"Nocturnal" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... to sacrifice themselves upon the altar of their devotion; but, although they could have forgiven any other form of maltreatment, Lulu's apparent distrust of them wounded them deeply. They had looked forward to delicious nocturnal confidences, when, half disrobed, each should visit the other's boudoir and discuss the fascinating topic from all possible and impossible points of view. That Lulu had proved impervious to all hints of this nature was a slight ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 10 • Various
... the plague of France; and she thought my object in remaining incognito was to guard myself from arrest and imprisonment; which according to her would be the inevitable result of the minister's discovering my real character. These wild notions were the fruit of the nocturnal revelations of her genius, that is, of the dreams of her disordered spirit, which seemed to her realities. She did not seem to think that if I was endowed as she supposed no one would have been able to arrest me, in ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... under the torch of the mischievous wayfarer: "Naturale sepimentum," says he, "quod obseri solet virgultis aut spinis, praetereuntis lascivi non metuet facem." It is not easy to see the origin or advantage of this practice of nocturnal travelling (which must have considerably increased the hazards of a journey), excepting only in the heats of summer. It is probable, however, that men of high rank and public station may have introduced the practice ...
— The Caesars • Thomas de Quincey
... may wear to us when we are floating down the current of such dreamy thoughts as these! It seems like some vast nocturnal shipwreck in which a hundred loving voices are clamoring for help, while the pitiless mounting wave is silencing all the cries one by one, before we have been able, in this darkness of death, to press a hand or give the farewell kiss. Prom such a point of view destiny looks harsh, ...
— Amiel's Journal • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... Constantine. His heaven at present was truly in the skies, and not in that only other place where they say it can be found, in the eyes of some daughter of Eve. Would any Circe or Calypso—and if so, what one?—ever check this pale-haired scientist's nocturnal sailings into the interminable spaces overhead, and hurl all his mighty calculations on cosmic force and stellar fire into Limbo? Oh, the pity of it, if such should be ...
— Two on a Tower • Thomas Hardy
... back if it happened to become smeared with whitewash from a wall. Yet all this passed as unnoticed as though it had never been done. Finally, Chichikov sniffed into his superior's family and domestic life, and learnt that he possessed a grown-up daughter on whose face also there had taken place a nocturnal, diabolical grinding of peas. HERE was a quarter whence a fresh attack might be delivered! After ascertaining what church the daughter attended on Sundays, our hero took to contriving to meet her in a neat suit and a well-starched dickey: and ...
— Dead Souls • Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol
... animal are purely nocturnal. He commences his wanderings at sunset, and retires to the forest at break of day. He is seldom found in greater numbers than two or three together, and is generally alone. When brought to bay he fights to the last, and charges man and hound indiscriminately, a choice ...
— The Rifle and The Hound in Ceylon • Samuel White Baker
... and a half, through which could be seen what was within, and through which could be thrown on the coffin, as is customary at the obsequies of kings, the broken staves of the officers and the ensigns and banners with their arms. This nocturnal ceremony ended, Melville, Bourgoin, and the other deputies were taken to the bishop's palace, where the persons appointed to take part in the funeral procession were to assemble, in number more than three hundred and ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - MARY STUART—1587 • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE
... of the room, was full of chinks through which the wind penetrated. Nothing could be less stately, yet nothing was ever more solemn than this lugubrious ceremony. Silence so deep that some far-distant cry could have pierced it, lent a sombre majesty to the nocturnal scene. The grandeur of the occasion contrasted vividly with the poverty of its circumstances, and roused a feeling of religious terror. On either side of the altar the old nuns, kneeling on the tiled floor and taking no thought of its ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 3 • Various
... rippling of the ropes through the blocks, as our mainsail rose up high against the moon and filled proudly with the steady northeast breeze we had been waiting for. The water began to talk along our sides, and the immense freshness of the nocturnal sea took us in its huge embrace. The spray began to fly over our bows as we nosed into the glassy rollers, one of which, on the starboard side, admonished us, by half swallowing us, that only the mighty-limbed immortals ...
— Pieces of Eight • Richard le Gallienne
... is contained in the following words: "Come back to me, Sorrow! Why have you left me? It is by grief alone that man is great." This is worthy of Chateaubriand. The theme of melancholy is as follows: "The moon appeared. . . . What is the moon, and what is its nocturnal magic to me? One hour more or less is nothing to me." This might very well be Lamartine. We then have the malediction pronounced in face of impassible Nature: "Yes, I detested that radiant and magnificent Nature, for it was there before me in all its stupid beauty, silent and ...
— George Sand, Some Aspects of Her Life and Writings • Rene Doumic
... a dead wildcat of truly awesome size. In its clenched teeth it still held the young nestling—the object of its nocturnal climb into the tree. Alec's unexpected shot had hit true and had ...
— Girl Scouts in the Adirondacks • Lillian Elizabeth Roy
... truly the refractory shutter of No. 7—the best bedroom adjoining the sitting-room. The next room, No. 8, was vacant. Jeff entered it softly, as softly opened the window, and leaning far out in the tempest, essayed to secure the nocturnal disturber. But in vain. Cord or rope he had none, nor could he procure either without alarming his aunt—an extremity not to be considered. Jeff was a man of clumsy but forceful expedients. He hung far out of the window, and ...
— Jeff Briggs's Love Story • Bret Harte
... adaptation to the world around him," that ignorance is a statutable crime before Nature, and punishable, and punished by the laws of Providence,—you deserve, I say, unless you contrive to make Mr H. your substitute, which I think would be just, yourself to be the subject of the nocturnal visit of a vampyr. Your scepticism will abate pretty considerably, when you see him stealthily entering your room, yet are powerless under the fascination of his fixed and leaden eye—when you are conscious, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 61, No. 378, April, 1847 • Various
... for the nocturnal operation which temporarily had thrilled me succumbed now to loneliness. With keen anxiety I awaited the return of my more experienced accomplice. The situation was grotesque, utterly bizarre; but even my sense of humour could not save me from ...
— The Quest of the Sacred Slipper • Sax Rohmer
... the present uncivilised state of Ireland is, that very little English capital travels there. The man who deals in steam-engines, and warps and woofs, is naturally alarmed by Peep- of-Day Boys, and nocturnal Carders; his object is to buy and sell as quickly and quietly as he can, and he will naturally bear high taxes and rivalry in England, or emigrate to any part of the Continent, or to America, rather than plunge into the tumult of Irish politics and passions. There is nothing which Ireland wants ...
— Peter Plymley's Letters and Selected Essays • Sydney Smith
... was not seen again on any nocturnal expedition. The twins lay in wait for him on several occasions, and strewed the passages with nutshells every night to the great annoyance of their parents and the servants, but it was of no avail. It was quite evident that his feelings were so wounded that he would ...
— The Canterville Ghost • Oscar Wilde
... presided over fruitfulness and plenty. So again juvare, from the root jov, after it had already been used for the anthropomorphic Jove. We find in Plautus the verb summanare, from the god Summanus, the nocturnal sky. Not only verbs but adjectives were derived in common speech from the mythical names of gods; from Genius, a multiform and universal power in ancient Latin mythology, we have genialis and hence the expressions genialis lectus, genialis homo, genialis hiems, ...
— Myth and Science - An Essay • Tito Vignoli
... outrageous profanation. It was impossible, unthinkable—and yet there, in the white glare of the electric light beneath us, was that dark figure with the bent grey head, and the twitching elbow. What inhuman hypocrisy, what hateful depth of malice against his successor must underlie these sinister nocturnal labours. It was painful to think of and dreadful to watch. Even I, who had none of the acute feelings of a virtuoso, could not bear to look on and see this deliberate mutilation of so ancient a relic. It was ...
— Tales of Terror and Mystery • Arthur Conan Doyle
... bedridden invalid that he was supposed to be, his nightly terror was of running into Theobald's arms in the immediate neighborhood of the flat. But Raffles had characteristic methods of minimizing even that danger, of which something anon; meanwhile he recounted more than one of his nocturnal adventures, all, however, of a singularly innocent type; and one thing I noticed while he talked. His room was the first as you entered the flat. The long inner wall divided the room not merely from the passage but from the outer ...
— Raffles - Further Adventures of the Amateur Cracksman • E. W. Hornung
... is a meeting avowedly for merriment; in Ireland it is a nocturnal meeting avowedly for the purpose of watching and bewailing the dead; but, in reality, for gossiping and ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. IV • Maria Edgeworth
... Nocturnal in its habits; sleeping during the day in holes of trees, and coming out to feed at night. Sir William Jones describes one kept by him for some time; it appeared to have been gentle, though at times petulant when ...
— Natural History of the Mammalia of India and Ceylon • Robert A. Sterndale
... Ingenious Proteuses, they take the shape of any animal at their pleasure. In the twinkling of an eye they whisk from one end of the world to the other. Annually, with returning spring, they celebrate a high nocturnal festivity. A tablecloth, white as the driven snow, is spread upon the greensward, by the margin of a fountain. It is covered with the most delicious viands; in the midst sparkles a crystal goblet, which sheds such a splendour as serves in the stead of torches. ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 55, No. 344, June, 1844 • Various
... ready for launching. The commander of the Carteret cutter, who first discovered this, having represented it to Captain Bennet of the Tribune, (senior officer of the detachment which Sir James had placed off Cherbourg,) proposed to take advantage of the first nocturnal spring-tide, either to launch her, if ready, or to destroy her. The Carteret was accordingly reinforced by two midshipmen and ten men from the Tribune; a landing was effected, and the guard defeated: but the brig was found to have a plank out on each side of the keel, and she ...
— Memoirs and Correspondence of Admiral Lord de Saumarez. Vol II • Sir John Ross
... burning brilliance of his blue-black eyes, his touching assurance that all of us were necessarily interested in his adventures, and the extremely graphic and convincing way in which he reconstituted for us the nocturnal scene on Ham Lake—the two sisters, the boat, the rustle of trees, the lights on shore, and his own difficulty in managing the oars, one of which he lost for half-an-hour and found again. It was by such details as that about the oar that, with a tint of humour, he ...
— The Grim Smile of the Five Towns • Arnold Bennett
... Porringer dragged a keg to the side of the settle, and sitting down upon it, approached his death mask of a face close to the face of the mender of nets, and commenced a whispered conversation. To Landless, awaiting rather listlessly the outcome of this nocturnal adventure, came now and then a broken sentence. "He hath not the look of a criminal, but—" "Of Puritan breeding, sayest thou?" "We need young blood." Then after prolonged whispering, "No ...
— Prisoners of Hope - A Tale of Colonial Virginia • Mary Johnston
... moment where the juiciest and finest esculent lies buried—and the chattering little opossums stripped the peach-trees of their wealth, in which labour of love they were eagerly assisted by the flying-foxes during the night, whilst any that had escaped these nocturnal depredators became the spoil of two or three idle boys, who loafed about all day, seeking mischief, and, as always happens, succeeding in finding it, even in this sequestered region. From this it will be seen that my efforts in the direction of husbandry were attended with ...
— Australian Search Party • Charles Henry Eden
... an Australian opossum, a female, with two young ones. This class of animal was formerly supposed to be peculiar to America, from whence its name is derived. Being nocturnal in their habits, nothing is to be seen of them in the daytime, unless you can catch a glimpse of one at noontide, sleeping soundly in the hollow of a tree. When night comes, they leap from bough to bough with the greatest animation, especially ...
— Captain Cook - His Life, Voyages, and Discoveries • W.H.G. Kingston
... the while citizen Heron put the lanthorn down on the floor of the couloir, and then followed his nocturnal visitor into ...
— El Dorado • Baroness Orczy
... Furies were at his heels, he quitted the scene of his nocturnal romance, leaving half his geological projects incomplete. Had he taken the amiable Don Francesco into his confidence he might have heard something to his advantage. But the scientist could not endure the sight of a Christian priest. Like other ...
— South Wind • Norman Douglas
... gray squirrels are more or less active all winter, though very shy, and, I am inclined to think, partially nocturnal in their habits. Here a gray one has just passed,—came down that tree and went up this; there he dug for a beechnut, and left the burr on the snow. How did he know where to dig? During an unusually severe winter I have known him to make long journeys to a barn, in a remote field, ...
— Squirrels and Other Fur-Bearers • John Burroughs
... hairy forms loomed large beneath the trees at the far side of the enclosure. The white giant, one hand freed, had struggled to his knees and was calling to the frightful, nocturnal visitors in a hideous medley of bestial ...
— Tarzan and the Jewels of Opar • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... being the two species most often caught by anglers. The bream (Pagellus centrodontus) is another bottom-feeder which resembles the fresh-water bream both in appearance and habits. It is an early morning or rather a nocturnal fish, and grows to a weight of 3 lb or 4 lb. Occasionally it will feed in mid-water or even close to the surface. The conger eel (Conger vulgaris) is another night-feeder, which gives fine sport, as it grows to a great size, and is very powerful. Strong ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 2, Part 1, Slice 1 • Various
... would he say to her? She thought. She had no right to be downstairs watching the acts of the smugglers, and she dreaded to make a confession of her knowledge of these nocturnal proceedings. ...
— Cutlass and Cudgel • George Manville Fenn
... patrolo. Nightmare terursongxo. Nimble vigla. Nimbus glorkrono. Nine naux. Ninny simplanimulo. Nip pincxi. Nippers prenileto. Nitre salpetro. Nobility nobelaro. Noble nobla. Nobleman nobelo. Nobleness nobleco. Nobody neniu. Nocturnal nokta. Nocuous pereiga. Nod (beckon) signodoni. No ne. No one neniu. Noise bruo. Noisome nauxza, malbonodora. Noisy (of children) petola. Nomad migranto. Nomadic migranta. Nom-de-plume ...
— English-Esperanto Dictionary • John Charles O'Connor and Charles Frederic Hayes
... me,—anchored in forty feet of water, and twenty or thirty rods from the shore, surrounded sometimes by thousands of small perch and shiners, dimpling the surface with their tails in the moonlight, and communicating by a long flaxen line with mysterious nocturnal fishes which had their dwelling forty feet below, or sometimes dragging sixty feet of line about the pond as I drifted in the gentle night breeze, now and then feeling a slight vibration along it, indicative of some ...
— English Prose - A Series of Related Essays for the Discussion and Practice • Frederick William Roe (edit. and select.)
... vault half lighted; in a fifth, a scanty flip of grass-plat, that would not afford pasture sufficient for an ass's colt. The walks, which nature seems to have intended for solitude, shade, and silence, are filled with crowds of noisy people, sucking up the nocturnal rheums of an aguish climate; and through these gay scenes, a few lamps glimmer like so many ...
— The Expedition of Humphry Clinker • Tobias Smollett
... being fortified and many Turks work every night on trenches, redoubts and entanglements. Not one single living soul has been seen, since the engagement of our Marines at the end of February, although each morning brings forth fresh evidences of nocturnal activity, in patches of freshly turned up soil. All landing places are now commanded by lines of trenches and are ranged by field guns and howitzers, which, thus far, cannot be located as our naval seaplanes are ...
— Gallipoli Diary, Volume I • Ian Hamilton
... the hall. Sahwah sat up quickly and bumped her head sharply on the back of the settle. Then, as the significance of the conversation she had just overheard sank into her mind she remembered Veronica's mysterious nocturnal errands, and it came to her in a startled flash that Veronica was carrying on something which was a secret from the others—was stealing away from the house to meet someone. She sprang out from behind the settle, not knowing what she intended ...
— The Camp Fire Girls Do Their Bit - Or, Over the Top with the Winnebagos • Hildegard G. Frey
... impotency is accompanied by a certain degree of cutaneous anaesthesia of the penis, but especially where the seminal secretion is scanty, the board should be positive (ascending current); where however nocturnal spermatorrhoea, premature discharges (before coition is possible) or other irritable phenomena characterize a case, the surface board should be negative (descending current). The head of the patient ...
— The Electric Bath • George M. Schweig
... weekly journal published at Ayr. In 1844 he became connected with the Witness newspaper; but in the following year removed to Glasgow, to assist in the establishment of the first Scottish daily newspaper. With that journal, the Daily Mail, he continued two years, till severe nocturnal labour much affecting his health, obliged him temporarily to abandon literary pursuits. He has been a contributor to Tait's Magazine, and was intrusted with the literary superintendence of Major De Renzy's "Poetical Illustrations ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volumes I-VI. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... waited, the monotonous trench-life to accomplish the rapid nocturnal raids or the formidable exploits of the great days and weeks of offensive, required more than that brilliant quality of our fathers, the furia francese that was the synonym of overwhelming courage and the ardor which commands ...
— World's War Events, Volume III • Various
... beheld the faithful Mendoza transfixed by Moorish lances. The four principal cavaliers already named, with several of their followers, effected their retreat and reached the camp in safety; but this nocturnal reverse obscured the morning's triumph. Gonsalvo remembered the last words of the devoted Mendoza, and bestowed a pension on his widow and marriage portions ...
— Chronicle of the Conquest of Granada • Washington Irving
... the place by night and removed the greater portion of the crops. Not wishing a return of these visitors, Mrs. Lewis, on the 16th of September, sent word to Egan to come and take away what was left of the crops; one of the horses employed in the nocturnal harvest of September 8th having been seized by the police and identified as belonging to Egan. Egan did not respond; but in July 1887 he brought an action against his landlady to recover L100 sterling for her "detention of his goods," and her "conversion of the ...
— Ireland Under Coercion (2nd ed.) (2 of 2) (1888) • William Henry Hurlbert
... warmer — when the thermometer stood daily at about 86 degrees in a cool room — the nocturnal evaporation increased. At length it grew to such a pitch, that the tube of the hygrometer containing the water was exhausted in a couple of nights. Notwithstanding the astonishment of Mr. H., he was enraptured at the triumphant confirmation of his theory. ...
— The Bushman - Life in a New Country • Edward Wilson Landor
... to the window with brightening eyes and swinging hands in her apron of the colour of the nocturnal sky. Her face and the upper part of her body were illuminated. She ...
— The Inferno • Henri Barbusse
... distroyed it's lungs and heart- yet it lived upwards of two hours this fanominon I could not account for unless it proceeded from the want of circulation of the blood.- the recarees call this bird to'-na it's note is at-tah-to'-nah'; at-tah'to'-nah'; to-nah, a nocturnal bird, sings only in the night as does the whipperwill.- it's weights ...
— The Journals of Lewis and Clark • Meriwether Lewis et al
... making about thirty miles a day, sleeping soundly at night, when the ever-watchful hyena, and occasionally a troop of wild asses, would pay us their nocturnal visits, and upon the fourth morning we began to approach the shores of the Mirage Seas. These atmospheric phenomenas on the Nubian Desert are not only very perfect imitations of real lakes, but have on many occasions inveigled expeditions ...
— Brave Men and Women - Their Struggles, Failures, And Triumphs • O.E. Fuller
... back, staring at the ceiling for a long time. From the street below came the whir and clatter of taxicabs as the midnight crowd came and went. The city's nocturnal life was at its height; men had put aside the worries of the day and were devoting themselves to the more serious and exhausting pastimes of relaxation. Still the white-haired Briton weighed in his mind the matter ...
— The Iron Trail • Rex Beach
... can be no end of mastodons, mammoths, woolly rhinoceroses, moa birds, and all such shooting." As the sun was already near the horizon, they chose a dry, sandy place, to secure as much immunity as possible from nocturnal visits, and, after procuring a supply of water from a pool, proceeded to arrange their camp for the night. They first laid out the protection- wires, setting them while the sun still shone. Next they built a fire and prepared their evening meal. While they ate ...
— A Journey in Other Worlds • J. J. Astor
... Sere Generals, Ensigns vernal, Were there; of neighbour-natives, Michel, Smith, Meggs, Bingham, Gambier, Cunningham, roused by the hued nocturnal Swoop ...
— Wessex Poems and Other Verses • Thomas Hardy
... There were all the nocturnal vagabonds of Paris, idlers and workers, all those who from seven o'clock in the evening know not what to do and dine at the club, ready to catch at anything or anybody that chance may offer ...
— Strong as Death • Guy de Maupassant
... servants to arm themselves with such weapons as they could obtain, she herself sitting up with a brace of loaded pistols before her. This proceeding had the desired effect. The ghostly visitants, if such they were, ceased from their nocturnal revels. All remained silent till cock-crow. Night after night the brave old dame heroically ...
— Stories of Animal Sagacity • W.H.G. Kingston
... fat we swallowed. I made an excursion up the river with Colonel Drummond in a scow, a flat boat so called, or rather float, and slept at a pavilion he had on the bank of it. I shall never forget my nocturnal visitors, the bull-frogs, who, sans facon, jumped about the room as if dancing a quadrille, not to my amusement but their own, making a most unmusical noise to the tune of something like, "Pay your debts, pay your debts, pay your debts." After the third croak they paused, probably to give time ...
— A Sailor of King George • Frederick Hoffman
... which Sir Francis Clavering desired so fervently, yet kept on fair terms with him. He had seen Altamont to bed with great friendliness on the night previous, and taken away his candle for fear of accidents; and finding a spirit-bottle empty, upon which he had counted for his nocturnal refreshment, had drunk a glass of water with perfect contentment over his pipe, before he turned into his own crib and to sleep. That enjoyment never failed him: he had always an easy temper, a faultless ...
— The History of Pendennis • William Makepeace Thackeray
... sharp argument, and to swing with many others on the gibbet adds a horrible corollary for the imagination. With the aspect of Montfaucon he was well acquainted; indeed, as the neighbourhood appears to have been sacred to junketing and nocturnal picnics of wild young men and women, he had probably studied it under all varieties of hour and weather. And now, as he lay in prison waiting the mortal push, these different aspects crowded back on his ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 3 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... Torbay, especially in the early autumn. I have one Guernsey specimen, however, killed near St. Samson's on the 28th September, 1876.[39] As far as I can make out the Manx Shearwater does not breed in any part of the Channel Islands, but being rather of nocturnal habits at its breeding-stations, and remaining in the holes and under the rocks where its eggs are during the day, it may not have been seen during the breeding-season; but did it breed anywhere in the Islands more birds, both old and young, would ...
— Birds of Guernsey (1879) • Cecil Smith
... are things bygone; applause, growing applause, growing interest, growing exultation in his own cleverness (for he takes all the credit), and at last a jubilant leap to wakefulness, with the cry, "I have it, that'll do!" upon his lips: with such and similar emotions he sits at these nocturnal dramas, with such outbreaks, like Claudius in the play, he scatters the performance in the midst. Often enough the waking is a disappointment: he has been too deep asleep, as I explain the thing; drowsiness has gained his ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 16 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... of mourning on his part, my mother-in-law's nocturnal wanderings continued with the same ...
— The Phantom Ship • Frederick Marryat
... Green—late a nuisance and a pandemonium, now an oasis of verdure—has not as yet reported its owl, but the public eye is upon it, and the nocturnal marauder may yet be detected in the forks of the great willow-trees, which still retain their verdure. The sparrows are almost disproportionately numerous in this small park, but this may be accounted for. It has ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 2, No. 36, December 3, 1870 • Various
... on the previous occasion when Brusson brought the casket, there came a knock at De Scuderi's house door at midnight. Baptiste, forewarned of this nocturnal visit, at once opened the door. De Scuderi felt an icy shiver run through her as she gathered from the light footsteps and hollow murmuring voices that the guards who had brought Brusson were taking up their stations about the ...
— Weird Tales, Vol. II. • E. T. A. Hoffmann
... a moonless night. He borrowed a lantern, sat a long while nerving himself for the adventure, and when he at last departed, wrung the Cascos by the hand as for a final separation. Certain presences, called Vehinehae, frequent and make terrible the nocturnal roadside; I was told by one they were like so much mist, and as the traveller walked into them dispersed and dissipated; another described them as being shaped like men and having eyes like cats; from none could I obtain the smallest ...
— In the South Seas • Robert Louis Stevenson
... centuries. But doubtless our archaeologists are so much wiser than the Athenian Senate of Five Hundred, who investigated the affair the day after it happened, that a perusal will be exceedingly edifying. Now, then, for a solution of this classic mystery of the nocturnal iconoclasm; which, in my humble opinion, only the brazen lips of ...
— St. Elmo • Augusta J. Evans
... with green, adds to the attraction of its presence. There are several species of Sajouins, known as the Widow monkey, the Moloch, the Mitred monkey, and the Black-handed Sajouin—all of them dwellers in the tropical regions of America. The Doroucouli is another small species, that in the nocturnal forest often alarms the traveller by its singular cry; and an allied species of Doroucouli constitutes, with the one above-mentioned, a second genus of ...
— Quadrupeds, What They Are and Where Found - A Book of Zoology for Boys • Mayne Reid
... There was hardly a sound from my vehicle. The buggy was rubber-tired, and the horse selected a smooth ribbon of grass to run on. But from the black forest wall there came the soughing of the wind and the nocturnal rustle of things unknown. And suddenly there came from close at hand a startling sound: a clarion call that tore the veil lying over my mental vision: the sharp, repeated whistle of the whip-poor-will. ...
— Over Prairie Trails • Frederick Philip Grove
... and in the trough all the missing bands will be found. Apologizing for the little interruption, it is satisfactory things are all arranged without damage, and hope all will go agreeably when the rough edge is worn off. Trusting these nocturnal visits will be ...
— Put Yourself in His Place • Charles Reade
... his senses, as the lowly hope of living like the meanest Otaheitan. It was highly probable that immediately on his return home, instead of indulging in repose those limbs which had been tossed from pole to pole, he would be placed in another ship, where the same fatigues, nocturnal watches, and unwholesome food, would still fall to his share; or though he were allowed to solace himself for a few days, after a long series of hardships, he must expect to be seized in the midst of his enjoyments, and to be dragged an unwilling champion to the defence ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 14 • Robert Kerr
... foundations of Constantinople, and though he has not condescended to relate in what manner the celestial inspiration was communicated to his mind, the defect of his modest silence has been liberally supplied by the ingenuity of succeeding writers, who describe the nocturnal vision which appeared to the fancy of Constantine as he slept within the walls of Byzantium. The tutelar genius of the city, a venerable matron sinking under the weight of years and infirmities, was suddenly transformed into a blooming maid, whom his own hands adorned ...
— Gibbon • James Cotter Morison
... capacities I bear, of astrologer, civilian, and physician, I have with great application studied the public emolument: to this end serve all my lucubrations, speculations, and whatever other labours I undertake, whether nocturnal or diurnal. On this motive am I induced to publish a never-failing medicine for the spleen: my experience in this distemper came from a very remarkable cure on my ever worthy friend Tom Spindle,[454] who, through excessive gaiety, had exhausted that natural stock of ...
— The Tatler, Volume 1, 1899 • George A. Aitken
... in the morning, secure your bait to-night. Worms are nocturnal, and they come out of their holes at night, provided it is not too dry on top. The ideal time for scooping them in is about dusk, after a long warm rain. Get a lantern and with it carry your bait can half filled ...
— Healthful Sports for Boys • Alfred Rochefort
... all over, from the extraordinary story of the red-headed copier of the "Encyclopaedia" down to the visit to Saxe-Coburg Square, and the ominous words with which he had parted from me. What was this nocturnal expedition, and why should I go on? Where were we going, and what were we to do? I had the hint from Holmes that this smooth-faced pawnbroker's assistant was a formidable man—a man who might play a deep game. I tried to puzzle it out, but gave it up in despair, and set the matter ...
— Short Stories of Various Types • Various
... a Siberian Tourist," published in 1896, in which bandits of various odd types tell thrilling tales of nocturnal attacks and other adventures, is a kind of artistic novel. The postillion is the most original character in the book. Huge of stature, audacious and clever, he exercises a mysterious influence over the brigands, whom he inspires with a superstitious ...
— Contemporary Russian Novelists • Serge Persky
... the false interpretation of a letter, on vague indications which it completes and patches together by the strength of its imagination, it forges a coup d'etat, makes examinations, domiciliary visits, nocturnal surprises and arrests;[2150] it exaggerates, blackens, and comes in public session to denounce the whole affair to the National Assembly. First comes the plot of the Breton nobles to deliver Brest to the English;[2151] then the plot for hiring brigands to destroy ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 2 (of 6) - The French Revolution, Volume 1 (of 3) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... the spider seizes its prey are hollow, and emit a venomous fluid into the body of the victim, which speedily benumbs and kills it. In Palestine and other countries a kind of spider is found which is entirely nocturnal in its habits, and never either hunts or feeds in daylight, but makes itself a little home, where it abides safely till sunset. It is called the trap-door spider, from the curious way in which it protects the entrance to its nest. It bores a hole in the dry earth of a bank a foot or more in depth, ...
— Wild Nature Won By Kindness • Elizabeth Brightwen
... Nocturnal though the beetles had been, they no longer feared the light of the sun. In fact, it was ascertained later that they were blind. An opacity had formed over the crystalline lens of the eye. Blind, they were no less formidable than with their sight. ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science February 1930 • Various
... washing-basins against the iron door of the lavatory, and then if any one comes he'll make clang enough to wake the dead; and while he's amusing himself with this, there'll be lots of time to 'extinguish the superfluous abundance of the nocturnal illuminators.' Eh?" ...
— Eric, or Little by Little • Frederic W. Farrar
... few had less reason to do so, the highest of his preferment being raking in the lowest sinks of vice and misery. I should think it a nobler and less nauseous employment to be one of the staff officers that conduct the nocturnal weddings. His happy constitution (even when he had, with great pains, half demolished it) made him forget everything when he was before a venison pasty, or over a flask of champagne; and I am persuaded he has known ...
— Selected English Letters (XV - XIX Centuries) • Various
... the plea of the night air disagreeing with my health, and returned to Versailles without ever making myself one of the nocturnal members of Her Majesty's society, well knowing she could dispense with my presence, there being more than enough ever ready to hurry her by their own imprudence into the folly of despising criticisms, which I always endeavoured to avoid, though I did not fear them. Of these I cannot ...
— The Secret Memoirs of Louis XV./XVI, Complete • Madame du Hausset, an "Unknown English Girl" and the Princess Lamballe
... Fresh air circulated in the deserted, silent streets. The young man could hear naught but his own footsteps resounding on the pavement. The nocturnal coolness of the atmosphere cheered him up; the silence, the darkness gave him sharp sensations of delight, and ...
— Therese Raquin • Emile Zola
... Nocturnal animals supply us with equally good illustrations. Mice, rats, bats, and moles possess the least conspicuous of hues, and must be quite invisible at times when any light colour would be instantly seen. Owls and goatsuckers are of those dark mottled tints that ...
— Contributions to the Theory of Natural Selection - A Series of Essays • Alfred Russel Wallace
... insects and frogs, in such innumerable quantities that the din made by them collectively was so loud as to resemble the sound of an iron foundry or a battle-ship in course of construction, the sounds produced by the millions of nocturnal singers being quite metallic and reproducing exactly the sound of hammers driving rivets into the steel plates of a ship. Whether it was done purposely or accidentally I do not know, but those little water creatures of the Arinos seemed to keep excellent time, their vigour ...
— Across Unknown South America • Arnold Henry Savage Landor
... "here's Enough that she could affix no Meaning to, nor I neither, without your condescending to explayn it—Cycle, Epicycle, nocturnal Rhomb." ...
— Mary Powell & Deborah's Diary • Anne Manning
... night in his chamber, whence she retired at daybreak, always carrying with her some valuable present from her lover. This intercourse continued till accident showed the young man the picture of his deceased bride, and he recognised, with horror, the features of his nocturnal visitor. The young lady's tomb being opened, he found in it the various presents which his liberality had bestowed on his unknown innamorata.'—M. G. Lewis: Tales of Wonder, v. ...
— Gryll Grange • Thomas Love Peacock
... silver birch tree, with the bird's head still peering from the orifice in the bark. Here, as well as in the library, the presentations were numerous: Col. Rhodes was represented by a glossy Saguenay raven. I listened, expecting each moment to hear it, like Poe's nocturnal visitor, "ghostly, grim ...
— Picturesque Quebec • James MacPherson Le Moine
... four hundred men from Aubagne arrive in haste, while from hour to hour the National Guards from the surrounding villages likewise rush in. The streets are full of armed men; shouts arise and the tumult increases; the municipal body, in the universal panic, loses its wits. This body is afraid of a nocturnal fight "between troops of the line, citizens, National Guards and armed strangers, no one being able to recognize one another or know who is an enemy." It sends back a detachment of three hundred and fifty Swiss Guards, ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 3 (of 6) - The French Revolution, Volume 2 (of 3) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... town. Distance, by shrouding him in mystery, increased his influence. While he was scorned and derided at Mecca, he was worshipped at Medina. A secret deputation from the city of Medina waited on the apostle, and an alliance was entered into "during two secret and nocturnal interviews, on a hill in the suburbs of Mecca." Seventy-three men and two women having professed the faith of Islam, as well as some yet unbelievers, met the prophet and proffered him assistance. "What recompense," said they, "have we to expect, should we fall in your defence?" ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 3 of 8 • Various
... suddenly spring up in affected surprise, and pointing to the clock, "Mercy, Mr. Archie!" she would say, "whatten a time o' night is this of it! God forgive me for a daft wife!" So it befell, by good management, that she was not only the first to begin these nocturnal conversations, but invariably the first to break them off; so she managed to retire and not ...
— Weir of Hermiston • Robert Louis Stevenson
... army for five days together. Having made an impenetrable array and caused many mighty car-warriors to be slain, that great car-warrior had protected Jayadratha (for some time). Fierce as the Destroyer himself, he caused a great carnage in the nocturnal battle. Endued with great valour, the heroic son of Bharadwaja consumed innumerable combatants with his arrows. At last, encountering Dhrishtadyumna, he attained to the highest end. If, on that day, thou hadst not checked in battle all the (Dhartarashtra) car-warriors headed by the Suta's ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 3 - Books 8, 9, 10, 11 and 12 • Unknown
... her mind. This nocturnal spectacle had put it into her head that here was some evil plot afoot against the Hetfalusy family. She must find out what it was, and if possible defeat it. So ...
— The Day of Wrath • Maurus Jokai
... evenings in Greenwich and Peckham. But playing a one-stringed violin at fairs and public-houses could not be more than a relaxation to a man of Peace's active temper, who had once tasted what many of those who have practised it, describe as the fascination of that particular form of nocturnal adventure known by the unsympathetic name of burglary. Among the exponents of the art Peace was at this time known as a "portico-thief," that is to say one who contrived to get himself on to the portico of a house and from that ...
— A Book of Remarkable Criminals • H. B. Irving
... to him the existence of something more than might and struggle in the world. It is the voice of Love. Slowly he draws near; embraces her; clasps her to his heart, while the door is pushed open by the breeze and the green forest appears, odorous in the moonlight—nocturnal Springtime, radiant and glorious, wrapped in a mantle of ...
— The Torrent - Entre Naranjos • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... could not help stealing inquiring looks at Lucy. Surely the participant in such a nocturnal adventure must bear some signs of it upon her face. Lucy had suddenly become a disturbing and incomprehensible problem. In trying to readjust her conception of the practical and energetic girl, Susan found herself confronted with the artifices of a world-old, feminine ...
— The Emigrant Trail • Geraldine Bonner
... the opinions I object to. Into the room they flop, those bat-like monsters of Wrong-Belief and Darkness; and though they glare at me with the daylight faces of bullying opponents, and their voices are the voices that often shout me down in argument, yet, in these nocturnal controversies, it is always my assertions ...
— More Trivia • Logan Pearsall Smith
... all within the deserted building of the Horeszkos had returned to its wonted calm. The darkness thickened; the remnants of the magnificent feast lay like that nocturnal banquet to which the ghosts of the departed must gather when evoked at the festival of the Forefathers.96 Now the owls had cried thrice from the garret, like conjurers; they seemed to greet the rising of the moon of ...
— Pan Tadeusz • Adam Mickiewicz
... him. As the afternoon advanced, the Persian assailants began to retire; for they were always in the habit of taking up their night-post at a distance of near seven miles from the Grecian position; being very apprehensive of nocturnal attack in their camp, when their horses were tied by the leg and without either saddle or bridle. As soon as they had departed, the Greeks resumed their march, and made so much advance during the night, that the Persians did not overtake ...
— The Two Great Retreats of History • George Grote
... "I saw, in a nocturnal vision, a man named Victoricus[120] coming as if from Ireland, with a large parcel of letters, one of which he handed to me. On reading the beginning of it, I found it contained these words: 'The voice of the Irish;' and while reading it I thought I ...
— An Illustrated History of Ireland from AD 400 to 1800 • Mary Frances Cusack
... tell that they had been before the others, because in places their marks had been entirely obliterated by the others coming upon the top of them. In this way my second link was formed, which told me that the nocturnal visitors were two in number, one remarkable for his height (as I calculated from the length of his stride), and the other fashionably dressed, to judge from the small and elegant impression left by ...
— A Study In Scarlet • Arthur Conan Doyle
... spell, depends upon the preservation of the ancient black-lettered bible, employed by the exorcist. It was some years ago thought necessary to have this bible re-bound; but, as soon as it was removed from the castle, the spectre commenced his nocturnal orgies, with ten-fold noise; and it is verily believed that he would have burst from his confinement, had not the ...
— Minstrelsy of the Scottish border (3rd ed) (1 of 3) • Walter Scott
... Canada porcupine, Hystrix pilosus. A nocturnal rodent quadruped, armed with barbed quills, his chief defence when attacked by ...
— Voyages of Samuel de Champlain, Vol. 1 • Samuel de Champlain
... him more impressive. One-half of the gigantic circus was in deep shade, the other was sleeping in the luminous dusk. As he stood there he began to murmur Byron's famous lines, out of "Manfred," but before he had finished his quotation he remembered that if nocturnal meditations in the Colosseum are recommended by the poets, they are deprecated by the doctors. The historic atmosphere was there, certainly; but the historic atmosphere, scientifically considered, was no better than a villainous ...
— Daisy Miller • Henry James
... at the nocturnal prowlers and promenaders, at the solitary veiled and seated figure, and he smiled. In ...
— The Return of the Prodigal • May Sinclair
... death they sweep a clear space round the grave at dusk every evening, and inspect it every morning. If they find any tracks on it, they assume that they have been made by the restless ghost in his nocturnal peregrinations, and accordingly they dig up his mouldering remains and bury them in some other place, where they hope he will sleep sounder.[194] The Kukata tribe think that the ghost may be thirsty, so they obligingly leave ...
— The Belief in Immortality and the Worship of the Dead, Volume I (of 3) • Sir James George Frazer
... grow sick. A quantity of small gravel should be spread in their coops at sea, which prevents this disorder, and will sometimes cure it. At the commencement of this complaint, the circumstance that first engages the patient's attention is the dimness of his eye-sight at twilight: the nocturnal dimness of vision was such, in the instance before-mentioned, that the youth could scarcely see, even with a candle in his hand, which he described, as seen by him, as if it were misty, or as glimmering in a thick fog. There was no external ...
— An Account of Timbuctoo and Housa Territories in the Interior of Africa • Abd Salam Shabeeny
... complained of in the middle of the dorsum across the instep, from stretching of the interosseous ligaments. Later, there is pain over the greater process of the calcaneus in front of the lateral malleolus, from these bones coming into contact. There may be nocturnal cramp in the muscles ...
— Manual of Surgery Volume Second: Extremities—Head—Neck. Sixth Edition. • Alexander Miles
... always a white cloud above her head. As night falls it becomes evident that this soft aggravation of her beauty is but a night robe hung on high. It is at about seven in the evening that she begins to draw down her garment of mist, but she is long in perfecting that nocturnal toilette. Lonely and neglected, she still is a beauty, exacting and fastidious. The cloud is tortured into many shapes before it meets her taste. She snatches it off, redisposes it, dons and takes it off again, wraps it about her with yet more enchanting folds, until by nine o'clock it ...
— The Conqueror • Gertrude Franklin Atherton
... returned. Two soldiers had been killed and three others wounded by their comrades in the ardor of that chase, and in the confusion of such a nocturnal pursuit, but they had ...
— Selected Writings of Guy de Maupassant • Guy de Maupassant
... half the evils with which you have to contend. You are pestered with nocturnal visitants far more disagreeable than even the mosquitoes, and must put up with annoyances more disgusting than the crowded, close room. And then, to appease the cravings of hunger, fat pork is served to you three times a ...
— Roughing it in the Bush • Susanna Moodie
... becoming hysterical, he told himself with compressed lips—no better than Lichfield Stope. The latter rose greyly in his memory, and fled across the sea, a phantom body pulsing with a veined fire like that stirred from the nocturnal bay. He again consulted his watch, and said aloud, incredulously: "Five minutes past eight." The inchoate crawling of his thoughts changed to an acute, ...
— Wild Oranges • Joseph Hergesheimer
... marshy road at such a rate, that their horses' feet struck fire at every stretch, which made us, with reason, begin to suspect they were thieves, having had warning of such; or rather, that they were nocturnal spectres, who, as we were afterwards told, are frequently seen in those places: there were likewise a great many Jack-a-lanterns, so that we were quite seized with horror and amazement! But, fortunately ...
— Travels in England and Fragmenta Regalia • Paul Hentzner and Sir Robert Naunton
... have been several hunts started within the last six years. There can well be many more, as, according to the opinion of that excellent authority, the late Rev. "Otter" Davies, as he was always called, there are otters on every river; but, owing to the nocturnal and mysterious habits of the animals, their whereabouts or existence is seldom known, or even suspected. Hunting them is a very beautiful sport, and the question arises as to whether the pure Otterhounds should not be more generally ...
— Dogs and All About Them • Robert Leighton
... of the female ripe for matrimony, and that of the modest fairy-lamp on the last segment, which both sexes kindle at any age. In the second case, the extinction caused by a flurry is sudden and complete, or nearly so. In my nocturnal hunts for young Glow-worms, measuring about 5 millimetres long,[3] I can plainly see the glimmer on the blades of grass; but, should the least false step disturb a neighbouring twig, the light goes out at once and the coveted insect becomes invisible. Upon the full-grown females, ...
— The Glow-Worm and Other Beetles • Jean Henri Fabre
... it is of a ruddy colour. At its height it is of brilliant whiteness, because there the nature of the aether is purer, and far away, he avoids {all} infection from the earth. Nor can there ever be the same or a similar appearance of the nocturnal Diana; and always that of the present day is less than on the morrow, if she is on the increase; {but} greater if she ...
— The Metamorphoses of Ovid - Literally Translated into English Prose, with Copious Notes - and Explanations • Publius Ovidius Naso
... Mannhardt's disciple, is very severe on solar theories of Osiris, and connects that god with the corn- spirit. But Mannhardt did not go so far. Mannhardt thought that the myth of Osiris was solar. To my thinking, these resolutions of myths into this or that original source—solar, nocturnal, vegetable, or what not—are often very perilous. A myth so extremely composite as that of Osiris must be a stream flowing from many springs, and, as in the case of certain rivers, it is difficult or impossible to say which ...
— Modern Mythology • Andrew Lang |
