"Moth" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... crushing defeat grind you into the dust, then you may arise, forgetting time and space and self, and take refuge in mansions not made with hands; and find a certain sad, sweet satisfaction in the contemplation of treasures stored up where moth and rust do not corrupt, and where thieves do not break through ...
— Love, Life & Work • Elbert Hubbard
... gone vrom e'thly eyes To be a-kept in darksome sleep, Until the good ageaen do rise A-jay to souls they left to weep. The rwose wer doust that bound her brow; The moth did eat her Zunday ceaepe; Her frock wer out o' fashion now; Her shoes wer dried up out o' sheaepe— The shoes that woonce did glitter black Along the ...
— Poems of Rural Life in the Dorset Dialect • William Barnes
... truth in that, and yet, like a fluttering moth round a flame, it seems to me, that when I do see you, you take a terrific kind of satisfaction in talking of ...
— Varney the Vampire - Or the Feast of Blood • Thomas Preskett Prest
... to the Bible she had brought, and from which she had previously been reading. "There is a verse there which tells us that we are to lay up riches in heaven, where neither moth nor rust doth corrupt, and where thieves do not break through and steal," she answered in an unaffected tone. "I should not expect interest, and I am very sure that I should be satisfied ...
— Ned Garth - Made Prisoner in Africa. A Tale of the Slave Trade • W. H. G. Kingston
... moth ate a word. To me that seemed A curious happening when I heard of that wonder, That a worm should swallow the word of a man, A thief in the dark eat a thoughtful discourse 5 And the strong base it stood on. He stole, but he was not ...
— Old English Poems - Translated into the Original Meter Together with Short Selections from Old English Prose • Various
... laboratory working day and night as long as he could. After nine years of close association with Edison he set up a little laboratory in his own back yard to work out new plastics. He found that by acting on naphthalene—the moth-ball stuff—with chlorine he got a series of useful products called "halowaxes." The lower chlorinated products are oils, which may be used for impregnating paper or soft wood, making it non-inflammable and impregnable to water. If four atoms of chlorine enter the naphthalene molecule ...
— Creative Chemistry - Descriptive of Recent Achievements in the Chemical Industries • Edwin E. Slosson
... flown into a room of its 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 ...
— The Garden Party • Katherine Mansfield
... as tar, and to-day was clothed in a yellow homespun frock. Her hair was twisted and bound into two upright tags that projected above her temples. Altogether, she was not unlike a gigantic black-and-tan moth, a resemblance heightened by the aforementioned antennae, albeit lessened by the baby she always carried on some portion of her wiry frame. She was the toughest, most supple, and most versatile creature I ever saw, of any color or clime. The baby was disposed decorously across ...
— When Grandmamma Was New - The Story of a Virginia Childhood • Marion Harland
... a very valuable insect: it is produced from an egg of a yellowish colour, about the size of a small pin's head, that is laid by a moth, or butterfly. The above cut represents a male and female, and her eggs, of which she lays several hundreds: the moths live but a few days; they never eat, and die directly after the eggs ...
— The History of Insects • Unknown
... frock—do not laugh at me—a bunch on each shoulder, of the most gorgeous colours. Looking yet more closely, I saw that they were of the shape of folded wings, and were made of all kinds of butterfly-wings and moth-wings, crowded together like the feathers on the individual butterfly pinion; but, like them, most beautifully arranged, and producing a perfect harmony of colour and shade. I could now more easily believe ...
— Phantastes - A Faerie Romance for Men and Women • George MacDonald
... flits the moth on filmy wings Into his solitary lair; Shrill evensong the cricket sings From some ...
— Songs of Childhood • Walter de la Mare
... not evade the eyes of the man stock still beside the hemlock; no detail of the drama that was being enacted beside the brook escaped him. He who could observe with ease the smashing of a moth's wing thirty rods from shore, possessed a clearness of vision akin to that of a hawk. A bird fluttered in the underbrush ...
— The Lady of Big Shanty • Frank Berkeley Smith
... rivals, though thou comest in peace yet thy object is hostile:—for one single moment that my mistress associated with a rival, it went well-nigh to slay me with jealousy. Smiling, she replied: "O Sa'di! I am the torch of the assembly; what is it to me if the moth consume itself?" ...
— Persian Literature, Volume 2, Comprising The Shah Nameh, The - Rubaiyat, The Divan, and The Gulistan • Anonymous
... 'mid fire and smoke, And twice ten hundred voices spoke - "The playhouse is in flames!" And, lo! where Catherine Street extends, A fiery tail its lustre lends To every window-pane; Blushes each spout in Martlet Court, And Barbican, moth-eaten fort, And Covent Garden kennels sport A bright ensanguined drain; Meux's new brewhouse shows the light, Rowland Hill's Chapel, and the height Where Patent Shot they sell; The Tennis Court, so fair and tall, Partakes the ray, with ...
— Rejected Addresses: or, The New Theatrum Poetarum • James and Horace Smith
... heels. Averting his face quickly Bloom bends to examine on the halltable the spaniel eyes of a running fox: then, his lifted head sniffing, follows Zoe into the musicroom. A shade of mauve tissuepaper dims the light of the chandelier. Round and round a moth flies, colliding, escaping. The floor is covered with an oilcloth mosaic of jade and azure and cinnabar rhomboids. Footmarks are stamped over it in all senses, heel to heel, heel to hollow, toe to toe, feet locked, a morris of shuffling feet without body ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce
... singular countenances and demeanour; for rare in this silent assemblage was any visage resembling aught she had seen, human or divine. Some bore the heads of bats; of owls and beetles others; some fluttered moth-like wings, while the shoulders of other bipeds were surmounted, in spite of their human organisation, with the heads of rats and weasels, of marten-cats and of foxes. But they were all remarkably civil; ...
— The Infernal Marriage • Benjamin Disraeli
... guessed at; now a fresh armadillo-burrow; now a parasol-ants' warren, which had to be avoided lest horse and man should sink in it knee-deep, and come out sorely bitten; now some glimpse of sea and forest far below; now we cut a water-vine, and had a long cool drink; now a great moth had to be hunted, if not caught; or a toucan or some other strange bird listened to; or an eagle watched as he soared high over the green gulf. Now all stopped together; for the ground was sprinkled thick with great beads, scarlet, with a black eye, which had fallen from some tree high overhead; ...
— At Last • Charles Kingsley
... against the wall behind it, and threw up the lid of one of them, and found therein a smock or two of her own, yellowed by the lapse of time, and her old grey coat, ragged as it was when last she wore it, and now somewhat moth-eaten withal; and she drew forth both smocks and coat and laid them on the settle. Then she opened another coffer, and therein were gay and gaudy gowns and gear of the witch's wear; but lying amongst them, as if the witch had worn them also, ...
— The Water of the Wondrous Isles • William Morris
... they had no part. This gave them an impression of distance between them and him. He all of a sudden, seemed to have become remote, as though a chasm, by what power they knew not, had opened between them—making their love for him as "the desire of the moth for the star." They knew that he was more often than ever before working upon his poetical and other compositions, but these were seldom shown, or even ...
— The Dreamer - A Romantic Rendering of the Life-Story of Edgar Allan Poe • Mary Newton Stanard
... crape; a huge, old-fashioned thing that framed in her silver-white hair like a pent-house. The very shape and fashion of this bonnet was pathetic—it spoke of so long ago. The black dress and soft shawl with which she had come to the prison were a little moth-eaten, but not much, for they had been carefully hoarded; but the poor old woman looked with a sigh on her prison-dress as it fell to the floor, and wept bitterly before she went out, as if that gloomy mass of stones had been ...
— The Old Countess; or, The Two Proposals • Ann S. Stephens
... his branches just then something flew; It seemed like moth, large and grayish of hue. But it was a Fairy. Her voice soft did sound, "Be the tree that bears apples all ...
— The Adventures of A Brownie - As Told to My Child by Miss Mulock • Miss Mulock
... that it was very dangerous, even to death, and with it I for one wished no closer acquaintance. Fire may be lovely and attractive, also comforting at a proper distance, but he who sits on the top of it is cremated, as many a moth ...
— She and Allan • H. Rider Haggard
... de Barbarie in the ground, upon which their kind-hearted Amphitrion regaled them. But neither clean canvass, nor simulated piety, sufficed to draw upon the ambitious schemers the favourable notice of Queen Pomaree. Accustomed to sailors, she held them cheap. A uniform, though but the moth-eaten undress of a militia ensign, would have been a powerful auxiliary to their projects of aggrandisement. Like some others of her sex, Pomaree loves a soldier's coat, and maintained in more prosperous days a formidable regiment of body-guards, in ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 61, No. 380, June, 1847 • Various
... end to the other, as were the lagoons and creeks in the neighbourhood. The natives having cleared the river of the fish that had been brought down by the floods, now subsisted for the most part on herbs and roots of various kinds, and on the caterpillar of the gum-tree moth, which they procured out of the ground with their switches, having a hook at the end. I do not think they could procure animal food in the then state of the country, there being no ducks or kangaroos in the neighbourhood, in any great quantity ...
— Expedition into Central Australia • Charles Sturt
... them out on the line to air. Presently an old uniform with worn trimmings was swinging its sleeves in the air and embracing a brocade gown; from behind it peeped a court-coat, with buttons stamped with coats-of-arms, and moth-eaten collar; and white kersymere pantaloons with spots, which had once upon a time clothed Ivan Nikiforovitch's legs, and might now possibly fit his fingers. Behind them were speedily hung some more in the shape of the letter pi. Then came a blue Cossack jacket, which ...
— Taras Bulba and Other Tales • Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol
... thrift, except that branch of it which got into his food. He did not call that thrift, he called it bad housekeeping. But for the thrift which, like moth, penetrated into Mrs. Wilkins's clothes and spoilt them, he had much praise. "You never know," he said, "when there will be a rainy day, and you may be very glad to find you have a ...
— The Enchanted April • Elizabeth von Arnim
... among the inconceivable numbers and magnitudes and velocities of the heavenly bodies. So that he concludes by striking into us some sense of that disproportion of things which Shelley has illuminated by the ironical flash of these eight words: The desire of the moth for ...
— Familiar Studies of Men & Books • Robert Louis Stevenson
... faint, floating fragrance that drew the flitting brown moth by way of the quicksand, swiftly, swiftly, along the moonlit shore travelling with mysterious certainty, irresistibly attracted? There was no pause in its rapid progress, though the course it followed was tortuous. It pursued, with ...
— The Tidal Wave and Other Stories • Ethel May Dell
... the community demands it. While they live as they do, they are only a moth and a curse. The moment they are reformed, society is relieved of its greatest burden. The poor-house and the ...
— Select Temperance Tracts • American Tract Society
... underneath the stair Where moth and rust hold undisputed sway, And here is hid my old civilian wear, And my wife sits and plays with it all day, Since Peace is imminent and, I'm advised, Even the bard ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, April 30, 1919 • Various
... sustenance I may draw from him; and, therefore, it (that part which I did not absorb) concerns me no more. And the same with Gautier. Mdlle. de Maupin, that godhead of flowing line, that desire not "of the moth for the star," but for such perfection of hanging arm and leaned thigh as leaves passion breathless and fain of tears, is now, if I take up the book and read, weary and ragged as a spider's web, that has hung the winter through in the dusty, ...
— Confessions of a Young Man • George Moore
... which Rose and Adele have plaited over the mantel, and over the stiff family portraits; and good Phil—in the character of Santa Claus—has stuffed the stockings of all the grandchildren, and—in the character of the bashful lover—has played like a moth about the blazing eyes ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 101, March, 1866 • Various
... a fluttering moth gave the excuse her heart longed for, and her fingers rested for a moment, light as the moth itself, on his hair. There was something in the touch which made him open his eyes—uncomprehending at first, and then filled with a ...
— With Edged Tools • Henry Seton Merriman
... bed are of the costliest and most beautiful fabrics, and must have been of fabulous value when they were made, for they are centuries old, though in excellent order. I saw something like them in Hampton Court, but they were worn and frayed and moth-eaten. But still in none of the rooms is there a mirror. There is not even a toilet glass on my table, and I had to get the little shaving glass from my bag before I could either shave or brush my hair. I have not yet seen a servant anywhere, or heard ...
— Dracula • Bram Stoker
... Clapham, Bedford, Mr. Thomas Maddams, always used to read his own version of Psalm xxxix. 12: "Like as it were a moth fretting in a garment." Apparently his idea was of a moth annoyed at being in a garment from ...
— The Parish Clerk (1907) • Peter Hampson Ditchfield
... just as it attracts most young men. Paris, with its glare and glitter, its superficial gaiety, its bright boulevards, and its feminine beauty, is the candle to the moth of youth. I revelled in Paris just as many a thousand other young men had done before me. I knew French, Italian and German, and I was vain enough to believe that I might have within me the making of a cosmopolitan. So many young men believe that—and, ...
— Hushed Up - A Mystery of London • William Le Queux
... two skeleton forms, One closely clasped in the other's arms. Recoiling, I shuddered and turned my face From the fleshless mockery of embrace. Again o'er a heap of rubbish and rust, I stumbled and caught in the moth and dust What hardly a sense of my soul believes— A mold-stained package of parchment leaves! A hideous bat flapped into my face! O'ercome with horror, I fled the place, And stood again with my curious ...
— Debris - Selections from Poems • Madge Morris
... worm is cloven in vain; That not a moth with vain desire Is shriveled in a fruitless fire, Or ...
— Poems with Power to Strengthen the Soul • Various
... that's the rarest moth in America," said the Bird Woman solemnly. "If you have a hundred of them, they are worth a hundred dollars according to my list. I can use all ...
— A Girl Of The Limberlost • Gene Stratton Porter
... crippled moth vainly trying to rise once again to the alluring yet deadly flame, Rene de Ronville essayed to break out of his embarrassment and resume equal footing with the girl so suddenly become his commanding superior; but the effort disclosed to him as ...
— Alice of Old Vincennes • Maurice Thompson
... vol. i., 1905.] described experiments in which he destroyed by means of a hot needle the gonads in silkworm caterpillars (Bombyx mori), and found no difference in the sexual characters of the moths reared from such caterpillars. Oudemans had previously obtained the same result in the Gipsy Moth, Limantria dispar. Meisenheimer [Footnote: Experimentelle Studien zur Soma- und Geschlechtedifferenzierung. Jena, 1909.] made more extensive experiments on castration of caterpillars in the last-mentioned species, ...
— Hormones and Heredity • J. T. Cunningham
... little Jew of the Boulevard de la Madeleine. Ste. Marie gazed back at her, and his heart was sick within him to think of the contemptible role Fate had laid upon this girl to play: the candle to the moth, the bait to the eager, unskilled fish, the lure to charm a ...
— Jason • Justus Miles Forman
... angle, from the glossy surfaces of a million leaves? At least we may be excused; for a bat has made the same mistake, and flits past us at noonday. And there is another—No; as it turns, a blaze of metallic azure off the upper side of the wings proves this one to be no bat, but a Morpho—a moth as big as a bat. And what was that second larger flash of golden green, which dashed at the moth, and back to yonder branch not ten feet off? A Jacamar {138d}—kingfisher, as they miscall her here, sitting fearless of man, with the moth in her long beak. Her throat ...
— At Last • Charles Kingsley
... The moth that indicates the advent of the army-worm has a Quaker-like simplicity in its light, chocolate-colored body and wings, and, from its harmless appearance, would never be taken for the destroyer of vast fields of luxuriant and ...
— Camp-Fire and Cotton-Field • Thomas W. Knox
... (Aphis) in five generations may become the parent of six thousand million descendants. It is necessary, then, to know what other insects are employed in holding them in check, by feeding on them. Some of our most formidable insects have been accidentally imported from Europe, such as the codling moth, asparagus beetle, cabbage butterfly, currant worm and borer, elm-tree beetle, hessian fly, etc.; but in nearly every instance these have come over without bringing their insect enemies with them, and in consequence they have spread more extensively here than ...
— Scientific American Supplement No. 275 • Various
... Moth. By Woden, God of Saxons, From whence comes Wensday, that is, Wodnesday, Truth is a thing that I will ever keep Unto thylke day in which I creep into ...
— The Antiquary, Complete • Sir Walter Scott
... be over. The whole low-vaulted building glows duskily; the frescoed roof, the stained windows, the figure-crowded pavements blending their rich but subdued colours, like hues upon some marvellous moth's wings, or like a deep-toned rainbow mist discerned in twilight dreams, or like such tapestry as Eastern queens, in ancient days, wrought for the pavilion of an empress. Forth from this maze of mingling tints, ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Second Series • John Addington Symonds
... Carleton assented politely, though he was disappointed; for in giving the invitation he had been following his friend's lead in trying to save the moth from the candle. "Shall we say three ...
— The Guests Of Hercules • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... wooden staircase, and doors all round it. The walls in both halls were painted grass green; and from little chains in the ceiling stuffed hawks and eagles, shot by Uncle Joachim, and grown with years very dusty and moth-eaten, hung swinging in the draught. The floor was boarded, and was still damp from a recent scrubbing. There was no carpet. A wooden bracket on the wall, with brass hooks, held a large assortment of whips and hunting crops; and in one corner stood an arrangement for coats, ...
— The Benefactress • Elizabeth Beauchamp
... evening, sleet was falling in the street, a piercing easterly wind drove even through his thick overcoat. In such doorways as offered protection from the bitter elements the wreckage of humanity which clings to the West end of London, as the singed moth flutters about the flame that destroys it, were ...
— The Clue of the Twisted Candle • Edgar Wallace
... said the voice behind the mist, "this is the text I leave with you: 'Lay not up for yourselves treasures upon earth, where moth and rust doth corrupt, and where thieves break through and steal; but lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust doth corrupt, and where thieves do not break through nor steal.' That text I read in the flood, where the hand of God has written it. All the pound-notes ...
— The Little Minister • J.M. Barrie
... October 1867. Republished in 'Natural Selection,' 1871.) to the Duke's criticisms, making some specially good remarks on those which refer to orchids. He shows how, by a "beautiful self-acting adjustment," the nectary of the orchid Angraecum (from 10 to 14 inches in length), and the proboscis of a moth sufficiently long to reach the nectar, might be developed by natural selection. He goes on to point out that on any other theory we must suppose that the flower was created with an enormously long nectary, and that then by a special act, ...
— The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin, Volume II • Francis Darwin
... good." My uncle walked to the window, opened it, looked out a moment, as if to draw in fresh air, closed it gently, and came back again to his seat; but during the short time the window had been left open, a moth flew in. ...
— The Caxtons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... die with them." Captain Douglas of the ROYAL OAK, when the Dutch fired his vessel in the Thames, sent his men ashore, but was burned along with her himself rather than desert his post without orders. Just then, perhaps the Merry Monarch was chasing a moth round the supper-table with the ladies of his court. When Raleigh sailed into Cadiz, and all the forts and ships opened fire on him at once, he scorned to shoot a gun, and made answer with a flourish of insulting ...
— Virginibus Puerisque • Robert Louis Stevenson
... fly or moth had fluttered across our path, and in an instant Stapleton was rushing with extraordinary energy and speed in pursuit of it. To my dismay the creature flew straight for the great mire, and my acquaintance never paused for an instant, bounding from tuft to tuft behind ...
— Hound of the Baskervilles • Authur Conan Doyle
... I be a disembodied spirit, and no longer subject to the petty annoyances that belong to the flesh?" cried he, fretfully. "My knowledge, too, is a moth,—only vexing me by a sense of the limitations of my condition. If I could grasp Nature,—if I could handle the stars,—if I could wake the thunder,—if I could summon the cloud! That would be worth something,—to send the comets on their errands! But what avails it, to know that they go?—how ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 3, No. 18, April, 1859 - [Date last updated: August 7, 2005] • Various
... the surrounding leaves he can reach. This, of course, before the frosts come, but when the leaves at last shrivel, loosen, and their petioles break, it is merely a larger brown nut than usual that falls to the ground, the kernel of which will sprout next June and blossom into the big moth of delicate fawn tints, feathery horned, with those strange isinglass windows in his ...
— The Log of the Sun - A Chronicle of Nature's Year • William Beebe
... told that it, too, was preying, or being preyed upon; and, as if being stirred by this, a panther sent his wail across the night. I listened for a mate to answer, but she did not. A large, whitish moth flying out of the shadows passed clumsily within a few inches of my face, its wings swishing as a bird's; and it, ...
— Wings of the Wind • Credo Harris
... piles of yellow and musty account-books in parchment covers, wherein creditors long dead and buried had written the names of dead and buried debtors in ink now so faded that their moss-grown tombstones were more legible. He found old moth-eaten garments, all in rags and tatters, or Peter would have put them on. Here was a naked and rusty sword—not a sword of service, but a gentleman's small French rapier—which had never left its scabbard till ...
— Twice Told Tales • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... "is like looking at the night. One never knows what's coming, only suspects, as in the darkness you suspect which trees are what, and try to see whether you are coming to the edge of anything. . . A moth has just flown into my candle before I could stop it! Has it gone quite out of the world? If so, why should it be different for us? The same great Something makes all life and death, all light and dark, all love and hate—then why one fate for one living thing, and the opposite for another? But ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... maidenhair in his distraction till the table round was scattered with little broken leaves. He wanted to keep out of that atmosphere of emotion which surrounded Elinor at the piano. But it attracted him, all the same, as the light attracts a moth. To get away from that, to make the severance which so soon must be a perfect severance, was the only true policy he knew; for what was he to her, and what could she be to him? He had already said everything ...
— The Marriage of Elinor • Margaret Oliphant
... instance, she had started a grove of paper-shelled pecans, which was soon due to bear; the ranch house and its clump of palms was all but hidden by a forest of strange trees, which were reported to ripen everything from moth-balls to bicycle tires. Blaze Jones was perhaps responsible for this report, for Alaire had shown him several thousand eucalyptus saplings ...
— Heart of the Sunset • Rex Beach
... "and then I said to him, 'Sit down alongside of me here, Tomas, and keep me company for a little while'—for I do be lonely in the night-time—but he wouldn't stay quiet at all. One minute he'd say, 'Mother, there's a moth flying round the candle and it'll be burnt,' and then, 'There was a fly going into the spider's web in the corner,' and he'd have to save it, and after that, 'There's a daddy-long-legs hurting himself on the window-pane,' and he'd ...
— The Crock of Gold • James Stephens
... A large white moth floated suddenly in and began to beat itself against the lamp-shade. Monck's eyes watched it with a grim concentration. Stella's were half-closed. She seemed to have dismissed him from her mind as an unimportant detail. The ...
— The Lamp in the Desert • Ethel M. Dell
... in them the breath of those recently spent dawns of which he was the eager spectator, never quite the full sunlight of the later day. Essentially he was the worshipper of the lip of flower, of dust upon the moth wing, of the throat of young girl, or brow of young boy, of the sudden flight of bird, the soft going of light clouds in a windless sky. These were the gentle stimulants to his most virile expression. Nor did his pictures ever contain more; they ...
— Adventures in the Arts - Informal Chapters on Painters, Vaudeville, and Poets • Marsden Hartley
... the key was very reluctant to let us in; but when the maire knew of our desire, he brought us the key that we might view it at our leisure. Its pews were thick with dust, the images were chipped and broken, some saints were minus nose or arm, the vestments in the open cupboard were moth-eaten and tawdry, dried flowers lay on tombs of the village great; but its atmosphere was one of peace, and it was not difficult to realize that many had carried therein their burden of grief and unrest and left it behind them, soothed on the bosom of Mother ...
— "Over There" with the Australians • R. Hugh Knyvett
... but cold and forlorn; And the Gnat slowly winded his shrill little horn; And the Moth, who was griev'd for the loss of a sister, Bent over the body, and silently ...
— The Butterfly's Funeral - A Sequel to the Butterfly's Ball and Grasshopper's Feast • J. L. B.
... moth again and again dares the flame which tortures it, and at last gives its life, a sacrifice to its folly; the burned child fears the fire, and does not the second time seek the experience. So also can the efficiency of an individual ...
— The Mind and Its Education • George Herbert Betts
... fallen in the socket, But as yet the flame is not out, And St. Jude hath singed the silly moth, That ...
— Women of the Romance Countries • John R. Effinger
... that waketh life, the action, charms into slumber life, the thought. As the stars pale at the rising of the sun, so fade the lights of the soul when the buds revive in the dews, and the lark sings to the day. In thy dream lies thy future, as the wing of the moth in the web of the changing worm; but, whether for weal or for woe, thou shalt burst through thy mesh, and spread thy plumes in the air. Of myself I know nought. Await the hour when Skulda shall pass into the soul of her servant, and thy fate shall rush from my lips ...
— Harold, Complete - The Last Of The Saxon Kings • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... agencies open up for business Green Valley laughs and goes to Martin's drug store to buy moth balls and talks about how it's going to paint its kitchen woodwork and paper its upstairs hall and where it's buying its special ...
— Green Valley • Katharine Reynolds
... this mortal flesh, These shrinking nerves, this feeble frame, For ever racked with ailments fresh And scarce from day to day the same — A fly within the spider's mesh, A moth ...
— An Anthology of Australian Verse • Bertram Stevens
... his bride. "I desired to become a countess that I might obtain access to court and enjoy a happiness of which thousands would be envious, although like the moth I could only flutter round the brilliant and dazzling light until it burned me to death. I told you I was no longer young. I, however, still have a young heart, a fresher heart perhaps than all your proud and beautiful ladies ...
— Frederick the Great and His Court • L. Muhlbach
... gladness of daybreak is not come yet, nor the pleasure of seeing the way again, the lifting of the darkness leaves heaviness beneath it, and if a rashly early bird flops down upon the grass, he cannot count his distance, but quivers like a moth. ...
— Springhaven - A Tale of the Great War • R. D. Blackmore
... a tobacco chewing, red-faced, red-whiskered stage driver who nagged at his four horses incessantly and never was known to beat one of them; a garrulous, soft-hearted stage driver who understood very well how lonely these two young folks must be, and who therefore had some moth-eaten joke ready for whoever might be waiting for him at the macaroni box. Whenever Helen May apologized for the favor she must ask of him—which was every time she handed him a list—the stage driver invariably a nasal ...
— Starr, of the Desert • B. M Bower
... easily. She is a sound sleeper and she's getting a little hard of hearing"; and lifting the candlestick to light her way, Miss Amelia turned back up the stairs, while the flame flitted like a golden moth into ...
— Life and Gabriella - The Story of a Woman's Courage • Ellen Glasgow
... are hangings. Perhaps, now and then—of course, I would not suggest continual inconstancy—a slight change, a little rearrangement, even a partial replacement, might brighten up the dear old dwelling-place. An ideal may be clung to too fondly. When the moth gets into it, or the dust—did not Carlyle warn us against this, lest they 'accumulate and at last produce suffocation'? I am exactly at one ...
— Select Conversations with an Uncle • H. G. Wells
... The moth-fly, as he shot in air, Crept under the leaf, and hid her there; The katy-did forgot its lay, The prowling gnat fled fast away, The fell mosquito checked his drone And folded his wings till the Fay was gone, And the wily beetle dropped his head, ...
— Choice Specimens of American Literature, And Literary Reader - Being Selections from the Chief American Writers • Benj. N. Martin
... unto Abraham.... I will be to you a God." The covenant made with the father was renewed to the children. The father's death did not disannul the promise of the Lord. Death has no power in the realms of grace. His moth and his rust can never destroy the ministries of Divine love. Abraham died and was laid to rest, but the river of life flowed on, and the bounties of the Lord never failed. The village well quenches the ...
— My Daily Meditation for the Circling Year • John Henry Jowett
... is the inventor of new proiects, cosen, They say, and patents; one that lives like a moth Upon the ...
— A Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. II • Various
... position. He saw himself a plaything in the hands of envy, treachery, and greed. What was he in this world of contending ambitions? A child sacrificing everything to the pursuit of pleasure and the gratification of vanity; a poet whose thoughts never went beyond the moment, a moth flitting from one bright gleaming object to another. He had no definite aim; he was the slave of circumstance—meaning well, doing ill. Conscience tortured him remorselessly. And to crown it all, he was penniless and exhausted with work and emotion. ...
— A Distinguished Provincial at Paris • Honore de Balzac
... me, and then you have been hoarding your charges. For sixteen years you have kept them, and they have not been corrupted either by rust or moth. ...
— Modern Icelandic Plays - Eyvind of the Hills; The Hraun Farm • Jhann Sigurjnsson
... exists in the caterpillar of the silkworm moth, and which can be drawn out into fine shreds of silk, is very similar to the slime of the snail, only in the latter it is not filiform, but exudes as a liquid and then hardens into a thin layer of silk which ...
— Wild Nature Won By Kindness • Elizabeth Brightwen
... was now going down behind the copse, through which his beams came aslant, chequered and mellow. The stream ran dimpling by him, sleepily swaying the masses of weed, under the surface and on the surface; and the trout rose under the banks, as some moth or gnat or gleaming beetle fell into the stream; here and there one more frolicsome than his brethren would throw himself joyously into the air. The swifts rushed close by him, in companies of five or six, and wheeled, and screamed, and dashed away again, skimming along the water, baffling his ...
— Tom Brown at Oxford • Thomas Hughes
... ease, luxury and vacuity with which they are surrounded their lives parallel those of demi-mondaines. Indeed, save for the marriage ceremony, there is small difference between them. The social butterfly flutters to the millionaire as naturally as the night moth of the Tenderloin. Hence the tendency to marry money is greater than ever before in the history ...
— The "Goldfish" • Arthur Train
... his rime be ragged Tattered and iagged Rudely rain-beaten Rusty and moth-eaten If ye talke well therewyth Yt hath in ...
— Animaduersions uppon the annotacions and corrections of some imperfections of impressiones of Chaucer's workes - 1865 edition • Francis Thynne
... have five different species of stock on which to grow them, and we ought to learn all the best varieties in the world. But unfortunately some of the best varieties in Sicily are infested with a moth which lays its eggs in the twigs just below the leaf scar and it is impossible for the entomologist to detect these eggs without destroying the buds. That apparently trivial circumstance has made it impossible for us to get these ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Report of the Proceedings at the Eleventh Annual Meeting - Washington, D. C. October 7 AND 8, 1920 • Various
... is not common; it is occasionally caught in plantain gardens, as it resorts to the leaves of that tree for shelter during the night, and may sometimes be discovered in the folds of a leaf. As Jerdon remarks, it looks more like a butterfly or a moth when disturbed during the day time. Dr. Dobson pertinently observes that the colours of this bat appear to be the result of the "protective mimicry" which we see so often in insects, the Mantidea and other genera, the colours being adapted to their abiding places. He alludes ...
— Natural History of the Mammalia of India and Ceylon • Robert A. Sterndale
... in this poor woman's case and in many others, gold is not the best thing to find. It often brings with it so much sorrow and sin as to be a curse to its owner. The only safe treasure is that laid up in heaven, where 'neither moth nor rust doth corrupt, and where thieves do not break through ...
— Among the Trees at Elmridge • Ella Rodman Church
... those places," the man said. "Inside of that are the eggs of a moth that eats things up and does a great deal of harm. Those eggs would hatch when it gets warm enough, and little worms would come out, and they would begin to eat, and the worms would change into moths later on, and the moths would lay more eggs. We are trying to get rid of them, so we paint some creosote ...
— The Doers • William John Hopkins
... hawk-moth, afraid of the flame yet determined to win the fire for the princess, hovered round and round the candle flame, coming nearer and nearer each time. "Now or never, the princess or death," he buzzed, as he darted forward ...
— Japanese Fairy World - Stories from the Wonder-Lore of Japan • William Elliot Griffis
... self-deprecatory references to his "weake wit" and "inferiour stile." Fully aware of his limitations, Page, like Barksted and many another unexceptional talent of his age, was nevertheless drawn to the composition of poetry like a moth to the flame. ...
— Seven Minor Epics of the English Renaissance (1596-1624) • Dunstan Gale
... solemn salvatory, Sealed from the moth and the owl and the flitter-mouse— Each with his name on his brow. 'All the kings of the nations lie in glory, Every one in his own ...
— Poems by Jean Ingelow, In Two Volumes, Volume I. • Jean Ingelow
... it had been dead long ago, for I saw some signs of moth in the fur, and as I was in Paris at the bidding of my employer, I consented, and carrying the little Peke beneath my arm I walked along the Quai du Louvre to the old bridge which, in two parts, spans the river. Just before I gained the Rue ...
— The Golden Face - A Great 'Crook' Romance • William Le Queux
... it in hundreds of yards of linen bandages; and then they sealed it up in a coffin or sarcophagus, which they laid in a chamber hewn in the bowels of the mountain. All these things were done to protect the physical body against damp, dry rot and decay, and against the attacks of moth, beetles, worms and wild animals. But these were not the only enemies of the dead against which precautions had to be taken, for both the mummified body and the spiritual elements which had inhabited it upon earth had ...
— The Book of the Dead • E. A. Wallis Budge
... columns as they come in to worship jar the warrior's ashes. The dusky standards captured in the Seven Years' War droop about him. The hundred intervening years have blackened them, already singed in the fire of Zorndorf, Leuthen, and Torgau. The moth makes still larger the rent where the volleys passed. The spiked helmet is even here among the tombs; and schooled as the Prussians are among the din of trumpets and smoke of wars, no other among the mighty graves in their land holds dust, in ...
— The Last Leaf - Observations, during Seventy-Five Years, of Men and Events in America - and Europe • James Kendall Hosmer
... of humanity, wuz pressin' down on her generous young heart. And I could see in her sweet face the brave determination to do and to dare, to try to help ondo the wrongs, and try to lift the burdens from weak and achin' shoulders. But Lorinda kep' on with the same old moth-eaten argument so broke down and feeble it ort to be allowed to ...
— Samantha on the Woman Question • Marietta Holley
... summer was approaching he had changed his winter suit for a combination of brown linen bound with black—(second hand, of course, its former owner having gone out of mourning) and at the moment sported a moth-eaten, crape-encircled white beaver with a floppy, two-inch brim, a rusty black stock that grabbed him close under the chin, completely submerging his collar, and a pair of congress gaiters very much run down at the heel. He was evidently master of himself and the situation, for he stood looking ...
— Kennedy Square • F. Hopkinson Smith
... all the woollens with fresh camphire and tobacco the last o' the winter; you have to be dreadful careful in one o' these old houses, 'less everything gets creaking with moths in no time. Miss Katharine, how she did hate the sight of a moth-miller! There's something I'll speak about before I forget it: the mice have eat the backs of a pile o' old books that's stored away in the west chamber closet next to Miss Katharine's room, and I set a trap ...
— Deephaven and Selected Stories & Sketches • Sarah Orne Jewett
... rush, and eats the sag And well-bestrutted bee's sweet bag; Gladding his palate with some store Of emmets' eggs: what would he more But beards of mice, a newt's stew'd thigh, A bloated earwig, and a fly: With the red-capp'd worm, that is shut Within the concave of a nut, Brown as his tooth; a little moth, Late fatten'd in a piece of cloth; With wither'd cherries; mandrakes' ears; Moles' eyes; to these, the slain stag's tears; The unctuous dewlaps of a snail; The broke heart of a nightingale O'ercome in music; with a wine Ne'er ravish'd from the flatt'ring rine, But gently ...
— Specimens with Memoirs of the Less-known British Poets, Complete • George Gilfillan
... choose between Garvice and say Hegel or Locke for a niche in the Temple of Letters, we should make an unintelligible blunder if we did not elect Mr. Garvice without discussion. He is human, he is ingenuous and funny, and the philosophers are only loosening with the insinuations of moth and rust. The philosophers are like the great statesmen and the great soldiers—we should be happier without them. If we are not happy and enjoying life, then we have missed the only reason for it. If books do not help us to this, if they even devise our thoughts into knots and put straws in our ...
— Waiting for Daylight • Henry Major Tomlinson
... glittering with dew. Here and there a dark bush or young birch-tree cast a long shadow over the ruts and scattered grass-tufts of the track. Yet even the monotonous din of our carriage-wheels and collar-bells could not drown the joyous song of soaring larks, nor the combined odour of moth-eaten cloth, dust, and sourness peculiar to our britchka overpower the fresh scents of the morning. I felt in my heart that delightful impulse to be up and doing which is ...
— Boyhood • Leo Tolstoy
... This is a moth whose larvae (as the caterpillars are called) do so much damage to foliage that the State has spent large sums of money in an attempt to destroy the troublesome pest. The matter has now been brought to the attention of Congress, and in the last Agricultural Appropriation Bill ...
— The Great Round World and What Is Going On In It, Vol. 1, No. 29, May 27, 1897 - A Weekly Magazine for Boys and Girls • Various
... wise men of Greece, born at Priene, in Ionia; lived in the 6th century B.C.; many wise sayings are ascribed to him; was distinguished for his indifference to possessions, which moth and rust can corrupt, and thieves break ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... many days in his Majesty's botanic gardens, which lie above the broad breast of the Forth. He now proved his learning, and with quick, sure eye made it real on the Galloway hills. Every leaf spoke to him. He could lie for half a day and learn wisdom from the ant. He took in the bird's song and the moth's flight. The keepers sometimes wondered at the lights which flashed here and there about the plantations, when in the coolness of a moist evening he went out to entrap the sidelong- dashing flutterers ...
— The Lilac Sunbonnet • S.R. Crockett
... ready to absorb the skin food when the finger massage is given, making it possible for the gentle electric current to force the ointment into the deeper layers of the skin, thus effecting the removal of moth patches, tan, freckles and other discolorations and imperfections. The vibratory massage should follow, the purpose of which is to stimulate the tissues, throwing off worn-out particles and increasing the circulation of the blood by giving proper exercise to the facial muscles, thereby restoring ...
— The Handy Cyclopedia of Things Worth Knowing - A Manual of Ready Reference • Joseph Triemens
... to which it would have been sheer folly to have given vent—for there was no contending with that unsubstantial feather, that mealy-winged moth—I extinguished my taper, locked my bureau, and left her, since she would not leave me. Small-beer as she was, she ...
— Villette • Charlotte Bronte
... it. Seeing real live animals was so different from the stuffed and moth-eaten ones ...
— A Little Girl of Long Ago • Amanda Millie Douglas
... and a waving blind, And the beat of a clock from a distant floor; On this scene enter—winged, horned, and spined— A longlegs, a moth, and a dumbledore; While 'mid my page there idly stands A sleepy fly, that rubs ...
— Figures of Several Centuries • Arthur Symons
... &c.—I am told by a neighbour of a cruel custom among the children in Somersetshire, who, when they have caught a certain kind of large white moth, which they call a miller, chant over it ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 69, February 22, 1851 • Various
... in the arrangement of their squares and colors; vivid buttercups and daisies mingle with bulky cat-o'-nine-tails,—all on canvas covered with paint; blacking-jugs adorned with pictures, embossed and otherwise; moth-eaten Kensington, partly outlined in conventional lilies and conventional stitches; forlorn-looking cats and dogs on half-made rugs and slippers,—all, all are there to point out certain very unpleasant morals, ...
— Hold Up Your Heads, Girls! • Annie H. Ryder
... horehound comes through the fence and under it, shouldering the pickets off the railings; the brier rose mines under the horehound; and no care, though I own I am not a close weeder, keeps the small pale moons of the primrose from rising to the night moth under my apple-trees. The first summer in the new place, a clump of cypripediums came up by the irrigating ditch at the bottom of the lawn. But the clematis will not come ...
— The Land Of Little Rain • Mary Hunter Austin
... I did see deuced pretty girls, but the emotion, as you call it, vanished as I handed the last fair bundle of shawls into her carriage. While the light burns, you know, the moth hangs around it, but when the flame goes out, spent in a weary flicker, after 'braving it' for a whole night, the moth goes to roost, when he has not been singed, or otherwise personally damaged without insurance. Well, what are you thinking of now? when you cross ...
— Honor Edgeworth • Vera
... the first hallucination; So that the streets of coloured lamps are full, That sage (said John) surrenders at discretion[ho] His purse, his soul, his sense, and even his nonsense, To gratify, like a huge moth, this one sense. ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 6 • Lord Byron
... thoughts that they seemed to drift to her from some distant point in space, out of the world beyond the garden and the black brows of the cedars. They were as meaningless as the wind that brought them, or the whirring of the white moth at the window. Beneath her vacant words and expressionless gestures, which were like the words and gestures of an automaton, she was conscious of a profound current of feeling which flowed steadily between Alice Rokeby and herself; and ...
— One Man in His Time • Ellen Glasgow
... slipped away. As she did so, she looked exactly like a crushed brown moth. In the passage she stopped, glanced furtively around her, and then, shocking to relate, put her ear to the key-hole. She felt both sore and angry; they were saying horrid things of Beatrice, and ...
— The Honorable Miss - A Story of an Old-Fashioned Town • L. T. Meade
... a silly habit of screaming when she saw a spider, an earwig, a beetle, a moth, or any kind of insect; and the sound of a mouse behind the wainscot of the room made her suppose she should die with fright. The persons with whom she lived used to pity her for being afraid, and that made her fond of the silly trick, so that she became worse ...
— The Bad Family and Other Stories • Mrs. Fenwick
... Chut! in Heaven's name hold thy mad tongue," she cried, in the irritation of panic; "surely that is no moth. May the saints guard your bed, my child. You ...
— The International Magazine, Volume 2, No. 2, January, 1851 • Various
... thee that richer wealth, No earthly mines reveal, "Which moth and rust cannot corrupt, And thief can ...
— The Poets and Poetry of Cecil County, Maryland • Various
... commission of all sin; and furthermore he suppliantly besought that the church over which he presided might not be called by his name, as was in many places the custom among the Irish people. And this did he to preserve his lowliness, and to avoid vainglory, which is the fretting moth of all virtues. Then Saint Patrick, understanding the worthiness of Sennachus and the simplicity of his heart, promised unto him all his desire; and blessing him and his flock, prophesied that thereout should proceed many holy and eminent ...
— The Most Ancient Lives of Saint Patrick - Including the Life by Jocelin, Hitherto Unpublished in America, and His Extant Writings • Various
... meet that outlaw, Moya Dwight. You said you wouldn't, but you are going. That's why you got out of that ride. No use fibbing to yourself. You've no more will power than a moth buzzing around ...
— The Highgrader • William MacLeod Raine
... Clare declined this invitation would be equivalent to saying that a moth of its own accord kept at a safe distance from the glowing flame which enticed it. As he read the note his heart gave a leap. He began to wonder and ask himself why he had remained away so long. Was it not the sheerest folly and absurdity? What was Eleanor Milbourne to him ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XII. No. 30. September, 1873 • Various
... catching and giving life. But thou art still for me who have adored Tho' single, panting but to hear thy name Which I believed a spell to me alone, Scarce deeming thou wast as a star to men! As one should worship long a sacred spring Scarce worth a moth's flitting, which long grasses cross, And one small tree embowers droopingly— Joying to see some wandering insect won To live in its few rushes, or some locust To pasture on its boughs, or some wild bird Stoop for its freshness from the trackless air: And then should ...
— Browning's England - A Study in English Influences in Browning • Helen Archibald Clarke
... Emerson's pages it seems as if another Arcadia, or the new Atlantis, had emerged as the fortunate island of Great Britain, or that he had reached a heaven on earth where neither moth nor rust doth corrupt, and where thieves do not break through nor steal,—or if they do, never think of denying that they have done it. But this was a generation ago, when the noun "shoddy," and the verb "to scamp," had not grown such familiar terms to English ears as they are to-day. ...
— Ralph Waldo Emerson • Oliver Wendell Holmes
... on the table there showing our eight hundred dollar spraying machine, the same kind used in Massachusetts in gypsy moth work. With this two men can spray about ten such trees in a day. I haven't got it down in black and white but I figured that, on those chestnuts at DuPont's, they sprayed about 600 gallons a day. Ten trees a day would make it, say, with a $2.50 man, not very high for a tree. I think it costs in ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association, Report of the Proceedings at the Third Annual Meeting • Northern Nut Growers Association
... saying, "am Pietro Moresco. I have-a da nice political posish, an' nice-a barber-shop on Mulberry-a Strit. Some-a day I getta on da force—da pollis-force. Sure t'ing. I been-a home to see ma moth. I go-a back to make-a da more mon." He pulled out from his corded bundle of red quilts and coats and rugs some bottles of cheap wine. "I getta place for all you men." He was beginning, thus early in the voyage of these would-be citizens, to prepare ...
— The Old Flute-Player - A Romance of To-day • Edward Marshall and Charles T. Dazey
... recovery. His brain was in no state for excitement or agitation, and pain and confusion were the consequence, and were counteracted, after the practice of the time, by profuse bleedings, which prolonged his weakness. The splintered state of the jaw and roof of the moth likewise produced effects that made him suffer severely, and deprived him at times even of the small power of speech that he usually possessed; and though he had set his heart upon being able to start for Paris so soon as Osbert's answer should arrive, ...
— The Chaplet of Pearls • Charlotte M. Yonge
... sight of Patricia fluttering in among them in her white gauzy draperies like some dainty moth, ...
— Miss Pat at School • Pemberton Ginther
... fanciful apprehensions of unhappiness. A moth having fluttered round the candle, and burnt itself, he laid hold of this little incident to admonish me; saying, with a sly look, and in a solemn but quiet tone, 'That creature was its own tormentor, and I believe ...
— Life of Johnson - Abridged and Edited, with an Introduction by Charles Grosvenor Osgood • James Boswell
... are fewer in number than might be expected in the case of so nutritive a plant. Against the weevil, the moth, and the fly, we are comparatively powerless, and perhaps the safest course is occasionally to dust the plants with lime or soot, in which case the work must be carefully done, or the leaf growth will be checked, to the injury of the crop. Light dustings will suffice to render the plant unpalatable ...
— The Culture of Vegetables and Flowers From Seeds and Roots, 16th Edition • Sutton and Sons
... the shadows pass All day long like dreams in the night; There, in the meadows of dim blue grass, Crimson daisies are ringed with white. There the roses flutter their petals, Over the meadows they take their flight, There the moth that sleepily settles Turns to a flower in the warm ...
— Collected Poems - Volume One (of 2) • Alfred Noyes
... head backward somewhat after the manner of a spirited horse. And then, the old irritable demon prompting him to give another good pinch at the moth-wings of poor Mr. Casaubon's glory, he went on, "And I have seen since that Mr. Casaubon does not like any one to overlook his work and know thoroughly what he is doing. He is too doubtful—too uncertain of himself. I may not be good for much, ...
— Middlemarch • George Eliot
... there came the Beetle, so blind and so black, Who carried the Emmet, his friend, on his back; And there came the Gnat and the Dragon-fly too, With all their relations, green, orange, and blue. And there came the Moth, with her plumage of down, And the Hornet with jacket of yellow and brown; And with him the Wasp, his companion, did bring; But they promised that evening to lay by their sting. Then the sly little Dormouse peeped ...
— The Nursery Rhyme Book • Unknown
... cupboard had been the lumber-room in Caleb's household. In an instant the whole troop had thrown themselves on the motley contents. Stray joints of clumsy fishing-rods; artificial baits; a pair of worn-out top-boots, in which one of the urchins, whooping and shouting, buried himself up to the middle; moth-eaten, stained, and ragged, the collegian's gown-relic of the dead man's palmy time; a bag of carpenter's tools, chiefly broken; a cricket-bat; an odd boxing-glove; a fencing-foil, snapped in the middle; and, more than all, some half-finished attempts at rude toys: ...
— Night and Morning, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... commencing and ending his career as a flycatcher by an awkward chase after a beetle or "miller." He is hunting around in the grass now, I suspect, with the desire to indulge this favorite whim. There!—the opportunity is afforded him. Away goes a little cream-colored meadow-moth in the most tortuous course he is capable of, and away goes Chippy in pursuit. The contest is quite comical, though I dare say it is serious enough to the moth. The chase continues for a few yards, when there is a sudden rushing ...
— Bird Stories from Burroughs - Sketches of Bird Life Taken from the Works of John Burroughs • John Burroughs
... administration. The Dutch fleet sailed up the Thames, and burned the ships of war which lay at Chatham. It was said that, on the very day of that great humiliation, the King feasted with the ladies of his seraglio, and amused himself with hunting a moth about the supper room. Then, at length, tardy justice was done to the memory of Oliver. Everywhere men magnified his valour, genius, and patriotism. Everywhere it was remembered how, when he ruled, all foreign powers had trembled at the name of England, how the States General, ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 1 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... assist the many fine specimens of moth in the Insect House, it is reported that several actor-managers owning fur coats have offered them a ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 152, May 9, 1917 • Various
... 'A moth loves the light though his wings are burnt. Though his wings are singed, he throws himself against the flame. He does not love the light because it has conferred some benefits upon him. Therefore he hovers round the light, though he sacrifice ...
— The Reconciliation of Races and Religions • Thomas Kelly Cheyne
... with no intention of abandoning the pretensions to youth for many a year. In dress he was as spick and span as a tailor at the trade's annual convention. But he had evidently been "going some" for several days; the sour, worn, haggard face rising above his elegantly fitting collar suggested a moth-eaten jaguar that has been for weeks on short rations ...
— Susan Lenox: Her Fall and Rise • David Graham Phillips
... moderately furnished house, where the articles are not too expensive to be reasonably renewed as time and use wear them; but it is infinitely worse when a cataract of splendid furniture is heaped upon her care,—when splendid crystals cut into her conscience, and mirrors reflect her duties, and moth and rust stand ever ready to devour and sully in every ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 13, No. 76, February, 1864 • Various
... grace from God through it. The grace of our Lord and Saviour is pledged to every one of us without measure, to give us all necessary strength and holiness when we pray for it; and Almighty God tells us Himself, "Fear ye not the reproach of men, neither be ye afraid of their revilings. For the moth shall eat them up like a garment, and the worm shall eat them like wool; but My righteousness shall be for ever, and My salvation from ...
— Parochial and Plain Sermons, Vol. VII (of 8) • John Henry Newman
... hand, the wing of the humming-bird and the wing of the humming-bird moth are not homologous at all, or in any sense; for the resemblance between them consists solely in the use to which they are put, and is therefore only a relation of analogy. There is no relation of homology between them, ...
— On the Genesis of Species • St. George Mivart
... sacrifices, as though in some dim way they saw already the glorious goal. But at present there was business to do. They bought one of the numerous little primers that are always on sale to show the poor vain moth of amateur authorship how least to burn his wings—little books more eagerly bought and read than any of those that they bring into the world. Such a publisher's guide, meant for ambitious schoolboys, the Brontes bought and studied as anxiously as they. ...
— Emily Bront • A. Mary F. (Agnes Mary Frances) Robinson
... chief teacher and the rest of the assembly had left me, some boys who were also engaged in the gymnasian exercise, followed me home, and stood near me for a little while as I was writing: and lo! at that instant they saw a moth running upon my paper, and asked in surprise what was the name of that nimble little creature? I said, "It is called a moth; and I will tell you some wonderful things respecting it. This little animal contains in itself as many members and viscera as there ...
— The Delights of Wisdom Pertaining to Conjugial Love • Emanuel Swedenborg
... they had been trained to the business. They stung 'em an' then dropped an egg where they'd stung. Sometimes the caterpillar lived long enough to spin a web, as they usually do, but it never come out as a moth. An' since it's the moth that lays the eggs, this fly put an end to the caterpillar output ...
— The Boy With the U. S. Foresters • Francis Rolt-Wheeler
... of something else, and to rummage out a store of old rubbish, as the first step towards manufacturing a new garment! The treasures which were to contribute towards Esther's trousseau consisted of a moth-eaten Paisley shawl, a checked silk skirt of unbelievable hideousness, a muslin scarf; yellow with age, a broken ivory fan, and a pair of mittens. A vision of Esther figuring as a bride in this old- world costume, rose before Peggy's quick-seeing eyes, the checked silk transforming her slim figure ...
— More About Peggy • Mrs G. de Horne Vaizey
... the duty of a host to Dick Follingsbee, found himself, after a while, looking on him with pity, as a poor creature, like the rich fool in the Gospels, without faith, or love, or prayer; spending life as a moth does,—in vain attempts to burn himself up in the candle, and knowing nothing better. In fact, after a while, the stiff, tow-colored moustache, smart stride, and flippant air of this poor little man struck him somewhere in the region between a smile and a tear; and his enforced hospitality ...
— Pink and White Tyranny - A Society Novel • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... to have hit upon a new moralization of the moth and the candle. They would lock up the light of Truth, lest poor Psyche should put it out in her effort ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell • James Lowell
... she sit by his knee when he drew his chair by the fire, weary from the chase, nor lean beside him while he slept, to wonder at her happiness. Down the great halls she went, looking through the narrow windows on the outside world, as a brown moth flutters at the pane, weary of an imprisonment that had in its hold the ...
— The Story and Song of Black Roderick • Dora Sigerson
... to try to make an escape when a momentary cessation of hostilities was caused by the entrance of a moth-eaten, abstracted-looking man. As the two-year-old hailed him as "fadder", I gathered that he was the person responsible for the family now fighting ...
— Our Next-Door Neighbors • Belle Kanaris Maniates
... an impassioned speech advocates conciliation all round in Ireland, and refers to Mr. JOHN REDMOND as "a moth-eaten, moss-gathering ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 146, February 25, 1914 • Various
... familiar with the main facts of such a life-story as that of a moth or butterfly. The form of the adult insect (fig. 1 a) is dominated by the wings—two pairs of scaly wings, carried respectively on the middle and hindmost of the three segments that make up the thorax or central region of the insect's body. Each of these ...
— The Life-Story of Insects • Geo. H. Carpenter
... removed and easily cleaned rugs for carpets will greatly lessen the danger from the destructive moth and beetle grubs. Carpets laid on tight floors are much less liable to injury than where numerous cracks furnish safe retreats for the insects. Tarred paper under a carpet is ...
— The Eugenic Marriage, Volume IV. (of IV.) - A Personal Guide to the New Science of Better Living and Better Babies • Grant Hague
... most enticing field of natural history is that in which common flowers and common insects work out their unending co-partnery. A blossom by its scent, its beauty of tint, allures a moth or bee and thus, in effect, is able to take flight and find a mate across a county so as to perpetuate its race a hundred miles from home. Our volume closes with a sketch of the singular ties which thus bind together the fortunes of blossom and insect, so that at last the very form ...
— Little Masterpieces of Science: - The Naturalist as Interpreter and Seer • Various
... careless lie Buried in ease and sloth? Knowledge that sleeps, doth die; And this security, It is the common moth That eats on wits and arts, ...
— Six Centuries of English Poetry - Tennyson to Chaucer • James Baldwin
... defiant note she left under the door. Her father and mother must wait and not worry. There are thousands of homes, I suppose, in which are buried just such letters as Minnie's farewell to her parents; rebellious, passionate, yearning, pitiful. Ah, well! The moth must break its chrysalis. The flower must rend its bonds toward the light. Little Minnie was "going on the stage." A garish and perilous stage it was, whereon Innocence plays a part as sorry as it is brief. And now she was making her exit, without applause. Memory ...
— From a Bench in Our Square • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... arguments. For that matter, I had plenty of fairly good reasons for suspecting them of containing the sense of direction. When the Hairy Ammophila (A Sand-wasp who hunts the Grey Worm, or Caterpillar of the Turnip-moth, to serve as food for her grubs. For other varieties of the Ammophila, cf. "Insect Life": chapter 15.—Translator's Note.) is searching for the Grey Worm, it is with her antennae, those tiny fingers continually fumbling at the soil, that she seems to recognize the presence of the underground ...
— The Mason-bees • J. Henri Fabre
... three birds' nests in the thick tapestry of cherry-trees, honey-suckles, and China roses, which cover our walls—now tracing the gay gambols of the common butterflies as they sport around the dahlias; now watching that rarer moth, which the country people, fertile in pretty names, call the bee-bird;[1] that bird-like insect, which flutters in the hottest days over the sweetest flowers, inserting its long proboscis into the small tube of the jessamine, and hovering over the scarlet blossoms ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 10, Issue 265, July 21, 1827 • Various
... on when we are asleep? Sometimes the stars, sometimes the moon, sometimes the clouds, sometimes the wind, sometimes the snow, sometimes the frost, sometimes all of them together, are busy. Sometimes the owl and the moth and the beetle, and the bat and the cat and the rat, are all at work. Sometimes there are flowers in bloom that love the night better than the day, and are busy all through the darkness pouring out on the still air the scent they withheld during the sunlight. Sometimes ...
— Gutta-Percha Willie • George MacDonald
... complimenting you, I was complimenting Ireland," said Silas sweetly. She was silent, a white moth passing close to her held her gaze for a moment, then it flitted ...
— The Ghost Girl • H. De Vere Stacpoole
... Alden's comment. "God! Imagine having one of those great things swooping down on you. Hey, Alden, look at that big devil over there! He must have a wing spread of thirty feet. Big as a Moth plane, isn't he?" ...
— Astounding Stories, March, 1931 • Various
... his old haunts, yet taking a roundabout road, as the moth is drawn to the candle, or as water descends to its level, he went slowly on, having little hope of comfort in his home, and not knowing very ...
— Dusty Diamonds Cut and Polished - A Tale of City Arab Life and Adventure • R.M. Ballantyne
... astonished, that his features remained contracted, his lips parted, and his eyes fixed. He did not move an inch, nor articulate a sound. Nothing could be heard in that large chamber but the wing-whisper of a little moth, which was fluttering to its death about the candles. Aramis, without even deigning to look at the man whom he had reduced to so miserable a condition, drew from his pocket a small case of black wax; ...
— The Man in the Iron Mask • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... such. The sandy plain before the house has left a strong impression, which is obscurely connected with an indistinct remembrance of curious insects, probably a Cimex mottled with red, and Zygaena, the burnet-moth. I was at that time very passionate (when I swore like a trooper) and quarrelsome. The former passion has I think nearly wholly but slowly died away. When journeying there by stage coach I remember a recruiting officer (I think I should know ...
— More Letters of Charles Darwin - Volume I (of II) • Charles Darwin
... that's certain.]) her whole character consists in having no will of her own, no prompter but her obedience. Her romantic turn is only a consequence of the domestic and practical part of her disposition; and instead of following Othello to the wars, she would gladly have 'remained at home a moth of peace', if her husband could have stayed with her. Her resignation and angelic sweetness of temper do not desert her at the last. The scenes in which she laments and tries to account for Othello's estrangement from her are exquisitely beautiful. After he has struck her, ...
— Characters of Shakespeare's Plays • William Hazlitt |
