"Sparrow" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... knew everybody's secrets, but she told them judiciously if at all. She chattered all day to you as a sparrow twitters, and you did not tire of her; and Kate and I were never more agreeably entertained than when she told us of old times and of Kate's ancestors and their contemporaries; for her memory was wonderful, and she had either seen ...
— Deephaven and Selected Stories & Sketches • Sarah Orne Jewett
... a sparrow tame There lived a cat; from tenderest age, Of both, the basket and the cage Had household gods the same. The bird's sharp beak full oft provoked the cat, Who play'd in turn, but with a gentle pat, His wee friend ...
— A Hundred Fables of La Fontaine • Jean de La Fontaine
... didn't mean any disrespect," said the boy, as he fixed the splint on the dog's leg, and tied it with a string, while the dog licked his hand, "but I learned in Sunday school that up there they watch even the sparrow's fail, and they wouldn't be apt to get left on a dog bigger than a whole flock of sparrows, 'specially when the dog's fall was accompanied with such noise as a velocipede makes when it falls down stairs. No sir, a woman who throws a velocipede ...
— The Grocery Man And Peck's Bad Boy - Peck's Bad Boy and His Pa, No. 2 - 1883 • George W. Peck
... thing conceal. A pagan once, of graceless heart and hollow, Whose faith in gods, I'm apprehensive, Was quite as real as expensive. Consulted, at his shrine, the god Apollo. 'Is what I hold alive, or not?' Said he,—a sparrow having brought, Prepared to wring its neck, or let it fly, As need might be, to give the god the lie. Apollo saw the trick, And answer'd quick, 'Dead or alive, show me your sparrow, And cease to set for me a trap Which can but cause yourself ...
— The Fables of La Fontaine - A New Edition, With Notes • Jean de La Fontaine
... whether it should be always so interpreted, for I know it is sometimes a sign of distress or call for help, having heard it from one in full flight from a pursuing hawk. Other curious local names of birds in Worcestershire are "Blue Isaac" for hedge sparrow, "mumruffin" for long-tailed tit, "maggot" for magpie, and the heron is always called "bittern" (really quite a distinct bird). There are innumerable rhymes as to the signification of numbers where ...
— Grain and Chaff from an English Manor • Arthur H. Savory
... perhaps, interest MR. SANSOM to be informed that the appearance described to him is mentioned as a known fact in one of the works of the celebrated mystic, Jacob Behmen, The Three Principles, chap. 19. "Of the going forth of the Soul." I extract from J. Sparrow's translations., London, 1648. ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 52, October 26, 1850 • Various
... without. I'll choose me masther, Hinnissy, an' whin I do, 'twill not be that low-lyin', purple-complected, indygistible viggytable. I may bend me high head to th' egg-plant, th' potato, th' cabbage, th' squash, th' punkin, th' sparrow-grass, th' onion, th' spinach, th' rutabaga turnip, th' Fr-rench pea or th' parsnip, but 'twill niver be said iv me that I was subjygated be a Beet. No, sir. Betther death. I'm goin' to begin a war f'r freedom. I'm goin' to ...
— Observations by Mr. Dooley • Finley Peter Dunne
... drives away the native birds, although he is himself an attractive inhabitant in winter, particularly where native birds are not resident. The English sparrow should be kept in reduced numbers. This can be easily accomplished by poisoning them in winter (when other birds are not endangered) with wheat soaked in strychnine water. The contents of one of the eighth-ounce vials of strychnine that may be secured at a drug store is added to sufficient ...
— Manual of Gardening (Second Edition) • L. H. Bailey
... a sparrow hawk they're after. That's the sparrow hawk's cry, but it's a blue jay that made it. They always mimic them when they chase them. I've ...
— Uncle Robert's Geography (Uncle Robert's Visit, V.3) • Francis W. Parker and Nellie Lathrop Helm
... She knows she is not a Princess, and no Prince changed into a blue bird will come to visit her. She tells herself that all birds are not Princes; that the birds of her village are villagers, and that there might be one perhaps found amongst them, a little country lad changed into a sparrow by a bad fairy and wearing in his heart under his brown feathers the love of little Fanchon. Yes, if he came and she knew him, she would give him not bread crumbs only, but cake and kisses. She would so like ...
— Child Life In Town And Country - 1909 • Anatole France
... conceptions of duty, and of how that duty should be done. It is childish to regret the old times, when our soot-grimed manufacturing districts were green with lonely farms. To murmur at the transformation would be, I believe, to murmur at the will of Him without whom not a sparrow ...
— Health and Education • Charles Kingsley
... said he. "The preparations are for the game that is to be held to-morrow by the young earl, which will be on this wise. In the midst of a meadow which is here, two forks will be set up, and upon the two forks a silver rod, and upon the silver rod a sparrow-hawk, and for the sparrow-hawk there will be a tournament. And to the tournament will go all the array thou didst see in the city, of men and of horses and of arms. And with each man will go the lady he loves best; and no man can joust for the ...
— Bulfinch's Mythology • Thomas Bulfinch
... floor. Most of their rooms are private; for the partners, being bachelors and bosom friends, live there; and the door marked Private, next the clerks' office, is their domestic sitting room as well as their reception room for clients. Let me describe it briefly from the point of view of a sparrow on the window sill. The outer door is in the opposite wall, close to the right hand corner. Between this door and the left hand corner is a hatstand and a table consisting of large drawing boards on trestles, ...
— John Bull's Other Island • George Bernard Shaw
... these had long ceased to affect him. Of all the changes that spring brings with it, there was one only that now interested Kant; and he longed for it with an eagerness and intensity of expectation, that it was almost painful to witness: this was the return of a hedge sparrow that sang in his garden, and before his window. This bird, either the same, or one of the next generation, had sung for years in the same situation; and Kant grew uneasy when the cold weather, lasting longer ...
— Narrative And Miscellaneous Papers • Thomas De Quincey
... a minute, I have heard it imitate the woodlark, chaffinch, blackbird, thrush, and sparrow.... Their few natural notes resemble those of the nightingale, but their song is of greater compass and more varied."—Ashe, Travels in ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook, Vol. 3 • E. Cobham Brewer
... After having viewed me well, and perceiving me to be so lean that I had nothing but skin and bone, he let me go. He took up all the rest, one by one, and viewed them in the same manner; and the captain being the fattest, he held him with one hand, as I might a sparrow, and thrusting a spit through him, kindled a great fire, roasted, and ate him in his apartment for his supper. This being done, he returned to his porch, where he lay and fell asleep, snoring louder than thunder. He slept thus till morning. For our parts, it was not possible ...
— Fairy Tales From The Arabian Nights • E. Dixon
... abolished by Reason. We are able to see now, with eyes made clear by knowledge, that everything is governed by Universal Law-that the infinite number of laws are but manifestations of the One Great Law-the LAW which is THE ALL. It is true indeed that not a sparrow drops unnoticed by the Mind of THE AL—that even the hairs on our head are numbered—as the scriptures have said There is nothing outside of Law; nothing that happens contrary to it. And yet, do not make the mistake of supposing that Man is but ...
— The Kybalion - A Study of The Hermetic Philosophy of Ancient Egypt and Greece • Three Initiates
... large number of small lakes. In spring this plain is so water-drenched and so crossed by deep rapid snow-rivulets, that it is difficult, often impossible, to traverse it. Immediately after the disappearance of the snow a large number of birds at all events had settled there. The Lapp sparrow had chosen a tuft projecting from the marshy ground on which to place its beautiful roofed dwelling, the waders in the neighbourhood had laid their eggs in most cases directly on the water-drenched moss without trace of a nest, and on tufts ...
— The Voyage of the Vega round Asia and Europe, Volume I and Volume II • A.E. Nordenskieold
... probably at Jumble Sales, and he always seems to choose clothes made for a stouter bird. There is no reason why he should never look chic; he has a slimmer figure than the bullfinch, for instance, who always manages to look so well-tailored. It is just arrogance, pure Londonism, on the part of the sparrow, just that impudent socialistic spirit that makes it so difficult for us ...
— Living Alone • Stella Benson
... exemplary. What irony that he should be unobserved! Even we, posterity, think far less of St. Peter than of Bellini when we see this picture; St. Peter is no more to us than the blue harmony of those little hills beyond, or than that little sparrow perched on a twig in the foreground. After all, there have been so many martyrs—and so many martyrs named Peter—but so few great painters. The little screed on the fence is no mere vain anachronism. It is a sly, rather ...
— Yet Again • Max Beerbohm
... powers by which he may be appreciated. And yet he is not only a real poet, but he is all poet. The Muses have not merely sprinkled his brow; he was baptized by immersion. His notes are not many; but in them Nature herself sings. He is a sparrow that half sings, half chirps, on a bush, not a lark that floods with orient hilarity the skies of morning; but the bush burns, like that which Moses saw, and the sparrow herself is ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 77, March, 1864 • Various
... fortune—favoured me? You jest! But I will tell you how I fared. The Khan Of Berlas hath a favourite sparrow-hawk, That with his jesses to the forest flew. By some good chance I caught this hawk, and brought him Home to the Khan, who questioned of my name. I hid my birth, and painted myself poor, A porter of burdens, and my parents ill. Straightway he sends them to the hospital... (Weeps.) ...
— Turandot, Princess of China - A Chinoiserie in Three Acts • Karl Gustav Vollmoeller
... a wood fire at his club, ordered hot gin for himself and the ship's doctor. The ship's doctor had gone below on another "hurry call" from the widow. At the first luncheon on board the widow had sat on the right of Doctor Sparrow, with Austin Ford facing her. But since then, except to the doctor, she had been invisible. So, at frequent intervals, the ill health of the widow had deprived Ford of the society of the doctor. That it deprived him, also, of the society ...
— Once Upon A Time • Richard Harding Davis
... thin little hands together, with his head cocked to one side, looking like an intellectual and benevolent sparrow. ...
— Sweetapple Cove • George van Schaick
... old "Father Duchesne" in a towering passion, with short legs, bare arms, and rubicund face, topped with an immense red cap. In one hand he holds a diminutive Monsieur Thiers and stifles him as if he were a sparrow. Here, the drawing is not only vile, ...
— Paris under the Commune • John Leighton
... and narcissi, also with flowery hats and airy garments that made the passer-by shiver by their contrast with the cutting March wind. In and out, among automobiles and pedestrians, darted that fearless optimist, the metropolitan sparrow, busy already with straws and twigs for ...
— Kildares of Storm • Eleanor Mercein Kelly
... and grilled quail— On every fowl they fare. Boiled perch and sparrow broth,—in each preserved The separate flavour that is most its own. O Soul come back to ...
— More Translations from the Chinese • Various
... quite softly to myself, and held my head sneeringly askew. Wherefore should I sorrow for what I eat, for what I drink, or for what I may array this miserable food for worms called my earthy body? Hath not my Heavenly Father provided for me, even as for the sparrow on the housetop, and hath He not in His graciousness pointed towards His lowly servitor? The Lord stuck His finger in the net of my nerves gently—yea, verily, in desultory fashion—and brought slight disorder among the threads. And then the Lord withdrew His finger, ...
— Hunger • Knut Hamsun
... thou not know him? He sang to thee the Marseillaise, and thou kissedst the pen that fell from his wing; he came in the radiance of Paradise, and perchance thou didst turn away from him towards the sparrow who sat with ...
— What the Moon Saw: and Other Tales • Hans Christian Andersen
... Thus the status of theology does not correspond to what we look for in very low culture. It would scarcely be a paradox to say that the popular Zeus, or Ares, is degenerate from Mungan-ngaur, or the Fuegian being who forbids the slaying of an enemy, and almost literally 'marks the sparrow's fall.' ...
— The Making of Religion • Andrew Lang
... Mrs. Sparrow cocked her head sideways and looked queerly at him. "You don't look as if you were starving," she observed. "You're as plump and sleek as any rabbit I ...
— Bumper, The White Rabbit • George Ethelbert Walsh
... cricket waxing slow, With home-made bow and arrow We took to shooting—once I know I all but hit a sparrow. ...
— Briefless Ballads and Legal Lyrics - Second Series • James Williams
... remember this. That when we walk across the field, or look out into the garden, we could have the wisdom to remember, Whither, O God, can I go from Thy presence? For Thou art looking down on the opening of every bud and flower, and without Thee not a sparrow falls to the ground. Whither can I flee from Thy Spirit? For Thy Spirit is giving life perpetually, alike to me and to the insect at my feet; without Thy Spirit my lungs could not breathe one breath, my heart ...
— All Saints' Day and Other Sermons • Charles Kingsley
... blackbirds rising in huge swarms like gnats; full-voiced meadowlarks on the fence posts; herons stalking solemnly, or waiting like so many Japanese bronzes for a chance at a gopher; red-tailed hawks circling slowly; pigeon hawks passing with their falcon dart; little gaudy sparrow hawks on top the telephone poles; buzzards, stately and wonderful in flight, repulsive when at rest; barn-owls dwelling in the haystacks, and horned owls in the hollow trees; the game in countless numbers; all the smaller ...
— The Killer • Stewart Edward White
... that were left of them, took her part; but they lived in the water, and she had never had very much to do with them. In the birds she found her true allies. They were not attached to the higher civilisation. The higher civilisation, so far, had treated them inconsiderately, at sparrow clubs. The Owl talked a good deal about the low moral tone of the human race in this respect, and was pessimistic about it, failing to perceive that higher types of organisms always like to signify their ...
— 'That Very Mab' • May Kendall and Andrew Lang
... imperfectly, but that a difference in skill may not unfrequently be detected between individuals{285}. Certain birds, moreover, adapt their nests to circumstances; the water-ouzel makes no vault when she builds under cover of a rock—the sparrow builds very differently when its nest is in a tree or in a hole, and the golden-crested wren sometimes suspends its nest below and sometimes places it ...
— The Foundations of the Origin of Species - Two Essays written in 1842 and 1844 • Charles Darwin
... appears to have been written on the day of the king's pardon being received. —Oh deem it not Presumptuous, that my soul grateful thus rates The present high deliv'rance it hath found;— Sole effort of Thy wisdom, sov'reign Pow'r, Without whose knowledge, not a sparrow fells! Oh I may I cease to live, ere cease to bless That interposing hand, which turn'd aside— Nay, to my life and preservation turn'd,— The fatal blow precipitate, ordain'd To level all my little hopes in dust, And give ...
— The Eventful History Of The Mutiny And Piratical Seizure - Of H.M.S. Bounty: Its Cause And Consequences • Sir John Barrow
... whole sheer in its talons, with as much ease as an eagle would carry off, in the same manner, a hare or a rabbit. This we may readily give credit to, from the known fact of our little kestrel and the sparrow-hawk frequently flying off with a partridge, which is nearly three times the weight ...
— A History of Aeronautics • E. Charles Vivian
... to note the exact order in which the different birds successively begin their parts in this performance; but the bluebird, whose song is only a short, mellow warble, is heard nearly at the same time with the robin, and the song sparrow joins them soon after with his brief but finely modulated strain. The different species follow rapidly, one after another, in the chorus, until the whole welkin rings with their matin hymn ...
— McGuffey's Sixth Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey
... has got the bulge on all the Christians now, and draws more water than anybody, but He who knows the sparrow's fall has no doubt got an eye on the fat rascal, and some day will close two or three fingers around Bob's throat, when his eyes will stick out so you can hang your hat on them, and he will blat like a calf and get down on his knees ...
— Peck's Compendium of Fun • George W. Peck
... were silent and went into hiding when above the tops of the trees there grated like a rusty weathercock the "alma de gato" or "soul of the cat," a kind of light fawn-colored sparrow-hawk. If he proudly hooted, displaying in the air the long white plumes of his tail, he in his turn meekly took to flight when in the loftier heights there appeared the "gaviao," the large white-headed ...
— Eight Hundred Leagues on the Amazon • Jules Verne
... meeting him in the antechamber, the corridor, or on the stairs, those touches of the hand every time she met him, and her deep sighs; but absorbed by his desire to please the great lady, he had disdained the soubrette. He whose game is the eagle takes no heed of the sparrow. ...
— The Three Musketeers • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... the eggs in the nest of the hedge-sparrow, Gleam the little rooms in the homestead that I know: Death, I think, has lost the way to Kimmeridge in Dorset; Sorrow never knew it, or forgot ...
— Collected Poems - Volume Two (of 2) • Alfred Noyes
... Gulf Stream which the Captain says seldom extends so far north. Passed a French brig at ten; the wind freshened and we took in some sail. About 5 some sail torn by the wind. At three passed another ship and brig nearly together; after dinner a small bird resembling our sparrow though rather larger and with speckled breast. The nearest point of land is at least 200 miles; it fluttered about refusing any food, then flew into the ladies' cabin and ...
— A Journey to America in 1834 • Robert Heywood
... religion of the most primitive type, and inclusive of all natural creatures and things, even to "the sparrow that falls to the ground,"—though never by shot of his,—and, for whatsoever is manly in man, his worship may compare with that of the priests and heroes of pagan times. Nor is he false to these traits under any guise,—worshipping at unbloody altars, a ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 54, April, 1862 • Various
... preface to the reader, John Sparrow writes: "I must say that this book, 'Aurora,' hath conduced more to open my mind to the understanding of all his writings, and of all Mysteries, both natural and divine (and so, consequently, of ...
— The Gnosis of the Light • F. Lamplugh
... blue jay, and the euthuma was a sparrow. We couldn't see what the shelcuff was ourselves, the tree was ...
— Betty Wales Freshman • Edith K. Dunton
... a small bird, which is said to be peculiar to the Blasquet Islands, called by the Irish, Gourder, the English name of which I am at a loss for, nor do I find it mentioned by naturalists. It is somewhat larger than a sparrow; the feathers of the back are dark, and those of the belly are white; the bill is straight, short, and thick; and it is web-footed: they are almost one lump of fat; when roasted, of a most delicious taste, and are reckoned to exceed an ortolan; for which reason the gentry hereabouts call them the ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. 6 • Maria Edgeworth
... was perched on a bough in a pine-wood, and the jester said that this bird was a very peculiar species. It had originally been grey, and its bill was as straight as a sparrow's, but when the Saviour hung upon the cross, it pitied him, and with its little bill strove to draw the nails from the wounded hands. In memory of this friendly act, the Lord had marked its beak with the ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... spirit, he despised them; and believing the Deity too wise to be affected by mere virtuous shows of any kind, his ignorance of the sublime benevolence, which disdains not to provide food even for the "sparrow ere it falls," made him think the Creator of all too great to care about the actions of men; hence, being without the true principles of good-virtue, as virtue, was nonsense ...
— The Scottish Chiefs • Miss Jane Porter
... canamus—Secundum formam statuti," &c., and from time to time, when he is greatly elated and wishes to show himself in all his magnificence, he adopts the elegances and similes proper to the euphuistic style: "The sparrow for his lecherie ...
— The English Novel in the Time of Shakespeare • J. J. Jusserand
... gente (la), people gerente, manager girar, to draw (a bill), to turn giro, bill, draft, also turnover gobernar, to govern gobierno, government goleta, schooner goma elastica, caucho, rubber gorra (gorro), cap gorrion, sparrow gozar, to enjoy grabado, embossed gracia, grace, gracefulness graduacion, gradation, degree granadas, pomegranates grande (gran), great, large grande velocidad (a), by fast train granizar, to hail granjearse, to win over granos, ...
— Pitman's Commercial Spanish Grammar (2nd ed.) • C. A. Toledano
... still. Compared with home and Budge Street, it was the reposeful quiet of the tomb. Barney Bill smoked for a time in silence, while Paul sat with clenched fists and a beating heart. The simplicity of the high adventure dazed him. All he had to do was to walk away—walk and walk, free as a sparrow. ...
— The Fortunate Youth • William J. Locke
... the majesty of the lightning, and in the grandeur of the storm regulating and directing the whole in its sublime career, but he notices the fall of a sparrow, and numbers the very hairs of our head. Events, the most trivial in their nature, are the objects of his notice, as well as those of the most momentous character. Were not this the case, universal disorder and ruin would soon find their way into his works, break the chain of events, ...
— Twenty-Four Short Sermons On The Doctrine Of Universal Salvation • John Bovee Dods
... vault. Then I saw that bees weren't the animal kingdom's only representatives inside this volcano. Here and in the shadows, birds of prey soared and whirled, flying away from nests perched on tips of rock. There were sparrow hawks with white bellies, and screeching kestrels. With all the speed their stiltlike legs could muster, fine fat bustards scampered over the slopes. I'll let the reader decide whether the Canadian's appetite was aroused by the sight ...
— 20000 Leagues Under the Seas • Jules Verne
... the town's a hive. From miles around, the autos drive. The sparrow chirps. The rooster crows. The ...
— Chinese Nightingale • Vachel Lindsay
... Birds' eggs are almost as different from each other as are the birds themselves. The robin lays four or five blue eggs. The dove lays two white eggs. The sparrow lays six or eight speckled eggs. If we should find a nest with four blue eggs in it, we could be pretty sure that it was the nest of a............. rather than of a............. ...
— Stanford Achievement Test, Ed. 1922 - Advanced Examination, Form A, for Grades 4-8 • Truman L. Kelley
... for the great light ahead of us, the light I truly saw. And what the light is, still I do not know. But this I know: God is. He lives. And He is sorry. The boy may tell me this is no more than the words about His caring for the sparrow that falleth. But I tell him it is more to me, for this I have found out for myself. And I have found it out through great tribulation. But the tribulation is not now. It has stopped. It stopped with the sound of old Billy Jones's voice I heard—somehow ...
— Old Crow • Alice Brown
... Books chained to Desks in Churches: Font Inscription: Parochial Libraries, by W. Sparrow Simpson, B.A. 93 Real Signatures versus Pseudo-names, by the Rev. James Graves 94 Popular Stories of the English Peasantry, by Vincent T. Sternberg 94 Shakspeare Correspondence, by Cecil Harbottle, &c. 95 Epitaph and Monuments ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 196, July 30, 1853 • Various
... about a fair, the inns were like anthills, the very churches were full. On the morrow was to be the great procession of religious to enact the translation of the remains. No lodgings were to be had better than a stall in the stable of the Sparrow-hawk. There it was that we established our camp; and that done, I left my companions and wandered alone about the town, hardly hoping, and not able, to find my beloved, remote ...
— The Fool Errant • Maurice Hewlett
... with a tuft of white feathers, just the shape of a loaf of bread, upon its head. The Sparrow flies ...
— Children's Classics In Dramatic Form • Augusta Stevenson
... speaking of the compositions introduced into his classes, he says: 'Besides religious compositions, there are others, which refer to the Creator, by calling attention to the beauty and grandeur of his works. Songs, shewing in a few touching lines the wondrous instinct of the sparrow, the ant, the bee, and cultivating a feeling of respect for all nature's children. Besides these, there are songs intended to promote social and domestic virtues—order, cleanliness, humility, contentment, unity, temperance, etc.; thus impressing, not the letter of the law of charity on ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 424, New Series, February 14, 1852 • Various
... of a casual song of the lark in a fresh morning, of the blackbird and thrush at sunset, or the monotonous wail of the yellow-hammer, the silence of birds is now complete; even the lesser reed-sparrow, which may very properly be called the English mock-bird, and which kept up a perpetual clatter with the notes of the sparrow, the swallow, the white-throat, &c. in every hedge-bottom, day and night, ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 10, Issue 262, July 7, 1827 • Various
... the flower laughs where lately lay the snow, O'er the breezy hill-top hoarsely calls the crow, By the flowing river the alder catkins swing, And the sweet song-sparrow cries, "Spring! ...
— St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, Vol. 5, May, 1878, No. 7. - Scribner's Illustrated • Various
... despise it, instead of taking it thankfully, as she ought to have done, for she was really very comfortably off in the cottage—having bread and milk every morning and night, and something for dinner too; besides what mice she could catch, to say nothing of a stray robin or sparrow now and then. But, as I said just now, the magpie's chattering stories unsettled her; she thought it would be so charming to dine upon bits of roast chicken, and have buttered crumpets for breakfast, and fine cushions to lie upon, like the countess's cat. All this was very silly, no doubt; but ...
— Tales From Catland, for Little Kittens • Tabitha Grimalkin
... you notice that the dog leaves the track of his nails every time; while puss, well, she sheathes her claws while she walks, keeping them sharp for business when she sights a sparrow or ...
— The Banner Boy Scouts on a Tour - The Mystery of Rattlesnake Mountain • George A. Warren
... "not a sparrow falls but He is noticing, if that is what you mean; but the human conception of it is that God is sitting up nights worrying over the ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... Walsham by Samuel Otes, rector of South Repps, Norfolk, who was chaplain to the Lord Chief Justice Hobart. Reference has already been made to the works of Humphrey Prideaux, Dean of Norwich. Anthony Sparrow, Bishop of Norwich, who was born in Suffolk, published "Rationale upon the Book of Common Prayer" (London, 1661), which was often reprinted and is still of some value, and a companion volume "Collection of Articles, Canons," etc. (London, 1684). Last but not least ...
— Three Centuries of a City Library • George A. Stephen
... braver. A bird does not 'fall to the ground' unless wounded, and if it falls it dies. Jesus had looked pityingly on the great mystery, the woes of the creatures, and had stayed Himself on the thought of the all-embracing working of God. The very dying sparrow, with broken wing, had its place in that universal care. God is 'immanent' in nature. The antithesis often drawn between His universal care and His 'special providence' is misleading. Providence is special because it is universal. ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. Matthew Chaps. IX to XXVIII • Alexander Maclaren
... similar to those secured by Supt. Babcock are becoming manifest. Only a few days ago a boy said to his teacher, "I used to take pleasure in killing all kinds of birds. Now I don't wish to harm even an English Sparrow." ...
— Birds Illustrated by Color Photograph [April, 1897] - A Monthly Serial designed to Promote Knowledge of Bird-Life • Various
... pluck, though not in the least sublime, Is wiser than blank dismay, Since "No sparrow can fall before its time", And we're valued higher than they; So hope for the best and leave the rest In charge of a stronger hand, Like the honest boors in the far-off west, With the ...
— Poems • Adam Lindsay Gordon
... sense has been strongest in saints of a very mystical sort; such as St. Francis who spoke of Sister Sparrow and Brother Wolf. Shaw adopted this crusade of cosmic pity but adopted it very much in his own style, severe, explanatory, and even unsympathetic. He had no affectionate impulse to say "Brother Wolf"; at the best he would have said "Citizen Wolf," like a sound republican. ...
— George Bernard Shaw • Gilbert K. Chesterton
... or Uncle Jed been there, the catastrophe would never have happened; but Mrs. Snawdor was at the post-office, and Uncle Jed at the signal tower, and the feeble protests of Mr. Demry were as futile as the twittering of a sparrow. ...
— Calvary Alley • Alice Hegan Rice
... gone. She prayed her evening prayer; she trusted herself to the Lord Jesus to take care of her; and then she undressed herself and lay down and went to sleep, just as quietly as any sparrow of them all with its ...
— The Carpenter's Daughter • Anna Bartlett Warner
... adulterous king, beloved of him, The same who offers to a chosen few The right to praise him in eternal song While a vast shrieking world of endless woe Blends its dread chorus with their rapturous hymn? Is this the God ye mean, or is it he Who heeds the sparrow's fall, whose loving heart Is as the pitying father's to his child, Whose lesson to his children is, "Forgive," Whose plea for all, "They ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... son of Colonel Nivelle—and an English mother, a former Miss Sparrow, whose family lived at Deal, on the English Channel. In his married life General Nivelle has ...
— Kelly Miller's History of the World War for Human Rights • Kelly Miller
... know something more concerning the Ash. HAR replied: 'What I have farther to add concerning it is, that there is an eagle perched upon its branches, who knows a multitude of things, but he hath between his eyes a sparrow-hawk (qui Vederloefner vocatur). A squirrel runs up and down the Ash, sowing misunderstanding between the eagle and the serpent, which lies concealed at its root. Pour stags run across the branches of the tree, and devour its rind. ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol 2, No 6, December 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... improvement sought. She rears her young the hundredth time as she did the first, by the long experience none the wiser. This is her nature. God made her thus. Instinct is wonderful, but it never improves. It grows not wiser with age nor the ages. It nothing from experience learns. The sparrow builds her nest, and the beaver his dam, just as they did in the years before the flood. The little quails an hour from the shell, will hide at the danger-signal of the mother bird, when they never saw a hawk, nor heard of one's existence. How different this from ...
— Autobiography of Frank G. Allen, Minister of the Gospel - and Selections from his Writings • Frank G. Allen
... and greedy spendthrift that he is, has not created even the humblest of the species of birds, mammals and fishes that adorn and enrich this earth. "The earth is THE LORD'S, and the fulness thereof!" With all his wisdom, man has not evolved and placed here so much as a ground-squirrel, a sparrow or a clam. It is true that he has juggled with the wild horse and sheep, the goats and the swine, and produced some hardy breeds that can withstand his abuse without going down before it; but as for species, he has not yet ...
— Our Vanishing Wild Life - Its Extermination and Preservation • William T. Hornaday
... supposed to be such that he would not countenance the slaughter of the meanest thing that crawls—not even those miserable creatures who hold that SHAKSPEARE'S plays were written by SHAKSPEARE. It was therefore with pained regret that I heard him attempting to support his objection to the activities of sparrow-clubs by the argument that, if the birds were destroyed, large numbers of grubs and caterpillars would be left alive. After this I shall not be surprised to hear that he has been summoned by the R.S.P.C.A. for brutality to ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 152, June 20, 1917 • Various
... this country break their fast with (el hassua) barley-gruel; they grind the barley to the size of sparrow-shot, this they mix with water, and simmer over a slow fire two or three hours. This food is esteemed extremely wholesome, and is 243 antifebrile. The Emperor takes this before he drinks tea in a morning: his father, Seedi Muhamed ben Abdallah, also, who drank none but fine ...
— An Account of Timbuctoo and Housa Territories in the Interior of Africa • Abd Salam Shabeeny
... putting his head on one side, like a meditative sparrow; "'tective fellers can't find out; that's the difficulty. Good mind to go on the ...
— The Mystery of a Hansom Cab • Fergus Hume
... all the voices of nature seemed to flow in and mix with the reading, I cannot tell, no more than I can number them; the whirr of a bird's wing, the liquid note of a wood thrush, the stir and movement of a thousand leaves, the gurgle of rippling water, the crow's call, and the song-sparrow's ecstasy. Once or twice the notes of a bugle found their way down the hill, and reminded me that I was in a place of delightful novelty. It was just a fillip to my enjoyment, as I looked on ...
— Daisy • Elizabeth Wetherell
... will wait. This sad and solemn hour Is dark with doubt and gloom, but by and by The clouds will lift and you will see God's face. For there is one in heaven whose pleading tongue Will pray for blessings on her only son Of Him who heeds the little sparrow's fall;— And O if He will listen to my prayers, The gates of heaven shall echo to my voice Morning and evening,—only keep your heart.' ...
— The Feast of the Virgins and Other Poems • H. L. Gordon
... window, Anna Barly peered out at the wet, gray morning. The ground was sopping, the trees black with the night's drenching. In the orchard a sparrow sang an uncertain song; and she heard the comfortable drip, drip, drip from the eaves. It was damp and fresh at the window; the breeze, cold and fragrant after rain, made her shiver. She drew her wrapper closer about ...
— Autumn • Robert Nathan
... fall out and you call them casual and attribute them to fortune? How many things do the world gaze upon, think upon, and discourse upon, and yet not one thought, one word of God all the time? What more contingent than the falling of a sparrow on the ground? And yet even that is not unexpected to him, but it flows from his will and counsel. What less taken notice of or known than the hairs of your head? Yet these are particularly numbered by him, and so that no power in the world can add to them or diminish from ...
— The Works of the Rev. Hugh Binning • Hugh Binning
... Dickie Chip-Chip, the sparrow boy, and he perched on the fence in front of Bully, put his head on one side—not on one side of the fence, you know, but on one side of his own little feathered neck—and Dickie looked out of his bright little eyes at ...
— Bully and Bawly No-Tail • Howard R. Garis
... waters flowed on sullenly in their eternal act of escape to the sea. All along the wan stretch of Cheyne Walk the thin trees stood exanimate, with not a breath of wind to stir the snow that pied their soot-blackened branches. Here and there on the muffled ground lay a sparrow that had been frozen in the night, its little claws sticking up heavenward. But here and there also those tinier adventurers of the London air, smuts, floated vaguely and came to rest on the snow—signs that in the seeming death of civilisation some housemaids at least ...
— A Christmas Garland • Max Beerbohm
... of God are numerous; the Scriptures are filled with creatures emblematic of the Saviour. David compares Him, by comparing himself, to the pelican in the wilderness, to the owl in its nest, to a sparrow alone on the house-top, to the dove, to a thirsting hart; the Psalms are a treasury of analogies with His qualities ...
— The Cathedral • Joris-Karl Huysmans
... invested, and ransacked from top to bottom. But for a long while all search was vain; at last a slave betrayed the secret;—the diamond was found concealed beneath a heap of ashes. Runjeet Singh had it set in an armlet, between two diamonds, each the size of a sparrow's egg." ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 7, Issue 41, March, 1861 • Various
... forward from under the bush, rose with a great hubbub a little way into the air, then fell in one mass to the earth and went to pieces. And then, without uttering a sound, each of the little balls suddenly went his way, and a moment afterwards there was not a sparrow to be seen ...
— Tales of Two Countries • Alexander Kielland
... frequently seen these eagles swoop on to one, and, while struggling with its prey, have galloped up and secured it myself, before the dazed wallaby could collect its senses. Other birds of prey, such as sparrow-hawks, owls, and mopokes (a kind of owl), inhabit this region, but they are not numerous. Dull-coloured, small birds, that exist entirely without water, are found in the scrubs; and in the mornings they are sometimes noisy, but not melodious, when ...
— Australia Twice Traversed, The Romance of Exploration • Ernest Giles
... charming picture, only to spoil it at the last moment by a careless movement, which altered the position of the camera, and so omitted such important details as the head of the sitter, or left her squeezed into one corner of the picture, like a sparrow on the house-top. ...
— About Peggy Saville • Mrs. G. de Horne Vaizey
... cabin was built. On the eighteenth of October, 1817, Thomas Lincoln entered a quarter-section of government land eighteen miles north of the Ohio river and about a mile and a half from the present village of Gentryville. About a year later they were followed by the family of Thomas and Betsy Sparrow, relatives of Mrs. Lincoln and old-time neighbors on the Rock Spring farm in Kentucky. Dennis Hanks, a member of the Sparrow household and cousin of Abraham Lincoln, came also. He has furnished some recollections of the President's boyhood which are well ...
— The Every-day Life of Abraham Lincoln • Francis Fisher Browne
... poor crippled sparrow fell to the ground, and fluttered about in a vain attempt to regain a place of safety. Some of its mates gathered around it, and seemed eager to help it; but they did not know what to do. Their chirping drew together a good many of the ...
— The Nursery, January 1877, Volume XXI, No. 1 - A Monthly Magazine for Youngest Readers • Various
... epistles on history, I was not acquainted with that amiable man and elegant poet. He afterwards thanked me in verse for my second and third volumes; and in the summer of 1781, the Roman Eagle, (a proud title) accepted the invitation of the English Sparrow, who chirped in the groves of Eartham, near Chichester. As most of the former purchasers were naturally desirous of completing their sets, the sale of the quarto edition was quick and easy; and an octavo size was printed, to satisfy at a cheaper rate the public demand. The conclusion of my work ...
— Memoirs of My Life and Writings • Edward Gibbon
... materially assisted by Military Store-Keeper Girardey and several young officers—Captain Finney, and Lieutenants Waller, Collier, Sparrow, Hallam, and Cadet Lewis, and towards the close ...
— History of the Confederate Powder Works • Geo. W. Rains
... was so big and angry that she felt like a wren or sparrow in his hold. But the stupidity of him! the blind idiocy! She eyed him from head to foot with a bitterness and contempt unutterable—a handsome six-foot animal, with his small brain filled with smaller, worn-out prejudices! The way of ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XII, No. 28. July, 1873. • Various
... Lord of Hoasts, how dear The pleasant Tabernacles are! Where thou do'st dwell so near. 2 My Soul doth long and almost die Thy Courts O Lord to see, My heart and flesh aloud do crie, O living God, for thee. 3 There ev'n the Sparrow freed from wrong Hath found a house of rest, 10 The Swallow there, to lay her young Hath built her brooding nest, Ev'n by thy Altars Lord of Hoasts They find their safe abode, And home they fly from round ...
— The Poetical Works of John Milton • John Milton
... wheeled round. It was Pye. The little man fixed his gold glasses on his nose with two fingers in his nervous way, and blinked through them at us, unruffled as a cock-sparrow that ...
— Hurricane Island • H. B. Marriott Watson
... at the beginning of each day. Linna, who had gained a dim idea of what the touching act meant, bent on her knees beside Alice; and who shall say the petition which went up from her heart was not heard and remembered by Him who notices the fall of every sparrow. ...
— The Daughter of the Chieftain - The Story of an Indian Girl • Edward S. Ellis
... rise from the clover or wheat, and nest in the trees or hedgerows of furze or quickset, are for the most part English—the skylark, the blackbird, finches, green and gold, thrushes, starlings, and that eternal impudent vagabond the house-sparrow. Heavy is the toll taken by the sparrow from the oat-crops of his new home; his thievish nature grows blacker there, though his plumage often turns partly white. He learns to hawk for moths and other ...
— The Long White Cloud • William Pember Reeves
... done, King Aylmer noticed his little daughter, and when he saw how pale her cheeks were, he patted her head and said, "Cheer up, child, the young cock-sparrow is not dead; 'tis but a swoon caused by the cold and wet, and methinks when old Elspeth hath put a little life into him, thou wilt mayhap ...
— Tales From Scottish Ballads • Elizabeth W. Grierson
... copper all about the walls; I have never seen so gay a room. And always flowers in the window, and always a yellow cat on a red cushion. No canary bird; my mother Marie never would have a bird. "No prisoners!" she would say. Once a neighbour brought her a wounded sparrow; she nursed and tended it till spring, then set it loose ...
— Rosin the Beau • Laura Elizabeth Howe Richards
... sparrow. "Let's see you throw me off!" When George good-naturedly took him at his word, Joe clinched with him and managed to get a half-Nelson hold on him. Joe always went at things in dead earnest, anyway. Bob and Betty, laughing and shouting, hopped gleefully around the swaying ...
— Sure Pop and the Safety Scouts • Roy Rutherford Bailey
... mother to the utmost of her strength night after night. To learn to take the universe seriously there is no quicker way than to watch—to be a "waker," as the country-people call it. Between the hours at which the last toss-pot went by and the first sparrow shook himself, the silence in Casterbridge—barring the rare sound of the watchman—was broken in Elizabeth's ear only by the time-piece in the bedroom ticking frantically against the clock on the stairs; ticking harder and harder ...
— The Mayor of Casterbridge • Thomas Hardy
... was one of those afternoons which intrude on the bleakness of winter with a false but none the less agreeable intimation that Spring is on its way. The sidewalks were wet underfoot, and the gutters ran with thawed snow. The sun shone exhilaratingly from a sky the color of a hedge-sparrow's egg. ...
— The Little Warrior - (U.K. Title: Jill the Reckless) • P. G. Wodehouse
... pale, and Jane now and then reproached her with eating no more than a sparrow, and told her she was getting into a dwining way; but she made no answer, except that she 'could do her work.' At last, one Sunday evening, when she had been left alone with the children, her mistress found her sitting at the foot of her bed, among ...
— Dynevor Terrace (Vol. II) • Charlotte M. Yonge
... horses can see much better in the dark than men can, and many an accident would never have happened if horses might have had the full use of their eyes. Some years ago, I remember, there was a hearse with two horses returning one dark night, and just by Farmer Sparrow's house, where the pond is close to the road, the wheels went too near the edge, and the hearse was overturned into the water; both the horses were drowned, and the driver hardly escaped. Of course after this accident a stout white rail was put up that ...
— Black Beauty • Anna Sewell
... generally with success. There are anecdotes hinging, however, on animals which have more to do with man than the other mammals referred to in the little story. These stories we have felt to be very interesting when they occur in biographies of great men. Cowper and his Hares, Huygens and his Sparrow, are tales—at least the former—full of interesting matter on the history of the lower animal, but are of most value as showing the influence on the man who amused himself by taming them. We like to know that the great ...
— Heads and Tales • Various
... grated unpleasantly on the ear, and set half a dozen alert in a small band of seals that were ahead of us. Away they went, breaching and jumping entirely out of water. A sea-gull with slow, deliberate flight and long, majestic curves circled round us, and as a reminder of home a little English sparrow perched impudently on the fo'castle head, and, cocking his head on one side, chirped merrily. The boats were soon among the seals, and the bang! bang! of the guns could be heard from ...
— Dutch Courage and Other Stories • Jack London
... roam unvexed by any beast more formidable than the fox. The inordinate breeding of rooks seems even in those days[125] to have led to a war of extermination against them, carried on upon a system akin to that which was waged against the sparrow in the memory of men yet living. But besides this one, he records, in the De Subtilitate, few facts concerning Britain. He quotes the instances of Duns Scotus and Suisset in support of the view that the barbarians are equal to the Italians in intellect,[126] and he likewise ...
— Jerome Cardan - A Biographical Study • William George Waters
... at St. James's. Yesterday evening he was at the Queen's and Carlton-house, and at night at Lady Hertford's assembly. He only takes the title of altesse, an absurd mezzotermine, but acts king exceedingly; struts in the circle like a cock-sparrow, and does the honours of himself very civilly. There is a favourite too, who seems a complete jackanapes; a young fellow called Holke, well enough in his figure, and about three-and-twenty, but who will be tumbled down long before he is prepared for it. Bernsdorff, a Hanoverian, his first ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole Volume 3 • Horace Walpole
... their behalf. Happy and contented in the belief that they were not forgotten by their heavenly Father, these poor "children in the wood" looked up with gratitude to that beneficent Being who suffereth not even a sparrow to fall unheeded. ...
— Lost in the Backwoods • Catharine Parr Traill
... go by, a noisy throng; About the meadows all day long The shore-lark drops his brittle song; And up tihe leafless tree The nut-hatch runs, and nods, and clings; The bluebird dips with flashing wings, The robin flutes, the sparrow sings, And the swallows ...
— The Evolution of Expression Vol. I • Charles Wesley Emerson
... do not," he said heartily. "I care for you as St Francis did for his pet sparrow. So now put your hat on and I will go down and get a vettura with a ...
— Olive in Italy • Moray Dalton
... and gave him her hand. Charley took it in both his own with a tenderness beyond description, unless it was like that of a child holding a captured sparrow. ...
— The Return of the Native • Thomas Hardy
... perpetual alertness of armed men to ensure peace and safety. For Kohat city boasted a creditable average of bad characters and murder cases—a corpse more or less on the Border being of no more consequence than the fall of a sparrow; and the Waziris had of late been unusually daring in regard to Government horses and carbines. Nor was it an unknown thing for them to creep past the sentries on very black nights into the station itself; and for ...
— Captain Desmond, V.C. • Maud Diver
... with distended cheeks, the members of the regimental band flung out their deafening, brazen notes upon the air, stimulated in their efforts by a smartly-dressed bandmaster who looked like a pert little sparrow, and who zealously flourished his baton. Grouped round the band-stand were clerks, shopmen, schoolboys in Hessian boots, and little girls wearing brightly-coloured handkerchiefs round their heads. In the main walks and side-walks, as if engaged in an endless quadrille, ...
— Sanine • Michael Artzibashef
... as on most occasions, was our friend Cockerell,—affectionately known to the entire Battalion as "Sparrow,"—and his qualifications for the post were derived from three well-marked and invaluable characteristics, namely, an imperious disposition, a thick skin, and an attractive bonhomie ...
— All In It K(1) Carries On - A Continuation of the First Hundred Thousand • John Hay Beith (AKA: Ian Hay)
... stew of tripe," said the landlord, smacking his lips, "and cow-heel," smacking them again, "and bacon," smacking them once more, "and steak," smacking them for the fourth time, "and peas, cauliflowers, new potatoes, and sparrow-grass, all working up together in one delicious gravy." Having come to the climax, he smacked his lips a great many times, and taking a long, hearty sniff of the fragrance that was hovering about, put on the cover again ...
— The Ontario Readers - Third Book • Ontario Ministry of Education
... all the birds are nesting, Tells the hermit thrush the song he cannot tell, While the white-throat sparrow never resting, Even in the deepest night rings his crystal bell: O, she would love me then with a wild elation, Then she must love me and leave her lonely state, Give me love yet keep her soul's imperial reservation, Large as her deep nature ...
— Lundy's Lane and Other Poems • Duncan Campbell Scott
... Robing in tresses blackest ink outvie. The morning-breezes give her boughs fair drink, * And like a branch she sways with supple ply: She smiles in passing us. O thou that art * Fairest in yellow robed, or cramoisie, Thou playest with my wit in love, as though * Sparrow in hand of ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 5 • Richard F. Burton
... things. If he can read only a word of one syllable in the book of nature, he will make the most of that. I read such a word the other morning when I perceived, when watching a young but fully fledged junco, or snowbird, that its markings Were like those of the vesper sparrow. The young of birds always for a brief period repeat the markings of the birds of the parent stem from which they are an offshoot. Thus, the young of our robins have speckled breasts, betraying their thrush kinship. And the young junco shows, in its striped appearance ...
— Under the Maples • John Burroughs
... set off to Sparrow Hill, and partook of some tea under a small tent commanding a splendid view of Moscow, and said to be the spot whence Napoleon had his first glance of this ...
— A Journey in Russia in 1858 • Robert Heywood
... Peterswaldau. A bare snow field, spread about huts of clay, shingles and branches, without a sign of life. Neither a cat, dog nor sparrow, not even chimney smoke, to indicate the activity of the inhabitants. Heated dwellings in this stretch of land are luxuries, difficult of achievement; and how is one to prepare a warm meal out ...
— Mother Earth, Vol. 1 No. 3, May 1906 - Monthly Magazine Devoted to Social Science and Literature • Various
... the ground with strong pulsation; rode quickly; pounded along. {150d} Skirl, sound shrill. {147d} Slaps, breaks in walls or hedges; also narrow passes. {149b} Smoored, smothered. {151j} Spean, wean. {32} Spear-hawk, sparrow-hawk. From the root spar, to quiver or flutter, comes the name of "sparrow" and a part of the name "sparrow-hawk." {94e} Summerhall, Stubbs, in the "Anatomy of Abuses," speaking of the maypole, tells ...
— Playful Poems • Henry Morley
... would soon exterminate the sworn foe of their chickens and pigeons. They are also the great drawback to the introduction of pheasants and partridges, for the young birds have not a chance in the open against even a sparrow-hawk. ...
— Station Amusements • Lady Barker
... and, after having viewed me well, and perceiving me to be so lean that I had nothing but skin and bone, he let me go. He took up all the rest one by one, viewing them in the same manner: and the captain being the fattest, he held him with one hand, as I would do a sparrow, and thrusting a spit through him, kindled a great fire, and roasted him in his apartment for supper; which being done, he returned to the porch, where he lay and fell asleep, snoring louder than thunder: he slept thus till morning; for our parts, it was not possible ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments Volume 1 • Anonymous
... was thus engaged in fight, Grifonio ran to gain a sweeter sight; The princess was on board full well he knew; No time he lost, but to her chamber flew; And, since his pleasures seemed to be her doom; He bore her like a sparrow from the room: But not content with such a charming fair, He took her diamonds, ornaments for hair, And those dear pledges ladies oft receive, When they a lover's ardent flame believe. Indeed, I've heard it hinted as a truth, (And very probable for such a youth,) ...
— The Tales and Novels, Complete • Jean de La Fontaine
... that he deserved, and his life had been so hemmed in with security that he had had no difficulty in assuring his congregation on every possible occasion that God was good and far-seeing, and that "not one sparrow..." ...
— Jeremy • Hugh Walpole
... and help, had been led back to sobriety and a life of honest industry by the hand of a little child cast somehow adrift in the world, yet guarded and guided by Him who does not lose sight in his good providence of even a single sparrow. ...
— Cast Adrift • T. S. Arthur
... the strength of this man's desire for the holy place. He covets the privilege of the very sparrow which builds its nest beneath the sacred eaves! When he is away from the Temple its worship and music haunt his mind and soul. It wooes him in the market-place. Its insistent call is with him by the fireside. Yes, "in his heart are the ...
— My Daily Meditation for the Circling Year • John Henry Jowett
... enviable reputation awaits that man of genius, who should attempt and realize a union;—who should recall the high finish, the appropriateness, the facility, the delicate proportion, and above all, the perfusive and omnipresent grace, which have preserved, as in a shrine of precious amber, the Sparrow of Catullus, the Swallow, the Grasshopper, and all the other little loves of Anacreon; and which, with bright, though diminished glories, revisited the youth and early manhood of Christian Europe, in the vales ...
— Biographia Literaria • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... I'll surprise your inmost secrets?" she taunted. "They'd be safe. I can be close-mouthed, even though I've been chattering like a sparrow." ...
— Success - A Novel • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... earnest or e'en in jest.[FN229] We bear with the dog which behaves itself * But the lion is chained lest he prove a pest: And the desert carcases swim the main * While union-pearls on the sandbank rest[FN230]: No sparrow would hustle the sparrow-hawk, * Were it not by folly and weakness prest: A-sky is written on page of air * 'Who doth kindly of kindness shall have the best!' 'Ware of gathering sugar from bitter gourd:[FN231] * 'Twill prove to its origin ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 9 • Richard F. Burton
... the roads are rambling. The name was originally Moor-Town, standing as it once did on the edge of the moor; and the manor, like the barton of Drascombe, was held on a curious tenure. 'Which manor was the Earls of Ulster in King Edward the first's age, who held it of the king for one sparrow-hawke yearly to be yielded.' Moreton is a small place, and in these days perhaps its most marked characteristic is the Dancing Tree, or Cross Tree, as it is sometimes called, for it has grown out of the steps that encircled the now broken village cross. This tree, an elm, was pollarded, and the ...
— Devon, Its Moorlands, Streams and Coasts • Rosalind Northcote
... rarely beautiful. In a sky of palest turquoise a crescent moon hung low, its arc of silver poised above the tips of the stunted pines, whose feathery outlines loomed black in the dusk. From out the dimness the note of a vesper sparrow sounded and mingled its sweetness with ...
— Flood Tide • Sara Ware Bassett
... Philip justice, he did not allow the bills to trouble him much. He died owing forty-five million piastres, which his dutiful son refused to pay. When you deal with Bourbons, it is well to remember the Spanish proverb, "A sparrow in the hand is better than ...
— Castilian Days • John Hay
... and murderers who acknowledged His splendor and fought His fight. This marvelous charity, the cleansing hope for his blackened soul, swept over him in a warm rush of humble praise and unutterable gratitude. Nothing of the Lord's was lost: "His eye is on the sparrow." ...
— The Happy End • Joseph Hergesheimer
... religious faith that was his sole unencumbered heritage. Once again he was a trustful little boy. He slid out of the great bed of his ancestors and knelt on the old rag mat beside it; he poured out an appeal for help from One who, he had been told—who, he truly believed—marked the sparrow's fall. Don Mike was far from being the orthodox person one ordinarily visualizes in a Spanish-Irish Catholic, but he was deeply religious, his religious impulse taking quite naturally a much more practical form and one most pleasing to himself and his neighbors, ...
— The Pride of Palomar • Peter B. Kyne
... of them; Smiling and free in breezes sway, Yet clothed by heavenly hand are they. Meek lilies of the quiet fields, Your growth instruction to me yields. The One who clothes the lily fair And gives it tender, earnest care— Will he not hear my fervent prayer? The One who notes the sparrow's fall— Does he not love his creatures all? If he so clothes each tuft and tree And gives the birds such liberty, Will he not clothe and care for me? I no more can doubt or sorrow: God ...
— Food for the Lambs; or, Helps for Young Christians • Charles Ebert Orr
... single turquoise, almost as large, and quite as clear in colour, as a hedge-sparrow's egg. The setting ...
— Vixen, Volume III. • M. E. Braddon
... broken hinges. The corral stockade was breached in many places by the years that had rotted the posts. The old-time windlass pump that, operated by a blind burro, once lifted water for the long vanished herds, was a pathetic old wreck, incapable now of offering drink to a thirsty sparrow. On their other hand, beneath the wide branches of giant sycamores and walnuts, and backed by a tangled orchard wilderness, stood an old house, empty and neglected, as if in the shadowy gloom of the untrimmed trees it awaited, lonely and forlorn, ...
— When A Man's A Man • Harold Bell Wright
... safe to assume that there is hardly any one who does not know by sight at least a few birds. Nearly every one in the eastern United States and Canada knows the Robin, Crow, and English Sparrow; in the South most people are acquainted with the Mockingbird and Turkey Buzzard; in California the House Finch is abundant about the towns and cities; and to the dwellers in the Prairie States the Meadowlark ...
— The Bird Study Book • Thomas Gilbert Pearson
... guessed how marvelous it is for a human being to walk. As for the internes in their white suits, I had never realized before the whiteness of white linen; but much more than that, I had never so much as dreamed of the beauty of young manhood. A little sparrow chirped and flew to a near-by branch, and I honestly believe that only "the morning stars singing together, and the sons of God shouting for joy" can in the least express the ecstasy of a bird's flight. I cannot express it, ...
— Human Traits and their Social Significance • Irwin Edman
... jellyfish to the ship-destroying monsters, the beasts of the forest, the birds of the air, they all are called into existence by God, and God has not merely called all these creatures into existence, but His providence preserves them, and not even a sparrow falls from the roof without ...
— The Excellence of the Rosary - Conferences for Devotions in Honor of the Blessed Virgin • M. J. Frings
... felt her pulse and said: "Oh! how weak this poor woman is!" Then he told the son that he must take good care of his mother and make her some very thin broth and give her a bowlful every minute. The son promised to obey him and went to the market and bought a sparrow and put on the fire a pail of water. When it boiled he put in the sparrow and waited until it boiled up two or three times, and then took a bowl of the broth to his mother, and repeated the dose as ...
— Italian Popular Tales • Thomas Frederick Crane
... soda," he thought. "What am I thinking about? Oh—my soda. . . . Most likely I shall have a bilious attack. . . . It's extraordinary, Smirnovsky swills vodka all day long and yet he never has a bilious attack. . . . There's a bird settled on the window . . . a sparrow. ...
— The Schoolmaster and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... in mine embrace and would keep it as my right eye.' Whereupon said he to me, 'What time I was born, the astrologers predicted that I should lose my soul at the hands of the son of a king of mankind. So I took it and set it in the crop of a sparrow, and shut up the bird in a box. The box I set in a casket, and enclosing this in seven other caskets and seven chests, laid the whole in a alabastrine coffer,[FN424] which I buried within the marge of yon earth-circling ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 7 • Richard F. Burton
... birds, are parrots, somewhat smaller than the common grey ones, of an indifferent green on the back and wings, the tail bluish, and the rest of a sooty or chocolate brown; parroquets, not larger than a sparrow, of a fine yellowish green, with bright azure on the crown of the head, and the throat and belly red; besides another sort as large as a dove, with a blue crown and thighs, the throat and under part of the head crimson, as also part of the ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 15 (of 18) • Robert Kerr
... were almost out of sight as they passed some trees but the colors could be seen dodging between them. When they were in full view again Handy Man led, with Milkmaid, Picket, Fright, and Sparrow close behind. Bandmaster came next, alone, followed by the rest. Seven had fallen and there was a ...
— The Rider in Khaki - A Novel • Nat Gould
... half-lights of Symbolist mysticism are remote from his hard glare. As a dramatist he drew upon and exaggerated that which in Aeschylus and Shakespeare seems to the countrymen of Racine nearest to the limit of the terrible and the brutal permissible in art: a princess nailed by the hands like a sparrow-hawk to a pine by a brutal peasant; the daughter of a noble house submitting to a loathed marriage with a foul-mouthed plebeian in order to ...
— Recent Developments in European Thought • Various
... honey. I know that the 'bug-birds,' that are always seen on or near cattle, do not feed on the bugs with which the cattle are covered, but on the locusts that fly about the herd. Last week, when our guards took us for a walk outside the fort, I noticed that a kind of sparrow in India has the same trick of catching the locusts that are driven on ahead ...
— On Commando • Dietlof Van Warmelo
... consider: for it is not always the part of wisdom to attempt a settlement of what the progress of events will soon settle for us. Mr. Buchanan seems to have no opinion, or, if he has one, it is a halting between two, a bat-like cross of sparrow and mouse that gives timidity its choice between flight and skulking. Nothing shocks our sense of the fitness of things more than a fine occasion to which the man is wanting. Fate gets her hook ready, but the eye is not there to clinch with it, ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 7, No. 39, January, 1861 • Various
... The Sparrow, Swan, the Doue, Though VENVS Birds they be, Yet are they not for Loue So absolute as we: For Reason vs doth moue; They but by billing woo: Then try what we can doo, To whom ...
— Minor Poems of Michael Drayton • Michael Drayton
... beautiful than in Europe.} Birds of Carolina. Eagle bald. Eagle gray. Fishing Hawk. Turkey Buzzard, or Vulture. Herring-tail'd Hawk. Goshawk. Falcon. Merlin. Sparrow-hawk. Hobby. Ring-tail. Raven. Crow. Black Birds, two sorts. Buntings two sorts. Pheasant. Woodcock. Snipe. Partridge. Moorhen. Jay. Green Plover. Plover gray or whistling. Pigeon. Turtle Dove. Parrakeeto. Thrush. Wood-Peckers, five sorts. Mocking-birds, two sorts. Cat-Bird. ...
— A New Voyage to Carolina • John Lawson
... 'The Sparrow's Nest', and the sonnet on Skiddaw, along with some translations from Chaucer, belong to the year 1801. During this year, however, 'The Excursion' was in progress. In its earlier stages, and before the plan ...
— The Poetical Works of William Wordsworth, Vol. II. • William Wordsworth
... of the demolition of Paul's Cross is stated by Dugdale to have been 1643, but the late Canon Sparrow Simpson produced evidence which clearly proves that it was pulled down before 1641, and probably before 1635. In the charge-books of the cathedral there is an entry under June, 1635, which shows that labourers were employed in carrying away "the lead, timber, etc., that was pull'd downe of ...
— Memorials of Old London - Volume I • Various |
