"Moth" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... swallows and flycatchers. Flies and insects, to any amount, are to be had for the catching; and the opportunity is well improved. See that sombre, ashen-colored pewee on yonder branch. A true sportsman he, who never takes his game at rest, but always on the wing. You vagrant fly, you purblind moth, beware how you come within his range! Observe his attitude, the curious movement of his head, his "eye in a fine frenzy rolling, glancing from heaven to earth, from ...
— Wake-Robin • John Burroughs
... time he caught it; and she vanished, Waving her hand, a little floating moth, Between the pine-trees, into the warm dark night. He turned into his room, and quickly thrust Under his pillow that forbidden fruit; For the door opened, and the hot red face Of Otto Brahe, his father, ...
— Watchers of the Sky • Alfred Noyes
... June, 1712 (well may I remember the day), I was sitting locked in my secret chamber, in a state of the utmost despondency, revolving in my mind what I ought to do to be free of my persecutors, and wishing myself a worm, or a moth, that I might be crushed and at rest, when behold Samuel entered, with eyes like to start out of his head, exclaiming: "For God's sake, master, fly and hide yourself, for your mother's found, an' as sure as you're a living soul, the blame is gaun ...
— The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner • James Hogg
... any summer flying insects may be enticed to destruction by a bright tin pan half filled with kerosene set in a dark corner of the room. Attracted by the bright pan, the moth will meet ...
— Burroughs' Encyclopaedia of Astounding Facts and Useful Information, 1889 • Barkham Burroughs
... class of carriages brought into vogue by diminished fortunes, which at that time bore the candid name of "demi-fortune"; at its first introduction it was called a "seringue." The cloth lining of this demi-fortune, sold under the name of caleche, was moth-eaten; its gimps looked like the chevrons of an old Invalide; its rusty joints squeaked,—but it only cost four hundred and fifty francs; and Max bought a good stout mare, trained to harness, from an officer of a regiment then stationed at Bourges. He had the carriage repainted ...
— The Two Brothers • Honore de Balzac
... her words, and even more of the look which accompanied them, had so remained with me in encouragement that I longed to encounter her again. God knows what I hoped for, for I knew well it must all inevitably end in despair, yet like the moth I must continue to singe my wings until the flame devoured me. Now, however, as we actually drew near to where I supposed she might be, I felt my earlier courage fast deserting me. Nor was I furnished with even the slightest excuse for pressing ...
— My Lady of the North • Randall Parrish
... fermenting and full of strange oaths, entered Johnson Miller. The dance-director was always edgey on first nights, and during the foregoing conversation had been flitting about the stage like a white-haired moth. His deafness had kept him in complete ignorance that there was anything untoward afoot, and he now approached Mr Goble with ...
— The Little Warrior - (U.K. Title: Jill the Reckless) • P. G. Wodehouse
... sag And well-bestrutted bee's sweet bag; Gladding his palate with some store Of emmets' eggs: what would he more But beards of mice, a newt's stew'd thigh, A bloated earwig, and a fly: With the red-capp'd worm, that is shut Within the concave of a nut, Brown as his tooth; a little moth, Late fatten'd in a piece of cloth; With wither'd cherries; mandrakes' ears; Moles' eyes; to these, the slain stag's tears; The unctuous dewlaps of a snail; The broke heart of a nightingale O'ercome in music; with a wine Ne'er ravish'd from the flatt'ring ...
— Specimens with Memoirs of the Less-known British Poets, Complete • George Gilfillan
... know that I am poor. I have told you often how the palace in Florence is shabby, eaten up with moth and rust. The Villa at Certaldo is falling into ruins too. ...
— Olive in Italy • Moray Dalton
... seemed to emerge at night, like a rat, seeking what to him was now food and drink. I watched him narrowly as he turned the corner, but there was no use in being too inquisitive. He was bound as certainly for the gambling joint as a moth would have headed toward one of the arc lights. Evidently Forbes was ...
— Guy Garrick • Arthur B. Reeve
... heavy cross-beam and looked down upon the packed contents while into her nostrils crept subtly the odour of old herbs and spicy defences against moth and mould which had been renewed from time to time through the lagging decades ...
— The Roof Tree • Charles Neville Buck
... so profoundly astonished, that his features remained contracted, his lips parted, and his eyes fixed. He did not move an inch, nor articulate a sound. Nothing could be heard in that large chamber but the wing-whisper of a little moth, which was fluttering to its death about the candles. Aramis, without even deigning to look at the man whom he had reduced to so miserable a condition, drew from his pocket a small case of black wax; he sealed the letter, and stamped it with a seal suspended at his ...
— The Man in the Iron Mask • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... On the stone bench by the porter's lodge, hard by the gate, sat the old Florentine and O'Mally. From some unknown source O'Mally had produced a concierge's hat and coat, a little moth-eaten, a little tarnished, but serviceable. Both were smoking red-clay pipes ...
— The Lure of the Mask • Harold MacGrath
... birch-bark containing these relics inclosed also the skin of a small rodent (Spermophilus sp.?) but in a torn and moth-eaten condition. This was used by the owner for purposes unknown to those who were consulted upon the subject. It is frequently, if not generally, impossible to ascertain the use of most of the fetiches and other sacred objects contained in Mid[-e] sacks of unknown ownership, ...
— Seventh Annual Report • Various
... evade the eyes of the man stock still beside the hemlock; no detail of the drama that was being enacted beside the brook escaped him. He who could observe with ease the smashing of a moth's wing thirty rods from shore, possessed a clearness of vision akin to that of a hawk. A bird fluttered in the ...
— The Lady of Big Shanty • Frank Berkeley Smith
... Lord has again most kindly helped us. It came to my mind that there were some new blankets in the Orphan-Houses, which had been given some time since, but which are not needed, and might therefore be sold. I was confirmed in this by finding that the moth had got into one pair. I therefore sold ten pairs, having a good opportunity to do so. Thus the Lord not only supplied again our present need for the three houses, but I was also able to put by the rent for this week and the next, acting out the light which ...
— A Narrative of some of the Lord's Dealings with George Mueller - Written by Himself. Second Part • George Mueller
... flirt—I agree. But he produces the same effect—without meaning it. Without meaning anything indeed—except to be good and kind to a young thing. The men with Philip's manners and Philip's charm—thank goodness, there aren't many of them!—have an abominable responsibility. The poor moth flops into the candle before she knows where she is. But as to marrying her—it has never entered his head for a ...
— Helena • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... grubs make use of this habit when they imagine themselves in danger. For instance, the "fever worm," the larva of one of our common moths,—the Isabella tiger-moth,—is a noted death-feigner, and will "pretend dead" on the slightest provocation. Touch this grub with the toe of your boot, or with the tip of your finger, or with a stick, and it will at once curl up, to all appearances absolutely ...
— The Dawn of Reason - or, Mental Traits in the Lower Animals • James Weir
... Is of all dreams the first hallucination; So that the streets of coloured lamps are full, That sage (said John) surrenders at discretion[ho] His purse, his soul, his sense, and even his nonsense, To gratify, like a huge moth, this one sense. ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 6 • Lord Byron
... These finished—and the sheets of manuscript were printed, eighteen months later, almost without change—he caught a sudden fever of entomology: hunted daily for specimens, but preserved, eventually, only six of his captures: a moth, silver and green; a butterfly of steely, iridescent blue; a solemn, black-coated cricket; a bee bound round with the five golden rings of Italy; a tiny, rainbow-hued humming-bird, found dead in a fast-shut moon-flower; and, finally, a slender, bright-winged ...
— The Genius • Margaret Horton Potter
... fields to the Manor was among sweet autumn scents, and with moth and bird taking his attention ...
— Crown and Sceptre - A West Country Story • George Manville Fenn
... got them to talk about their plans, and watched them closely. Then he took them out to see his bees. He showed them his ingenious hives and a bee-house which he had built to keep out the moths by drawing chalk-lines about it, for over these lines the wingless grub of the moth could not crawl. Then he showed them a glass hive, in which all the processes of the bees' housekeeping could be observed. After that, he took the boys to the old log-house, and pointed out some holes in the roof that would have to be fixed. ...
— The Hoosier School-boy • Edward Eggleston
... It seemed to clarify and state so much of her lately confused being. Hodie, artfully drawn into the consideration of earthly affection, was far less satisfactory than Gerrit Ammidon. She dwelt on the treasure beyond moth or rust, lost in an ecstasy of contemplation expressed in her customary explosive amens. At the same time she admitted that lower unions were blessed of God, and recommended Sidsall to think on "a man who has seen the light and by no means a sea captain." Sidsall ...
— Java Head • Joseph Hergesheimer
... Batts told me that passage was haunted. 'Don't you never go there, Martha,' she says, 'unless you want to have your blood froze. I've heard things there that have froze mine.' And I never should go, mum, if it wasn't for moth—Mrs. Tadman's worrying and driving, about the place being cleaned once in a way. And Sarah Batts is right, mum, however she may have got to know it; ...
— Fenton's Quest • M. E. Braddon
... passed on, crossed a stile and walked up a narrow, laurel-bordered path towards the light of another window which was drawing him, moth-like, by its gleam. It also, though in the "Removable's" house, was unshuttered, testifying to the peaceful state of the district. He could see a cheerful sitting-room, gay with flowers and chintzes, the light of a shaded ...
— The Argosy - Vol. 51, No. 6, June, 1891 • Various
... the air and tried to keep it from getting damp. I fixed all the woollens with fresh camphire and tobacco the last o' the winter; you have to be dreadful careful in one o' these old houses, 'less everything gets creaking with moths in no time. Miss Katharine, how she did hate the sight of a moth-miller! There's something I'll speak about before I forget it: the mice have eat the backs of a pile o' old books that's stored away in the west chamber closet next to Miss Katharine's room, and I set ...
— Deephaven and Selected Stories & Sketches • Sarah Orne Jewett
... deer's horns," he repeated as he walked on, and then the gathering gloom of the wood suggested an addition: "And some day I shall find in the wood that moth of which I have dreamed since childhood—the dark moth with the face of death ...
— The Worshipper of the Image • Richard Le Gallienne
... baptized, and heard the loud chorus of joy of his brethren and sisters when the sign of the Church was put upon him, and seen the sympathy of eye and hand that welcomed him to the blessed company, has not felt that for this poor, despised race there are riches laid up in that kingdom 'where neither moth nor rust doth corrupt, and where thieves do not break through nor steal'? Who that has stood in a Southern forest on some Sunday afternoon, in the early Southern spring, when the woods are resonant with the songs of birds, and heard a negro congregation of believers ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No 2, August, 1864 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... enough. He consoled himself as best he might for the blue looks with which he was greeted by his own party, and took his revenge by consorting more thoroughly than ever with his political adversaries. Foolishly, like a foolish moth, he flew to the bright light, and, like the moths, of course he burnt his wings. Early in 1833 he had become a member of Parliament, and in the autumn of 1834 the dissolution came. Young members of three or four-and-twenty do not think much of dissolutions, ...
— Doctor Thorne • Anthony Trollope
... fluttering moth gave the excuse her heart longed for, and her fingers rested for a moment, light as the moth itself, on his hair. There was something in the touch which made him open his eyes—uncomprehending at first, and then filled with a ...
— With Edged Tools • Henry Seton Merriman
... especially destructive to grapes with tender skins and such as grow in compact bunches. Its work is detected usually in compact grape clusters where a number of berries are injured by a "worm." The "worm" is a dark-colored caterpillar, the larva of the grape-berry moth (Polychrosis viteana.) There are two broods of this caterpillar, the first of which feeds on the stems and external portions of the young berries, while the second attacks the berries. The loss to the fruit-grower is of two kinds, the ...
— Manual of American Grape-Growing • U. P. Hedrick
... mine end and the number of my days, that I may be certified how long I have to live. When thou with rebukes dost chasten man for sin, thou makest his beauty to consume away, like as it were a moth fretting a garment: every man, therefore, is vanity. For man walketh in a vain show, and disquieteth—" the engine of a passing freight coughed, and a cloud of smoke billowed against the windows; the strips of sunshine falling between the ...
— The Iron Woman • Margaret Deland
... Angels, and she would doubtless remain in Angels or its immediate vicinity for some time; that was unpreventable; but he could still resolve that there should not be a repetition of the old tragedy of the moth and the candle. It was well that at the very outset a duty call had come to enable him to break the spell of her nearness, and it was also well that he had decided ...
— The Taming of Red Butte Western • Francis Lynde
... corporation, or a life insurance policy, or money in a savings bank, has laid up for himself treasure upon earth. But Jesus did not say, "Lay not up for yourselves treasures upon earth." He said, "Lay not up for yourselves treasures upon earth where moth and rust doth corrupt and where thieves break through and steal." And no sensible American does. Moth and rust do not get at Mr. Rockefeller's oil wells, nor at the Sugar Trust's sugar, and thieves do not often break through and steal a railway ...
— The Profits of Religion, Fifth Edition • Upton Sinclair
... and seemed to oppress and weigh us down. Presently we saw the dark cloud rise gradually from behind the hills, completely clearing their summits, and then sweeping along until it hung over the valley, in form and appearance like some monstrous night-moth, resting the tips of its enormous wings on the mountains on either side. To our right we still saw the roofs and walls of Quidricovi, apparently at ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXLII. Vol. LV. April, 1844 • Various
... considered more of a friend than an enemy. It is yearly becoming more numerous and more destructive. It is found over a great extent of country; and is particularly numerous in the valley of the Mississippi north of the Ohio River. The larva of the stalk-borer moth leaves the stalk in which it burrowed about the latter part of July, and descends a little below the surface of the earth, where in about three days it changes into the ...
— The $100 Prize Essay on the Cultivation of the Potato; and How to Cook the Potato • D. H. Compton and Pierre Blot
... the means of ascertaining, nor the power to detect, the genuine article from the harmful substitute. With the public the best bath will be the most elaborate and most flashily decorated, and the moth-and-candle principle comes into play with striking semblance to the ...
— The Turkish Bath - Its Design and Construction • Robert Owen Allsop
... substitute bathing suits, candy, straw hats, toy shovels, patent medicines and caps. Small boys began barefoot experiments. Miss Tamson Black departed for Nantucket to visit a cousin. Mr. Raish Pulcifer had his wife resurrect his black-and-white striped flannel trousers from the moth chest and hang them in the yard. "No use talkin'," so Zach Bloomer declared, "summer is headin' down our way. She'll be here ...
— Galusha the Magnificent • Joseph C. Lincoln
... Leila, closing the lid of the box, and remarking that he would like to find things as he left them; and had Aunt Ann noticed that there were moths about the bear skins. Now a moth has the power of singularly exciting ...
— Westways • S. Weir Mitchell
... richness and taste displayed in all the details of this the scholar's sanctum. The very atmosphere of the chamber, filled with the perfume of the cedar wood employed as a specific against the ravages of the moth and bookworm, seemed to the young man redolent of midnight learning; and the superb front of the presiding god, calm in the grandeur of its ineffable benignity, who appeared to his excited fancy to smile ...
— The Roman Traitor (Vol. 1 of 2) • Henry William Herbert
... home. These mules are too skittish for him to handle. Fine pair, eh, William?' And right there in the early dawn, almost in front of the garage that contained his touring Chauvinnais and my gray roadster, father stood in his velvet dressing-gown and admired the two moth-eaten old animals. Now, I honestly ask you, Matthew, could a woman of heart refuse at least to attempt to see those two great old boys through the rest of their lives in peace and comfort together? Elmnest is roof ...
— The Golden Bird • Maria Thompson Daviess
... beautiful purple grassy-leaved orchid, was abundantly in flower on the hill-top, and the great white swallow-tailed moth (Saturnia Atlas) was extremely common, with tropical butterflies and other insects. The curious leaf-insect (Mantis) was very abundant on the orange trees, on the leaves of which the natives believe it to feed; nor indeed could we persuade some of our friends that its ...
— Himalayan Journals (Complete) • J. D. Hooker
... rime be ragged Tattered and iagged Rudely rain-beaten Rusty and moth-eaten If ye talke well therewyth Yt hath in it ...
— Animaduersions uppon the annotacions and corrections of some imperfections of impressiones of Chaucer's workes - 1865 edition • Francis Thynne
... Carleton assented politely, though he was disappointed; for in giving the invitation he had been following his friend's lead in trying to save the moth from the candle. "Shall we say three ...
— The Guests Of Hercules • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... strange calm return to the things about him, "I ask your pardon for taking up your time so long. I go now. I will never mention to my moth—I mean to Mrs. Fairfield—what I have learned, nor to any one. I will work my way somehow. If Mr. Prickett will keep me, I will stay with him at present; but I repeat, I cannot take Mrs. Avenel's money and be ...
— My Novel, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... our castle will not be destructible by fire or water. All the walls will be of masonry and the floor beams will be of steel. There will be nothing to invite moth ...
— The House that Jill Built - after Jack's had proved a failure • E. C. Gardner
... its own accord. I dash against the walls, dash against the windows, flop against the ceiling, do everything on God's earth, in fact, except fly out again. And all the while I'm thinking, like that moth, or that butterfly, or whatever it is, 'The shortness of life! The shortness of life!' I've only one night or one day, and there's this vast dangerous garden, ...
— The Garden Party • Katherine Mansfield
... with two neckties and an old blackbird badly molted; result perfectly hideous, but the sugar-bowl, clothing, and sundry fund are out of debt and doing well. Had my faded gray dress dyed black, and trimmed the jacket with pieces of my moth-eaten cock's-feather boa; perfectly elegant, almost too gorgeous for my humble circumstances. Mamma looks at me sadly when I don these ancient garments, and almost wishes I had n't such "a wealthy look." I tell her I expect the girls to say, when I walk into the school-yard on Monday, "Who ...
— Polly Oliver's Problem • Kate Douglas Smith Wiggin
... sickle. He calls the rich lordlings who exacted sweat and withheld wages, to "weeping and howling," assuring them that the complaints of the injured laborer had entered into the ear of the Lord of Hosts, and that, as a result of their oppression, their riches were corrupted, and their garments moth-eaten; their gold and silver were cankered; that the rust of them should be a witness against them, and should eat their flesh as it were fire; that, in one word, they had heaped treasures together for the last days, ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society
... shelves. I took such a dislike to him that I felt inclined to bounce out as quickly as I had bounced in, but the door had banged mechanically behind me, as if to stop the bell at any cost. The shop smelt of moth powder, old leather, musty paper, and ...
— Secret History Revealed By Lady Peggy O'Malley • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... were, O Madelaine, Moth that murmurs 'gainst your pane, Peering at your rest, As, so like its woolly wing, Ceasing scarce its fluttering, ...
— Poems • Victor Hugo
... worm is chosen in vain; That not a moth with vain desire Is shrivell'd in a pent-up fire, Or but subserves ...
— Parish Papers • Norman Macleod
... leave of his mother, he rode forth, sad at first for leaving her in sorrow and tears, but afterwards glad that now he was going into the world to become a knight. And for armour he had a rough jerkin, old and moth-eaten, and for arms he had a handful of sharp-pointed sticks ...
— King Arthur's Knights - The Tales Re-told for Boys & Girls • Henry Gilbert
... domestic ducks, and in this latter case I presume no one will dispute that they have resulted from the lessened use of the wings and the increased use of the legs" (pp. 286-7). "As with other long-domesticated animals, the instincts of the silk-moth have suffered. The caterpillars, when placed on a mulberry-tree, often commit the strange mistake of devouring the base of the leaf on which they are feeding, and consequently fall down; but they are capable, according to M. Robinet, of again crawling up the trunk. ...
— Essays: Scientific, Political, & Speculative, Vol. I • Herbert Spencer
... who is with them," put in Prue. "She is the real thing—the link between the best of New York and Albany society. Old family—away back to the patroons—so old she has to keep moth balls hung in her family tree. My! if mother could once become the familiar friend of ...
— Cap'n Abe, Storekeeper • James A. Cooper
... understandingly, so she left-her chair and went around to the different groups of ladies, who were talking earnestly, to get them interested. The first group of four that she broke in on were talking of the best way to renovate seal-skin cloaks that had been moth eaten. One lady said that she had tried all the aesthetic insect powder that was advertised in the papers, and the moths would fairly get fat on it, and beg for more; but last spring she found out that ...
— Peck's Sunshine - Being a Collection of Articles Written for Peck's Sun, - Milwaukee, Wis. - 1882 • George W. Peck
... rough embrace than a soft caress. She reserved her favors for those who wrested them from her...she had no patience with the soft delights of persuasion. It was strange how much rough-hewn vitality had poured into her embrace from the moth-eaten civilization of the Old World. Starratt was only a generation removed from a people who had subdued a wilderness ... he was not many generations removed from a people who wrestled naked with God for a whole continent—that is, ...
— Broken to the Plow • Charles Caldwell Dobie
... you never noticed those places," the man said. "Inside of that are the eggs of a moth that eats things up and does a great deal of harm. Those eggs would hatch when it gets warm enough, and little worms would come out, and they would begin to eat, and the worms would change into moths ...
— The Doers • William John Hopkins
... reflections since my eyes are too bad to read. I stare at the ceiling, and if a moth comes on it—and just now that happened, or I would not have thought of mentioning it—I watch the pair of them, the moth and its leaping shadow, as they whirl from square to square of the smoke-ripened ceiling. ...
— A Diary Without Dates • Enid Bagnold
... Le Petit Trianon. Much has been said of the extravagant expense lavished by her upon this spot. I can only declare that the greater part of the articles of furniture which had not been worn out by time or were not worm or moth-eaten, and her own bed among them, were taken from the apartments of former Queens, and some of them had actually belonged to Anne of Austria, who, like Marie Antoinette, had purchased them out of her private savings. ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... refus'd clearing him; Upon which, the Canoe was sold, and, I think, remains in being still. This Wood is very lasting, and free from the Rot. A Canoe of it will outlast four Boats, and seldom wants Repair. They say, that a Chest made of this Wood, will suffer no Moth, or Vermine, ...
— A New Voyage to Carolina • John Lawson
... moth beneath thy hand, We moulder to the dust; Our feeble powers can ne'er withstand, And all our ...
— The Psalms of David - Imitated in the Language of The New Testament - And Applied to The Christian State and Worship • Isaac Watts
... taken up to the box-room and made as comfortable as possible in a snug nook between an old nursery fender and the wreck of a big four-poster. They gave him a big rag-bag to sit on, and an old, moth-eaten fur coat off the nail on the door to keep him warm. And when they had had their own tea they took him some. He did not like the tea at all, but he liked the bread and butter, and cake that went with it. They took it in turns to sit with him during the evening, ...
— The Story of the Amulet • E. Nesbit
... looked up. Fred scarcely dared to breathe. He knew what had happened. The twine had brushed against the sentry's cheek. But then a puff of wind carried it away, and the man went on, brushing at his cheek, thinking, perhaps, a moth had touched it. ...
— The Boy Scouts In Russia • John Blaine
... Lucy,' she said, smiling. 'We will do our cousins a better turn than they merit; we will keep their doors fast against thieves, and their household stuff from moth and mould and rust. For the infection, we run as little risk in that house as out of it.' So she bore me down with her will, the more easily since we had no choice but either to lodge in that house or ...
— Andrew Golding - A Tale of the Great Plague • Anne E. Keeling
... of his bed, in the shaded light, she looked like some rare, pale moth in her moon-coloured sari flecked and bordered with gold; amber earrings and a rope of amber beads—his own gift; first fruits of poetic earnings. The years between had simply ripened and embellished her; rounded a little the oval of her ...
— Far to Seek - A Romance of England and India • Maud Diver
... than had been his wont for many seasons. The two young-lady cousins whom he had brought and installed in his home thirsted for that gorgeous, nocturnal moth life in which no thirst is truly slaked, and dragged him with them into the iridescent, gas-lighted ...
— Dr. Sevier • George W. Cable
... two treasures I'm afraid that this will be a disappointment." She indicated a small humpbacked trunk covered with moth-eaten horsehair. "No romance here. But the key is tied to the clasp beside ...
— Ralestone Luck • Andre Norton
... the most unromantic of nights; though everything is charming, there is no attempt at idealization, little of the higher faculty of imagination; but great realism, and much play of fancy. Herrick's verses were written by Cobweb and Moth together, Drayton's by Puck. Granting, however, the initial deficiency in subtlety of charm, the whole poem is inimitably graceful and piquant. The gay humour, the demure horror of the witchcraft, the terrible seriousness of the battle, wonderfully realize the mock-heroic ...
— Minor Poems of Michael Drayton • Michael Drayton
... Bluebird Brown-tailed Moth Butterflies Bird's Nest Crow's Foot Chimney Swallows Cockscomb Dove in the Window Duck and Ducklings Four Little Birds Goose Tracks Goose in the Pond Honeycomb Honeycomb Patch Hen and Chickens King's Crows Peacocks and Flowers Spider's Den Shoo ...
— Quilts - Their Story and How to Make Them • Marie D. Webster
... words which Jacqueline took for truth; the light was joyful and blessed, and of all things to be desired, though it smote the life from one like lightning. She waited alone with faith, watching till it should come,—left alone with this beam glimmering like a moth through darkness!—for thus was a believer, or one who resolved on believing, left in that day, when he turned from the machinery of the Church, and stood alone, searching for God without the ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 6, No. 34, August, 1860 • Various
... will give a man such a knowledge of geology, for example, as will make every quarry and railway cutting an object of interest. A very little zoology will enable you to satisfy your curiosity as to what is the proper name and style of this buff-ermine moth which at the present instant is buzzing round the lamp. A very little botany will enable you to recognize every flower you are likely to meet in your walks abroad, and to give you a tiny thrill of interest when you chance upon one which is beyond your ken. A very little archaeology will tell ...
— Through the Magic Door • Arthur Conan Doyle
... — 'T was a small town, Lit with a ruby, Lathed with down. Stiller than the fields At the full dew, Beautiful as pictures No man drew. People like the moth, Of mechlin, frames, Duties of gossamer, And eider names. Almost contented I could ...
— Poems: Three Series, Complete • Emily Dickinson
... that the sun had set, and night had come. It got so dark that I could not see my dog lying at my feet. Suddenly I felt something touch me and pass lightly over my hair. I thought it was an ant or a night moth, and I raised my hand to chase it away. Then it changed its place, and I felt it at the nape of my neck. I tried to catch the thing that was making my neck itch, and caught a hand, soft and warm. I shuddered and started ...
— In Those Days - The Story of an Old Man • Jehudah Steinberg
... ambition gets the better of discretion, but fortunately soon finds its natural level: the violent ultra-tory, and the violent ultra-demagogue sink alike, after a few years of excitement, into the moth-eaten receptacle of newspaper renown, alike unheeded, and alike forgotten, by a newer and more enlightened generation, who find that, to the cost of the real interest of the people, the mouthing orator, the agitator, the exciter, is ...
— Canada and the Canadians, Vol. 2 • Richard Henry Bonnycastle
... been used little better than mere prisoners; and after a thousand invitations to throw our cause and our persons under the protection of France, the Most Christian King has afforded us at first but a base inn for our residence, and now a corner of this moth eaten palace, out of which we are only permitted to creep towards sunset, as if we were bats or owls, whose appearance in the sunshine is to be ...
— Quentin Durward • Sir Walter Scott
... of insect pests, two specially stand out into prominence, both of which belong to the moth tribe of insects, viz., Alethia argillacea or Cotton Caterpillar, and the ...
— The Story of the Cotton Plant • Frederick Wilkinson
... a long list might be made without including any of the so-called wild flowers. A favorite of mine is the little moth mullein that blooms along the highway, and about the fields, and maybe upon the edge of the lawn, from midsummer till frost comes. In winter its slender stalk rises above the snow, bearing its round seed-pods on its pin-like stems, and is pleasing even then. Its flowers are yellow or white, ...
— A Year in the Fields • John Burroughs
... taken your best coat to an "invisible mender" and paid him ten dollars to have him mend two moth holes? ...
— How to Write Letters (Formerly The Book of Letters) - A Complete Guide to Correct Business and Personal Correspondence • Mary Owens Crowther
... never throwed away any thing in all their days. Often and often I used to propose to clean out and kind of sort over the things, but your Ma, she wouldn't ever let me. They was sure to come in useful some day, she said; but that day never come,—and there they be, moth-and-rust-corrupted, sure enough! Well, 'tain't no use layin' up treasures upon earth. We all find that out when we come to clear ...
— Eyebright - A Story • Susan Coolidge
... small firefly (a species of Lampyris) is plentiful, showing out at night like a twinkling phosphorescent spark, slowly flitting about from tree to tree or resting on the leaves wet with dew. Nor must I omit a very splendid day-flying moth (Cocytia durvillei) which is common on the skirts of the woods and thickets; several even came on board the ship at ...
— Narrative Of The Voyage Of H.M.S. Rattlesnake, Commanded By The Late Captain Owen Stanley, R.N., F.R.S. Etc. During The Years 1846-1850. Including Discoveries And Surveys In New Guinea, The Louisiade • John MacGillivray
... contains a soul that's cankered with disease, moth-eaten with corruption, worn away to an atom not bigger than a grain of dust. I would not call it a soul ...
— Flames • Robert Smythe Hichens
... two last substances will kill choice plants if used close to their roots, so use caution. An ingenious soul, rightly conceiving that the mole is highly sensitive to smells made a number of stiff pasteboard tubes and put in the center of each a stinking moth-ball. Buried in the runways there was a dearth of moles directly. I heartily approve of the mole's judgment in leaving moth-ball-scented premises. I have felt like ...
— The Mayflower, January, 1905 • Various
... had crowded the stellar spaces; from the uncurbed poetry of Hyginus writing the floor of heaven over with romantic myths in planetary words, to the more wondrous truth of Le Verrier measuring the steps from nimble Mercury flitting moth like in the beard of the sun to dull Neptune sagging in his cold course twenty six hundred million miles away; from the half inch orb of Hipparchus's naked eye, to the six feet speculum of Rosse's awful tube; from the primeval belief in one world studded around with skyey torch ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger
... came to glitter once more in the sunlight, though the eyes that looked upon them last were years since closed upon all earthly scenes, and the soul of him who placed them there had gone, let us trust, to find a better treasure, where neither moth nor rust corrupts, nor thieves ...
— Tom, The Bootblack - or, The Road to Success • Horatio Alger
... is like the poor moth that flutters around a candle till it scorches itself to death. If genius be desirable at all, it is only of that great and magnanimous kind, which, like the condor of South America, pitches from the summit ...
— McGuffey's Fifth Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey
... glittering with dew. Here and there a dark bush or young birch-tree cast a long shadow over the ruts and scattered grass-tufts of the track. Yet even the monotonous din of our carriage-wheels and collar-bells could not drown the joyous song of soaring larks, nor the combined odour of moth-eaten cloth, dust, and sourness peculiar to our britchka overpower the fresh scents of the morning. I felt in my heart that delightful impulse to be up and doing which is a sign of ...
— Boyhood • Leo Tolstoy
... for the ancient 'propped,' and the other two were emptied out on the track. From the dust they called their brother many names that are not to be found in school books; but he, laughing, had slid down and was cutting a twig from a neighbouring tree. 'A case-moth! A case-moth!' he cried. The fallen ones scrambled to their feet. 'What sort, Teddy? What ...
— Peeps At Many Lands: Australia • Frank Fox
... previous coyness, it might remove that bitter objection to risk a repulse which Lush divined to be one of Grandcourt's deterring motives; on the other hand, the certainty of acceptance was just "the sort of thing" to make him lapse hither and thither with no more apparent will than a moth. Lush had had his patron under close observation for many years, and knew him perhaps better than he knew any other subject; but to know Grandcourt was to doubt what he would do in any particular case. It might happen that he would behave ...
— Daniel Deronda • George Eliot
... jerked suddenly and a third of the gigantic shape heaved itself into the air as the devil ray whirled. There was an instant of suspense, but the giant went past, one huge fin beating the air like the waving of some uncanny monstrous moth born in the terrors of a nightmare, and the boat was wrenched around sharply, half filling it ...
— The Boy With the U. S. Fisheries • Francis Rolt-Wheeler
... in a moment how things stood. No matter under what disguise that woman appeared to him, and whether he recognised her or not, Charles couldn't help falling a victim to Madame Picardet's attractions. Here he actually suspected her; yet, like a moth round a candle, he was trying his hardest to get his wings singed! I almost despised him with his gigantic intellect! The greatest men are the greatest fools, I verily believe, when there's a woman ...
— An African Millionaire - Episodes in the Life of the Illustrious Colonel Clay • Grant Allen
... whose laughter We heard last New Year's Day, - (They reeked not of Hereafter, Or what the Doctor'd say,) - For those small forms that fluttered Moth-like around the plate, When Sally brought the buttered ...
— Verses and Translations • C. S. C.
... pays her a compliment, he is reminded that his predecessor was accustomed to say the same thing. The relatives of the first wife are gently made aware that their acquaintance is not desired. His manner of life is carefully renovated and his old friendships put away with moth balls and camphor, never to see ...
— The Spinster Book • Myrtle Reed
... outfit in the twinkling of an eye. In an incredibly short time, the five youngsters were dressed, each to satisfy his own peculiar taste: Joseph as an Indian in blanket and beads, with a crimson band about his head; Jacob, carrying a sword, wore a moth-eaten smoking jacket, a bright sash and crimson Turkish turban; Rachel and Matilda were two dainty ladies in full skirts of blue and pink, with deep bonnets; while Rebecca was rather splendid in a yellow silk wrapper, a ...
— The New Land - Stories of Jews Who Had a Part in the Making of Our Country • Elma Ehrlich Levinger
... the flashing fire-flies Round us gleam and glance, Like a countless host of fays In an airy dance. And the moth king, velvet-winged, Dainty kiss bestows, As he whispers, 'You are sweet, Sweet as ...
— Harper's Young People, August 3, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... once explained to Sister Angela, "that 'tain't all gold as glitters, but dis year yaller in my mouth, ma'am, is right sure gold an' it's like layin' up treasure in heaven, for no moth nor rust ain't ever going to distroy anythin' in my mouth. ...
— The Shield of Silence • Harriet T. Comstock
... Her mood was all obsessed now with the conviction that this was the end to her life of a moth. An end to everything; come morning and she must be cast forth in disgrace, to go back ...
— Nobody • Louis Joseph Vance
... most enticing field of natural history is that in which common flowers and common insects work out their unending co-partnery. A blossom by its scent, its beauty of tint, allures a moth or bee and thus, in effect, is able to take flight and find a mate across a county so as to perpetuate its race a hundred miles from home. Our volume closes with a sketch of the singular ties which thus bind together the fortunes of blossom and insect, so that at last the very ...
— Little Masterpieces of Science: - The Naturalist as Interpreter and Seer • Various
... of a naturalist. Wherever he was stationed the lives of the birds, animals, insects and plants interested him. ... Everywhere one comes across his pencilled queries and comments concerning such things; here he discovers a moth unfamiliar to him, there a bird he does not recognise. He was ...
— In Secret • Robert W. Chambers
... dormitory, or middle state. I do not want to handle, to profane the leaves, their winding-sheets. I could as soon dislodge a shade. I seem to inhale learning, walking amid their foliage; and the odour of their old moth-scented coverings is fragrant as the first bloom of those sciential apples which grew amid ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Volume 2 • Charles Lamb
... a rascal. It eats the starch from the paste that fastens on her wall paper, and from book-bindings, so you see it makes things fall to pieces. But my! what a pretty rascal it is! Besides its name of silver fish, it is also called fish moth, though it is not a moth at all. It is also called bristle-tail, because of the long, bristle-like parts at the end of its body; and in some places it is called a slink, because, you know, it loves dark places, and when you uncover it in the daytime, it slips around ...
— The Insect Folk • Margaret Warner Morley
... riotous living. Next he sold all the grand old furniture in the palace; all the silver and gold plate and bric-a-brac; all the rich carpets and furnishings and even his own kingly wardrobe, reserving only a soiled and moth-eaten ermine robe to fold over his threadbare raiment. And he spent the ...
— American Fairy Tales • L. Frank Baum
... which is the root of all evil. The sin of Dives is the sin of hundreds to-day. He lived for himself alone, and he lived only for this world. He had sunk all his capital in his gold and silver, and purple and fine linen. He had no treasure laid up in Heaven. So when the moth and rust had done their work, and death had broken through like a thief and stolen all his earthly goods, he had nothing left. This parable is full of sharp contrasts. First, there is the contrast in the life of these two men. The one rich, the other a beggar. The one ...
— The Life of Duty, v. 2 - A year's plain sermons on the Gospels or Epistles • H. J. Wilmot-Buxton
... We tried various methods to extirpate them, such as rolling the wheat with a heavy roller, and beating it with turf-beaters, in order to kill them, but with little effect; for in an hour's time they were as numerous as ever, and daily increased in size. I found they were bred from a small moth, vast numbers of which infested the air in the mornings and evenings: the number of these caterpillars on the wheat was incredible; and they were so thick in the gardens that we swept them in heaps: the adjoining rivulet was also covered with them. The whole wheat of eight acres (which ...
— An Historical Journal of the Transactions at Port Jackson and Norfolk Island • John Hunter
... was falling in the street, a piercing easterly wind drove even through his thick overcoat. In such doorways as offered protection from the bitter elements the wreckage of humanity which clings to the West end of London, as the singed moth flutters about the flame that destroys it, were huddled ...
— The Clue of the Twisted Candle • Edgar Wallace
... leaves of the tree-tops, far overhead, were quivering and dancing in the sunlight and the breeze. Here Oberon and Titania might sleep beneath a bower of motionless royal Osmunda. Here Puck might have a noon-tide council with Peaseblossom, Cobweb, Moth, and Mustardseed, holding forth to them in whispers, beneath the green and purple sounding-board of a Jack-in-the-Pulpit. Here, even in this age of reason, the mystery of nature wove its magic round the curious ...
— Days Off - And Other Digressions • Henry Van Dyke
... light clung about the trees of the square, as though Night, like a great downy moth, had brushed them with her wings. The lamps were still alight, all pale, but not a soul stirred—no living ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... crowns on you. All the chairs, tables, sideboards, and things on the walls were made out of the horns of stags and other animals the Count had shot. Sometimes the chairs were covered with the skin of the same, minus the hair, which was missing and moth-eaten ...
— In the Courts of Memory 1858-1875. • L. de Hegermann-Lindencrone
... his skill. Freeman's shot had not only smashed and extinguished the lantern which served as bait for the game, but had also given the professor a disagreeable reminder that the tenure of human life is as precarious as that of the silly moth which allows itself to be lured to destruction by ...
— The Golden Fleece • Julian Hawthorne |
