"Wingless" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Mr. Stillman is on old ground. His real artistic discovery is this. In working about the Acropolis of Athens, some years ago, he photographed among other sculptures the mutilated Victories in the Temple of Nike Apteros, the 'Wingless Victory,' the little Ionic temple in which stood that statue of Victory of which it was said that 'the Athenians made her without wings that she might never leave Athens.' Looking over the photographs afterwards, ...
— Reviews • Oscar Wilde
... down of various Bees, the queer little creature for a long time baffled the sagacity of the naturalists, who, mistaking its true origin, made it a species of a special family of wingless insects. It was the Bee-louse (Pediculus apis) of Linnaeus;[1] the Triungulin of the Andrenae (Triungulinus andrenetarum) of Leon Dufour. They saw in it a parasite, a sort of Louse, living in the fleece of the honey-gatherers. It was reserved for the distinguished English naturalist Newport ...
— The Glow-Worm and Other Beetles • Jean Henri Fabre
... hour at last, when for her sake No wing may fly to me nor song may flow; When, wandering round my life unleaved, I The bloodied feathers scattered in the brake, And think how she, far from me, with like eyes Sees through the untuneful bough the wingless skies? ...
— The House of Life • Dante Gabriel Rossetti
... Zenophile, dainty girl; would that I had come to thee now, a wingless sleep, upon thine eyelids, that not even he, even he who charms the eyes of Zeus, might come nigh thee, but myself had held ...
— Select Epigrams from the Greek Anthology • J. W. Mackail
... child, that you dare to look me through and through, as though I had laid my confidence at your feet? Who are you that you dare to descend wingless into the abysms of my soul, that you can smile away my ...
— The Indian Lily and Other Stories • Hermann Sudermann
... two or three days we were passing over an arid desert. The only vegetation was a few tufts of short grass, dried and shriveled by the heat. There was an abundance of strange insects and reptiles. Huge crickets, black and bottle green, and wingless grasshoppers of the most extravagant dimensions, were tumbling about our horses' feet, and lizards without numbers were darting like lightning among the tufts of grass. The most curious animal, however, was that commonly called the horned frog. I caught one ...
— The Oregon Trail • Francis Parkman, Jr.
... then beheld those elephants, huge as hills, running hither and thither, with their frontal globes split open by Bhima with his mace and all their limbs bathed in blood. Struck with Bhima's mace, those elephants, running off from him, fell down with cries of pain, like wingless mountains. Beholding those elephants, many in number, with their frontal globes split open, running hither and thither or falling down, thy soldiers were inspired with fear. Then Yudhishthira also, filled with wrath, and the two sons of Madri, began to slay those elephant-warriors with ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 3 - Books 8, 9, 10, 11 and 12 • Unknown
... gave about Madeira, but I wish you had alluded to Lyell's discussion on land shells, etc.—not that he has said a word on the subject. The whole address quite delighted me. I hear Mr. Crotch[86] disputed some of your facts about the wingless insects, but he is a crotchety man. As far as I remember, I did not venture to ask Mr. Appleton to get you to review me, but only said, in answer to an inquiry, that you would undoubtedly be the best, or one of the very few men ...
— Alfred Russel Wallace: Letters and Reminiscences, Vol. 1 (of 2) • James Marchant
... they will find stories of old friends among the Bush birds; and of English children, because I hope that they will be glad to make new friends, and so establish a free trade between the Australian and English nurseries—wingless, and laughing birds, in exchange for fairy godmothers, and ...
— Australian Legendary Tales - Folklore of the Noongahburrahs as told to the Piccaninnies • K. Langloh Parker
... news spread up and down Main street and was heralded to St. Paul, that three "Crowes" had perched on the banner of our village during the early morning of June 26th, 1859, when Mrs. Isaac Crowe gave birth to three white Crowes, two girls and one boy. The father of these three birds—wingless, though fairest of the fair, was a prominent attorney of St. Anthony and one of ...
— Old Rail Fence Corners - The A. B. C's. of Minnesota History • Various
... opening where the Adriatic rushes into Cattaro at the hidden end of the great sheet of lakes, can't be more than fifteen miles as the crow flies; but so does the course twist that it is much longer for mere wingless things, going by water. How I wished for a motor-boat! But we did not do badly in the big fishing smack. I feared at last that in the straits the wind might die, but instead it blew as through a funnel. We were swept finely up the narrow channel, and so into the ...
— My Friend the Chauffeur • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... several species of New Zealand and Australian birds, from 2 to 14 ft. high, and quite wingless; almost extinct since the 17th century; two living ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... up and up, to fall Through twilight to the sleepless dusk again, Like tortured flies upon a window pane. Wingless or broken-winged, They crawl and crawl ... Meaningless, striving—nowhere after all, Till one is tired of heeding. Tired. A stain of drab unloveliness the days remain Unmoving now, save that across the wall, A patch of sun behind a shadow of bars, Creeps in a ...
— Miscellany of Poetry - 1919 • Various
... realized for me, I know not: my waking life, alas! had never given me experience of it. Has the mind power of creating sensations for itself? Surely it does so, in those delicious dreams about flying which haunt us poor wingless mortals, which would seem to give my namesake's philosophy the lie. However that may be, intense and new was the animal delight, to plant my hinder claws at some tree-foot deep into the black rotting vegetable-mould which steamed rich gases up wherever it ...
— Alton Locke, Tailor And Poet • Rev. Charles Kingsley et al
... the Theotokos as the Leader of God's people in war, and around it gathered memories of wonderful deliverances and glorious triumphs, making it seem the banner of wingless victory. When the Saracens besieged the city the eikon was carried round the fortifications, and the enemy had fled. It led Zimisces in his victorious campaign against the Russians; it was borne round the fortifications when Branas assailed the capital ...
— Byzantine Churches in Constantinople - Their History and Architecture • Alexander Van Millingen
... their species in this condition! Several facts—namely, that beetles in many parts of the world are frequently blown out to sea and perish; that the beetles in Madeira, as observed by Mr. Wollaston, lie much concealed until the wind lulls and the sun shines; that the proportion of wingless beetles is larger on the exposed Desertas than in Madeira itself; and especially the extraordinary fact, so strongly insisted on by Mr. Wollaston, that certain large groups of beetles, elsewhere excessively numerous, which ...
— The Humour of Homer and Other Essays • Samuel Butler
... any true conception, . . long, dazzling rays such as encircled God's maiden, Edris, with an arch of roseate effulgence, so that the very air was sunset-colored in the splendor of her presence! How if she were a wingless angel,— ...
— Ardath - The Story of a Dead Self • Marie Corelli
... confinement. Their life is comparatively long: I have had working ants which were seven years old, and a queen ant lived in one of my nests for fifteen years. The community consists, in addition to the young, of males, which do no work, of wingless workers, and one or more queen mothers, who have at first wings, which, however, after one marriage flight, they throw off, as they never leave the nest again, and in it wings would of course be useless. The workers do ...
— The Junior Classics Volume 8 - Animal and Nature Stories • Selected and arranged by William Patten
... was no hope for that wingless old man. His fate was certain, his end was already come. Within five minutes at most the great doors would have slammed on him for ever. And here he sat chuckling like a boy at ...
— The Gentleman - A Romance of the Sea • Alfred Ollivant
... flickering lights. From a honeysuckle-trellis on the other side of the porch, a penetrating sweetness came in breaths, now rising, now dying away. In Virginia's heart, Love stirred suddenly, and blind, wingless, imprisoned, ...
— Virginia • Ellen Glasgow
... Of the creeping, wingless creatures, which can ever be found beneath rocks, rails, chunks, and especially beneath those old decaying logs which are half buried in the rich vegetable mould, the myriapods, or "thousand-legs," deserve more than a passing notice. ...
— A Book of Natural History - Young Folks' Library Volume XIV. • Various
... forces us to remember that we are enwrapped by the supernatural, is helpful and stimulating. A human life lived only in the seen and felt, with no sense of the invisible, is a fatally impoverished life, a poor, blind, wingless life, but to believe that ever around us is a whole world full of spiritual beings; that this life, with its burdens, is but the shadow which precedes the reality; that here we are but God's children at school, ...
— Italy, the Magic Land • Lilian Whiting
... crystallizing in spite of the fact that any chance Wieroo flying above the stream might easily see him, when again a floating object bumped against him from behind and lodged across his back. Turning quickly he saw that the thing was what he had immediately guessed it to be—a headless and wingless Wieroo corpse. With a grunt of disgust he was about to push it from him when the white garment enshrouding it suggested a bold plan to his resourceful brain. Grasping the corpse by an arm he tore the garment ...
— Out of Time's Abyss • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... now have a fair showing of aeroplanes, but mostly of the wingless sort. At this precise moment only two are really fit. K. has stuck to his word and is not going to help us here, and I can't grumble as certainly I was forewarned. Had he only followed Neville Usborne's L10,000,000 suggestion, we might now be ...
— Gallipoli Diary, Volume I • Ian Hamilton
... 1. the infinite reason; 2. the finite rational; and 3. the finite irrational—that is, God, man, and beast. What indeed, even for the vulgar, is or can an archangel be but a man with wings, better or worse than the wingless species according as the feathers are white or black? I would that the word had been translated instead of Anglicised in our ...
— The Literary Remains Of Samuel Taylor Coleridge • Edited By Henry Nelson Coleridge
... are wingless all and dead; My dumps are made of more than lead;— My flights soon find a fall; My fears prevail, my fancies droop, Joy never cometh with a hoop, ...
— The Poetical Works of Thomas Hood • Thomas Hood
... are well worthy of being carefully studied; for they all show the design of their Creator. The extraordinary creature represented in the engraving is the "Apteryx," or "wingless bird" of New Zealand. It was not known to European naturalists till of late years, and for a long time the accounts which the natives of New Zealand gave of it were discredited. A specimen of it, preserved in brine, was, however, brought to this country, ...
— Happy Days for Boys and Girls • Various
... leaving him wiping his astonished eyes disgustedly, for the act was so sudden and tragic as to excite tears. Before he is aware of it other and stronger gusts duplicate the dastardly deed of the first wingless wizard of the plains, and the hapless voyager is left gasping. Almost immediately there are to be seen the regular "desert devils," as they are called, bringing a dozen or more whirling columns of yellow silt rapidly through the air, each pirouetting on ...
— Trail Tales • James David Gillilan
... and creeping intelligently. Sociable to man extremely, building and nestling and rustling about him,—prying and speculating, curiously watchful of him at his work, if likely to be profitable to themselves, or even sometimes in mere pitying sympathy, and wonder how such a wingless and beakless creature can ...
— Love's Meinie - Three Lectures on Greek and English Birds • John Ruskin
... with the aphids is greatly facilitated by the gregarious and rather sedentary habits of the latter, especially in their younger, wingless stages, for the ants are thus enabled to obtain a large amount of food without losing time and energy in ranging far afield from their nests. Then, too, the ants may establish their nests in the immediate vicinity of the aphid droves or actually keep them in their ...
— Introduction to the Science of Sociology • Robert E. Park
... the darkness, for their very life is light. Such are the "cocuyos", whose brilliant lamps of green and gold and flame, gleam through the aisles of the forest, until the air seems on fire. Such, too, are the "gusanitos", the female of which—a wingless insect, like a glow-worm—lies along the leaf, while her mate whirrs gaily around, shedding his most captivating gleams as he woos her upon the wing. But, though light is the life of these beautiful creatures, it is often the cause of their death. It guides their enemies—the ...
— The Rifle Rangers • Captain Mayne Reid
... wings, as the myriad paroquets settled among the shadowy branches. The soft murmuring of the reeds that fringed the shores told where the waterfowl had already found resting-places. The swaying of the cane-brakes—near and far—signalled the secret movements of the wingless wild things which had only stealth to guard them against the cruelty of nature and against one another. The heaviest waves of cane near the great Shawnee Crossing might have followed a timid red ...
— Round Anvil Rock - A Romance • Nancy Huston Banks
... sit up like a dog, or fly in the air like a swallow. The variety and beauty of the birds, as well as the charm of their song, exceed all description. Most of them have iridescent feathers, several are wingless, and one at least has teeth. The insects are a match for the birds in point of beauty, if not also in size and musical qualities. Many of them are luminescent, and omit steady or flashing lights of every tint ...
— A Trip to Venus • John Munro |
