"Butterfly" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... collection! Bobus picked up a tin-case and basket full of flowers, interspersed with bottles of swimming insects. The trio and Armine shouldered their butterfly-nets, and had a distribution of pill-boxes and bottles, in some of which were caterpillars intended to live, in others butterflies dead (or dying, it may be feared) of laurel leaves. Babie had a mighty nosegay; Janet put up the sketch, which showed a good deal of power; and the whole ...
— Magnum Bonum • Charlotte M. Yonge
... at the idea; but, rather than trouble his little mistress, he said Very soberly: "I'm afraid they wouldn't lay easy, not being used to it. Tucking up a butterfly would about kill him; the worms would be apt to get lost among the bed-clothes; and the toads would tumble ...
— Junior Classics, V6 • Various
... is the best and most serious thing in the way of friendship, protection and guardianship that I have had during my life. That butterfly acted as my godmother. Do you wonder now at the zigzags, the erratic flights of my mind? Lucky for me that ...
— The Nabob, Vol. 2 (of 2) • Alphonse Daudet
... Blue-jay Bobolink Boilers Boneset (Eupatorium perfoliatum) Bow— How to make Bowstring Bow-drill Yan makes How to light a fire with Boyle Char-less Burns, Guy Is captured by Yan and Sam Becomes a member of the tribe His stuffed Deer His test of courage Kills the Woodchuck Name changed to Hawkeye Butterfly, black Butternuts— ...
— Two Little Savages • Ernest Thompson Seton
... butterfly mimics an inedible or noxious one, as is frequently the case in the tropics, the mimicker is no doubt ...
— Ways of Nature • John Burroughs
... here and pick orchids," Bertram suggested, leaning over the gate. "Just see how pretty they are! The scented white butterfly! It loves moist bogland. Now, Mrs. Monteith, wouldn't a few long sprays of that lovely thing look charming on ...
— The British Barbarians • Grant Allen
... flesh as it touched a certain kind of metal led Galvani to invent the electric battery. The swinging of a spider's web across a garden walk led to the invention of the suspension bridge. The oscillation of a lamp in the temple of Pisa led Galileo to invent the measurement of time by a pendulum. A butterfly's wing suggested the combination of colors. So little things are suggestive of ...
— Wit, Humor, Reason, Rhetoric, Prose, Poetry and Story Woven into Eight Popular Lectures • George W. Bain
... butterfly Appear in gayer coats than I; Let me be dressed fine as I will, Flies, worms, and flowers exceed ...
— Ruby at School • Minnie E. Paull
... to do. They either halted and searched for a way round, or returned whence they had come, or climbed the adjacent herbage, with the evident intention of reaching my hand and going up the sleeve of my jacket. From this interesting spectacle my attention was distracted by the yellow wings of a butterfly which was fluttering alluringly before me. Yet I had scarcely noticed it before it flew away to a little distance and, circling over some half-faded blossoms of white clover, settled on one of them. Whether it was ...
— Childhood • Leo Tolstoy
... lobbies, Corny would stroll leisurely about, lingering at the theatre entrance, dropping into the fashionable restaurants as if seeking some friend. He rarely patronized any of these places; he was no bee come to suck honey, but a butterfly flashing his wings among the flowers whose calyces held no sweets for him. His wages were not large enough to furnish him with more than the outside garb of the gentleman. To have been one of the beings he so cunningly imitated, ...
— Sixes and Sevens • O. Henry
... darkened garden-scene where impossible tropical flowers expand giant petals, and a spangled waterfall tumbles over the edge of a blue precipice in sparkling foam. The nucleus of a cobweb of quivering rays, crossing and intersecting, is a dazzling human butterfly, circling, spinning, waving white arms like quivering antennae, flashing back the coloured lights from the diamonds that are in her hair and on her bosom, are clasped about her rounded waist and wrists, gleam like fireflies from the folds of her diaphanous skirts, ...
— The Dop Doctor • Clotilde Inez Mary Graves
... utterance; but first, with a powerful facial exertion, he wrenched his mouth and nose to one side, inhaling vigorously through the lee nostril, then cleared his throat with the sound of a strongly-driven wood-rasp catching on an old nail, and sent the result whirling from his mouth at a butterfly on a stem of lignum—sent it with such accurate calculation of the distance of his object, the trajectory of his missile, and the pace of his horse, that the mucous disc smote the ornamental insect fair on the back, laying it out, never to rise again. This was but a ceremonious ...
— Such is Life • Joseph Furphy
... eyes to you, that'll be the decidin' minit for you. Have you everything you need, ready to your hand? Is all your little laces an' frills done up fresh an' tidy, so's you can choose the becomingest? Where's that lace butterfly for your neck, I like so much? I washed it as careful as could be, a couple o' weeks ago, but have ...
— Martha By-the-Day • Julie M. Lippmann
... a writ of replevin? This whimsical view of the case only exasperated him the more as it presented the utter hopelessness of approaching her—of ever seeing her again—and, when the dogs came chasing an utterly inconsequential and useless butterfly in his direction, he pelted them with stones until they yelped. Hang the dogs, anyhow. ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume V. (of X.) • Various
... touching passion for her only child. At the Greenwich masquerades she used to shine resplendent, her beautiful, lithe body glorious with stage-jewels, and not much else; for the time being she has flitted away, but some day she will surely return like a darkly brilliant butterfly, and the Village will again thrill to her dancing. There is Hyppolite, the anarchist, dark and fervid; there is "Bobby" Edwards, the Village troubadour, with his self-made and self-decorated ukelele, and his cat, Dirty Joe; there is Charlie-immortal barber!—whose ...
— Greenwich Village • Anna Alice Chapin
... surprise, suddenly became aware of Teddy Westlake hurrying along the platform in the direction of the train—of Teddy Westlake or his sun-browned ghost in cheviot, boots and leather-girdled hat—Theodore Westlake, Jr., amateur polo (almost) champion, all-round butterfly and cumberer of the soil; but a broader, surer, more emphasized and determined Teddy than the one she had known a year ago when last ...
— Whirligigs • O. Henry
... with vested rights and time-hallowed interests. They often wear an unlovely, forbidding aspect. Their office corresponds to that of Nature's sanitary commission for the removal of material nuisances. It is not the butterfly, but the beetle, which she employs for this duty. It is not the bird of paradise and the nightingale, but the fowl of dark plumage and unmelodious voice, to which is entrusted the sacred duty of eliminating the substances that infect the air. And the force of ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... not to external beauty alone; but also to the ornaments of an inward spirit, of a noble mind, and an amiable and pious heart. "If," says the Rev. H. Harbaugh, "you will be foolish, follow the gilded butterfly of beauty, drive it a long chase; it will land you at last at some ...
— The Christian Home • Samuel Philips
... shame me before Sir Percy," murmured the young girl, casting shy glances at the elegant cavalier before her, vainly trying to find in the indolent, foppish personality of this society butterfly, some trace of the daring man of action, the bold adventurer who had snatched her and her lover from out the very tumbril that bore them ...
— The Elusive Pimpernel • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... incessantly, as though they sought food for the rapacious jaws they guarded. From a point slightly above and to the rear of the tiny, ruby eyes, two slim and graceful antennae, iridescent and incongruously beautiful, rose twice the height of a man. Like the antennae of a butterfly, they were surmounted by tiny knobs, and ...
— The Terror from the Depths • Sewell Peaslee Wright
... the old man laugh, and Tracy runs off after a passing butterfly, and Arthur goes on with talk to the baby and the other Gretchen beside him, until the former falls asleep, and he takes her to the crib he has had put in the bay window under the picture which smiles down upon the sleeping infant, whose ...
— Tracy Park • Mary Jane Holmes
... Bible-meetings, funerals and festivities, churches and concerts—in short, every thing that lives and moves and has its being awaits the military smile. And the smile is smiled. And so, I tell you what it is, my dear fellow, it amounts to this, that the life of an officer isn't by any means the butterfly existence that you imagine it to be. What with patronizing Tom, Dick, and Harry, inspecting militia, spouting at volunteers, subscribing to charities, buying at bazaars, assisting at concerts, presiding at public dinners, and all that ...
— The Lady of the Ice - A Novel • James De Mille
... sprang up with fresh power in his excitable soul, and his lost cheerfulness returned to him like a butterfly to the newly opened flower. The image of his beloved Daphne rose before him in sunny radiance, and he saw himself in his studio in the ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... earth, and I saw him carrying into his den no less an insect than the cicada or harvest-fly. Then another came, and after coursing up and down a few times, disturbed by my presence, alighted upon a tree, with his quarry, to rest. The black hornet will capture a fly, or a small butterfly, and, after breaking and dismembering it, will take it to his nest; but here was this hornet carrying an insect much larger than himself, and flying with ease and swiftness. It was as if a hawk should carry a hen, or an eagle a turkey. I at once proceeded ...
— The Writings of John Burroughs • John Burroughs
... Nothing but Juliet Butterfly Love Romantic Stories of Non-Romantic Love Obstacles to Monopolism Wives and Girls in Common Trial Marriages Two ...
— Primitive Love and Love-Stories • Henry Theophilus Finck
... not," he answered; "if I had known I am sure I would have felt that I ought not to come. But I didn't know, and so you see I am as innocent as a butterfly. More innocent, in fact, for that little wagwings knows where he ought not to go, and he goes there ...
— The Captain's Toll-Gate • Frank R. Stockton
... sitting-room, a modest meal of rolls, porridge, and imitation coffee. Beside the pot containing this hell-brew, was a little pile of letters. Mrs. Hignett opened them as she ate. The majority were from disciples and dealt with matters of purely theosophical interest. There was an invitation from the Butterfly Club, asking her to be the guest of honour at their weekly dinner. There was a letter from her brother Mallaby—Sir Mallaby Marlowe, the eminent London lawyer—saying that his son Sam, of whom she had never approved, would be in New York shortly, passing through on his way back to England, ...
— The Girl on the Boat • Pelham Grenville Wodehouse
... glee, Ellen ran for the pieces of Bristol board which were to form the backs of the needlebook, and brought them to the library; and explained how room was to be left in the middle of each for a painting, a rose on one, a butterfly on the other; the writing to be as elegant as possible, above, beneath, and roundabout, as the fancy of ...
— The Wide, Wide World • Elizabeth Wetherell
... yet puzzled over it, doubting, as it afterwards appeared, the part to be assigned to a friend of his, the daily milkman. And so he solved it. "God makes the milk and the milkman brings it," he said. The Fioretti, if you must needs break a butterfly on your dissecting-board, was written, as I judge, by a bare-foot Minorite of forty; compiled, that is, from the wonderings, the pretty adjustments and naive disquisitions of any such weatherworn brown men as you may see to- day toiling up the Calvary to their Convent. And in this same story- telling ...
— Earthwork Out Of Tuscany • Maurice Hewlett
... of Dana, and thy husband, Etain. Thus it was, that when I took thee to wife in the Land of Youth, the jealousy of thy rival, Fuamnach, was awakened; and having decoyed me from home by a false report, she changed thee by magical arts into a butterfly, and then contrived a mighty tempest that drove thee abroad. Seven years wast thou borne hither and thither on the blast till chance blew thee into the fairy palace of Angus my kinsman, by the waters of the Boyne. But Angus knew thee, for the ...
— The High Deeds of Finn and other Bardic Romances of Ancient Ireland • T. W. Rolleston
... 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
... the theatre. A distinguished traveler relates having heard her sing the grand aria of the Queen of the Night in the "Zauberflote" at this age, "her arms hanging beside her and her eye following the flight of a butterfly, while her voice, pure, penetrating, and of angelic tone, flowed as unconsciously as a limpid rill from the mountain-side." The year after this Henrietta lost her father, and she went to Prague with her mother, where she played children's parts under Weber, then chef d'orchestre. When she ...
— Great Singers, First Series - Faustina Bordoni To Henrietta Sontag • George T. Ferris
... hesitation, and I shall sacrifice it without pain if something better can be found to take its place. All the same, I did try to explain what I meant by it. I speak of Significant Form in contradistinction to Insignificant Beauty—the beauty of gems or of a butterfly's wing, the beauty that pleases, but does not seem to provoke that peculiar thrill that we call an aesthetic emotion. I suggested very cautiously that the explanation of this difference might lie in the fact that the forms created by an ...
— Pot-Boilers • Clive Bell
... we are, again, Jud!" he said. "But with this change, that now it's you who are the respectable member of the community, and I'm the—well, we'll call it the butterfly." ...
— The Breaking Point • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... Time, and all such as can pay, For the Summer-green country are up and away; But what of the poor pale-faced waifs of the slums? Oh, the butterfly flits, and the honey-bee hums O'er the holt and the heather, the hill and the plain, But they flit and they hum for Town's children in vain; Unless—ah! unless—there is hope in that word!— Mrs. JEUNE'S kindly plea ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 99, August 16, 1890 • Various
... of ichneumon which make thinnings among the caterpillars of the cabbage butterfly. The process of one species is this:—while the caterpillar is feeding, the ichneumon fly hovers over it, and, with its piercer, perforates the fatty part of the caterpillar's back in many places, and in each deposits an egg, by means of the two parts of the sheath uniting together, ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 12, No. 339, Saturday, November 8, 1828. • Various
... is puerile in nature; and he who becomes impassioned of a flower, a blade of grass, a butterfly's wing, a nest, a shell, wraps around a small thing that always contains a great truth. To succeed in modifying the appearance of a flower is insignificant in itself, if you will; but reflect upon it for however short a while and ...
— Leaves of Life - For Daily Inspiration • Margaret Bird Steinmetz
... landed on the farther shore he found a still bigger leaf, and sent it forth on a voyage in another direction, with a cargo of daisy petals, and a hairy caterpillar for a bo'sun's mate. But, just as the vessel was getting under way, a butterfly of amazing brilliance floated past insolently under his very nose. Leaving the beetle and the caterpillar to navigate the currents as best they could, he at once gave chase. Cap in hand, he flew after the butterfly down the lane, and a dozen times when his cap was just upon it, ...
— Jimbo - A Fantasy • Algernon Blackwood
... home with Mistress Pauncefort, but Lady Annabel's little daughter was not in her usual lively spirits; many a butterfly glanced around without attracting her pursuit, and the deer trooped by without eliciting a single observation. At length she said, in a thoughtful tone, 'Mistress Pauncefort, I should have liked to have gone and seen the ...
— Venetia • Benjamin Disraeli
... the second or third floor, or 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 ...
— Nobody's Man • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... There, glancing bright in the sunshine, a most beautiful butterfly fluttered in the air, in the very middle of the open window. When we first saw it, it was flitting gaily and happily amongst the plants and flowers that were blooming in the balcony, but it gradually became more ...
— Tom Cringle's Log • Michael Scott
... directions for acquiring and saving, that his old acquaintance, Mr. Winterblossom, tapping his morocco snuff-box with the sly look which intimated the coming of a good thing, was wont to say, that he had reversed the usual order of transformation, and was turned into a grub after having been a butterfly. After all, this narrowness, though a more ordinary modification of the spirit of avarice, may be founded on the same desire of acquisition, which in his earlier days sent him to ...
— St. Ronan's Well • Sir Walter Scott
... for him. But obedience was not a lover's part here. He hesitated, the golden moment hung hovering, the conductor cried "All aboard!" the train went, and there on the platform stood obedient Sam, with his golden moment gone like a butterfly. ...
— The Virginian - A Horseman Of The Plains • Owen Wister
... have always wanted to be of some use in the world. I assure you, Master Zane, I am not the butterfly I seem. I have worked hard all day, that is, until your sister Betty came over. All the girls have helped me fix up the cabin until it's more comfortable than I ever dreamed one could be on the frontier. Father is well content here, and that makes me happy. I haven't ...
— The Last Trail • Zane Grey
... thought of thee, Their golden heads close-haremed from the heat; All day the mystic moonflowers silkenly Veiled snowy faces,—that no bee might greet, Or butterfly that, weighed with pollen, passed;— Keeping Sultana charms for thee, at last, Their lord, who comest to ...
— Poems • Madison Cawein
... from the range, but he had the polish of a university education over his roughness, and what I know now to be inborn coarseness was then accepted for ingenuousness. He passed current in the best society of the capital, where he was coddled as a butterfly of new species. We met; he made love to me, and I—I am afraid that I encouraged him to ...
— Claim Number One • George W. (George Washington) Ogden
... middle of the low ceiling; and hung against the wall, between two glaring woodcuts representing "Lady Caroline" in red and "Highland Mary" in blue, is a deep frame filled with worsted flowers, to which a butterfly and a bumble-bee have been pinned. Paper lacework depends from their kitchen-shelves, and common eggshells, artificially colored, decorate the lilac-bushes in the side yard. They are always making new mats or piecing ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 26, July 1880. • Various
... thoughtless, who were vain of their forms. I observed too, that instead of decorating their heads with flowers, like the ladies of our earth, they taxed the animal world for a correspondent ornament. Many of the head-dresses were made of a stiff open gauze, occasionally stuck over with insects of the butterfly and coccinella species, and others of the gayest hues. At other times these insects were alive; when their perpetual buzzing and fluttering in their transparent cages, had a very animating effect. One decoration for the head in particular struck ...
— A Voyage to the Moon • George Tucker
... of the work, accordingly, is much like the pattern of that patch-work drapery that is sometimes to be met with in the mansions of the industrious, where a blue tree overshadows a shell-fish, and a gigantic butterfly seems ready to swallow up Palemon and Lavinia. The author has the merit merely of cutting out each of his figures from the piece where its inventor had placed it, and stitching them down together in ...
— Famous Reviews • Editor: R. Brimley Johnson
... shrill little screams at his feet. Looking down he spied a shrew standing on the dead leaves close to his boot, screaming with all its might, its long thin snout pointed upwards and its mouth wide open; and just above it, two or three inches perhaps, hovered a small brown butterfly. There for a few moments it continued hovering while the shrew continued screaming; then the butterfly flitted away and the shrew disappeared among ...
— A Shepherd's Life • W. H. Hudson
... lately observed a curious fact, which I have never seen noticed in any book which has fallen in my way, viz. that it is the tail of the caterpillar which becomes the head of the butterfly. I found it hard to believe till I had convinced myself of it in a number of instances. The caterpillar weaves its web from its mouth, finishes with the head downwards, and the head, with the six ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 19, Issue 546, May 12, 1832 • Various
... or that it matters much whether your queen is called queen of India or empress, because two parties made a noise about it, and the country has wasted ten thousand square miles of good paper on the subject, trivial as the dust on a butterfly's wing. Fight against these illusions of petty and ephemeral minds. It does not matter the millionth of a straw to mankind whether any one woman is called queen, or empress, of India; and it matters greatly to mankind whether the whole race of women are to be allowed to study ...
— The Woman-Hater • Charles Reade
... long, 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 here, and there be heard ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 13, No. 76, February, 1864 • Various
... too delicately or cunningly in doing this; work with it as if you were drawing the down on a butterfly's wing. ...
— The Crown of Wild Olive • John Ruskin
... by a farewell visitation of bluebirds; during the first week, at least four sorts of butterflies—Disippus, Philodice, Antiopa, and Comma—were on the wing, and a single Philodice (our common yellow butterfly) was flying as late as the 16th. Wild flowers of many kinds—not less than a hundred, certainly—were in bloom; among them the exquisite little pimpernel, or poor man's weather-glass. My daily notes are full of complimentary allusions to the weather. Once in a while it rained, ...
— The Foot-path Way • Bradford Torrey
... beds I wandered by One bright and cheerful morn, When I found a new-fledged butterfly A-sitting on a thorn, A black and crimson butterfly, ...
— Practice Book • Leland Powers
... 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 ...
— Gifts of Genius - A Miscellany of Prose and Poetry by American Authors • Various
... friends' horses! I never touch a card, although I love play. 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. ...
— Serge Panine, Complete • Georges Ohnet
... 'ave the pot a-boiling. Many's the weary night I've spent in bed thinkin' about you w'en I might 'ave bin snorin'. That reminds me. Did y'ever notice yer can niver tell exactly w'en yer drop off? I've tried all I know, but ye're awake one minit, an' chasin' a butterfly wi' a cow's 'ead the next. But that ain't wot I'm a-talkin' about. Paasch 'e's blue mouldy, an' couldn't catch a snail unless yer give 'im a start; an' if yer went ter Packard's, yer'd tell the manager ter go to 'ell, an' git ...
— Jonah • Louis Stone
... very glad to be of any sort of use to you in regard to the beetles. But first let me thank you for your kind note and offer of specimens to my children. My boys are all butterfly hunters; and all young and ardent lepidopterists despise, from the bottom of their ...
— More Letters of Charles Darwin - Volume I (of II) • Charles Darwin
... Tom in great haste, but being fully aware of the danger of royal anger, he crept into an empty snail shell, where he lay for a long time until he was almost starved with hunger; at last he ventured to peep out, and seeing a fine large butterfly on the ground, near the place of his concealment, he got close to it and jumping astride on it was carried up into the, air. The butterfly flew with him from tree to tree and from field to field, at last ...
— The Junior Classics, Volume 1 • Willam Patten
... and been built by her great-grandfather. As it was, she had a real affection for the antiquated place, with its curiously-carved door-knocker, its oaken staircase, and broad chimneys with their heavy franklins. She was a sweet, wild, restless little butterfly, with beauty enough to make her the heroine of the most extravagant romance, and ...
— The Sea-Witch - or, The African Quadroon A Story of the Slave Coast • Maturin Murray
... kings, Who webbed enchantment on the bowls of night. Sleeps in the soul of all created things; In the blue sea, th' Acroceraunian height, In the eyed butterfly's auricular wings And orgied visions of the anchorite; In all that singing flies and flying sings, In rain, in pain, in delicate delight. But much more magic, much more cogent spells Weave here their wizardries about my ...
— Crome Yellow • Aldous Huxley
... 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 ...
— Bunny Brown and His Sister Sue at Camp Rest-A-While • Laura Lee Hope
... more than mortal beauty ever really be his—his in the common prose of possession that can never be disassociated with marriage—the prose that is to the delicate subtle beauty of love, what the rough touch is to the wings of the butterfly, the bloom of ...
— The Mystery of a Turkish Bath • E.M. Gollan (AKA Rita)
... remember my tellin' you about Lucy Lee, the Virginia butterfly we took in over the week-end once and how I had to scratch around one Saturday to find some male dinner mate for her, and picked this hard-boiled egg from the bond room, one of these buddin' John D.'s who keeps an expense account and shudders every time he passes ...
— Torchy As A Pa • Sewell Ford
... scene is changed; another monarch has ascended the throne, and the grub has changed to a beautiful butterfly! The witnesses to all I have asserted are still living, loudly now proclaim the truth, and embrace me with ...
— The Life and Adventures of Baron Trenck - Vol. 2 (of 2) • Baron Trenck
... girls and boys; He'll come near us by and by; Here he is, don't make a noise;— We'll not hurt you, butterfly." ...
— Little Songs • Eliza Lee Follen
... down, crying and yelping, and looking wistfully over the swollen flood, which the poor thing had not the courage to brave. This day, for the first time, I heard the song of the Canada sparrow, a soft, sweet note, almost running into a warble. Saw a small, black velvety butterfly with a yellow border to its wings. Under a warm bank found two flowers of the houstonia in bloom. Saw frogs' spawn near Piny ...
— Wake-Robin • John Burroughs
... among birds, and these are so curious that I must briefly describe them. It will be as well, however, first to explain what is meant by mimicry in natural history. At page 205 of the first volume of this work, I have described a butterfly which, when at rest, so closely resembles a dead leaf, that it thereby escape the attacks of its enemies. This is termed a "protective resemblance." If however the butterfly, being itself savoury morsel to birds, had closely ...
— The Malay Archipelago - Volume II. (of II.) • Alfred Russel Wallace
... butterfly fluttered across the scene of their festivities. With all the energy of his enthusiastic spirit and strong muscular frame the naturalist leaped up, overturned his dinner, rushed after the coveted specimen, tripped over ...
— Blown to Bits - or, The Lonely Man of Rakata • Robert Michael Ballantyne
... chrysalis, don't it? I say, Jack, if there be anything in the old myth that a soul is typified by a butterfly, well, then the one that this chrysalis sent forth was a very noble specimen and took all the sunlight on its wings. See here!' He uncovered the face. Horrible, indeed, it looked, as though stained with blood. But I knew him at once, Jacob Settle! My friend ...
— Dracula's Guest • Bram Stoker
... But for every butterfly there comes an end to summer. The flowers dropped from the frames and died in the garden; a pitiless winter set in; and day after day the mittened and mufflered schoolboy, dragging his sled through drifts of heavy snow to school, eyed curiously ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 22, Aug., 1859 • Various
... to call in the sunrise and the sunset, the rainbow and the autumn woods and the wild flowers, and the woodpecker and the purple finch and the squirrel and the jay and the butterfly, the November traveler and the truant boy, ...
— History of American Literature • Reuben Post Halleck
... flight suggested by the word "butterfly," the mechanical power implied by "motor," the ability to control assured in the title "aviator," all combined with the personality and enthusiasm of girls themselves, make this story one for any girl or other reader "to ...
— What Two Children Did • Charlotte E. Chittenden
... history of Attraction, capillary Barley, to transplant, by Messrs. Hardy Beetle, instinct of Books noticed Butterfly, instinct of Calendar, horticultural ——, agricultural Columnea Schiedeana Dahlia, the, by Mr. Edwards Digging machine, Samuelson's Eggs, to keep Farm leases, by Mr. Morton Frost, plants injured by Grapes, ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 185, May 14, 1853 • Various
... Betsy Butterfly is the owner of a pair of such beautifully colored wings and her sweet disposition matches them so perfectly that it is a very common occurrence to hear one of the tiny dwellers in Farmer Green's meadow ...
— The Tale of Cuffy Bear • Arthur Scott Bailey
... pleasure the butterfly chases; When manhood approaches, the maid he embraces; But view him at once baith the husband and daddie, He fondly looks back to the ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volumes I-VI. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... busy and so wise; but when he touches even the astral, he realizes at once that he has been all the time only a caterpillar crawling about and seeing nothing but his own leaf, whereas now he has spread his wings like the butterfly and flown away into the sunshine of a wider world. Yet, impossible as it may seem, the same experience is repeated when he passes into the mental world, for this life is in turn so much fuller and wider and more intense than the astral that once more no comparison is possible. And yet ...
— A Textbook of Theosophy • C.W. Leadbeater
... and excitement until it almost matched the velvet in her imposing hat. Every now and then she glanced furtively at her reflection in the mirror, and the vision of that bird-of-paradise hovering over those huge butterfly bows thrilled her with a great sense of importance and self-satisfaction. More than once she saw that her hat was being noticed and commented on by the other guests, and she tried her best to seem not aware—to ...
— The Governess • Julie M. Lippmann
... it from her mind: so she knew him, knew him to be a sweeter and a variable Willoughby, a generous kind of Willoughby, a Willoughby-butterfly, without having the free mind to summarize him and picture him for a warning. Scattered features of him, such as the instincts call up, were not sufficiently impressive. Besides, the clouded mind was ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... the divans Cuban senoritas—refugees at Tampa—dark-eyed, of course, languid of manner, to be sure, and with the eloquent fan, ever present, omnipotent—shutting and closing, shutting and closing, like the wings of a gigantic butterfly; adventurers, adventuresses; artists, photographers; correspondents by the score—female correspondents; story writers, novelists, real war correspondents, and real draughtsmen—artists, indeed; and a host of lesser men with spurs yet to ...
— Crittenden - A Kentucky Story of Love and War • John Fox, Jr.
... the drift of this poem, or rather cycle of poems, that ring throughout with a deeper accent and a more direct appeal than has yet made itself felt. It is the drama of the human soul,—"the mystic winged and flickering butterfly," "flitting between earth and sky," in its passage from birth ...
— The Poems of Emma Lazarus - Vol. I (of II.), Narrative, Lyric, and Dramatic • Emma Lazarus
... including spotted rays that were oval in shape and brick red in color, their bodies strewn with erratic blue speckles and identifiable by their jagged double stings, silver-backed skates, common stingrays with stippled tails, butterfly rays that looked like huge two-meter cloaks flapping at middepth, toothless guitarfish that were a type of cartilaginous fish closer to the shark, trunkfish known as dromedaries that were one and a half feet long and had humps ending in backward-curving stings, serpentine moray eels with ...
— 20000 Leagues Under the Seas • Jules Verne
... beauties and interesting objects of Rome. He wanted to get me home, he said, to have me all to himself, and to see me safely installed as the mistress of Grassdale Manor, just as single-minded, as naive, and piquante as I was; and as if I had been some frail butterfly, he expressed himself fearful of rubbing the silver off my wings by bringing me into contact with society, especially that of Paris and Rome; and, more-over, he did not scruple to tell me that there were ladies in both places that would tear his eyes out if they ...
— The Tenant of Wildfell Hall • Anne Bronte
... more alike than a bee and a butterfly, or any other useless little thing," she said, brightly. "But you're very much mistaken if you think I'm the best. Mother would lie down in despair and die, and this house would come to naught at once, if ...
— Ester Ried • Pansy (aka. Isabella M. Alden)
... alas! or happily? Generally some pretty trifle which vouched for the sentiment and taste of the gift horse without seeming to tax the poor animal's resources. For instance, Mrs. Guy Sloane brought a silver butterfly intended for a pen-wiper, and my old friend Sam Bolles a silver paper-knife. Polly Flinders (I never remember her married name), who has babies of her own, gave Josephine a silver whistle, ostensibly intended for ...
— The Opinions of a Philosopher • Robert Grant
... with a capacious pocket, in which she always carried knitting or some other "handy work"; a white handkerchief was laid primly around the wrinkled throat and fastened with a pin containing a lock of gray hair; her cap was of black lace and lutestring ribbon, not one of the butterfly affairs that perch on the top of the puffs and frizzes of the modern old lady, but a substantial structure that covered her whole head and was tied securely under her chin. She talked in a sweet old treble with a little lisp, caused ...
— Aunt Jane of Kentucky • Eliza Calvert Hall
... kinds of Oviparous Insects I have found to be perfectly round every way, like so many Globules, of this sort I have observ'd some sorts of Spiders Eggs; and chancing the last Summer to inclose a very large and curiously painted Butterfly in a Box, intending to examine its gaudery with my Microscope, I found within a day or two after I inclos'd her, almost all the inner surface of the Box cover'd over with an infinite of exactly round Eggs, which were stuck very ...
— Micrographia • Robert Hooke
... you come? I know not, I ask not, I never had home. Butterfly, butterfly, where do you go? Where the sun shines, ...
— The Little Mother Goose • Anonymous
... the pink carnations in a tall glass vase, a turning round of a long-stemmed rose in a silver holder, a punch here and there to the pillows of the davenport and at last dropping down on her desk chair as a hovering butterfly settles ...
— Raspberry Jam • Carolyn Wells
... heart and transform him into one of the holiest and most useful of men. It has often occurred in the past and will doubtless often occur in the future. There sits before you a woman, who is a mere butterfly of fashion. She seems to have no thought above society and pleasure and adulation. Why preach to her? Without the regenerating power of the Holy Spirit, it would be foolishness and a waste of time; but you can never tell, perhaps this very night the Spirit of ...
— The Person and Work of The Holy Spirit • R. A. Torrey
... was more serious in my life, good folkses all. I've got to be. This butterfly existence has gone on long enough. Norah, and Max, and Mr. Doctor Man, I am ...
— Dawn O'Hara, The Girl Who Laughed • Edna Ferber
... fingertips that Selincourt was watching him with an amused smile, Lawrence returned Mrs. Cleve's nod with less than his usual ease. Her eye ranged on from Selincourt, to whom she waved a butterfly salute, over the rather faded elegance of Laura Clowes and the extremely youthful charms of Isabel: apparently she did not admire Lawrence's ladies: she spoke to her cavalier, an elderly, foreign-looking man with a copper complexion and curly dark hair, and they laughed together. What ensued ...
— Nightfall • Anthony Pryde
... of our friends—this butterfly may fold his wings, and lie under cover in the cold air of Glendearg; but were he at Holyrood, he would, did his life depend on it, expand his spangled drapery in the eyes of the queen and court—Rather than fail of ...
— The Monastery • Sir Walter Scott
... Selwoode. Many people came there now—masculine women and muscleless men, for the most part. They had, every one of them, some scheme for bettering the universe; and if among them Margaret seemed somewhat out of place—a butterfly among earnest-minded ants—her heart was in every plan they advocated, and they found her purse-strings infinitely elastic. The girl was pitiably anxious to be of some ...
— The Eagle's Shadow • James Branch Cabell
... 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 ...
— Games and Play for School Morale - A Course of Graded Games for School and Community Recreation • Various
... Cowen's overture "The Butterfly's Ball" given by the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, and on the 31st Saint-Saens's overture ...
— Annals of Music in America - A Chronological Record of Significant Musical Events • Henry Charles Lahee
... him by the arm and leads him to the butterfly-cases, which the DOCTOR, who has come back, has ...
— L'Aiglon • Edmond Rostand
... his youth: disappointed by not obtaining a commission in the Guards, he led a desultory butterfly-like life; one day at Richmond with Queen Caroline, then Princess of Wales; another, at Pope's villa, at Twickenham; sometimes in the House of Commons, in which he succeeded his elder brother as member for Bury; and, at the period when he has been described ...
— The Wits and Beaux of Society - Volume 1 • Grace Wharton and Philip Wharton
... daughter, another Lady Alice. With these illustrious sisters Spenser claimed kindred. To each of these he dedicated one of his minor poems; to Lady Strange, the Tears of the Muses; to Lady Compton, the Apologue of the Fox and the Ape, Mother Hubberd's Tale; to Lady Carey, the Fable of the Butterfly and the Spider, Muiopotmos. And in each dedication he assumed on their part ...
— Spenser - (English Men of Letters Series) • R. W. Church
... Now the butterfly dance followed the others. This was danced by the boys and girls together, and the pairs were equal in size, age and the color of their garments. When all the dances had ended, the dancers marched out with ...
— The Chinese Fairy Book • Various
... did not stare long. She soon forgot there was a shabby figure at the big piano, because she was seeing the butterfly soaring up and up in the sunshine, with the jewels glowing on his gorgeous wings, wings that were soon to be broken and trailing. She saw the pulsing of the broken wings, and felt the pity that was pulsing through the sunny world at this darkening tragedy. ...
— Miss Pat at Artemis Lodge • Pemberton Ginther
... the lure was still there. She was like a butterfly, he thought, yellow and white or blue and gold, fluttering over a hedge of ...
— The Titan • Theodore Dreiser
... cloud about her slender waist; one bare, thin, soft, girlish arm, hanging listlessly, was lost in the folds of her pink tunic; in the other she held her fan, and with rapid, short strokes fanned her burning face. But while she looked like a butterfly, clinging to a blade of grass, and just about to open its rainbow wings for fresh flight, her heart ached ...
— Anna Karenina • Leo Tolstoy
... gay little city that lies as bright within its girdle of woodland as any butterfly that rests ...
— Wisdom, Wit, and Pathos of Ouida - Selected from the Works of Ouida • Ouida
... them, with my home so thatched and shady, and my life drowned in their wide-eyed reverie. At any rate, these little creatures are alive, the batrachians also, and, as I found the next day, pupae and chrysales of one sort or another, for, to my deep emotion, I saw a little white butterfly staggering in the air over the flower-garden of a ...
— The Purple Cloud • M.P. Shiel
... in his rage, speech seemed denied to Robert as he glared at the many-colored crowd before him—the fair ladies of honor, butterfly bright; the slim, Italianate youths, fantastically foppish; the smooth, eager priesthood; the soldiers weary of ceremonial but indifferent to fatigue; the sturdy bulk, blue eyes, and yellow hair of the Northern Guards. ...
— The Proud Prince • Justin Huntly McCarthy
... a little, and rising from the bed went to the window and leaned out. A large white clematis pushed its moonlike blossom up to her face, as though asking to be kissed, and a bright red butterfly danced dreamily up and down in the late sunbeams, now poising on the ivy and anon darting off again into ...
— God's Good Man • Marie Corelli
... "Mother and the Boy, with the Butterfly," were not indifferent: it was an affair of whole continents of ...
— The Prose Works of William Wordsworth • William Wordsworth
... leaves Chaucer, the spirit of Chaucer leaves the verse. You see plainly that his rule is to change the least that can possibly be changed. Yet the gentle grace, the lingering musical sweetness, the taking simplicity, of the wise old poet, vanishes—brushed away like the down from the butterfly's wing, by the lightest and most ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Vol 58, No. 357, July 1845 • Various
... quotation about "breaking a butterfly upon a wheel" came to him as she chattered on, telling him delightedly how she had made up her mind to surprise him with tomato bisque if it was her last act, and how she had discovered a box that was labeled "condensed milk," and opened it with ...
— I've Married Marjorie • Margaret Widdemer
... nautics are an effort toward angelhood. Men can walk water who are willing to take a boat for an overshoe. So we may air when we get the right shoe. Browning gives us a delicious sense of being amphibian as we swim. And the butterfly, that winged rather than rooted flower, looking down upon us as we float, begets in us a great longing to be polyphibian. We have innate tendencies toward a life of finer surroundings, and we shall take to them with zest, if we ...
— Among the Forces • Henry White Warren
... in his shirt-sleeves, carrying a butterfly-net and a botany-can. He goes straight up to the bookshelf and takes down a book, which he begins to ...
— Plays by August Strindberg, Second series • August Strindberg
... with pleasure as the little creature bounded toward her. "Oh, it looks like a bird or a butterfly!" she cried as she picked it up; and the dog put its paws on her shoulders and looked at her with eyes "like a Christian's." After that she would never have it out of her sight, and petted and talked to it as if it had been a child—as indeed ...
— The Early Short Fiction of Edith Wharton, Part 1 (of 10) • Edith Wharton
... to understand. St. Jerome's love 'pale with midnight prayer' would be more believable than the butterfly Dora. Goodness, gracious! The idea of that man being in love! It pulls him down a bit. I thought he never ...
— The Man Between • Amelia E. Barr
... Tom drew his sword, and spoilt her treat, By slaying pussey at his feet. Thus, Tom lived happy—without strife, Till the queen, in anger, sought his life. In the palace he could no longer stay; So on a butterfly he ...
— An Entertaining History of Tom Thumb - William Raine's Edition • Unknown
... a cannon shot to kill a butterfly," he said, "and neither will I ever light a delicate cigarette with a huge, shapeless coal from a campfire. It would be an insult to the cigarette, and after such an outrage I could never draw a particle of flavor from it. No, Harry, we thank you, you mean well, but ...
— The Scouts of Stonewall • Joseph A. Altsheler
... wave, standing on the board, dashing far across the breakers to the shore, with never a failure, while Gedge's little half-breed daughter, a beautiful fairy-like creature, darted upon the sea as a butterfly upon ...
— White Shadows in the South Seas • Frederick O'Brien
... mighty good keer of sick slaves. He allus called in a doctor for 'em, and kept plenty of castor ile, turpentine, and de lak on hand to dose 'em wid. Miss Emily made teas out of a heap of sorts of leaves, barks, and roots, sich as butterfly root, pine tops, mullein, catnip and mint leaves, feverfew grass, red oak bark, slippery ellum bark, and black gum chips. Most evvybody had to wear little sacks of papaw seeds or of assyfizzy (asafetida) 'round deir necks to ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves - Georgia Narratives, Part 3 • Works Projects Administration
... black-and-crimson oriole (Analcipus sanguinolentus)." Mr. Wallace also speaks of the rare and beautiful butterflies which he captured here. In particular he secured a specimen of the calliper butterfly, "remarkable for having on each hind wing two curved tails like ...
— A Visit to Java - With an Account of the Founding of Singapore • W. Basil Worsfold
... always liked to do, so she took the little round basket Mrs. Hunt handed her and was soon very busy among the tomato vines. She was watching a big yellow butterfly bury itself in an opening flower when she heard a voice on the other side of the fence, say: "Hello!" and looking up she saw Marjorie Stone and Alice ...
— Little Maid Marian • Amy E. Blanchard
... inquisitiveness, buoyant and thoughtless, content to look neither forwards nor backwards, wholly without responsibility or intelligence, just borne along by the pleasure of the moment, perfectly harmless and friendly as a rule, a sort of cheerful butterfly. That is not in the least my waking temperament; but it fills me sometimes with an uneasy suspicion that it is more ...
— Escape and Other Essays • Arthur Christopher Benson
... then, nothing exists which has not solidity and extension, and nothing is extended and solid but matter, which in one state forms a crystal, in another a blade of grass, in a third a butterfly, and in other states other forms. The essence of grass, or the essence of crystal, in other words, those native energies of their several forms constituting and keeping them what they are, can no more be explained than can the essentiality of ...
— An Apology for Atheism - Addressed to Religious Investigators of Every Denomination - by One of Its Apostles • Charles Southwell
... Jem wandered far and wide that night, but never met Esther. The next day he applied to the police; and at last they recognised under his description of her, a woman known to them under the name of the "Butterfly," from the gaiety of her dress a year or two ago. By their help he traced out one of her haunts, a low lodging-house behind Peter-street. He and his companion, a kind-hearted policeman, were admitted, suspiciously enough, by the ...
— Mary Barton • Elizabeth Gaskell
... A butterfly settled on a purple sea-thistle close to his head. It poised there with fanning wings, so languid, so unconcerned. ...
— The Gentleman - A Romance of the Sea • Alfred Ollivant
... thoroughly understood her, when all at once he would find himself mentally peering into some dark corner into which the penetrating light of his usually swift deduction could throw no glimmer. She possessed the sins of the butterfly and the latent possibilities of a Judith. She was the most interesting feminine problem he had in his long years encountered. The mother mildly amused him, for he could discern the character that she was sedulously ...
— The Place of Honeymoons • Harold MacGrath
... chariot in distress, a chariot such as would have become an Ondine by the waters of the Serpentine, and the very last sort of equipage that you could expect to see smashed in the Poultry. It was really breaking a butterfly upon a wheel to crush its delicate springs, and crack its dark brown panels, soil its dainty hammer-cloth, and endanger the lives of its young coachman in a flaxen wig, and its two tall footmen in short ...
— Tancred - Or, The New Crusade • Benjamin Disraeli
... good deal about the resort. I knew that many or most of its patrons were Socialists or anarchists or some other kind of "ists." After my experience at the Cooper Institute meeting, Yampolsky's caf seemed to be the last place in the world for me to visit. But I was drawn to it as a butterfly is to a flame, and finally the temptation ...
— The Rise of David Levinsky • Abraham Cahan
... of her, she saw a ruffed grouse wandering in the trail. These, and a single tiny grey bird with a dreary note interminably repeated, were the only living things she saw except here and there a summer-battered butterfly of the Vanessa tribe flitting ...
— The Flaming Jewel • Robert Chambers
... the river are animated, and peculiarly Chinese. The northern monsoons, called typhoons in China, are blowing strongly down stream, while the current itself is naturally strong; under the influence of wind and current combined, junks and sampans with butterfly sails all set are going down stream at racing speed. In striking contrast to these, are the up-stream boats, crawling along at scarcely perceptible pace against the current, in response to the rhythmical movements of a line of men, women, and children harnessed ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle Volume II. - From Teheran To Yokohama • Thomas Stevens
... the girl had no evil tendencies and was, upon the whole, well-principled, warm-hearted, and good-natured, or she might have gone very grievously astray. As it was, she was now at seventeen a bright butterfly, flitting from one to another of the flowers of life, and sipping as much honey as she could from each. She was fond of all sorts of bright, pretty things, handsome clothes and jewelry included. She liked to sing and she ...
— Katie Robertson - A Girls Story of Factory Life • Margaret E. Winslow
... insects with which we need not desire to be too familiar, such as Mosquitoes, Fleas, Wasps, and Bees; but when a "bug" is harmless as well as beautiful, there is no reason why we should not treat it as a friend. Who is afraid of a Butterfly? ...
— Round-about Rambles in Lands of Fact and Fancy • Frank Richard Stockton
... without the thing produced being of the same kind as that which produced it. Very few creatures reproduce after their own kind; they reproduce something which has the potentiality of becoming that which their parents were. Thus the butterfly lays an egg, which egg can become a caterpillar, which caterpillar can become a chrysalis, which chrysalis can become a butterfly; and though I freely grant that the machines cannot be said to have more than the germ ...
— Erewhon • Samuel Butler
... lovely enough, with its emerald lake and rainbow mists, to start a man's tongue to love-making whether he will or not. And so surely as it is raining, something has happened. Dolly was as gay as a day-old butterfly and smiled as if a curly-headed Cupid had tickled her with a wing-feather. The Seeker was deadly solemn. Possibly ...
— The Lady and Sada San - A Sequel to The Lady of the Decoration • Frances Little
... is there, over whose mind a bright spring morning does not exercise a magic influence—carrying him back to the days of his childish sports, and conjuring up before him the old green field with its gently-waving trees, where the birds sang as he has never heard them since—where the butterfly fluttered far more gaily than he ever sees him now, in all his ramblings—where the sky seemed bluer, and the sun shone more brightly—where the air blew more freshly over greener grass, and sweeter-smelling ...
— Sketches by Boz - illustrative of everyday life and every-day people • Charles Dickens
... Police wore his full uniform and decorations as the law requires of him when on duty. During the affair he was thoroughly spattered with water and covered with dirt and cinders. When he emerged he presented an appearance somewhat like that of a butterfly after passing through a sausage machine. A detachment of soldiers came to the spot but did not form a cordon around it. Every spectator went as near the fire as he thought prudent, but was careful not to get in the way. Two or three ...
— Overland through Asia; Pictures of Siberian, Chinese, and Tartar - Life • Thomas Wallace Knox
... contemplates with vague notions of poetry and love— which, at forty, he might think dull and d—-d expensive-which, at sixty, he would pronounce to be damp in winter, and full of earwigs in the summer. Master Philip was leaning on his gun; Master Sidney was chasing a peacock butterfly; Arthur was silently gazing on the shining lake and the still foliage that drooped over its surface. In the countenance of this young man there was something that excited a certain interest. He was less handsome than Philip, ...
— Night and Morning, Volume 1 • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... 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 ...
— Recollections of a Tour Made in Scotland A.D. 1803 • Dorothy Wordsworth
... glass, which a woman ne'er misses. Nor ever wants time for a sly glance or two, A butterfly,[1] fresh from the night-flower's kisses. Flew over the mirror, and shaded her view. Enraged with the insect for hiding her graces, She brushed him—he fell, alas; never to rise: "Ah! such," said the girl, "is the pride ...
— The Complete Poems of Sir Thomas Moore • Thomas Moore et al
... 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
... store: But the country they travers'd was smiling and gay, While the Sun, brightly shining, illumin'd their way; And we all know how cheerful, how sweet is the scene, When Nature unfolds her new livery of green. The Birds carol'd round them, the Butterfly play'd, And the soft vernal breeze kindly lent them ...
— The Peacock and Parrot, on their Tour to Discover the Author of "The Peacock At Home" • Unknown
... on the walls and two huge fireplaces supported on nudities shivering with the cold, for no stick of wood ever blazes on the well-swept hearths. It has also a gorgeous restaurant, with panelled ceiling, across which skip bunches of butterfly Cupids in shameless costumes, and an inviting cafe with never-dying palms in the windows, a portrait of the Kaiser over the counter holding the coffee-urn, and a portrait of the Kaiserin over the counter holding the little sticky cakes, the baby bottles ...
— The Underdog • F. Hopkinson Smith
... arms he gradually fluttered round, keeping time with the music. In some of the quicker movements he either snapped his fingers or used wooden castanets, or held the pleated skirt of his coat fully extended like butterfly wings. There was very little variation to his dancing which, like the Persian was more a feat of endurance and speed than a graceful performance. The ankle did most of ...
— Across Coveted Lands - or a Journey from Flushing (Holland) to Calcutta Overland • Arnold Henry Savage Landor
... butterfly poised on a wild-rose spray, As a child tripped by one summer day, And he thought: "How sorrowful she must be To know she can never have wings like me!" But the child passed on, with a careless eye Of the gay-winged, proud, young butterfly, While he fluttered about, ...
— Pages for Laughing Eyes • Unknown
... could hope to find in so young and so glacial a wilderness. Almost every leaf is tinted then, and the golden-rods are in bloom; but most of the color is given by the ripe grasses, willows, and aspens. At the foot of the lake you stand in a trembling aspen grove, every leaf painted like a butterfly, and away to right and left round the shores sweeps a curving ribbon of meadow, red and brown dotted with pale yellow, shading off here and there into hazy purple. The walls, too, are dashed with bits of bright color that ...
— The Mountains of California • John Muir
... for the most part, on the side of the designer—the morality, unexceptionable certainly, the author's capital. Here are then, to these moralities, a smiling train of mirths supplied by George Cruikshank. See yonder little fellows butterfly-hunting across a common! Such a light, brisk, airy, gentleman-like drawing was never made upon such a ...
— George Cruikshank • William Makepeace Thackeray
... Patty, happy as a butterfly, hovered over her treasures. She wore the immaculate white linen garb of a nurse, and very sweet and fair she looked. Later, Fleurette was to grace the booth and attract all observers by her marvellous ...
— Patty and Azalea • Carolyn Wells
... mid-day course hath reached, His tranquil face he in a mirror sees: Nor grass nor leaf is shaken by the wind; There is no ripple on the wave, no chirp Of cricket, rustling wing of bird in bush, Nor hum of butterfly; no motion, voice, Or far or near, is either seen or heard. Its shores are locked in quiet most profound; So that myself, the world I quite forget, As motionless I sit; my limbs appear To lie dissolved, of breath and sense deprived; As if, ...
— The Poems of Giacomo Leopardi • Giacomo Leopardi
... 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
... Tony, just as Eagle had forgotten me. Behind Eagle's slight figure towered massively Major Vandyke's splendid bulk; and as I waved my handkerchief to Eagle, while the train slid slowly out, I was vaguely aware of Diana's outstretched arm and a butterfly flutter of something white and small. Eagle's eyes went past me to her, though his smile was for me also; and Di was able deftly to kill her two birds with one stone, at the last. Her farewell look and gesture ...
— Secret History Revealed By Lady Peggy O'Malley • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... considerable progress. My spare time was spent almost entirely in the company of little Emily. I was never tired of attending on her. As was then the custom, she wore a little red mantle as a walking dress. One day we were out in the fields, when she ran off in chase of a butterfly. At the further end of the field a bull was grazing, having been turned out to indulge his sulky humour by himself. The sight of the red cloak fluttering over the green meadow suddenly excited his ...
— Ben Burton - Born and Bred at Sea • W. H. G. Kingston
... Still he could not forego the company of his sisters-in-law, especially as the eldest one was beautiful. Her honey was no less than her gall, and Nabendu's mind tasted at once the sweetness of the one and the bitterness of the other. The butterfly, with its bruised wings, buzzes round the flower in blind fury, ...
— The Hungry Stones And Other Stories • Rabindranath Tagore
... butterfly came and sat on a cluster of heliotrope and waved his crimson-banded wings in the hot sunshine. Hastings knew him for a friend, and before his eyes there came a vision of tall mulleins and scented milkweed alive with painted wings, a vision of a white house and woodbine-covered piazza,—a ...
— The King In Yellow • Robert W. Chambers
... since Abel's time, I do suppose, but it was all new to us; and indeed, my two companions had fresh ways of putting things that seemed to make them their own in a manner. Yvon maintained that gaiety was the best that life had to give; that the butterfly being the type of the human soul, the nearer man could come to his prototype, the better for him and for all. Sorrow and suffering, he cried, were a blot on the scheme, a mistake, a concession to the devil; if all would but spread their wings and fly ...
— Rosin the Beau • Laura Elizabeth Howe Richards
... himself of a totally different opinion, and quoted Dr. Johnson against her, who had told him that, taking away her Greek, she was as ignorant as a butterfly. ...
— Autobiography, Letters and Literary Remains of Mrs. Piozzi (Thrale) (2nd ed.) (2 vols.) • Mrs. Hester Lynch Piozzi
... must not allow yourself to be too much excited, you must not. Indeed you must not. Mrs Wititterly is of a most excitable nature, Sir Mulberry. The snuff of a candle, the wick of a lamp, the bloom on a peach, the down on a butterfly. You might blow her away, my lord; ...
— The Life And Adventures Of Nicholas Nickleby • Charles Dickens
... admires the fair and the lovely in nature—whether it be the wide-spread beauty of sky and earth, or beauty in its minuter modifications, as we see it in the flowers that spring up at our feet, or the butterfly that flutters over them—who, I say, that admires the fair and lovely in nature, can be indifferent to the fairest and loveliest of all her productions? As the mistress, however, of by far the strongest-minded man I ever knew, there ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Volume 2 - Historical, Traditional, and Imaginative • Alexander Leighton |
