"Slimy" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... which flourish well in these antipodean waters and attain a weight of six or seven pounds. Across the river is thrown a primitive bridge, consisting of the trunk of a big tree cut in halves. Very slippery and slimy it looked, and I did not feel inclined to attempt the perilous passage. Near the inn were some extremely nice gardens with the trunks of old tree-ferns filled with flowers, producing a pretty effect ...
— The Last Voyage - to India and Australia, in the 'Sunbeam' • Lady (Annie Allnutt) Brassey
... they had possessed for ages in perfect security. We reached the bed of the stream, where scattered threads of water tinkled as they fell over huge blocks into little pools below, and then went whispering on their way towards the darkness. At the botton of a long slant of greenish slimy stone, patched here and there with moss, I stopped a few minutes, feeling that I could not grasp without an effort the deep gloom and grandeur of my surroundings. The jackdaws had all flown away, and there was no sound now but the tinkle ...
— Wanderings by southern waters, eastern Aquitaine • Edward Harrison Barker
... a thin veneer, and the world today may be slimy with hypocrisy, but no man is justified in killing lions to ...
— The Story of Cole Younger, by Himself • Cole Younger
... (Seizing him again) Pray this instant, you dog, you rotten hound, you slimy snake, you beastly ...
— Androcles and the Lion • George Bernard Shaw
... dreamed of anything like this boy. For half an hour he wandered about the table, and poured out a steady stream of obscenities; his mind was like a swamp, in which dwelt loathsome and hideous serpents which came to the surface at night and showed their flat heads and their slimy coils. In the heavens above or the earth beneath there was nothing sacred to him; there was nothing too revolting to be spewed out. And the company accepted the performance as an old story—the men ...
— The Metropolis • Upton Sinclair
... It was a hot and oppressive day; the air was filled with mosquitoes,—"so thick," says Champlain, "that we could hardly draw breath, and it was wonderful how cruelly they persecuted us,"—their route lay through swampy soil, where the water at places stood knee-deep; over fallen logs, wet and slimy, and under entangling vines; their heavy armor added to their discomfort; the air was close and heavy; altogether it was a progress fit to make one sicken of warfare in the wilderness. After struggling onward till they were almost in despair, they saw two Indians in the distance, and ...
— Historic Tales, Vol. 1 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris
... impulses in harmless discords would not have been floating, dead, in the brown stream which slides through the meadows by her father's door,—or living, with that other current which runs beneath the gas-lights over the slimy pavement, choking with wretched weeds that were ...
— Elsie Venner • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... he still walked in a dream and without feeling his feet, he descended a slight slope and found the ground change in colour from black to a dull red. In his dazed state he had taken several steps into this red before he noticed that it was liquid, unctuous and slimy, like a thick oil. It deepened rapidly and was already over his shoes; he returned to the black shore and stood looking out over the water, if such it could ...
— After London - Wild England • Richard Jefferies
... leaf already"—Chad could see the rock fence where he had sat that spring day—"it's curious and mournful that you can see in any season a sign of the next to come." And there was the creek where he found Dan fishing, and there the road led to the ford where Margaret had spurned his offer of a slimy fish—ugh! "I do love the autumn. It makes me feel like the young woman who told Emerson that she had such mammoth thoughts she couldn't give them utterance—why, wake up, Mr. Buford, wake up!" Chad came ...
— The Little Shepherd of Kingdom Come • John Fox
... push back the death that was crowding close upon him. All night he raved, and his delirious talk went back to the wild scenes of his earlier life. Sometimes he swore savagely; again he made quiet deadly threats; but always his talk was crisp and clean and vigorous. Nothing foul or slimy came to the surface in those ...
— The Yukon Trail - A Tale of the North • William MacLeod Raine
... Grande Terre and thought she would like to be alone there with Robert, in the sun, listening to the ocean's roar and watching the slimy lizards writhe in and out among the ruins of ...
— The Awakening and Selected Short Stories • Kate Chopin
... tax When put down people's backs - Surprising, too, what one can do with fifty fat black beedles - And treacle on a chair Will make a Quaker swear! Then sharp tin tacks And pocket squirts - And cobblers' wax For ladies' skirts - And slimy slugs On bedroom floors - And water jugs On open doors - Prepared with these cheap properties, amusing tricks to play, Upon a friend a man may spend a ...
— Songs of a Savoyard • W. S. Gilbert
... considerable distance we walked along sands of the most perfect smoothness, and then had to make our way over slimy rocks and treacherous masses of seaweed, before we reached the fairy-like forest under the sea, where all the branches of the ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol VIII • Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton, Eds.
... plenty, and the monkies open the shells at low water. There are also abundance of pearl oysters, fixed to loose rocks by their beards, four, five, and six fathoms under water. These resemble our oysters, but are somewhat flatter and thinner in the shell, their flesh being slimy and not eatable, unless dried beforehand and afterwards boiled. Some shells contain twenty or thirty seed pearls, and others have one or two pearls of some size, lying at the head of the oyster, between the fish and the shell; but the inside of the ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume X • Robert Kerr
... it, gather quite a mess of them in a brief time. One morning the cook brought himself into special notice by giving us a fry of the self-immolated creatures. Large watersnakes appeared at the surface now and again, raising their slimy heads a couple of feet or more above the waves. These have been known to board sailing ships by means of a stray rope left dragging in the water, or through an open port near the surface of the sea. But they would hardly attempt such feats with ...
— Due West - or Round the World in Ten Months • Maturin Murray Ballou
... to him. He threw up his arms suddenly and shouted a reply in the broadest Neapolitan, then began to swim vigorously towards the slimy rocks at the base of Castel dell' Ovo. Upon the wooden terrace of the baths among green plants in pots stood three women, probably friends of the proprietor. For though it was already hot, the regular bathing season of Naples ...
— A Spirit in Prison • Robert Hichens
... when something cold and slimy wound itself about one of his legs. He drew back for a second, and the Frog got safely away! But the Crane did not lose his dinner after all, for about his leg was curled a large black water snake, and ...
— Wigwam Evenings - Sioux Folk Tales Retold • Charles Alexander Eastman and Elaine Goodale Eastman
... restless sea. There were days into which the sun shone not; when everybody and everything was sticky with salty distillations; when half the passengers were sea-sick and the other half sick of the sea. The decks were slimy, the cabins stuffy and foul. The hours hung heavily, and the horizon line closed in about us a gray ...
— In the Footprints of the Padres • Charles Warren Stoddard
... mists of the evening dropped, Dropped as a cloth upon the dead, and rose Above the roofs, and by the Unlighted Shrine Lay as the slimy water of the troughs When murrain thins the cattle of Er-Heb: And through the mist men heard ...
— Verses 1889-1896 • Rudyard Kipling
... and Martin Chuzzlewit were here it was muddy, and it is muddy now. There is fine, thin, sticky, slimy, splashy, thick, heavy, dirty mud. Thousands of men and thousands of mules and horses are treading it to mortar. It is mixed with slops from the houses and straw from the stables. You are reminded of the Slough ...
— My Days and Nights on the Battle-Field • Charles Carleton Coffin
... Prix at Paris will always remain one of those mysteries with which the world is laden. Of all disagreeable colour schemes, it is certainly one of the least appealing ever put upon a canvas. It is hardly a scheme at all, since I do not believe the juxtaposition of so many different slimy greens, nowhere properly relieved nor accentuated by a complementary red, can ever be called a scheme. Technically speaking, the canvas is well painted, but it is hardly worthy of the attention its size and subject win. Dagnan-Bouveret has rendered good service as a teacher and ...
— The Galleries of the Exposition • Eugen Neuhaus
... flatted, which adheres to the rock. The texture is somewhat like isinglass, or rather more like fine gum-dragon; and the several layers of the matter it is composed of, are very apparent; being fabricated from repeated parcels of a soft slimy substance, in the same manner as the common martins form theirs of mud. Authors differ much as to the materials of which it is composed: some suppose it to consist of sea-worms, of the mollusca kind; others, of a kind of cuttle-fish, or a glutinous sea-plast called agal-agal. It has also been supposed, ...
— Domestic pleasures - or, the happy fire-side • F. B. Vaux
... true to appearance, that a horse-hair, 'laid,' as Hollinshed says, 'in a pail of water' will become the supporter of seemingly one worm, though probably of an immense number of small slimy water-lice. The hair will twirl round a finger, and sensibly compress it. It is a common experiment with school boys ...
— Literary Remains, Vol. 2 • Coleridge
... about to get a glimpse into the inner heart of being, the brightness quickly dies, and only the surfaces of things remain visible. Oh, the unimaginable length of ages when on the earth there was no living thing! then life's ugly, slimy beginnings; then the conscious soul's fitful dream stretching forth to endless time and space; then the final sleep in abysmal night with its one star of hope twinkling before the all-hidden ...
— Education and the Higher Life • J. L. Spalding
... lie on the hearthrug before the fire, leaning his head upon his hands, and think on those sentences. He shivered as if he had cold slimy water next his skin. That was mean of Wells to shoulder him into the square ditch because he would not swop his little snuff box for Wells's seasoned hacking chestnut, the conqueror of forty. How cold and slimy the water had been! A fellow had once ...
— A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man • James Joyce
... fact that such men are in prison, but that a Dostoevski should be among them. Here is a delicate, sensitive man of genius, in bad health, with a highly organised nervous system, with a wonderful imagination, condemned to live for years in slimy misery, with creatures far worse than the beasts of the field. Indeed, some of the most beautiful parts of the story are where Dostoevski turns from the men to the prison dog and the prison horse, and there finds true friendship. ...
— Essays on Russian Novelists • William Lyon Phelps
... occasion. A thick vapour, half smoke half cloud, drifted along the street, and a thin persistent rain was falling steadily. It pit-patted upon the windows, splashed upon the sills, and gurgled in the water-pipes. Far down beneath him on the drab-coloured slimy road stood the lines of wet cabs, looking like beetles with glistening backs. Round black umbrellas hurried along the shining pavements. A horse had fallen at the door of the Constitutional Club, and an oil-skinned policeman was helping the cabman to raise it. Frank watched it until the harness ...
— A Duet • A. Conan Doyle
... waste; view this globe often convulsed both from within and without; pouring forth from several mouths, rivers of boiling matter, which are imperceptibly leaving immense subterranean graves, wherein millions will one day perish! Look at the poisonous soil of the equator, at those putrid slimy tracks, teeming with horrid monsters, the enemies of the human race; look next at the sandy continent, scorched perhaps by the fatal approach of some ancient comet, now the abode of desolation. Examine the rains, ...
— Letters from an American Farmer • Hector St. John de Crevecoeur
... ooze: Lethe is the river of oblivion in Hades; its slimy depths of forgetfulness are not even ...
— The Vision of Sir Launfal - And Other Poems • James Russell Lowell
... them to observe what a difference there was when they had surmounted the chine and began to descend toward the north upon other people's land. Here all was damp and cold and slow; and chalk looked slimy instead of being clean; and shadowy places had an oozy cast; and trees (wherever they could stand) were facing the east with wrinkled visage, and the west with wiry beards. Willie (who had, among other great inventions, a scheme for ...
— Mary Anerley • R. D. Blackmore
... it? Come in and tell me!" she laughed. "You dassn't, Jim! You're afraid! come in," she flashed, "and I'll make you lick my shoes! And when you're crawling on the floor, Jim, like a slimy dog, I'll kick you out. Hear me, you pup? What you take my child in there for?" she cried. "Hear me? Aw, you pup!" she snarled. "You're afraid ...
— The Mother • Norman Duncan
... comparatively few. There are the crocodiles, more of them than any one wants; there are quantities of flies, particularly the big silent mangrove-fly which lays an egg in you under the skin; the egg becomes a maggot and stays there until it feels fit to enter into external life. Then there are "slimy things that crawl with legs upon a slimy sea," and any quantity of hopping mud-fish, and crabs, and a certain mollusc, and in the water various kinds of cat-fish. Birdless they are save for the flocks of gray parrots that pass over them ...
— Travels in West Africa • Mary H. Kingsley
... break in skate a little lunch so slimy, a west end of a board line is that which shows a little beneath so that necessity is a silk under wear. That is best wet. It is so natural, and why is there flake, there is flake ...
— Tender Buttons - Objects—Food—Rooms • Gertrude Stein
... ridiculous little figure, jogging doggedly over the dank fields. Mile after mile it runs, the little idiot; jumping—sometimes falling into the muddy ditches: it seems anxious rather than otherwise to get itself into a mess; scrambling through the dripping hedges; swarming over tarry fence and slimy paling. On, on it pants—through Bishop's Wood, by tangled Churchyard Bottom, where now the railway shrieks; down sloppy lanes, bordering Muswell Hill, where now stand rows of jerry-built, prim villas. At intervals it stops an instant to dab its eyes with its dingy ...
— Paul Kelver • Jerome Klapka, AKA Jerome K. Jerome
... soon as she begins to manipulate and improve. If a sensible fashion lifts the gown out of the mud, she raises hers midway to the knee. If there is a reaction against an excess of hair oil, and hair slimy and sticky with grease is thought less nice than if left clean with a healthy crisp, she dries and frizzes and sticks hers out on end like certain savages in Africa, or lets it wander down her back like Madge Wildfire's, and thinks herself all ...
— The True Woman • Justin D. Fulton
... This is harvested with ocean reapers run by gasoline engines and brought in barges to the shore, where it may be dried and used locally as a fertilizer or burned and the potassium chloride leached out of the charcoal ashes. But it is hard to handle the bulky, slimy seaweed cheaply enough to get out of it the small amount of potash it contains. So efforts are now being made to get more out of the kelp than the potash. Instead of burning the seaweed it is fermented in vats producing acetic acid (vinegar). From the resulting ...
— Creative Chemistry - Descriptive of Recent Achievements in the Chemical Industries • Edwin E. Slosson
... a critical stage, the hero walked serenely on the scene and confronted the villain. The villain assumed the good old stereotyped posture and shouted out with a horrified expression, 'Stand back, stand back, your hands is cold and slimy!' That busted up the show, as the audience, composed largely of the Academy boys, stood up as one and yelled. They finally started a cheer, 'Stand back, stand back, your hands is cold and slimy!' They repeated this cheer vigorously three times, ...
— Tales of the Road • Charles N. Crewdson
... chained to the wall; or it is done by the bath-man, should you prefer the assistance of another. Within this chamber was a smaller one, containing similar basins, and to one of these I moved, followed by one of the men, who, after lathering me from head to foot with a sort of slimy caustic soap, scrubbed me down with a brush made of aloe shreds. Having overwhelmed me once more with cold and hot water, and given a finishing pull or two at my limbs, he left me to duck myself, if I thought fit; but I had had quite enough, and ...
— Journal of a Visit to Constantinople and Some of the Greek Islands in the Spring and Summer of 1833 • John Auldjo
... silver nitrate at about one hundred degrees with a long rectual tube. Dr. Hare, of Philadelphia, recommends one two-hundredth grain of bichloride of mercury every hour or two (in adults), if the stools are slimy and bloody and if much blood is present, and high rectal injections of witch-hazel water and water, half and half. I know this last is good, and also the following; Oil of fireweed, five drops on sugar every two ...
— Mother's Remedies - Over One Thousand Tried and Tested Remedies from Mothers - of the United States and Canada • T. J. Ritter
... across the seat, and Jimmie, who had to sit next to him, caught him in his arms and held him. He was quivering, with awful motions like a spasm. He made no sound, and Jimmie was terrified, thinking that he was dying. Before long Jimmie felt a hot wetness stealing over his hands, first slimy, then turning sticky. He had to sit there, almost fainting with horror; he dared not say anything, for maybe the policeman would strike him also. He sat, clutching in his arms the shaking body, and whispering under his breath, "Poor Bill! ...
— Jimmie Higgins • Upton Sinclair
... disregarding her signal, shared her mishap; and two were sunk by the American fire. Under these circumstances a seaman, sounding with a boat hook, declared that he found along side three or four feet of slimy mud. This was considered decisive, and the ...
— Sea Power in its Relations to the War of 1812 - Volume 2 • Alfred Thayer Mahan
... father, soft-winged, foul-eyed, hungry-taloned, flitting noiselessly in circles, that grew ever and ever narrower, sure, and unfaltering to the final triumphant swoop! Or no—Rather a coiled and quiescent father, horrible-eyed, lying in slimy rings at the foot of the tree, basilisk gaze fixed upward, while the enthralled bird fluttered hopelessly down, twig by twig, ever nearer ...
— Queed • Henry Sydnor Harrison
... absolutely valueless, but exceedingly harmful; its only merit is that, like its ideal seaweed, it has no backbone of its own, and we may hope that it will soon betake itself to its natural home, the slimy bottom of ...
— Wood-Carving - Design and Workmanship • George Jack
... out on the Dedlow Marsh, its extended dreariness was patent. Its spongy, low-lying surface, sluggish, inky pools, and tortuous sloughs, twisting their slimy way, eel-like, toward the open bay, were all hard facts. So were the few green tussocks, with their scant blades, their amphibious flavor and unpleasant dampness. And if you choose to indulge your fancy—although the flat monotony of the Dedlow Marsh was not inspiring—the wavy ...
— Selected Stories • Bret Harte
... so I fell about only just enough to get used to the feel of the ground as a preliminary to what was coming later. It had rained heavily two or three days before, consequently there were lake districts, slimy reaches of mixed oil and mud and dried, hard-looking islands that were in reality traps to the unwary. The top only was firm, and it had the playful property of sliding rapidly on the greasy substratum and thus sitting you down without warning when you thought ...
— A Dweller in Mesopotamia - Being the Adventures of an Official Artist in the Garden of Eden • Donald Maxwell
... rowing at first, vor t' place war as flat as a table, but arter running vor a vew minutes he says, 'Look owt!' Oi didn't know what to look owt vor, and down oi goes plump into t' water. Vor all at once we had coomed upon a lot o' rocks covered wi' a sort of slimy stuff, and so slippery as you could scarce keep a footing on 'em. Oi picks myself up and vollers him. By this toime, maister, oi war beginning vor to think as there warn't so mooch vun as oi had expected in this koind o' business. Oi had been working two hours loike ...
— Through the Fray - A Tale of the Luddite Riots • G. A. Henty
... and fifty yards," he estimated, and, whipping up the Winchester, sighted full at the ponderous creature's slimy snakelike head. When the recoil jarred his shoulder, Nelson dropped the barrel an inch or so to watch. Nothing happened. The great beast was advancing as before, its incredibly long neck weaving steadily back and forth as though ...
— Astounding Stories, February, 1931 • Various
... miles of bricks and mortar, the tangled railroads, the ceaseless roar of the great city like the din of a huge factory. Here was the mill and the market—here was LIFE in its raw material. When she crossed the murky, slimy river, as she had occasion to do almost daily, after the removal to the North Side, she thought merely how dingy and dirty the place was, and what a pity it was one had to go through such a mess to reach the best shops and the other quarters of the city where "nice" people lived. She saw ...
— One Woman's Life • Robert Herrick
... begetter. Both patron and protg must have been surprised by its lack of impact, and still more surprised by the immense success of The Crock of Gold. The poems are mainly realistic, pictures of slimy city streets with slimy creatures crawling on the pavements. It is an interesting fact that they appeared the same year of Synge's Poems with Synge's famous Preface counselling brutality, counselling anything to bring poetry away from ...
— The Advance of English Poetry in the Twentieth Century • William Lyon Phelps
... and crunched at us at every step, and vomited thick spittle; at every tenth step their keen blue fangs reached for our lives. Meanwhile, the soaked condition of our boots and clothes had rendered us as slimy as though smeared with paste. Also, it so weighed us down as to hinder any active movement, and to cause each step to be taken cautiously, slowly, ...
— Through Russia • Maxim Gorky
... your masters are black; They are filthy with the slimy filth of ages; like the canals on which they float they give forth an evil smell. On soiled perches you sit, swung out on either side over the scummy water—you who should be savage and untamed, who should ...
— Profiles from China • Eunice Tietjens
... have loved to gaze into a spring. The water filled a circular basin, small but deep, and set round with stones, some of which were covered with slimy moss, the others naked, and of variegated hue, reddish, white, and brown. The bottom was covered with coarse sand, which sparkled in the lonely sunbeam, and seemed to illuminate the spring with an unborrowed light. In one spot, the gush of ...
— The Vision of the Fountain (From "Twice Told Tales") • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... connections unsevered from the hard rock, which must be chipped away with the chisel, and often with the blows of the hammer deadened by being struck under water. It is by lifting up the overhanging masses of slimy fuel, tangles, and sea-grass, that we find the delicate varieties, as the Chondrus with its metallic lustre, and the red Algae, or the stony Corallina, which delights in ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, No. 47, September, 1861 • Various
... of desperation and strange exhilarated hope, the miserable woman waited and waited with her two children. On the twelfth day, a revenue cutter came into the port of the Cabanal, towing tio Pascualo's boat behind, bottom-up, blackened, slimy and sticky, floating weirdly like a big coffin and surrounded by schools of fish, unknown to local waters, that seemed bent on getting at a bait they scented through the seams of the ...
— Mayflower (Flor de mayo) • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... Bostoniensis, the only species of eel known in the State, a slimy, squirming creature, informed of mud, still squirming in the pan, is speared and hooked up with various success. Methinks it too occurs in picture, left after the deluge, in many a meadow ...
— A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers • Henry David Thoreau
... with splitting-knives on hake and cod and pollock and haddock, brought in by the noisy power-boats; the lighthouse-keepers from Matinicus Rock, five miles south, in military caps, oilskins, and red rubber boots, towing a dory to be dumped full of slimy hake heads for lobster bait; the post-office and general store above the cove, and the ...
— Jim Spurling, Fisherman - or Making Good • Albert Walter Tolman
... crevices, on all sides, snowy jets gushed up, and streams spouted out of the mouths and nostrils of stone monsters, and fell in glistening drops; while other rivulets, that had run wild, came leaping from one rude step to another, over stones that were mossy, slimy, and green with sedge, because, in a Century of their wild play, Nature had adopted the Fountain of Trevi, with all its elaborate devices, for her own. Finally, the water, tumbling, sparkling, and dashing, with joyous haste and ...
— The Marble Faun, Volume I. - The Romance of Monte Beni • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... the doorway of the same house where he had been lodging all along. Even as he did so Blakeney saw the two spies gather together like a pair of slimy lizards, and whisper excitedly one to another. A third man, who obviously had been dogging Armand's footsteps, came up and joined them after ...
— El Dorado • Baroness Orczy
... Bob Hart. For ten days he did not take off his clothes. When he slept it was in cat naps, an hour snatched now and again from the fight with the rising tide of wealth that threatened to engulf its owners. He was unshaven, unbathed, his clothes slimy with tar and grease. He ate on the job—coffee, beans, bacon, cornbread, whatever the cooks' flunkies brought him—and did not know what he was eating. Gaunt and dominating, with crisp decision and yet unfailing ...
— Gunsight Pass - How Oil Came to the Cattle Country and Brought a New West • William MacLeod Raine
... of his vigil, an odd thing happened. A blast of spray struck Madden with some slimy thing that whipped about his neck and chest and almost tore him from the wheel. With convulsive repugnance, he jerked it loose and held the clammy stuff toward the binnacle light. He saw it was seaweed. Presently more strands ...
— The Cruise of the Dry Dock • T. S. Stribling
... mud of ponds or rivers; and land-snails hide themselves in the ground or under moss and leaves. The heart then ceases perceptibly to beat, but respiration continues in a very faint degree. The common garden snail closes the mouth of his shell when he wants to hibernate, with a slimy covering; but he leaves a very small hole in it somewhere, so as to allow a little air to get in, and keep up his breathing to a slight amount. My experience has been, however, that a great many snails go to sleep in this way, and never wake up again. Either they get frozen to death, ...
— Falling in Love - With Other Essays on More Exact Branches of Science • Grant Allen
... conclusive proof that emancipation was no mistake. Slavery was a twofold cross of woe to the land. It did not only degrade the slave, but it blunted the sensibilities, and, by its terrible weight, carried down under the slimy rocks of society some of the best white people in the South. Like a cankerous malady its venom has touched almost every ...
— History of the Negro Race in America from 1619 to 1880. Vol. 2 (of 2) - Negroes as Slaves, as Soldiers, and as Citizens • George Washington Williams
... her hair: it was a black stream of something oozing from her basket, and it glistened like a slimy snake in the cold still rays ...
— Tess of the d'Urbervilles - A Pure Woman • Thomas Hardy
... the prevailing religious ceremonial lies in the attitudes of abasement that it enforces upon the faithful. A man would be thought a slimy and knavish fellow if he approached any human judge or potentate in the manner provided for approaching the Lord God. It is an etiquette that involves loss of self-respect, and hence it cannot be pleasing to its object, for one cannot think of the Lord God as sacrificing ...
— Damn! - A Book of Calumny • Henry Louis Mencken
... brother-in-law. On the bank of a river they came upon a nest of young pythons. The guests thought it was a curious mound; but the Maharajah recognised the reared heads of the young snakes and told his friends what the heap was. When they came closer, they could see that the long slimy bodies were all twisted together; and with an uncanny feeling, the sportsmen watched these serpents uncoil themselves from each other and glide away and disappear ...
— Bengal Dacoits and Tigers • Maharanee Sunity Devee
... Viviette, and muttered with some bitterness: "And if I fell into a dry ditch she'd say I came up slimy." ...
— Viviette • William J. Locke
... gaming. As he went, by day or night, in rain or fog or burning sun, by the margins of turgid south-western rivers, where his "leaders" shied at the alligators asleep in the stage-road; through dreary pine woods, where the owls hooted at silence; over red, reedy, slimy causeways; in cane-breaks and bayous; past villages where civilization looked westward with a dirk between its teeth, and cracked its horsewhip; past rich plantations where the negroes sang afield, and the planter in the house-porch took off his hat to bow—here, there, always, everywhere, ...
— Bohemian Days - Three American Tales • Geo. Alfred Townsend
... I believe for the first time in his life, snapped an oar and overturned a lantern. Some drift-wood, covered with slimy weeds, washed heavily up at our feet. I remember that a little disabled ground-sparrow, chased by the tide, was fluttering and drowning just in sight, and that Myron drew it out of the water, and held itup for ...
— Men, Women, and Ghosts • Elizabeth Stuart Phelps
... man in a black jersey, who chewed tobacco and squinted observantly at the dock. From this person, at first inclined to be taciturn, Ken learned that the Celestine was sailing the next night, bound for Rio de Janeiro, "and mebbe further." Rio de Janeiro! And here she lay quietly at the slimy wharf, beyond which the gray northern town rose in a ...
— The Happy Venture • Edith Ballinger Price
... crooked mind and heart, same sort of poisonous snake, and since you get it all from him I suppose it can't be helped. Nor changed, except by killing and burying you. One thing is sure, when I'm done you won't be trying any more deals like this. Bah, you slimy reptile, you ...
— In the Shadow of the Hills • George C. Shedd
... day of the seventh John takes Will Cathcart's acceptance from its place in the large safe, and lays it in the smaller box beside his desk, devoted to more pressing and immediate business. Two days later Cathcart picks his way across the slimy yard, passes through the counting-house, and enters his friend's inner sanctum, ...
— John Ingerfield and Other Stories • Jerome K. Jerome
... appear to hear: so his companions made short work of it. They pulled in for the shore of the Red-hill, and laid Roger on the slimy bank:—for they saw no occasion to carry one so heavy and so sulky up to the nice bed of grass which was spread at the top of the red precipice that the waters had cut Oliver knew that there was a knife in ...
— The Settlers at Home • Harriet Martineau
... breezy South; From towns deserted rush the breathless hosts, Swarm round the hills, and darken all the coasts; Boats follow boats along the shouting tides, 450 And spears and javelins pierce his blubbery sides; Now the bold Sailor, raised on pointed toe, Whirls the wing'd harpoon on the slimy foe; Quick sinks the monster in his oozy bed, The blood-stain'd surges circling o'er his head, 455 Steers to the frozen pole his wonted track, And bears the iron ...
— The Botanic Garden - A Poem in Two Parts. Part 1: The Economy of Vegetation • Erasmus Darwin
... the fleshpots and effeminacy. Aldermen of our ancient conception, they may teach him that he has been backsliding once more, and must repent in ashes, as those who are for jewels, titles, essences, banquets, for wallowing in slimy spawn of lucre, have ever to do. They dispossess him ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... time, I was imprest with the same idea. For several minutes I stood contemplating this proud and noble river—violent, but not furious; wild, but still majestic. It was swollen, and was magnificent in appearance, and was washing with its yellow mane, or, as Boileau says, its "slimy beard," the bridge of boats. Its two banks were lost in the twilight, and tho its roaring was loud, still there ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume V (of X) • Various
... things was a perilous traverse watched with great interest by spectators on either side. Often the hardy adventurer, after teetering for some time, would with a descriptive oath sink to his waist in the slimy mud. If the wayfarer was drunk enough, he then proceeded to pelt his tormentors with missiles of the sticky slime. The good humor of the community saved it from absolute despair. Looked at with cold appraising eye, the conditions were decidedly uncomfortable. In addition there was a ...
— The Forty-Niners - A Chronicle of the California Trail and El Dorado • Stewart Edward White
... an agitated voice, turning to his General, "let us destroy this rash mortal at once! Seize her and take her to the Slimy Cave and lock ...
— Tik-Tok of Oz • L. Frank Baum
... win, I touched, despite my loathing sane, The cold, hair-covered, slimy skin, Not yet washed ...
— Enamels and Cameos and other Poems • Theophile Gautier
... "Primera Vista" camp was struck, and the march onward recommenced. But not before The Chaperon had pointed out a terror that "might have been." After breakfast he approached us with a stick held at arm's length, on which hung a dead, slimy-looking, grey snake, about 4 feet long. He explained that this reptile had crawled over the neck of one of the peons as he lay on the grass last night. This had happened before we went to bed, and we felt grateful to The Chaperon for having saved us from ...
— Argentina From A British Point Of View • Various
... and a couple of the men set to work to wash and dry the slimy deck, but waited until the little admiring crowd had looked their fill, the foremost men seeming to take a vast amount of interest in fishology, making several highly intellectual remarks about the configuration of the denizen ...
— Fitz the Filibuster • George Manville Fenn
... praises of father or mother do our Selves good, and comfort them and make them beautiful. They never do them any harm. If they do any harm, it comes of our mixing some of our own praises with them, and that turns them nasty and slimy and poisonous. ...
— At the Back of the North Wind • George MacDonald
... inspection terminated with the repairing of a break in the fence inclosing the spring-hole, a small area of bog-land dotted with hummocks of lush grass. Between the hummocks was a slimy, black ooze that covered the bones of more than one unfortunate animal. The heavy, ripe grass lent an appearance of stability, of solidity, to the ...
— Overland Red - A Romance of the Moonstone Canon Trail • Henry Herbert Knibbs
... "Here comes Mr. Steele," as badly scared as his dazed senses would permit him to be, Alfred fumbled and scrambled about for a moment. He spied a large wheel-barrow overloaded with cows' ears and other by-products of green hides that go into the refuse and find their way to the glue factory. This slimy mess was just out ...
— Watch Yourself Go By • Al. G. Field
... tall spires and shade the shuddering deep; She gains the deck, displays her wonted store, Her cords and scourges wet with prisoners' gore; Gripes, pincers, thumb-screws spread beneath her feet, Slow poisonous drugs and loads of putrid meat; Disease hangs drizzling from her slimy locks, And hot contagion issues from ...
— The Columbiad • Joel Barlow
... town is smoke. It rolls sullenly in slow folds from the great chimneys of the iron-foundries, and settles down in black, slimy pools on the muddy streets. Smoke on the wharves, smoke on the dingy boats, on the yellow river,—clinging in a coating of greasy soot to the house-front, the two faded poplars, the faces of the passers-by. The long ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 7, Issue 42, April, 1861 • Various
... would be! Others look at the dancing, glittering surface, but you, if you are a wise man, will go down in the diving-bell sometimes, and for a while stop there at the bottom, and turn a bull's-eye straight upon all the slimy, crawling things that are there, and that would die if ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... weather cold and hot, dry and wet, and their ration of food consisted of a small can of barley sod in water—one can for five men. Drinking water came from the river which in turn was salt at high tide, and slimy and filthy at low. With such food and drink, the small contingent within the fort lay about for weeks "night and day groaning in every corner ... most pittifull ...
— Medicine in Virginia, 1607-1699 • Thomas P. Hughes
... cases are very very rare—but live almost entirely on fish. I remember seeing one catch a paddy-bird on one occasion near the junction of the Koosee with the Ganges. My boat was fastened to the shore near a slimy creek, that came oozing into the river from some dense jungle near. I was washing my hands and face on the bank, and the boatmen were fishing with a small hand-net, for our breakfast. Numbers of attenuated melancholy-looking paddy-birds were stalking ...
— Sport and Work on the Nepaul Frontier - Twelve Years Sporting Reminiscences of an Indigo Planter • James Inglis
... brought him once more to that quarter of the town "best suited to the likes of him," according to the innkeeper's opinion, and he found himself actually seeking a house of entertainment in the slimy, ill-lighted narrow street, when, from out the dimness, running towards him, with bare feet paddling in the sludge, came a slatternly girl, with unkempt wisps of red hair hanging over her face ...
— The Light of Scarthey • Egerton Castle
... at home. If we have it not there, we have it not anywhere. If we have not genuine grace in the family circle, all our outward and public plausibility merely springs from a fear of the world or from the slimy, putrid pool of our own selfishness. I tell you the home is a mighty test of character! What you are at home you are everywhere, whether ...
— The Wedding Ring - A Series of Discourses for Husbands and Wives and Those - Contemplating Matrimony • T. De Witt Talmage
... his feet, elevated the torch with infinite precaution, throwing a fan-shaped light over the stretch of sink he had suspected and feared. It flanked the flat, wet path of rock on either side. Here Death spread its slimy trap ...
— The Flaming Jewel • Robert Chambers
... rites. Each of these devils was armed with a knife, and bore in her hand some cannibal trophy. Jen-ken's wife, a corpulent wench of forty-five,—dragged along the ground, by a single limb, the slimy corpse of an infant ripped alive from its mother's womb. As her eyes met those of her husband the two fiends yelled forth a shout of mutual joy, while the lifeless babe was tossed in the air and caught as it descended on the point of a spear. ...
— Captain Canot - or, Twenty Years of an African Slaver • Brantz Mayer
... across we saw some ox tracks leading toward the lake, and in the hope we might find the water drinkable we turned off at right angles to our course and went that way also. Long before we reached the water of the lake, the bottom became a thin, slimy mud which was very hard on our mocassins. When we reached the water we found it to be of a wine color, and so strongly alkaline as to feel slippery to the touch, and ...
— Death Valley in '49 • William Lewis Manly
... they find it not quite so shallow, as they had supposed from seeing the garzones wading about with but the slightest portion of their shanks below the surface. For at the bottom is a substratum of mud; a soft slimy ooze, firm enough to support the light birds, but through which the heavier quadrupeds, further weighted with themselves and their baggage, sink to ...
— Gaspar the Gaucho - A Story of the Gran Chaco • Mayne Reid
... a glass tank filled with water, and ornamented in the middle by a miniature pyramid of rock-work interlaced with weeds. Snails clung to the sides of the tank; tadpoles and tiny fish swam swiftly in the green water, slippery efts and slimy frogs twined their noiseless way in and out of the weedy rock-work; and on top of the pyramid there sat solitary, cold as the stone, brown as the stone, motionless as the stone, a little bright-eyed toad. The art of keeping fish and reptiles as domestic pets had not at that time been popularized ...
— No Name • Wilkie Collins
... existence within the Infinite Mind of THE ALL. And even in our own little solar system there are regions and planes of life far higher than ours, and beings compared to which we earth-bound mortals are as the slimy life-forms that dwell on the ocean's bed when compared to Man. There are beings with powers and attributes higher than Man has ever dreamed of the gods' possessing. And yet these beings were once as you, and still lower—and you will be even as they, and still higher, in time, for such is ...
— The Kybalion - A Study of The Hermetic Philosophy of Ancient Egypt and Greece • Three Initiates
... Conservative, work scab, and are rightly termed the "deserving poor," inasmuch as they richly deserve every degree of poverty, every ounce of indignity, and every inch of condescension they stagger under. But their children don't deserve these things. And just mark the slimy little word-shuffle which, in order to keep the "deserving poor" up to their work, pronounces upon them the blessings obviously adherent only to that unquestionable guarantee of unselfish purpose, namely, voluntary ...
— Such is Life • Joseph Furphy
... is haunted, doctor, and if I lived there a day longer, I couldn't do my work. I didn't wish to discuss it—you know we don't believe in that—but you meant to do me a service. It's a crime to rent that house. It's slimy. ...
— The Strange Cases of Dr. Stanchon • Josephine Daskam Bacon
... funereal robes and huge Hack caps, with cruel lips and hard, steely eyes, sitting in solemn state in a gloomy hall and dispensing death, disgrace, or long terms of prison, at the very least, to all comers. For her, the police-station was a dungeon, and she fancied the Count chained to a dank and slimy wall in a painful position, chilled to the marrow by the touch of the dripping stone, his teeth chattering, his face distorted with suffering. Of course he was in a solitary cell, behind a heavy door, braced with clamps and bolts and locks and studded with ...
— A Cigarette-Maker's Romance • F. Marion Crawford
... Pyole, H. Ord. p.469. 'I must needs agree with Diocles, who being asked, whether were the better fish, aPike or a Conger: That (said he) sodden, and this broild; shewing us thereby, that all flaggy, slimy and moist fish (as Eeles, Congers, Lampreys, Oisters, Cockles, Mustles, and Scallopes) are best broild, rosted or bakt; but all other fish of a firm substance and drier constitution is rather to be ...
— Early English Meals and Manners • Various
... the ways of escaped nuns," said Arthur, "but I am going to study them. I'll wager you find Claire behind the rusty garments of this obscure, muddy, slimy little woman. They have ...
— The Art of Disappearing • John Talbot Smith
... with progressive men—thinking, sagacious, long-headed men. The contrast between the spirit of the city and the city's architecture is like the contrast between waking and sleep. Apparently there is a 'boom' in everything but that one dead feature. The water in the gutters used to be stagnant and slimy, and a potent disease-breeder; but the gutters are flushed now, two or three times a day, by powerful machinery; in many of the gutters the water never stands still, but has a steady current. Other sanitary improvements have been made; ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... down each side of his bristly chin—while each tooth loosened from its socket with individual fear.—Not a word could he utter, for his tongue, in its fright, clung with terror to his upper jaw, as tight as do the bellies of the fresh and slimy soles, paired together by some fisherwoman; but if his tongue was paralysed, his heart was not—it throbbed against his ribs with a violence which threatened their dislocation from the sternum, and with a sound which reverberated through the dark, ...
— Olla Podrida • Frederick Marryat (AKA Captain Marryat)
... our voices in a call with the unreasoning obstinacy with which men will cling to hope, but no answer came back to us save a hollow moaning from the depths beneath. Footsore and heart-sick, we retraced our steps and climbed the slimy slope once more. ...
— The Mystery of Cloomber • Arthur Conan Doyle
... people only a step or two above the poorest class, with whom they fare scantily, endure harsh treatment, lead shifting and precarious lives, and finally drop into the slough of evil, through which, in their best estate, they do but pick their slimy way ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XII. July, 1863, No. LXIX. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... between the grotesque creatures he found there and certain animals of his acquaintance. The marquis, with his leanness and small crafty-looking head, reminded him exactly of a long green grasshopper. Vuillet impressed him as a pale, slimy toad. He was more considerate for Roudier, a fat sheep, and for the commander, an old toothless mastiff. But the prodigious Granoux was a perpetual cause of astonishment to him. He spent a whole evening measuring this imbecile's facial angle. When he heard him mutter ...
— The Fortune of the Rougons • Emile Zola
... populous villages, and towns, and fenced cities—then spreading themselves, impelled by the love of glory and zeal of proselytism, over distant countries; the other, reposing ever in luxurious ease and wealth on the rich soil, watered by their slimy river, never quitting it for a foreign clime or displaying, unless forced, the least change in their position or habits of life. The intellectual character, the metaphysical belief, and the religious sentiments and practices of the two nations were equally diverse; one adoring an ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 347, September, 1844 • Various
... His palace and his most exalted courts Bestrewn with fragments of the Peristyle; The broken column, slab and monolith O'erhung with pendant moss and slimy mold; Its dismal haunts and gloomy apertures Become the habitation of the bat, The hissing serpent and the scorpion, The basking lizard dull and indolent, And forms of reptile, foul ...
— Mountain idylls, and Other Poems • Alfred Castner King
... But the fellow laughed with a sinister leer. "No—ah, no, the lovely senorita will come with me," he replied; but there was the temper of steel in his words. For Snake le Vasquez, on the border, where human life was lightly held, was known as the Slimy Viper. Of all the evil men in that inferno, Snake was the foulest. Steeped in vice, he feared neither God nor man, and respected no woman. And now, Estelle St. Clair, drawing-room pet, pampered darling of New York society, which she ruled with an iron ...
— Merton of the Movies • Harry Leon Wilson
... place. No sooner had they done so than almost they wished themselves back again, for there was something about the spot that frightened them, to say nothing of the horrible smell which made Tua feel ill. It was a great tank, with a little artificial island in its centre, full of slimy water that looked almost black because of the shadow of the high walls, and round it ran a narrow stone path. At one spot in this path, however, where grew some dank-looking trees and bushes, was a slope, also of stone, and on the slope with its prow ...
— Morning Star • H. Rider Haggard
... rolling of the open sea. The ocean in the spaces between the foam was slimy in appearance. The waves, seen through the twilight in indistinct outline, somewhat resembled plashes of gall. Here and there a wave floating flat showed cracks and stars, like a pane of glass broken by stones; in the centre of these ...
— The Man Who Laughs • Victor Hugo
... found himself sinking. At the same time the grasp on his collar tightened, while with almost superhuman power he was flung backward. With such force did Jack handle his adversary that he sent him flying several yards away, where he fell in a pool of dark, slimy water. ...
— Jack North's Treasure Hunt - Daring Adventures in South America • Roy Rockwood
... frowning keep and solid walls of the great stone castles, in which the Norman barons lived, betokened an age of violence and suspicion. Beauty gave way to the needs of safety. Girdled with a green and slimy ditch, round the inner side of which ran a parapeted wall pierced along the top with shot-holes, stood the buildings, spreading ...
— The Ontario Readers: Fourth Book • Various
... this I gathered as we pulled slowly along the coast, seeking an opening whereby we could pass inward to the land; but a weary time passed or ere we came upon that which we sought. Yet, in the end, we found it—a slimy-banked creek, which proved to be the estuary of a great river, though we spoke of it always as a creek. Into this we entered, and proceeded at no great pace upwards along its winding course; and as we made forward, we scanned the low banks upon each side, ...
— The Boats of the "Glen Carrig" • William Hope Hodgson
... But hadn't I been carrying the key to it every minute for the last forty-eight hours? There must be a mine of stuff in that desk of Tausig's, Mag. The touch of every paper in it is slimy with some dirty trick, some bad secret, some mean action. It's a pity that I hadn't time to go through 'em all; it would have been interesting; but under a bundle of women's letters, which that old fox keeps for no good reason, I'll bet, I lit on ...
— In the Bishop's Carriage • Miriam Michelson
... as they moved forward the head of the stone steps was reached, lying in the darkness of the clouded night nearly hidden by a great overhanging willow, whose pensile twigs brushed the roof of the waterside summer-house supported upon slimy water-worn piles, to one of which the boat-chain was attached, the rusty iron creaking faintly against the ring-bolt as the skiff swung softly to and fro, influenced by the ...
— The King's Esquires - The Jewel of France • George Manville Fenn
... matter with this place, she made me take her into it. Nerve? Say, I'm telling you there wasn't any of it left out of her when she was born!" He was silent for a moment, and then added: "When we came to that dripping, slimy rock with the big yellow skull layin' there like a poison toadstool, she didn't screech and pull back, but just gave a little gasp and stared at it hard, and her fingers pinched my arm until it hurt. It was a devilish-looking thing, yellow as a sick orange and soppy with the drip of the wet moss ...
— The Alaskan • James Oliver Curwood
... potato-bugs, The caterpillars, and the slugs, The beetles striped with yellow lines, That spoil the tender melon-vines, And looked round with his blinking eyes For cabbage-worms and turnip-flies, Low-flying moths with downy wings, And slimy snails in shady nooks. It was the cruellest of things To kill poor Hop Toad for ...
— The Nursery, No. 165. September, 1880, Vol. 28 - A Monthly Magazine For Youngest Readers • Various
... at the Nabob, whose immense person almost blocked the pavement, revealed to him suddenly in that walk oppressed by the weight of his wealth, a something low and vulgar which he had not previously remarked. Yes, he was indeed the adventurer from the south, moulded of the slimy clay that covers the quays of Marseilles, trodden down by all the nomads and wanderers of a seaport. Kind, generous, forsooth! as harlots are, or thieves. And the gold, flowing in torrents through that tainted and luxurious world, splashing the very walls, seemed to him now to be loaded ...
— The Nabob • Alphonse Daudet
... of the hut, and kicked after him a few rags of clothing which were lying about on the floor, all filthy and slimy. ...
— The Sowers • Henry Seton Merriman
... a slimy fog crept into the city, as it grew blind. Street lights were gloomy swamp flowers, which flickered on blackish, glowing stalks. Objects and creatures had only chilly shadows and blurred movements. Like a monster, a night bus reeled past Kohn. The poet called out: "Now one is again ...
— The Prose of Alfred Lichtenstein • Alfred Lichtenstein
... barrows, stands, and show-tents. There were cheap jacks with shoddy watches, phrenologists with two chairs, fat women, dwarfs, wandering minstrels, itinerant hawkers of toffee in tin hat-boxes, and other shiny and slimy creatures with the air and grease of the towns. There were a few oxen and horses also, tethered and lanketted, and kicking up the dust ...
— The Manxman - A Novel - 1895 • Hall Caine
... reptiles do great damage in fields and gardens, especially to crops of lettuces, cabbages, or turnips. Their track is perceived by the shining and slimy substance which they leave behind them. There are several kinds of these little animals. The white and brown leathery kind often even destroy the strong stems of young cabbage, and other similar plants. ...
— The Cook and Housekeeper's Complete and Universal Dictionary; Including a System of Modern Cookery, in all Its Various Branches, • Mary Eaton
... conscience and prepare the way for every vice and crime. Then, with all that, let us briefly review a few of the attendant miseries of intemperance that are about us like a swarm of locusts coming as a plague: In the slimy trail of this alcoholic serpent can be found everything that is dark and dreadful—yea, everything that is ruinous. In it can be found men without manhood, women without womanhood, infancy without hope, want and woe, rage and wretchedness, disease and death; and, furthermore, in the trail of this ...
— Sparkling Gems of Race Knowledge Worth Reading • Various
... attendance at a gymnasium under the supervision of Professor Schneipp, the Bavarian Hercules; I had practiced the most approved 'knock-outs' known to my instructor, the famous pugilist, Melchizedeck Cohen (popularly known as 'Slimy' Cohen); I had given up an hour a day to studying the management of the concussor with the aid of a punching-ball; the alarms were ready for fixing, and I even had the address of an undoubtedly disreputable ...
— The Uttermost Farthing - A Savant's Vendetta • R. Austin Freeman
... Uisge, or "Water-horse," a horse with staring eyes, webbed feet, and a slimy coat, is still dreaded. He assumes different forms and lures the unwary to destruction, or he makes love in human shape to women, some of whom discover his true nature by seeing a piece of water-weed in his hair, and only escape with difficulty. ...
— The Religion of the Ancient Celts • J. A. MacCulloch
... till I end my song, Sweet Thames, run softly, for I speak not loud or long. But at my back in a cold blast I hear The rattle of the bones, and chuckle spread from ear to ear. A rat crept softly through the vegetation Dragging its slimy belly on the bank While I was fishing in the dull canal On a winter evening round behind the gashouse 190 Musing upon the king my brother's wreck And on the king my father's death before him. White bodies naked on the low damp ground ...
— The Waste Land • T. S. Eliot
... was a daring and keen-eyed wrecker. For a season both throve. He had escaped detection in many a heavy run of contraband goods; and she had come in for many a valuable 'waif and stray' which the receding waters left upon the slimy strand. It was, however, her last venture, which, in her neighbors' language, had made her. Made her, indeed, independent of her fellows, but a murderer before her God!... About day-break in a thick misty morning in April, a vessel, heavily laden, was seen to ground on 'The Jibber Sand;' and after ...
— International Miscellany of Literature, Art and Science, Vol. 1, - No. 3, Oct. 1, 1850 • Various
... went on sinking. Small slimy spots began to appear, which glittered steadily amidst the changeful shine of the water. These grew to broad patches of mud, which widened and spread, with rocks here and there, and floundering fishes and crawling eels swarming about. The people went everywhere catching these, and looking ...
— Adela Cathcart, Vol. 1 • George MacDonald
... sooty art of lying. "Your eyes shall be opened, and ye shall be as God knowing good and evil." It was true because by the use of this highest power of choice he would become like God, and through choosing he would know. It is cunningly implied with a sticky, slimy cunning that, by not eating, that likeness and knowledge would not come. That was the lie. The choice either way would bring both this element of likeness to God in the sovereign power of choice, and ...
— Quiet Talks about Jesus • S. D. Gordon
... Pyramids assume The hue of Rhamesis, black with the gloom. A Jailer who ne'er needs bolts, bars, or hasps, Is Death. With unawed hand a god he grasps, He thrusts, to stiffen, in a narrow case, Or cell, where struggling air-blasts constant moan; Walling them round with huge, damp, slimy stone; And (leaving mem'ry of bloodshed as drink, And thoughts of crime as food) ...
— Poems • Victor Hugo
... I meet with in all my drive, while mine was like an apparition from another and better world, the way the children ran after it and alongside. And as far as I could see were the solid walls of brick, the slimy pavements, and the screaming streets; and for the first time in my life the fear of the crowd smote me. It was like the fear of the sea; and the miserable multitudes, street upon street, seemed so many waves of a vast and malodorous sea, lapping about ...
— The People of the Abyss • Jack London
... military style to prevail, not the Indian. We shall then not be ashamed of the flag of our passion, which mother Nature has sent with us as our standard into the battlefield of life. Passion is beautiful and pure—pure as the lily that comes out of the slimy soil. It rises superior to its defilement and needs no Pears' soap to wash ...
— The Home and the World • Rabindranath Tagore
... suppose if I try to walk this thing I shall presently find myself holding a session with some slimy, muddy frogs. Ugh!" and she looked between the ties at the lurking depths of mud and other things on either side of the railroad embankment. "I ...
— Dorothy Dale's Camping Days • Margaret Penrose
... larva had its curved bloodsucking prongs gripping into his heart, and with that red stream went Herakleophorbia IV, in a state of solution, into the being of a new client. The only thing that had a chance with these monsters to get any share of the Food were the rushes and slimy green scum in the water and the seedling weeds in the mud at the bottom. A clean up of the study presently washed a fresh spate of the Food into the puddle, and overflowed it, and carried all this sinister expansion of the struggle for life into the adjacent ...
— The Food of the Gods and How It Came to Earth • H.G. Wells |
