"Acorn" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... at once sent to Francis Bedford for binding, with instructions to have the "inlaying, repairing etc. done over in the very best manner, by the best restorer in France or England." Bound in brown morocco, richly blind-tooled, with Tudor rose, fleur-de-lis and acorn emblems. Leaf 10-1/4 x 7-1/2 in. The Smets fly-leaf and the original instructions sent to Mr. Bedford with the volume and returned by him with an added note over his own ...
— Catalogue of the William Loring Andrews Collection of Early Books in the Library of Yale University • Anonymous
... we have analogies illustrating this fact. It is said that in every acorn rests and exists, in miniature, the form of the future oak. And, some go so far as to say that the oak is the "ultimate cause" of the acorn—that the idea of the oak caused the acorn to be at all. In the same way, the "idea" of the man must be in the infant boy, from the moment of birth, and ...
— Clairvoyance and Occult Powers • Swami Panchadasi
... perhaps, we are not capable of observing with our present confined inlets of knowledge. The resurrection of a spiritual body from a natural body does not appear in itself a more wonderful instance of power than the germination of a blade of wheat from the grain, or of an oak from an acorn. Could we conceive an intelligent being, so placed as to be conversant only with inanimate or full grown objects, and never to have witnessed the process of vegetation and growth; and were another being to shew him two little pieces of matter, a grain of wheat, ...
— An Essay on the Principle of Population • Thomas Malthus
... in fruit, and the Stenochilus and the white Vitex in blossom; from the latter the native bee extracts a most delicious honey. A small tree, with stiff alternate leaves scarcely an inch long, was covered with red fruit of the form of an acorn, and about half an inch long, having a sweet pericarp with two compressed grain-like seeds, which had the horny albumen of the coffee, and were exceedingly bitter. The pigeons, crows, and cockatoos, fed upon them, we also ate a ...
— Journal of an Overland Expedition in Australia • Ludwig Leichhardt
... doth keep his revels here to-night, Take heed the Queen come not within his sight; For they do square, that all their Elves for fear Creep into acorn-cups, and hide ...
— A Fairy Tale in Two Acts Taken from Shakespeare (1763) • William Shakespeare
... Then she took her fairy goblet and fetched a few drops of dew from a shady place which the sun had not yet reached, to revive the fainting flower, and bound up the broken stem with a single thread of her golden hair. But it was all in vain, and the fairy, after wrapping an acorn in soft moss, and placing it for a pillow beneath the head of the fast fading Violet, left it to try her skill on the other flowers. A faint fragrance from the dying flower thanked her, as she turned sadly away to pursue her labour of love. It was not till she had ...
— How the Fairy Violet Lost and Won Her Wings • Marianne L. B. Ker
... thereabouts acorns were planted in "Acorn Patch Enclosure" in the Forest; and in 1800 trees marked A and B were taken from this place and planted opposite the "Speech House." Two, marked D and F, were drawn out of Acorn Patch in 1807 and planted near ...
— Autobiography of Seventy Years, Vol. 1-2 • George Hoar
... of whom I am telling you had grown so much used to using it in this way, that whenever he saw anything coming in the shape of a carte he thrust it forward as naturally as a pig does when he sees an acorn. After a couple of semesters the cartes sat on his nose from bridge to tip, one after the other, like the days of the week in a calendar. But when the third semester began, and the cartes began to fall ...
— Greifenstein • F. Marion Crawford
... flow from seemingly insignificant causes!" said Sir Christopher. "A spark shall light a conflagration of a mighty city; an acorn shall bear an oak to waft armies over oceans to conquest; and the conversion of a child to the true faith may change the destinies of nations. It may be thy blessed lot, Celestina, to plant a seed which shall grow into a tree, whose ...
— The Knight of the Golden Melice - A Historical Romance • John Turvill Adams
... most important events with the minuteness of their primeval causes, and the records of mankind are full of examples for such contemplations. It is, however, a more profitable employment to trace the constituent principles of future greatness in their kernel; to detect in the acorn at our feet the germ of that majestic oak, whose roots shoot down to the centre, and whose branches aspire to the skies. Let it be, then, our present occupation to inquire and endeavor to ascertain the causes ...
— Orations • John Quincy Adams
... jupe of blue silk, very long and full, trimmed down the front with rows of velvet and small silk tassels, the form of an acorn. A cain de feu, a sort of jacket, of blue satin, of a darker shade than the jupe, the small skirt of which is of the Hungarian form. It is trimmed round with velvet and has tassels up the front to correspond with the skirt; the sleeves come but little below the elbow, wide at the ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Vol. 2, No. 8, January, 1851 • Various
... is over by Gardnerville. In that hole Indians can always find plenty of wild-grub—wild-wheat, wild potato, wild acorn—plenty there. Snow very deep. No difference. Always plenty wild grub there. I see that hole. I ...
— The Lake of the Sky • George Wharton James
... and gathered nearer. The spell was broken. That strange and mysterious look vanished from Lady Sue's face; she turned away from the speakers and idly plucked a few bunches of acorn from an overhanging oak. ...
— The Nest of the Sparrowhawk • Baroness Orczy
... in her wisdom, counseled the Birds that when the acorn first began to sprout, to pull it all up out of the ground and not allow it to grow. She said acorns would produce mistletoe, from which an irremediable poison, the bird-lime, would be extracted and by which they would be captured. The Owl next advised them ...
— Aesop's Fables • Aesop
... us consider the art of tree-planting, from the stand-point of an acorn, as being a typical nut or tree-bearing seed, such as I now ...
— Solaris Farm - A Story of the Twentieth Century • Milan C. Edson
... at the termination of our view opposite the North Dome. Here the precipice rises to the height of nearly one sheer mile with a parabolic sky-line, and its posterior surface is as elegantly rounded as an acorn-cup. From this contour results a naked semi-cone of polished granite, whose face would cover one of our smaller Eastern counties, though its exquisite proportions make it seem a thing to hold in the hollow of the hand. ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 80, June, 1864 • Various
... bees construct four kinds of cells. First of all, the royal cells, which are exceptional, and contrived somewhat in the shape of an acorn; then the large cells destined for the rearing of males and storing of provisions when flowers super-abound; and the small cells, serving as workers' cradles and ordinary store-rooms, which occupy normally about four-fifths of the ...
— The Life of the Bee • Maurice Maeterlinck
... I can see it from the window, and not forget to water and take care of it," added Jack, still turning the pretty brown acorn to and fro as if he ...
— Jack and Jill • Louisa May Alcott
... acorns and of any other food that might lie handy to her line of march. In her owner's part of the grove, there was too much competition, in the food-hunt, from other and equally greedy pigs of the herd. These she could fight off and drive from the choicest acorn-hoards. But it was easier to ...
— Further Adventures of Lad • Albert Payson Terhune
... of the Amicable society are to walk, in a few days, from the townhall to the cathedral, in procession, to hear a sermon. They walk in linen gowns, and each has a stick, with an acorn; but for the acorn they could give no reason, till I told them of ...
— Dr. Johnson's Works: Life, Poems, and Tales, Volume 1 - The Works Of Samuel Johnson, Ll.D., In Nine Volumes • Samuel Johnson
... replied he. "And I saw it was an acorn, not the seed of one of those weak plants that spring up overnight and wither at noon. Yes, you will win." He laughed gayly, rolled his eyes and kissed his fingers. "And then you can afford to take a little holiday, and fall in love. Love! Ah, it is a joyous pastime—for a ...
— The Price She Paid • David Graham Phillips
... in her place, we should have refrained. The friends of the man around whom all fell into ruins, and of the neighbour who ever was able to build up his life anew, will have observed before that the acorn sometimes will fall on to rock, and sometimes on fertile soil. And though poverty, sickness, and death still remain the three inequitable goddesses of human existence, they no longer awake in us the ...
— The Buried Temple • Maurice Maeterlinck
... towards this Mexican, would make him quit out like a jack rabbit. "As I observes prior, courage is frequent the froots of what a gent don't know. Take grizzly b'ars. Back fifty years, when them squirrel rifles is preevalent; when a acorn shell holds a charge of powder, an' bullets runs as light an' little as sixty-four to the pound, why son! you-all could shoot up a grizzly till sundown an' hardly gain his disdain. It's a fluke if you downs one. That sport who can show a set of grizzly ...
— Wolfville Days • Alfred Henry Lewis
... the biggest things of life grow out of the tiniest ones. There is the old simile of the acorn and the oak, for instance. But oaks take a long time to grow, and everybody concerned in oak culture is calmly expecting them to do it. Imagine an acorn exploding to let out an oak huge enough to ...
— Secret History Revealed By Lady Peggy O'Malley • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... view Your acorn goblets fill'd with dew; Nor warn us hence till we have seen The ...
— Tales And Novels, Volume 1 • Maria Edgeworth
... all of a sudden, she stumbled on an acorn, and fell down, basket and all, and she hurt her paw on a thorn, so she couldn't carry ...
— Bully and Bawly No-Tail • Howard R. Garis
... itself until it covers the whole earth, and even all the earths in the universe, if it could reach them. Is such a profession as this credible? It is entirely credible, as soon as I paraphrase it by saying that I propose to plant an acorn. And yet all magic has no mystery which is so wonderful as this universal mystery of growth: and the only reason we are not lost in amazement at it is that it goes quietly on all the time, and perfects itself under uniform conditions. But let me eliminate from the phenomenon the one ...
— Confessions and Criticisms • Julian Hawthorne
... negligence, Which, scorning art and veiling sense, Achieves that conquest o'er the heart Sense seldom gains, and never art: This lady, 'tis our royal will Our laureate's vacant seat should fill; A chaplet of immortal bays Shall crown her brow and guard her lays, Of nectar sack an acorn cup Be at her board each year filled up; And as each quarter feast comes round A silver penny shall be found Within the compass of her shoe— And so we ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole - Volume I • Horace Walpole
... more energy than usual into her singing, it was the energy of indignation against the shallowness of her own content. In that mood she once said, "Shall I tell you what is the difference between you and me, Ezra? You are a spring in the drought, and I am an acorn-cup; the waters of heaven fill me, but the least little shake leaves ...
— Daniel Deronda • George Eliot
... on the wall she could but just see her chin in it. As she slowly tied her pink bonnet strings she grew happier. In truth, she would have been a maiden hard to console if the face that looked back at her from the quaint oak leaf and acorn wreath had not comforted her inmost soul, and made her again at peace with herself. And as the mother looked on she too was comforted; and in five minutes more, when Little Bel was ready to say good-by, they flung their arms around each ...
— Between Whiles • Helen Hunt Jackson
... the might of minutes. 25 "Every day is a little life, and our whole life is a day repeated. Those that dare lose a day are dangerously prodigal; those that dare misspend it, desperate." Emerson says, "The creation of a thousand forests is in one acorn." ...
— Story Hour Readings: Seventh Year • E.C. Hartwell
... Ostracodes, especially in the fresh-water strata of the Wealden. It should further be noted that there occurs here a great development of the singular Crustaceous family of the Barnacles (Lepadidoe), whilst the allied family of the equally singular Acorn-shells (Balanidoe) ...
— The Ancient Life History of the Earth • Henry Alleyne Nicholson
... rosy, the sweet view on't Might well have warm'd old Saturn; that I thought her As chaste as unsunn'd snow. O, all the devils! This yellow Iachimo, in an hour,—was't not?— Or less,—at first?—perchance he spoke not, but, Like a full-acorn'd boar, a German one, Cried "O!" and mounted; found no opposition But what he look'd for should oppose and she Should from encounter guard. Could I find out The woman's part in me! For there's no motion That tends ...
— Cymbeline • William Shakespeare [Tudor edition]
... a mushroom's head, Our table cloth we spread; A grain of rye or wheat Is manchet, which we eat; Pearly drops of dew we drink, In acorn cups, filled to ...
— Boys and Girls Bookshelf (Vol 2 of 17) - Folk-Lore, Fables, And Fairy Tales • Various
... us don't go raspberrying. Sit down here, Queenie, under this acorn tree, and I'll tell you; ...
— Dotty Dimple at Her Grandmother's • Sophie May
... poor flower can symbol all the might And all the magnitude, great Love, of thee? Ah, is there aught can image thee aright In earth or heaven, how great or fair it be? We watch the acorn grow into the tree, We watch the patient spark surprise the mine, But what are oaks to thy Ygdrasil-tree? What the mad mine's convulsive strength to thine, That wrecks a world but bids heaven's soaring ...
— English Poems • Richard Le Gallienne
... of Ireland during his reign: fruitless the corn, for there used to be but one grain on the stalk; fruitless her rivers; milkless her cattle; plentiless her fruit, for there used to be but one acorn on the ...
— An Illustrated History of Ireland from AD 400 to 1800 • Mary Frances Cusack
... eloquent harangue to the shepherds in the Sierra Morena, took a different view of man during the acorn period. He saw ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 101, March, 1866 • Various
... world are the rooks at the acorns. It is not only the eating of them, but the finding: the fluttering up there and hopping from branch to branch, the sidling out to the extreme end of the bough, and the inward chuckling when a friend lets his acorn drop tip-tap from bough to bough. Amid such plenty they cannot quarrel or fight, having no cause of battle, but they can boast of success, and do so to the loudest of their voices. He who has selected a choice one flies with it as if it were a nugget in his ...
— The Life of the Fields • Richard Jefferies
... fowl which furnished them food—he stalked behind them, or sat bolt upright against the tree or rock beneath which they had made their resting place, tireless, watchful, the breathing image of caution. If he slept, it was a sleep from which the sound of a falling acorn, the sleepy stir of a partridge in the fern was sufficient to awaken him. Sometimes they rested by fires, for they heard the wolves through the darkness; upon the nights when this was necessary the Susquehannock sat with his gun across his ...
— Prisoners of Hope - A Tale of Colonial Virginia • Mary Johnston
... his space, his materials, and the nature of the thoughts he wishes to suggest. In the sculpture of an oak-tree, introduced above an Adoration of the Magi on the tomb of the Doge Marco Dolfino (fourteenth century), the sculptor has been content with a few leaves, a single acorn, and a bird; while, on the other hand, Millais' willow-tree with the robin, in the background of his "Ophelia," or the foreground of Hunt's "Two Gentlemen of Verona," carries the appeal to the imagination into particulars so multiplied and minute, ...
— The Stones of Venice, Volume III (of 3) • John Ruskin
... nearly one-half of which is "tub-sized," "loft-dried" writings. The region in the vicinity of Holyoke is dotted with paper-mills, and within a few miles of the city is made about one-half of all the "loft-dried" writings produced in the United States. The tiny acorn planted two centuries ago has waxed with the years, gaining strength and vigor with the increasing strength of the nation, till now it has become a giant oak, whose branches extend to the lands ...
— A Book of Exposition • Homer Heath Nugent
... mistakes of mankind. The value of the discoveries of all these great men has long since been acknowledged by the world; and the day will and must surely arrive, when the little acorn of Truth, planted by Hahnemann, which has already taken deep root, and is lifting high its vigorous stem, shall tower far above all other giants of the medical forest, and its wide-spreading branches cast their beneficent shadows ...
— Allopathy and Homoeopathy Before the Judgement of Common Sense! • Frederick Hiller
... improvements of this quarter of the globe might be ascribed to penal laws; but they have the same relation to its present prosperity as the numerous parts of an edifice have to each other—not such as of the oak to the acorn. When, therefore, it is stated that transportation has been the making of these colonies, it should be rather said it was the cause of their establishment. The outlay of the crown, although great, has been small compared with the outlay of the people. The chief settlers of the convict colonies were ...
— The History of Tasmania , Volume II (of 2) • John West
... down under a great oak tree that grew beside the way, and one gathered acorn cups, and another pulled burdock leaves and laid them for a cloth, and a third plucked the wild strawberries that shone like rubies in ...
— The Silver Crown - Another Book of Fables • Laura E. Richards
... distance. On the branches were hanging the great mameis, just like the inside of cocoa-nuts when the inner shell has been cracked off. It appeared that Nature was not acquainted with M. De La Fontaine's works, or she would probably have got a hint from the fable of the acorn and the pumpkin, and not have hung mameis and cocoa-nuts ...
— Anahuac • Edward Burnett Tylor
... had thrown away all their joy in a foolish quarrel. They never met without saying disagreeable things to each other, and scolded each other so dreadfully that all their little fairy followers, for fear, would creep into acorn cups ...
— The Junior Classics, V5 • Edited by William Patten
... accomplished. At Mount Pizarro, where such storehouses are found, the nearest oak trees are in the Cordilleras, thirty miles distant; thus the birds are obliged to make a journey of sixty miles to accomplish the storing of one acorn. At first it seemed strange that a bird should spend so much labor to place those bits of food, and so far away. De Saussure, a Swiss naturalist, published in the Bibliotheque Universelle, of Geneva, entertaining accounts of the Mexican Colaptes, ...
— Scientific American Supplement, Vol. XXI., No. 531, March 6, 1886 • Various
... nightfall that this silence was most intense. On a still night one could almost hear the earth move, and fancy that the stars diffused a gentle crackling noise as of rushing flame. The fall of an acorn in a pine wood startled the ear like an explosion. The river also was discerned as having a definite rhythm of its own. It ran up and down a perpetual scale, like a bird singing. What had seemed a heavy confused sound of falling water resolved ...
— The Quest of the Simple Life • William J. Dawson
... like fundamental types in the animal kingdom, securing the same homologous structures in all classes and orders; so these fundamental ideas in human nature constitute its sameness and unity, under all the varying conditions of life and society. The acorn must produce an oak, and nothing else. The grain of wheat must always produce its kind. The offspring of man must always bear his image, and always exhibit the same fundamental characteristics, not only in his corporeal nature, but also ...
— Christianity and Greek Philosophy • Benjamin Franklin Cocker
... offensive to me and its berries the least pleasant of all wild fruits to my taste. I can eat ivy-berries in March, and yew in its season, poison or not; and hips and haws and holly-berries and harsh acorn, and the rowan, which some think acrid; but the elderberry ...
— Afoot in England • W.H. Hudson
... creatures we have about us! Tinman practicing in his Court suit before the chiwal-glass! And that good fellow, the carpenter, Crickledon, who has lived with the sea fronting him all his life, and has never been in a boat, and he confesses he has only once gone inland, and has never seen an acorn!" ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... "I know," she said, brokenly, "for I had it all once, long ago. People used to say that marriage changes love, but, with us, it only grew and strengthened. The beginning was no more the fulness of love than an acorn is the oak tree which springs from it. We had our trials, our differences, and our various ...
— Master of the Vineyard • Myrtle Reed
... laddie? touch a grain of rye if ye dare! Shell these dry bains; and if so be ye're starving, eat as many as ye can boil in an acorn-cup." ...
— Fairy Book • Sophie May
... but not until the sun had already run nearly half his course, for he never dared to leave his timber observatory before, le pauvre diable dropped down from his perch like an acorn—and, marching off with weary steps, and scarcely a hope that ere another night fell he should gain the shelter of some cottage, he dragged himself along. On he rolled from side to side, torn with the thorns and bitten by the gnats that swarmed around him, sometimes ...
— Le Morvan, [A District of France,] Its Wild Sports, Vineyards and Forests; with Legends, Antiquities, Rural and Local Sketches • Henri de Crignelle
... an acorn which is sown under the floor. From it springs an oak which grows to the skies. The old man of the story climbs up it in search of acorns, and reaches heaven. There he finds a hand-mill and a cock with a golden comb, both of which he carries off. ...
— Russian Fairy Tales - A Choice Collection of Muscovite Folk-lore • W. R. S. Ralston
... from it; but the nights were all his, and at the end of the sixth night the thing arose, perfect as far as his hand could perfect it; begotten by a chance and ignorant word as have been many of the greatest works the world has seen;—oaks sprung from the acorn that a ...
— Wisdom, Wit, and Pathos of Ouida - Selected from the Works of Ouida • Ouida
... Another method Fruit syrup Currant syrup Orange syrup Lemon syrup Lemon syrup No 2 Blackberry syrup Fruit ices Nuts Composition and nutritive value of The almond Almond bread The Brazil nut The cocoanut, its uses in tropical countries The chestnut Chestnut flour The acorn The hazel nut The filbert The cobnut The walnut The butternut The hickory nut The pecan The peanut or ground nut Recipes: To blanch almonds Boiled chestnuts Mashed chestnuts Baked chestnuts To ...
— Science in the Kitchen. • Mrs. E. E. Kellogg
... An acorn has in itself the potentiality not of one oak-tree alone, but of a forest of oak-trees, to the thousandth generation, and indeed of oak-trees without end. There is no sort of law of "conservation" here. It is not as ...
— Life and Matter - A Criticism of Professor Haeckel's 'Riddle of the Universe' • Oliver Lodge
... who, it is said, was a brother of Veliant, Siegfried's fellow-apprentice in the days of his boyhood. And men told them this story of Eigill. That once on a time old Nidung, the king of that land, in order to test his skill with the bow, bade him shoot an apple, or, as some say, an acorn, from the head of his own little son. And Eigill did this; but two other arrows, which he had hidden beneath his coat, dropped to the ground. And when the king asked him what these were for he answered, "To kill thee, wretch, had ...
— The Story of Siegfried • James Baldwin
... not see the effects?" replied Lorenzo. "We have tried in our crucibles the acorn which produces the oak, and the embryo from which grows a man; from this tiny substance results a single principle, to which some force, some movement must be given. Since there is no overruling creator, this principle must give to itself the outward forms which constitute our world—for ...
— Catherine de' Medici • Honore de Balzac
... wood, and on into the plains, where it would soberly carry grain to town; yet the real strength of the fable is when it deals with the shut pool in which certain unfortunate raindrops are imprisoned among slugs and snails, and in the company of an old toad. The sodden contentment of the fallen acorn is strangely significant; and it is astonishing how unpleasantly we are startled by the appearance of her horrible lover, ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. XXII (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... despite original unity, not to be confounded with them. The drift of recent investigations seems, indeed, to be to find the embryonic solar system already potentially complete in the parent nebula, like the oak in an acorn, and to relegate detailed explanations of its peculiarities to the ...
— A Popular History of Astronomy During the Nineteenth Century - Fourth Edition • Agnes M. (Agnes Mary) Clerke
... desire to understand capacity or function—still more if we speak of worth or goodness—then it is much more correct to say that we must interpret the less developed by the more developed. If you wish to trace the growth of the oak-tree from its earliest beginnings to maturity, then study the acorn and the soil; but if you wish to know what the capacity and the function of the acorn are, then you must interpret the less developed by the more developed, you must see what an oak is like when it spreads its branches ...
— Recent Tendencies in Ethics • William Ritchie Sorley
... out. Or, if one does not do that, simply to think no more about them. This is Philosophy. The true philosopher is the man who says "All right," and goes to sleep in his arm-chair. One's attitude towards Life's Little Difficulties should be that of the gentleman in the fable, who sat down on an acorn one day, and happened to doze. The warmth of his body caused the acorn to germinate, and it grew so rapidly that, when he awoke, he found himself sitting in the fork of an oak, sixty feet from the ground. ...
— Mike • P. G. Wodehouse
... The joyes of earth and ayre are thine intire, That with thy feet and wings dost hop and flye; And when thy poppy workes, thou dost retire To thy carv'd acorn-bed to lye. ...
— Lucasta • Richard Lovelace
... forming a single tree-like animal, every individual plant or animal of which is as truly one and the same person with the primordial cell as the oak a thousand years old is one and the same plant with the acorn out of which it has grown. This is easily understood, but will, I trust, be made ...
— God the Known and God the Unknown • Samuel Butler
... size, is nearly white when divested of its outer husk, and this is soaked for about twenty-four hours in water. During this time a slight fermentation takes place and the gas generated splits the nut open at a closed joint like an acorn. This fermentation may, perhaps, take some exhilarating effect ...
— Eight Years' Wandering in Ceylon • Samuel White Baker
... Thou shalt smile upon me, God of wisdom, love, and might, Foes may hate, and friends may shun me Show Thy face and all is bright. Go, then, earthly fame and treasure! Come disaster, acorn, and pain! In Thy service, pain is pleasure; With Thy favour, ...
— Neville Trueman the Pioneer Preacher • William Henry Withrow
... I say? A thousand sestertia to begin with? Oh! don't laugh, I expect more than that. What! Fifty? You are joking, my friend. However, the acorn grows into the oak, doesn't it? and I am told that you can stop the sources of the Tiber with your hat; so I'll start with fifty. Fifty—a hundred. Come, bid up, gentlemen, or we shall never get home to supper. Two hundred—three, ...
— Pearl-Maiden • H. Rider Haggard
... never saw a vacant place in his estate, but he took an acorn out of his pocket and popped it in.—Thackeray, Vanity ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama, Vol 1 - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook • The Rev. E. Cobham Brewer, LL.D.
... easy to say this, Ghita—but hard to prove. I take the acorn and put it in the ground; in due time it comes up a plant; in the course of years, it becomes a tree. Now, all this depends on a certain mysterious principle, which is unknown to me, but which I am sure exists, for I can cause it myself to produce its fruits, ...
— The Wing-and-Wing - Le Feu-Follet • J. Fenimore Cooper
... twist of a clamp. You found an assortment of big and little sizes of solid wood bodies with guttered blades turning up in front with a sharp point, or perhaps curling over above the toe. In this case they sometimes ended in an acorn; if this acorn was of brass, it transfigured the boy who wore that skate; he might have been otherwise all rags and patches, but the brass acorn made him splendid from head to foot. When you had bought your skates, you took them to a carpenter, and stood awe-strickenly about while he pierced the ...
— A Boy's Town • W. D. Howells
... upon a mast rear'd far aloft, He bore a very bright and crescent blade, The which he waved so dreadfully, and oft, In meditative spite, that, sore dismay'd, I crept into an acorn-cup for shade; Meanwhile the horrid effigy went by: I trow his look was dreadful, for it made The trembling birds betake them to the sky, For every leaf was ...
— The Poetical Works of Thomas Hood • Thomas Hood
... the heart of monks so foolish. For whatsoever the Church guards is all for the folk that ask it in God's name, not for one's kindred, or for another more vile. The flesh of mortals is so soft that a good beginning suffices not below from the springing of the oak to the forming of the acorn. Peter began without gold and without silver, and I with prayers and with fasting, and Francis in humility his convent; and if thou lookest at the source of each, and then lookest again whither it has run, thou wilt see dark made of the white. Truly, Jordan turned back, ...
— The Divine Comedy, Volume 3, Paradise [Paradiso] • Dante Alighieri
... The mythic trees of Elysium had the same varied fruitage, and the reason in both cases is perhaps the fact that when the cultivated apple took the place of acorns and nuts as a food staple, words signifying "nut" or "acorn" were transferred to the apple. A myth of trees on which all these fruits grew might then easily arise. Another Irish bile was a yew described in a poem as "a firm strong god," while such phrases in this poem as "word-pure man," "judgment ...
— The Religion of the Ancient Celts • J. A. MacCulloch
... blackleg Robin, who sang so hard in his efforts to make up for the rest that he was as hoarse as a crow the next morning. The blackleg fairies had a hard time too. They hadn't a minute to gossip with the flowers, as they usually did when they flew round with their acorn-cups of dew and thistledown sponges and washed their faces and folded up their petals and kissed ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 159, November 3, 1920 • Various
... the dream that the stone which was despised by the architect has become the corner-stone. The acorn of the dream, of the ephemeral and inconsiderable product of our soul, dates from the earliest times. Before that, men saw in the dream a prophecy for the future, a warning spirit, a comforter, a messenger ...
— The Journal of Abnormal Psychology - Volume 10
... the Duke of Devonshire[527], grandfather of the present representative of that very respectable family: 'He was not a man of superiour abilities, but he was a man strictly faithful to his word. If, for instance, he had promised you an acorn, and none had grown that year in his woods, he would not have contented himself with that excuse; he would have sent to Denmark for it. So unconditional was he in keeping his word; so high as to the point of honour.' This was a liberal ...
— The Life Of Johnson, Volume 3 of 6 • Boswell
... it, myself," agreed Mrs. Denton. "I remember when I was a very little girl my mother longing for a tree upon the lawn underneath which she could sit. I found an acorn and planted it just in the right spot. I thought I would surprise her. I happened to be in the neighbourhood last summer, and I walked over. There was such a nice old lady sitting under it, knitting stockings. So ...
— All Roads Lead to Calvary • Jerome K. Jerome
... she dipped down a hill by a transverse lane into the small town or village of Evershead, being now about halfway over the distance. She made a halt here, and breakfasted a second time, heartily enough—not at the Sow-and-Acorn, for she avoided inns, but at a cottage by ...
— Tess of the d'Urbervilles - A Pure Woman • Thomas Hardy
... Christmas Eve," continued Katy, in a mysterious tone. "The fairy of the Rosary was quite sick. She had taken a dreadful cold in her head, and the poplar-tree fairy, just over there, told her that sassafras tea is good for colds. So she made a large acorn-cup full, and then cuddled herself in where the wood looks so black and soft, and fell asleep. In the middle of the night, when she was snoring soundly, there was a noise in the forest, and a dreadful black bull with fiery eyes galloped ...
— What Katy Did • Susan Coolidge
... of boys has met with tolerable success, hitherto,—but only tolerable it must be confessed,—in developing them into men, there are those who would make girls grow into women by the same process. Because a gardener has nursed an acorn till it grew into an oak, they would have him cradle a grape in the same soil and way, and make it a vine. Identical education, or identical co-education, of the sexes defrauds one sex or the other, or perhaps both. It defies the Roman maxim, ...
— Sex in Education - or, A Fair Chance for Girls • Edward H. Clarke
... be extended from a product of disease possessing this susceptibility of multiplication when conveyed into the living body, to substances of inorganic origin, such as silex or sulphur, would be capable of arguing that a pebble may produce a mountain, because an acorn can ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... fine white skin of the inside of an eggshell. The boots of the little one had soles cut out of the inside husks of the corn; a poppy leaf made her an ample bonnet. The spider's web which the dew whitens, and the wind winds up in balls, seemed too coarse too weave her sheets with, and the cup of an acorn was big enough for Piccolissima. Her parents obtained all her wardrobe, and all the small furniture for her use from those thousands of skilful laborers, so adroit, and yet of whom we think so little, who hide ...
— Piccolissima • Eliza Lee Follen
... leaf-mould, moss, and fern (not to speak of flowers)—the pale green veil in spring, the rich shade in summer, the rustle of the dry leaves in autumn, I suppose an old woman may enjoy all these, my dears, as well as you. But I think I could make 'fairy jam' of hips and haws in acorn cups now, if any child would be condescending enough to play with me. "This wood, ...
— The Brownies and Other Tales • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... going giant's brains during a slumber, in which he is represented as "snoring outrageously,"—and after each blow of the Thunder god's hammer, Skrymer merely wakes up—strokes his beard—and complains of feeling some trifling inconvenience, such as a dropped acorn on his head, a fallen leaf, or a little moss shaken from the boughs. Finally, he takes leave of them,—points out the way to Utgard Loke's palace, advises them not to give themselves airs at his court,—as unbecoming "such ...
— Letters From High Latitudes • The Marquess of Dufferin (Lord Dufferin)
... the time take him farther from a present duty: the more disagreeable to a nature like his because it was present, and not a mere matter for speculative consideration. When Goethe made his famous comparison of the acorn planted in a vase which it bursts with its growth, and says that in like manner Hamlet is a nature which breaks down under the weight of a duty too great for it to bear, he seems to have considered the character too much from one side. Had Hamlet actually killed himself to escape his ...
— Among My Books - First Series • James Russell Lowell
... another match to make a little railing. Cover the box as you did the dressing-table. Put a little mat of oil-cloth on the top of the box, and make another large one to lay in front of it. Proper jugs and basins will, of course, have to be bought, but an acorn cup or small shell makes a ...
— What Shall We Do Now?: Five Hundred Games and Pastimes • Dorothy Canfield Fisher
... given the man some pretty strong obligations, to endorse and support the policy of Jeff. Davis, together with an intimation that if he ever exposes any of the secrets, he may expect to suffer all sorts of penalties, and told him to fancy he had just received an acorn, the emblem of the order—he now sits down quietly in the pleasant consciousness that "we have got one more good voter on our side." The guardian of the North having put the new Son on his way, he appears in the East, reflecting his effulgence all around. ...
— The Great North-Western Conspiracy In All Its Startling Details • I. Windslow Ayer
... were to take an oak tree as a specimen of the plant world, I should find that it originated in an acorn, which, too, commenced in a cell; the acorn is placed in the ground, and it very speedily begins to absorb the inorganic matters I have named, adds enormously to its bulk, and we can see it, year after year, ...
— Lectures and Essays • T.H. Huxley
... was one glorious sheen of topaz, sapphire and gold. Down in the valley the mist still hung in thick patches, but the sun's rays were piercing it in many directions, and there was every promise of a hot day, such as would make the shade of the great forest with its acorn-laden oaks welcome, and the whole place tempting to one who cared to fill pocket or basket with the bearded hazelnuts, already beginning to show colour in the pale green husks, while the acorns, too, were changing tint slightly, and growing too big ...
— The Weathercock - Being the Adventures of a Boy with a Bias • George Manville Fenn
... responsibility on some high subject is blazing at your heart, and the young Elihu, even if he would, cannot keep silence? Is it not a wrong to find pearls unprized, because many a modern, like his Celtic progenitors, (for I must not say like swine,) would sooner crush an acorn? to know your estimation among men ebbs and flows according to the accident of success, rather than the quality of merit? to be despised as an animal who must necessarily be living on his wits in some purlieu, answering to that antiquated reproach, a Grub-street attic; ...
— The Complete Prose Works of Martin Farquhar Tupper • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... looked closer into the state of the Chevalier's Court, less reason to be satisfied with it. It contained, as they say an acorn includes all the ramifications of the future oak, as many seeds of TRACASSERIE and intrigue, as might have done honour to the Court of a large empire. Every person of consequence had some separate object, which he pursued ...
— Waverley • Sir Walter Scott
... to the acorn, when first they stood. On Bunker's height, And, fearless stemmed the invading flood, And wrote our dearest rights in blood, And mowed in ranks the hireling brood, In desperate fight! O! 't was a proud, exulting day, For even our fallen ...
— The American Union Speaker • John D. Philbrick
... the case, Upon that oak it should have hung—— A noble fruit as ever swung To grace a tree so firm and strong. Indeed, it was a great mistake, As this discovery teaches, That I myself did not partake His counsels whom my curate preaches. All things had then in order come; This Acorn, for example, Not bigger than my thumb, Had not disgraced a tree so ample. The more I think, the more I wonder To see outraged proportion's laws, And that without the slightest cause; God surely ...
— The Talking Beasts • Various
... mead, The golden acorn lay; And watch with care the bursting seed, And guard the tender spray; England will bless us for the deed, In ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volume V. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... microscopic slugs which are the pioneers of that great army of life in which for the instant we five have the extraordinary duty of serving as rear guard. Once the lowest form of life has established itself, the final advent of man is as certain as the growth of the oak from the acorn. The old circle will ...
— The Poison Belt • Arthur Conan Doyle
... do all these things, but how ignorant we still are in the commonest doings of Nature! By giving up our whole lifetime, and spending millions of pounds, we could never make a grain of wheat or an acorn, and wherever we turn we find ourselves confronted with mysteries beyond our power to explain from a finite material standpoint; even in material vibrations we meet a mystery almost beyond our power to comprehend. Take ...
— Science and the Infinite - or Through a Window in the Blank Wall • Sydney T. Klein
... young man, and Lizzy still a little girl,—when long talks banished turkeys and apples and sliding,—when new books or sleigh-rides crowded out the old games,—when the two days of John's yearly visit were half-spent in the leafless, sunny woods, gathering mosses and acorn-cups, delicate fern leaves, and clusters of fire-moss, and red winter-green berries, for the pretty frames and baskets Lizzy's skilful fingers fabricated,—when he shook hands at coming and going, instead of kissing her;—but it seemed just the same, somehow. Dear me! those days were ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, Issue 17, March, 1859 • Various
... Aunt Emmie crocheted, the Clover Leaf pattern, the Sea Shell, Acorn, the Rose, and if a bride-to-be had no silver, the lacemaker was content to take in exchange a pat of butter, eggs, or well-cured ham. Her delight was in ...
— Blue Ridge Country • Jean Thomas
... Roman custom thus to adorn those who had saved the life of a citizen; whether that the law intended some special honor to the oak, in memory of the Arcadians, a people the oracle had made famous by the name of acorn-eaters; or whether the reason of it was because they might easily, and in all places where they fought, have plenty of oak for that purpose; or, finally, whether the oaken wreath, being sacred to Jupiter, the guardian of the city, might, therefore, be thought a propel ...
— Plutarch's Lives • A.H. Clough
... in one bead that looks like solid honey, and a little bright-winged beetle in another. This one holds two slender pine-needles lying across each other, and here we see a single scale of a pine-cone; while yet another shows an atom of an acorn-cup, fit for a fairy's use. I wish you could see the beads, for I cannot tell you the half of their beauty. Now, where do you suppose they came from, and how did little Scotch Jeanie come into possession of ...
— The Stories Mother Nature Told Her Children • Jane Andrews
... the centre of its large broad leaves, which gather at the top, when it has reached the height of twelve or fifteen feet there springs forth a large purple bud ten inches long, shaped like a huge acorn, though more pointed. This cone hangs suspended from a strong stem, upon which a leaf unfolds, displaying a cluster of young fruit. As soon as these are large enough to support the heat of the sun and the chill of the rain, ...
— Due South or Cuba Past and Present • Maturin M. Ballou
... route in hopes to reach the Namoi. I took care to find again the tree which bore the yellow flowers; as it certainly was rare, being the only one of the description seen throughout the journey. Now however the flowers had given place to young fruit which were of the size of an acorn, and grew on ...
— Three Expeditions into the Interior of Eastern Australia, Vol 1 (of 2) • Thomas Mitchell
... in the essays already mentioned, but generally his argument is a rope of sand. Its strength is the strength of the separate particles. He is perpetually hooking things together that do not go together. It is like putting an apple on a pumpkin vine, or an acorn on a hickory. "A club foot and a club wit." "Why should we fear," he says, "to be crushed by the same elements—we who are made up of the same elements?" But were we void of fear, we should be crushed much oftener than we are. The electricity ...
— The Last Harvest • John Burroughs
... can do—given happiness, and cheered those who came across my path. It is not much to do,' it continued meekly, 'not great and glorious deeds at which the world stands amazed; but it was all I could do, and was the work He meant for me—we must not despise the day of small things. The acorn is very small, yet look at the oak. A gentle word, a bright smile, is not hard to bestow, but oh, the blessing they can be to hearts pining ...
— Parables from Flowers • Gertrude P. Dyer
... was bound in the direction of the palace. The causeway was straight as an arrow, as these old Roman roads will be, but the track men used on its crest was not so. Here and there a great tree had grown from acorn or beech nut, and had set wayfarers aside since it was a sapling, to root up which was no man's business. So we could not see who came, there being a tree and bushes at a swerve of the way. The horses heard, and pricked up their ears, and told ...
— A King's Comrade - A Story of Old Hereford • Charles Whistler
... of delved loam, Or lop with hooked knives from off high trees The boughs of yester-year. What sun and rains To them had given, what earth of own accord Created then, was boon enough to glad Their simple hearts. Mid acorn-laden oaks Would they refresh their bodies for the nonce; And the wild berries of the arbute-tree, Which now thou seest to ripen purple-red In winter time, the old telluric soil Would bear then more abundant and more big. And many coarse foods, too, ...
— Of The Nature of Things • [Titus Lucretius Carus] Lucretius
... kicked and reared and plunged, he thought he saw something work out from under their collars, and fall to the ground. An acorn-burr is just the thing to worry a restive horse, if put in such a place; but Joe and Fuz had hardly expected their "little joke" to be so very successful as ...
— Dab Kinzer - A Story of a Growing Boy • William O. Stoddard |
