"Spiky" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... had seen. As the night advanced the mighty rock walls of my mountain mansion seemed to come nearer, while the starry sky in glorious brightness stretched across like a ceiling from wall to wall, and fitted closely down into all the spiky irregularities of the summits. Then, after a long fireside rest and a glance at my note-book, I cut a few leafy branches for a bed, and fell into the clear, death-like ...
— The Mountains of California • John Muir
... a line of dull green—evidently the vegetation along a stream. The ocher desert was scattered with sparse clumps of reddish, spiky scrub. Larry taxied the plane into one of those thickets. Finding canvas and rope in the cabin, he staked down the machine, ...
— The Pygmy Planet • John Stewart Williamson
... almost sixty years Since we on Bothwell's bonny braes were seen, By those whose eyes long closed in death have been: Two tiny imps, who scarcely stooped to gather The slender harebell, or the purple heather; No taller than the foxglove's spiky stem, That dew of morning studs with silvery gem. Then every butterfly that crossed our view With joyful shout was greeted as it flew, And moth and lady-bird and beetle bright In sheeny gold were each a wondrous sight. Then as we paddled barefoot, side by side, Among the sunny shallows of ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 3 • Various
... pale grey and sombre brown, smeared over with a vitreous enamel of obsidian or pierced by oily, writhing dykes that blazed with metallic scintillations. Anon came some yawning cleft or an assemblage of dizzy rock-needles, fused into whimsical tints and attitudes, spiky, distorted, over-toppling; then a bold tufa rampart, immaculate in its beauty, stainless as a curtain of silk. And as the boat moved on he looked into horrid dells which the rains had torn out of the loose scoriae. Gaping wounds, they wore the bright hues of corruption. ...
— South Wind • Norman Douglas
... bent on getting to the very topmost branch as quickly as ever he could climb; not a moment, indeed, was he able to spare to cast a glance at what was happening beneath. His puggaree had been torn off by one thorn, and waved gracefully in the breeze; a fancy waistcoat adorned another spiky branch, and his long white cotton gown was torn to ribbons in his mad endeavour to put as great a distance as possible between himself and the dead lion. As soon as I could stop laughing, I called ...
— The Man-eaters of Tsavo and Other East African Adventures • J. H. Patterson
... Summer, with a matron grace, Retreats to Dryburgh's cooling shade, Yet oft, delighted, stops to trace The progress of the spiky blade. ...
— Poems And Songs Of Robert Burns • Robert Burns
... But having committed herself to this line of action there was no retreating for bad weather. Even the receipt of Clym's letter would not have stopped her now. The gloom of the night was funereal; all nature seemed clothed in crape. The spiky points of the fir trees behind the house rose into the sky like the turrets and pinnacles of an abbey. Nothing below the horizon was visible save a light which was still burning in the ...
— The Return of the Native • Thomas Hardy
... but as he was no soldier, and was not very brave, he fled at the very first onset. Dashing through the bushes, he was suddenly stopped by some spiky branches that caught in his cloak and held him fast. The orator was so frightened that he thought the enemy had captured him, and, falling upon his knees, he began to beg that his life might ...
— The Story of the Greeks • H. A. Guerber
... sketch of a darkly-shaded spot, with a house showing dimly through, and at one side a spiky sun was rising above a quavering line, evidently meant for the horizon. There were various guesses. "Any port in a storm." ("Which is the same as saying, any guess, if you can't make ...
— Cricket at the Seashore • Elizabeth Westyn Timlow
... things do not matter now, these nights of flight and pain... We were in an open place near those great temples at Paestum, at last, on a blank stony place dotted with spiky bushes, empty and desolate and so flat that a grove of eucalyptus far away showed to the feet of its stems. How I can see it! My lady was sitting down under a bush resting a little, for she was very weak and weary, ...
— The Country of the Blind, And Other Stories • H. G. Wells
... of our Scottish Oolite seems to have most nearly resembled the flora of New Zealand,—a flora remarkable for the great abundance of its ferns, and its vast forests of coniferous trees, that retain at all seasons their coverings of acicular spiky leaves. It is to this flora that Dacrydium cupressinum,—so like a club moss in its foliage,—belongs; and Podocarpus ferrugineus,—a tree which more closely resembles in its foliage the Eathie conifer, save that its spiky leaves are somewhat narrower ...
— The Testimony of the Rocks - or, Geology in Its Bearings on the Two Theologies, Natural and Revealed • Hugh Miller
... the railings, The spiky railings all painted green, There are neat little beds of geraniums and fuchsia With never a happy weed between. There's a neat little grass plot, bald in places, And very dusty to touch; A respectable man comes once a week To keep ...
— Many Voices • E. Nesbit
... reached level ground and, leaving the steps behind them, proceeded to traverse a narrow and winding passage, the air in which smelt stale and musty, while here and there they were obliged to squeeze their painful way between long, spiky stalactites and stalagmites until they came to more steps—this time leading upward. Harry counted these; there were only one hundred and twenty-three of them, and they were not nearly so steep as the others; and then they ceased, and the ...
— Harry Escombe - A Tale of Adventure in Peru • Harry Collingwood
... curious things they are! huge, hard, yellowish-brown stems, as thick as my arm, or thicker, extending and ramifying under the ground in masses that seem hardly justified or accounted for by the elegant, light, spiky fans of dusky green foliage with which they fill the under part of the woods here. They look very tropical and picturesque, but both in shape and colour suggest something metallic rather than vegetable, the bronze green hue and lance-like form of their ...
— Journal of a Residence on a Georgian Plantation - 1838-1839 • Frances Anne Kemble |
