"Fir tree" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... answer to his prayer, life for him suddenly became a doubtful thing. A wild gust of wind had uprooted a young fir tree from the plantation, and bearing it with a savage glee toward the cliff side, dashed it against the kneeling man. There was no chance for him against it. Over they went, man and tree together, to all appearance bound for ...
— The New Tenant • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... was sitting under the Slender Fir Tree, and he couldn't help hearing what Old Mother West Wind said. "The Best Thing in the World—now what can that be?" thought Striped Chipmunk. "Why, it must be heaps and heaps of nuts and acorns! I'll go ...
— Boys and Girls Bookshelf (Vol 2 of 17) - Folk-Lore, Fables, And Fairy Tales • Various
... day Bodo and One-Ear climbed a fir tree near the edge of a cliff. They were watching a big-nosed rhinoceros. It had just rooted up an oak tree with its twin-tusked snout. Now it was tearing the trunk into strips as we tear a stalk of celery. The boys watched it grinding the ...
— The Tree-Dwellers • Katharine Elizabeth Dopp
... when the poet to description yields Of waters gliding through the goodly fields; The Groves of Granta and her Gothic Halls, Oxford and Christchurch, London and St. Pauls, Or with a ruder flight he feebly aims To paint a rainbow or the River Thames. Perhaps you draw a fir tree or a beech, But then a landscape is beyond your reach; Or, if that allegory please you not, Take this—you'ld form a ...
— Byron's Poetical Works, Vol. 1 • Byron
... hug and coddle one another until they flash into a limpid pool. A score of rivulets from all the mountain side babble hither over rocky beds to join their companions. Thence in rippling current they purl and tinkle down the gentle slopes, through bosky nooks sweet with the odors of fir tree and pine, over meads dappled with the scarlet snap-dragon and purple heath buds, now pausing for a moment to idle with a wood encircled lake, now tumbling in opalescent cascade over a mossy lurch, and then on again in cheerful, hurried ...
— The Johnstown Horror • James Herbert Walker
... A Fir Tree said boastingly to the Bramble: "You are useful for nothing at all, while I am everywhere used for roofs and houses." The Bramble made answer: "You poor creature, if you would only call to mind the axes and saws which are about to hew you down, you would have reason to wish that you had grown ...
— Aesop's Fables - A New Revised Version From Original Sources • Aesop
... the Blacks hadn't everything on their side—I ought to explain though that in our district were large forests of a kind of pine—there's one in this garden,' and he pointed to a pyramidal fir tree with spreading branches of small pointed leaves spiked at the ends, and with a cone of nuts about the size of a big man's head, hanging ...
— Lady Bridget in the Never-Never Land • Rosa Praed
... stood a pretty little Fir Tree. It had a good place; it could have sunlight, air there was in plenty, and all around grew many larger comrades—pines as well as firs. But the little Fir Tree wished ardently to become greater. It did not care for the warm sun and the fresh air; it took no notice of the peasant ...
— Journeys Through Bookland V2 • Charles H. Sylvester
... Pemaou, dancing between me and the sun like some grotesque dream fantasy. He was in full war bravery, his body painted red, barred with white stripes to imitate the lacing on our uniforms, and his hair feather-decked till he towered in height like a fir tree. I say that he was grotesque, but at the time I did not think of his appearance; I thought only that here was a man who was my mate in cunning, ...
— Montlivet • Alice Prescott Smith
... poor Woodcutter was making his way through a pine forest. It was winter, and a night of bitter weather. So cold was it that even the animals and the birds did not know what to make of it. The little Squirrels who lived inside the tall fir tree kept rubbing each other's noses to keep warm, and the Rabbits curled themselves up in their holes and did not even ...
— Tell Me Another Story - The Book of Story Programs • Carolyn Sherwin Bailey
... in the thing whereto I sent it. For ye shall go out with joy, and be led forth with peace: the mountains and the hills shall break forth before you into singing, and all the trees of the field shall clap their hands. Instead of the thorn shall come up the fir tree, and instead of the brier shall come up the myrtle tree: and it shall be to the LORD for a name, for an everlasting sign that ...
— The Ontario Readers: The High School Reader, 1886 • Ministry of Education
... the horse with all his might. The road grew worse and worse every hour. Now he could not see the yoke at all. Now and then the sledge ran into a young fir tree, a dark object scratched the turner's hands and flashed before his eyes, and the field of vision was white and ...
— The Schoolmistress and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... structure, composed exteriorly of twigs, grass, and moss, and lined with stalks of maiden-hair fern and fine roots. It is usually placed high up in a fir tree. Colonel Rattray believes that the birds bring up two broods in the year. They lay first in May, and, as soon as the young are able to shift for themselves, a second nest is made. Thus in July both young birds at large ...
— Birds of the Indian Hills • Douglas Dewar
... where the warm sun and the fresh air made a sweet resting place, grew a pretty little fir tree. The situation was all that could be desired; and yet it was not happy, it wished so much to be like its tall companions, the pines and firs ...
— Christmas Stories And Legends • Various
... he made his way to the heap of debris. It was the drift-pile made by the river, which at this point cast out from its bosom logs and trees and all manner of debris brought over the falls and down the gorge, a great heap piled in inextricable confusion as high as a tall fir tree, and as broad as ...
— A Mating in the Wilds • Ottwell Binns
... a fine opportunity for a first grade at Christmas time. The fir tree has become vitally interesting through nature study at this time of the year. The children love to make things to decorate a tree. They have a short list of stories they can tell by this time. All this can be utilized in a Christmas ...
— A Study of Fairy Tales • Laura F. Kready
... into a ripple of sound, and eddying and dying away and coming back again—buz-z-z! His notebook lying on the table was as small as a postage stamp, while the pencil in his hand was as big as an elephant's leg. How can a man write on a microscopic blur with the stump of a fir tree? He poked and prodded, and Mr. MacMahon watched for a few moments his clerk poking his note-book with the wrong end of a pencil. He silently pulled his daughter forward and made ...
— Here are Ladies • James Stephens
... burned out his eyes and turned him adrift, in spite of his prayers and tears; but, as the boat drifted, the lions swam after, and at last they laid hold of it and dragged it ashore on an island, and placed the lad under a fir tree. They caught game for him, and they plucked the birds and made him a bed of down; but he was forced to eat his meat raw and he was blind. At last, one day the biggest lion was chasing a hare which was ...
— East of the Sun and West of the Moon - Old Tales from the North • Peter Christen Asbjornsen
... eminence. On the top of the hill the Saracens had a castle, from which they were driven (p.187), and all the fortifications destroyed excepting one tower, now the town clock tower. By the roadside, about half-way between Cogolin and St. Tropez, is a very large fir tree. 32 m. N.E. from Hyres and 26m. S.E. ...
— The South of France—East Half • Charles Bertram Black
... "I never heard of a stork that when it met with a fir tree demurred as to its right to build its nest there; and I never heard of a coney yet that questioned whether it had a permit to run into the rock. Why, these creatures would soon perish if they were always doubting and fearing as to whether they had a ...
— The Way to God and How to Find It • Dwight Moody
... desperate risks and survive, without some trace of his deeds being manifest in his bearing. Those tried by fire are sure of themselves, and it shows in their eyes. Besides, Jack MacRae was twenty-four, clear-skinned, vigorous, straight as a young fir tree, a handsome boy in uniform. But he was not quick to apprehend that these things stirred a girl's fancy, nor did he know that the gloomy something which clouded his eyes made Betty Gower ...
— Poor Man's Rock • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... under a little fir tree near by, and lined it with wild flowers and leaves, and even then hesitated to cover the body with the earth. At last he bethought himself of the fanciful costume which the skeleton and his wife had given him, and in this he carefully wrapped his dead pet. ...
— Toby Tyler • James Otis
... leaves and the flight of the migrating song-birds overhead. His eye grew calmer, his brow more smooth, as he walked silently onward; he drew a long breath, almost like one of relief; then he stopped short, and leaned against the trunk of a tall fir tree, looking absently before him, as though he had forgotten the reason for his proposed interview with his cousin. Hugo grew impatient. They had left the garden, and were walking down a grassy little-trodden lane between ...
— Under False Pretences - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant
... didn't care for what they said; he climbed the steep hillside towards the spot whence the noise came, and when he reached the place, what do you think he saw? Why, an axe that stood there hacking and hewing, all of itself, at the trunk of a fir tree. ...
— East O' the Sun and West O' the Moon • Gudrun Thorne-Thomsen
... with every kind of fruit trees, such as the olive and orange; in the plains, vines, and chestnut trees; along the shore, the hazel and the oak; upon the sides and summits of the mountains, the larch and the fir tree, as in the Alps—every where were signs both of a land promising rich rewards to the laborer, and but few inhabitants. The expatriation was decided on; the young, ready to depart, married; proprietors ...
— The International Monthly Magazine, Volume 5, No. 1, January, 1852 • Various
... swiftly along the Isthmus, for his heart burned to meet that cruel Sinis; and in a pine-wood at last he met him, where the Isthmus was narrowest and the road ran between high rocks. There he sat, upon a stone by the wayside, with a young fir tree for a club across his knees, and a cord laid ready by his side; and over his head, upon the fir tops, hung the bones ...
— Types of Children's Literature • Edited by Walter Barnes
... During the year 1860, however, in the month of July, I came across a community with an unusually large stock of slaves, and I observed a few slaves mingled with their masters leaving the nest, and marching along the same road to a tall Scotch-fir tree, twenty-five yards distant, which they ascended together, probably in search of aphides or cocci. According to Huber, who had ample opportunities for observation, the slaves in Switzerland habitually work with their masters ...
— On the Origin of Species - 6th Edition • Charles Darwin
... seeing, if the woods were so vastly preferable as he seemed to think. She felt herself to be what she was in his imagination, a part of the nature in which she had grown up, as much as the oldest and tallest fir tree on the hillside. People who spend all their lives in unfrequented regions, feel a sense of property in the air, the earth and the water, which city-bred folks cannot readily understand. They have such an intimate, unconscious knowledge of the seasons, the weather, ...
— Greifenstein • F. Marion Crawford
... after the young brave, who was bounding along toward the scrub fir tree where Aggretta was perched. On came the bear, with the blood streaming from his mouth, steadily gaining on the brave, until it seemed certain he would catch him before the tree was reached. Aggretta, ...
— The Sheep Eaters • William Alonzo Allen
... on the hills against the sky, A fir tree rocking its lullaby Swings, swings, Its emerald wings, Swelling the song that my ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 3 (of 4) • Various
... was the biggest and the handsomest man in the village; nearly six feet tall, straight as a fir tree, and black as a bull-moose in December. He had natural force enough and to spare. Whatever he did was done by sheer power of back and arm. He could send a canoe up against the heaviest water, provided he did not get mad and break his ...
— The Ruling Passion • Henry van Dyke
... going up the street; it was rough weather, wet and dirty—the right kind of weather to catch cold in. The dustman was there with his cart, which was full, and looked like a sample of streets on moving-day. At the back of the cart stood a fir tree, quite green still, and with tinsel on its twigs; it had been used on Christmas eve, and now it was thrown out into the street, and the dustman had stood it up at the back of his cart. It was droll to look ...
— Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen • Hans Christian Andersen
... forehead with its tassels, Said, with one long sigh of sorrow, "Take them all, O Hiawatha!" From the earth he tore the fibers, Tore the tough roots of the Larch Tree. Closely sewed the bark together, Bound it closely to the framework. "Give me of your balm, O Fir Tree! Of your balsam and your resin, So to close the seams together That the water may not enter, That the river may not wet me!" And the Fir Tree, tall and somber, Sobbed through all its robes of darkness, Rattled like a shore with ...
— De La Salle Fifth Reader • Brothers of the Christian Schools
... broke down utterly behind a fir tree, so tender a thing is a cynic's heart—"that fouk 'ill tak a man's best wark a' his days withoot a word an' no dae him honour till he dees. Oh, if they hed only githered like this juist aince when he wes livin', an' lat him see he hedna laboured ...
— Beside the Bonnie Brier Bush • Ian Maclaren
... Hills, as I found them in July; but they wear a different garb when winter sets in, when the broad boughs of the fir tree are bent to the ground by the load of snow, and the dark mountains are whitened with it. At that season the mountain-trappers, returned from their autumn expeditions, often build their rude cabins in the midst of these solitudes, ...
— The Oregon Trail • Francis Parkman, Jr.
... tales still told in the villages of this deadly and enchanted mandragora; the lads sometimes go to the churchyards to search for it. Plantains and docks, wild spurge, hops climbing up a dead fir tree, a well-chosen pole for them—nothing is omitted. Even the silver weed, the dusty-looking foliage which is thrust aside as you walk on the footpath by the road, is here labelled with ...
— Nature Near London • Richard Jefferies
... a place of this kind that Mr Ralph Nickleby gazed, as he sat with his hands in his pockets looking out of the window. He had fixed his eyes upon a distorted fir tree, planted by some former tenant in a tub that had once been green, and left there, years before, to rot away piecemeal. There was nothing very inviting in the object, but Mr Nickleby was wrapt in a brown study, and sat contemplating it ...
— The Life And Adventures Of Nicholas Nickleby • Charles Dickens
... deal about the fir tree," said Miss Harson, "as it is very hardy and rugged, and as common in all Northern regions as the white birch—quite as useful, too, as we shall soon see. This rugged species—which is generally called the Scotch fir—is not so smooth and handsome as our balsam-fir, but it is a tree which the ...
— Among the Trees at Elmridge • Ella Rodman Church
... nearer the approach to real life. Casuistry is of no avail; the fact is obvious; Nature flings treasures abroad, puffs them with open ups along on every breeze, piles up lavish layers of them in the free open air, packs countless numbers together in the needles of a fir tree. Prodigality and superfluity are stamped on everything she does. The ear of wheat returns a hundredfold the grain from which it grew. The surface of the earth offers to us far more than we can consume—the grains, the seeds, the fruits, the animals, the abounding ...
— The Life of the Fields • Richard Jefferies
... long at the painting. It was a study of a solitary fir tree, growing at the edge of a cliff—wind-swept, rugged. The high precipice on which it stood was only suggested and far below there was a hint ...
— The Shadow of the East • E. M. Hull
... you are young. You may yet flourish in a milder clime. But the old fir tree dies on ...
— Plays: The Father; Countess Julie; The Outlaw; The Stronger • August Strindberg
... muffled-up forms, with little lights, stole through the dark streets; often there stood a long palace with colonnades in the light of the moon, often a solitary gray column, often a single high fir tree, or a statue behind cypresses. Once, when there was neither rain nor moonshine, the carriage went round the corner of a large house, on whose roof a tall, blooming virgin, with an uplooking child on her arm, herself directed a little hand-light, now toward a white statue, now toward the child, ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. IV • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... Gretel had filled the basket with strawberries, and then had wandered into the forest. They sat down upon a mossy bank under a fir tree, ...
— Story Hour Readers Book Three • Ida Coe and Alice J. Christie
... explained that the Lord would show Smith everything about it, including its site. All the Saints from afar were ordered to come to Nauvoo, "with all your gold, and your silver, and your precious stones, and with all your antiquities, . . . and bring the box tree, and the fir tree, and the pine tree, together with all the precious trees of the earth, and with iron, with copper, and with brass, and with zinc, and with all your most precious things ...
— The Story of the Mormons: • William Alexander Linn
... dog has anything to do with it, Ned; it is a natural law. Now, if a fir tree is in a sheltered place, where the soil is deep and sandy, it grows to a tremendous size; but if the seed falls in a rocky place, where it has to get its roots down cracks to find food, and cling tightly against the cold freezing winds, it keeps down ...
— Jack at Sea - All Work and no Play made him a Dull Boy • George Manville Fenn
... sit doon here a meenit, Teen; the sun's fine an' warm,' said Liz, and plumped down among the bracken, while Teen stood still under the jagged branches of an old fir tree, and looked 'her fill,' as she expressed it, of the lovely world at her feet. It was still a spring world, clothed in a most delicate and exquisite garb of green, waiting only for the touch of later summer to give it a deeper hue. There were many touches of white ...
— The Guinea Stamp - A Tale of Modern Glasgow • Annie S. Swan |
