"Snail" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... and land shells is exceedingly easy, the greater number of specimens requiring only to be plunged into boiling water, and the contents removed—an easy operation in the case of the bivalves, and the contents of univalves or snail-like shells being also easily wormed out with a pin or crooked awl. [Footnote: Mr. R. B. Woodward, F.G.S, etc. in one of the very best and most practical of those wonderful little penny "Handbooks" for young collectors, advises a large spoonful of salt being added to ...
— Practical Taxidermy • Montagu Browne
... to the door accordingly, murmuring at the cowardice of the servants; but at such a snail's pace, that it seemed he would most willingly have been anticipated by any one whom his reproaches had roused to exertion. "Cowardly blockheads!" he said at last, seizing hold of the handle of the door, but without turning it effectually round— "dare ...
— Woodstock; or, The Cavalier • Sir Walter Scott
... hand he was pulling along at a snail's pace a green leaf, on which a dead bumble-bee lay in state. With the other he was keeping in order a funeral procession of caterpillars. It was a motley crowd of mourners that the energetic forefinger urged along the line of march. He had evidently collected them from many quarters,—little ...
— Big Brother • Annie Fellows-Johnston
... a wonderful, but at the same time, we think, a universal and important fact, that love permeates the universe. Even a female snail, if we could only put the question, would undoubtedly admit that it loves ...
— The Hot Swamp • R.M. Ballantyne
... letters, to which he hints that I am to answer. In his last, of 31 closely written sides of note-paper, he informs me, with reference to my obstinate silence, that though I think myself and am thought by others to be a mathematical Goliath, I have resolved to play the mathematical snail, and keep within my shell. A mathematical snail! This cannot be the thing so called which regulates the striking of a clock; for it would mean that I am to make Mr. Smith sound the true time of day, which I would by no means undertake upon ...
— A Budget of Paradoxes, Volume II (of II) • Augustus de Morgan
... thrown back, and was continually in the act of wriggling his long chin into his ample neckerchief. He could not ask you how do you do, or say in answer to that question, "I thank you, sare, very well," without stamping prettily with his foot, as if cracking a snail, and tossing his chin into the air as if he were going to balance a ladder upon it. Then, though his features were compressed into a small, monkeyfied compass, they were themselves, individually, upon a magnificent scale. It was as if ...
— Rattlin the Reefer • Edward Howard
... "now I come to think of it. Only natural they should be going at snail's pace. Carrai! the wonder is the gringo being able for even that, or go at all. I thought I'd given him his quietus, for surely I sent my spear right through his ribs! It must have struck button, or buckle, or something, and ...
— Gaspar the Gaucho - A Story of the Gran Chaco • Mayne Reid
... not quick enough. The girl, though not nearly as active under the increased pull of gravity as a person of Earth might be, was yet more agile than the Rogans. And she was the faster mover in this tortuous, snail-like race. While the Rogan leader was still several feet away, she retrieved ...
— The Red Hell of Jupiter • Paul Ernst
... dashing as if in mockery, and the cry "Water! water!" rises from a hundred lips, the guard joining, for they are suffering like ourselves. Some comfort in that! Past midnight we reach Strasburg and are halted around an old wooden pump. It is broken! No water there. Still on and on at a snail-pace, up and over the almost interminable stretch of Fisher's Hill. At three o'clock in the morning we arrive at a place known by the classical name of Tom's Brook about twenty-five miles from Winchester. Never was nectar more delicious than the water of this stream, ...
— Lights and Shadows in Confederate Prisons - A Personal Experience, 1864-5 • Homer B. Sprague
... passage obscure. Benedick is represented as challenging Cupid at archery. To challenge at the flight is, I believe, to wager who shall shoot the arrow furthest without any particular mark. To challenge at the bird-bolt, seems to mean the same as to challenge at children's archery, with snail arrows such as are discharged at birds. In Twelfth Night Lady Olivia opposes a bird-bolt to a cannon-bullet, the lightest to the heaviest ...
— Johnson's Notes to Shakespeare Vol. I Comedies • Samuel Johnson
... went down the firepots in the booths would be filled with charcoal, and presently a marvellous smell of frying oil would pervade the air, while thousands upon thousands of little lights would be lighted, all made of big snail-shells filled with olive oil and tallow and each having a tiny wick in it. But the sun was not low yet, and the great bells were ringing to call the people into the Basilica ...
— Stradella • F(rancis) Marion Crawford
... don't," Betty replied wearily. "You see how we've been traveling—not more than a snail's pace, and it won't be very long before we shall have to stop altogether. I'm surprised that Mollie has been able to keep going so long. You will have to keep your eye on her all the time, now, Grace, since it is getting so dark. We don't want ...
— The Outdoor Girls at Bluff Point - Or a Wreck and a Rescue • Laura Lee Hope
... spring And day's at the morn: 20 Morning's at seven; The hillside's dew-pearled; The lark's on the wing; The snail's on the thorn: God's in His heaven— All's ...
— Browning's Shorter Poems • Robert Browning
... the house to the station had been a long and tedious one. The way back was surprisingly short, even though they walked at snail's pace. There never was a courting such as Tarling's, and it seemed unreal as a dream. The girl had a key of the outer gate and they ...
— The Daffodil Mystery • Edgar Wallace
... it doesn't always work among the human herd. Man considers that he has the right of selection—quite a mistake of his I'm sure, for he has no real sense of beauty or fitness, and generally selects most vilely. All the same he is an obstinate brute, and sticks to his brutish ideas as a snail sticks to its shell. I am an obstinate brute!—I am absolutely convinced that I have the right to choose my own woman, if I want one—which I don't,—or if ever I do ...
— The Secret Power • Marie Corelli
... certainly the people of the coast near which it is found. He told me that possibly this idea had arisen because the shell, when empty, swims on the surface. The creature, when at the bottom, crawls along like any other snail. Sometimes it dies and falls out, when the shell rises to the surface by means of the gases generated in its chambers; and thus they are seen floating on the waves. Others say, however, that the animal itself with the shell, putting out its head and ...
— In the Eastern Seas • W.H.G. Kingston
... head grain found how treat dead staid ground town beast stead waif hound growl bleat tread rail mound clown preach dread flail pound frown speak thread quail round crown streak sweat snail sound ...
— McGuffey's Eclectic Spelling Book • W. H. McGuffey
... hundred years before the audience had been created; and although "Old Neb" of Babylon had destroyed a million of Hebrews several hundred years previous to the birth of the Bethlehem "Savior of Mankind," the "frog" and "snail" eaters of France were still breaking their lungs and throats in cheering for the ...
— Shakspere, Personal Recollections • John A. Joyce
... in which is a large basin twelve or fifteen feet deep, at the bottom of which are rocks. From these rocks proceed certain substances that present at first, sight beautiful flowers, but on the approach of a hand or instrument, retire like a snail, out of sight! On examination, there appears in the middle of a disk, filaments resembling spiders' legs, which moved briskly round a kind of petal. The filaments, or legs, have pincers to seize their prey, ...
— Scientific American magazine Vol 2. No. 3 Oct 10 1846 • Various
... place from crown to base, and I hit the homeward trail. Ah, God! it was good, though my eyes were blurred, and I crawled like a sickly snail. In that vast white world where the silent sky communes with the silent snow, In hunger and cold and misery I wandered to and fro. But the Lord took pity on my pain, and He led me to the sea, And some ice-bound whalers heard my moan, and they fed and sheltered me. They fed ...
— Ballads of a Cheechako • Robert W. Service
... retorted she; "for no sooner set I my foot out of the door this morrow than I well-nigh stepped of a black snail." ...
— For the Master's Sake - A Story of the Days of Queen Mary • Emily Sarah Holt
... door-drink still on my palate, and I looking for my way home. It was nut-time. I had a pouch of them in my jacket, and I cracked and ate them as I went. Not a star pricked the sky; the dark was the dark of a pot in a cave and a snail boiling under the lid of it. I had cracked a nut and the kernel of it fell on the ground, so I bent and felt about my feet, though my pouch was so full of nuts that they fell showering in the fin dust. I swept every one with a shell aside, hunting for my cracked fellow, ...
— Gilian The Dreamer - His Fancy, His Love and Adventure • Neil Munro
... health and life is more than, in my opinion, they are both worth; without the former the latter is a burden; and, indeed, I am very weary of it. I think I have got some benefit by drinking these waters, and by bathing, for my old stiff, rheumatic limbs; for, I believe, I could now outcrawl a snail, or perhaps even ...
— The PG Edition of Chesterfield's Letters to His Son • The Earl of Chesterfield
... a coward, indeed," grumbled the host, drawing near to d'Artagnan, and endeavoring by this little flattery to make up matters with the young man, as the heron of the fable did with the snail he had despised ...
— The Three Musketeers • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... I'll take him through," said Emerson, stubbornly; and so they crawled their weary way, sore beset with their dragging burden. Slow at best, their advance now became snail-like, for darkness had fallen, and threatened to blot them out. It betrayed them down declivities, up and out of which they had to dig their way. In such descents they were forced to let go the helpless man, whose body rolled ahead ...
— The Silver Horde • Rex Beach
... still kneeling down, so it was impossible to form an opinion of his legs, but his arms and shoulders certainly did not look like those of a "snail." ...
— Follow My leader - The Boys of Templeton • Talbot Baines Reed
... smooth that the barrier reefs for once were silent, and one could hear, far across the hushed and shining water, the coo of pigeons in the forest. Under bare steerage way, with the leadsman droning in the fore chains, the ship hugged the shore and steamed at a snail's pace round the island. On the lofty bridge, high above the wondering faces of his command, the white-haired captain, impassive, supreme, and solitary, gave no sign of those inner emotions that were devouring him. Along the shore the sight of the battleship ...
— Wild Justice: Stories of the South Seas • Lloyd Osbourne
... walk a little faster?" said a whiting to a snail, "There's a porpoise close behind us, and he's treading on my tail. See how eagerly the lobsters and the turtles all advance! They are waiting on the shingle—will you come and join the dance? Will you, won't you, will you, won't you, will you join the dance? Will you, won't you, will ...
— Childhood's Favorites and Fairy Stories - The Young Folks Treasury, Volume 1 • Various
... fare, cousin, as AEsop telleth in a fable that the snail did. For when Jupiter (whom the poets feign for the great god) invited all the poor worms of the earth unto a great solemn feast that it pleased him upon a time—I have forgotten upon what occasion—to prepare for them, the snail kept her at home and would ...
— Dialogue of Comfort Against Tribulation - With Modifications To Obsolete Language By Monica Stevens • Thomas More
... that is the true vocation of the Golden Gardener. It is annoying that it can give us but little or no assistance in ridding us of another plague of the kitchen-garden: the snail. The slime of the snail is offensive to the beetle; it is safe from the latter unless crippled, half crushed, or projecting from the shell. Its relatives, however, do not share this dislike. The horny Procrustes, the great Scarabicus, entirely black and larger than the Carabus, ...
— Social Life in the Insect World • J. H. Fabre
... human birth! And now did all the tyrannous crew depart, Knowing there was a storm in Hero's heart, Greater than they could make, and scorn'd their smart. She bow'd herself so low out of her tower, That wonder 'twas she fell not ere her hour, With searching the lamenting waves for him: Like a poor snail, her gentle supple limb Hung on her turret's top, so most downright, As she would dive beneath the darkness quite, To find her jewel;—jewel!—her Leander, A name of all earth's jewels pleas'd not her Like his dear name: "Leander, ...
— Hero and Leander and Other Poems • Christopher Marlowe and George Chapman
... the poet fired to sing The snail's discreet degrees, A rhapsody of sauntering, A gloria of ease; Proclaiming their's the baser part Who consciously forswear The delicate and gentle art Of never ...
— Highways & Byways in Sussex • E.V. Lucas
... Who are the Arabs that the King's favour should be cast among them? The walls of their houses are canvas. Even the common snail has a finer ...
— Plays of Gods and Men • Lord Dunsany
... the same in all places, and even during the journeys taken by their Majesties, who were thus never separated, except for a few minutes at a time. They passed their lives in one long tete-a- tete. When they travelled it was at the merest snail's pace, and they slept on the road, night after night, in houses prepared for them. In their coach they were always alone; when in the ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... In the season of floods such streams are turbid at their entrance, but clear as a mountain-spring where they issue again; so that they must be slowly filling up cavities in the interior with mud, sand, pebbles, snail-shells, and the bones of animals which may be carried away ...
— The Antiquity of Man • Charles Lyell
... of the woods, and its little yard was made cavernous by thick-planted paper-mulberry and maple trees, while a line of cherry-trees and an old pole-well rose along the road and hedge. As they rode to the rear of the house a little dormer window, like a snail, crawled low along the roof, and a ...
— The Entailed Hat - Or, Patty Cannon's Times • George Alfred Townsend
... of blank verse puts the poet to the severest test, and Cowper does not survive the test. Had The Task been written in couplets he might have been forced to sharpen his wit by the necessity of rhyme. As it is, he is merely ponderous—a snail of imagination labouring under a heavy shell of eloquence. In the fragment called Yardley Oak he undoubtedly achieved something worthier of a distant disciple of Milton. But I do not think he was ever sufficiently preoccupied with poetry to be a good poet. ...
— The Art of Letters • Robert Lynd
... were busy ones in the valley as well as on the dam. Jim's eighteen hours a day often stretched into twenty, though he sometimes dozed in his office chair or in the automobile with Oscar, reveling in his new-learned accomplishment, driving at a snail's pace. ...
— Still Jim • Honore Willsie Morrow
... prison, Of flesh and bone, curbs, and confines, and frets 21 Our spirit's wings: despondency besets Our pillows; and the fresh to-morrow morn Seems to give forth its light in very scorn Of our dull, uninspired, snail-paced lives. Long have I said, how happy he who shrives To thee! But then I thought on poets gone, And could not pray:—nor can I now—so on I move to the end in ...
— Endymion - A Poetic Romance • John Keats
... pure willing with him. The nature of his experiences so far disinclined him for any further experiments, at least until he had reconsidered them. But he lifted a sheet of paper, and turned a glass of water pink and then green, and he created a snail, which he miraculously annihilated, and got himself a miraculous new tooth-brush. Somewhere in the small hours he had reached the fact that his will-power must be of a particularly rare and pungent quality, a fact of which he had indeed had inklings before, but no certain ...
— The Country of the Blind, And Other Stories • H. G. Wells
... in town he sends men out on the roads leading to the country, himself taking one. In a very short time he overtakes the noted horse-thief. Gus was sitting in the buggy sound asleep; the lines were hanging down over the dashboard, and the old horse was marching along at a snail's pace. He was out some two miles from town, and, no doubt, had traveled at this gait all the way. He was faced about, and, assisted by the sheriff, drove back to town. He was then placed under arrest ...
— The Twin Hells • John N. Reynolds
... heart of the Ottoman kingdom, he avoided their camp, dexterously inclined to the left, occupied Caesarea, traversed the salt desert and the river Halys, and invested Angora; while the Sultan, immovable and ignorant in his post, compared the Tartar swiftness to the crawling of a snail. He returned on the wings of indignation to the relief of Angora; and as both generals were alike impatient for action, the plains round that city were the scene of a memorable battle, which has immortalized the glory of Timur and the ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... the burning coals here and there over the surface to avoid burning a hole through it. At one point I noticed a horse-car filled with straw bedding for the animals, and the train going here at a snail's pace enabled me to jump off and chuck an armful of the straw into our car; I did this with my friend of the blankets in mind. I threw the damp straw on top of the live coals and in a few minutes or less the car was filled with rank, reeking smoke that fairly made the eyes water. Up jumped the blanket ...
— S.O.S. Stand to! • Reginald Grant
... I jeered at myself for a fraud as the doughty platform combatant, when shrinking from blaming some lad or lass for doing their work badly. An unkind look or word has availed to make me shrink myself as a snail into its shell, while, on the platform, opposition makes me ...
— Introduction to the Science of Sociology • Robert E. Park
... shell to fit the snail, as it were," commented the land baron, patronizingly, gazing around the little cupboard of a room. "At any rate," he added, in an effort to hide his dissatisfaction, "it's a pleasure to become better acquainted with such a—what shall ...
— The Strollers • Frederic S. Isham
... home, and that his report had testified to his diligence and progress. At the end of the letter comes this little touch as to some of the schoolboy belongings which had been left behind in Professor Newman's house. "Harry has left divers snail-shells fastened on pasteboard. Perhaps he did not know how to carry ...
— Memoir and Letters of Francis W. Newman • Giberne Sieveking
... gone now, and he got his men into a series of well-concerted, steady, deadly efforts, that threatened to bring the whole Kingston four over with the snail-like white cord. But Sawed-Off pleaded with his men, and they buried their faces in the board and worked like mad. To the spectators they seemed hardly to move, but under their skins their muscles were crowding and shoving like a gang of slaves, and fairly squeezing streams of sweat ...
— The Dozen from Lakerim • Rupert Hughes
... adher'd; And, now, in love to household cares, By a shrill voice the hour declares, Warning the housemaid not to burn The roast-meat which it cannot turn. The easy chair began to crawl, Like a huge snail along the wall; There, stuck aloft in public view, And, with small change, a pulpit grew. A bed-stead of the antique mode, Made up of timber many a load, Such as our ancestors did use, Was metamorphos'd into pews: ...
— The Young Gentleman and Lady's Monitor, and English Teacher's Assistant • John Hamilton Moore
... take the yeast-plant, a Protococcus, a common mould, a Chara, a fern, and some flowering plant; among animals we examine such things as an Amoeba, a Vorticella, and a fresh-water polyp. We dissect a starfish, an earthworm, a snail, a squid, and a fresh-water mussel. We examine a lobster and a crayfish, and a black beetle. We go on to a common skate, a codfish, a frog, a tortoise, a pigeon, and a rabbit, and that takes us about all the time we have to give. The purpose of this course is not ...
— Thomas Henry Huxley; A Sketch Of His Life And Work • P. Chalmers Mitchell
... O'CONNOR is a declared opponent of both these measures, but that did not prevent him from contrasting the lightning speed of the House when passing coercion for Ireland with its snail-like pace when approaching conciliation. In fifty years it had not given justice to Ireland; it was to be asked to give injustice to Ireland in ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 159, August 11, 1920 • Various
... a troop of angels fly-catching, snail-seeking, and bug-hunting through all lands, lugging through the air, horses, giraffes, elephants, and rhinoceroses, and dropping them at the door of the ark. One has crossed the Atlantic with rattlesnakes, copperheads, and boas twined around ...
— The Deluge in the Light of Modern Science - A Discourse • William Denton
... daily dairy daisy drain dainty explain fail fain gain gait gaiter grain hail jail laid maid mail maim nail paid pail paint plain prairie praise quail rail rain raise raisin remain sail saint snail sprain stain straight strain tail train vain ...
— The Art Of Writing & Speaking The English Language - Word-Study and Composition & Rhetoric • Sherwin Cody
... not loud, but deep." Deep or loud, no purpose would they have answered; the waggoner's temper was proof against curse in or out of the English language; and from their snail's pace neither Dickens, nor devil, nor any postilion in England could make him put his horses. Lord Colambre jumped out of the chaise, and, walking beside him, began to talk to him; and spoke of his horses, their bells, ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. 6 • Maria Edgeworth
... young crabs pass through a stage when to all intents and purposes they are counterparts of lobsters. Even the twisted hermit crab, which has a soft-skinned hinder part coiled to fit the curve of the snail shell used as a protection, is symmetrical and lobster-like when it ...
— The Doctrine of Evolution - Its Basis and Its Scope • Henry Edward Crampton
... out into the open thoroughfare to avoid some obstacle—some spectral wain or omnibus got hopelessly stranded; while there were muffled cries and calls here, there, and everywhere. They went at a snail's pace, of course. Once, at a corner, the near wheels got on the pavement; the cab tilted over; Miss Burgoyne shrieked aloud and clung to her companion; then there was a heavy bump, and the venerable vehicle resumed its slow progress. Suddenly they beheld a cluster of ...
— Prince Fortunatus • William Black
... of large muscles about the rocks, many sea-ears, and we often saw shells of pretty large plain chamae. The smaller sorts are some trochi of two species, a curious murex, rugged wilks, and a snail, all which are, probably, peculiar to this place, at least I do not recollect to have seen them in any country near the same latitude in either hemisphere. There are, besides these, some small plain ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 16 • Robert Kerr
... but your faith is rewarded by finding the ground strewn with spirited fruit,—some of it, perhaps, collected at squirrel-holes, with the marks of their teeth by which they carried them,—some containing a cricket or two silently feeding within, and some, especially in damp days, a shelless snail. The very sticks and stones lodged in the tree-top might have convinced you of the savoriness of the fruit which has been so eagerly sought ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 61, November, 1862 • Various
... long sigh. "O Monsieur, it is wonderful that people can talk this way on paper. I have tried, but the master could not help laughing and I laughed, too. It was like a snail crawling about and the pen would go twenty ways as if there was an evil sprite in my fingers. But I shall keep on although it is very tiresome and I have such a longing to be out in the fields and woods, chasing squirrels ...
— A Little Girl in Old Detroit • Amanda Minnie Douglas
... snail bleached In the grass; chip of flint, and mite Of chalk; and the small birds' dung ...
— Last Poems • Edward Thomas
... priests clasped her robe to draw her back, but she turned on him with the spear, whereon he shrank back into his litter like a snail into his shell and left her alone. So following the steep path they marched on, and after them came the two litters with the priests, carried by all the bearers who could still stand, for these old men weighed no more than ...
— The Ghost Kings • H. Rider Haggard
... taking many beaver. As a New Year's greeting a shower of arrows from a new tribe, the Pipis, fell amongst them. The trappers killed six of them at one volley, and the rest ran away, leaving twenty-three beautiful longbows behind. The only clothing the dead men had on was snail-shells fastened to the ends of their long locks of hair. The trappers now began to seek more anxiously for the mythical settlements. "A great many times each day," says Pattie, "we bring our crafts to the ...
— The Romance of the Colorado River • Frederick S. Dellenbaugh
... the train seemed to travel! It was a snail compared to Jack's eagerness to arrive. He was inclined to think that P.D., Wrath of God, and Jag Ear were faster than through expresses. He kept inquiring of the conductor if they were on time, and the conductor kept repeating that ...
— Over the Pass • Frederick Palmer
... standards of desert warfare it must have seemed that Kitchener and his English made war as slowly as grass grows or orchards bear fruit. The horsemen of Araby, darting to and fro like swallows, must have felt as if they were menaced by the advance of a giant snail. But it was a snail that left a shining track unknown to those sands; for the first time since Rome decayed something was being made there that could remain. The effect of this growing road, one might almost say this living road, began to be felt. Mahmoud, the Mahdist ...
— Lord Kitchener • G. K. Chesterton
... in the gathering dark, spurning hamlets behind us, I suddenly called out, "Why, what asses we are! Why, it's She that is brave—she and the donkey. We are safe enough; we are artillery and plate-armour: and she stands up to us with matchwood and a snail! If you had grown old in a quiet valley, and people began firing cannon-balls as big as cabs at you in your seventieth year, wouldn't you jump—and she never moved an eyelid. Oh! we go very fast ...
— Alarms and Discursions • G. K. Chesterton
... be goin'. I did think I'd be forehanded in callin', but mother's been dredful wakeful lately, and when daylight comes, it don't seem as if I had the ambition of a snail. She don't like to be left alone for a minit, mother don't, so it's a bit of a puzzle to ...
— A Beautiful Possibility • Edith Ferguson Black
... me—the swift year's flight I count like miser's gold; I keep the "watches of the night," I wait until the morning light Its glories snail unfold. ...
— Lays from the West • M. A. Nicholl
... subtle magic of this sort for which we have no organized science. It is said that if you put snails together and afterwards separate them, placing each upon a copper ground to which electric wires are attached, a shock given to one snail will be registered by the other at the same moment. I have not tried this theory, but the idea is fundamental to a mass of telepathic observations which have found practical expression in wireless telegraphy. Some ...
— Second Sight - A study of Natural and Induced Clairvoyance • Sepharial
... ridden quite fast, or perchance these two had gone at a snail's pace, but when half-way home they looked about them and found that ...
— Shapes that Haunt the Dusk • Various
... unreserve. His mother saw that he winced, and enjoyed the scratch she had given him. Had she felt less confident of victory she had better have foregone the pleasure of touching as it were the eyes at the end of the snail's horns in order to enjoy seeing the snail draw them in again—but she knew that when she had got him well down into the sofa, and held his hand, she had the enemy almost absolutely at her mercy, and could do pretty much ...
— The Way of All Flesh • Samuel Butler
... flights of fancy, idiomatic expressions, he sets down among the signs of the times—the extraordinary occurrences of the age we live in. They are marks of a restless and revolutionary spirit: they disturb his composure of mind, and threaten (by implication) the safety of the state. His slow, snail-paced, bed-rid habits of reasoning cannot keep up with the whirling, eccentric motion, the rapid, perhaps extravagant combinations of modern literature. He has long been stationary himself, and is determined that others shall remain so. The hazarding a paradox is like letting off a pistol ...
— The Spirit of the Age - Contemporary Portraits • William Hazlitt
... bank, which is standing very nearly still, and you will realise that you and your canoe are standing very nearly still too; and that all your exertions are only enabling you to creep on at the pace of a crushed snail, and that it's the water that is going the pace. It's a most ...
— Travels in West Africa • Mary H. Kingsley
... from a box some of the exquisite little violet snail-shells, and gave them to Lena, who cried out with delight, and instantly resolved to have a pair ...
— Nautilus • Laura E. Richards
... moved out of Lafayette that forenoon amidst the greatest excitement and enthusiasm. Most of them swam their horses across the river, too eager to wait for the snail-like ferry to transport them to the opposite bank. They were fearfully and wonderfully armed and equipped for the expedition. Guns of all descriptions and ages; pistols, axes, knives and diligently scoured swords; pots and pans and kettles; blankets, knapsacks and ...
— Viola Gwyn • George Barr McCutcheon
... on my list of friends (Though graced with polished manners and fine sense, Yet wanting sensibility) the man Who needlessly sets foot upon a worm. An inadvertent step may crush the snail That crawls at evening in the public path; But he that has humanity, forewarned, Will tread aside, and let the reptile live. The creeping vermin, loathsome to the sight, And charged perhaps with venom, that intrudes A visitor unwelcome into scenes Sacred to neatness and repose, the alcove, ...
— The Task and Other Poems • William Cowper
... mole-hill, I fell to my neck in the hole, through which that animal had cast up the earth, and coined some lie, not worth remembering, to excuse myself for spoiling my clothes. I likewise broke my right shin against the shell of a snail, which I happened to stumble over, as I was walking alone ...
— Gulliver's Travels - into several remote nations of the world • Jonathan Swift
... was a remnant of old Ballarat which had survived the rage for new houses and highly ornamented terraces. Slivers had been offered money for that ricketty little shanty, but he declined to sell it, averring that as a snail grew to fit his house his house ...
— Madame Midas • Fergus Hume
... Grant in an agonized voice. Even as he spoke a sailor ran swiftly along the deck to the base of the foremast and began to climb rapidly. To those who watched him, however, it seemed as if he progressed at a snail's pace. ...
— The Go Ahead Boys and the Treasure Cave • Ross Kay
... saw that they were gone, he crept back out of the subterranean passage. "It is so dangerous to walk on the ground in the dark," said he; "how easily a neck or a leg is broken!" Fortunately he knocked against an empty snail-shell. "Thank God!" said he. "In that I can pass the night in safety," and got into it. Not long afterwards, when he was just going to sleep, he heard two men go by, and one of them was saying, "How shall we contrive to get hold of the rich pastor's silver and ...
— Household Tales by Brothers Grimm • Grimm Brothers
... said Pepsy. "If people have something the matter with their hips you can't fix them. Because, anyway, if they're going to die on a Friday even snail water ...
— Pee-wee Harris • Percy Keese Fitzhugh
... would be uncharitable to blame them. They are ignorant poor folk, and the prince of darkness is behind them to urge them on. They sank little charges of powder into my legs and then they exploded them, which makes me a slower walker than ever, though I was never very brisk. 'The Snail' was what I was called at school in Tours, yes, and afterwards at the seminary ...
— The Refugees • Arthur Conan Doyle
... likened to stagnant water, that is not good, that nobody drinks, and that does not run down in brooks, upon the banks of which kumara and trees grow. My heart is all rock, all rock, and no good thing will grow upon it. The lizard and the snail run over the rocks, and all evil runs ...
— A History of the English Church in New Zealand • Henry Thomas Purchas
... frightened deer and sees or hears him go bounding off at breakneck pace over loose rocks and broken trees and tangled underbrush; rising swift on one side of a windfall without knowing what lies on the other side till he is already falling; driving like an arrow over ground where you must follow like a snail, lest you wrench a foot or break an ankle,— finds himself asking with unanswered wonder how any deer can live half a season in the wilderness without breaking all his legs. And when you run upon ...
— Types of Children's Literature • Edited by Walter Barnes
... that my old friend's child might have a roof to her head, and come to no harm. You see I was forced to do her that injury; for, after all, poor young creature, it was a sad lot for her. A dull bookworm like me,—cochlea vitam agens, Mr. Squills,—leading the life of a snail! But my shell was all I could offer ...
— The Caxtons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... one's horns; to retract an assertion through fear: metaphor borrowed from a snail, who on the apprehension of danger, draws in his horns, and ...
— 1811 Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue • Captain Grose et al.
... all was arranged. Without killing more than a snail or two, which we could not take time to beware of, Walter and I—finding that the window did not open down to the ground in French fashion, for which there were two good reasons, one the fierceness of the winds in winter, the other, the fact that the means of egress ...
— The Seaboard Parish Volume 1 • George MacDonald
... flipped a rosebud covered with blight, kicked off a snail which was crawling on the path; then, halfway down the path, he suddenly raised his head and gave ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... before. The wind was strong and cold, blowing the vapory water-smoke in long trails across the surface of the waves. It was not long, however, before some dim white gleams through the mist were pointed out as the shores of Sweden, and the Carl Johan slackened her speed to a snail's pace, snuffing at headland after headland, like a dog off the scent, in order to ...
— Northern Travel - Summer and Winter Pictures of Sweden, Denmark and Lapland • Bayard Taylor
... lance, good man, and stick the point Here in the ground, and then the roof will be Held up in that direction. Thus it throws A broader shadow. Quickly, now! That's right! You other fellow, like a snail, you bear Your house upon your back, unless, perhaps, A house for some one else. Show me the shield! A mirror 'tis, in sooth! 'Tis crude, of course, As all is, here, but in ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VI. • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... I have been out and returned like Noah's Ark with animals of all sorts. I have to-day to my astonishment found two Planariae living under dry stones: ask L. Jenyns if he has ever heard of this fact. I also found a most curious snail, and spiders, beetles, snakes, scorpions ad libitum, and to conclude shot a Cavia weighing a cwt.—On Friday we sail for the Rio Negro, and then will commence our real wild work. I look forward with dread to the wet stormy regions of the south, ...
— More Letters of Charles Darwin - Volume I (of II) • Charles Darwin
... the Snail, Miss, among ourselves," said the Porter. "She's oftener be'ind'and nor any ...
— The Railway Children • E. Nesbit
... little doubt that while a certain number may have improved with age, others will have deteriorated and even lost their original point and bearing. It is curious to find in the Solvamhall records our familiar friend the climbing snail puzzle, and it will be seen that in its modern form it has ...
— The Canterbury Puzzles - And Other Curious Problems • Henry Ernest Dudeney
... sixty pupils," said I; for I knew the number, and with my usual base habit of cowardice, I shrank into my sloth like a snail into its shell, and alleged incapacity and impracticability as a pretext to escape action. If left to myself, I should infallibly have let this chance slip. Inadventurous, unstirred by impulses of practical ambition, I was capable of sitting ...
— Villette • Charlotte Bronte
... and tourist earnings remained low. Production of taro, the primary food export crop, has dropped 97% since a fungal disease struck the crop in 1993. The rapid growth in 1994 of the giant African snail population in Western Samoa is also threatening the country's basic food crops, such ...
— The 1995 CIA World Factbook • United States Central Intelligence Agency
... failed to get the rascals, did you, Mr. Narkom?" Cleek was saying. "I feared as much; but I couldn't get word to you sooner. We injured the machine in that mad race to the mill, and of course we had to come at a snail's pace afterwards. I'm sorry we didn't get Margot—sorrier still that that hound Merode got away. They are bound to make more trouble before the race is run. Not for her ladyship, however, and not for this dear little chap. Their troubles are at an end, and the ...
— Cleek: the Man of the Forty Faces • Thomas W. Hanshew
... croose," replied Gideon Kemp; "for though his castle stands proud in the green valley, the time may yet come when horses and carts will be driven through his ha', and the foul toad and the cauld snail be the only visitors around the unblest ...
— Ringan Gilhaize - or The Covenanters • John Galt
... head, like a muffin-man carries his tray. It was a great thing, you never would have thought he could have carried it, and it was easy to see that it was as much as he could manage; it bent him nearly double, and he went crawling along like a snail,—it took him quite a time to get to the ...
— The Beetle - A Mystery • Richard Marsh
... hate to think of it. Am I to squeeze my body into stays, and straight-lace my will in the trammels of law. What might have risen to an eagle's flight has been reduced to a snail's pace by law. Never yet has law formed a great man; 'tis liberty that breeds giants and heroes. Oh! that the spirit of Herman* still glowed ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... creeping along at a snail's pace now, so even should either boat strike mud bottom, which Jud had declared it to be, ...
— The Banner Boy Scouts Afloat • George A. Warren
... Paris, where they are eaten, after being cooked with butter and garlic, as escargots de Bourgogne—but it stuck in his throat, and a catastrophe would have happened but for the sturdy blow which his companion gave him on the 'chine.' That a snail-eater should criticise gipsies for eating cockchafers shows what creatures of ...
— Two Summers in Guyenne • Edward Harrison Barker
... the Grand Army of the Potomac was moving southward at a snail's pace; and on the seventh of November, just after reaching Warrenton, General McClellan was relieved from command, and directed to report to the authorities by letter from Trenton, New Jersey. Thus ended another indecisive campaign, which though it had witnessed a greater victory than ever ...
— Three Years in the Federal Cavalry • Willard Glazier
... thy own sweet smile, and tuneful tongue, Delighted BELLIS calls her infant throng. 145 Each on his reed astride, the Cherub-train Watch her kind looks, and circle o'er the plain; Now with young wonder touch the siding snail, Admire his eye-tipp'd horns, and painted mail; Chase with quick step, and eager arms outspread, 150 The pausing Butterfly ...
— The Botanic Garden. Part II. - Containing The Loves of the Plants. A Poem. - With Philosophical Notes. • Erasmus Darwin
... of a sign; or the sign is the shell, and mine host is the snail. He consists of double beer and fellowship, and his vices are the bawds of his thirst. He entertains humbly, and gives his guests power, as well of himself as house. He answers all men's expectations to his power, save in the reckoning; and hath gotten ...
— Character Writings of the 17th Century • Various
... of the production of the human race from the mud, through the mushroom, the snail, the tortoise, the greyhound, the monkey and the man, which is now such a favorite with atheists, if it were fully proved to be a fact, would only increase the difficulty of getting rid of God. For either the primeval mud had all ...
— Fables of Infidelity and Facts of Faith - Being an Examination of the Evidences of Infidelity • Robert Patterson
... them consume away like a snail, and be like the untimely fruit of a woman: and let them ...
— The Book of Common Prayer - and The Scottish Liturgy • Church of England
... "Charley," who slept at Captain Kingwalt's every second night, and who returned my beast to his owner in Washington. The aphorism that a Yankee can do anything, was exemplified by this lad; for he worked my snail into a gallop. He was born in Chelsea, Massachusetts, and appeared to have taken to speculation at the age when most children are learning A B C. He was now in his fourteenth year, owned two horses, and employed another boy to sell papers ...
— Campaigns of a Non-Combatant, - and His Romaunt Abroad During the War • George Alfred Townsend
... With the beginning of her last speech, Sir Thomas had begun to swell, until now he looked as if he were in imminent danger of bursting. His face was purple. To Molly's lively imagination, his eyes appeared to move slowly out of his head, like a snail's. From the back of his throat came ...
— The Intrusion of Jimmy • P. G. Wodehouse
... would not touch any portion of such a snake with their hands: even its skin was supposed by these people to be noxious. Down came the rain; I believe it could not have rained harder. Mrs. Baker in the palanquin was fortunately like a snail in her shell; but I had nothing for protection except an oxhide: throwing myself upon my angarep I drew it over me. The natives had already lighted prodigious fires, and all crowded around the blaze; but what would have been the Great Fire ...
— The Albert N'Yanza, Great Basin of the Nile • Sir Samuel White Baker
... Benson To a Mouse Robert Burns The Grasshopper Abraham Cowley On the Grasshopper and Cricket John Keats To the Grasshopper and the Cricket Leigh Hunt The Cricket William Cowper To a Cricket William Cox Bennett To an Insect Oliver Wendell Holmes The Snail William Cowper The Housekeeper Charles Lamb The Humble-Bee Ralph Waldo Emerson To a Butterfly William Wordsworth Ode to a Butterfly Thomas Wentworth Higginson The Butterfly Alice Freeman Palmer Fireflies Edgar ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 3 (of 4) • Various
... enough;[68] but a huge feeder, Snail-slow in profit, and he sleeps by day More than the wild cat: drones hive not with me, Therefore I part with him; and part with him To one that I would have him help to waste His borrow'd purse.—Well, Jessica, go in; Perhaps, I will return immediately; ...
— The Merchant of Venice [liberally edited by Charles Kean] • William Shakespeare
... learned afterward. Alas! I was getting my triumph early and in one big chunk! I figure that that one huge breakfast of triumph, if properly distributed, would have fed me through the whole two thousand miles of back-strain and muscle-cramp. And yet, through all the days of snail-paced toil that followed, I remained truly thankful ...
— The River and I • John G. Neihardt
... the oysters lie in the brackish sluices, and all sorts of fish, from shrimps to sharks, hover around the oyster beds. In the green depths they can be seen, and there the crab darts sidewise, like a shooting star. In the sandy beach grows the mamano, or snail-clam, putting his head from his shell at high tide to suck nutrition from the mysterious food of the sea, and giving back such chowder to man as makes the eater feel his stomach to possess a nobility above the pleasures of the brain. The bay of ...
— Tales of the Chesapeake • George Alfred Townsend
... or ferry, or wherry, or whatever its contemptible inconvenience makes it fitting that this unclean and snail-like craft should be styled, cast off and began to lumber along the edges of the town with its dense cargo of hats and parasols and lunch parcels. We were a most extraordinary litter of man and womankind. There was the severe New England type, improving each ...
— Lady Baltimore • Owen Wister
... the wounded body of Jerry Boyle that the pot-bellied peace officer feared, but the stiffening frame of Hun Shanklin, lying out there in the bright sun. Every time he looked that way he drew up on himself, like a snail. At length Slavens gave him permission to leave, charging him to telephone to Meander for the coroner the moment that he arrived in Comanche, and to get word to Boyle's people ...
— Claim Number One • George W. (George Washington) Ogden
... me. I had danced with her, I had talked with her under the stars, but what might she expect me not to do? And what was an Occidental, a city man, before her? She retired behind a bird's-nest fern, on the long, lanceolate leaves of which were the shells of the mountain snail. At her feet was the bastard canna, the pungent root of which ...
— Mystic Isles of the South Seas. • Frederick O'Brien
... of the Tsay-ee-kah and of the Petrograd Soviet, lay miles out on the edge of the city, beside the wide Neva. I went there on a street-car, moving snail-like with a groaning noise through the cobbled, muddy streets, and jammed with people. At the end of the line rose the graceful smoke-blue cupolas of Smolny Convent outlined in dull gold, beautiful; and beside it the great barracks ...
— Ten Days That Shook the World • John Reed
... With head crouched down upon his feet, Till strangers pass his sunny seat— Then quick he pricks his ears to hark And bustles up to growl and bark; While boys in fear stop short their song, And sneak in startled speed along; And beggar, creeping like a snail, To make his hungry hopes prevail O'er the warm heart of charity, Leaves his lame halt ...
— The Dog's Book of Verse • Various
... gauged as dyspeptic or eupeptic, friend or foe. On the march, Javert was on the alert, snuffing up the air, until some savory odor crossed his path, when he would shut himself up, like a snail within his shell. Yet he was not sleeping, for no titbit ever passed the portals beneath. Perhaps, however, they were themselves trusty now, having made habit a second nature. I cannot imagine them watering at sight of ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 85, November, 1864 • Various
... oar and pulled with both hands. It was almost impossible to get started against the wind, and when at last their steady, even pulling overcame the deterring power of the gale they were able to move at but a snail's pace. They followed the shoreline, keeping as close in as they could, preferring the circuitous route to the more perilous row across ...
— Tom Slade's Double Dare • Percy Keese Fitzhugh
... that certaine affects of the minde by nature doth chance contrary. For as teares oftentimes trickle downe the cheekes of him that seeth or heareth some joyfull newes, so I being in this fearfull perplexity, could not forbeare laughing, to see how of Aristomenus I was made like unto a snail [in] his shell. And while I lay on the ground covered in this sort, I peeped under the bed to see what would happen. And behold there entred in two old women, the one bearing a burning torch, and the other a sponge and a naked ...
— The Golden Asse • Lucius Apuleius
... pretty wet, but still laughing, when he crawled out, like a snail from under his shell, and got upon his feet, clutching the tub to hurl ...
— The Young Surveyor; - or Jack on the Prairies • J. T. Trowbridge
... quick to give a wicked snap that made the head fall down again. When I saw that Hal had actually conquered the dog and had proved that he-was the splendid hound I had ever considered him to be, I told West to go out at once and separate them. But for the very first time West was slow—he went like a snail. It seemed that one of the dogs had snapped at his leg once, and I believe he would have been delighted if Hal had gnawed the dog flesh and bone. He pulled Hal in by his collar and opened the gate for Turk, and soon things were quite ...
— Army Letters from an Officer's Wife, 1871-1888 • Frances M.A. Roe
... led them to the war. They were arranged one behind the other, with their bows and arrows, clubs, and round shields with which they provide for fighting. They went leaping one after the other, making various gestures with their bodies, and many snail-like turns. Afterwards they proceeded to dance in the customary manner, as I have before described; then they had their tabagie, after which the women stripped themselves stark naked, adorned with their handsomest ...
— Voyages of Samuel de Champlain, Vol. 1 • Samuel de Champlain
... the nervous centres.' At home his little weaknesses do not strike you. You may not be on the spot when he flies across Piccadilly Circus, pursued, as he fancies, by a Brompton omnibus which has not yet reached St. James's Church, and is moving at a snail's pace; you may not have been with him on that occasion when, in his eagerness to be in time for the 'Flying Dutchman,' he arrives at Paddington an hour before it starts, and is put into the parliamentary train which is shunted at ...
— Some Private Views • James Payn
... Sir Percivale: 'All men, to one so bound by such a vow, And women were as phantoms. O, my brother, Why wilt thou shame me to confess to thee How far I faltered from my quest and vow? For after I had lain so many nights A bedmate of the snail and eft and snake, In grass and burdock, I was changed to wan And meagre, and the vision had not come; And then I chanced upon a goodly town With one great dwelling in the middle of it; Thither I made, and there was I disarmed By maidens each as fair ...
— Idylls of the King • Alfred, Lord Tennyson
... they were gone, he came out of his hiding-place. "What dangerous walking it is," said he, "in this ploughed field! If I were to fall from one of these great clods, I should certainly break my neck." At last, by good chance, he found a large empty snail-shell. "This is lucky," said he, "I can sleep here very well," and in he crept. Just as he was falling asleep he heard two men passing, and one said to the other, "How shall we manage to steal that rich parson's silver and gold?" "I'll tell you," cried ...
— My Book of Favorite Fairy Tales • Edric Vredenburg
... The crest acts as a tiny sail (hence the name) and communicates to the animal a slow rotatory movement while drifting before the wind. Two kinds of Janthinae (J. globosa and J. exigua) molluscs with a fragile, snail-like shell, and a vesicular float, were drifting about, and, together with a very active, silvery-blue Idotea, half an inch long, prayed upon the Velellae. At another time, among many other pelagic crustacea, we obtained ...
— Narrative Of The Voyage Of H.M.S. Rattlesnake, Commanded By The Late Captain Owen Stanley, R.N., F.R.S. Etc. During The Years 1846-1850. Including Discoveries And Surveys In New Guinea, The Louisiade • John MacGillivray
... enemies of our efforts after purity. There is nothing that makes a man so down-hearted in his work of self-improvement as the constant and bitter experience that it seems to be all of no use; that he is making so little progress; that with immense pains, like a snail creeping up a wall, he gets up, perhaps, an inch or two, and then all at once he drops down, and further down than ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ephesians; Epistles of St. Peter and St. John • Alexander Maclaren
... scientific plutocrat to maintain that humanity will adapt itself to any conditions which we now consider evil. The old tyrants invoked the past; the new tyrants will invoke the future evolution has produced the snail and the owl; evolution can produce a workman who wants no more space than a snail, and no more light than an owl. The employer need not mind sending a Kaffir to work underground; he will soon become an underground ...
— What's Wrong With The World • G.K. Chesterton
... underlying economic forces should be found to be improving Labor's condition at a snail's pace, instead of actually heaping up more misery, no changes would be required in any of the other statements, or in the conclusion of this paragraph, which, with this exception, undoubtedly expresses the views of the overwhelming ...
— Socialism As It Is - A Survey of The World-Wide Revolutionary Movement • William English Walling
... carelessly thrown in, a quantity of the same; and I could see also from all the surrounding circumstances, especially the pallid faces of the crowd, that there was something sad about it all. The horse moved slowly along, at almost a snail's pace, while behind walked a poor, sad couple with their heads bowed down, and each with a hand on the tail-board of the cart. They were evidently ...
— The Reminiscences Of Sir Henry Hawkins (Baron Brampton) • Henry Hawkins Brampton
... better still if you would carry me,' said she sweetly, 'but as I don't like to see people giving themselves trouble, you may carry me, and make that snail carry you.' So saying, she pointed languidly with one tiny foot at what the Prince had taken for a block of stone, but now he saw that it was ...
— The Green Fairy Book • Various
... returned. When distant from it only two hundred yards, we saw the girls enter the wood, evidently taking the direction of the seat. At the same moment I caught a glimpse of Neb moving up the road from the landing at a snail's pace, as if the poor fellow dreaded to encounter the task before him. After a moment's consultation, we determined to proceed at once to the grove, and thus anticipate the account of Neb, who must pass so near the summer-house as to be seen and recognised. We met with more obstacles ...
— Afloat And Ashore • James Fenimore Cooper
... could very well remember that there had been a great many more of them; that they had descended from a large family. They led a very retired and happy life and, as they had no children, they had adopted a little common snail which they brought up as their own child. But the little thing would not grow, for he was only a common snail, although the mother declared that he was getting too large for his shell. And when the father noticed ...
— Tell Me Another Story - The Book of Story Programs • Carolyn Sherwin Bailey |
