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Vulture   Listen
noun
Vulture  n.  (Zool.) Any one of numerous species of rapacious birds belonging to Vultur, Cathartes, Catharista, and various other genera of the family Vulturidae. Note: In most of the species the head and neck are naked or nearly so. They feed chiefly on carrion. The condor, king vulture, turkey buzzard, and black vulture (Catharista atrata) are well known American species. The griffin, lammergeir, and Pharaoh's chicken, or Egyptian vulture, are common Old World vultures.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Vulture" Quotes from Famous Books



... before the tone died away. Swallowing it with considerable difficulty, the harmony was taken up again, a bit throaty for a few notes. Then the pair talked together in the usual trogon fashion, and the sudden shadow of a passing vulture, drew forth discordant cat calls, as both birds swooped from sight to avoid ...
— Edge of the Jungle • William Beebe

... the void That hid them from his bended bow, Shall crawl from caverns overjoyed, Jackal and snake and carrion crow. And perched above the vulture's eggs, Reversed upon its hideous head, A blue-faced ape shall wave its legs To tell the ...
— Poems • G.K. Chesterton

... jewelled ring in the nose, and a wavy star on each cheek, and in the middle of the forehead; while over the balustrade on which she was leaning there peeped a monster with grotesque eyes, a pair of twisted horns, a parrot's beak, vulture's claws, and a scaly tail stretching away in complicated spires far into the distance. No one could for a moment doubt that this was Gerald's work, and Marian felt sure that he had been thereto incited by Lionel. Extreme ...
— The Two Guardians • Charlotte Mary Yonge

... distance, moving insensibly down the long, glaring corridor, a sinister figure, suggesting in the silence of his oncoming the motionless flight of a vulture. Well within my field of sight he overtook them and, with a lack of preliminary greeting that suggested supreme intimacy, walked beside them. I stood for some moments—for some minutes, and then hastened after them. I was going ...
— The Inheritors • Joseph Conrad

... descriptive form, and for the most part in regular pentameter rime. The best of them is In the Orchestra, where the poor fiddler in the band at the cheap music-hall plays mechanically every night for his daily bread, while his heart is torn by the vulture of memory. This poem shows a firm grasp of the material; every word adds something to ...
— The Advance of English Poetry in the Twentieth Century • William Lyon Phelps

... done, I'd have no son Pounce on these treasures like a vulture; Nay, give them half My epitaph And let them share ...
— The Love Affairs of a Bibliomaniac • Eugene Field

... to commit himself to speech, the chaplain cast up his pale eyes and looked volumes. This was quite enough for Mrs Pansey; she scented evil like a social vulture, and taking Cargrim's arm dragged him away to find out all the bad she could about The Derby Winner and its ...
— The Bishop's Secret • Fergus Hume

... not an ill-favoured knave;[hq][555] A good deal like a vulture in the face, With a hook nose and a hawk's eye, which gave A smart and sharper-looking sort of grace To his whole aspect, which, though rather grave, Was by no means so ugly as his case; But that, indeed, was hopeless as can be, Quite ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 4 • Lord Byron

... the kingdom. And having obtained the kingdom, Sugriva sent forth monkeys by hundreds and by thousands in search of Sita. And, O best of men, I too with innumerable monkeys set out towards the south in quest of Sita, O mighty-armed one. Then a mighty vulture Sampati by name, communicated the tidings that Sita was in the abode of Ravana. Thereupon with the object of securing success unto Rama, I all of a sudden bounded over the main, extending for a hundred yojanas. And, O chief of the Bharatas, ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa Bk. 3 Pt. 2 • Translated by Kisari Mohan Ganguli

... armour;—potable gold!—the three great Angels of Conduct, Toil, and Thought, still calling to us, and waiting at the posts of our doors, to lead us, with their winged power, and guide us, with their unerring eyes, by the path which no fowl knoweth, and which the vulture's eye has not seen! Suppose kings should ever arise, who heard and believed this word, and at last gathered and brought forth treasures ...
— Sesame and Lilies • John Ruskin

... the figure of the conqueror and that of the pirate?" said the ancients. The difference only between the eagle and the vulture,—serenity ...
— The Black Tulip • Alexandre Dumas (Pere)

... a transition play from the dramatic satires of the war of the theatres to the purer comedy represented in the plays named above. Its subject is a struggle of wit applied to chicanery; for among its dramatis personae, from the villainous Fox himself, his rascally servant Mosca, Voltore (the vulture), Corbaccio and Corvino (the big and the little raven), to Sir Politic Would-be and the rest, there is scarcely a virtuous character in the play. Question has been raised as to whether a story so forbidding can be considered a comedy, for, although the plot ends in the ...
— Every Man In His Humour • Ben Jonson

... over the abyss, more than half a mile from its edge, convinced him a strong upward current existed to-day, as on the day when they had made their short flight over the void. The bird soared and circled and finally shot away to northward, without a wing-flap, almost in the manner of a vulture. Stern knew an eagle could not imitate the feat without some aid in ...
— Darkness and Dawn • George Allan England

... sockets cleaned out to the very bottom. Now, I reasoned that no quadruped could do this. The holes were too small even for a jackal to get his slender snout into. The work must have been done by the beak of a bird; and what sort of bird. Why, a vulture, of course! ...
— Ran Away to Sea • Mayne Reid

... jungle creatures were common sights for the boys during their march. They saw a weird soundless fight between a forty-foot snake and a giant vulture with talons nearly two feet across and a beak resembling a mammoth nutcracker. The vulture won, methodically cutting the reptile's body into sections, its beak slicing through the snake as easily as ...
— The Revolt on Venus • Carey Rockwell

... typical miner. Death has placed its irrevocable stamp upon him; he has served his three years in the pits; has been transferred to the breakers when the signs of failing strength are perceived by the mine overseer. In another year he will be in the hands of the mortuary vulture; his last week's earnings will go to pay for the hard earned grave that is grudgingly ...
— The Transgressors - Story of a Great Sin • Francis A. Adams

... detail, this law of transmigration. For great sins one is condemned to pass a great many times into the bodies of dogs, insects, spiders, snakes, or grasses. The change has relation to the crime: thus, he who steals grain shall be born a rat; he who steals meat, a vulture; those who indulge in forbidden pleasures of the senses shall have their senses made acute to ...
— Ten Great Religions - An Essay in Comparative Theology • James Freeman Clarke

... deepest life and highest colour of passion. But I would not look; I had fixed my resolve, but I would not violate my nature. And then—something tore me so cruelly under my shawl, something so dug into my side, a vulture so strong in beak and talon, I must be alone to grapple with it. I think I never felt jealousy till now. This was not like enduring the endearments of Dr. John and Paulina, against which while I sealed my eyes and my ears, ...
— Villette • Charlotte Bronte

... what had befallen his lord at the hands of Pharaoh; then, taking him, led him to the presence. But when Sankharib considered him, he found him as one clean wasted by want; his hair had grown long like the pelts of wild beasts and his nails were as vulture's claws and his members were meagre for the length of time spent by him in duresse and darkness, and the dust had settled upon him and changed his colour which had faded and waxed of ashen hue. So his lord mourned for his plight and, rising up in ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 6 • Richard F. Burton

... out the bird book, settled comfortably on a bench, and with a deep sigh of satisfaction turned to the section headed. "V." Past "veery" and "vireo" he went, down the line until his finger, trembling with eagerness, stopped at "vulture." ...
— Freckles • Gene Stratton-Porter

... vulture has eaten the pigeon, the wolf has eaten the lamb; the lion has devoured the buffalo with sharp horns; man has killed the lion with an arrow, with a sword, with gunpowder; but the Horla will make of man what we have made of the horse and of the ox: ...
— Library of the World's Best Mystery and Detective Stories • Edited by Julian Hawthorne

... Tezpi embarked in a spacious vessel with his wife, his children, and several animals, and grain, whose preservation was essential to the subsistence of the human race. When the great god Tezcatlipoca decreed that the waters should retire, Tezpi sent a vulture from the bark. The bird, feeding on the carcasses with which the earth was laden, did not return. Tezpi sent out other birds, of which the humming-bird only came back with a leafy branch in its beak. Then ...
— The Antediluvian World • Ignatius Donnelly

... of a keeper in the zoological gardens. He dreams that there was presented to the Zoo first a marmot, then an emu, then a vulture, then a she-goat, then another emu; the presentations are made without end and the Zoo is crowded out—the keeper wakes up ...
— Note-Book of Anton Chekhov • Anton Pavlovich Chekhov

... terror, His Lordship peeped out. Seeing no one, he advanced to step into the corridor, and tumbled over the doctor. Curdie ran up, and held out his hand. He received in it the claw of a bird of prey—vulture or eagle, he could not ...
— The Princess and the Curdie • George MacDonald

... life, tearing, like a man possessed with a devil. Like Abudah in the Arabian story, he is always looking out for the Fury, and knows that the night will come and the inevitable hag with it. What a night, my God, it was! what a lonely rage and long agony—what a vulture that tore the heart of that giant! It is awful to think of the great sufferings of this great man. Through life he always seems alone, somehow. Goethe was so. I can't fancy Shakspeare otherwise. The giants must live apart. The kings can have ...
— Harvard Classics Volume 28 - Essays English and American • Various

... same foolish woman you ever were," answered the older queen. Just then, a strange sound echoed far off among the hills above, strange and far as the scream of a distant vulture sailing its mate to the carrion feast—an unearthly cry that rang high in the air from side to side of the valley, and struck the dark crags and doubled in the echo, and died away in short, faint pulsations of ...
— Marzio's Crucifix and Zoroaster • F. Marion Crawford

... was being driven directly through the only gap in the reefs to the island. Like a bird chased by a vulture she sought any shelter. She returned the fire as well as she could; but was no match for ...
— The Real America in Romance, Volume 6; A Century Too Soon (A Story - of Bacon's Rebellion) • John R. Musick

... drawled the Hottentot from the other side of the window, "because someone from Maraisfontein—I think it was the Vulture" (the natives gave this name to Leblanc on account of his bald head and hooked nose)—"shot Quabie's son on Sunday when he ...
— Marie - An Episode in The Life of the late Allan Quatermain • H. Rider Haggard

... seasons, when the disease prevails. When a dose is required, a small quantity of the paste is dried and pulverised on a flat shell, and the powder, then drawn up into both nostrils at once through two vulture quills secured together by cotton thread. The use of Parica was found by the early travellers amongst the Omaguas, a section of the Tupis who formerly lived on the Upper Amazons, a thousand miles distant from the homes of the Mauhes and Muras. This community of habits ...
— The Naturalist on the River Amazons • Henry Walter Bates

... gentleman, for whom, as he was young and devoted to the arts, Michelangelo made many stupendous drawings of superb heads in black and red chalk, wishing him to learn the method of design. Moreover, he drew for him a Ganymede carried up to heaven by Jove's eagle, a Tityos with the vulture feeding on his heart, the fall of Phaeton with the sun's chariot into the river Po, and a Bacchanal of children; all of them things of the rarest quality, and drawings the like of which were never seen. Michelangelo made a cartoon portrait of Messer ...
— The Life of Michelangelo Buonarroti • John Addington Symonds

... and the vulture out," continued the first speaker; "why, our poor friend and servant, man. And do you desire ...
— Tales of the Caliph • H. N. Crellin

... retracted and the whole still enclosed in a capsule. B, A section through the same; a, the invaginated proboscis; b, proboscis sheath; c, beginning of the neck; d, lemniscus. Highly magnified (both from Hamann). king vulture, Sarcorhampus papa, and G. taeniodes in ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia

... bright lines and spots in his strenuous young life. He played and sang the gathering brood of cares out of his own and his mother's heart. He needed to play and he needed to sing to charm away from his spirit the vulture of poverty. That evil bird hovered ever over his childhood. It was able to do many hard things to him, break up his home, sunder him from his mother, force him at a tender age to earn his bread, ...
— William Lloyd Garrison - The Abolitionist • Archibald H. Grimke

... dugouts or in lean-tos of logs and moss along the river-bank. There were fights and there was killing, and sometimes the river cast up its dead. The marvel is that there were not more crimes. In every camp is a species of human vulture living off other men's risk. Whenever a lone man came in from the hills and paid for his purchase in nuggets, such vultures would trail him back to his claim and make what they ...
— The Cariboo Trail - A Chronicle of the Gold-fields of British Columbia • Agnes C. Laut

... Moorcroft speaks of as "the gigantic Chukor, much larger than the common partridge, found in large coveys on the edge of the snow;... one plucked and drawn weighed 5 lbs."; described by Vigne as "a partridge as large as a hen-turkey"; the original perhaps of that partridge "larger than a vulture" which formed one of the presents from an Indian King to Augustus Caesar. [With reference to the large Tibetan partridge found in the Nan-shan Mountains in the meridian of Sha-chau by Prjevalsky, M. E. D. Morgan in a note (P. R. Geog. S. ix. 1887, p. 219), writes: "Megaloperdrix ...
— The Travels of Marco Polo Volume 1 • Marco Polo and Rustichello of Pisa

... hundred parts? How dost thou, superior as thou art in knowledge, desire to praise that cow-boy in respect of whom even men of little intelligence may address invectives? If Krishna in his infancy slew a vulture, what is there remarkable in that, or in that other feat of his, O Bhishma, viz., in his slaughter of Aswa and Vrishava, both of whom were unskilled in battle? If this one threw drown by a kick an inanimate ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Part 2 • Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa

... occupied, a spectacle of agitated dejection. Here and there about the apartment, either motionless in chairs, or moving noiselessly about, and pulling and pushing softly this piece of furniture and that, were numerous vulture-like persons of either sex, waiting the up-coming of the ...
— Dr. Sevier • George W. Cable

... have been known to kill a bird, pluck it, salt and pepper it, and cook it by carrying it some time in their caps. It is equally true that some races of men do not dine any more than the tiger or the vulture. It is not a dinner at which sits the aboriginal Australian, who gnaws his bone half bare and then flings it behind to his squaw. And the native of Terra-del-Fuego does not dine when he gets his morsel of red clay. ...
— The Book of Household Management • Mrs. Isabella Beeton

... of the Roc has its probable origin in the condor, which is undoubtedly the largest and strongest bird of the vulture tribe in existence, and extremely ravenous. Minerva's bird, the Owl, is well known as one of ill omen; besides the superstitious idea that the screech-owl foretells death by its cry, it was formerly believed to suck the blood of children. The Mongol and Calmuc Tartars ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. XIX. No. 542, Saturday, April 14, 1832 • Various

... little concern—m'lady's best parlor centerpiece, polished floor or cherished urn usually preferred; woe betide the luckless Buddie who denies his poor dead fag decent burial in the ubiquitous spit kit! To throw butts, gum wrappers, matches or anything but glances overboard, clew to the vulture eye of the lurking submarine, was a positive court martial offense. It was beginning to be evident that Sherman ...
— The Greater Love • George T. McCarthy

... A great vulture flapped heavily by and perched on a sand-hill not far from us, eyeing us somewhat askance, and some sea-gulls circled ...
— Five Nights • Victoria Cross

... she gasped. In a flashing vision, Richard was half boy, half vulture, flapping to the ground ...
— Tree, Spare that Woodman • Dave Dryfoos

... There were more traces, too, of a physical organization, especially two vast shadowy, circular plates upon either side, which may have been eyes, and a perfectly solid white projection between them which was as curved and cruel as the beak of a vulture. ...
— Danger! and Other Stories • Arthur Conan Doyle

... dog, stalking along the valley, and hearing only the dashing of torrents, which the woods concealed from the eye, the long sullen murmur of the breeze, as it swept over the pines, or the notes of the eagle and the vulture, which were seen ...
— The Mysteries of Udolpho • Ann Radcliffe

... find you knocked up and ill after all the exertion and fatigue of yesterday; but I am glad to see that you are so much stronger than I gave you credit for. How is your back, though, Walter? Don't the wounds made by the vulture's claws pain you ...
— Harper's Young People, November 25, 1879 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various

... dwell, O Thracian, went thy silver song! Grim Minos, with unconscious tears, Melts into mercy as he hears— The serpents in Megara's hair, Kiss, as they wreathe enamour'd there; All harmless rests the madding thong;— From the torn breast the Vulture mute Flies, scared before the charmed lute— Lull'd into sighing from their roar The dark waves woo the listening shore— Listening the Thracian's silver song!— Love was ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Vol. 53, No. 331, May, 1843 • Various

... aloud in a solemn and sonorous voice. The yellow light illuminated the old merchant's massive features as he stooped forwards towards the candle. His strongly marked nose and his hollow cheeks gave him a vulture-like aspect, which was increased by the effect of ...
— The Firm of Girdlestone • Arthur Conan Doyle

... the head of a vulture is generally looked at as a direct adaptation for wallowing in putridity; and so it may be, or it may possibly be due to the direct action of putrid matter; but we should be very cautious in drawing any such inference, when we ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. VI.,October, 1860.—No. XXXVI. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various

... The prince with transport flew, Hung round his neck, while tears his cheek bedew; Nor less the father pour'd a social flood; They wept abundant, and they wept aloud. As the bold eagle with fierce sorrow stung, Or parent vulture, mourns her ravish'd young; They cry, they scream, their unfledged brood a prey To some rude churl, and borne by stealth away: So they aloud: and tears in tides had run, Their grief unfinish'd with the setting sun; But checking the full torrent in its flow, ...
— The Odyssey of Homer • Homer, translated by Alexander Pope

... Bungloore,—not on her account, but my own. If you don't know India, you won't know Bungloore. It's all that and more. An egg dropped by a vulture, sat upon and addled by the Department. But I knew the house and walked boldly in. A lion walked out of one door as I came in at another. We did this two or three times—and found it amusing. A large cobra in the hall rose up, bowed as I passed, ...
— New Burlesques • Bret Harte

... macrura, Owen; with impression of tail- feathers; one-fifth natural size. B. Two caudal vertebrae of same; natural size. C. Single feather, found in 1861 at Solenhofen, by Von Meyer, and called Archaeopteryx lithographica; natural size. D. Tail of recent vulture (Gyps Bengalensis) showing attachment of tail-feathers in living birds; one-quarter natural size. E. Profile of caudal vertebrae of same; one-third natural size. e, e. Direction of tail-feathers when seen in profile. f. Ploughshare ...
— The Student's Elements of Geology • Sir Charles Lyell

... reasons of his own, and his dilated pupils were beginning to contract again, facts which were not very evident, however, in the poor light. He was very twitchy, nevertheless, and the face of the man beside him was that of a sympathetic vulture, if such a creature can be imagined. He inquired casually if the new patron had brought his money with him, but for the most part his conversation turned upon China, with which country he seemed to be well acquainted. Arrived at Victoria, ...
— The Yellow Claw • Sax Rohmer

... [71]—The vulture of insatiate minds Still wants, and wanting seeks, and seeking finds New fuel to increase her rav'nous fire. The grave is sooner cloy'd than men's desire. ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan

... not manifest much concern. Somers lit a cigarette; Springer wiped his face with a grimy hand and counted the shells in his belt, which appeared to be half empty. Colter stretched his long neck like a vulture and peered down the slope and through the aisles of the forest up ...
— To the Last Man • Zane Grey

... plentiful feast on the seashore, well knowing from what the blind king said of their greediness that the Harpies would snuff up the scent of the victuals and quickly come to steal them away. And so it turned out, for hardly was the table set before the three hideous vulture-women came flapping their wings, seized the food in their talons and flew off as fast as they could. But the two sons of the North Wind drew their swords, spread their pinions and set off through the air in pursuit of the ...
— Myths and Legends of All Nations • Various

... I have come to ask you if you were in earnest the other day, and if you really wish to have a vulture's brood." ...
— Harper's Young People, November 4, 1879 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various

... pricked up her ears; vulture-like, she undertook to pick out of her daughter all that had occurred, down to the most insignificant detail. Lorelei had always made a confidant of her mother in such cases, even to the repetition of whole conversations; but this time the latter's inquisitiveness ...
— The Auction Block • Rex Beach

... counterpart in a particular feature in the every-day American absorbed in the pursuit of gain; and yet how widely different are the two in the minor points of character! While the other allows himself no rest, no relaxation, no mitigation of the eternal gnawing of the vulture rapacity, this man has made self-indulgence the constant companion of his toil; while the other has centered all his pleasures in gain, this Englishman, with the same object in view, but obedient to national ...
— Homeward Bound - or, The Chase • James Fenimore Cooper

... threaten the business man no less than the monarch, the warrior, the poet, and the lover, though there has not been many an AEschylos or Euripides or Dante to make poetry of the Prometheus chained to the rocks of trade with the vulture pay-roll gnawing at his profits; the OEdipos in the factory who sees everything gone horribly awry; or the slow pilgrim through the business hell with all the infernal variations of bankruptcy, strikes, ...
— The Cup of Fury - A Novel of Cities and Shipyards • Rupert Hughes

... the east, a cloud like night, Like a huge vulture, and the blessed light Of the great sun grew shadow'd awfully: It seem'd to mount up from the mighty sea, Shaking the showers from its solemn wings, And grew, and grew, and many a myriad springs, Were on its bosom, teeming full of rain. There ...
— The Death-Wake - or Lunacy; a Necromaunt in Three Chimeras • Thomas T Stoddart

... the women—who could bridle their tongues or blunt their scornful glances? Briareus, armed to the teeth, would not affright our modern dowagers, or deter them from their prey. Wherever the carcass of a fair fame lies, thither they flock, screaming shrilly in triumph, vulture-eyed, sharp-taloned—the choosers of ...
— Guy Livingstone; - or, 'Thorough' • George A. Lawrence

... vulture came sailing slowly through the blue ether, and circled nearer and nearer; and off on the horizon was another—and still ...
— Little Journeys To The Homes Of Great Teachers • Elbert Hubbard

... chair Which doth belong unto Minerva's heir. O hecatombs! O catastrophe! From Midas' pomp to Trus' beggary! Prometheus, who celestial fire Did steal from heaven, therewith to inspire Our earthly bodies with a sense-ful mind, Whereby we might the depth of nature find, Is ding'd to hell, and vulture eats his heart Which did such deep ...
— A History of English Literature - Elizabethan Literature • George Saintsbury

... wild scream was heard in the air above, and a vulture, cleaving the clouds, flew over their heads. Laura's smiling face was upturned to reply to some loving expression of Eugene's; but when the vulture's scream was heard, she rose to her feet, and with a slight shudder followed ...
— Prince Eugene and His Times • L. Muhlbach

... caught their hue of the rocks that menaced them. The sun appeared afraid to shine, the birds ceased to sing, and the flowers to bloom; but the eagle fixed his nest high amongst the rocks, and the vulture hovered over this abode of desolation. The farm houses, in which only poverty resided, were formed of logs scarcely keeping off the cold and drifting snow: out of them the inhabitants seldom peeped, and the sports or prattling of children ...
— Letters written during a short residence in Sweden, Norway, and Denmark • Mary Wollstonecraft

... of vulture, most obscene, May have designs upon the Dove; Its carrion taste was never keen On the Millennial reign of Love; And I, for one, am stiff with fear About our little friend's career, Lest that disgusting fowl should maul And eat it, ...
— Punch, Volume 156, 26 March 1919 • Various

... Trimmer must have known all this, and led me to waste a fortune just so that he could reap the benefit of my advertising for his own vulture advantage!" ...
— The Making of Bobby Burnit - Being a Record of the Adventures of a Live American Young Man • George Randolph Chester

... after many delays and many plans, early one May morning I was taken to the mouth of the harbor. There the boat of the English warship Vulture was in waiting, and I was formally transferred to the English Government, and Curtin. Perry, Hayden and Green went on board with me. Soon after she steamed out of the harbor. Later in the day the Moselle, the regular passenger ...
— Bidwell's Travels, from Wall Street to London Prison - Fifteen Years in Solitude • Austin Biron Bidwell

... record that, accompanied by Middleton, I watched at an alligator's hole with a rifle, but the beast would not come out, perhaps luckily for me, if I missed a stomach shot; that I was prevented from bringing down a carrion vulture, it being illegal to kill those useful scavengers; that I caught some dear little green tree frogs; that I noted how the rice-fields had become a poisonous marsh; that I noticed the extensive strata of guano and fossil bone ...
— My Life as an Author • Martin Farquhar Tupper

... from the time of my navy service," he explained, nodding rapidly his frail, vulture-like head. It was not very likely that he had picked up that relic in the street. He looked certainly old enough to have fought at Trafalgar—or, at any rate, to have played his little part there as a powder monkey. Shortly after we had been ...
— A Personal Record • Joseph Conrad

... nod Has tumbled feebler despots from their sway, A moment pauseth ere he lifts the rod; A little moment deigneth to delay: Soon will his legions sweep through these their way; The West must own the Scourger of the world.[cp] Ah! Spain! how sad will be thy reckoning-day, When soars Gaul's Vulture, with his wings unfurled,[cq] And thou shall view thy sons in crowds ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 2 • George Gordon Byron

... the British warship, the Vulture, crept up the river. Presently Arnold heard the soft splash of oars, and in a few minutes ...
— This Country Of Ours • H. E. Marshall Author: Henrietta Elizabeth Marshall

... that none call it murder! O loathly suppliants! ye, that unreceived 290 Totter heart-broken from the closing gates Of the full Lazar-house; or, gazing, stand, Sick with despair! O ye to Glory's field Forced or ensnared, who, as ye gasp in death, Bleed with new wounds beneath the vulture's beak! 295 O thou poor widow, who in dreams dost view Thy husband's mangled corse, and from short doze Start'st with a shriek; or in thy half-thatched cot Waked by the wintry night-storm, wet and ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Vol I and II • Samuel Taylor Coleridge

... the sensuality of the flesh that he shall destroy, or the possibilities of the spiritual life on earth. The problem awaits solution. The eagle sits ready to bear aloft the spirit of the sleeper. The vulture hopes for sleep to end in death, that he may live upon the carrion thereof. The flowers of the external mind have for their roots the snakes; and, in a larger sense, the flowers of immortality have the serpent of wisdom for their roots. And the poppy winks. It knows its own power of illusion, ...
— The Light of Egypt, Volume II • Henry O. Wagner/Belle M. Wagner/Thomas H. Burgoyne

... the fagot and the rack about many of the Spanish masters. At one end of this gallery the Prometheus of Ribera agonizes chained to his rock. His gigantic limbs are flung about in the fury of immortal pain. A vulture, almost lost in the blackness of the shadows, is tugging at his vitals. His brow is convulsed with the pride and anguish of a demigod. It is a picture of horrible power. Opposite hangs one of the few Zurbarans ...
— Castilian Days • John Hay

... came the ugly black bird again, shrieking horribly and perching itself on his chest. Its huge claws raked his ribs, and its dripping beak fastened itself on his throat. Now he recognized the species for what it was: a vulture, a bird of prey, unwilling to be robbed of its Earth victim; trying to pinion him to the planet with the strength of its anger. Its great wings flapped, flapped, flapped, beating against his body, flooding it ...
— Heart • Henry Slesar

... slay such a creature would incur no sin. He who kills him kills one that has been already killed by his own acts. If slain, it is the dead that is slain. He who vows to destroy those persons of lost senses should keep his vows.[340] Such sinners are, like the crow and the vulture, dependent on deceit for their living. After the dissolution of their (human) bodies, they take rebirth as crows and vultures. One should, in any matter, behave towards another as that other behaves ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 3 - Books 8, 9, 10, 11 and 12 • Unknown

... indulged in a very legitimate laugh, he turned on him at once and said, "I thank that honourable gentleman for his laugh. The pulse of the national heart does not beat as high as once it did. I know the temper of this House is not as spirited and brave as it was, nor am I surprised, when the vulture rules where once the eagle reigned." From the days of Horace downwards it has been permitted to actors and orators to pass rapidly from the comic to the tumid strain.[72] But in this case the language was so bombastic and so utterly out of proportion to the occasion which called it forth that a ...
— Political and Literary essays, 1908-1913 • Evelyn Baring

... passing-out of the Sun through the Gates of the East and the Gates of the West,—by the Vulture of Gold and White Lotus and the countless virtues of Nagaya, may peace dwell ...
— Ardath - The Story of a Dead Self • Marie Corelli

... want to do. I hate that prefect as I hate a dead camel, or the vulture who eats him. And to tell the truth, I am growing a great deal too fond of that heathen ...
— Hypatia - or, New Foes with an Old Face • Charles Kingsley

... Varden, bursting into tears, 'yes, you would. I don't doubt it, Varden. Certainly you would. That's as much as to tell me that you would be hovering round me like a vulture, waiting till the breath was out of my body, that you might go and ...
— Barnaby Rudge • Charles Dickens

... which from Lucian to H.G. Wells (even to modern "pulp magazines") have enthralled human imagination. Yet while its fantasy looks back to Lucian's Icaro-Menippus, who flew to the moon by using the wing of a vulture and the wing of an eagle, its suggestion of the growing scientific temper of modern times makes it much more than mere fantasy. In the semilegendary history of Iran is to be found a tale, retold by Firdausi in the Shaknameh, of Kavi Usan, who "essayed the ...
— A Voyage to Cacklogallinia - With a Description of the Religion, Policy, Customs and Manners of That Country • Captain Samuel Brunt

... vulture, had been hoping for a place on the crew for many a day. The hope gave an excuse for idleness. Eliza Jane knew Billy's symptoms and was willing to countenance James B.'s indifference to other business propositions ...
— Janet of the Dunes • Harriet T. Comstock

... profound genius which through them looked into the secrets of the universe. Wonderful humility blended with his intellectual greatness. To other men he seemed a spirit of higher rank, having almost superhuman faculties of mental vision, wont to soar into regions which the vulture's eye hath never seen; to himself he was but a boy playing with the shells on the seashore, while the ocean lay undiscovered before him. Others were taken up with what Newton accomplished, Newton was taken ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 4 of 8 • Various

... soon teach you manners, my fine fellow! give way, men" and I fired my musket, when the crow that I had seen, rose from the boat into the air, but immediately alighted again, to our astonishment, vulture—like with out—stretched wings, ...
— Tom Cringle's Log • Michael Scott

... prince, departing from the court-master (i.e. the Purohita) and the great minister, Saddharma, keeping along the stream, then crossing the Ganges, he took the road towards the Vulture Peak,[99] hidden among the five mountains, standing alone a lovely peak as a roof amid the others. The trees and shrubs and flowers in bloom, the flowing fountains, and the cooling rills; all these he gazed upon—then ...
— Sacred Books of the East • Various

... breeze, and freshly curled the waters; and Gertrude did not feel the vulture that had fixed its talons within her breast. The Rhine widens, like a broad lake, between the Drachenfels and Unkel; villages are scattered over the extended plain on the left; on the right is the Isle of Werth and the houses ...
— The Pilgrims Of The Rhine • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... the influence of Egypt may be seen in the technique of the carving, in the winged disk above the figures, and still more in the representation of the goddess in her character as the Egyptian Hathor, with disk and horns, vulture head-dress and papyrus-sceptre. The inscription records the dedication of an altar and shrine to the goddess, and these too we may conjecture ...
— Legends Of Babylon And Egypt - In Relation To Hebrew Tradition • Leonard W. King

... crushing of an old and hitherto frustrated desire; the return, when Jimmy went back to England after the holidays, to an empty life which she hated, more than hated, a life of horrible restlessness, a life in which the imagination preyed, like a vulture, upon the body. It would mean the wise, instead ...
— In the Wilderness • Robert Hichens

... these with vulture-feather, golden-yellow in their hue, Made of iron, keen and whetted, whose may be ...
— Maha-bharata - The Epic of Ancient India Condensed into English Verse • Anonymous

... vaincre, to conquer. vainqueur, m., conqueror, victor. valeur, f., valor. vallee, f., valley, vale. valoir, to be worth; faire —, to show off, make the most of. vanter, to boast, claim. vapeur, f., vapor, mirkiness. vaste, vast. vautour, m., vulture. veiller, to watch. veine, f., vein. vengeance, f., vengeance, punishment, revenge. venger, to avenge. vengeur, avenging; m., avenger. venir, to come; — de, to have just. vent, m., wind. vrit, f., truth. vers, towards. verser, to pour. vertu, f; virtue, power. vertueux, virtuous. vtements, ...
— Esther • Jean Racine

... certain locality, it might be almost anywhere, for the rheumatism was no longer confining itself to the right leg and the right arm, but rioted through all the man's limbs and about his back and shoulders. It went about like a vulture after food, alighting where it found ...
— The Wolf's Long Howl • Stanley Waterloo

... along the tracks he with his hat in his hand. Rosalind thought he looked like a gigantic bird, an aged wise old bird, "perhaps a vulture" she thought. For a time he was silent and then he began to talk, explaining his lying with his face buried in the grass. There was a twinkle in his eyes and Rosalind wondered if he was laughing at her as she had seen him laugh at the ...
— Triumph of the Egg and Other Stories • Sherwood Anderson

... vultures, were, however, still met with, as they are everywhere throughout the continent, performing their graceful evolutions in the air, wheeling round and round without closing their wings, in large flocks, above the watery region we had left. The black vulture (Cathartes atratus), which closely resembles the well-known turkey buzzard in habits and appearance, performs, like it, the duty of scavenger, and is protected therefore by the inhabitants of all parts of ...
— On the Banks of the Amazon • W.H.G. Kingston

... to her now that Privy Seal, having seen her thick with the Bishop of Winchester, had delivered her into the hands of this vulture. 'If you have a knife,' she said, 'put it into me soon. God will look kindly on you and I would pardon you half the crime.' She closed her eyes ...
— The Fifth Queen • Ford Madox Ford

... with his hands upon the edge of the coffin, he fastened his vulture-like eyes upon the closed eyelids ...
— The Knights of the Cross • Henryk Sienkiewicz

... tyranny to great extremes against the vultures. In hard times, when food happens to be scarce, should he accidentally meet with one of these who has its craw crammed with carrion, he attacks it fiercely in the air; the cowardly vulture instantly disgorges, and the delicious contents are snatched up by the eagle before they reach ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 494. • Various

... though only from fear, would ride in a body. But, in the meanwhile, the Bedouins, who, by Idris' order, for the past few days drove considerably in advance, could not be seen at all; while Chamis, riding as a rear guard, appeared at a distance not greater than the vulture lying on the ground. ...
— In Desert and Wilderness • Henryk Sienkiewicz

... confess, and insisted upon it that Seriff Sahib had sent them, &c. Many urged me to put these Dyaks to death; but the reluctance we all have to shedding blood withheld me, and I had no desire to strike at a wren when a foul vulture was at hand. I dismissed the emissaries scot-free, and then both Muda Hassim and myself indited letters to Seriff Sahib, that of Muda Hassim being severe but dignified. Before they were dispatched, an ambassador arrived from Singe with letters both to the rajah and myself, ...
— The Expedition to Borneo of H.M.S. Dido - For the Suppression of Piracy • Henry Keppel

... Valenciennes with aquatic birds! There was clearly therefore room for difference of opinion, and Professor Bianconi of Bologna, who has written much on the subject, concludes that it was most probably a bird of the vulture family. This would go far, he urges, to justify Polo's account of the Ruc as a bird of prey, though the story of it's lifting any large animal could have had no foundation, as the feet of the vulture kind are unfit for such efforts. Humboldt describes the habit of the condor of the Andes ...
— The Travels of Marco Polo, Volume 2 • Marco Polo and Rustichello of Pisa

... words. In Heaven's name, give up that thought!" The commandant of the fortress paid him a short official visit, and exclaimed repeatedly, "How sad! how sad! to come back when you were free-in a foreign country!" The chief of police, a hard, dry, vulture-like man, asked why he had dared to return without the czar's permission. "I could not bear my homesickness," replied the prisoner. "O native country!" said the Russian in a softened voice, "how dear thou art!" After various ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 15, - No. 87, March, 1875 • Various

... are there, are you? Sir," said he, turning to me, "I am the most unhappy man in the world. Talk of Sisyphus rolling the ever-recoiling stone—of Prometheus gnawed by the vulture since the birth of time. The fables yet live. There is my rock, forever crushing me back! there is my eternal vulture, feeding upon my heart! There! there! there!" And, with an awful gesture of malediction ...
— Stories by Modern American Authors • Julian Hawthorne

... sweetness of her voice. Now, when all had entered in, save the Wanderer, there was a stir in the crowd, and a man rushed up. He was travel-stained, he had a black beard, black eyes, and a nose hooked like a vulture's beak. ...
— The World's Desire • H. Rider Haggard and Andrew Lang

... that ill-fated journey; nor, indeed, have I any recollection of anything at all, until I woke up in Room No. 37 of the Ship and Vulture Hotel ...
— A Bid for Fortune - or Dr. Nikola's Vendetta • Guy Boothby

... imagination, forbade repose. Ever, in the midst of all his busy, useful, aspiring life he was conscious, deep in his heart, of a gnawing anguish, whose name was Claudia Merlin. To-night this deep-seated anguish tortured him like the vulture of Prometheus. One vivid picture was always before his mind's eye—the sofa, with the beautiful figure of Claudia reclining upon it, and the stately form of the viscount, leaning with deferential admiration ...
— Ishmael - In the Depths • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth

... envious sisters, who descended here below after us lost themselves in the hope of losing you. Both, each in turn, as a reward for the plot which cost them their life, suffer, now the rock at Ixion's side, now the vulture at Tityus'! Love, by means of the Zephyrs, has executed on them swift justice for their envenomed and jealous malice. Those winged ministers of his just wrath, under pretence of restoring them again to you, ...
— Psyche • Moliere

... His business, he said, was of a general nature. He was usually to be heard of in connection with apocryphal companies and misty speculations. He was always great as an agitator. As soon as a League was formed, Happy Jack flew to its head-quarters as a vulture to a battle-field. Was it a league for the promotion of vegetarianism?—or a league for the lowering of the price of meat?—a league for reforming the national costume?—or a league for repealing the laws still existing upon the Statute-book against witches?—Happy Jack ...
— Chambers' Edinburgh Journal - Volume XVII., No 422, New Series, January 31, 1852 • Various

... the life of the South, when her wounded people lay helpless amid rags and ashes under the beak and talon of the Vulture, suddenly from the mists of the mountains appeared a white cloud the size of a man's hand. It grew until its mantle of mystery enfolded the stricken earth and sky. An "Invisible Empire" had risen from the field of Death and challenged the ...
— The Clansman - An Historical Romance of the Ku Klux Klan • Thomas Dixon

... utters a thin wail. The vulture pauses, and is stationary on the white and desert skies. She strives with her last strength to free herself from the thrall of the great lianas, and she falls into fresh meshes.... The claws are heard ...
— A Mere Accident • George Moore

... Great Lake? They have, and even so have your sons descended the stream of Time into the lake of Death. The great star sees them as they lie by the water of the Walkulla, but they see him not. The panther and the wolf howl unheeded at their feet, and the eagle screams, but they hear him not. The vulture whets his beak on their bones; the wild cat rends their flesh: both are ...
— Traditions of the North American Indians, Vol. 1 (of 3) • James Athearn Jones

... strong, with ivory teeth and gills upon either side, which rose and fell whenever breath passed through them. The nose was like the beak of the vulture. A tuft of porcupine-quills made the ...
— Folk-Lore and Legends: North American Indian • Anonymous

... the canons of medicine, and the calendar and the art of playing on musical instruments."[FN8] Said the Wazir, "Bring me her master." So the broker brought him at once and, behold, he was a Persian of whom there was left only what the days had left; for he was as a vulture bald and scald and a wall trembling to its fall. Time had buffetted him with sore smart, yet was he not willing this world to depart; even as ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 2 • Richard F. Burton

... offered peaceful front and open hand, Veiling the perjured treachery he planned, By friendship's zeal and honour's specious guise, Until he won the passes of the land; Then burst were honour's oath and friendship's ties! He clutched his vulture grasp, and ...
— Some Poems by Sir Walter Scott • Sir Walter Scott

... destined to bless the world and become elements of national wealth. And now from that great laboratory, through innumerable channels, cut through the living rock by the hand of the Creator, and by 'paths which no fowl knoweth, and which the vulture's eye hath not seen,' is that treasure brought near to the earth's surface, just in our time of need. When other supplies are failing and other resources giving way, we see God's wisdom in opening up new channels. The great Benefactor ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. 5, Issue 2, February, 1864 • Various

... safe shore, with anchor and with line; So, by Jove's dread decree, the God of fire Confines me here the victim of Jove's ire. With baneful art his dire machine he shapes; From such a God what mortal e'er escapes? When each third day shall triumph o'er the night, Then doth the vulture, with his talons light, Seize on my entrails; which, in rav'nous guise, He preys on! then with wing extended flies Aloft, and brushes with his plumes the gore: But when dire Jove my liver doth restore, ...
— Cicero's Tusculan Disputations - Also, Treatises On The Nature Of The Gods, And On The Commonwealth • Marcus Tullius Cicero

... the webbed window the lapidary's fingers prove a timedulled chain. Dust webbed the window and the showtrays. Dust darkened the toiling fingers with their vulture nails. Dust slept on dull coils of bronze and silver, lozenges of cinnabar, on rubies, leprous ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce

... Remus, they say, saw six vultures, and Romulus double the number; others say Remus did truly see his number, and that Romulus feigned his, but, when Remus came to him, that then he did, indeed, see twelve. Hence it is that the Romans, in their divinations from birds, chiefly regard the vulture, though Herodorus Ponticus relates that Hercules was always very joyful when a vulture appeared to him upon any occasion. For it is a creature the least hurtful of any, pernicious neither to corn, fruit-tree, nor cattle; it preys ...
— The Boys' and Girls' Plutarch - Being Parts of The "Lives" of Plutarch • Plutarch

... huge and horrible with scarlet eyes ablaze, came out on the shelf of rock and yelped at the great rock-eagles; but, if something indeed lay dead there, possibly it was enough for all—or perhaps the vulture-like bird was too heavily gorged to offer battle. McKay saw the rock-eagles alight heavily on the shelf, then, squealing defiance, hulk forward, undeterred by the ...
— In Secret • Robert W. Chambers

... out. They considered him as a fallen man; and they acted after their kind. Some of our readers may have seen, in India, a cloud of crows pecking a sick vulture to death, no bad type of what happens in that country, as often as fortune deserts one who has been great and dreaded. In an instant, all the sycophants who had lately been ready to lie for him, to forge for him, to pandar for him, to poison for him, hasten to purchase the ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 1 • Thomas Babington Macaulay

... Gardens comforted the little one, however, after she got over her first fear of the animals. There they saw a vulture, like a lady in a cell, looking sadly out of a window, the train of her grey and brown dress trailing on the ground. Horace thought of ...
— Prudy Keeping House • Sophie May

... proud beyond a Poet's praise; If the pure confines of thy tranquil breast Contain, indeed, the subject of thy lays! By me how envied!—for to me, The herald still of misery, Memory makes her influence known By sighs, and tears, and grief alone: I greet her as the fiend, to whom belong The vulture's ravening beak, ...
— Poems • Samuel Rogers

... the world flies the vulture of madness, pausing to wheel above isolated farm-houses, where a wife, already dizzy with the pressure of rarefied silence, looks up, magnetized. Then across the flat stretches, his shadow under him moving across moor and the sand of desert, slowing at ...
— Gaslight Sonatas • Fannie Hurst

... to confer with Arnold, and got off the ship Vulture to make his way to the appointed place, but it was daylight by that time, and the Vulture, having been fired on, dropped down the river. Andre now saw no way for him but to get back to New York; but at Tarrytown he was met by three patriots, who caught his horse by the reins, ...
— Comic History of the United States • Bill Nye

... That guilty minds pursue With ever-haunting fears, Are all dissolved in tears. Ixion, on his wheel, A respite brief doth feel; For, lo! the wheel stands still. And, while those sad notes thrill, Thirst-maddened Tantalus Listens, oblivious Of the stream's mockery And his long agony. The vulture, too, doth spare Some little while to tear At Tityus' rent side, ...
— The Consolation of Philosophy • Boethius

... mountain head and speak to me, and I will tell thee what to do." So he sewed him up in the skin, placing therein three cakes and a leathern bottle full of water, and withdrew to a distance. Presently a vulture pounced upon him and taking him up, flew away with him to the mountain-top and there set him down. As soon as Hasan felt himself on the ground, he slit the skin and coming forth, called out to the Magian, who hearing his speech ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 8 • Richard F. Burton

... sincerity in his look. I saw his soul skulking away behind his subterfuges like a spider in the depths of his flimsy web. He seems to thrive, however, in the midst of general ruin. I've no doubt he lives like a vulture, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 3, No. 18, April, 1859 - [Date last updated: August 7, 2005] • Various

... privacy of his locked chamber; in the dead of night, we see what he does, when he is hidden from the eyes of all: everybody can pretty well guess (but only guess not positively know) how it fared with him; an evil conscience like a hidden torture wracks the criminal as the vulture fed on the liver of the rock-tied Titan;—the Furies come, causing the guilty to pass sleepless nights, for the Furies are the Demons sent to torture the impious: accordingly Bracciolini thus continues the description:—"during the remainder of the night, he would at ...
— Tacitus and Bracciolini - The Annals Forged in the XVth Century • John Wilson Ross

... tail where it is as long as that of the Cur dog and streight. the nativs do not eate them, or make any further use of them than in hunting the Elk as has been before observed. Shannon an Labiesh brought in to us to day a Buzzard or Vulture of the Columbia which they had wounded and taken alive. I believe this to be the largest Bird of North America. it was not in good order and yet it wayed 25 lbs had it have been so it might very well have ...
— The Journals of Lewis and Clark • Meriwether Lewis et al

... my right out in the full blaze of the sun get one of the three, then wisp after wisp got up and we began to bag them and to fear our cartridges would run out. But imagine the difficulty of hitting even those slow waterfowl with an eagle or vulture or a group of them, huge fellows, looking at you from fifteen to twenty yards off from the top of a low palm, or a kingfisher of vivid cerulean quivering in front of your nose, so fixed in its poise and so dazzling in colour that you saw a pink spot for minutes ...
— From Edinburgh to India & Burmah • William G. Burn Murdoch

... women boast of: so would a vulture, could it speak, with the entrails of its prey upon its rapacious talons. Of this you'll judge from what I have ...
— Clarissa, Volume 7 • Samuel Richardson

... following four well-known symbols of sacrificial gifts appear in connection with god B in the Dresden manuscript; a sprouting kernel of maize (or, according to Foerstemann, parts of a mammal, game), a fish, a lizard and a vulture's head, as symbols of the four elements. They seem to occur, however, in relation also to other deities and evidently are general symbols of sacrificial gifts. Thus they occur on the two companion ...
— Representation of Deities of the Maya Manuscripts • Paul Schellhas

... loud may roar, High may the hovering Vulture soar, Alas! regardless of them all, Soon shall the empurpled glutton sprawl— Soon, in the desert's hushed repose, Shall trumpet tidings through his nose! Alack, unwise! that nasal song ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. XXII (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson

... corrupt form of Dhanusdhar or a holder of a bow. The bow consists of a cleft piece of bamboo and the arrow is made of wood of the dhaman tree. [531] The pointed end is furnished with a piece or a nail of iron called phani, while to the other end are attached feathers of the vulture or peacock with a string of tasar silk. Dhanuhar boys learn the use of the bow at five years of age, and kill birds with it when they are seven or eight years old. At their marriage ceremony the bridegroom carries an arrow with him in place ...
— The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India - Volume II • R. V. Russell

... man's apathy and tranquillity vanished, and the voracity with which he devoured the unaccustomed dainty showed that though he might have no demon thoughts to rack his brain, the vulture in his stomach tortured him ...
— The Macdermots of Ballycloran • Anthony Trollope

... Death ensuing. I have known mercurial Unguents and Remedies work a Cure, following the same Methods as in the Pox; several white People, but chiefly the Criolo's, losing their Palates and Noses by this devouring Vulture. ...
— A New Voyage to Carolina • John Lawson

... now it is the time; from Hell's abyss Come thirsting Tantalus, come Sisyphus Heaving the cruel stone, come Tityus With vulture, and with wheel Ixion come, And come the sisters of the ceaseless toil; And all into this breast transfer their pains, And (if such tribute to despair be due) Chant in their deepest tones a doleful ...
— Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra

... the fall, thus exposing the head and feet of the body, from which the bandages had decayed and fallen off. In the powerful glare of the electric light which we carried, the bare skull, with a golden vulture upon it, could be seen protruding from the remains of the linen bandages and from the sheets of flexible gold-foil in which, as we afterwards found, the whole body was wrapped. The inscription on the coffin, the letters of which were made of rare stones, gave the titles of Akhnaton, "the beautiful ...
— The Treasury of Ancient Egypt - Miscellaneous Chapters on Ancient Egyptian History and Archaeology • Arthur E. P. B. Weigall

... Vulture, Captain Nabob; the Tortoisesnow, from Lapland; the Pet-en-l'air, from Versailles; the Dreadnought, from Mount Etna, Sir W. Hamilton, commander; the Tympany, Montgolfier; and the Mine-A-in-a-bandbox, from the Cape of Good Hope. Foundered in a hurricane, the Bird of Paradise, from Mount Ararat. ...
— The Bed-Book of Happiness • Harold Begbie

... submission, and been complaint rather than adoration. Now, the same conviction has different companions in Job's mind, and so has different effects, and is really different in itself. The Titan on his rock, with the vulture tearing at his liver, sullenly recognised Jove's power, but was a rebel still. Such had been Job's earlier attitude, but now that thought comes to him along with submission, and so is blessed. Its recurrence here, as in a very real sense a new ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren

... home the meat I had bought, a famished vulture flew upon me, and would have taken it away, if I had not held it very fast; but, alas! I had better have parted with it than lost my money; the faster I held my meat, the more the bird struggled to get it, drawing me sometimes on one side, and sometimes on another, but would not quit the ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments vol. 3 • Anon.

... his talents all careers are open doors. When Gorman, M.P., says 'I do it,' the damned thing at once is done. I offer——But no. I do not offer where I trust——I confer upon Gorman, M.P., the Order of the Royal Pink Vulture of Megalia, First Class. You are Knight Commander, my friend. You are also ...
— The Island Mystery • George A. Birmingham

... liver. The fable of Prometheus, on whose liver a vulture was said to prey constantly, as a punishment for his stealing fire from heaven, was intended to illustrate the painful effects of ardent spirits upon ...
— Select Temperance Tracts • American Tract Society

... kaleisthai.] The Christian bystanders reported that a dove had been seen to issue from the body of Polycarp when he was martyred at the stake (Martyr. Polyc. c. 16). Similarly Lucian represents himself as spreading a report, which was taken up and believed by the Cynic's disciples, that a vulture was seen to rise from the pyre of Peregrinus when he consigned himself to a voluntary death by burning. It would seem that the satirist here is laughing at the credulity of these simple Christians, with whose history he appears to have had ...
— Essays on "Supernatural Religion" • Joseph B. Lightfoot

... day they fed upon his hide, And Juan, who had still refused, because The creature was his father's dog that died, Now feeling all the vulture in his jaws, With some remorse received (though first denied) As a great favour one of the fore-paws,[124] Which he divided with Pedrillo, who Devoured it, longing ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 6 • Lord Byron

... naked in a sack, and yet had gold and bank-notes hidden in the crevices of the walls and in cracked jugs and tea-pots; of an old apple woman in whose house a fortune was found wrapped up in little scraps of paper; of "Vulture Hopkins" and "Blewbury Jones" and many others whose riches after their death were found hidden in strange places. While Wegg read, Mr. Boffin would pretend to get tremendously excited about his dust mounds, so that Wegg ...
— Tales from Dickens • Charles Dickens and Hallie Erminie Rives

... and the buzzards draw the eye fondly. The National Capital is a great place for buzzards, and I make the remark in no double or allegorical sense either, for the buzzards I mean are black and harmless as doves, though perhaps hardly dovelike in their tastes. My vulture is also a bird of leisure, and sails through the ether on long flexible pinions, as if that was the one delight of his life. Some birds have wings, others have "pinions." The buzzard enjoys this latter distinctions. There is something in the sound of the word that suggests ...
— Winter Sunshine • John Burroughs

... was something more or less than man—of another species. In the thick of the fight a lion; in his dominion over armies, in his calmness amidst danger, a god. Shall I ever see it again, I wonder—that vulture face, those eyes that flashed Jove's ...
— London Pride - Or When the World Was Younger • M. E. Braddon

... traversing the brain, had been turned downwards by the frontal bone, through which it crashed, finally lodging in the root of the tongue, the lead showing on both sides. I cut out the tongue and hung it up to dry, intending to keep it as a trophy; but unfortunately a vulture swooped down when my back was ...
— The Man-eaters of Tsavo and Other East African Adventures • J. H. Patterson

... disrespect to Jefferson Davis. He would always meet the statement that Mr. Davis was a traitor with a vigorous denial. When I made a motion excepting Jefferson Davis from the benefit of the bill to pension the soldiers of the Mexican War, Mr. Lamar compared him to Prometheus, and me to the vulture preying upon his liver. He was the last person from whom I should have expected an expression of compliment, or even of kindness in those days. Yet when the question of my reelection was pending in 1883 and the ...
— Autobiography of Seventy Years, Vol. 1-2 • George Hoar

... admitted to be positive existences, i.e. earth, and so on, it is proved by consciousness not invalidated by any means of proof. For the formation of immediate judgments such as 'here a hawk flies, and there a vulture,' implies our being conscious of ether as marking the different places of the flight of the different birds. Nor is it possible to hold that Space is nothing else but the non-existence (abhva) of earth, and so on; for this view collapses as soon as set forth in definite alternatives. ...
— The Vedanta-Sutras with the Commentary by Ramanuja - Sacred Books of the East, Volume 48 • Trans. George Thibaut

... rather to the things of art than to the things of experience. The broken flowerpot with its red-hot geraniums, the green bulk of Smith and the black bulk of Warner, the blue-spiked railings behind, clutched by the stranger's yellow vulture claws and peered over by his long vulture neck, the silk hat on the gravel, and the little cloudlet of smoke floating across the garden as innocently as the puff of a cigarette— all these seemed unnaturally distinct and definite. They existed, like symbols, in an ...
— Manalive • G. K. Chesterton

... miseries of what the world calls 'difficulties' and a 'struggle'—these were for the poor vicar;—the worst torture, for aught we know, which an average soul out of hell can endure. Other sorrows bear healing on their wings;—this one is the Promethean vulture. It is a falling into the hands of men, not of God. The worst is, that its tendencies are so godless. It makes men bitter; its promptings are blasphemous. Wherefore, He who knew all things, in describing the thorns which choke the word, places the cares of this world first, and after ...
— Wylder's Hand • J. Sheridan Le Fanu

... direction, until at last their glance fell upon the figure upon the rock. The circling stopped. There was a swift rush through the air. A black feathered body passed between the buccaneer and the sun, and a mighty vulture, hideous bird of the tropics, alighted on the ...
— Sir Henry Morgan, Buccaneer - A Romance of the Spanish Main • Cyrus Townsend Brady

... am bound to say, would have guessed it. With his long scrag neck and great moons of spectacles, which he had now drawn down, the better to study me, he suggested an absurd combination of the vulture and the owl. ...
— The White Wolf and Other Fireside Tales • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch

... Constantine, nor himself! She was calling to him across the great gulf; it was as if her words were trembling on the air, telling him the hour had struck. The Vilyashev's power had been great; it had been achieved by force; by force it had been overthrown, the vulture- nest was torn to pieces. ...
— Tales of the Wilderness • Boris Pilniak

... of the great hospital, was a great miser, living in the back part of his shop, eating upon an old bench, and using his counter for a table, with a newspaper for a cloth. He did not marry. One day he was visited by "Vulture" Hopkins, another well-known miser. "What is your business?" asked Guy, lighting a candle. "To discuss your methods of saving money," was the reply, alluding to the niggardly economy for which Guy was famous. On learning Hopkins's business he blew out the light, ...
— Architects of Fate - or, Steps to Success and Power • Orison Swett Marden

... thieves, receiver of stolen goods, and very devil incarnate: his features distorted with rage, his penthouse eyebrows (those wonderful eyebrows!) working like the antennae of some deadly reptile, his whole aspect, half-vulpine, half-vulture-like, in its ...
— Charles Dickens as a Reader • Charles Kent

... beyond the last green wall of the garden on to a sort of towing path looking on the river and a wooden island opposite. There, indeed, he saw a lean, dark figure with a stoop almost like that of a vulture, a posture well known in the law courts as that of Sir John Harker, the Attorney-General. His face was lined with headwork, for alone among the three idlers in the garden he was a man who had made his own way; and round his bald brow and hollow ...
— The Man Who Knew Too Much • G.K. Chesterton

... found a rich hunting-ground, the earth is seen pitted with hundreds of these neat symmetrical bores. It is also an enemy to ground-nesting birds, being fond of eggs and fledglings; and when unable to capture prey it will feed on carrion as readily as a wild dog or vulture, returning night after night to the carcase of a horse or cow as long as the flesh lasts. Failing animal food, it subsists on vegetable diet; and I have frequently found their stomachs stuffed with clover, and, stranger still, with ...
— The Naturalist in La Plata • W. H. Hudson



Words linked to "Vulture" :   piranha, New World vulture, cathartid, bearded vulture, vulturous, black vulture, assailant, attacker, king vulture, Aegypiidae, moss-trooper, griffon vulture, Egyptian vulture, aggressor, Old World vulture, turkey vulture, raptor, assaulter, marauder, predator, raptorial bird



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