He squared again: I gave him another; till at last, as the claret was flowing, he sulked off, and said he would not serve me any more. I then gave Nasib ...
— The Discovery of the Source of the Nile • John Hanning Speke
... influence of Bacon and the dawn of experimental science; for, having been told many stories regarding the salamander, he secured one, placed it alive upon the burning coals, and reports to us that the legends concerning its power to live in the fire are untrue. He also tried experiments with the chameleon, and found that the stories told of it were to be received with much allowance: while, then, he locks up his judgment whenever he discusses the letter of Scripture, he uses his mind in other things much after ...
— History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom • Andrew Dickson White
... thing that excited any attention being the continual renewal of the blood-stain on the library floor. This certainly was very strange, as the door was always locked at night by Mr. Otis, and the windows kept closely barred. The chameleon-like colour, also, of the stain excited a good deal of comment. Some mornings it was a dull (almost Indian) red, then it would be vermilion, then a rich purple, and once when they came down for family prayers, according to the simple rites ...
— Lord Arthur Savile's Crime and Other Stories • Oscar Wilde
... species. One is popularly known as the chameleon on account of its rather showy colours, but does not really belong to that family. And a beautiful grass-snake, which, as it is limbless, is often mistaken for a tree-snake, is also ...
— The Heart of Nature - or, The Quest for Natural Beauty • Francis Younghusband
... such as Marie Boyer and Gabrielle Fenayrou, who may be described as passively criminal, chameleon-like, taking colour from their surroundings. By the force of a man's influence they commit a dreadful crime, in the one instance it is matricide, in the other the murder of a former lover, but neither of the women is profoundly ...
— A Book of Remarkable Criminals • H. B. Irving
... only a rod back of the boat. I had no calm judgment with which to measure his dimensions. I only saw that he was tremendous and beautiful. His great, yard-wide fins gleamed royal purple. And the purple strips crossed his silver sides. He glowed in the water, changed color like a chameleon, and drifted, floated after us. I thought of my brother Reddy—how he would have gloried in that sight! I thought of Dilg, of Bob Davis, of Professor Kellogg—other great fishermen, all in a flash. ...
— Tales of Fishes • Zane Grey
... of us was a sleepy, bald-headed man upon whose shining, nodding, snoring pate several flies were resting in quiet enjoyment of the sermon. All at once, this toothsome collection attracted the attention of a very large bright-eyed chameleon admirer who launched himself through the air upon said bald head in pursuit of his dinner. With a yell of fear, the sleeper struck the animal with his huge hand, sending the long tailed frolicsome creature heels ...
— The Gentleman from Everywhere • James Henry Foss
... for God's sake besought him that he might be permitted so to do. Whereunto Pantagruel would not give consent, but commanded him to depart thence speedily and begone as he had told him, and to that effect gave him a boxful of euphorbium, together with some grains of the black chameleon thistle, steeped into aqua vitae, and made up into the condiment of a wet sucket, commanding him to carry it to his king, and to say unto him, that if he were able to eat one ounce of that without drinking after it, he might then be able to resist him without any ...
— Gargantua and Pantagruel, Complete. • Francois Rabelais
... theory of science is the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, and then find a revision of the statement necessary to-day, I certainly am inconsistent. This jewel of consistency certainly loses its lustre, if not its identity, in such a process of shifting. I do hope these chameleon artists will leave us the multiplication table, the yardstick, and the ablative absolute. I'm not so particular about the wine-gallon, for prohibition will probably do away with that anyhow. When I was in school I could tell to a foot the equatorial and the polar ...
— Reveries of a Schoolmaster • Francis B. Pearson
... for what I know. Of all fools the positive philosophers seem to me the worst; and the most abject kind of conceit is that of alleged consistency. Why will you insist on a definiteness which has so little place in nature? The world is a chameleon, and you and I are ...
— A Pessimist - In Theory and Practice • Robert Timsol
... shadow to sunlight, and from sunlight to shadow, down the road to the great pine-tree. The white and purple flowers lay in her hand and along her bended arm; from the folds of her dress, of some rich and silken stuff, chameleon-like in its changing colors, breathed the subtle fragrance of the perfume then most in fashion; over the thin lawn that half revealed, half concealed neck and bosom was drawn a long and glossy curl, carefully let to escape from the waved and banded hair beneath ...
— Audrey • Mary Johnston
... "A chameleon that needed the influence of a good woman. Then he gave me this box of Cuban chocolates, to keep me from crying, I suppose. Have one! They're not nearly as ...
— South Wind • Norman Douglas
... a polyhedric Peter, or a Peter with many sides. He changes colours like a chameleon, and his coat like a snake. He is a Proteus of a Peter. He was at first sublime, pathetic, impressive, profound; then dull; then prosy and dull; and now dull—oh so very dull! ...
— Peter Bell the Third • Percy Bysshe Shelley
... have so good an opinion of yourself, Mr. Chance," she replied. "I was vexed with you at first, but am not so now. To watch the changes of your chameleon mind, not always successful in getting the right colour at the right moment, is just as good as a play. If you really mean to come again and again I shall not object—it will amuse me. Only do not come at two o'clock in the morning; ...
— Fan • Henry Harford
... it was named. The irreverent school-boys of Autun and Brienne gave the nickname "straw nose"—paille-au-nez—to both the brothers. The pronunciation, therefore, was probably as uncertain as the form, Napaille-au-nez being probably a distortion of Napouillone. The chameleon-like character of the name corresponds exactly to the chameleon-like character of the times, the man, and the lands of his birth and of his adoption. The Corsican noble and French royalist was Napoleone de Buonaparte; the Corsican republican and patriot was ...
— The Life of Napoleon Bonaparte - Vol. I. (of IV.) • William Milligan Sloane
... distinguished Moors; old, white bearded fellows, in turbans and burnouse. Each of them offered a present of some kind. One of them brought a beautiful pair of Barbary pheasants, another a young wild pig in a crate; others, quaint arms, and one had a chameleon of a rare species, which he carried on the twig of a tree. An address of welcome to Morocco was read by one of their number and then they asked Paul he would not kindly walk on the water in the daylight for them ...
— The Story of Paul Boyton - Voyages on All the Great Rivers of the World • Paul Boyton
... don't mean it!" said Allen, catching up the dog and holding him to the lamp, while Janet observed that he was a sort of chameleon, for his body, which had been black, was now yellow, and his chops which had ...
— Magnum Bonum • Charlotte M. Yonge
... mind he drooped idly over the rail as the yacht drew out of the bay, the evening of the second day. The glories of the southern sunset lingered and vanished, a-begging, without his senses being roused by them; and long after the sea, chameleon-like, changed from rose to lavender, from lavender to gray, the mountains yet jealously clung to their vivid aureolas of phantom gold. Fitzgerald saw nothing but ...
— A Splendid Hazard • Harold MacGrath
... and nothing—it has no character—it enjoys light and shade—it lives in gusto, be it foul or fair, high or low, rich or poor, mean or elevated—it has as much delight in conceiving an Iago as an Imogen. What shocks the virtuous philosopher delights the chameleon poet. It does no harm from its relish of the dark side of things, any more than from its taste for the bright one, because they both end in speculation. A poet is the most unpoetical of anything in existence, because he has no identity; he is continually in for, and filling, some other body. ...
— Selected English Letters (XV - XIX Centuries) • Various
... when considering woman's costumes, for ordinary use, in their relation to background, unless some chameleon-like material be invented to take on the colour of any background, one must be content with the consideration of one's own rooms, porches, garden, opera-box or automobile, etc. For a gown to be worn when away from home, when ...
— Woman as Decoration • Emily Burbank
... Buchanan's fall. He had avenged it, as far as pen could do it, by that 'Admonition Direct to the Trew Lordis,' in which he showed himself as great a master of Scottish, as he was of Latin, prose. His satire of the 'Chameleon,' though its publication was stopped by Maitland, must have been read in manuscript by many of those same "True Lords;" and though there were nobler instincts in Maitland than any Buchanan gave him credit for, the satire breathed an honest indignation ...
— Health and Education • Charles Kingsley
... facades grinning at each other across the gorge—their rugged features but little relieved by the mottling of dark junipers that clung from their clefts. There appeared neither root nor fruit that might be eaten. Only a chameleon could maintain existence in such ...
— The Wild Huntress - Love in the Wilderness • Mayne Reid
... They worship many living creatures, such as the ape, the tiger, the elephant the horse, the ox, the stag, the sheep, the hog, the dog, the cat, the rat, the peacock, the eagle, the cock, the hawk, the serpent, the chameleon, the lizard, the tortoise, fishes, and even insects. Of these, some receive much more worship than others, such as the cow, the ox, and the serpent Cobra Capella. I will speak at present only of the ...
— Dr. Scudder's Tales for Little Readers, About the Heathen. • Dr. John Scudder
... easy task, for Smiles took to "manners" as readily as a chameleon adapts its exterior to suit the color of its surroundings. In the woods she had learned to mimic the note of the birds or the chattering of the squirrels; in the hotel dining-room she copied the behavior ...
— 'Smiles' - A Rose of the Cumberlands • Eliot H. Robinson
... sir," quoth Jocelyn, "'tis plain to see No maid but a chameleon is she, For here we have her brown and green and blue, And if not brown then rosy is her hue, And, if not red, why then 'tis very plain That brown she is or blue or green again. Now fain, sir, would I ask and question whether She e'er is ...
— The Geste of Duke Jocelyn • Jeffery Farnol
... to SEE him. No two people ever pronounce them the same color, yet each individual is perfectly honest in his belief that they are black, or dark brown, or dark blue, or deep gray, or SEA green. Maybe Nature designed me for a chameleon but changed her mind when she had ...
— Peggy Stewart: Navy Girl at Home • Gabrielle E. Jackson
... for Mrs. Sewell's presence before she unpacked her heart. Then she left nothing in it. She ended by saying, "I have examined and cross-examined Sibyl, but it's like cross-questioning a chameleon; she changed colour with every new light she was put into." Here Miss Vane had got sorrowfully back to something more of her wonted humour, ...
— The Minister's Charge • William D. Howells
... "you were never a great eater, Janie, but latterly you live, like the chameleon, on air. Surely your health cannot be good, with such a poor appetite;—your ...
— Jane Sinclair; Or, The Fawn Of Springvale - The Works of William Carleton, Volume Two • William Carleton
... are a thousand other birds flitting to and fro in their aerial city and chirping to each other. Two tiny squirrels have just run along a branch nearly over my head, in a desperate hurry apparently, their tails cocked over their backs, and a sky blue chameleon is standing on the trunk near where it parts. There is always a breeze in this great tree; the leaves are always moving, and there is a continuous rustle and murmur up there. A mango-tree and tamarind near by are quite still. Not a breath shakes their leaves; they are as still as stone, but the ...
— The Soul of a People • H. Fielding
... been difficult to find. His whole life had been one of trimming; he had made his way by trimming; he had gained the governor's chair by yielding to the opinions of others. This training combined perfectly with the natural disposition of a chameleon. He was, or became, a sincere trimmer, taking his colour and his temporary beliefs from those with whom he happened to be. His judgment often stuck at trifles, and his opinions were quickly heated but as quickly cooled. His private morals were none of the best, which gave certain ...
— The Gray Dawn • Stewart Edward White
... accommodate ourselves to others rather than to want to bend every one to our own ways and opinions! The human mind is like pulp, which takes readily any colour mixed with it. The great thing is to take care that it be not like the chameleon, which, one after the other, takes every colour except white. Condescension, if unaccompanied by frankness and purity, is dangerous, and ...
— The Spirit of St. Francis de Sales • Jean Pierre Camus
... rosewood box and let her see them. She had never worn the ring—it was much too large for her. Aunt Comfort and her mother had each thought that it was foolish to buy a gold ring that she could outgrow. "If it was a chameleon ring I wouldn't care," said Aunt Comfort; "but it does seem a pity when it's a real gold ring." So the ring was bought a little too large for Comfort's mother. She was a very small woman, and Comfort was a large baby, and, moreover, favored her father's family, who were all well grown, and Aunt ...
— Comfort Pease and her Gold Ring • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... on their journey to be engaged in a warm dispute about the colour of the Chameleon. One of them affirmed that it was blue and that he had seen it with his own eyes upon the naked branch of a tree, feeding in the air ...
— The Talking Beasts • Various
... city—there were days of mists, silvery and gray, when life took on the indistinctness and indecision of a dream; as there were days less lucent, when sea and sky melted in an indistinguishable line and the chameleon tints of the marshes mellowed into a monotonous gray surface—when the wonted brilliancy of the sunset clouds, and the glittering domes and campaniles were only faint gray shadows on the gray whiteness ...
— A Golden Book of Venice • Mrs. Lawrence Turnbull
... Jud was chameleon. Long experience had taught him to drop instinctively into the mannerism—even the dialect—of those he hoped to cajole. With the well-bred he could speak glibly, and had airs himself. With the illiterate and the low-bred, he could out-Caliban ...
— The Bishop of Cottontown - A Story of the Southern Cotton Mills • John Trotwood Moore
... preparing the kabara-tel poison Blood-suckers The green calotes The lyre-headed lizard Chameleon Ceratophora ...
— Sketches of the Natural History of Ceylon • J. Emerson Tennent
... women—Mrs. Grinnell, and Mrs. Winthrop and Leonore and myself—have been quarrelling over you, and each insisting you are something different. I believe you are not a bit firm and stable, as people say you are, but a perfect chameleon, changing your tint according to the color of the tree you are on. Leonore was the worst, though! She says that you talk and joke a great deal. We could ...
— The Honorable Peter Stirling and What People Thought of Him • Paul Leicester Ford
... thick coat, fiery eyes, and spear-like teeth. He was terrifying to look at. Mr. Cross made me a present of six chameleons which belonged to a small breed and looked like lizards. He also gave me an admirable chameleon, a prehistoric, fabulous sort of animal. It was a veritable Chinese curiosity, and changed colour from pale green to dark bronze, at one minute slender and long like a lily leaf, and then all at once puffed out and thick-set like a toad. Its lorgnette ...
— My Double Life - The Memoirs of Sarah Bernhardt • Sarah Bernhardt
... been no whit more resolute in her refusal, you see, than becomes any self-respecting maid. In fact, she had not refused him; and the experienced moon had seen the hopes of many a wooer thrive, chameleon-like, on answers far less encouraging than that which Margaret had given ...
— The Eagle's Shadow • James Branch Cabell
... seem to have been of a different opinion. The murder of Murray did not involve Buchanan's fall. He had avenged it, as far as pen could do it, by that "Admonition Direct to the Trew Lordis," in which he showed himself as great a master of Scottish, as he was of Latin prose. His satire of the "Chameleon," though its publication was stopped by Maitland, must have been read in manuscript by many of those same "True Lords;" and though there were nobler instincts in Maitland than any Buchanan gave him credit for, the satire breathed an honest indignation against that wily ...
— Historical Lectures and Essays • Charles Kingsley
... together, she had turned to Gratton. Now, here in her father's log house in the mountains, she wondered that she could have done so. Did men change colour like chameleons, shifted from one environment to another? Or was it she who had been unstable, she who was the chameleon? A queer sensation which had been hers before, and which she was to know more than once in days to follow, mastered her. It seemed that within her, coexistent and for ever in conflict, there were two Glorias: a girl who was very young, ...
— The Everlasting Whisper • Jackson Gregory
... and demands their wider recognition. He ventures to hold that as much talent is necessary to constitute a tolerable figurant as to make a good actor. He describes the figurant as a multiform actor, a dramatic chameleon, compelled by the special nature of his occupation, or rather by its lack of special nature, to appear young or old, crooked or straight, noble or base-born, savage or civilised, according to the good pleasure of the dramatist. "Thus, when Tancred ...
— A Book of the Play - Studies and Illustrations of Histrionic Story, Life, and Character • Dutton Cook
... perspective, and in the angles of the corners he painted the four elements, making for each an appropriate animal—for the earth a mole, for the water a fish, for the fire a salamander, and for the air a chameleon, which lives on it and assumes any colour. And because he had never seen a chameleon, he painted a camel, which is opening its mouth and swallowing air, and therewith filling its belly; and great, indeed, was his simplicity in making allusion by means of the ...
— Lives of the Most Eminent Painters Sculptors and Architects - Vol 2, Berna to Michelozzo Michelozzi • Giorgio Vasari
... wishing to be disagreeable, for Raleigh had to hint to Cobham that the Lieutenant might be blamed if it were discovered that letters were passing. Cobham shifted from hour to hour, and changed colour like a moral chameleon; Raleigh could not depend on him, nor even influence him. Meanwhile Cobham was transferred to the Tower, and now communication between the prisoners seemed almost impossible. However, the servant who was waiting upon Raleigh, a man named Cotterell, undertook to ...
— Raleigh • Edmund Gosse
... mind, the King would change from an indulgent to a strict and even cruel father, from a confiding to a jealous brother, or from a benignant and bountiful to a grasping and encroaching sovereign. Like the chameleon, his feeble mind reflected the colour of that firmer character upon which at the time he reposed for counsel and assistance. And when he disused the advice of one of his family, and employed the counsel of another, it was no unwonted ...
— The Fair Maid of Perth • Sir Walter Scott
... little chagrined at her abrupt departure; yet her very carelessness, and the open simplicity of her manner, only served to fix her the more deeply in his thoughts. But a problem of greater difficulty was to be resolved than how to fix the chameleon hue of woman's thought. He had a king to pacify—wayward as a child, fickle as a lady's favour. Unless he could acquit himself by some witty quibble or device, he might bid adieu to the gaieties over which ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 1 (of 2) • John Roby
... The American Chameleon or "Green" Lizard, which ranges in this country in the coastal regions from North Carolina to the Rio Grande River, has a remarkable power of changing the color of its skin through shades of brown, gray, and green. In fact, it is said to rival or possibly excel the true ...
— Scouting For Girls, Official Handbook of the Girl Scouts • Girl Scouts
... "Chameleon spirit—at once contributing to the misery of our existence and adding to its fancied bliss—at once detested and a charm, to be eschewed and to be practised—that, with thy mystic veil, dimmest the bright beauty of virtue, and concealest the dark deformity of vice— imperishable, ...
— The King's Own • Captain Frederick Marryat
... because hills give Mrs. Norton the "creeps" in her feet and back hair, and she never recovers until she has had tea. But it was a charming lane, with views by and by of wide, purple moorland, sunset-red with new heather; and the sky had turned from bluebell azure to green and rose, in a wonderful, chameleon way, which it seems that the sky has in Cornwall. I suppose it was a Celtic habit! All about us billowed a profusion of wild beauty; and though for a long time there was nothing alive in sight except a flock of bright ...
— Set in Silver • Charles Norris Williamson and Alice Muriel Williamson
... When to the public gaze I am on view. I'm Colonel, Admiral, and President, A theatre manager, and resident Director of the Opera House, and mine Are Erie and the Boston steamboat line. Of merchant, banker, broker, every shade Am I; in fact, a Jack of every trade. More varied than the hues of the Chameleon; Far heavier than Ossa piled on Pelion Are all my duties! Really it's confusing, At times, to a degree that's quite amusing. When am I this, when that, when which, when what? And am I always FISK, or am I not? Thus, constantly I get into a fix, And one thing ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 7, May 14, 1870 • Various
... remove them. At other times they darted, tail first, with the rapidity of an arrow, from one side of the pool to the other, at the same instant discoloring the water with a dark chestnut-brown ink. These animals also escape detection by a very extraordinary, chameleon-like power of changing their color. They appear to vary their tints according to the nature of the ground over which they pass: when in deep water, their general shade was brownish-purple, but when placed on the land, ...
— A Book of Natural History - Young Folks' Library Volume XIV. • Various
... on his chin. He had the pompous air of a chameleon, the same long, thin lips, the ...
— Mary Magdalen • Edgar Saltus
... these long intervals, which you assume, between the periods of pregnancy, can a woman suddenly change her way of life without danger? Can she be a nursing mother to-day and a soldier to-morrow? Will she change her tastes and her feelings as a chameleon changes his colour? Will she pass at once from the privacy of household duties and indoor occupations to the buffeting of the winds, the toils, the labours, the perils of war? Will she be now timid, [Footnote: Women's timidity is yet another instinct ...
— Emile • Jean-Jacques Rousseau
... politician, the philosopher, and the man of science have inevitably figured in hostile reviews under the head of colour-changing sauroids. The popular notion respecting the colour-changing powers of these lizards is, that at will the chameleon can habit itself in any colour of the rainbow; that by turns it is a red chameleon, a blue chameleon, a green chameleon, and a yellow chameleon. The fact of the case is very far-from this notion. Chameleons are found ...
— How to See the British Museum in Four Visits • W. Blanchard Jerrold
... God-Man, Modernism gives us the history of the Church as an object of reverence. We are bidden to contemplate an institution of amazingly tough vitality but great adaptability, which in its determination to survive has not only changed colour like a chameleon but has from time to time put forth new organs and discovered new weapons of offence and defence. We ask for evidence that the Church has regenerated the world; and we are shown how, by hook or by crook, it has succeeded in safeguarding ...
— Outspoken Essays • William Ralph Inge
... cxeno. Chain of mountains montaro. Chair segxo. Chairman prezidanto. Chaise veturileto. Chalice kaliko. Chalk kreto. Chalky kreteca. Challenge, to ekciti, al. Chamber cxambro. Chambermaid cxambristino. Chamberlain cxambelano. Chameleon kameleono. Chamois cxamo. Chamois-leather sxamo. Champagne cxampano. Champion probatalanto. Chance hazardo. Chance (to happen) okazi. Chancel hxorejo. Chancellor kanceliero. Chandelier lustro. Change sxangxi. Changeable sxangxebla. Channel ...
— English-Esperanto Dictionary • John Charles O'Connor and Charles Frederic Hayes
... may be empty of action and filled with philosophy. It may be humorously perverse in its license of digression,—as it was in Sterne's hands, for example. It may be all things to all men: it is a very chameleon-weathercock. And it is too varied, too negligent, too lax, to spur its writer to his utmost effort, to that stern wrestle with technic which is ...
— Inquiries and Opinions • Brander Matthews
... feelings toward the brave men who had served with him are shown by a note in his diary, which was probably not intended for any other eye than his own: "Nov. 7. I had the comfort of making an old AGAMEMNON, George Jones, a gunner into the CHAMELEON brig." ...
— The Life of Horatio Lord Nelson • Robert Southey
... else should I call what has so often filled me with the deepest rapture? The Greek language has no more fitting expression for the grand and lofty things that hovered before me, and which I called by that chameleon of a word. Yet I have a different meaning from what appears before you at its sound. Were I to call it truth, you would scarcely understand me, but when I conjure before my soul the image of Alexandria, with all that springs ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... and the dagger of "Resignation" in the other. Disraeli accepted the former, and Punch and the Free Traders rejoiced. But in their triumph they did not spare the feelings of the convert, whom they had dubbed "The Political Chameleon;" but at least they admitted the importance of the man, who is no longer sneeringly alluded to as "Benjamin Sidonia," no more represented as an ill-bred schoolboy made up of impudence ...
— The History of "Punch" • M. H. Spielmann
... generals, leaders, provincial towns, rivers, ports, creeks, with other fitting materials to furnish his imaginary building. Whisperings, mutterings, and bare suppositions are sufficient grounds for the authority of his relations. It is strange to see with what greediness this airy chameleon, being all lungs and wind, will swallow a receipt of news, as if it were physical; yea, with what frontless insinuation he will screw himself into the acquaintance of some knowing intelligencers, who, ...
— Character Writings of the 17th Century • Various
... an automobile, and motored out to Potsdam. Then when we were outside the old Palace we heard that the Kaiser's "strong-for-peace" policy had been of no avail, that the Czar had insulted his messenger, and that now war was inevitable. We ourselves, chameleon-like, assumed the German colour. We believed what we were told, and felt sorry for the man who was called upon unwillingly to shed his nation's blood. On our way back to the hotel Kitty and I went to see Mr. Schermerhorn's cousin, Miss Barber, and then we realized the immediate gravity of the ...
— An Account of Our Arresting Experiences • Conway Evans
... Diario' in the City of Mexico. Since that time he has been a voluminous contributor to magazines and has published books in many fields, since he is poet, essayist, critic, and satirist. As a poet his best-known work is in "The Shadow-Eater", 1915. Among his other volumes are "The Chameleon", "Forty Immortals", "Edelweiss and Mandragora", and "Counsels of Imperfection", translated into ...
— The Second Book of Modern Verse • Jessie B. Rittenhouse
... to pickle, which also bears the name of pierce-stone and sea-fennel. Conseil gathered some bundles of it. As to the fauna, it might be counted by thousands of crustacea of all sorts, lobsters, crabs, spider-crabs, chameleon shrimps, and a large number of shells, rockfish, and limpets. Three-quarters of an hour later we had finished our circuitous walk and were on board. The crew had just finished loading the sodium, and the Nautilus could have left that instant. But Captain Nemo gave no order. Did he wish to ...
— Twenty Thousand Leagues under the Sea • Jules Verne
... wildly. She would have excited satiety itself, and chained inconstancy. To have Clarimonde was to have twenty mistresses; ay, to possess all women: so mobile, so varied of aspect, so fresh in new charms was she all in herself—a very chameleon of a woman, in sooth. She made you commit with her the infidelity you would have committed with another, by donning to perfection the character, the attraction, the style of beauty of the woman who appeared to please you. She returned ...
— Clarimonde • Theophile Gautier
... Southern India. They are adapted for life on trees, where they hunt insects with great deliberateness and success. The protrusible tongue, ending in a sticky club, can be shot out for about seven inches in the common chameleon. Their hands and feet are split so that they grip the branches firmly, and the prehensile tail rivals a monkey's. When they wish they can make themselves very slim, contracting the body from side to side, so that they are not very readily seen. In ...
— The Outline of Science, Vol. 1 (of 4) - A Plain Story Simply Told • J. Arthur Thomson
... Apostles and other saints in tabernacles, executed in terretta; and there he caused to be made by Giovanni da Udine, his disciple, who has no equal in the painting of animals, all the animals that Pope Leo possessed, such as the chameleon, the civet-cats, the apes, the parrots, the lions, the elephants, and other beasts even more strange. And besides embellishing the Palace greatly with grotesques and varied pavements, he also gave the designs for the Papal staircases, as well as for the loggie ...
— Lives of the Most Eminent Painters Sculptors and Architects - Vol. 04 (of 10), Filippino Lippi to Domenico Puligo • Giorgio Vasari
... "you are right, Pickle," and he focussed upon it a little old-fashioned single opera-glass which he carried in his pocket. "That's a chameleon, sure enough; and a big one too, I should say, though it's the first one I ever ...
— The Ocean Cat's Paw - The Story of a Strange Cruise • George Manville Fenn
... times she recklessly concluded that it was impossible to battle against destiny. For one never knew just how one was going to act. For a very chameleon was this strange Elizabeth, always the color of her surroundings. Being just ten-and-a-half, she would act with the wisdom of an ancient sage when in company with Mrs. MacAllister, and the foolishness of a spring lamb when left to gambol ...
— 'Lizbeth of the Dale • Marian Keith
... deriving a sympathetic joy or sorrow from the varied aspect of mortal affairs even as my figure catches a gleam from the lighted windows or is blackened by an interval of darkness. Not that mine is altogether a chameleon spirit with no hue of its own. Now I pass into a more retired street where the dwellings of wealth and poverty are intermingled, presenting a range of strongly-contrasted pictures. Here, too, may be found the golden mean. Through yonder casement I discern a family circle—the grandmother, ...
— Twice Told Tales • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... this term to designate the faculty of changing color according to surroundings—is possessed by a number of the lower animals. The chameleon is the best known of all the tinctumutants (tinctus, color, and mutare, to change), though many other animals possess this faculty in a very marked degree. In order to understand the manner in which these ...
— The Dawn of Reason - or, Mental Traits in the Lower Animals • James Weir
... Otherwise known as the "Hatherly Distillery," owned by a chameleon millionaire German-Jew, named Sammy Marks. Oh, that fine old Scotch whisky! The labels announcing this un-fact are, I understand, obtained from the Old Country and gummed on the bottles ...
— A Yeoman's Letters - Third Edition • P. T. Ross
... receiver off the hook and found himself in communication with the sheriff of Alexandria county. This was not the vacillating, veering sheriff who had spent nearly four days accepting the hints of a detective or sitting, chameleon-minded, at the feet of a designing woman. Here was an impressive and self-appreciative gentleman, one who delighted in his own deductive powers ...
— No Clue - A Mystery Story • James Hay
... sufficiently difficult of digestion. Lending itself, as it does, he says, in all the flowery imagery of the French tongue and manner, "to so many metamorphoses, it may be called, without exaggeration, the chameleon of the kitchen. Who has not eaten calf's head au naturel, simply boiled with the skin on, its flavour heightened by sauce just a little sharp? It is a dish as wholesome as it is agreeable, and one that the most inexperienced cook may serve with ...
— The Book of Household Management • Mrs. Isabella Beeton
... Fordidge trouts, which never afford an angler sport, but either live their time of being in the fresh water by their meat formerly got in the sea (not unlike the swallow or frog), or by the virtue of the fresh water only; or, as the birds of Paradise and the chameleon are said to live, by the sun and ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to prose. Volume III (of X) - Great Britain and Ireland I • Francis W. Halsey
... "You're a chameleon. There's nobody in the world quite like you. Why, at this minute you're different even to yourself. ...
— The Winds of Chance • Rex Beach
... have thus considered are those mainly depended on in support of the Calvinistic doctrine of election. The doctrine, like the chameleon, has different shades, according to the school. The high predestinarians, or, as they are called, "supra -lapsarians," maintain, as we have seen, that God created a certain number to be saved, and a certain number to be lost. ...
— The Doctrines of Predestination, Reprobation, and Election • Robert Wallace
... hope. Their talk became desultory. The blue and silver of afternoon gave way to the blue and gold of approaching evening. The tide came in and the amber sky took on the luminous tints of rose and jade, cobalt and orange. The heaving, chameleon sea, unruffled by a breath of wind, gave back the colors quivering, burnished, opalescent, like the bowl of an abalone shell. They, on the Lookout, felt themselves alone inside the tinted bubble of the world. Ellen's day was waning in an enthralling splendor that ...
— Where the Sun Swings North • Barrett Willoughby
... Carrington. The actor estimated that it had suffered as few actual changes since the departure of its solitary follower of Thespis as had a stage upon which "four years is supposed to have elapsed." He absorbed Cranberry Corners and returned to the city of chameleon changes. ...
— The Voice of the City • O. Henry
... course of time, however, he succeeded in accumulating a considerable sum of money, but as he had tasted the bitter poison of destitution, and had for a very long time earned the heavy load of poverty upon his back, and fearing to lose his property by the chameleon-like changes of fortune, he took up his money on a certain night, carried it out of the city, and buried it under a tree. After some time had passed be began sorely to miss the presence of his treasure, and betook himself ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 2 • Richard F. Burton
... seemed to become aware of our presence, for, ceasing his contemplation of the sinking sun, he scanned us both with his slow, thoughtful eyes, which somehow reminded me of those of a chameleon, although they were not prominent, but, as ...
— Child of Storm • H. Rider Haggard
... Bishop Orders His Tomb at Saint Praxed's Church Robert Browning Up at a Villa—Down in the City Robert Browning All Saints' Edmund Yates An Address to the Unco Guid Robert Burns The Deacon's Masterpiece Oliver Wendell Holmes Ballade of a Friar Andrew Lang The Chameleon James Merrick The Blind Men and the Elephant John Godfrey Saxe The Philosopher's Scales Jane Taylor The Maiden and the Lily John Fraser The Owl-Critic James Thomas Fields The Ballad of Imitation Austin Dobson The Conundrum ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 3 (of 4) • Various
... exactly teach me to say it—she didn't give me lessons in it—but she says it herself. She said the damned chameleon was lovely; and I want to see it. She didn't say I ought to see it. But I want to. I've been wanting to ever since. She said it at lunch today, and I do want to. Lots of other boys go to the Zoo, and why shouldn't I? I want to see ...
— Tenterhooks • Ada Leverson
... Cronicas, [331] that "there is no fixed rule by which to construe the Indians; for each one needs a new syntax, all being anomalous. With the Indians the argument does not conclude by induction, since no one is like to himself; for, in the short circuit of a day, he changes into more colors than a chameleon, takes more shapes than a Proteus, and has more movements than a Euripus. [332] He who has most to do with them, knows them least. In short, they are an aggregate of contrarieties, and the best logician cannot reconcile them. They are an obscure and confused chaos, in ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898 - Volume 40 of 55 • Francisco Colin
... instance, withstanding as they do the action of the sunbeam, become by time, foul air, and the influence of other pigments, inferior to the ochres. So the dazzling scarlet of iodine and mercury must yield the palm of excellence to the more sober vermilion, being a chameleon colour, subject to the most sudden and opposite changes. And the blues of cobalt, as always tending to greenness and obscurity, cannot ...
— Field's Chromatography - or Treatise on Colours and Pigments as Used by Artists • George Field
... things, because that was what she was paid for, corrected his table manners and tried to make him the kind of boy that she would have preferred to be herself had nature fortunately not decided the matter otherwise, and chameleon-like, Jerry reflected her tepor, her supineness and femininity. She recounted his virtues with pride, while I questioned her, hoping against hope to hear of some prank, the breaking of window-panes, the burning of a haystack or the explosion ...
— Paradise Garden - The Satirical Narrative of a Great Experiment • George Gibbs
... her dinner-party—their first recognised meeting. Her whole person, which at first sight had impressed him with its emphatic individuality, now struck him as characterless and conventional. And yet—what was she like? She was like a chameleon. No, she wasn't; he recollected that the change of colour was a vital process in that animal. She was like an opal—all sparkle when you move it, and at rest dull, most undeniably dull. No, that wasn't it exactly. She was a looking-glass ...
— Audrey Craven • May Sinclair
... "Humboldt showed me a chameleon," wrote Taylor, "remarking on its curious habit of casting one eye upward and the other downward at the same time,—'a faculty possessed also by some clergymen,'" added the facetious old man, as though he had discovered a ...
— In and Around Berlin • Minerva Brace Norton
... to grin. Very little later he had an obscure biochemist hooked, and ended his instructions with: "... don't care if it needs concentrated essence of chameleon juice. Invent it. And it better work for there's going to be a total shortage of neo-hyperacth at two-twenty-eight per cc ...
— Zero Data • Charles Saphro
... breadth. It was as if her designer were trying to make a craft invisible at sea. As near as Madden could determine in the strange light, she was painted a pale sky-blue. During the day, no doubt, she melted into the sky like a chameleon. ...
— The Cruise of the Dry Dock • T. S. Stribling
... blind poet, Philip Marston, who, being so deeply stricken, needed to love and to be loved more sorely than I, to whom Fate has been kind. And yet I should find it difficult to say wherein lay the charm of Rossetti’s chameleon-like personality. So with other men and women I could name. This is not so in regard to the great man now lying dead at Aldworth. Nothing is easier than to define the charm ...
— Old Familiar Faces • Theodore Watts-Dunton
... difficulties I am liable to encounter. The human heart, which will be the subject of my letters, presents so many contrasts, that whoever lays it bare must fall into a flood of contradictions. You think you have something stable in your grasp, but find you have seized a shadow. It is indeed a chameleon, which, viewed from different aspects, presents a variety of opposite colors, and even they are constantly shifting. You may expect to read many strange things in what I shall say upon this subject. I will, however, give you my ideas, though they may often seem strange; however, that ...
— Life, Letters, and Epicurean Philosophy of Ninon de L'Enclos, - the Celebrated Beauty of the Seventeenth Century • Robinson [and] Overton, ed. and translation.
... creature not unlike a miniature monkey in that it had hind legs on which it walked erect and forepaws, well clawed for digging purposes, which it used with as much skill and dexterity as a man used hands. Its body was hairless and it was able to assume, chameleon-like, the color of the soil and rocks where it denned. The head was set directly on its bowed shoulders without vestige of neck; and it had round bubbles of eyes near the top of its skull, a nose which was a single vertical slit, and a wide mouth fanged ...
— Key Out of Time • Andre Alice Norton
... be a little amended. But herein they rather disgrace than adorn their persons, as by their niceness in apparel, for which I say most nations do not unjustly deride us, as also for that we do seem to imitate all nations round about us, wherein we be like to the polypus or chameleon; and thereunto bestow most cost upon our arses, and much more than upon all the rest of our bodies, as women do likewise upon their heads and shoulders. In women also, it is most to be lamented, that they do ...
— Chronicle and Romance (The Harvard Classics Series) • Jean Froissart, Thomas Malory, Raphael Holinshed
... are papers—on the Fern Owl; Mr. Rennie's interesting Notes on the Cleanliness of Animals; Mechanism of the Voice in Singing; the Vision of Birds of Prey; New species of British Snake; Animalculae in Snow; Habits of the Chameleon; Peculiarity of the Negro Stomach; Growth of Spanish Flies; British Pearl Fishery on the Conway; the cause of Goitre; seat of the sense of touch and taste; stones found in the stomach of Pikes; Learned Poodles at Paris; Faculties of Domestic Animals; Increase of Mankind; Larva of the Gad-fly, ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 17, No. - 488, May 7, 1831 • Various
... Sagan's points. Isolde was not only wonderfully pretty, but she was endowed with a superficial cleverness, and kindliness and tact, all of which rendered her irresistible to nine men out of ten. A moral chameleon, Isolde almost always believed in herself and her own moods, therefore it was little wonder that the men whose phases of humour she reflected believed in her also, and moreover thought her as adorable and as full of delicious changes ...
— A Modern Mercenary • Kate Prichard and Hesketh Vernon Hesketh-Prichard |
