"Parrot" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... saw felt shoes and pigtails flying in the air 'twas then," said Hy. "It looked for all the world like Old Faithful had spouted in a poll-parrot cage. I don't know why I done it, no more than the man in the moon—it was one of them idees that takes hold of you, and gets put through before you can more'n realise you're thinking of it—but it was the ...
— Red Saunders' Pets and Other Critters • Henry Wallace Phillips
... August 6. That year it was fearfully hot in Paris. I believe that Perrin, who could not tame me alive, had, without really any bad intention, but by pure autocracy, the desire to tame me dead. Doctor Parrot went to see him, and told him that my state of weakness was such that it would be positively dangerous for me to act during the trying heat. Perrin would hear nothing of it. Then, furious at the obstinacy of this intellectual bourgeois, ...
— My Double Life - The Memoirs of Sarah Bernhardt • Sarah Bernhardt
... fellah like me,—he said,—but I come pretty near tryin'. If she had said, Yes, though, I shouldn't have known what to have done with her. Can't marry a woman now-a-days till you're so deaf you have to cock your head like a parrot to hear what she says, and so longsighted you can't see what she ...
— The Professor at the Breakfast Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes (Sr.)
... your Majesty at pasa (dice) with the queen: behind you stands one damsel with the betel box, whilst another is waving the chownri over your head: the dwarf is playing with the monkey, and the parrot abusing the Vidushaka." The chamber also contains the portrait of Mrigankavali, the damsel whom the prince has really seen in his supposed dream. There is also a statue of her, whence the drama is named Viddha Salabhanjika, meaning a curved statue ...
— Tales from the Hindu Dramatists • R. N. Dutta
... old peach trees in their blossoming time I mentioned the paroquets which occasionally visited us but had their breeding-place some distance away. This bird was one of the two common parrots of the district, the other larger species being the Patagonian parrot, Conarus patagonus, the Loro barranquero or Cliff Parrot of the natives. In my early years this bird was common on the treeless pampas extending for hundreds of miles south of Buenos Ayres as ...
— Far Away and Long Ago • W. H. Hudson
... accustomed as he was to look upon human theories and principles as buyable and saleable appendages, could not suppress a mild surprise at the rapidity with which this Hindu prince had assimilated the ideas and mental attitude of another hemisphere. Possibly it could be traced back to the parrot-like propensities of all inferior races, but Travers, much as the solution appealed to him, could not accept it. A parrot that assumes with apparent ease the ways of his master within a fortnight, and thereby retains a striking originality of his own, is not an ordinary parrot, and the conviction ...
— The Native Born - or, The Rajah's People • I. A. R. Wylie
... a lady of more than middle age, and of that species of beauty depending upon expression, which it is not in the power of time to wither, because it is of the spirit rather than the flesh; and we also remembered a green parrot, in a fine cage, that talked a great deal, and was the only thing which seemed out of place in the house. We had been treated with much courtesy; and, emboldened by the memory of that kindness, we now ascended the stone steps, unlatched the ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 2, No. 4, March, 1851 • Various
... able to make the responses to the commandments, and join in the psalms, and so with his own mouth, before the whole congregation, confess that God's curse is on his doings, with no more sense or care of what the words mean, and of what a sentence he is pronouncing against himself, than if he were a parrot taught to speak by rote words which he does not understand. And so that man, by hardening his own heart, makes the Lord ...
— Sermons on National Subjects • Charles Kingsley
... had, no doubt, been far and wide. Placards and portraits, bordered by advertisements, hung above the shaky steps, and the small windows with their closed shutters, were almost hidden by boxes of sweet basil and mignonette, while an old, bald parrot, with her feathers all ruffled, ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume II (of 8) • Guy de Maupassant
... the titles of the old ballads—Purcell's "What shall I do to show how much I love her?" "Grim King of the Ghosts," "Thomas I cannot," "Now ponder well ye parents dear," "Pretty parrot say," "Over the hills and far away," "Gin thou wert my ain thing," "Cease your funning," ...
— Madame Flirt - A Romance of 'The Beggar's Opera' • Charles E. Pearce
... silence of the house was depressing, and the rooms seemed much too large. Norah saw to one or two odd jobs, fed some chickens, talked for a while to Fudge, the parrot, who was a companionable bird, with a great flow of eloquence on occasions, wrote a couple of letters—always a laborious proceeding for the maid of the bush—and finally arrived at the decision that there was nothing to do. In the kitchen Mary sat and "crochered" placidly at a fearful and ...
— Mates at Billabong • Mary Grant Bruce
... metacarpal of index finger round to styloid process of ulna; dividing integuments only, then separating the tendons of the common extensor longitudinally, and drawing them aside by blunt hooks, the diseased bones are removed piecemeal by curved parrot-bill forceps.[59] ...
— A Manual of the Operations of Surgery - For the Use of Senior Students, House Surgeons, and Junior Practitioners • Joseph Bell
... she repeated rapidly until something else came into her mind, and when Mrs. Crawford, referring to the bunch on her head, said to the physician, 'Peterkin struck the blow, she says,' she began at once like a parrot. 'Peterkin struck the blow! Peterkin struck the blow!' until another idea suggested itself, and she began to ring changes on the sentence. 'In the rat-hole; in the Tramp House; in the Tramp House; in the rat-hole,' talking so fast that sometimes it ...
— Tracy Park • Mary Jane Holmes
... popular. Besides his favourite subjects, such as 'The Family Jollification,' 'The Feast of the Bean King,' 'Game of Skittles,' he has pictures in a slightly higher atmosphere, such as 'A Pastor Visiting a Young Girl,' 'The Parrot,' 'Schoolmaster with Unmanageable Boys,' 'The Pursuit of Alchemy.' Among the latter a good example is 'The Music Master' ...
— The Old Masters and Their Pictures - For the Use of Schools and Learners in Art • Sarah Tytler
... month ago and used it to put a sick canary and a sick parrot out of their misery. Mary Billings saw me chloroform ...
— The Mansion of Mystery - Being a Certain Case of Importance, Taken from the Note-book of Adam Adams, Investigator and Detective • Chester K. Steele
... a centered cross of three equal bands - the vertical part is yellow (hoist side), black, and white and the horizontal part is yellow (top), black, and white; superimposed in the center of the cross is a red disk bearing a sisserou parrot encircled by 10 green, five-pointed stars edged in yellow; the 10 stars represent the 10 administrative ...
— The 2004 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency
... be drifting away from him, and their present tete-a-tete, though compulsory on her part, was to him paradise. During the season when the London world knew no monarch, save the king of revels. She had laughed at his prayers for a quiet half hour, tossing him instead, as she did to her parrot, now a few careless words, now a sugar plum. At present the season is waning, and a great dread has taken possession of him, lest she should slip away from him altogether, for Dame Rumour has given the widow of the American millionaire in marriage ...
— A Heart-Song of To-day • Annie Gregg Savigny
... truths is proper in a Christian, and without a knowledge of them, a Christian is not able to live a spiritual and a Christian life. These truths are contained in the Creed, and are taught to every child. It is not enough to repeat the Creed like a parrot, but the meaning of the truths contained in it must be grasped by the mind and understood. This is the advantage of Christian instruction, and I think it would be well if we Clergy, instead of so generally appealing to your consciences to lead good lives, were ...
— The Village Pulpit, Volume II. Trinity to Advent • S. Baring-Gould
... [at Danzig] was a green parrot on a stand; we addressed it as "Pretty Poll," and it put its head on one side and thought about it, but wouldn't commit itself to any statement. The waiter came up to inform us of the reason of its silence: ...
— The Life and Letters of Lewis Carroll • Stuart Dodgson Collingwood
... well say so, Miss," put in Ben. "That is, if you had to stay here all along, as I did, with nothing but them parrot birds screeching at you all ...
— The Motor Girls on Waters Blue - Or The Strange Cruise of The Tartar • Margaret Penrose
... and besides several maid-servants that one would suppose she had selected with care, since it can not be by mere chance that they are all pretty, she has, after the fashion of old maids, various animals to keep her company—a parrot, a little dog whose coat is of the whitest, and two or three cats, so tame and sociable that they jump up on one in the most ...
— Pepita Ximenez • Juan Valera
... are, I believe, either a separate creation or a composite of the parrot and the magpie. I have not yet discovered their particular function in nature but have observed them with some particularity. They wear top hats and are constantly making speeches, both of which are easy ...
— Here are Ladies • James Stephens
... almost animal affection for his master; who, he said, had been very badly treated. The chief offender seemed to be his highness's brother, whose name alone would lengthen the old man's lantern jaws and pucker his parrot nose into a sneer. Captain Stephen was a ne'er-do-weel, apparently, and had drained his benevolent brother of hundreds and thousands; forced him to fly from fashionable life and live quietly in this retreat. That ...
— The Innocence of Father Brown • G. K. Chesterton
... parrot!' he said, laughing loudly. 'Wouldn't it be fun if you was a parrot. I wish ...
— Love's Shadow • Ada Leverson
... he heard an explosion of laughter close to him and, looking up, he saw a large Parrot perched on a tree, who was pruning the ...
— Pinocchio - The Tale of a Puppet • C. Collodi
... the figure of a bird, decked with party-coloured feathers, so as to resemble a popinjay or parrot. It was suspended to a pole, and served for a mark, at which the competitors discharged their fusees and carabines in rotation, at the distance of sixty or seventy paces. He whose ball brought down the mark, held the proud title of Captain of the Popinjay for the remainder of the ...
— Old Mortality, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... mistake. She had married Lloyd for the social position his name could give her. She found that Lloyd hated society and would go nowhere. He was also comparatively poor and could not supply her with the luxuries her shallow nature craved. So they endured a parrot and monkey life of it. After the birth of their baby there was continuous friction, for Lloyd declared that to cut down expenses to meet additional bills they would have to live in a farm house which he owned near a village in ...
— The Lost Despatch • Natalie Sumner Lincoln
... Lanyard contented himself with nodding to the auctioneer; and the lips of the latter had barely parted to parrot the bid when Victor sprang to his feet, his features working, his limbs shaking so that the legs of the chair beside him, whose back he seized, chattered on the floor, while the high-pitched ...
— Red Masquerade • Louis Joseph Vance
... you are as fond of creatures as I am," cried Miss Folly, turning her goggle eyes upon her parrot; "I have a fancy, I may say a passion, for them! I keep a regular 'happy family' at home—dogs, cats, mice, parrots, and pigeons, and a little pet alligator, the dearest duck of an alligator, that I've taught to eat out of my hand! You must really come and ...
— The Crown of Success • Charlotte Maria Tucker
... ferry, a "big giant" alone could have been equal to such a task. In 1775, Sergeant Thompson, as overseer of Government works, was charged with erecting the palisades, fascines and other primitive contrivances to keep out Brother Jonathan, who had not yet learned the use of Parrot or Gatling guns and torpedoes. Later on, we find the sturdy Highlander an object of curiosity to strangers visiting Quebec —full of siege anecdotes and reminiscences—a welcome guest at the Chateau in the days of the Earl of Dalhousie. In ...
— Picturesque Quebec • James MacPherson Le Moine
... laid in a supply of cut wood on his roof to the height of several feet above the irregular parapet. Outside one of the narrow vertical slits, which in ages past had served as vantage point for a vizored knight fitting arrow to bow, hung a parrot cage. "Coco" ...
— Riviera Towns • Herbert Adams Gibbons
... the parrot and its love For how long must you sleep, Clasped to the heart of your Dark-stone? Listen. The dawn has come And the red shafts of the ...
— The Loves of Krishna in Indian Painting and Poetry • W. G. Archer
... various strains; the mocking bird trilled out her sweet notes fain and the turtle filled with her voice the plain. There sang the nightingale, whose chant arouses the sleeper, and the merle with his note like the voice of man and the cushat and the ring-dove, whilst the parrot with its eloquent tongue answered the twain. The valley pleased them and they ate of its fruits and drank of its waters, after which they sat under the shadow of its trees till drowsiness overcame them and they slept, glory be to Him who sleepeth not! As they ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 7 • Richard F. Burton
... we looked a little closer at the ogre as he stood With his great red eyeballs glowing like two torches in a wood, And his mighty speckled belly and his dreadful clutching claws And his nose—a horny parrot's beak, his whiskers and his jaws; Yet he seemed so sympathetic, and we saw two tears descend, As he murmured, "I'm so ugly, but I've lost my dearest friend! I tell you most lymphatic'ly, I've yearnings ...
— Collected Poems - Volume One (of 2) • Alfred Noyes
... letter, produced no little agitation at the breakfast table. Jennie simply announced her intention of immediate departure; all questions as to her health, happiness, and possible reasons were met only with a parrot-like repetition of the fact. Upon closer pressing she gave way to hysterical tears, Dorothea the while assisting the scene with round, innocent eyes and the bewildered air of one suddenly made aware of an ...
— Stories from Everybody's Magazine • 1910 issues of Everybody's Magazine
... England that, when it is on the wing, it is almost impossible to tell the difference; its habits and food are also identical with that of the English pheasant. The chief point of distinction is that its toes point two before and two behind, in the same manner as those of a parrot; but what is very remarkable about this bird is that, although, like the other Scansores, it delights in climbing and running up trees, it is equally fond of running along the ground in the ...
— Journals Of Two Expeditions Of Discovery In North-West And Western Australia, Vol. 1 (of 2) • George Grey
... it, Dotty. Is it not sweet? "God is faithful and just." I had always before repeated my verses like a parrot, I think; but this came home to me. I wondered if my dreadful sin couldn't be washed out, so I might begin over again. I knew what confess meant; it meant to tell God you were sorry. I went right off ...
— Aunt Madge's Story • Sophie May
... to the sexton, and tell him never to chase a dog in religious service. Better let it alone, though it should, like my friend's poll-parrot, during prayer time, break out with the song, "I would not live alway!" But the fidgety sexton is ever on the chase; his boots are apt to be noisy and say as he goes up the aisle, "Creakety-crack! Here I come. Creakety-crack!" Why should he come ...
— Around The Tea-Table • T. De Witt Talmage
... bein' so surprised," she said in that peculiar tone with which one who has spent another's money always defends his purchase,—"it's a stuffed parrot without any head." ...
— Susan Clegg and Her Friend Mrs. Lathrop • Anne Warner
... true. To listen to Charteris on the subject, one might have thought that he considered the matter rather amusing than otherwise. This, however, was simply due to the fact that he treated everything flippantly in conversation. But, like the parrot, he thought the more. The actual casus belli had been trivial. At least the mere spectator would have considered it trivial. It had happened after this fashion. Charteris was a member of the School corps. The orderly-room ...
— Tales of St. Austin's • P. G. Wodehouse
... paused and glared at him, unsympathetic and unimaginative as one of his own test-tubes. He was professor of physics in the high school, possessor of a large family, a meagre salary, and a select fund of parrot-learned knowledge. ...
— Martin Eden • Jack London
... track. He is the most thoroughly careless and irresponsible being I ever saw, reckless about the horses, reckless about himself, without any manners or any obvious sense of right and propriety. In his mouth this musical tongue becomes as harsh as the speech of a cocatoo or parrot. His manner is familiar. He rides up to me, pokes his head under my hat, and says, interrogatively, "Cold!" by which I understand that the poor boy is shivering himself. In eating he plunges his hand into my bowl of fowl, or snatches half my biscuit. ...
— The Hawaiian Archipelago • Isabella L. Bird
... thrilling pages, the irrepressible youth twanged a banjo accompaniment, and roared with gusto the piratical chantey of Long John Silver's buccaneer crew; Hicks, however, despite his saengerfest, was completely lost in the enthralling narrative, so that he seemed to hear the parrot shrieking, "Pieces of eight! Pieces of eight!" and ...
— T. Haviland Hicks Senior • J. Raymond Elderdice
... subjects upon which one may discourse with a free imagination, and without the possibility of being controverted. You may talk of your dreams; and you may tell what you heard a parrot say. Both Morpheus and the bird are incompetent witnesses; and your listener dare not attack your recital. The baseless fabric of a vision, then, shall furnish my theme—chosen with apologies and regrets instead of the more limited field ...
— The Four Million • O. Henry
... different breasts together burn, Together both to ashes turn. But women now feel no such fire, And only know the gross desire; Their passions move in lower spheres, Where'er caprice or folly steers. A dog, a parrot, or an ape, Or some worse brute in human shape Engross the fancies of the fair, The few soft moments they can spare From visits to receive and pay, From scandal, politics, and play, From fans, and flounces, and brocades, From equipage and park-parades, From all the thousand female ...
— The Battle of the Books - and Other Short Pieces • Jonathan Swift
... want to know, judge?" cried Cavendish, panting from his exertions. "I'll learn this parrot ...
— The Prodigal Judge • Vaughan Kester
... parrot said to the falling tree, Wait, brother, till I fetch a prop!' said Gobind with a grim chuckle. 'God has given me eighty years, and it may be some over. I cannot look for more than day granted by day and as a favour ...
— Life's Handicap • Rudyard Kipling
... and amphibious animals, particularly turtles and guanas. Among the birds is a very beautiful one called the Maccaw, having feathers of all the colours of the rainbow. It is in shape like a large parrot, with a white bill, and black legs and feet. The carrion crow is as big as a small turkey, which it perfectly resembles in shape and colour; but its flesh smells and tastes so strong of muck that it is not eatable. The pelican is almost ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume X • Robert Kerr
... 'Historia del Paraguay', relates a curious story which he said was current amongst the Indians. Two brothers, Tupi and Guarani, lived with their families upon the sea-coast of Brazil. In those days the world was quite unpopulated but by themselves. They quarrelled about a parrot, and Tupi with his family went north, and populated all Brazil; whilst Guarani went west, and was the ancestor of all the Indians of ...
— A Vanished Arcadia, • R. B. Cunninghame Graham
... It is a bullfinch. It is real pretty, and whistles like a boy. It likes potatoes and corn very much, and eats them out of my mouth and hand. When it whistles it says "Pretty Poll" just as plain as a parrot, and when it bathes it spatters ...
— Harper's Young People, February 17, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... incurred strictures from the Inquisition more severe than those of Kugler upon Tintoretto's Last Supper, and possibly with as much reason, it being objected that the introduction of German soldiery, buffoons, and a parrot was "irreligious." His Family of Darius, now in the National Gallery, was ...
— Six Centuries of Painting • Randall Davies
... of life issues, skipping like a young roe from one side of the road to the other. "There are the hills, not a bit changed, Mardie!" she cried; "and the sea is just where it was!... Here's the house with the parrot, do you remember? Now the place where the dog barks and snarls is coming next... P'raps he'll be dead.., or p'raps he'll be nicer... Keep close to me till we get past the gate... He did n't come out, so p'raps he is dead or gone a-visiting.... There's that 'specially lazy cow ...
— Homespun Tales • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... Jejunus-a-um—empty—so called because there was really nothing in it; a thoroughly empty bird—except for stuffing. Old Javvers has the thing now, and I suppose he is almost as proud of it as I am. It is a masterpiece, Bellows. It has all the silly clumsiness of your pelican, all the solemn want of dignity of your parrot, all the gaunt ungainliness of a flamingo, with all the extravagant chromatic conflict of a mandarin duck. Such a bird. I made it out of the skeletons of a stork and a toucan and a job lot of feathers. Taxidermy of that kind is just pure ...
— The Stolen Bacillus and Other Incidents • H. G. (Herbert George) Wells
... his wife's fidelity, and who accomplishes one of Paul's favourite fairy-tale or rather pantomime endings by coming down with fifteen thousand francs for an old mistress (she has lost her beauty by the bite of a parrot, and is the mother of the extraordinarily virtuous Marie); a scapegrace "young first" or half-first; a superior ditto, who is an artist, who rejects the advances of Marie's mother, and finally marries Marie herself, etc. ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 2 - To the Close of the 19th Century • George Saintsbury
... Circumstantial Selection does not account for natural death: it accounts only for the survival of species in which the individuals have sense enough to decay and die on purpose. But the individuals do not seem to have calculated very reasonably: nobody can explain why a parrot should live ten times as long as a dog, and a turtle be almost immortal. In the case of man, the operation has overshot its mark: men do not live long enough: they are, for all the purposes of high civilization, mere children when they die; and our Prime Ministers, though rated as mature, ...
— Back to Methuselah • George Bernard Shaw
... faith. All that they knew of Jesus was that He was the one 'whom Paul preached.' Even the name of Jesus is spoiled and is powerless on the lips of one who repeats it, parrot-like, because he has seen its power when it came flame-like from the fiery lips of some ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: The Acts • Alexander Maclaren
... carven silver. Curious vases adorned the hall and side-board; and numberless quaint trinkets, whose use the villagers could not even imagine, gave to the richly-furnished rooms an air of Oriental magnificence. Tropical birds sang or chattered in cages, and a learned but lawless parrot talked, swore, or made mischief, as he chose. The tawny servant George, brought by Mr. Kinloch from one of the islands of the Pacific, completed his claims upon the admiration ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Number 9, July, 1858 • Various
... game, is it?" he said with a sneer; "you're goin' in for swells right away, are yer, my gal? Got your name as pat as a poll-parrot. Knows all my private business, I dessay; I'll break every ...
— Adrien Leroy • Charles Garvice
... the influence of the priests, and have tried to turn it to their own use by methods into which they have been afraid to let the light of day; and for the rest, with every trouble and every discontent, has arisen the parrot cry of cherchez le pretre. Conscientious objections to certain forms of education are respected in England when they are emphasised by passive resistance. How many times have the same objections in Ireland been put down to clerical ...
— Ireland and the Home Rule Movement • Michael F. J. McDonnell
... called Patna, the gem of the earth. And long ago a king lived there whose name was Lion-of-Victory. Fate had made him the owner of all virtues and all wealth. And he had a parrot called Jewel-of-Wisdom, that had divine intelligence and knew all the sciences, but lived as a ...
— Twenty-two Goblins • Unknown
... cephalopod to these animals, were twice as long as its body, and were twisted like the furies' hair. One could see the 250 air holes on the inner side of the tentacles. The monster's mouth, a horned beak like a parrot's, opened and shut vertically. Its tongue, a horned substance, furnished with several rows of pointed teeth, came out quivering from this veritable pair of shears. What a freak of nature, a bird's beak on a mollusc! Its spindle-like body formed a fleshy mass that might weigh 4,000 ...
— Twenty Thousand Leagues under the Sea • Jules Verne
... scene, Mrs. Waddel's grey parrot, who was not the least important personage in her establishment, having been presented to her by her sailor son, fraternised with the prostrate lad, and echoed his laughter in the ...
— Flora Lyndsay - or, Passages in an Eventful Life • Susan Moodie
... rode up to the chief gateway, a grand circular archway, with all the noble though grotesque mouldings, zigzag and cable, dog-tooth and parrot-beak, visages human and diabolic, wherewith the Norman builders loved to surround their doorways. The doors were of solid oak, heavily guarded with iron, and from a little wicket in the midst peered out a cowled head, and ...
— The Caged Lion • Charlotte M. Yonge
... "My parrot can't stand dogs," said Mrs. Paley, with the air of one making a confidence. "I always suspect that he (or she) was teased by a dog ...
— The Voyage Out • Virginia Woolf
... woman as a beautiful romantic animal, that may be adorned with furs and feathers, pearls and diamonds, ores and silks. The lynx shall cast its skin at her feet to make her a tippet; the peacock, parrot, and swan shall pay contributions to her muff; the sea shall be searched for shells, and the rocks for gems; and every part of nature furnish out its share towards the embellishment of a creature that is the most consummate work of ...
— Isaac Bickerstaff • Richard Steele
... nation has but one military memory, it clings to it with all the affectionate tenacity of an old maid for her solitary poodle or parrot. Boston-supreme over any city in the Republic-can boast of possessing one military memento: she has the Hill of Bunker. Bunker has long passed into the bygone; but his hill remains, and is likely to remain for many a long day. It is not improbable that the life, character and ...
— The Great Lone Land - A Narrative of Travel and Adventure in the North-West of America • W. F. Butler
... love, with its great memories, its high courage, and its bright skies, as I love the little Danish town where my cradle stood, let me, before I close this account of the struggle with evil, show you also its good heart by telling you "the unnecessary story of Mrs. Ben Wah and her parrot." Perchance it may help you to grasp better the meaning of the Battle with the Slum. It is for such as she and for such as "Jim," whose story I told before, that ...
— The Battle with the Slum • Jacob A. Riis
... literary and intellectual society have long ceased to enjoy: while the powers of your own mind are preserving all that originality and energy for which no intellectual experience can compensate, you are saved the otherwise perhaps inevitable danger of adopting, parrot-like, the tastes and opinions of others who may indeed be your superiors, but who, in a copy, become wretchedly inferior to your real self. Time you have, too, to cultivate your mind in such a manner, and to such a degree, as may fit ...
— The Young Lady's Mentor - A Guide to the Formation of Character. In a Series of Letters to Her Unknown Friends • A Lady
... The retort, Eh! ta soeur, was the purest Montmartre; also Fich'-moi la paix, mon petit, and Tu as un toupet, toi; and the delectable locution, Allons etrangler un perroquet (let us strangle a parrot), employed by Apaches when inviting each other to drink a glass of absinthe, soon became current French in the school for invitations ...
— The Joyous Adventures of Aristide Pujol • William J. Locke
... decision of what it is or is not good for us to do. We ourselves must seek the solution, seek it all through life if needs must, seek it with untiring patience. A half truth which we have won for ourselves is worth more than a whole truth learned from others, learned by rote as a parrot learns. A truth which we accept with closed eyes, submissively, deferentially, servilely—such a truth is nothing ...
— The Forerunners • Romain Rolland
... apologies should be expected from those who necessarily make use of technical terms in the discussion of this technical subject, notwithstanding the common foolish advice that farmers should be given a sort of "parrot" instruction in almost baby language instead of established facts and principles in definite and permanent scientific terms. The farmer should be as familiar with the names of the ten essential elements of plant food as he is with the names of his ten nearest ...
— The Farm That Won't Wear Out • Cyril G. Hopkins
... spray of the fountain, reappear again on the other side, and then vanish in the bushes. I felt as though I had been left alone in the world and were about to be lost forever; I listened for some bird or other creature, and was happy to hear the shriek of a parrot and the hissing of the fountain through ...
— The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries - Masterpieces of German Literature Vol. 19 • Various
... sort of large parrot or cockatoo came flying down the valley, perching on the branch of a tree near the waterfall, where he began to croak away; so Denis Brown ups with a piece of stone and chucking it at the bird brings it down. In a moment he had picked off the feathers, when Magellan, taking out his knife ...
— The Penang Pirate - and, The Lost Pinnace • John Conroy Hutcheson
... the bay from Akka towards the foot of Carmel, supposing Suleyman to be a hundred miles away, I came upon a group of tourists by the river Kishon, on the outskirts of the palm grove. They had alighted and were grouped around a dragoman in gorgeous raiment, like gulls around a parrot. The native of the land was holding forth to them. His voice was richly clerical in intonation, which made me notice that his audience consisted solely of members of the clergy and ...
— Oriental Encounters - Palestine and Syria, 1894-6 • Marmaduke Pickthall
... cruise by fairy islands where the gaudy parrot screeches And the turtle in his soup-tureen floats basking in the calms; We would see the fire-flies winking in the bush above the beaches And a moon of honey yellow ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 152. January 17, 1917 • Various
... night, and then sent a party of men ashore, "well prepared with arms and adapted for such an affair," to have some conversation with the people. The innocent harvest was duly reaped; the natives met the Spaniards with gifts of food and drink, and understanding that the Admiral would like to have a parrot, they sent as many parrots as were wanted. The husband of the girl who had been captured and clothed came back with her to the shore with a large body of natives, in order to thank the Admiral for his kindness and clemency; and their confidence ...
— Christopher Columbus, Complete • Filson Young
... a generation that accepts hidebound dogmas for the ultima thule of reasoning and truth; precept for right and in reality worships at the shrine of exploded fables and crowns, by its own acts, the parrot as its preceptor—lives and dies, having no desire to do anything that somebody has not done before! Is it any wonder that such a man as W. C. Brann should fall a victim to such a populace? He was hounded to his death—mobbed, spat upon, shot and murdered, by several thousand pin-headed obstreperous ...
— Volume 12 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann
... company at dinner-time. Our way lies under yonder arch, and up the narrow alley into a paved court. Here are oleanders in pots, and plants of Japanese spindle-wood in tubs; and from the walls beneath the window hang cages of all sorts of birds—a talking parrot, a whistling blackbird, goldfinches, canaries, linnets. Athos, the fat dog, who goes to market daily in a barchetta with his master, snuffs around. 'Where are Porthos and Aramis, my friend?' Athos does ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Complete - Series I, II, and III • John Symonds
... of Rome, has just come in. This number represents the fortress of Gaeta. Outside hangs a cage containing a parrot (pappagallo), the plump body of the bird surmounted by a noble large head with benign face and Papal head-dress. He sits on the perch now with folded wings, but the cage door, in likeness of a portico, ...
— At Home And Abroad - Or, Things And Thoughts In America and Europe • Margaret Fuller Ossoli
... frighten me," she said, trying to moisten her lips with her tongue. But it was dry as a parrot's. It was hard to close her lips. They were oval and suddenly immobile as a picture frame. What if she could not swallow. There was nothing to swallow! ...
— The Vertical City • Fannie Hurst
... Rajah send," repeated the man, parrot fashion, showing plainly enough that he had been trained to use these words and ...
— Middy and Ensign • G. Manville Fenn
... take another case) that a cricket chirps by rubbing his knees together does not interest me; I want to know why he chirps. Is it involuntary, or is it done with the idea of pleasing? Why does a bird sing? The editor is prepared to tell me why a parrot is able to talk, but that is a much less intriguing matter. Why does a bird sing? I do not want an explanation of a thrush's song or a nightingale's, but why does a silly bird go on saying "chiff-chaff" all day long? Is it, for instance, ...
— If I May • A. A. Milne
... said the popinjay,* *parrot "Your might is told in Heav'n and firmament." And then came in the goldfinch fresh and gay, And said this psalm with heartly glad intent, "Domini est terra;" this Latin intent,* *means The God of Love hath earth in governance: And then the wren ...
— The Canterbury Tales and Other Poems • Geoffrey Chaucer
... the Colonial representatives that they did not expect us to tax raw materials. And so nothing was left to Ministers, determined as they were to wriggle out of any agreement with the Colonies at all costs, except to fall back on the old, weary parrot-cry—"Will you tax corn?" "Will you tax butter?" and so on through the whole list of articles of common consumption, the taxation of any one of which was thought to be valuable ...
— Constructive Imperialism • Viscount Milner
... son, Kshatradharman of regulated vows, proceeded., borne by red steeds. Kshatradeva, the son of Sikhandin, himself urging well-decked steeds of the hue of lotus-leaves and with eyes of pure white, proceeded (against Drona). Beautiful steeds of the Kamvoja breed, decked with the feathers of the green parrot, bearing Nakula, quickly ran towards thy army. Dark steeds of the clouds wrathfully bore Uttamaujas, O Bharata, to battle, against the invincible Drona, standing with arrows aimed. Steeds, fleet as the wind, and of variegated hue, bore Sahadeva with upraised weapons to that fierce ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 2 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... turn with a most formidable roll of papers. The other individual in the room was a Hungarian, who moved about, sat down, and rose up, with the most restless impatience, twirled his mustachios, and kept up a most lively conversation with a caged parrot which stood on ...
— Servia, Youngest Member of the European Family • Andrew Archibald Paton
... anybody but a Forsyte at forty; but she was seventy-two, and had never looked better. And one felt that there were capacities for enjoyment about her which might yet come out. She owned three canaries, the cat Tommy, and half a parrot—in common with her sister Hester;—and these poor creatures (kept carefully out of Timothy's way—he was nervous about animals), unlike human beings, recognising that she could not help being blighted, attached themselves ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... Hixon's parrot!" said the owner of the big auto. "I've got him in a cage in the back of my car. He's doing that yelling. I forgot all ...
— Six Little Bunkers at Grandma Bell's • Laura Lee Hope
... regarded. Colonels, captains, and sergeants were given their proper place and rank. So with the political world; the President, Cabinet, and leading officers of the government were learned by heart, and nothing gratified the keen humor of my father more than the parrot-like readiness with which I lisped these difficult names." That they did not mean much even to such a precocious child as Clara Barton is shown by an incident of those early days, when her sister Dorothy asked her how she ...
— Ten American Girls From History • Kate Dickinson Sweetser
... course. Now I hadn't no intention of tellin' about that hog; hadn't thought of it for a thousand year, as you might say. I just commenced to tell about Angie Phinney, about how fast she could talk, and that reminded me of a parrot that belonged to Sylvanus Cahoon's sister—Violet, the sister's name was—loony name, too, if you ask ME, 'cause she was a plaguey sight nigher bein' a sunflower than she was a violet—weighed two hundred and ten and had a face ...
— Kent Knowles: Quahaug • Joseph C. Lincoln
... or elsewhere, provided they had interpreted the young ladies' wishes as toys and not real live creatures. "I'll thank you to bring me a monkey and some grapes," said Felix. "I also wish for a monkey," said Winny. "No, no, Winny," said Zoe, "don't have a monkey, they smell so. Let us have each a parrot." "Oh yes, yes, a parrot. Bring Zoe a green one and me a blue one," said Winny, "A blue one, you stupid girl," said Oscar, "there never was a blue one in all the world." "Then I will have a yellow one; red parrots are so common and vulgar," Lilly said, "but whatever you do, mind and ...
— Yr Ynys Unyg - The Lonely Island • Julia de Winton
... ten dollars and a box of cigars fer the bunch; and him jest settin' there laughin' like a plumb fool and tellin' me I didn't need to worry, they'd all vote Republican fer nothin'! Talked like a parrot: 'Vote a Republican! Republican eternal!' Republican! Faugh, he don't know no more why he's a Republican than a yeller dog'd know! I went around to-night, when he was out, thought mebbe I could fix it up with the others. No, sir! Couldn't ...
— In the Arena - Stories of Political Life • Booth Tarkington
... thought here to close this chapter; but finding that, as the parrot, which other while useth the form of a man's voice, yet being beaten and chaffed, returneth to his own natural voice, so some of our opposites, who have been but erst prating somewhat of the language of Canaan against us, finding themselves pressed and perplexed in such a way of reasoning, ...
— The Works of Mr. George Gillespie (Vol. 1 of 2) • George Gillespie
... in this country; that's one comfort," observed Billy, as he began to munch away at his share of a parrot. ...
— The Three Admirals • W.H.G. Kingston
... which time the enemy again began to close with us, and at five o'clock was not more than three miles distant. At six o'clock she opened a harmless fire with the Parrot gun in her bow, the shot falling far short of us. The sun set at a quarter to seven, by which time she had got so near that she managed to send two or three shots over us, and was ...
— Sketches From My Life - By The Late Admiral Hobart Pasha • Hobart Pasha
... and wholesome evening meal. A huge Newfoundland dog sits upon his haunches near this circle, his eyes eagerly watching for a morsel to be thrown him, the which, when happening, his jaws close with a sudden snap, and are instantly agape for more. A green and gold parrot also wanders about this knot of men, sometimes nibbling the crumbs offered it, and anon breaking forth into expressions which, from their tone, evince no great respect for some of the commandments in the Decalogue. Between the long-boat and the fore-hatch ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII. No. 3. March 1848 • Various
... desolate country covered with thick jungle. In the midst of the jungle grows a circle of palm trees, and in the center of the circle stand six chattees full of water, piled one above another: below the sixth chattee is a small cage which contains a little green parrot; on the life of the parrot depends my life; and if the parrot is killed I must die. It is. however," he added, "impossible that the parrot should sustain any injury, both on account of the inaccessibility of the country, and because, by my appointment, many thousand genii surround ...
— The Junior Classics, Volume 1 • Willam Patten
... in our palm-leaf hut; the fatted calf (in the shape of a parrot of gorgeous plumage) was killed—and devoured by the patient with something approaching to relish—and my reputation as a great ...
— The Congo Rovers - A Story of the Slave Squadron • Harry Collingwood
... Robinson (art. "Ticklishness," Dictionary of Psychological Medicine), "local titillation of the skin, though in parts remote from the reproductive organs, plainly acts indirectly upon them as a stimulus. Thus, Harvey records that, by stroking the back of a favorite parrot (which he had possessed for years and supposed to be a male), he not only gave the bird gratification,—which was the sole intention of the illustrious physiologist,—but also caused it to reveal its sex ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 4 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... and easy to leave. I saw many, many women in the London parks and shopping district so perverted as to be on friendly terms with dogs, and in their homes, with cats and cockatoos, and who had no affection for children—women who could try to understand the screams of a parrot, the barking of a dog, but who would not tolerate the lovely patois of the nursery. Jane, the salvation of society depends on good mothers, and if women decline to be mothers at all, it is a shameful and ...
— The Measure of a Man • Amelia Edith Huddleston Barr
... sort of elder sister to her, and the only authority in the house was the grandmother. She ordered the servants, and her daughter paid her the same timid reverence as in the time of her short frocks. Frau Marker seldom opened her lips except to eat, or to answer her mother in a parrot-like sort of echo. Frau Brohl's energetic spirit stirred even in these narrow boundaries. She did not feel at home in Berlin; she met no one she knew in the streets, and in fact knew no one, and this ...
— The Malady of the Century • Max Nordau
... He wore tight red trousers, a red and blue turban on his head, and a tight jeweled tunic, covered with pearl buttons. His sash was green, dotted with purple spots. He had purple parrot feathers at his waist ...
— Fil and Filippa - Story of Child Life in the Philippines • John Stuart Thomson
... Where the sea otter mews to its brood in the ripples, As the pelican wings near the palm-forest gloom. Ghosts of the buccaneers flit through the branches, Dusky and dim in the shadows of eve, While shrill screams the parrot,—the lord of Potanches, 'Drake, Captain Drake, you've had ...
— Famous Privateersmen and Adventurers of the Sea • Charles H. L. Johnston
... situation that night, Rex and Bowles taking the lead by virtue of their superior resolution and experience, was productive of absolutely no result except to place an additional damper upon their already sufficiently depressed spirits. Bob said nothing, but, like the queen's parrot, he thought the more. Brook frankly acknowledged himself quite unequal to the emergency, as did Dale, but both cheerfully stated their readiness to do anything they might be directed to do. And here it may be stated that misfortune had been gradually ...
— The Pirate Island - A Story of the South Pacific • Harry Collingwood
... words, and immediately afterwards his Excellency himself, with his foot wrapped in a woollen sock, accompanied the Bishop out. The lofty figure, clothed now in a dark-green morning coat, seemed to me more imposing than ever. He swung a stick in his hand, upon which a grey parrot was sitting, which, while it strove to maintain its balance, screamed with all its might after the Bishop, 'Adieu to ...
— The Home • Fredrika Bremer
... a similar feeling of distrust of a cruel master by crouching up to him when called, instead of being delighted to see him, and according him a frisky welcome. I will give an instance of what I once saw a bad-tempered man do with a bird in India. The animal was a small green parrot which the man had taught to perform a certain trick; but I don't know what it was, because the parrot did not execute it when asked to do so. The owner of the bird was a very mild private individual, who I thought was fond of animals, and who asked me to see the effect of his training ...
— The Horsewoman - A Practical Guide to Side-Saddle Riding, 2nd. Ed. • Alice M. Hayes
... three words I had, parrot-like, learned by heart, astonished that such sounds could mean anything, astonished, too, at their being understood. We started, he running at full speed, I dragged along and jerked about in his light chariot, wrapped in oilcloth, ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... cowboys was called Hookey. His nose resembled that of a parrot and he had the disposition of a locoed coyote, according to Pug and Slats. Hookey took a dislike to Pan, and always sought to arouse the boy's temper. These cowboys were always gone in the morning before Pan got up, but by the ...
— Valley of Wild Horses • Zane Grey
... pets, and, next to a dog, quite the most interesting and intelligent. They are always cheerful: whistling, singing, and talking. The gray parrot is the best talker, and speaks much more distinctly than any other kind, but the Blue-fronted Amazon is more amusing and far better-tempered as a rule. These birds are very beautiful, with bright green plumage and touches of yellow and red, and a blue patch on the forehead. The ...
— What Shall We Do Now?: Five Hundred Games and Pastimes • Dorothy Canfield Fisher
... voice grated also on old Judge Bowman, who threw down his book and looked up over his bowed spectacles. He was a testy old fellow, with a Burgundy face and shaggy white hair, a chin and nose that met together like a parrot's, and an eye like a hawk. It was one of his principles to permit none of his intimates to speak ill of his friends in his hearing. Criticisms, therefore, by an outsider like Cobb were ...
— The Fortunes of Oliver Horn • F. Hopkinson Smith
... you half shut your eyes and looked—" Katharine half shut her eyes and looked, but she looked in the wrong direction, and Cassandra laughed more than ever, and was still laughing and doing her best to explain in a whisper that Aunt Eleanor, through half-shut eyes, was like the parrot in the cage at Stogdon House, when the gentlemen came in and Rodney walked straight up to them and wanted to know what they ...
— Night and Day • Virginia Woolf
... case, for a little accident befell my nurse, in which my eldest brother's tutor, an unfrocked priest, as he was then discovered to be, was also concerned. My earliest memory, and a very hazy one it is, mixed up with some story or other about a parrot, is of having seen my grandmother, the Duchesse d'Orleans-Penthievre, at Ivry. After that I recollect being at the Chateau of Meudon with my great-aunt, the Duchesse de Bourbon, a tiny little woman; and being taken to see the Princesse Louise de Conde at the Temple, and then I remember ...
— Memoirs • Prince De Joinville
... for thirty years showed us through the grounds, where the King's greyhounds are buried, and where he pleaded to be buried with them. The guide had no idea that he possessed a certain dramatic genius for pathos, for, parrot-like, he was repeating the story he had told perhaps a thousand times before. But when he showed us the graves of the greyhounds which ate the poisoned food which had been prepared ...
— As Seen By Me • Lilian Bell
... paused by the shrine, his head lowered to the damp earth. A green Parrot in the branches preened his wet wings and screamed against the thunder as the circle under the tree filled with the shifting shadows of beasts. There was a Black-buck at the Bull's heels—such a buck as Findlayson in his far-away life upon earth might have seen in dreams—a ...
— Kipling Stories and Poems Every Child Should Know, Book II • Rudyard Kipling
... Harrison kept a parrot called Ginger. Nobody in Avonlea had ever kept a parrot before; consequently that proceeding was considered barely respectable. And such a parrot! If you took John Henry Carter's word for it, never was such an unholy bird. It swore terribly. Mrs. Carter would have taken ...
— Anne Of Avonlea • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... Beholding the Apsara in those woods, the illustrious Rishi Vyasa, O Yudhishthira, became suddenly smitten with desire. The Apsara (Ghritachi), seeing the Rishi's heart troubled by desire, transformed herself into a she-parrot and came to that spot. Although he beheld the Apsara disguised in another form, the desire that had arisen in the Rishi's heart (without disappearing) spread itself over every part of his body. Summoning all ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 3 - Books 8, 9, 10, 11 and 12 • Unknown
... eventful years, augmented by petty, suggestive, yet meaningless recent affronts, shaded by somber-hued reveries, congest about the center of Oswald's sensitive consciousness at the parrot-like yell ...
— Oswald Langdon - or, Pierre and Paul Lanier. A Romance of 1894-1898 • Carson Jay Lee
... put her head farther out of the window, and screamed in a queer voice that echoed like a parrot's, "Oh, 'Melia! 'Melia! it's Mrs. Liscom's, it's Mrs. Liscom's, and the wind's this way! Come, quick, and help me get out the best feather bed, and the counterpane that mother knit! ...
— The Jamesons • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... He mocks and mimics all he sees and hears, Yet with a quaint and graceful licence—Prithee For this once do not as Prynne would, were he Primate of England. With your Grace's leave, He lives in his own world; and, like a parrot 100 Hung in his gilded prison from the window Of a queen's bower over the public way, Blasphemes with a bird's mind:—his words, like arrows Which know no aim beyond the archer's wit, Strike sometimes what eludes philosophy.— 105 [TO ARCHY.] Go, sirrah, and repent of your offence Ten minutes ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley Volume I • Percy Bysshe Shelley
... you next about Buddy helping Sammie Littletail, that is if the man comes to cut our grass and lets our puppy dog hide under the door-mat to scare the parrot next door. ...
— Buddy And Brighteyes Pigg - Bed Time Stories • Howard R. Garis
... he objected to noise, and for that reason he eschewed the company of the kakas and paroquets who ranged the forest in flocks, and spoilt all quietude by quarrelling and screeching in the tree-tops. But for the kakapo, the green ground-parrot who lived in a hollow rata tree and looked like a bunch of maiden-hair fern, he had great respect. This was a night-bird who interfered with no one, and knew all that went on in the ...
— The Tale of Timber Town • Alfred Grace
... "Britannic" with the fixed conviction that I should never, never return. For six weeks before we started the word America had only to be breathed to me, and I burst into floods of tears! I was leaving my children, my bullfinch, my parrot, my "aunt" Boo, whom I never expected to see again alive, just because she said I never would, and I was going to face the unknown dangers of the Atlantic and of a strange, barbarous land. Our farewell ...
— McClure's Magazine, Vol 31, No 2, June 1908 • Various
... scoundrel Parrot," burst out Sir Brian; "because I wouldn't have any more wine of him—No, it's Vidler, the apothecary. By heavens! Lady Anne, I told you it would be so. Why didn't you ask the Miss Vidlers to ...
— The Newcomes • William Makepeace Thackeray
... parrot market in every port, however, and this is a popular place of resort. Here are cool trees and drinking stands, or booths, where cocoanut milk and cool ...
— A Little Journey to Puerto Rico - For Intermediate and Upper Grades • Marian M. George
... his knees before The goddess Venus, and to Bacchus fell A willing victim; while his babbling mouth Did spew dire boastings of official pull, While Folly's goblet filled unto the brim Slopped over, when in wordy contest, he With green-winged parrot did engage, and fain Its neck would there have wrung because its hue Proclaimed not sympathy with those who bear The orange flag when they procession make! The guardsmen of the peace should ever soar On wings of probity and moral worth As Erin's Isle had furnished many such I deemed ...
— 'A Comedy of Errors' in Seven Acts • Spokeshave (AKA Old Fogy)
... expatriate him." An aspirant made this generous offer: "I will write you an article every week if you so wish it, as I have nothing to do after supper." Modest was the request of another, concerning remuneration: "I do not ask for money, but would like you to send me a small monkey. I already have a parrot." ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume VI. (of X.) • Various
... am not prepared to maintain; but that there is a good deal of it is certain. A young French gentleman of my acquaintance, who visited England to study the language, told me that the impression made upon him by his first social evening in London was that of a parrot-house. Later on, when he came to comprehend, he, of course, recognized the brilliancy and depth of the average London drawing-room talk; but that is how, not comprehending, it impressed him at first. Listening to the riot of a rookery is much the same ...
— The Second Thoughts of An Idle Fellow • Jerome K. Jerome
... on the divan beside her with a laugh. "Because I sing an English song?" he replied in French. "La! la! I heard a Spanish boy singing in 'Carmen' once in Paris who did not know a word of French beside the score. He learned it parrot-like, as I learn your English songs," he ...
— The Sheik - A Novel • E. M. Hull
... sight o' Books!" cries the Baron, remembering the clever Parrot who uttered a similar exclamation at a Parrot Competition. First, here is Blossom Land and Fallen Leaves, by CLEMENT SCOTT, published by HUTCHINSON & CO., which is an interesting and useful book to those who are able to take a holiday in Cromer, and marvel at the ...
— Punch, Vol. 99., July 26, 1890. • Various |
