"Biped" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... about the most ungainly-looking fowl you can well imagine; while on a half-buried tree trunk, running out towards it into the water, crouched a wiry, black creature, of about average dog size, wriggling a long, restless tail, and apparently in the very act of springing at the long-legged biped in the water. Just now they were eying each other very intently; but from the splashed and bedraggled appearance of both, it was evident there had been recent hostilities, which, judging from the attitude of the combatants, were ...
— Happy Days for Boys and Girls • Various
... simple question, but not so easy to answer. All men are sinners. But what is a man? A featherless biped? So was the plucked fowl of Diogenes. A man is—well a man; and a sinner is—well a sinner. And this is near enough for most people. But it does not satisfy a rational investigator, to say nothing of your born critic, who will go on splitting hairs till his head is as bare as a plate, ...
— Flowers of Freethought - (First Series) • George W. Foote
... marching-trim. Iglesias bore an umbrella, our armor against what heaven could do with assault of sun or shower. I was weaponed with a staff, should brute or biped uncourteous dispute our way. We had no impediments of "great trunk, little trunk, bandbox, and bundle." A thoughtful man hardly feels honest in his life except as a pedestrian traveller. "La propriete c'est le vol"—which the West more ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 58, August, 1862 • Various
... cliff is horizontally streaked from top to bottom we find hollowed, as we approach, into a multitude of circular openings, like shot-holes in an old tower, which form breeding-places for the daw and the sand-martin. The biped inhabitants of the cliff are greatly more numerous than the biped inhabitants of the quiet little hamlet below; and on Fortrose fair-days, when, in virtue of an old feud, the Rosemarkie boys were wont to engage in formidable bickers with the boys of Cromarty, I remember, as ...
— The Cruise of the Betsey • Hugh Miller
... and thoughtful students. By the ancient Egyptians cats were held in the highest esteem; and we learn from Diodorus Siculus, their "lives and safeties" were tendered more dearly than those of any other animal, whether biped or quadruped. "He who has voluntarily killed a consecrated animal," says this writer, "is punished with death; but if any one has even involuntarily killed a cat or an ibis, it is impossible for him to escape death: the mob drags him to it, treating him with every cruelty, ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 5, No. 3, March, 1852 • Various
... arrested, and ordered them back. One of his own officers represented to him that these people had an order for the boat from General Garfield, and, becoming alarmed, he let them go upon their way. Soon, however, the biped hounds were on their track, in hot pursuit. Two slaves, married into these families, had escaped and followed this boat-load. Although their villainous masters had fought in the rebel army, they were furnished with ...
— Incidents of the War: Humorous, Pathetic, and Descriptive • Alf Burnett
... his comparing my last madonna, the image and eidolon of whose witching face filled my heart, to that odious little flirt, Baby Blake, a young damsel that hawked her tender affections about at the beck and call of every male biped who might for the moment be enthralled by her charms! It was like his cool impudence. And then, again, his asking me his stupid, inane questions, as if I cared what man, and how many. Lizzie Dangler or any other girl might have "in tow," as he ...
— She and I, Volume 1 • John Conroy Hutcheson
... the show windows of the largest dry goods stores stand dummies of the female figure dressed only in the combination undersuit made of wool or silk "tights," covering the whole body, except the head, hands, and feet. By this time everyone must know that woman, like man, is a biped. Can anyone give a good reason why she must lift an unnecessary weight of clothing with every step she takes,—pushing forward folds of restricting drapery and using almost constantly, not only her hands, but her mental power and nervous energy to keep ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 22, September, 1891 • Various
... human biped, and Mary, with another heavy sigh, lighted the candles, and retreated into ...
— Mark Hurdlestone - Or, The Two Brothers • Susanna Moodie
... threads more firmly round his body, and then there is no escape; for when the winder of the fatal net finds his course impeded by the terrified human wrestling in its coils, he, seeking no contest with the mightier biped, casts loose his envenomed arms, and swims away. The amputated weapons severed from their parent body vent vengeance on the cause of their destruction, and sting as fiercely as if their original proprietor itself gave ...
— Chambers' Edinburgh Journal - Volume XVII., No 423, New Series. February 7th, 1852 • Various
... my calculations the day would break in about an hour's time; and during that hour, but always on the alert, we stretched ourselves upon the sand to rest, listening to every sound; for there was the possibility, we knew, of there being enemies, biped or quadruped, within a few ...
— The Golden Magnet • George Manville Fenn
... as the Galapagos, which had never seen man, were at first not in the least afraid of him. It required, however, but a few generations of experience to show these creatures that the unfeathered biped was a singularly dangerous animal, and they at once and permanently adopted the habit of avoiding him. This incident of itself shows how quick birds are to learn certain large and important lessons. We see also the reverse of this education ...
— Domesticated Animals - Their Relation to Man and to his Advancement in Civilization • Nathaniel Southgate Shaler
... painter, was the cut-up. As a piece of delicate Athenian wit he got up from his chair and waltzed down the room with a waiter. That dependent, no doubt an honest, pachydermatous, worthy, tax-paying, art-despising biped, released himself from the unequal encounter, carried his professional smile back to the dumb-waiter and dropped it down the shaft to eternal oblivion. Reeves began to make Keats turn in his grave. Mrs. Pothunter told the story ...
— The Trimmed Lamp • O. Henry
... thundered her decision. "It would be nothing less than handing her over bodily to that pompous old biped Claude Martel! For the next six months she has got to stay right here, where I can know what she is doing ...
— Quin • Alice Hegan Rice
... curtains, very difficult to adjust in spite of their long service, were supposed to protect the occupants from cold and rain. The driver, perched on a plank seat like those of the worst Parisian "coucous," shared in the conversation by reason of his position between his victims, biped and quadruped. The equipage presented various fantastic resemblances to decrepit old men who have gone through a goodly number of catarrhs and apoplexies and whom death respects; it moaned as it rolled, and squeaked ...
— The Chouans • Honore de Balzac
... thumb with his teeth and bit it to the bone. Hawes yelled with pain and strove furiously to get his hand away, but Carter held it like a tiger. Hawes capered with agony and yelled again. The first to come to his relief was Mr. Eden. He was at the biped's side in a moment, and pinched his nose. Now, as his lungs were puffing like a blacksmith's bellows, his mouth flew open the moment the other breathing-hole was stopped, and Hawes got his ...
— It Is Never Too Late to Mend • Charles Reade
... finally rest upon the principle that the end sanctifies the means. I don't feel in favor of a compromise on a basis like that. Religion may be an excellent means of training the perverse, obtuse and ill-disposed members of the biped race: in the eyes of the friend of truth every fraud, even though it be a pious one, is to be condemned. A system of deception, a pack of lies, would be a strange means of inculcating virtue. The flag to which I have taken the oath is truth; I shall remain ...
— The Essays of Arthur Schopenhauer; Religion, A Dialogue, Etc. • Arthur Schopenhauer
... garden and adds his mellow whistle to the orchestra of the mocking-bird. This so-called lark is classed by most naturalists among the starlings, as are two of the blackbirds, which two he resembles in some of his habits, but not in migrating, being about as much of a continental as any other biped American. Nor is he like his cousins in changes of dress. Out of a dozen of the latter that may be brought down at a shot, you will scarcely find three exactly alike. They moult at the South, and the young pass gradually into adult ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, December, 1885 • Various
... elaborate display of their attractions moths, butterflies and beetles are just as fond as any belles of the ball-room. Now let us bear in mind that of all the creatures that share the earth with man, the one that stands next to him in intelligence is neither a biped nor a quadruped, but that king of the insect tribe, the ant, which can be a herdsman and warehouse-keeper, an engineer and builder, an explorer and a general. With all his varied powers the ant lacks a peculiarity in his costume which has denied him enlistment in a task of ...
— Little Masterpieces of Science: - The Naturalist as Interpreter and Seer • Various
... playing marbles with them, and getting them sewed back again all in three minutes and a half. The result to the patient is of course purely a minor consideration, but it may interest you to know that I can tell a biped from a quadruped, and may in time, by the aid of powerful glasses, be able ...
— Mr. Opp • Alice Hegan Rice
... criticised. In addition to the not very flattering remarks "the bounders of the Fifth" had to pass on his features, Plunger had to listen to terse descriptions of himself as "that ass, Plunger," "a mixed pickle," "a queer egg," "conceited young biped," and ...
— The Hero of Garside School • J. Harwood Panting
... he never strikes out pugilistically, right and left, when addressed as one of 'My friends,' or 'My assembled friends;' that he does not become inappeasable, and run amuck like a Malay, whenever he sees a biped in broadcloth getting on a platform to talk to him; that any pretence of improving his mind, does not instantly drive him out of his mind, and cause him to toss his obliging patron like a ...
— The Uncommercial Traveller • Charles Dickens
... any persons to be found, who are so indolent as not to think continually, on one subject or another. And it is this constant thinking, more than anything else, that creates the necessity of which I am speaking. The mere drudge, whether biped or quadruped—he, I mean, whose thinking powers are scarcely alive—has little need of the relief which is ...
— The Young Mother - Management of Children in Regard to Health • William A. Alcott
... nearly swarming time, the Harn had many things to preoccupy it, but it spared one unit to watch the hole into the other world. So far, nothing much had happened. A large biped had found the opening from the other side. It had been joined by a smaller quadruped; but neither showed any indication yet of coming through. The sun was shining through the hole, a large young yellow sun, and the air was crisp, ...
— Cat and Mouse • Ralph Williams
... nothing whatever. Men in well-worn velveteens and felt billycocks, hobnobbed with men in the gaudiest uniforms ever evolved by the theatrical costumier. Green velvet and gold lace, topped by cocked hats that had despoiled the ostrich to make a human biped vainly ridiculous, adorned Ginirals and Cornels that had no rigiments belongun' to 'um at all at all! and had come over from the Distressful Country to make a bould bid for glory, with the experience of warfare acquired while lurking behind hedges with shot-guns, in ...
— The Dop Doctor • Clotilde Inez Mary Graves
... indifference. But the man of whose spiky bracelet we read was not in search of Nirvana's annihilation, nor had he ever prayed in nakedness beside the Ganges. Cardinal Vaughan, Archbishop of Westminster, was as little like a starveling Sanyasi as any biped descendant of the anthropoids could possibly be. A noticeable man, singularly handsome, of conspicuous, indeed of almost precarious, personal attraction, a Prince of the Church, clothed, quite literally, in purple and ...
— Essays in Rebellion • Henry W. Nevinson
... animal by another form, the sensitive soul, and man by another form, the intellectual soul, it would follow that man is not absolutely one. Thus Aristotle argues, Metaph. viii (Did. vii, 6), against Plato, that if the idea of an animal is distinct from the idea of a biped, then a biped animal is not absolutely one. For this reason, against those who hold that there are several souls in the body, he asks (De Anima i, 5), "what contains them?"—that is, what makes them one? It cannot be said that they are united by the one body; because rather does the soul ...
— Summa Theologica, Part I (Prima Pars) - From the Complete American Edition • Thomas Aquinas
... right, who were used to have cells of quietness in the inner chamber, but, alas! in these unhappy times we are altogether exiled, suffering poverty without the gates. For our places are seized now by dogs, now by hawks, now by that biped beast whose cohabitation with the clergy was forbidden of old, from which we have always taught our nurslings to flee more than from the asp and the cockatrice; wherefore she, always jealous of the love of us, and never to be appeased, ...
— The Philobiblon of Richard de Bury • Richard de Bury
... astonished than anything else at the ridiculous simplicity of my emancipation. Yesterday at this hour I was a highly respectable if slightly pampered person with a shrewd sense of my own importance in the economic and social scheme; to-day I'm a mere biped—an instinct on legs, with nothing to recommend me but an amiable disposition and ...
— Madcap • George Gibbs
... difficult to keep back his passion for activity; Ellery, big but loosely joined, had the dogged look of one that held some of his energy in reserve. A good pair, Mr. Elton concluded, and felt a sudden spasm of longing for a son—not that he would have exchanged Madeline for any trousered biped that walked, but it would be a great thing to own one such well of ...
— Jewel Weed • Alice Ames Winter
... will that could have withstood any amount of spiritual or material attrition. She had never seen Flint so clearly as at this moment; in fact, she had never seen him at all. Formerly, he had been a conventionalized masculine biped in a blue-serge covering who paid her salary and struck attitudes that were symbols of predatory instincts rather than an indication that such instincts existed. Life had, after all, been peopled by the precisely labeled puppets of a morality play; they came on, and declaimed, and made gestures—but ...
— The Blood Red Dawn • Charles Caldwell Dobie
... strolled into Russia; there he drove a pair of horses, one of whom put his head down and did the work; the other pranced and capricoled alongside, all unconscious of the trace. He seemed happier than his working brother; but the biped whose career corresponded with this ...
— Christie Johnstone • Charles Reade
... broad, sunshiny sky, the silence and the roominess of it all, were quite different from her suburban experiences; and the farm animals, too, were in her opinion curiously dangerous objects. Big Dan, the horse, was truly a horrible creature; the rooster was a new and suspicious species of biped, and the bleating calves objects of ...
— Concerning Cats - My Own and Some Others • Helen M. Winslow
... that we should have begun at first by dividing land animals into biped and quadruped; and since the winged herd, and that alone, comes out in the same class with man, we should divide bipeds into those which have feathers and those which have not, and when they have been divided, and the art of the management of mankind is brought to light, ...
— Statesman • Plato
... the sum of him, the all of him, the hairless biped who struggled upward from the slime and created love and law out of the anarchy of fecund life that screamed and squalled in the jungle. I am all that that man was and did become. I see myself, through the painful generations, snaring and ...
— The Jacket (The Star-Rover) • Jack London
... that the bat does suck the blood of cattle and horses, but denies that it will attack man! This is sheer nonsense. What difference to the vampire, whether its victim be a biped or quadruped? Is it fear of the former that would prevent it from attacking him? Perhaps it may never have seen a human being before: besides, it attacks its victim while asleep, and is rarely ever caught or punished ...
— Popular Adventure Tales • Mayne Reid
... which to the seeing eye are as republican as the Stars and Stripes. His blunt-toed yellow shoes sang gaily of home. And his hat was not so much a hat as an effusive greeting from Gotham. A long time had passed since Mr. Crocker had set eyes upon a biped so exhilaratingly American, and rapture held him speechless, as one who after long exile beholds some landmark of ...
— Piccadilly Jim • Pelham Grenville Wodehouse
... throw this half aside and even cast it off entirely.—On each page, now with the bold stroke of a hardy naturalist, now with the quick turn of a mischievous monkey, Voltaire lets the solemn or serious drapery fall, disclosing man, the poor biped, and in which attitudes![4127] Swift alone dared to present similar pictures. What physiological crudities relating to the origin and end of our most exalted sentiments! What disproportion between such feeble reason and such powerful instincts! What recesses ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 1 (of 6) - The Ancient Regime • Hippolyte A. Taine
... strange spectacle met his view. The pony was sitting on the ground, erect, after the manner of a biped. Its head was in the air, its hind-legs were extended horizontally, its fore-legs were waving impotently up and down'. The ant-bear had carved its way deep into the bowels of the earth, gradually ...
— Reminiscences of a South African Pioneer • W. C. Scully
... down his innocent nose." Now it so happened that Spinoza, despite the general (and, in my most meek opinion, the just) condemnation of his theoretical tenets,* was, in character and in nature, according to the voices of all who knew him, an exceedingly kind, humane, and benevolent biped; and it doth, therefore, seem a little strange unto us grave, sober members of the unphilosophical Many, that the struggles and terrors of these little winged creatures should strike the good subtleist in ...
— Devereux, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... to be institutions in the Pines, and all the bogs for miles around the site of the first experiment were hired by sanguine farmers. But the cranberry-cultivator has one enemy, which is neither bird, nor worm, nor blight, but biped,—a Rat, two-legged, erect, or moderately so, talking, even, in audible and intelligible speech,—the Pine Rat, namely. Few but New Jerseymen, and of them chiefly those who dwell about the forest, have heard of this human species; ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, No. 19, May, 1859 • Various
... door, believing he had left the letter on the floor of Marshal Simon's room. But he had reckoned without Spoil-sport. Whether he thought it more prudent to bring up the rear, or, from respectful deference for a biped, the worthy dog had been the last to leave the room, and, being a famous carrier, as soon as he saw the letter dropped by Loony, he took it delicately between his teeth, and followed close on the heels of the servant, without ...
— The Wandering Jew, Complete • Eugene Sue
... time Lancelot saw Mary Ann he did not remember having seen her before. This time she was a biped, and wore a white cap. Besides, he hardly glanced at her. He was in a bad temper, and Beethoven was barking terribly at the intruder who stood quaking in the doorway, so that the crockery clattered on the tea-tray she bore. With a smothered oath Lancelot caught up the fiery little ...
— The Grey Wig: Stories and Novelettes • Israel Zangwill
... sent me word that he intended paying me a short visit, and requested me to send a syce (groom), with a saddle-horse, to meet him at a certain place on the road. The syce, Sidhoo, was a smart, open-chested, sinewy-limbed little fellow, a perfect model of a biped racer. He could run—as is the custom in the East—alongside his horse at a pace of seven or eight miles an hour, for a length of time that would astonish the best English ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 2, No. 12, May, 1851. • Various
... sedate and patrician Roman, and he leaps at the throat of fear in a wild defiance. "What art thou afraid of? Wherefore, like a coward, dost thou forever pip and whimper, and go cowering and trembling? Despicable biped! What is the sum-total of the worst that lies before thee? Death? Well, Death: and say the pangs of Tophet too, and all that the Devil and Man may, will or can do against thee! Hast thou not a Heart; canst thou not suffer whatsoever it be; and, as a Child of Freedom, ...
— Among Famous Books • John Kelman
... said another. "It seems too good to be true; but she has the most stupid of husbands! Ah!—Buffon has admirably described the animals, but the biped ...
— The Physiology of Marriage, Part I. • Honore de Balzac
... romance of wearing each other's clothes. Alas, that every advance of reason should mean a corresponding retreat of romance! It is only reasonable that woman, being—have you yet realised the fact?—a biped like her brothers, should, when she takes to her brothers' recreations, dress as those recreations demand; and yet the death of Rosalind is a heavy price to pay for the lady bicyclist. So soon as the two sexes wear ...
— The Quest of the Golden Girl • Richard le Gallienne
... large negro, with a ragged red shirt, waded out and took me on his shoulders. There is no position so absurd, nor in which a man feels himself so utterly helpless, as when thus dependant on the strength and sure-footedness of a fellow-biped. As we left the boat, a heavy "roller" came in. The negro lost his footing, and I my balance, and down we plunged into the surf. My sable friend seemed to consider it a point of duty to hold stoutly by my legs, the inevitable ...
— Journal of an African Cruiser • Horatio Bridge
... is sometimes alleged that great valour he showed When he chased a mad cow for three miles on the road; But there's also another account of the hunt With a four-legged pursuer, a biped in front. ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 153, Sept. 12, 1917 • Various
... for a thrush, an ortolan, a beccafico, a robin-redbreast, or any other feathered and diminutive biped. He is not so ambitious as to expect a quail. Partridges he has heard of; of one, at least, a sort of phoenix, reproduced from its own ashes, and seen from time to time before an earthquake, or other great catastrophe. As to the hare, he is well aware that it is a fabulous animal ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 55, No. 340, February, 1844 • Various
... conversation with this hybrid: and being equally disposed for hot discourse or for sleep, the deprivation of the one and the other forced him to seek amusement in his famous reading of character; which was profound among the biped equine, jockeys, turfmen, sharpers, pugilists, demireps. He fronted Woodseer with square shoulders and wide knees, an elbow on one, a fist on the other, engaged in what he termed the 'prodding of his eel,' or 'nicking of his man,' a method of getting straight at the riddle of the ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... genus with reference to the species Mathematician. Animal is a genus, divided into two species, man and brute; but animal is also a species, which, with another species, vegetable, makes up the genus, organized being. Biped is a genus with reference to man and bird, but a species with respect to the superior genus, animal. Taste is a genus divided into species, but also a species of the genus sensation. Virtue, a genus with reference to justice, temperance, etc., is one of ...
— A System Of Logic, Ratiocinative And Inductive • John Stuart Mill
... sailor Bill upon shore, and expect him to go ahead upon it, you would be disappointed: you might as well expect a fish to make progress on land; and you would witness a species of locomotion more resembling that of a manatee or a seal, than of a human biped. As the old man-o'-war's-man had now being floundering full five weeks through the soft shore-sand, he was thoroughly convinced that a mode of progression must be preferable to that; and as soon as the young Scotchman descended from his seat, ...
— The Boy Slaves • Mayne Reid
... as it is convenient to speak of the British Lion. But Britain is no more an organism than Britain is a lion. The moment we begin to give a nation the unity and simplicity of an animal, we begin to think wildly. Because every man is a biped, fifty men are not a centipede. This has produced, for instance, the gaping absurdity of perpetually talking about "young nations" and "dying nations," as if a nation had a fixed and physical span of life. Thus people will say that Spain has entered a final senility; they might as well say that ...
— What's Wrong With The World • G.K. Chesterton
... say of Huger shall receive due attention. Which Maria did your husband go for, the biped or the quadruped? It is impossible to determine from any thing in your letter. On the subject of busts you are more whimsical than even your father; just now you had something in view; but, on the 22d of February, "worse ...
— Memoirs of Aaron Burr, Complete • Matthew L. Davis
... protection except elevation and precipitous rocks, and to the hunter who has the energy to climb up to him he, too, is easy prey. Usually his biped enemy finds him and attacks him in precipitous mountains, where running and hiding are utterly impossible. When discovered on a ledge two feet wide leading across the face of a precipice, poor Billy has nothing to do but to take the bullets as they come until ...
— The Minds and Manners of Wild Animals • William T. Hornaday
... the food both for himself and for his beast, the latter generally having the precedence in eating his share. The sleeping accommodation also is, as a rule, amicably divided between quadruped and biped, and, taken all round, it cannot be said that either is any the worse for their brotherly relations. I firmly believe that the Mapus are infinitely better-natured towards their animals than towards their wives or their children, who, as you will find ...
— Corea or Cho-sen • A (Arnold) Henry Savage-Landor
... in Jeekie in alarm. "If wonder, not live, if wonder, not be born, too much wonder about everywhere. Can't understand nothing, so give it up. Say, 'Right-O and devil hindermost!' Very good motto for biped in tight place. Better drown here than in City bucket shop. But no drown. Should be dead long ago, but Little Bonsa play the game, she not want to sink in stinking swamp when so near her happy home. Come out all right somehow, as from dwarf. Every cloud have silver lining, ...
— The Yellow God - An Idol of Africa • H. Rider Haggard
... slowly rolled up their pantaloons and waded out to the rescue,—for the money that was in it. The boat's crew elevated their trousers' legs also and slided down into the water. Each of us then straddled the neck of a Filipino standing in the water and was held by ankles to be steadied while our biped mounts ...
— An Epoch in History • P. H. Eley
... she met with the old man, who had seen her alight from the carriage, and had asked the mischievous Victor, "Who was the small biped Richard had ...
— Darkness and Daylight • Mary J. Holmes
... with a feeling of thankfulness the letter of 'A Male Biped,' in this day's Colonist. The writer deserves the thanks of every good woman in the land for the bold and able manner in which he has administered a shaking to a shrewish old mischief-maker who, having failed to secure a husband herself, is tramping the continent ...
— The Life and Work of Susan B. Anthony (Volume 1 of 2) • Ida Husted Harper
... general understanding that the wooden-legged men in country parishes should be employed as postmen, owing to the great steadiness of demeanour which a wooden leg is generally found to produce. It may be that such men are slower in their operations than would be biped postmen; but as all private employers of labour demand labourers with two legs, it is well that the lame and halt should find a refuge in the less exacting service of the government. The one-legged man who rode his donkey ...
— He Knew He Was Right • Anthony Trollope
... to change the basis of society; he had a blind faith in the future. Man must progress in the same way as communities; these reckoned their evolutions by centuries, but man by millions of years. How could a man of to-day be compared to the biped animal of prehistoric times, though bearing visibly the traces of the animalism from which he had lately emerged? Living in fellowship with his ancestors the monkeys, the principal difference being the first ...
— The Shadow of the Cathedral • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... on the pigskin? Surely a male biped need not dwell In a prejudiced pedantic prig's skin, Not to like that prospect passing well. CARLYLE, who scoffed at Man, had deemed it caddish To picture Woman as ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 98, March 22, 1890 • Various
... Guinevere had been a fish, then a helpless biped, and now suddenly, somewhere between my salad and coffee, she became an aquatic quadruped. Strangest of all, her hands were mobile, her feet useless; and when the dance was at an end, and she sank slowly to the bottom, she came to rest on the very tips of her two longest fingers; her legs ...
— Edge of the Jungle • William Beebe
... animated biped, an instinct on legs. Is that a thing to be proud of—for a man who ...
— Paradise Garden - The Satirical Narrative of a Great Experiment • George Gibbs
... in his dress, and from the cravat to the well-polished boot, his costume was perfect. An effeminate, solemn-looking dandy outwardly—within, as ferocious and hard a human biped as ever disgraced ...
— The Monctons: A Novel, Volume I • Susanna Moodie
... the human one, though it came only from a bird. No lark this time, however, but a great black and white creature that flew into the cloak, and began walking round and round on the edge of it with a dignified stride, one foot before the other, like any unfeathered biped you could name. ...
— The Little Lame Prince - And: The Invisible Prince; Prince Cherry; The Prince With The Nose - The Frog-Prince; Clever Alice • Miss Mulock—Pseudonym of Maria Dinah Craik
... the geologic history of the earth under the symbol of a year of three hundred and sixty-five days, each day a million years, which is probably not far out of the way, then man, the biped, the Homo sapiens, in relation to this immense past, is of to-day, or of this very morning; while the origin of the first vertebrates, the fishes, from which he has arisen, falls nearer the middle of ...
— Time and Change • John Burroughs
... aloud, "There is the real benefactor," and I point to the ruin which the young man has become whom we used to know, to the miserable, darkened biped whose eyelids flutter in the daylight, who leans weakly against a tree in face of the festive crowd, as if it were an ...
— Light • Henri Barbusse
... in the swift torrent he heard rushing over the rocks,—this pretty idol for a weak and kindly and easily satisfied worshipper, was to be enthroned as the queen of his affections, to be adopted as the companion of his labors! The boy, led by the commonest instinct, the mere attraction of biped to its female, which accident had favored, had thrown away the dearest possession of manhood,—liberty,—and this bauble was to be his lifelong reward! And yet not a bauble either, for a pleasing person and a gentle and sweet nature, which ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... superstitious persons believed him the spirit of a departed Ursa Major, and others of his fraternity welcomed the animal as a favorable omen. The bear walked quietly along to the Custom House, ascended the steps of the building, and became bewildered, as many a biped bear has done before him. He seemed to lose his sense of vision, and, no doubt, endeavoring to operate for a fall, walked over the side of the steps and broke his neck. He succeeded in his object, but it cost him dearly. The appearance of Bruin in the street sensibly affected the stock ...
— A Unique Story of a Marvellous Career. Life of Hon. Phineas T. • Joel Benton
... social gulf which yawned between the youngest son of the late Lord Bortledyne and the only daughter of Albert Edward Smith, mechanic. To the Professor she was Miss H. Sapiens—an agreeable, featherless plantigrade biped of the genus Homo. She was also thoroughly domesticated and cooked like an angel, a nice woman who apparently never knew that her husband had a Christian name, for she called him "Mr. Whitland" to the day of ...
— Bones in London • Edgar Wallace
... the heavens above were made vocal with the screams of wild geese, still pouring along in their hurried flight to the south, to escape the elemental foe behind, like the rapidly succeeding detachments of some retreating army, yet not a living creature, biped or quadruped, was anywhere to be heard or seen in the forest beneath. All seemed to have instinctively shrunk away and fled, as from the presence of some impending evil, to their dens and coverts, there to await, cowering and silent, the dreaded outbreak. ...
— Gaut Gurley • D. P. Thompson
... sanctifies the means. However, I am not in favour of a compromise on a basis of that sort. Religion may be an excellent means of curbing and controlling the perverse, dull, and malicious creatures of the biped race; in the eyes of the friend of truth every fraus, be it ever so pia, must be rejected. It would be an odd way to promote virtue through the medium of lies and deception. The flag to which I have sworn is ...
— Essays of Schopenhauer • Arthur Schopenhauer
... biped animal already alluded to, actuated by an overweening desire of notoriety, and in order to catch the applause of some one, grovelling in the morasses of insignificance and vice, like himself, leaves his native obscurity, and indulges in ...
— The Hedge School; The Midnight Mass; The Donagh • William Carleton
... tongue, Scip," said the Doctor. "I'm the talking man here. Yes! gentlemen," addressing the attentive cowboys, "I can cure anything that touches the ground—biped, quadruped, or centipede—glanders, botts, greased hoofs, heaves, blind staggers, it makes no odds. My universal, self-acting, double compound elixir of equestrian ointment will perform a cure in each and every case. It is cheap! It is sure! It ...
— Jim Cummings • Frank Pinkerton
... it is because it has nothing to do with the humanitarian pity retailed by rhetoricians. It is philosophical and haughty, detached from any "anthropocentric" characteristics. It is universal suffering that it covers. And to tell the truth, it is man, the hypocritical and cunning biped who has the least share in it. Maupassant is helpful to all those of his fellows who are tortured by physical suffering, social cruelty and the criminal dangers of life, but he pities them without caring for them, and his ...
— Une Vie, A Piece of String and Other Stories • Guy de Maupassant
... breaks out, and shows what nature designed it for. Some of these carpeted pets acquit themselves nobly in the covert. There they ought oftener to be; for they have not much individuality of attachment to recommend them, and, like other spoiled animals, both quadruped and biped, misbehave. The breed has degenerated of late, and is not always to be had pure, even in the neighbourhood of Blenheim. This spaniel may he distinguished by the length and silkiness of the coat, the deep fringe about the ear, the arch and deep-feathering of ...
— The Dog - A nineteenth-century dog-lovers' manual, - a combination of the essential and the esoteric. • William Youatt
... themselves to the uttermost ends of the earth in order to hide in deep solitude their poverty, and there renew their garments. Judge then, reader, if you can, the consternation with which these once graceful creatures discovered that their retreat had been found out by that inquisitive biped, man—that they were actually caught in the ...
— The Pioneers • R.M. Ballantyne
... been. Bed would have done me good, and the nurse is a darling, old enough to be Will's mother. But they put a biped by the name of Peter Measel in the bed next mine. He's a missionary on his own account, and keeps a diary. Seems be contributes to the funds of a Welsh mission in France, and they do what he says. He has all ...
— The Eye of Zeitoon • Talbot Mundy
... of view of evolution, we are irresistibly drawn to the ape tribe as the next lower link in the long chain of development, and are led to consider the characteristics of the apes as the intermediate stage between the quadruped and the biped, the bridge crossing this great gulf in organic development. This is by no means to suggest that some one of the existing anthropoid apes is the direct ancestor of man. Such an idea has never been entertained by scientists. These animals cannot even fairly ...
— Man And His Ancestor - A Study In Evolution • Charles Morris
... and it was necessary to make him a well-padded dressing-gown. But what a servant he was, clever, zealous, indefatigable, not indiscreet, not talkative, and he might have been with reason proposed as a model for all his biped brothers in ...
— The Mysterious Island • Jules Verne
... picture galleries and battlegrounds and ruins and abbeys, studying other tourists provides a pleasant way of passing many an otherwise tedious hour. Certain of the European countries furnish some interesting types—notably Britain, which producing a male biped of a lachrymose and cheerless exterior, who plods solemnly across the Continent wrapped in the plaid mantle of his own dignity, never speaking an unnecessary word to any person whatsoever. And Germany: ...
— Europe Revised • Irvin S. Cobb
... gallant body; and, as to exaggeration, let it be remembered that, in the very same year, and on the very same station that my tricing-up to the truck occurred, another post-captain tarred and feathered one of his young gentlemen, and kept him in that state, a plumed biped, for more than six weeks in his hen-coop. This last fact obtained much notoriety, from the aggrieved party leaving the service, and recovering heavy damages from his torturer in the court of civil law. My treatment never was ...
— Rattlin the Reefer • Edward Howard
... sweet sleep. His wife, weary with anxiety and watching, was trying to get a nap in the easy chair, when, suddenly, close by them, as if in the very room, came an indescribable screech, an unearthly, long, shrill cock-a-doodle-do yell, such as only a fancy feathered biped can perform. ...
— Who Spoke Next • Eliza Lee Follen
... copper-skinned, barrel-chested; he looked like a third-or fourth-generation Martian, of Andes Indian ancestry. He came forward and stood behind Gomes' chair, looking down at the instruments. His assistant stopped at the door. This assistant was not human. He was a biped, vaguely humanoid, but he had four arms and a face like a lizard's, and, except for some equipment on a belt, he ...
— Uller Uprising • Henry Beam Piper, John D. Clark and John F. Carr
... the sight of the struggling gander, still enveloped in Ted's coat, and then, with extended hands and wildly-flapping drapery, hastened towards him—her aspect being not unlike that assumed by the unfortunate biped in question when he had first advanced ...
— North, South and Over the Sea • M.E. Francis (Mrs. Francis Blundell)
... halls were swept and adorned with the best suit of hangings. All the gentlemen, young and old, all the keepers and verdurers, were put in requisition to slaughter all the game, quadruped and biped, that fell in their way, the village women and children were turned loose on the blackberries, cranberries, and bilberries, and all the ladies and serving-women were called on to concoct pasties of ...
— Unknown to History - A Story of the Captivity of Mary of Scotland • Charlotte M. Yonge
... a biped I felt sorry for. He was a little man with sandy hair and whiskers a good deal like mine. Henpecked?—well, toucans and flamingoes and pelicans all had their bills in him. He wiped the dishes and listened to my mistress tell about the cheap, ragged things the lady with the squirrel-skin coat ...
— The Four Million • O. Henry
... soul of the society; being again reinstated in his old post of lion, from which high station the temporary distraction of their thoughts had for a moment dispossessed him. Quadruped lions are said to be savage, only when they are hungry; biped lions are rarely sulky longer than when their appetite for distinction remains unappeased. Mr Lillyvick stood higher than ever; for he had shown his power; hinted at his property and testamentary intentions; gained great credit for disinterestedness and virtue; ...
— The Life And Adventures Of Nicholas Nickleby • Charles Dickens
... the hero we forgot his humanity wherever it was his interest that we should forget it, and while we admired him as a man we judged him only as a fox. We doubt whether it would have been possible, if he had been described as an open acknowledged biped in coat and trousers, to have retained our regard for him. Something or other in us, either real rightmindedness, or humbug, or hypocrisy, would have obliged us to mix more censure with our liking than most of us do in the case as it stands. It may be that the dress of ...
— Short Studies on Great Subjects • James Anthony Froude
... consideration, that, if man is stupid, then who is wise?) But if he is not stupid, he is monstrously ungrateful! Phenomenally ungrateful. In fact, I believe that the best definition of man is the ungrateful biped. But that is not all, that is not his worst defect; his worst defect is his perpetual moral obliquity, perpetual—from the days of the Flood to the Schleswig-Holstein period. Moral obliquity and consequently lack of good sense; for it has long been accepted that lack of good sense is ...
— Notes from the Underground • Feodor Dostoevsky
... and comparison. From these an aggregate distance was struck. But it was not until we were well on the march that I noticed the man with the pace stick, who staggered and reeled like an inebriated crab in his efforts to extricate his biped from the unevennesses of the ground before he was trampled down by the column. I watched him with a curious fascination, and as I grew sleepier and sleepier that part of my consciousness which was not counting steps, recognized him as a cripple ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume V (of 8) • Francis J. (Francis Joseph) Reynolds, Allen L. (Allen Leon)
... farther end was the keeper, who did the showman, vainly endeavouring to go through his usual jogtrot description. His monotone was drowned every minute by the chorus of voices, each shouting out some new fact in natural history touching the biped or quadruped whom the keeper was attempting to describe. At that day a great deal of this sort of chaff was current, so that the most dunder-headed boy had plenty on the tip of his tongue. A small and indignant knot of townspeople, ...
— Tom Brown at Oxford • Thomas Hughes
... the taste of the narrator, the interesting individual is an old woman, sometimes a young one, sometimes a black-bearded bandit, sometimes a child; and not unfrequently, a dog is humane enough to do this service. One thing, however, never varies,—be the agent biped or quadruped, dumb or speechful, young or old, the stranger invariably takes the hint, and gets off scott free for his sharpness. This never-varying trick on the doomed man, I had often been sceptical ...
— Charles O'Malley, The Irish Dragoon, Volume 1 (of 2) • Charles Lever
... self-sacrificing. I hope to God, Doloria, that you won't be among those who squeeze their hearts dry! You've lived away from the world and may not know how plentiful these are; but no day passes without its toll of some woman being silently crucified in her losing fight to save a besotted biped—the lord of her earthly temple. It's only by a streak of luck when their stage is cleared, as ...
— Wings of the Wind • Credo Harris
... community for their common altar. And by the light of this celestial fire they learnt to see those celestial and eternal bonds between man and man, as of husband to wife, of father to child, of citizen to his country, and of master to servant, without which man is but a biped without feathers, and which are in themselves, being independent of the flux of matter and time, most truly facts as they are. And since that time, whatsoever household or nation has allowed these fires to become extinguished, has sunk ...
— Phaethon • Charles Kingsley
... resides in the fact that it is, as one might say, a biped among ideas. It marches to triumph on two feet, an Irish and an Imperial foot. If there were in Ireland no demand whatever for self-government it would, nevertheless, be necessary in the interests ...
— The Open Secret of Ireland • T. M. Kettle
... of Oude and Rohilcund, was the colonel's starting-point;—and thence on St Patrick's day[6] he set forward for Hurdwar, at the head of a retinue, the members of which, both quadruped and biped, he enumerates seriatim, giving the pas to the former—a precedence perhaps well merited by steeds up to such a welter weight under the climate of India, over such a set of unredeemed and thriftless knaves as he describes his native attendants. Accordingly, he gives the ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. 341, March, 1844, Vol. 55 • Various
... tragedy in itself. If man's supremacy is to be challenged at all let it be by a creature of flesh-and-blood, a big-brained biped who must kill to live. Better that by far than a ghostly flickering in the deepening dusk, a whispering and a flapping and a long-drawn sighing ...
— The Man the Martians Made • Frank Belknap Long
... are at least as much esteemed by them as their own kindred. I have known an instance of a quadruped of the cynic sect being appointed successor to a biped chief, and discharging the duties of his office with the utmost gravity and decorum; appearing at the feast given in honour of his deceased predecessor, and furnishing his quota—(this of course by proxy)—of the ...
— Service in the Hudson's Bay Territory • John M'lean
... abandoning the practice of eating. I had acquired the habit too early. For twenty-seven years I had been blindly rushing upon my fate, yielding to the insidious lures of that deadly monster, food. It was too late. I was a ruminant biped for keeps. It was lobster salad to a doughnut that my life was going to be ...
— Heart of the West • O. Henry
... is wise, the wind thinks well, And all through which it blows, If plants or brain, if egg or shell, Or bird or biped knows; ...
— Poems - Household Edition • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... crowing like a cock, and the other boys were laughing at Robina for her utter ignorance of the white-fleshed biped she ...
— The Pillars of the House, V1 • Charlotte M. Yonge
... about Him! The horse, dog, cat,—even the wild animals, whose vices, perchance, pale beside your own, may go to Heaven before you. The Supreme Architect is neither a Nero, nor a Stuart, nor a clown. He will recompense all who deserve recompense, be they great or small—biped ...
— Animal Ghosts - Or, Animal Hauntings and the Hereafter • Elliott O'Donnell
... a woman's voice, and, although neither hoarse nor shrill, it is no more musical than the crow of the other biped, who struts about on his widely-spread toes in the yard, to which Christina Fasch has come to feed the pigs. There are five of them, pink-nosed and yellow-coated, and they keep up a grunting and snarling chorus within their wooden ...
— The Empire Annual for Girls, 1911 • Various
... is remembered with what ludicrous solemnity he apostrophised his unhappy fate as one over whom a cloud of the darkest despair had just been drawn—a peacock had come to live within hearing distance from him, and not only the terrific yells of the accursed biped pierced him to the soul, but the continued terror of their recurrence kept his nerves in agonising tension during the intervals ...
— The Book-Hunter - A New Edition, with a Memoir of the Author • John Hill Burton
... general public. The points of resemblance betwixt the Gorilla and the Boy are numerous and striking. In most cases, the two animals have an equally pleasing exterior. They both have the ability to climb giddy heights, inaccessible to any other wingless biped. Their language is not dissimilar, the same unintelligible chatter being characteristic of both. As the argument proceeds, it will be seen that distinctive traits belonging to lower classes of the animal kingdom are totally extinct in the Gorilla, ...
— Punchinello, Vol.1, No. 4, April 23, 1870 • Various
... remember to have ever seen one of them perfectly awake, except at feeding-time. In every respect we uphold the biped lions against their four-footed namesakes, and we boldly ...
— Sketches by Boz - illustrative of everyday life and every-day people • Charles Dickens
... its brim, with their muskets, that gallant force of revenue men steadily scoured the neighborhood; and the further they went, the worse they fared. There was not a horse standing down by a pool, with his stiff legs shut up into biped form, nor a cow staring blandly across an old rail, nor a sheep with a pectoral cough behind a hedge, nor a rabbit making rustle at the eyebrow of his hole, nor even a moot, that might either be a man or hold a man inside ...
— Mary Anerley • R. D. Blackmore
... be frequent. A typical confession is that of a girl of nineteen: "I seldom have time to build castles in Spain, but when I do, I am not different from most Southern girls; i.e., my dreams are usually about a pretty fair specimen of a six-foot three-inch biped." ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 1 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... declaration—to which Bavarian authorities, it would seem, attach value—that he was "a rogue and a vagabond;" confessions which the Captain possibly deemed as absurd an act of "surplusage" as though he were to give a written declaration that he was a vertebrated animal and a biped. ...
— Cornelius O'Dowd Upon Men And Women And Other Things In General - Originally Published In Blackwood's Magazine - 1864 • Charles Lever
... we only take the trouble we can turn the whole male sex round our little fingers. Who ever saw half a dozen of us hovering and watching and fussing round a masculine biped, thankful even to be snubbed rather than not noticed at all. Who ever saw us fetch and carry like so many retrievers, and "sit up," so to speak, for a withered rose-bud at the fag end of an over-blown bouquet. Not that we don't love flowers in their proper places, and keep ...
— Kate Coventry - An Autobiography • G. J. Whyte-Melville
... thoughtful students. By the ancient Egyptians cats were held in the highest esteem; and we learn from Diodorus Siculus, their 'lives and safeties' were tendered more dearly than those of any other animal, whether biped or quadruped. 'He who has voluntarily killed a consecrated animal,' says this writer, 'is punished with death; but if any one has even involuntarily killed a cat or an ibis, it is impossible for him to escape death: ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 419, New Series, January 10, 1852 • Various
... absurdity of the situation. Those four limbs of the quadruped, which, noway under the rider's control, nor sometimes under that of the creature they more properly belong to, fly at such a rate as if the hindermost meant to overtake the foremost; those clinging legs of the biped which we so often wish safely planted on the greensward, but which now only augment our distress by pressing the animal's sides—the hands which have forsaken the bridle for the mane—the body, which, instead of sitting upright ...
— Quentin Durward • Sir Walter Scott
... the vices of the age He manfully did battle; His chickens were a biped breed, And ...
— The Book of Humorous Verse • Various
... immediate transformation into some jollier shape. A little, long-tailed, horned fiend sidled up to him and suddenly blew at him through a tube, enveloping our poor friend in a whole harvest of winged seeds. A biped, with an ass's snout, brayed close to his ear, ending his discordant uproar with a peal of human laughter. Five strapping damsels—so, at least, their petticoats bespoke them, in spite of an awful freedom ...
— The Marble Faun, Volume II. - The Romance of Monte Beni • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... licking—and he had one, and something over—is the best lesson for that manner of biped. That's the way to school him: but as we are on lessons, ...
— Two Years Ago, Volume I • Charles Kingsley
... was useless to attempt it; their white flags were flying in front and on both flanks, as far as one could see, and new ones seemed constantly joining the procession. Among them were several very large bucks with superb antlers, and these seemed very little afraid of the small, quiet biped in leaf-colored rig. They often paused to gaze back with bold, fearless front, as though inclined to call a halt and face the music; but when within a hundred yards, would turn and canter leisurely away. As the herd neared the summit of the low-lying ridge, I tried to make ...
— Woodcraft • George W. Sears
... Richelieu, in front of the big public library. That pile of oyster-shells which is called a library is disgusting even to think of. What paper! What ink! What scrawling! And all that has been written! What rascal was it who said that man was a featherless biped?[51] And then, I met a pretty girl of my acquaintance, who is as beautiful as the spring, worthy to be called Floreal, and who is delighted, enraptured, as happy as the angels, because a wretch yesterday, a frightful banker all ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo
... was a fairly large mammalian class on Zarathustra—but beyond that he was stumped. It wasn't a primate, in the Terran sense. It wasn't like anything Terran, or anything else on Zarathustra. Being a biped put it in a class by itself for this planet. It was just a Little Fuzzy, and that was the best ...
— Little Fuzzy • Henry Beam Piper
... mean habitations. I don't wonder the tenants were glad to make our arrival the excuse for running off. Here are men claiming to have been worth forty thousand dollars, half in biped property, half in all other kinds, and they lived in dens such as a drayman would have disdained and a hod-carrier ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 8, No. 46, August, 1861 • Various
... to roam about the woods; and as for the danger—pooh, pooh—I have no fear of that. I fear neither bear nor panther, nor any other quadruped. Ha! I have more fear of a two-legged creature I know of; and I should be in greater danger of meeting with that dreaded biped by staying ...
— The Wild Huntress - Love in the Wilderness • Mayne Reid
... of some casks that had got loose, and were smashing against one another, and the shouting, and the roaring of wind and waves, there was enough to stun and terrify any creature, be he quadruped or biped! ...
— The Rambles of a Rat • A. L. O. E.
... another thing which is also called man, and he is the subject of not a few lucubrations, more or less scientific. He is the legendary featherless biped, the zoon politikhon of Aristotle, the social contractor of Rousseau, the homo economicus of the Manchester school, the homo sapiens of Linnaeus, or, if you like, the vertical mammal. A man neither of here nor there, neither of this age nor of another, ...
— Tragic Sense Of Life • Miguel de Unamuno
... obtained on that score, it would probably be somewhat different; for be it known that the husband of Mrs. Moggs is of the kind that is neither useful nor ornamental. He belongs to that division which addicts itself mainly to laziness—a species of the biped called husband, which unfortunately is not so rare that we seek for the specimen only in museums. We know not whether Montezuma Moggs was or was not born lazy; nor shall we undertake to decide that laziness is an inherent quality; but as Mrs. Moggs was herself a thrifty, ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol. XXXII No. 2. February 1848 • Various
... The division of biped mammalia into merely men and women is of comparatively recent date. In very early times, however, when wisdom was commoner than now, the classification began with gods and goddesses, heroes, men and ...
— An Ocean Tramp • William McFee
... period of the morning when the grazing animals retired from the open patena to the cool shade of the forest: doubtless, the leopard had taken my approach for that of a deer, or some such animal. And if his spring had been at a quadruped instead of a biped, his distance was so well measured, that it must have landed him on the neck of a deer, an elk, or a buffalo; as it was, one pace more would have done for me. A bear would not have let his victim ...
— Sketches of the Natural History of Ceylon • J. Emerson Tennent
... viper, eft; asp, aspick^. [amphibians] frog, toad. [fishes] trout, bass, tuna, muskelunge, sailfish, sardine, mackerel. [insects] ant, mosquito, bee, honeybee. [arthropods] tardigrade, spider. [classification by number of feet] biped, quadruped; [web-footed animal] webfoot. flocks and herds, live stock; domestic animals, wild animals; game, ferae naturae [Lat.]; beasts of the field, fowls of the air, denizens of the sea; black game, black grouse; blackcock^, duck, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... in Man's pre-Ad'amite days to feed and swill, to sleep and breed, Were the Brute-biped's only life, a perfect life sans Code ...
— The Kasidah of Haji Abdu El-Yezdi • Richard F. Burton
... while Spot barks and pussy mews, To move the cook's compassion, He takes his after-dinner snooze In genuine biped fashion. ...
— The Poems of Henry Kendall • Henry Kendall
... traveling than we had been on betaking ourselves to the prairies for the first time a few months before. The daily routine had ceased to be a novelty. All the details of the journey and the camp had become familiar to us. We had seen life under a new aspect; the human biped had been reduced to his primitive condition. We had lived without law to protect, a roof to shelter, or garment of cloth to cover us. One of us at least had been without bread, and without salt to season his food. Our idea of what is indispensable to human existence and enjoyment ...
— The Oregon Trail • Francis Parkman, Jr.
... unconscious. Mrs. Vivian's protege was a member of the former category; she belonged to the genus coquette. We all have our conception of the indispensable, and the indispensable, to this young lady, was a spectator; almost any male biped would serve the purpose. To her spectator she addressed, for the moment, the whole volume of her being—addressed it in her glances, her attitudes, her exclamations, in a hundred little experiments of tone and gesture and position. And these rustling artifices were so innocent and obvious that the ...
— Confidence • Henry James
... the bridge—with two feet, not more my friends; the dear old fiddle has managed these three or four hundred years to crawl along very respectably as a biped: I shall have nothing whatever to do with turning him into ...
— Violin Making - 'The Strad' Library, No. IX. • Walter H. Mayson
... a different view of things terrestrial than we do who claim the world's real estate in 1915, because they had no telegraph, no telephone, no electric light, no automobile, and no aeroplane. How they managed to live at all is a mystery to the twentieth century biped. Fancy having to cross the street to your neighbor's house when you wanted to ask him if he was going to the pioneer supper, and just think of having no "hello girl" to flirt with. The condition ...
— Skookum Chuck Fables - Bits of History, Through the Microscope • Skookum Chuck (pseud for R.D. Cumming)
... time not given by the bugle—and leaving a sufficient detail to look after the animals, they commenced the ascent, their guide, seemingly more quadruped than biped, in the lead. Strung out in single file—no other formation being possible—as they wound their way up the zig-zag with the moonlight here and there, giving back the glint of their armour, it was as some great serpent—a monster of the antediluvian ages—crawling towards ...
— The Free Lances - A Romance of the Mexican Valley • Mayne Reid
... of arms and of the lever, man has conquered all nature; he has subjected it to his pleasure, wants and caprices. He has overturned its surfaces, and a feeble biped has become king ...
— The Physiology of Taste • Brillat Savarin
... whose ears are a couple of pens, And whose head is an ant-hill of units and tens, Though Plato denies you, we welcome you still As a featherless biped, in spite ...
— The Poetical Works of Oliver Wendell Holmes, Complete • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... were inclined to think that the brindle had taken that course during the afternoon and had actually gone astray,—something which a quadruped is less likely to do than a biped, though the former will sometimes make the blunder. There was nothing unreasonable in the theory that the bell had fallen from her neck and that the owner therefore might ...
— The Hunters of the Ozark • Edward S. Ellis
... sits and shudders at in one's own friends, when the victim, swelling with importance, makes confident mis-statements, draws erroneous conclusions, sums up and gives advice so fatuous that you blush to be a biped of the ...
— The Beth Book - Being a Study of the Life of Elizabeth Caldwell Maclure, a Woman of Genius • Sarah Grand
... tenants were known to be most in motion; and the rustling of a leaf, or the snapping of a dried twig beneath the light tread of the smallest animal, was apt to conjure images of the voracious and fire-eyed panther, or perhaps of a lurking biped, which, though more artful, was known to be scarcely less savage. It is true, that hundreds experienced the uneasiness of such sensations, who were never fated to undergo the realities of the fearful pictures. Still, facts were not wanting to supply sufficient motive ...
— The Wept of Wish-Ton-Wish • James Fenimore Cooper
... man, it tears the fingers asunder. So M. du Chaillu (chapter vi.) mentions, in the Mpongwe report, that the Njina tears off the toe-nails and the finger-nails of his human captives. We should not believe so scandalous an assertion without detailed proof; it is hardly fair to make the innocent biped as needlessly cruel as man. It is well known to the natives of the Old Calabar River by the name of "Onion." In 1860, the brothers Jules and Ambroise Poncet travelled with Dr. Peney to Ab Kuka, ...
— Two Trips to Gorilla Land and the Cataracts of the Congo Volume 1 • Richard F. Burton
... finding themselves masters of the soil, became greater usurpers than the foes whom they had been called in to vanquish. These treacherous animals, and most unworthy allies, discovering that they could sustain themselves in freedom, without the aid of the biped population, fled into the least inhabited parts of the island, where they lived most royally upon young guinea fowl, and other wild poultry; regaling themselves occasionally upon eggs, or such other dainties as fell in the way of their ...
— A Voyage Round the World, Vol. I (of ?) • James Holman
... hustle and bustle of the early morning hours so that regular habits are not formed, bring about a sluggish bowel. Indeed it is a cynicism amongst physicians that the proper definition of woman is "a constipated biped." ...
— The Nervous Housewife • Abraham Myerson
... Darcy, "what is the heiress of Lipscombe Park to me?—a girl who might claim alliance with the wealthiest and noblest of the land—to me, who have just that rag of property, enough to keep from open shame one miserable biped? Can a man never make a general reflection upon one of the most general of all topics, without being met by a personal allusion? I thought you had been superior, Griffith, to ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Vol. 53, No. 331, May, 1843 • Various
... jinrikisha, a two-wheeler, with a buggy top and poles for the biped horse to trot between, from Nagasaki to a fishing village over the mountains, five miles away, passing at the start through the Japanese quarter, long streets of shops, populous and busy, many diligent in light manufacturing ...
— The Story of the Philippines and Our New Possessions, • Murat Halstead
... much a primeval wilderness that a big bull moose stalked almost upon their camp before discovering the presence of a strange biped. Big Bill snatched up a rifle and took a shot ...
— The Yukon Trail - A Tale of the North • William MacLeod Raine
... off his emissaries to fetch in the plunder, or, by detection, to be handed off to prison. Pickpockets are the least faithful to each other of all known rogues, and are the most difficult of all biped animals to tame, or make any thing of in the ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 576 - Vol. 20 No. 576., Saturday, November 17, 1832 • Various
... I cannot but regard it as fortunate that you are only engaged to your obedient Microcosm: a biped inheriting some of the traits of his mother, the Kosmos, its untidiness, its largeness, its irritating imperfection and its profound and hearty intention to go on existing as long as it ...
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton • Maisie Ward
... sailors the weevil-biscuit, rancid pork, and horse-beef, composing the Julia's stores; or smothering themselves, the luscious vermin, in molasses, which thereby acquired a rich wood-cock flavour, whose cause became manifest when the treacle-jar ran low, greatly to the disgust and consternation of the biped consumers. There were no delicate feeders on board, but this saccharine essence of rat was too much even for the unscrupulous stomachs of South-Sea whalers. A queer set they were on board that Sydney barque. Paper ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 61, No. 380, June, 1847 • Various
... to where the biped native sat hunched. The creature was bent into an ungainly position, its body crooked at incongruous angles, in such a way as to allow most of its weight to rest on a packing-box at the base of a ...
— Vital Ingredient • Charles V. De Vet
... reverse effect of rarefied mountain air, and they seldom had to expand their lungs fully in order to breathe. The ground continued to be marked with very large footprints. Often the impressions were those of a biped like some huge bird, except that occasionally the creature had put down one or both forefeet, and a thick tail had evidently dragged nearly all the time it walked erect. Presently, coming to something they had taken for a ...
— A Journey in Other Worlds • J. J. Astor
... my provant by a pannikin of tea, some fried fish, and a slice off the edge of a damper which rivalled the nether millstone in more than one respect; thus assuring myself that I had attained Carlyle's definition of a man: "An omnivorous biped that wears ——." Meanwhile, in response to my host's invitation to tell him what I was lagged for, I explained that I was travelling; my horses were on the other side of the river; I had come across to see a friend, had been bushed all night, and ...
— Such is Life • Joseph Furphy
... of the home habits of the male biped she gleaned from the telltale hints of the inanimate garments that passed through her nimble hands. She could even tell character and personality from deductions gathered at heel and toe. She knew, for example, that F.C. (in black ink) was an indefatigable fox trotter and she dubbed him Ferdy ...
— Defenders of Democracy • The Militia of Mercy
... example, the procuring of a private peace for a citizen who is weary of the privations of war; or the establishment of a city in Cloud-Cuckoo-Land where the birds shall regulate things better than the featherless biped, man; or the restoration of the eyesight of the proverbially blind god of Wealth. The attention of the audience is at once enlisted for the semblance of a plot by which the scheme is put into execution. The design once effected, the remainder of the play is given ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol. 2 • Charles Dudley Warner
... its right bank until we were halted point-blank by a narrow sluice having an immeasurable depth of black mud. The difficulty presented by this was very grave, though its breadth was barely eight feet; the donkeys, and least of all the horses, could not be made to traverse two poles like our biped carriers, neither could they be driven into the sluice, where they would quickly founder. The only available way of crossing it in safety was by means of a bridge, to endure in this conservative land for generations as the handiwork of the Wasungu. ...
— How I Found Livingstone • Sir Henry M. Stanley
... with crackers and saloon cheese, and minor poets struggling home with the Saturday night marketing—he feels the thrill of being one, or at least two-thirds, with this various, grotesque, pathetic, and surprising humanity. The sense of fellowship with every other walking biped, the full-blooded understanding that Whitman and O. Henry knew in brimming measure, comes by gulps and twinges to almost all. That is the essence of Lindsay's feeling about life. He loves crowds, ...
— Shandygaff • Christopher Morley
... gently," apologized Philip, smiling, "that I thought I'd better try a bit of it myself. Hence the sylvan note. Ras, if you go to sleep by that tree, I'll like as not let you sleep there until you die. Go back to camp and build a fire and hollow out the feathered biped." ...
— Diane of the Green Van • Leona Dalrymple |
