"Bird" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... than William could spare, and had arranged with him to accept the sum that the boy offered. And of all the gifts that Flo Dearmore received from others but the man of her choice, that parrot pleased her most, "For," said she, "he is the slangiest bird imaginable, and sometimes he uses swear words—just ...
— William Adolphus Turnpike • William Banks
... heard a nightingale singing in the woods. Did ever a bird sing like that? He listened. There was a witchery in the song. He rose and went into the woods. The song filled the air like a shower of golden notes. He followed it. It retreated. He went on. But the song, more and more enchanting and alluring, floated into the shadowy distance. He found ...
— ZigZag Journeys in Northern Lands; - The Rhine to the Arctic • Hezekiah Butterworth
... entitled "Familiar Dialogues," the fun grows fast and furious. Let us accompany our mad wag upon "The walk." "You hear the bird's gurgling?" he enquires, and then rapturously exclaims "Which pleasure! which charm! The field has by me a thousand charms"; after this, to the question "Are you hunter? Will you go to the hunting in one day this week?" he responds "Willingly; I have not a most pleasure in the ...
— English as she is spoke - or, A jest in sober earnest • Jose da Fonseca
... nothing to do with it—nothing. Between my niece and me—tout est fini." She darted from him, swerving again like a bird on the wing. "I don't know you. You come here with what may be no more than a cock-and-bull story, to get ...
— The Street Called Straight • Basil King
... morning, however, he was more successful, having risen before daylight in order that he might catch his bird on his first appearance in the open air. At six o'clock the bell rang as usual for the hands to turn to, and a few minutes afterwards the whole place was astir. Lance walked down to the landing-place ...
— The Pirate Island - A Story of the South Pacific • Harry Collingwood
... of all these minds, so different and yet so united,—meeting in a common adoration, and offering up, each according to his degree and means of approaching the Divine centre, his acknowledgment of praise and worship, each singing (to recur to the bird simile) his ...
— The History of Pendennis • William Makepeace Thackeray
... all the trouble, I'll take the responsibility that she shan't get lost. I'll bind her fast with a silken chain. Really, children, my heart is set on your coming. My house is full of things that make a noise—a canary, a paroquet, a mocking-bird, a harp, a ...
— Prudy Keeping House • Sophie May
... of the name of Birdcage Walk has been disputed. It has been derived from "boccage," meaning avenue; another account says it was from the bird-cages of the King's aviary, which were hung in the trees. ...
— Westminster - The Fascination of London • Sir Walter Besant
... equal horizontal bands of green, yellow, red, black, red, yellow, and green with a white equilateral triangle edged in black based on the hoist side; a yellow Zimbabwe bird is superimposed on a red five-pointed star in the center ...
— The 1997 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... the recollection of their former rank comes over them like a qualm, which they dispel with brandy, and then humorously rally one another on their mutual degeneracy. She often stops me in the walk, and, pointing to the captain, says, 'My husband, though he is become a blackguard jail-bird, must be allowed to be a handsome fellow still.'—On the other hand, he will frequently desire me to take notice of his rib, as she chances to pass.—'Mind that draggle-tailed drunken drab,' he will say; 'what an antidote it is—yet, for all that, ...
— The Adventures of Sir Launcelot Greaves • Tobias Smollett
... Like a dingy London bird among the birds at roost in these pleasant fields, where the sheep are all made into parchment, the goats into wigs, and the pasture into chaff, the lawyer, smoke-dried and faded, dwelling among mankind but not consorting with them, aged without experience of genial youth, and so long used to make ...
— Bleak House • Charles Dickens
... word Touching Telephus, a bird Ranking far too high above you; (And the loafer doesn't ...
— Something Else Again • Franklin P. Adams
... Bertha, "you have not preserved the bird in your bosom safer than I have; at home or abroad, in servitude or in freedom, amidst sorrow or joy, plenty or want, my thought was always on the troth I had plighted to Hereward at the ...
— Waverley Volume XII • Sir Walter Scott
... who loveth well Both man and bird and beast. He prayeth best who loveth best All things, both great and small; For the dear God who loveth us He ...
— Poems with Power to Strengthen the Soul • Various
... "Short Shrift Island" lay a few miles to the northwest of Andros Island. Now Andros is a great haunt of wild duck, not to speak of that more august bird, the flamingo. Attraction number one for the good Charlie. Then, though it is some hundred and fifty miles long and some fifty miles broad at its broadest, it has never yet, it is ...
— Pieces of Eight • Richard le Gallienne
... very day of departure a happy omen greeted Fabius Valens and the army under his command. As the column advanced, an eagle flew steadily ahead and seemed to lead the way. Loudly though the soldiers cheered, hour after hour the bird flew undismayed, and was taken for ...
— Tacitus: The Histories, Volumes I and II • Caius Cornelius Tacitus
... sponge; and this is often all that is seen on the surface of the water as the huge brute swims about waiting for his prey. These nakars, or long-nosed specimens, never attack human beings—at least such cases are very very rare—but live almost entirely on fish. I remember seeing one catch a paddy-bird on one occasion near the junction of the Koosee with the Ganges. My boat was fastened to the shore near a slimy creek, that came oozing into the river from some dense jungle near. I was washing my hands and face on the bank, and the boatmen were fishing with a small hand-net, for ...
— Sport and Work on the Nepaul Frontier - Twelve Years Sporting Reminiscences of an Indigo Planter • James Inglis
... urged Irene's horse on at great speed, and while it flew along like a bird, the most stormy feelings raged in ...
— The Son of Monte-Cristo, Volume II (of 2) • Alexandre Dumas pere
... raised from nothing! Begone, begone, begone, go, go; that I took from washing of old gauze and weaving of dead hair, with a bleak blue nose, over a chafing-dish of starved embers, and dining behind a traver's rag, in a shop no bigger than a bird-cage. Go, go, starve ...
— The Way of the World • William Congreve
... burning soil, 140 And watch the billowy Lavas, as they boil; Where, in basaltic caves imprison'd deep, Reluctant fires in dread suspension sleep; Or sphere on sphere in widening waves expand, And glad with genial warmth the incumbent land. 145 So when the Mother-bird selects their food With curious bill, and feeds her callow brood; Warmth from her tender heart eternal springs, And pleased she clasps them with ...
— The Botanic Garden - A Poem in Two Parts. Part 1: The Economy of Vegetation • Erasmus Darwin
... a flight of birds crossing the blue, and every bird carried a few crumbs of bread in its beak. Then she ran and called to her villains, 'Follow the birds, and they will take you to where the little wizard is; for they are carrying bread to feed him, and they are all heading for the tarn-stones ...
— The Field of Clover • Laurence Housman
... thoughts? There are few, who have not been forced to drink of the cup of misfortune; there are few, who have not desired their end. Finally, it did not depend upon us to exist or not to exist. Should the bird then be very grateful to the fowler for taking him in his net and confining him in his cage for ...
— Good Sense - 1772 • Paul Henri Thiry, Baron D'Holbach
... crisp and lovely, and just as she was beginning to rise and go in to the summoning dishes, a small striped squirrel trotted across the grass and requested scraps with impudent wavings of his two small front paws. So she really had to stay and feed him. And after that there was a bird that actually seemed as if it was going to walk up to her, almost as the squirrel had done. He flew away just at the most exciting moment, but Marjorie didn't hold it against him. And then—why, then, she felt suddenly sleepy and lay down with her cloak ...
— I've Married Marjorie • Margaret Widdemer
... therefore never be shortened. Phillips says: 'Cherries bear the knife worse than any other sort of fruit-trees, and we would therefore impress on the pruner, that though the fruit was won by the sword, it may be lost by the knife!' The other species of cherry is the bird-cherry (Cerasus padus), a pretty little smooth-branched tree, with doubly-serrate, acute leaves, and beautiful white blossoms, which grow in long-shaped racemes, hanging in pendulous clusters, and forming an elegant ornament to the hedges and woods ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 456 - Volume 18, New Series, September 25, 1852 • Various
... lifetime, during part of which he was indistinguishable from an embryonic dog, and had neither a skull nor a backbone. When he at last acquired these articles, he was for some time doubtful whether he was a bird or a fish. He had to compress untold centuries of development into nine months before he was human enough to break loose as an independent being. And even then he was still so incomplete that his parents might well have exclaimed 'Good Heavens! have you learnt nothing ...
— Back to Methuselah • George Bernard Shaw
... of discomfort. Over all the dismal landscape a canopy of low, lead-colored clouds hung like a visible curse. In all this there were a menace and a portent—a hint of evil, an intimation of doom. Bird, beast, or insect there was none. The wind sighed in the bare branches of the dead trees and the gray grass bent to whisper its dread secret to the earth; but no other sound nor motion broke the awful repose ...
— Can Such Things Be? • Ambrose Bierce
... crewels by one of the young ladies—work of art which would have made Washington hesitate about crossing, if he could have foreseen what advantage was going to be taken of it. Piano—kettle in disguise— with music, bound and unbound, piled on it, and on a stand near by: Battle of Prague; Bird Waltz; Arkansas Traveler; Rosin the Bow; Marseilles Hymn; On a Lone Barren Isle (St. Helena); The Last Link is Broken; She wore a Wreath of Roses the Night when last we met; Go, forget me, Why should Sorrow o'er that Brow a Shadow fling; ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... one in Timothy's Quest, by KATE DOUGLAS WIGGIN. The little volume is apparently an importation, having been printed for the Riverside Press, Cambridge, Mass. It is published in London by GAY AND BIRD, a firm whose name, though it sounds lively, is as unfamiliar as the Author's. Probably from this combination of circumstances, Timothy's Quest has, as far as my Baronite's quest goes, escaped the notice ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 104, February 18, 1893 • Various
... contented himself with sending Livingstone and his dragoons after Dundee, while he turned his attention to Gordon, who was still maintaining some show of resistance in the castle. But Livingstone was too late. He found the nest warm, but the bird had flown. Dundee had gone northwards over the Grampians into the Gordons' country, where the Earl of Dunfermline, the Duke's brother-in-law, at once joined him with a most welcome addition to his little band of troopers. Mackay foresaw that the Highlands were to be the real scene ...
— Claverhouse • Mowbray Morris
... dry land appear; and it was so." The manifestation of the primordial energy was supposed to have been akin to that which is shown in organic reproduction. The myths of the primeval egg from which life proceeded, of the mighty bird typical of the Holy Spirit which "brooded" upon the waters, of Love developing the Kosmos from the Chaos, of the bull bringing the world from the waters, of Protogonus, the "egg-born," the "multispermed," and countless ...
— The Religious Sentiment - Its Source and Aim: A Contribution to the Science and - Philosophy of Religion • Daniel G. Brinton
... shoulders; but his whole figure rose lightly into the air and Perseus followed. By the time they had ascended a few hundred feet the young man began to feel what a delightful thing it was to leave the dull earth so far beneath him and to be able to flit about like a bird. ...
— Myths and Legends of All Nations • Various
... keen on it as the two Irishmen were, who went hunting for the first time," broke in Bobby. "When they sighted a bird sitting on a bush Meehan took very careful aim and prepared to fire. Said his friend, ...
— The Girls of Central High Aiding the Red Cross - Or Amateur Theatricals for a Worthy Cause • Gertrude W. Morrison
... of "Bird Stories" is written both for the children who already know our common birds, and for those who may ...
— Stories of Birds • Lenore Elizabeth Mulets
... them of 140 years. The first spoke still of the actual queen of the world, of the secular empire subdued and inherited by the spiritual. The feathers of Leo's eagle shone to him with celestial light; the talons of the royal bird traversed the earth not to raven, but to feed a conquered world with Christian doctrine. St. Gregory speaks of the eagle as bald; but we shall see that he who day by day guarded the gates of defenceless Rome against the Lombard spoiler, barbarian ...
— The Formation of Christendom, Volume VI - The Holy See and the Wandering of the Nations, from St. Leo I to St. Gregory I • Thomas W. (Thomas William) Allies
... a pleasant time! Flowers o' every color— The sweet bird builds her nest, And I lang for my lover. Aye wakin', oh! Wakin' aye and wearie; Sleep I can get nane, For thinkin' o' ...
— Spare Hours • John Brown
... trousers, very likely, the glass bottle-tops have left their cruel scars. And so with servants. "Who ate up the three pigeons which went down in the pigeon-pie at breakfast this morning?" "O dear me! sir, it was John, who went away last month!"—or, "I think it was Miss Mary's canary-bird, which got out of the cage, and is so fond of pigeons, it never can have enough of them." Yes, it WAS the canary-bird; and Eliza saw it; and Eliza is ready to vow she did. These statements are not true; but please ...
— Roundabout Papers • William Makepeace Thackeray
... most perilous part of his flight. Tomorrow would take care of itself. The possibility that thirty minutes from now he might be dead in a flaming pyre did not cross his mind, the chance that an hour from now he could be told that his bird was off-course and his fate starvation if it obtained an untrue orbit or abrupt destruction if it didn't orbit ...
— Instinct • George Oliver Smith
... exception of the sun at noonday, and the stars and moon at night. At the head of the walk was a sundial, and at the further end a fountain. Not a great, noisy, conspicuous construction, suggestive of the rush and turmoil of life, drowning in its splash all the sweet sounds of bird and bee, and the marvelous music of nature, but a pure, gentle, dainty little fountain, the sound of whose crystal drops, so full of soothing and tenderness, fell upon the ear like the voice of the one we love. Near the fountain was a rustic seat from which one might ...
— Peak's Island - A Romance of Buccaneer Days • Ford Paul
... November was on the wane. He babbled to the chickens, who pecked about him with as much indifference as if he were made of wood. His two teeth came glittering out whenever the rooster crowed, and his gleeful laugh—he rejoiced so in this handsomely endowed bird—could be heard to the barn. The dogs seemed never to have known that he was a Kittredge, and wagged their tails at the very sound of his voice, and seized surreptitious opportunities to lick his face. Of all his underfoot world only the gobbler awed him into gravity and silence; he would gaze ...
— His "Day In Court" - 1895 • Charles Egbert Craddock (AKA Mary Noailles Murfree)
... the very beginning—the hatching out of the eggs. Frogs' eggs and birds' eggs are really not so unlike as they seem at first sight, for though the frog's eggs have no shell, yet, just as in the bird's egg, there are two essential parts to be distinguished—the formative material out of which the young frog grows and the yolk on which the growing animal feeds. By the untrained eye nothing more can be seen in the frog's egg than a small black ball enclosed within ...
— Chatterbox, 1906 • Various
... kiss her ma agen, she shall do it," declared Mr. Tisbett; and throwing down the reins, he sprang to the ground, seized Phronsie, and swung her lightly over the window edge. "There you be— went through just like a bird." And there she was, sure enough, ...
— Five Little Peppers Midway • Margaret Sidney
... Denver we had our first glimpse of the Rockies, and although they were then only in the blue distance we were quite excited about them; and at Greely Station (much impressed on our minds by having read Miss Bird's book just before coming here), we came in full view of Long's Peak,—almost wishing "Mountain Jim" might still be alive to ascend it with us,—and the whole of the gorgeous range; and quite one of the loveliest ...
— A Lady's Life on a Farm in Manitoba • Mrs. Cecil Hall
... breaths, when she feels quite like a bird, but she does not know that it is freedom. She hardly misses Mr. Grandon, who seems to be up at the factory or down to the city nearly all the time. The piano stands open, daring innovation, and she plays for ...
— Floyd Grandon's Honor • Amanda Minnie Douglas
... Dangle, taking his straw hat from the shade over the stuffed bird on the chiffonier and turning towards the ...
— The Wheels of Chance - A Bicycling Idyll • H. G. Wells
... lightnin' broncho out in the herd That could split the air like a flyin' bird, An' I hinted round in an off-hand way, That, providin' the enterprize would pay, I thought as I might jes' happen to light On a hoss that would leave him out er sight. In less'n a second we seen him yank A roll o' greenbacks out o' his flank, An' he said if we ...
— Songs of the Cattle Trail and Cow Camp • Various
... memoranda in my drawer; they are the history of my early youth, but uneventful as that was, it has had its effect upon my whole life. It will tell you that the world has been sad, very sad for me, and that I am as glad as an escaped bird to leave it." ...
— The Visionary - Pictures From Nordland • Jonas Lie
... rises and the sky above grows pink and purple, it, too, changes its color from pink to purple, copying the sky from zone to zone, from blue to deeper blue, until, at late evening the young nestlings may look up and say, in their bird language: ...
— The Bishop of Cottontown - A Story of the Southern Cotton Mills • John Trotwood Moore
... here, for sure, yesterday mornin'," Mike asserted; "I'd take me oath o' that. An' if he wasn't here, how could he see me givin' ye a light from me pipe? Answer me that! He says it's a little bird told him; but that's not it, I'm thinkin'. Not but that they have clocks with birds into 'em, that come out and tell the time o' day, 'Cuckoo! Cuckoo! Cuckoo!' An' if that big clock he broke last week had a bird in it that could tell time that way, I'd ...
— Tales of Fantasy and Fact • Brander Matthews
... pay his fly, while the spring rain pattered on his wide-awake, he produced an impression as of some delicate, draggled thing, which would certainly have gone to the heart of his adoring wife could she have beheld it. The Dean's ways were not sybaritic. He pecked at food and drink like a bird; his clothes never caused him a moment's thought; and it seemed to him a waste of the night to use it for sleeping. But none the less did he go through life finely looked after. Mrs. Winston dressed him, took his tickets and paid his cabs, and without her it was an arduous matter ...
— The Marriage of William Ashe • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... sensible; and mother's bird'll set along with you as good as a kitten. Toast her tootsies wal, for she's croupy, and I have to be extra choice ...
— Work: A Story of Experience • Louisa May Alcott
... avail myself of the present when all you girls are alive, to pass away. And could I get you to shed such profuse tears for me as to swell out into a stream large enough to raise my corpse and carry it to some secluded place, whither no bird even has ever wended its flight, and could I become invisible like the wind, and nevermore from this time, come into existence as a human being, I shall then have died at ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book II • Cao Xueqin
... "Oh, bird of ill omen, why croak you forth such dire intelligence?" I asked, as he threw off his snow-covered coat, and prepared to join me in my meal with a look which made me fear there were not many more such ...
— Hurricane Hurry • W.H.G. Kingston
... trickled down his nose. Scattered boulders seemed to move gently. He closed his eyes for an instant. When he opened them he thought he saw a movement in the brush below. The heat burned into his back, and he shrugged his shoulders. A tiny bird flitted past and perched on the dry, dead stalk of a yucca. Again Waring thought he saw a movement ...
— Jim Waring of Sonora-Town - Tang of Life • Knibbs, Henry Herbert
... this, with their synthetic bird's-eye view, the mind sometimes sees more clearly than in hours of careful reflection and analysis. And the first thing he saw now was Minks, his friendly, ridiculous little confidential secretary. From all the crowds of men and women he knew, respected, and enjoyed in London, as from the vast deluge ...
— A Prisoner in Fairyland • Algernon Blackwood
... the much desired food, The eagle towards the sky spreads out his wings And warns of his approach both bird and beast, The third flight bringing him upon the prey. And the fierce lion roaring from his lair Spreads horror all around and mortal fear; And all wild beasts, admonished and forewarned, Fly to the caves and cheat his cruel ...
— The Heroic Enthusiast, Part II (Gli Eroici Furori) - An Ethical Poem • Giordano Bruno
... of her the less I understand her. If your nature draws near hers, it retreats. If you pursue, it flies—a little frightened perhaps. If then you keep still and look perfectly safe, she will return, but remain at a fixed distance, like a bird that will stay in your yard, but not enter your house. It is hardly shyness, for she is not shy, but more like some strain of wild nature in her that refuses to be domesticated. One's faith is strained to accept Sylvia's estimate that Georgiana is deep—she is so light, ...
— A Kentucky Cardinal • James Lane Allen
... come down, my bonny bird, "And eat bread aff my hand! "Your cage shall be of wiry goud, "Whar now its but ...
— Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border, Vol. II (of 3) • Walter Scott
... fine, and the hills quite clear. The ascent out of Hawes is dull; the little branch dale is simple and monotonous, and so are the hills about the great dale which are in sight. The only thing which interested us was the sort of bird's-eye view of Hardraw dell, which appeared a most petty and insignificant opening in the great hill side. But when we got to the top of the pass there was a magnificent view of Ingleborough. The dale which was most nearly in front of us is ...
— Autobiography of Sir George Biddell Airy • George Biddell Airy
... wing, and then above the stomach. After that, drawing out the guts, she laid the liver a short time on the fire, and eat it almost raw. She then cleaned the gizzard, which she eat quite raw, as she did the body of the bird. Her children eat in the same manner, one being a girl of four years of age, and the other a boy, who, though only six months old, had most of his teeth, and could walk alone.[90] The woman looked grave and serious at her meal, though the seamen laughed heartily at her strange figure, and unusual ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume X • Robert Kerr
... than when a kite, tremendous bird, is beheld by the feathered generation soaring aloft, and hovering over their heads, the amorous dove, and every innocent little bird, spread wide the alarm, and fly trembling to their hiding-places. He proudly beats the air, ...
— The History of Tom Jones, a foundling • Henry Fielding
... sounds; for they stir up in them fierce feelings, and a desire for blood," returned the Pathfinder, totally unmoved. "I thought them rather frightful when a mere youngster; but they have become like the whistle of the whippoorwill or the song of the cat-bird in my ear now. All the screeching reptyles that could stand between the falls and the garrison would have no effect on my narves at this time of day. I say it not in boasting, Jasper; for the man that lets in cowardice through the ears must have but a weak heart at the best; sounds and outcries ...
— The Pathfinder - The Inland Sea • James Fenimore Cooper
... railways, and the formation of pens or enclaves into which the attenuated roving bands of Boers were to be herded and dealt with severally and severely. The work of extension was taken in hand in July, 1901. The Boers in the veld watched it with the detachment and unconcern of a wild bird on the branches looking down upon the fowler laying his snares in the ...
— A Handbook of the Boer War • Gale and Polden, Limited
... H. D. Bird, general superintendent of the railroad, writes from Petersburg that the movements of cars with ammunition, etc. are thrown into confusion by the neglect of telegraph agents in giving timely notice. This is an unfortunate time for confusion. I sent the letter to the Secretary, and know that it ...
— A Rebel War Clerk's Diary at the Confederate States Capital • John Beauchamp Jones
... amounts of ammonia. Not only will this filter-bed, or spongy mat of bacteria, burn up and remove all traces of vegetable decay, but if the rain happens to have soaked through the decaying body of a bird or animal or insect, the bacteria will just as eagerly feed upon these animal substances and change them into ...
— A Handbook of Health • Woods Hutchinson
... universal friend of man, a philanthropist on the largest scale, yet is so selfish that he would willingly see the world perish, if he could but secure paradise to himself. Indeed he can think of no other being; and his child, his canary bird, his cook-maid, or his cat, are the most extraordinary of God's creatures. This is the only consistent trait in his character. In the same sentence, he frequently joins the most fulsome flattery and some ...
— The Adventures of Hugh Trevor • Thomas Holcroft
... towns—Geneva, Fribourg, Basle, Thun, Baden and Schaffhausen, to which in 1858 he added Rheinfelden and Bellinzona. He intended to illustrate the work with pictures of the places described. He began with his drawing of Thun, a large bird's-eye view of the town with its river and bridges, roofs and towers, all exquisitely defined with the pen, and broadly coloured in fluctuating tints that seem to melt always into the same aerial blue; the blue, high up the picture, beyond ...
— The Life of John Ruskin • W. G. Collingwood
... France, in particular Brittany, during the French Revolution, and even for a time under the Empire, when their head-quarters were in London; so named from their muster by night at the sound of the chat-huant, the screech-owl, a nocturnal bird of prey which ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... his life for his love at the hands of that eminent theologian, Fulke de Breaute. The beautiful tower of Merton was still almost fresh, and the spires of St. Mary's, of old All Saints, of St. Frideswyde, and the strong tower of New College on the city wall, were the most prominent features in a bird's-eye view of the town. But though part of Merton, certainly the chapel tower as we have seen, the odd muniment- room with the steep stone roof, and, perhaps, the Library, existed; though New was built; and though Balliol and University owned some halls, on, or near, the ...
— Oxford • Andrew Lang
... is warranted for work and wind," said Ned. "She crossed the continent in a rush and spied on us through British Columbia and on down the Columbia river, not long ago, and I can recommend her as a very desirable bird of the air." ...
— Boy Scouts in an Airship • G. Harvey Ralphson
... were crossing and flying on the night the King of Ireland's Son and Fedelma whom he had brought from the Land of Mist stayed in the house of the Little Sage of the Mountain. On that night the Little Sage told them from what bird had come the wing that thatched his house. That was a wonderful story. And he told them too about the next place they should go to—the Spae-woman's house. There, he said he would find people that they knew—Flann, ...
— The King of Ireland's Son • Padraic Colum
... producing healthy children. If he does not destroy his health by premature indulgence, he may destroy his happiness by witnessing his children a prey to debility and deformity. An old German proverb says, 'Give a boy a wife, and a child a bird, and death will soon knock at the door.' Even an author so old as Aristotle warns young men against early marriage, under penalty of disease ...
— The Physical Life of Woman: - Advice to the Maiden, Wife and Mother • Dr. George H Napheys
... is now in the limited, but choice and curious, collection of my old and very worthy friend Mr. Joseph Haslewood. The handle of the stick is decorated by a bird's head, in ivory, which I conjectured to be that of an Eagle; but my friend insisted upon it that it was the head of an Hawk. I knew what this meant—and what it would end in: especially when he grasped ...
— A Bibliographical, Antiquarian and Picturesque Tour in France and Germany, Volume Two • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... own judgment. Only then shall I return to Edward Carpenter, to give a resume of his position, and to point out how far and why I agree with him, and at what stage I part company with him and for what reasons. Then I shall attempt to present a bird's-eye view of the steps in human advancement towards civilization as the best anthropologists have traced them. Thus, we shall be able to see our historic social order in right relation to that ideal humanity which our own ...
— Is civilization a disease? • Stanton Coit
... annihilation by fire, and the whisper, whisper of their voices had only emphasized the quiet. And, with every moment that went by, the lit-up tower had seemed more like a symbol to Dion. Then at last the cuckoo-clock had chimed and the wooden bird, with trembling tail, had made its ...
— In the Wilderness • Robert Hichens
... Verona, least of all Vanna herself, suspected him of any affection for his young wife. Mostly he was silent; thus she became silent too whenever he was in the house. This was against nature, for by ordinary her little songs bubbled from her like a bird's. But to see him so glum and staring within doors awed her: she set a finger to her lips as she felt the tune on her tongue, and went about her business mute. Baldassare would go abroad, stooping under his pack: she took her seat at the shop-door, threaded her needle, her fingers ...
— Little Novels of Italy • Maurice Henry Hewlett
... them. They, too, have their national ambitions and interests, and, of course, if these clashed with ours, they would go off on their own. I blame them not at all. It is as well, however, to be prepared for contingencies. For example, four or five sparrows will combine to attack a larger bird which has a piece of bread. As soon as they get the bread the sparrows themselves begin to squabble for its possession; and perhaps two or three will set on the one that has hold of it and force him to give it up. Such is Nature—a theatre of vast, unceasing conflict. ...
— War Letters of a Public-School Boy • Henry Paul Mainwaring Jones
... world where brute and fish Converse with man and bird, Where dungeons open at a wish, And seas dry at ...
— The True Story Book • Andrew Lang
... a malevolent look at the bird, and then, his cigar tip-tilted and the corner of his mouth sarcastically askew, suggested with an air as though the idea were the limit ...
— Ainslee's, Vol. 15, No. 5, June 1905 • Various
... fairly bounding over the water. I never knew that canoes could be paddled so rapidly. They were almost upon the schooner when the first rocket went off with a terrible sputter. It shot like a bird of fire right into the leading canoe, and then another, and another, shot off until the air between the schooner and the canoes seemed filled with ...
— Swept Out to Sea - Clint Webb Among the Whalers • W. Bertram Foster
... went to church every Sunday. We would go to the white folks church in the morning and to our church in the evening. Bill McWilliams, old Master's oldest boy, didn't take much stock in church. He owned a nigger named Bird, who preached for us. Bill said, "Bird, you can't preach, you can't read, how on earth can you get a text out of the Bible when you can't even read? How'n hell can a man preach that don't know nothing?" Bird told him the Lord had called him to preach and he'd put the things in ...
— Slave Narratives, Oklahoma - A Folk History of Slavery in the United States From - Interviews with Former Slaves • Various
... at Manassas, Saturday noon,—the very day that Patterson ascertains that "the bird has flown,"—after assuming command, by virtue of seniority, he proceeds to examine Beauregard's position. This he finds "too extensive, and the ground too densely wooded and intricate," to be learned quickly, and hence he is impelled to rely largely ...
— The Great Conspiracy, Complete • John Alexander Logan
... let us get behind the branch on which it is singing; let us manoeuvre so as to avoid the five centres of vision, and then let us speak, whistle, clap the hands, beat two stones together. For far less a bird which could not see you would stop its song and fly away terrified. The Cigale imperturbably continues to sing as ...
— Social Life in the Insect World • J. H. Fabre
... imagined dear old Joe looking so unlike himself or so like some extraordinary bird; standing as he did speechless, with his tuft of feathers ruffled, and his mouth open as if ...
— Great Expectations • Charles Dickens
... thirty-nine degrees of latitude, however, we could already perceive how much further the South pole extends its unfavourable influence than the North. The sky was no longer clear, the wind became changeable and violent, the air much colder, and the frequent sight of the whale, and of a giant bird called the albatross, warned us that we were approaching the stormy region. We afterwards shot one of these birds on the coast of Chili, which measured ...
— A New Voyage Round the World in the Years 1823, 24, 25, and 26. Vol. 1 • Otto von Kotzebue
... teaching was based upon the doctrine of the unity of all sentient existence. Buddhism explained the whole visible world by its doctrine of Karma,—simplifying that doctrine so as to adapt it to popular comprehension. The forms of all creatures,—bird, reptile, or mammal; insect or fish,—represented only different results of Karma: the ghostly life in each was one and the same; and, in even the lowest, some spark of the divine existed. The frog or the serpent, the bird or the bat, the ox or the ...
— Japan: An Attempt at Interpretation • Lafcadio Hearn
... of September 14, 1834] that we can no longer see each other and exchange our opinions! I have got so much to tell you. I should like also to thank you for the present, which is doubly precious to me. I wish I were a bird, so that I might visit you in your Olympian dwelling, which the Parisians take for a swallow's nest. Farewell, love me, as I do you, for I shall always remain ...
— Frederick Chopin as a Man and Musician - Volume 1-2, Complete • Frederick Niecks
... very thankful for its light, and happy in watching beneath it the flow and the glittering of the classical river, when I noticed a well-dressed boy, apparently just out of some orderly Sunday-school, leaning far over the parapet; watching, as I conjectured, some bird or insect on the bridge-buttress. I went up to him to see what he was looking at; but just as I got close to him, he started over to the opposite parapet, and put himself there into the same position, his object ...
— The Crown of Wild Olive • John Ruskin
... &c.] The American Indians call a great bird they have, with a white head, a penguin, which signifies the same thing in the British tongue: from whence (with other words of the same kind) some authors have endeavoured to prove, that the Americans are originally ...
— Hudibras • Samuel Butler
... he mocked me. "What's the use praising it when you eat it like a bird? What's the matter with you? Are you bashful? Fire away, old man!" Then to his wife: "Why do you keep quiet, Dvorah? Why don't you tell him to eat like a man and not ...
— The Rise of David Levinsky • Abraham Cahan
... a sheykh in our neighbourhood had asked me to lend him my gun for a few days, since I never used it. There was nothing really which I cared to shoot. The village people rushed out in pursuit of every little bird whose tweet was heard, however distant, in the olive groves or up the mountain side. Jackals there were besides, and an occasional hyaena; and, in the higher mountains, tigers, so the people still persisted in declaring, meaning leopards, I suppose, or lynxes; ...
— Oriental Encounters - Palestine and Syria, 1894-6 • Marmaduke Pickthall
... dictionaries of all sizes and weights, that it has become to many a most impersonal term, and we may almost expect in a few generations to find the word "Webster" defined in some revised edition of the Unabridged as the colloquial word for a Dictionary. The bright-eyed, bird-like looking gentleman who faces the title-page of his Dictionary may be undergoing some metempsychosis, but the student of American literature will at any time have little difficulty in rescuing his personality from unseemly transmigration, and, by the aid of historical ...
— Noah Webster - American Men of Letters • Horace E. Scudder
... down a turkey's crop, and it has got rubbed up in the gravel with which the ingenious bird assists the process of digestion. A man who could swallow that gem is ...
— Punch, Or the London Charivari, Vol. 102, Feb. 13, 1892 • Various
... Stenographers, as I have said, have a somewhat similar task. Nevertheless, you would sometimes be in uncertainty as to the words. Suppose you have the three consonants brd, how would you know whether the word was bard, or bird, or bread, or board, or brad, or broad, or bride, or braid, or brood, or breed? It might be any one of them. You could usually tell what it was by a glance at the connection, but you could not tell infallibly, for there might be sentences in which more than one ...
— Who Wrote the Bible? • Washington Gladden
... river it's so smooth. And look up into the leaves; how pretty they are! and every one of them is trembling a little; not one of them is still, Nora. How beautiful the green is, with the sun shining through! Wouldn't you like to be a bird up there?" ...
— Melbourne House • Elizabeth Wetherell
... I don't know why we're so severe with women when they seem to take the initiative. It's merely, after all, the call of the maiden bird, and there's nothing lovelier or more ...
— Between The Dark And The Daylight • William Dean Howells
... self-sufficing soul, a pool in trance, Un-stirred by all the spirit-winds that blow From o'er the gulfs of change, content, ere yet On its own crags, which rough peaked limpets fret The last rich colours glance, Content to mirror the sea-bird's wings of snow, Or feel in some small creek, ere sunset fails, A tiny Nautilus hoist its lovely ...
— Collected Poems - Volume Two (of 2) • Alfred Noyes
... seven equal horizontal bands of green, yellow, red, black, red, yellow, and green with a white isosceles triangle edged in black with its base on the hoist side; a yellow Zimbabwe bird representing the long history of the country is superimposed on a red five-pointed star in the center of the triangle, which symbolizes peace; green symbolizes agriculture, yellow - mineral wealth, red - blood shed to achieve independence, ...
— The 2004 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency
... the truth, that being so sad, and so utterly alone, and in such great need of sympathy, her thoughts sometimes recurred to the sculptor. Had she met him now, her heart, indeed, might not have been won, but her confidence would have flown to him like a bird to its nest. One summer afternoon, especially, Hilda leaned upon the battlements of her tower, and looked over Rome towards the distant mountains, whither Kenyon had told her that he ...
— The Marble Faun, Volume II. - The Romance of Monte Beni • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... he tried to regain his natural manner. "I kem down hyar," he remarked, in an off-hand way, "ter git a drink o' water." He glanced furtively at the girl, then looked quickly away at the gallant red-bird, still gayly parading ...
— The Wit of Women - Fourth Edition • Kate Sanborn
... another basin close to us; it trickles in silver threads through the leaves at its edge, and falls tinkling and splashing (though in considerable body) into the pool, stirring its quiet surface, at which a bird is stooping to drink, with concentric and curdling ripples which divide round the stone at its farthest border, and descend in sparkling foam over the lip of the basin. Thus we find, in every case, the system of Turner's truth entirely unbroken, each phase and ...
— Modern Painters Volume I (of V) • John Ruskin
... This bird house was designed and built to make a home for the American martin. The house will accommodate 20 families. All the holes are arranged so they will not be open to the cold winds from the north which often kill the birds which come in the early spring. Around each opening ...
— The Boy Mechanic: Volume 1 - 700 Things For Boys To Do • Popular Mechanics |
