"Butterfly" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... buy their bread. In this emergency, they hit upon the expedient of dismissing their servant, and starving themselves through the winter and spring, for the purpose of making a display in the summer; and this last they were now doing. Eugenia fluttered like a butterfly, sometimes in white satin, sometimes in pink, and again in embroidered muslin; while her mother, a very little disgusted with society, but still determined to brave it through, held aside her cambric wrapper and made faces over three glasses of spring water in the morning, drowned herself in ...
— Dora Deane • Mary J. Holmes
... in itself, which, if it be considered as a crisis, or phenomenal change, incident to a progressive being, ought as little to be thought so, as the casting of the caterpillar's skin to make room for the wings of the butterfly. It is the ...
— The Literary Remains Of Samuel Taylor Coleridge • Edited By Henry Nelson Coleridge
... that thou dost grow more unmannerly each day. Thou art as unthinking as the butterfly, else thou wouldst not have burdened my fore-wearied flesh ...
— In Doublet and Hose - A Story for Girls • Lucy Foster Madison
... Not to mention other things, she instituted and practised economies as alien to her nature as to her husband's, and in their narrowing affairs she kept him out of debt. She was prudent; she was alert; and while presenting to the world all the outward effect of a butterfly, she possessed some of the best ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... even though she kept the path and she was going on her way as she had elected to before she saw him. But to Jeff she seemed to be a drifting thing. A delicate butterfly floated past him, weakened by the coldness of last night and fluttering on into a ...
— The Prisoner • Alice Brown
... looked about half-interestedly and began kicking leaves into a pile, Peter doing the same. If Nick had any particular purpose in this business, at least you would not have supposed so. He seemed as aimless as a butterfly. "Are you going to ask ...
— Pee-wee Harris on the Trail • Percy Keese Fitzhugh
... Brown. "We'll have to look for Tom. Bunny and Sue, you stay with me. Uncle Tad, you and Bunker walk around in the woods. It may be that Tom fell and hurt himself, when running after a bird or butterfly, and can't walk. ...
— Bunny Brown and His Sister Sue at Camp Rest-A-While • Laura Lee Hope
... in the old sense, in both botany and entomology, which speak of the "nerves" of a butterfly's wing, or the "nervation" of a leaf, meaning simply the branching, ...
— Preventable Diseases • Woods Hutchinson
... and recited a little poem which declared that, as each one had himself drawn out of the urn of Fate, no one could be angry, let him have procured for himself honor or derision—Fate, and not Merit, being here the ruler. Two little boys, with huge butterfly wings and in flowing garments, bore the presents to the guests. A number, which had been purposely given to one of the elder ladies, was now called out, and the boys brought forward a large, heavy, brown earthen jug. To ...
— O. T. - A Danish Romance • Hans Christian Andersen
... merely a temporary vehicle for the soul which the latter discards at the proper time. It has nothing to do with the real being of the soul. It is merely the shell which is discarded by the soul, as the chrysalis shell is discarded by the butterfly when it spreads its wings for its aerial ...
— Mystic Christianity • Yogi Ramacharaka
... moon is sleeping under ground like a dead one; but beyond the garden the sun's red evening-clouds have fallen down like rose-leaves; and the evening-star, the brideman of the sun, hovers, like a glancing butterfly, above the rosy red, and, modest as a bride, deprives no single starlet ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. IV • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... hills of sand; And the wind where nothing is Green and sweet of the land; No grass, no trees, No bird, no butterfly, But hills, hills of ...
— Collected Poems 1901-1918 in Two Volumes - Volume I. • Walter de la Mare
... little tree that we plant today What will you be when we're old and gray? "The savings bank of the squirrel and mouse, For robin and wren an apartment house, The dressing-room of the butterfly's ball, The locust's and katydid's concert hall, The school-boy's ladder in pleasant June, The school-girl's tent in the July noon. And my leaves shall whisper them merrily, A tale of the ...
— Ohio Arbor Day 1913: Arbor and Bird Day Manual - Issued for the Benefit of the Schools of our State • Various
... took a hurried departure. Could he have been ignorant that ours is, in general, greater than the Periclean for the very reason that the Divinity is neither the devil nor a bungler; that three thousand years of human consciousness is not nothing; that a whole is greater than its part, and a butterfly than a chrysalis? But it was the assumption that it was therefore in any way great in the abstract that occasioned my profound astonishment, and indeed contempt. Civilisation, if it means anything, can only mean the art by which men live musically ...
— Prince Zaleski • M.P. Shiel
... ever disturbs the great expanse of ocean which gleams through the still, thick trees. Rose in the sweet cool morning, gold in the sweet cool evening, but always dreaming; and white sails come and go, no larger than a butterfly's wing on the horizon, of ships drifting on ocean currents, dreaming too! Nothing surely can ever happen here: it is so dumb and quiet, and people speak in hushed thin voices, and move as in a lethargy, ...
— The Hawaiian Archipelago • Isabella L. Bird
... scent with the more delicate violet odour! How transparent and smooth and lusty are the branches, full of sap and life! And there, just by the old mossy root, is a superb tuft of primroses, with a yellow butterfly hovering over them, like a flower floating on the air. What happiness to sit on this tufty knoll, and fill my basket with the blossoms! What a renewal of heart and mind! To inhabit such a scene of peace and sweetness is again to be fearless, gay, and gentle as a child. Then it ...
— Our Village • Mary Russell Mitford
... any absurder, though, than me in an orphan asylum, or you as a conservative settled matron, or Marty Keene a social butterfly in Paris. Do you suppose she goes to embassy balls in riding clothes, and what on earth does she do about hair? It couldn't have grown so soon; she must wear a wig. Isn't our class turning ...
— Dear Enemy • Jean Webster
... death," said the lady, who was crying; her trickling tears and her sopping handkerchief removed what remnants of her "cheeks" the sudden bath in the river had left. As the paint disappeared, one saw how very pretty the poor draggled butterfly was—big, honey-dark eyes, and quite exquisite features. "Oh, my soul and body!—I'll die!" she said, ...
— The Vehement Flame • Margaret Wade Campbell Deland
... and unsuspecting in the chair I had had made for his especial benefit, and then the moment he began to revile me I turned on the power, the fan began to revolve, the devastating wind rushed down upon him with a roar, pinned him to the wall like a butterfly on a cork, and he was at last my prisoner—and he is my prisoner still. For three weeks has that wheel been revolving night and day, and despite all his cunning he cannot creep beyond its blustering influence, nor shall he ...
— Ghosts I have Met and Some Others • John Kendrick Bangs
... amazed—the mighty men of Moab, trembling shall take hold of them—the inhabitants of Canaan shall melt away." Any one who has a tolerable ear and any sensibility, must remember the sensation of delight in the mere sound—like the colors of a butterfly's wing, or the shapeless glories of evening clouds, to the eye—in reading aloud such passages as these: "Heshbon shall cry and Elealeh—their voice shall be heard to Jabez—for by the way of Luhith ...
— Spare Hours • John Brown
... too much, too much!" said she. "Queen Lura, a butterfly can eat honey only; let us have a higher life for the Princess of Larrirepense. Maya, I give thee for a birth-gift another ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I., No. 3, January 1858 - A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics • Various
... grudge this pretty fool her short day! Since, with her summer's sun, when her butterfly flutters are over, and the winter of age and furrows arrives, she will feel the just effects of having neglected to cultivate her better faculties: for then, lie another Helen, she will be unable to bear the reflection even of her own glass, and being sunk into the ...
— Clarissa, Volume 1 (of 9) • Samuel Richardson
... she'll refuse to pay my bill," thought Persis, with a grim smile, as she watched Diantha turning the gaily colored plates like a butterfly fluttering from blossom to blossom. "I guess she won't go as far as that though, as long as there ain't another dressmaker in Clematis she'd trust to make her a kimono. If she says anything, that'll ...
— Other People's Business - The Romantic Career of the Practical Miss Dale • Harriet L. Smith
... go Kathleen's hand, put his foot on the pediment, his knee on the pedestal. He stood up, dark and human, beside the white girl with the butterfly wings. ...
— The Enchanted Castle • E. Nesbit
... you! he must have seen you!" said Baglioni, hastily. "For some purpose or other, this man of science is making a study of you. I know that look of his! It is the same that coldly illuminates his face as he bends over a bird, a mouse, or a butterfly, which, in pursuance of some experiment, he has killed by the perfume of a flower; a look as deep as Nature itself, but without Nature's warmth of love. Signor Giovanni, I will stake my life upon it, you are the subject of one of ...
— Mosses from an Old Manse and Other Stories • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... and the last deal of a lively mouche was going on. Charlotte de Kergarouet, in despair at Calyste's indifference, was paying attention to his father as a means of promoting her marriage. Calyste wandered hither and thither like a butterfly which had flown into the room by mistake. At last, when mouche was over, he drew the Chevalier du Halga into the great salon, from which he sent away Mademoiselle de ...
— Beatrix • Honore de Balzac
... over, they repent and live to God. Harlots and publicans enter the kingdom of God, while scribes and pharisees remain without. The oyster, if you look at its outward covering, is a "hard case;" yet within, it is soft and tender in the extreme. The ugliest caterpillar is but an undeveloped butterfly, and in time, if placed under favorable influences, may leave its crawling, and mount aloft on wings of gold and silver. And it often happens that the worst children make the best men. The fiercest persecutor of the early Church became the chief of the ...
— Modern Skepticism: A Journey Through the Land of Doubt and Back Again - A Life Story • Joseph Barker
... the butterfly, but when the butterfly saw Pinkie Whiskers coming, he thought how nice it would be to have a ride on Pinkie Whiskers' back, so he ...
— Hazel Squirrel and Other Stories • Howard B. Famous
... for the pines," said Leslie. "Here, Dakie, I hope you'll catch a butterfly for every pin. Oh, now I think of it, ...
— A Summer in Leslie Goldthwaite's Life. • Mrs. A. D. T. Whitney
... him! Purdy was at a loose end, and would no doubt rise like a fish to a fly at the chance of getting to town free of cost. After all, why be hard on him? He was not much over twenty, and, at that age, it was natural enough—especially in a place like this—for a lad to flit like a butterfly from every cup that took ...
— Australia Felix • Henry Handel Richardson
... out on the pavement below. The city seemed to be exuding the soaked-in heat of the long summer's day. The women who floated by were dressed in the lightest of muslins; even the plainest of them gained a new charm in their airy and butterfly-looking costumes. The men walked bareheaded, waistcoatless, fanning themselves with straw hats. Here and there, as they turned into Shaftesbury Avenue, an immaculately turned-out young man in evening dress passed along the baked pavements and dived into one ...
— Nobody's Man • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... dark and miserable wilderness, no bigger than a man's hand, no bigger than a flower. 'There is something,' I said unwillingly; 'it has no shape nor form. It is a gossamer-web upon some bush, or a butterfly blown on the wind.' ...
— The Little Pilgrim: Further Experiences. - Stories of the Seen and the Unseen. • Margaret O. (Wilson) Oliphant
... like steel at the thought of what the future might bring forth, he reflected that if Edward Cossey's turn did come he was by no means sure that the ultimate triumph would rest with him. Ida de la Molle, to whatever extent her sense of honour and money indebtedness might carry her, was no butterfly to be broken on a wheel, but a woman whose dislike and anger, or worse still, whose cold, unvarying disdain, was a thing from which the boldest hearted man ...
— Colonel Quaritch, V.C. - A Tale of Country Life • H. Rider Haggard
... reconstruct the picture which was in the mind of the author as he wrote "The Village Blacksmith" or "Snowbound," the significance will have dropped out, and the throbbing scenes of life and action become only so many dead words, like the shell of the chrysalis after the butterfly has left its shroud. Without the power of imagination, the history of Washington's winter at Valley Forge becomes a mere formal recital, and you can never get a view of the snow-covered tents, the wind-swept landscape, the tracks in the snow marked by the telltale ...
— The Mind and Its Education • George Herbert Betts
... profits of such an establishment, with a widow's pension of sixteen pounds sterling, were the means of subsistence for herself and her family. When she first returned to Cartside a few religious friends called to welcome her home. The gay and wealthy part of her former acquaintances, who, like the butterfly, spread their silken wings only to bask in the warmth of a summer sun, found not their way to the lonely cottage of an afflicted widow. Her worth, though in after-life rendered splendid by its own fruits, was at this time hidden, excepting to ...
— The Power of Faith - Exemplified In The Life And Writings Of The Late Mrs. Isabella Graham. • Isabella Graham
... elaborate, instantaneous magic of language, without the formality of an after all impossible description; to be, in fact, rather than to express; that is what Mallarme has consistently, and from the first, sought in verse and prose. And he has sought this wandering, illusive, beckoning butterfly, the soul of dreams, over more and more entangled ground; and it has led him into the depths of many forests, far from the sunlight. He would be the last to permit me to say that he has found what he sought; but (is it possible to avoid saying?) how heroic a ...
— Figures of Several Centuries • Arthur Symons
... every kind. Our little master talked to the flowers and they answered him, and we all had a merry time in the meadow that afternoon, I can tell you. 'Don't go away, little child,' cried the daisies, 'but stay and be our playfellow always.' A butterfly came and perched on our master's hand, and looked up and smiled, and said: 'I 'm not afraid of you; you would n't hurt me, would you?' A little mouse told us there was a thrush's nest in the bush yonder, and we hurried to see it. The lady thrush was ...
— The Holy Cross and Other Tales • Eugene Field
... ambition," she admitted, "for something bigger and better than my social butterfly life, and with you I hope to achieve it. But I ...
— Patty Blossom • Carolyn Wells
... two minutes," I observed to McCloud, "you're going to observe yon butterfly turn into a stinging lizard. He's going to head in this direction; and he'll probably aim to climb my hump. Such being the case, and the affair being private, you'll do me a favour by supervising something in some remote corner of ...
— The Killer • Stewart Edward White
... could see that she was already asleep, and her calm and reasonable sleep reminded me of her agitated and unreasonable life; and I stood looking at her, at this poor butterfly who was lying here all alone, robbed by her friends and associates. But she slept contentedly, having found a few francs that they had overlooked amid the bedclothes, enough to enable her to pass her evening at the Elysee! ...
— Memoirs of My Dead Life • George Moore
... will make thee my comrade, thou sleeping butterfly.) An Occidental reader may recognize, through the translation, the charm of the poetic image, and he may be interested in a technical lyric form hitherto new to him, but beyond this, in his ignorance of Japanese, he cannot go. Here is a lyric by ...
— A Study of Poetry • Bliss Perry
... showed quite plainly that no mere longing for a possible ideal would ever lure her from the path of practical expediency. She walked slowly, steadily ahead, while her boy companion leaped to and fro about her, chasing first one bright butterfly of the imagination and then another, only to clutch them and bring them back to her to be viewed relentlessly with prosaic eyes which saw only the spots where his impatient touch had rubbed ...
— The Brentons • Anna Chapin Ray
... with Plato, Shakespeare and a throng Of bards beneath some plane-tree's cool eclipse To gaze on glowing meads where, lingering long, Psyche's large Butterfly her honey sips; Or, mingling free in choirs of German song, To learn of Goethe's life ...
— The Poems of Sidney Lanier • Sidney Lanier
... I knew that!" said Mr. Belleville. "I know your hospitality never fails, Cousin Miranda. But you know me, too—a butterfly—here to-day, gone to-morrow! A summons from the Dunderblincks—races going on at their place, don't you know; midsummer fetes, that sort of thing—changed my plans. Mamma said, 'You will have to give up the Camp, Cheri!' 'No!' I said. 'They expect me; ...
— The Merryweathers • Laura E. Richards
... is merely one of definitions and that a definition is a description of something given to it after—not before—it is finished. A definition is a tag, like the label the entomologist ties to the pin after he has the butterfly nicely dead. Of questionable profit it would be to you, struggling to waken your playlet into life, to worry about a definition that might read "Here ...
— Writing for Vaudeville • Brett Page
... unburthening himself of the object of his mission. "'Ow are you?" said he, shaking his arm like the handle of a pump. "'Ow are you, I say?—I'm so delighted to see you, ye carn't think—isn't this charming weather! It makes me feel like a butterfly—really think the 'air is sprouting under my vig." Here he took off his wig and rubbed his hand over his bald head, as though he ...
— Jorrocks' Jaunts and Jollities • Robert Smith Surtees
... still if you talk politics," she said to one man. "They know their mistress is of the nature of a butterfly." The man was one who was likely to be well informed, and she did not say it until he had told ...
— Princess Maritza • Percy Brebner
... from the arms of sleep, And, like the sky-bird, hail the bright-cheek'd morn With gleeful song, then o'er the bladed mead To chase the blue-wing'd butterfly, or play With curly streams; or, led by watchful Love, To hear the chorus of the trooping waves, When the young breezes laugh them into life! Or listen to the mimic ocean roar Within the womb of spiry sea-shell wove,— From sight and sound to catch intense delight, ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 12, No. 336 Saturday, October 18, 1828 • Various
... the little things we know, but he speaks with a lyric ecstasy. Ecstasy is a horrible word; it sounds like something to do with algebra; but it is the one word for this voice. The passion of him has at times almost frightened me. I remember hearing him at the first performance of "Madame Butterfly," and he hurt us. He worked up the love-duet with Butterfly at the close of the first act in such fashion that our hands were wrung, we were perspiring, and I at least was near to fainting. Such fury, such volume of liquid sound ...
— Nights in London • Thomas Burke
... her affections to him, and attired his person in a complete costume of the best Lyons silk-velvet, not the proctor's velvet, which Theodore felt with thumb and finger, impudently asking 'how much a yard?' I secretly resolved to do the same thing as Mr. Butterfly when I came of age. But the said Mr. Butterfly had a varied and somewhat awful history, all of which was narrated in various ditties chanted by my nurse. I could not quite join in her vivid assertion that ...
— The Wits and Beaux of Society - Volume 2 • Grace & Philip Wharton
... ye will your dwelling, Or breath or tint whose praise we sing; Butterfly shining bright, Full-blown or bursting rosebud, flow'r or wing. Dwell together ye fair, 'Tis a boon to the loveliest given; Perchance ye then may choose your home On ...
— Poems • Victor Hugo
... cared for the acts of either moth or butterfly, but to-day there was in Comale's heart a sense of guilt that ...
— Out of the Triangle • Mary E. Bamford
... and beautiful butterfly fluttered close over Mr. Medland's head. He paused and watched it for a moment. Then he looked carefully round him: no one was in sight: the butterfly settled for a moment on a flowerbed. Mr. Medland looked round again. Then he ...
— Half a Hero - A Novel • Anthony Hope
... that means," answered Amy. "I will be forced to give up my church work and be a useless butterfly again; and besides, the conditions father insists upon—." She blushed ...
— That Printer of Udell's • Harold Bell Wright
... little girl slept soundly. She had merry dreams, and finally woke up laughing. She hurried over her breakfast, and then stood ready to go for a butterfly hunt. She looked thoroughly happy, and evidently had found, and was holding tightly, the key to ...
— Stories By English Authors: Germany • Various
... came to the fresh supply of money, and his lady friend went off with his dearest companion, to whose purse she had taken a sudden liking. Villiers, deserted by all his acquaintances, sank lower and lower in the social scale, and the once brilliant butterfly of fashion became a billiard marker, then a tout at races, and finally a bar loafer with no ...
— Madame Midas • Fergus Hume
... remains a good dining place, but I have not been within its doors since the days when it attained celebrity as a supper place in favour with the butterfly ladies of Paris. ...
— The Gourmet's Guide to Europe • Algernon Bastard
... the girl, watching through her eyes a butterfly as it fluttered to rest on a flower and perched there, gently ...
— The Inhabited • Richard Wilson
... will grasp at straws. This elegant stranger, who had emerged from mystery to disturb the Christmas day of a humble organist, now leaned on the friendly arm of the little man, walking along with him, not as he once sauntered through the promenade, a butterfly disdaining all but the brightest of sunbeams, the sweetest of flowers. Poor worm! he was half frozen in this wintry brightness, this exhilarating atmosphere, in which Summerman throve ...
— Gifts of Genius - A Miscellany of Prose and Poetry by American Authors • Various
... volume, Selmann and Tobias ride off in pursuit of a sentimental adventure, but the latter proves to be merely a jest of the Captain at the expense of his sentimental friend. Satire on sentimentalism is further unmistakable in the two maidens, Adelheid and Kunigunde, who weep over a dead butterfly, and write a lament over its demise. In jest, too, it is said that the Captain made a "sentimental journey through the stables." The author converses with Ermindus, who seems to be a kind of Eugenius, aconvenient ...
— Laurence Sterne in Germany • Harvey Waterman Thayer
... transparent vase lighted from within, now gave out, deeply moved as she was, an almost visible brightness. "Judith!" she cried, her voice ringing like a silver trumpet, "Judith and Arnold!" She was poised like a butterfly, and as she spoke she burst into ...
— The Bent Twig • Dorothy Canfield
... display of a harmful badness. Evolution was not aiming at Belgravia when it set out on its long journey from the flaming mist of the nebula. We cannot suppose that Nature is content with the egoism of the social butterfly. The very blood of dead humanity cries out for ...
— The Mirrors of Downing Street - Some Political Reflections by a Gentleman with a Duster • Harold Begbie
... a rock, flat as an anvil's face, and left dry by the surf, with no trace of living thing about it (Death's altar by the lone shore), she sees a cricket spring gay, with films of blue, upon the parched turf, and a beautiful butterfly settle and spread its two red fans, on the rock. And then there is to her, wholly taken up, as she is, ...
— Introduction to Robert Browning • Hiram Corson
... dearie. I'm not taking exception to the girl because she works. We're all—those of us that are good for much—the mothers and wives and daughters of men who work, and we share in their labor. I could admire and love a real worker, but this butterfly creature affects me like a parasite—a woman who wants to get and not to give. It's just because I feel that she isn't a real worker that ...
— Jewel Weed • Alice Ames Winter
... motion, she darted past and stood defiantly just out of his reach. Mr. Raleigh attempted to seize her, but he might as easily have put his hand on a butterfly; she eluded him always when within his grasp, and led him such a dance up and down the forest-path as none other than a will-o'-the-wisp, it seemed, could have woven. All at once a dark figure glided out from ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 6, No. 37, November, 1860 • Various
... fair and had long golden hair of which she was very proud. She was different from her sister, and never helped with the work, but spent the day combing her hair and catching butterflies. She would catch a pretty butterfly, cruelly stick a pin through it, and fasten it in her hair. Then she would go down to the lake to see her reflection in the clear water, and would laugh to see the poor butterfly struggling in pain. The people disliked her for her ...
— Philippine Folklore Stories • John Maurice Miller
... truly, indifferent to his admiration, and seemed much more interested in the samples of choice fruit arranged on every side. From one to another of these she flitted with the delicate sensuousness of a butterfly, smelling them and touching them lightly with the hand she had ungloved (which was as white as the snow without), as if they had ...
— What Can She Do? • Edward Payson Roe
... 'The Lost Sylphid' the best," said Prudy; "but was she a great butterfly, do you s'pose? The stories are all just as nice; just like book stories. I shouldn't think anybody made 'em up. Aunt 'Ria can write as good as the big girls to the grammar-school. I promised not to believe a single word; and I sha'n't. I'm glad she ...
— Fairy Book • Sophie May
... with several ideas, but must deal with the most persistent, and a kind of melancholy replaced her excitement. She sank down on to the earth clasping her knees together, and looking blankly in front of her. For some time she observed a great yellow butterfly, which was opening and closing its wings very slowly on a ...
— The Voyage Out • Virginia Woolf
... may still do so! Let the world's prudish owl unheeded flutter by; Freedom converts the grub into a butterfly! ...
— Love's Comedy • Henrik Ibsen
... musty, dusty books, tear-stained slates, awful examples and punishments of a hundred lines of Vergil, by wholesome good-cheer and limpid forgetfulness of self in drawing pictures of spiders and noting the difference between a wasp and a bee, a butterfly and a moth, a frog and a toad, a mushroom and a toadstool. And so the reason Rousseau is read is because there is much in his work that is essentially modern. No thinker writes on political economy without quoting the "Social Contract," either for the ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 9 - Subtitle: Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Reformers • Elbert Hubbard
... of the bread and milk, my cherub was transformed into a hungry human child, chiefly anxious to reach the bottom of her porringer. I was with her a great deal that day. She gave no manner of trouble: it was like having the charge of a floating butterfly, endowed with warm arms to clasp, and a silvery voice to prattle. I sent Janet out to sail, with the other servants, by way of holiday, and Marian's perfect temperament was shown in the way she watched ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 117, July, 1867. • Various
... Pyke's two poems, "To a Butterfly" and "Life and Time" are gems of incomparable beauty. "Ole Gardens", by Winifred V. Jordan, is a haunting bit of semi-irregular verse which deserves warm applause for the cleverness of its imagery and the aptness of its phraseology. "The Reward of it All", by Emilie C. Holladay, is a potent ...
— Writings in the United Amateur, 1915-1922 • Howard Phillips Lovecraft
... called a soft little voice, and when she looked up she saw a tiny white butterfly resting on ...
— How Freckle Frog Made Herself Pretty • Charlotte B. Herr
... corrupted from her very childhood, corrupted by the very parents who should have guided, with all her highest qualities of mind and body perverted studiously till they had hardened into vices, to raise herself erect at once from the slough of sensuality and sin, and spring aloft, as the butterfly transmuted from the grub, into the purity and loveliness of virtue—than for one, who hath known no trial, suffered no temptation, to hold the path ...
— The Roman Traitor (Vol. 2 of 2) • Henry William Herbert
... ecstasy With wide looks of starry unconcern. Their spirits looked upon my torture; They drank it as it were the water of life; With reddened cheeks, brightened eyes, The rising flame of my soul made their spirits gilt, Like the wings of a butterfly drifting suddenly into sunlight. And they cried to me for life, life, life. But in taking life for myself, In seizing and crushing their souls, As a child crushes grapes and drinks From its palms the purple juice, I came to this wingless void, Where neither red, nor gold, nor wine, ...
— Spoon River Anthology • Edgar Lee Masters
... announced October, and till the pale petals of the autumnal colchicum begin to appear; a month after Gouts and Rheumatisms, for which they grow, have left Vichy and are returned to Paris for the winter. We arrived long before this, in the midst of the butterfly month of July. It was warm enough then for a more southern summer, and both insect and vegetable life seemed at their acme. The flowers, even while the scythes were gleaming that were shortly to unfound their several pretensions in that leveller of all distinctions, ...
— Blackwoods Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 365, March, 1846 • Various
... Gregory Nazianzen (A.D. 370), "Ad Hellenium pro Monarchis Carmen:" "Silver and gold some bring to God, or the fine thread by Seres spun."[251] Basil illustrates the idea of the resurrection by the birth of the butterfly from the cocoon.[252] ...
— Needlework As Art • Marian Alford
... don't know as I could be blamed. Course, I'd seen bunchy little blondes before; but this was the first time I'd ever seen one that had draped herself in a rainbow. That's the only word for it. The thin, fluttery silk thing with the butterfly sleeves is shaded from cream white to royal purple, and underneath is one of these Dolly Varden gowns of flowered pink, set off by a Roman striped sash two feet wide. And when you add to that such details as gold shoes, ...
— Shorty McCabe on the Job • Sewell Ford
... woman, lithe, graceful, mirthful, was divinely dressed and in a fashion too young for her age, counting her twenty-five years as a wife. Nevertheless, she wore well a gown with small pink stripes, a cape embroidered and edged with lace, boots pretty as the wings of a butterfly. She carried in her hand a pink ...
— A Street Of Paris And Its Inhabitant • Honore De Balzac
... a scuffle, a flutter; Ike and Urb fled up the stairs, and the Phoenix swept out through the doorway. The children followed and the Phoenix settled on Robert, 'like a butterfly on a rose,' as Anthea said afterwards, and wriggled into the breast of his Norfolk jacket, 'like an eel into mud,' ...
— The Phoenix and the Carpet • E. Nesbit
... in the realm of feeling; without the slightest hesitation or fear of its escaping him, he seizes upon the most delicate, rarest, and mildest emotion, and holds it fast, as though it had hardened at his touch, despite the fact that it may seem like the frailest butterfly to every one else. His music is never vague or dreamy; everything that is allowed to speak through it, whether it be of man or of nature, has a strictly individual passion; storm and fire acquire the ruling power ...
— Thoughts out of Season (Part One) • Friedrich Nietzsche
... "Poor butterfly, listen and beware! You are destined to imbrue that little hand in the life current of one who loves you the most of all on earth! You are destined to rise by the destruction of one who would shed his heart's best blood for you!" said the beldame, ...
— Capitola the Madcap • Emma D. E. N. Southworth
... attentions, but the way she accepted them made her appear more pleased than Ian cared for, and he became colder and more polite. Piqued by his indifference, she took it nevertheless with a sweetness which belonged to her nature as God made it, not as she had spoiled it; and even such a butterfly as she, felt the influence of a man like Ian, and could not help being more natural in his presence. His truth elicited what there was of hers; the trae being drew to the surface what there was of true in the being that was not true. The longer she was in his company, the more she was pleased with ...
— What's Mine's Mine • George MacDonald
... the Countess; 'but we both serve the same person, as you know - or if you do not, then I have the pleasure of informing you. Your conduct is so light - so light,' she repeated, the fan wavering higher like a butterfly, 'that perhaps you do not truly understand.' The Countess rolled her fan together, laid it in her lap, and rose to a less languorous position. 'Indeed,' she continued, 'I should be sorry to see any young woman in your situation. You began with ...
— Prince Otto • Robert Louis Stevenson
... lamp-black and charcoal. John worked in the shop and obeyed his father, but when his day's task was over he turned again to his darling pursuits. At twelve years old he had mastered Euclid, and could also rival 'Mark Oaks,' the village phenomenon, in painting a butterfly; by the time John was sixteen he could earn as much as 7s. 6d. for a portrait. It was in this year that there came to Truro an accomplished and various man Dr. Wolcott—sometimes a parson, sometimes a doctor of medicine, sometimes as Peter Pindar, ...
— A Book of Sibyls - Miss Barbauld, Miss Edgeworth, Mrs Opie, Miss Austen • Anne Thackeray (Mrs. Richmond Ritchie)
... annunciation) that if the anonymous in criticism was—as itself originally indicated—but an early caterpillar stage, the nominate too is found to be no better than a homely transitional chrysalis, and that the ultimate butterfly form for a critic who likes to sport in sunlight, and yet elude the grasp, is after ...
— Recollections of Dante Gabriel Rossetti - 1883 • T. Hall Caine
... into some higher life; if all that it changes in us is our body—the mere shell and husk of us— such a change as comes over the snake, when he casts his old skin, and comes out fresh and gay, or even the crawling caterpillar, which breaks its prison, and spreads its wings to the sun as a fair butterfly. Where is the sting of death, then, if death can sting, and poison, and corrupt nothing of us for which our friends have loved us; nothing of us with which we could do service to men or God? Where is the victory of the grave, if, so far from the grave holding us down, it frees us from the ...
— The Water of Life and Other Sermons • Charles Kingsley
... inferred he was hard at work booting himself; though by no law of propriety that I ever heard of, is any man required to be private when putting on his boots. But Queequeg, do you see, was a creature in the transition stage—neither caterpillar nor butterfly. He was just enough civilized to show off his outlandishness in the strangest possible manners. His education was not yet completed. He was an undergraduate. If he had not been a small degree civilized, he very probably would not have troubled ...
— Moby Dick; or The Whale • Herman Melville
... virility. This mysterious gland is located in front of the neck, about half way between the so-called "Adam's apple" and the top of the sternum or breast-bone, where it adheres to each side of the front of the trachea, or windpipe, in a flattened form, something like the wings of a butterfly, with a connecting "isthmus." It is a "ductless" gland, its secretions apparently being taken up by absorption into the lymph, and from ...
— Vitality Supreme • Bernarr Macfadden
... So my butterfly-dreams their golden wings But seldom unfurl from their chrysalis; And thus I retain my loveliest things, While the world, in its worldliness, does not miss What a ...
— Poems of Henry Timrod • Henry Timrod
... ne'er had seen one earthly sight, The sun, the day; the stars, the night; Or tree, or butterfly, or flower, Or fish in stream, or bird in bower, Or woman, ...
— Recollections of a Tour Made in Scotland A.D. 1803 • Dorothy Wordsworth
... as if she had been a butterfly, with a glance as sharp as a needle, Mrs. Culpeper demanded sternly, "How much do you know of this affair, ...
— One Man in His Time • Ellen Glasgow
... enough. Primarily he was always aware of the cord which shackled him to a restless, butterfly woman who played at life out in India, and secondly, although he was undoubtedly attracted by Nan, he was not the type of man to fall headlong in love. He was too fastidious, too critical, altogether too much master of himself. ...
— The Moon out of Reach • Margaret Pedler
... ridden in the trim Butterfly, though the trips had not been so frequent that he was tired of them. A little later, Tom, having adjusted the motor that had stalled before, compelling him to vol-plane back to earth, the two chums were sailing through the ...
— Tom Swift in the Caves of Ice • Victor Appleton
... saucy freckled nose, a crown of fluffy, reddish-yellow hair, and a shower of coaxing little pitfalls called dimples round her pretty mouth. She made you think of a sunbeam, a morning songbird, a dancing butterfly, or an impetuous little crocus just out after the first spring shower. Dislike her? You couldn't. Approve of her? You wouldn't always. Love her? Of course; you couldn't help ...
— A Summer in a Canyon: A California Story • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... Church which had come in his way; he disbelieved the truth of what such men professed. If there had been truth in it, he thought, they would deserve to be drummed out of the profession. He detested the crooked involvments and double-dealing of the law. He despised the butterfly life of a soldier; and as to the other side of a soldier's life, again he thought, what is it for?—to humour the arrogance of the proud,—to pamper the appetite of the full,—to tighten the grip of the iron ...
— Queechy • Susan Warner
... lodging. With anger vexed, forth rushes the Swimming-Crab and dashes away from the unwelcome visitor. As if he knew a bore to be the most persistent of hunters, he plies his paddles with rapid beat until far from his invaded chamber. His swimming is more like the fluttering of a butterfly than the steady poise of a fish. Pretty as is his variegated coat by day, it is far more beautiful by night; then his limbs shine with metallic lustre, and every joint seems ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 4, February, 1858 • Various
... is every bit as proper for a husband. —Alas! Madam, there's not a beau about the court looks so little like a man. He is a perfect butterfly, a thing without substance, ...
— Miscellanies, Volume 2 (from Works, Volume 12) • Henry Fielding
... circle held quiet possession of the Ark before the songful company had arrived. "He didn't use to stay but a week or two at a time, and all the rest o' the fishermen have been gone some time now; and he keeps them horses down here, and goes loungin' around with no more object than a butterfly in December." ...
— Cape Cod Folks • Sarah P. McLean Greene
... that she would exchange her wrapper for the jacket. And to further the transaction, she took Li Wan's hand and placed it amid the lace and ribbons of the flowing bosom, and rubbed the fingers back and forth so they might feel the texture. But the jewelled butterfly which loosely held the fold in place was insecurely fastened, and the front of the gown slipped to the side, exposing a firm white breast, which had never known ...
— Children of the Frost • Jack London
... synopsis of the story, and then you can judge of its fitness. The hero is called Victor Desmond. He is a young man of a sterling though undeveloped character, who has been hampered by an indulgent parent with a large fortune. Desmond is a butterfly, and sips life after the approved manner of his kind,—now from Bohemian glass, now from vessels of gold and silver. He chats with stage lights in their dressing-rooms, and attends a ball in the Bowery or a supper at Sherry's with a ready versatility. The book, apart from its intention, ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... Oria understood Ellen's wish to obtain living creatures, and they were constantly seeking about, and coming back sometimes with a beautiful butterfly or moth, sometimes with ...
— On the Banks of the Amazon • W.H.G. Kingston
... exclusive of facts which kept one's feet well on the earth, or on the roof of one's college barge. Out of that "giddy pleasure of the eyes" business lifted a practical front from time to time, and extended a kind of butterfly net at the end of a pole so long that it would reach anywhere, and collected pennies for the people in boats who had been singing or playing banjos or guitars or even upright pianos. For, it must be explained, there were many ...
— London Films • W.D. Howells
... Taking up the little waxen body with the blood upon its innocent breast, I laid it within the mother's arms, and went my way over the sunny doorstep and the earth that had been made ready for planting. A white butterfly—the first of the year—fluttered before me; then rose through a mist of green and passed ...
— To Have and To Hold • Mary Johnston
... ceased his paddling for several minutes and the canoe drifted slowly on while the two boys gazed with delight at the novel beauty that surrounded them. The dark, stagnant water through which they drifted was nearly hidden from view by great white and gold water-lilies and the butterfly flowers of water hyacinths, the trees on either side stood like beautiful gray ghosts under their festoons of Spanish moss through which flashed the blazing hues of flowering orchids. Brilliant-hued paroquets and other birds ...
— The Boy Chums in the Forest - or Hunting for Plume Birds in the Florida Everglades • Wilmer M. Ely
... the garden gate, Where the little butterfly reposes, Now I hate to tell, but then I must, ...
— A California Girl • Edward Eldridge
... eyes, as unfathomable as the ocean itself, he was struck dumb with reverence and wonder, for they held in keeping all the secrets of the moon and the stars, of dawn and sunset, of green things growing and flowers in bloom, of the butterfly in the crysalis and on the wing, of still waters and ...
— The Dreamer - A Romantic Rendering of the Life-Story of Edgar Allan Poe • Mary Newton Stanard
... long summer hours, The golden light should lie, And thick young herbs and groups of flowers Stand in their beauty by. The oriole should build and tell His love-tale, close beside my cell; The idle butterfly Should rest him there, and there be heard The ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 5 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... butterfly, without volition or effort? Human appointments are different. Work is the inevitable, and with the proper tools, it ...
— Short Story Writing - A Practical Treatise on the Art of The Short Story • Charles Raymond Barrett
... I go much in society; I shine there, and walk home to save the cost of a carriage. My door-keeper cleans my rooms and keeps my linen in order. My private life is sad, dull, and humiliating. It is the black chrysalis of the bright butterfly which you know. That is what Prince Panine is, my dear Jeanne. A gentleman of good appearance, who lives as carefully as an old maid. The world sees him elegant and happy, and its envies his luxury; but this luxury is as deluding as watch-chains made of pinchbeck. You understand now ...
— Serge Panine, Complete • Georges Ohnet
... of the day following they remained on the Kittiwake and waited. No canoes appeared. There were no signs of human life. Save for the occasional splash of a fish or the screaming of cockatoos, there seemed no other life. Once, however, a huge butterfly, twelve inches from tip to tip, fluttered high over their mastheads and drifted across to ...
— A Son Of The Sun • Jack London
... moments which, like the wings of the butterfly, are injured by the slightest touch of the human hand, and which, therefore, must not be approached; there are words which no human ear ought to listen to, and tears which God alone ought ...
— LOUISA OF PRUSSIA AND HER TIMES • Louise Muhlbach
... Sudermann is a conjurer. His puppets are all agreeable, and, in one instance, vital: the father of the baroness, a financier, who could be easily turned into a "heavy" conventional father, but, as played by Hermann Nissen, is a positively original characterisation. Max the butterfly (Ernst Dumcke) was wholly admirable. I shall be very much surprised if Der gute Ruf does not soon appear on the stage of other lands. Its picture of manners, its mundane environment, its epigrams and dramatic bravoura will make it welcome everywhere. Sudermann is still Klingsor, the evoker of artificial ...
— Ivory Apes and Peacocks • James Huneker
... beneath the pot—the other stifleth the heart and keepeth down the soul from her true flight. I count the wit and wisdom of thy daughter even as I count her beauty. She hath all, I think—as they are known to and regarded by men. But all is nothing. Beauty hath a day's life like the butterfly; wit shineth like the sudden flash of the lightning, leaving only the cloud behind it; and oh! for the vain wisdom of man which makes him vain and unsteady—likely to falter—liable to fall—rash in his judgment—erring in his aims—blind to his duty—wilful ...
— Charlemont • W. Gilmore Simms
... butterfly fluttered across the grass, revelling the sunlight. Sanine watched its progress just as intently as he listened ...
— Sanine • Michael Artzibashef
... the back just above the buttocks. Many of the patches coalesced. At the time of report the lumbar region was the seat of the disease, the affection here presenting a most peculiar appearance, looking as if an enormous butterfly had alighted on the patient's back, with its dark blue wings covered with silvery scales, widely expanded. The patient was not anemic and appeared to be in the best of health. None of the glands were affected. ...
— Anomalies and Curiosities of Medicine • George M. Gould
... Quite so!" observed Hsi Jen, clapping her hands, after listening to her throughout. "It isn't strange then if she let me have the ten butterfly knots I asked her to tie for me only after ever so many days, and if she said that they were coarsely done, but that I should make the best of them and use them elsewhere, and that if I wanted any nice ones, I should wait until by and bye when she came to stay here, when she would ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book II • Cao Xueqin
... then," she returned, with heightened color. "We will not refer to this again;" and she brushed away a butterfly that was fluttering about her conceitedly in ...
— The Queen of Sheba & My Cousin the Colonel • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... other hand it had to be admitted that the man kept up his establishment in Calcutta rather than lived there; for he was given to unexpected and extended absences from home, and was frequently reported as having been seen poking sedulously over this plain or through that jungle, with a butterfly net, a bottle of chloroform, and an air of abstraction. In view of all of which he was set down as an original and wholly irresponsible. The first of which he was and the second of which ...
— The Bronze Bell • Louis Joseph Vance
... sand-bank, without injury. Sand-martins are much smaller than any other species of hirundines, and also differ from them in colour, being what is termed mouse-colour, instead of black. They fly also in a peculiar manner, by jerks, somewhat resembling a butterfly. They are by no means so common as the other species; for there are few towns or large villages that do not abound with house-martins; few churches, towers, or steeples, but what are haunted by swifts; scarcely ...
— Domestic pleasures - or, the happy fire-side • F. B. Vaux
... just apparently flattened his nose against the dark glass inward, dotting a great and increasing period outward. A bright birch-leaf, "the last of its clan," has just fallen down, and been snapped at most probably by a little spooney of a trout, thinking it a yellow butterfly; and on the bottom, which, directly under our eyes is shallow, are several water-insects crawling along like locomotive spots of shadow and reflected through the tremulous medium into distorted shapes. However, we have lingered ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXIII No. 3 September 1848 • Various
... Cowen's overture "The Butterfly's Ball" given by the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, and on the 31st Saint-Saens's ...
— Annals of Music in America - A Chronological Record of Significant Musical Events • Henry Charles Lahee
... came indeed when her breathless auditors learnt from her in bewilderment that what ailed him was that he was, alas, simply not serious. Maisie wept on Mrs. Wix's bosom after hearing that Sir Claude was a butterfly; considering moreover that her governess but half-patched it up in coming out at various moments the next few days with the opinion that it was proper to his "station" to be careless and free. That had been proper to every one's station ...
— What Maisie Knew • Henry James
... because her dead are coming to life again. The trees, the grass, the flowers all rise up in the glory of a new and beautiful life. Chrysalis and egg are not strong enough to keep back the new life of butterfly and bird which rises skyward to rejoice, each in ...
— Games For All Occasions • Mary E. Blain
... sitting under the white thorn. Every now and then, for instance, Hanna would start up and commence a series of little flirtations with the blackbird, which she called her sweetheart, and again resume her chat and seat as before; or she would attempt to catch a butterfly as it fluttered about her, or sometimes give it pursuit over half the green, whilst Kathleen sat with laughing and delighted eyes, and a smile of unutterable sweetness on her lips, watching the success of this innocent frolic. In this situation we must now leave them, ...
— The Emigrants Of Ahadarra - The Works of William Carleton, Volume Two • William Carleton
... straightforward little girl, with whom they had fished or cooked crabs for years: very different from the ladies who came down in summer, and were a fearfully and wonderfully made species of human being. Neckart would have analyzed these women at a glance as easily as he could impale a butterfly on a pin: why should he watch Jane as though she were the Sphinx? The dark-blue eyes that met his now and then were the most frank and friendly in the world, but the naked truth in them irritated ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 20, August 1877 • Various
... interests, and none of the responsibilities that she had assumed in marrying him; her only idea of life appeared to be amusement and variety and gaiety. Gerald was a student, and always very grave and serious; the kind of man who invariably marries a butterfly, if he can find one to make him miserable. He was exceedingly patient; but after the birth of little Broona, Adeline became so homesick and depressed and discontented that, although the journey was almost an impossibility at the time, Gerald took her ...
— Penelope's Irish Experiences • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... the half-drunken servant arranging these packages under the direction of a secretary. These favours had been made for the occasion by a famous jeweller; a diamond pin of peculiar design, a gold death's head with diamond teeth and eyes surmounted by a butterfly and a caterpillar. The stones in each piece were worth a hundred dollars. They lay on a table in little open jewel boxes, fifty in a box, and each box contained five thousand dollars' worth of gold and ...
— The Root of Evil • Thomas Dixon
... no cessation of the piano-playing. Little Guiraud, in her Alsatian costume, with a butterfly of black ribbon in her golden hair, swung round in the dance with a harlequin twice her height. A Highlander whirled Marguerite Tissot round so madly that she lost her milk-pail. The two Berthier girls, Blanche and Sophie, who ...
— A Love Episode • Emile Zola
... constantly: I have No fixity of feeling or of sight. I have no courage: I can often dream Of daring: when I wake I am in dread. I am inconstant as a butterfly, And shallow as a brook with little fish! Strange little fish, that tempt the small boy's net, But at a touch straight dive! I am any one's, And no one's! I am vain. Praise of my beauty lodges in my ears. ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... its spectacular course; Ione Burke, Polly Marshall, and Mrs. Vining were in the cast; tableau succeeded tableau; "I wish I were in Dixie," was sung, and the popular burlesque ended in the celebrated scene, "The Birth of the Butterfly in the Bower of Ferns," with the entire company kissing their finger-tips to ...
— Ailsa Paige • Robert W. Chambers
... there was yet another butterfly of my namesake's. He led us to a by-path that followed the river bank up to the bridge, running far ahead of us. When we reached him he was seated, dumb with yearning, before ...
— The Boss of Little Arcady • Harry Leon Wilson
... his father in the offices of the great drygoods house from which Mr. Cameron's fortune had come, Tom, abetted by Helen, had become almost a social butterfly in ...
— Ruth Fielding on the St. Lawrence - The Queer Old Man of the Thousand Islands • Alice B. Emerson
... presently returned with the naughty fairies looking very much ashamed of themselves, with their coat-tails all curled round from having been tied in a hard knot. Lilliebelle and Dewdrop laughed behind their butterfly wing-fans, while Ripple and Firefly curled their mustaches, and looked on with ...
— The Fairy Nightcaps • Frances Elizabeth Barrow
... said, "if we lived still in the days of the ancient gods, I would not trust any butterfly nor any bird, nay, not even a gold-piece, for, behind every thing, I should suspect Jove disguised, for the purpose of surprising ...
— LOUISA OF PRUSSIA AND HER TIMES • Louise Muhlbach
... I supposed the serious and absorbed air which your face has worn came from the interest of your studies, and that those studies were fitting you for the work I had planned for you. I wish now that you had never touched a book in your life. Better in my opinion to be the careless butterfly of society than the fanatic. I never expected to live to see my only child so blind to common-sense as to wish to follow such a monstrous theory as you have described. Money! Why, it is the power and possibility of the world. ...
— A Romantic Young Lady • Robert Grant
... over this first sale, set about filling a box with the fresh butterfly blossoms, while Ethel Brown attended to the man who had begun the conversation. He wanted "A bunch of bachelor's buttons for a young lady with blue eyes." An older man who came to see what the younger ones were doing bought buttonholes for all the men and directed that a ...
— Ethel Morton's Enterprise • Mabell S.C. Smith
... The teacher, beginning with the first file, asks the leader, "What did you see?" The leader suggests some activity as "I saw a butterfly flying," "I saw a boy beating a drum," "I saw a chicken hopping on one foot," "I saw a drum major leading a band," "I saw a horse galloping down the street," "I saw a boy rolling a hoop," etc. Each row in turn imitates its leader, following him around the ...
— Games and Play for School Morale - A Course of Graded Games for School and Community Recreation • Various
... passionate eye though that eye was invisible?—Nyssia hesitated to strip herself of that tunic, the last rampart of her modesty. Twice or thrice her shoulders, her bosom, and bare arms shuddered with a nervous chill, as though they had been suddenly grazed by the wings of a nocturnal butterfly, or as though an insolent lip had dared to ...
— King Candaules • Theophile Gautier
... her face like moonrise, two radiant wings sprang from her shoulders; and even as a butterfly bursts from its dull cocoon, so the human Psyche blossomed ...
— Good Stories For Great Holidays - Arranged for Story-Telling and Reading Aloud and for the - Children's Own Reading • Frances Jenkins Olcott
... was a beauty and was sometimes called a society butterfly by people who didn't know very much about it. Her father was wealthy and her mother came of an extremely blue-blooded family. Frances had been out for three years, and was a social favourite. Consequently, it may be wondered ...
— Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1902 to 1903 • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... contact, so centred, in her significant self, on its one deep preoccupation. But there was no preoccupation now. Gerald's image passed before her and meant nothing more than the other things she looked at, while her mind drifted like an aimless butterfly from the flowers and the prints to the pretty old mirror—a gift of Gerald's—and hovered over the graceful feminine objects scattered upon the chairs and tables. The thought of Gerald stirred nothing more ...
— Franklin Kane • Anne Douglas Sedgwick
... half smiling, "it is a pity to think even of a crushed butterfly; but indeed, Colin, if you can bear to listen to me, I think I can show you that it all has been a blessing even by sight, as well as, of course, by faith. Only remember the unsatisfactoriness of our condition—the never seeing or hearing from one another after that day when Mr. Beauchamp ...
— The Clever Woman of the Family • Charlotte M. Yonge
... before he had fairly reopened his eyes, our Manitou butterfly, now nearly ready to spurn the chrysalis, raised himself again to his elbow and took another dreamy survey of the room. His eyes, however, seemed to find no object to rest on, until they met a pair as dreamy as themselves—the innocent, blue ones, there at ...
— The Red Moccasins - A Story • Morrison Heady
... own accord. I dash against the walls, dash against the windows, flop against the ceiling, do everything on God's earth, in fact, except fly out again. And all the while I'm thinking, like that moth, or that butterfly, or whatever it is, 'The shortness of life! The shortness of life!' I've only one night or one day, and there's this vast dangerous garden, waiting out there, ...
— The Garden Party • Katherine Mansfield
... if her young spirit had been tempted away from the household paths of thought, far into tangled wilds where it had lost itself—tempted, like other children, by the mere pleasure of the ramble—led on to catch a butterfly, or chase the rainbow. Feeling—passion, had not mingled with the dream at all, and consequently there had been no suffering. I am not sure that on other occasions, when such absent fits fell upon her, Emily Hastings was not more joyous, more full of pure delight, than when, in a gay and sparkling ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 1, April, 1851 • Various
... As good a heart as hers, but somewhat given To hunt the nearest butterfly, and light The fire of fancy without hanging o'er it The porridge-pot of practice. He ...
— The Saint's Tragedy • Charles Kingsley
... fond of it when roasted, on account of its pleasant vegetable taste. When about to pass into the chrysalis state, it buries itself in the soil, and is sometimes sought for as food even then. If left undisturbed, it comes forth as a beautiful butterfly: the transmutation was sometimes employed by me with good effect when speaking with the natives, as an illustration of our ...
— Missionary Travels and Researches in South Africa - Journeys and Researches in South Africa • David Livingstone
... steps, and when the dancer had arrived in front of the stage, he raised slowly his rounded arms, stretched them gracefully backward and forward, moved his feet with precision and lightness, took a few small steps, made some battements and pirouettes, and disappeared like a butterfly. The whole had not lasted half a minute. The applause burst from every part of the house. I was astonished, and asked my friend the cause of all ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... to dance there, too, very softly in stockinged feet, so nobody could hear—dances she and I made up together out of stories she used to tell me. The Shadow Dance and the Statue Dance which you saw, came out of those stories, and there are more you didn't see, which I do sometimes—a butterfly dance, the dance of the wheat, and two of the East, which were in stories she told me after we knew Cassim ben Halim. They are the dance of the smoke wreath, and the dance of the jewel-and-the-rose. I could dance quite well even in those days, because ...
— The Golden Silence • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... a butterfly net in two sections and the deeply scalloped, silver-trimmed butt of a sporting rifle. Edelweiss adorned his green felt hat; a green tin box punched full of holes was slung ...
— Barbarians • Robert W. Chambers
... happiness, such as they are capable of, in mornings and evenings spent at their worsted-work, than the most diligent cultivation of the intellect can ever insure to you. But the question is, not whether the butterfly can contentedly dispense with the higher instincts of the industrious, laborious, and useful bee, but whether the superior creature could content itself with the insipid and objectless pursuits of the lower one. The mind requires more to fill it in proportion to the largeness of its ...
— The Young Lady's Mentor - A Guide to the Formation of Character. In a Series of Letters to Her Unknown Friends • A Lady
... the yielding wood, That day, to this sweet-rustling shore? Oh, there together while we stood, A butterfly was wafted o'er, ...
— Rose and Roof-Tree - Poems • George Parsons Lathrop |
