"Octopus" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... octopus of the air clutched them in its corpse-like grip, breathing its wet vapoury breath into their faces, soddening their clothes with heavy moisture and slackening their energies as it had already damped their hopes of a steam-vessel coming to the rescue, Bob, whose nerves were strained ...
— Bob Strong's Holidays - Adrift in the Channel • John Conroy Hutcheson
... inspector stood firm. The old gentleman, in a fine burst of passion, tossed the razors into the water. Then they were going to arrest him for smuggling. A friend extricated him. The old gentleman went away, saying something about the tariff and an unreasonably warm place which has as many synonyms as an octopus ...
— The Man on the Box • Harold MacGrath
... the octopus a devil-fish," said Mr. Choate. "This is all wrong. They are both large and vicious creatures, but entirely different in looks. The devil-fish belongs to the ray family, and, as you see, is a huge bat-like creature which uses its body fins with a waving, undulating motion, ...
— Around the World in Ten Days • Chelsea Curtis Fraser
... is a machine!" said young Denton. "He is simply a human octopus for pulling in money. Not that I object to money," he added, with a laugh, "but I hate to see men make it ...
— For Gold or Soul? - The Story of a Great Department Store • Lurana W. Sheldon
... rays of the setting sun which proved to be those of Mrs. Glass and her daughter Mrs. Lavarello. We did not succeed in catching anything, but Mrs. Lavarello gave us her catch of three crawfish and two small fish. She caught an octopus, which they call cat-fish, horrid-looking creatures:—how she could handle them ...
— Three Years in Tristan da Cunha • K. M. Barrow
... me to clear the film which is slowly closing over her eyes. She labors in a true landscape garden—the small circle wrested with cutlass and fire from the great jungle, and kept free only by constant cutting of the vines and lianas which creep out almost in a night, like sinister octopus tentacles, to strangle the strange upstarts and rejungle the ...
— Edge of the Jungle • William Beebe
... jingling cars, as he went about the city, with an almost hungry eye. Chicago was growing fast, and these little horse-cars on certain streets were crowded night and morning—fairly bulging with people at the rush-hours. If he could only secure an octopus-grip on one or all of them; if he could combine and control them all! What a fortune! That, if nothing else, might salve him for some of his woes—a tremendous fortune—nothing less. He forever busied himself with various aspects of ...
— The Titan • Theodore Dreiser
... world-old forests with my laugh, And whirl the ancient snows of Hecla sheer into Orion's eyes. I dance on the deep under the big Indian stars, And wrap the water spout about my sinuous hips As a dancer winds her girdle. The ocean's horrid crew, The octopus, the serpent, and the shark, with the heart of a coward, Plunge downward when they hear my feet above on the sea-floor, And hide in their slimy coverts. Brave men pray upon the straining decks Till comes my mood to ...
— Pan and Aeolus: Poems • Charles Hamilton Musgrove
... a huge brute, fully six feet tall, and he was the possessor of two of the strongest-looking hands I had ever seen. They were claws, that's what they were. The great fingers were slightly crooked, as if waiting, like the tentacles of an octopus, for something to get in their grip. The body was heavy, and, in a manner that I cannot explain, it made me think of animals that lived and died in long past ages. The big brute looked so capable of making an inexcusable attack that one's primitive ...
— The White Waterfall • James Francis Dwyer
... the threshold of the secret cell. But what was that horrible thing beneath the dim sky-light? Dick's electric torch was failing, and we could not see distinctly, and a very oppression of fear seized upon us both. What was the gruesome object in front that resembled a dead octopus ...
— Border Ghost Stories • Howard Pease
... the fisher, as was the horrific creature in Victor Hugo's "Toilers of the Sea," whom his hero fought, yet menacing even when dead. It is a frightful figure in its aspect of hatred and ugliness, but good to eat. See that fat Tahitian thrust his finger into the sides of the octopus to plumb its cooking qualities. ...
— Mystic Isles of the South Seas. • Frederick O'Brien
... but the grass and the weeds were verra thick, and they closed aboot me the way the arms of an octopus mich and it was scary work gettin' free. When I did my head and shoulders showed above the ...
— Between You and Me • Sir Harry Lauder
... picture obsessed me. It clung with an octopus-like grip to my soul. I truly found trouble and sorrow, intensified by the consciousness of perfect helplessness to grapple with such a vast area of evil. It was world-wide, and whatever the remedy, it would have to be universal in its application. This experience seemed to bring ...
— Fighting the Traffic in Young Girls - War on the White Slave Trade • Various
... closer, till he satisfies himself that there is no line attached—then he makes a lightning-like dart, and vanishes in an instant with the morsel between his strong, thick jaws. If, however, he sees the most tempting bait—a young yellow-tail, a piece of white and red octopus tentacle, or a small, silvery mullet—and detects even a fine silk line attached to the cleverly hidden hook, he makes a stern-board for a foot or two, still eyeing the descending bait; then, with languid contempt, he slowly turns away, ...
— The Colonial Mortuary Bard; "'Reo," The Fisherman; and The Black Bream Of Australia - 1901 • Louis Becke
... system, the system of leaning on the government, is spreading like a blight over England and America, and everywhere we suffer from it. Government, that in theory represents a union of effort and a saving of force, sprawls like an octopus over the land. It has become like a dead weight upon us. Wherever it touches industry it cripples it. It runs railways and makes a heavy deficit: it builds ships and loses money on them: it operates the ships and loses more money: it piles up taxes ...
— My Discovery of England • Stephen Leacock
... much interested, on several occasions, by watching the habits of an Octopus, or cuttle-fish. Although common in the pools of water left by the retiring tide, these animals were not easily caught. By means of their long arms and suckers, they could drag their bodies into very narrow crevices; and when thus fixed, it required great force to remove them. ...
— A Book of Natural History - Young Folks' Library Volume XIV. • Various
... railways. These contestants were sometimes decided at the polls with varying degrees of success. Perhaps the nearest approach to the Rhodesian line-up was the struggle of the California wheat growers against the Southern Pacific Railway, which Frank Norris dramatized in his book, "The Octopus." ...
— An African Adventure • Isaac F. Marcosson
... knows the soul, who has ever dared to look into the soul, of a nation at war? It is a monster, composed of many myriads of conglomerated lives, of lives that are distinct and conflicting, lives that move in all directions and are yet joined at the base like the tentacles of an octopus.... It is a confused mingling of all the instincts, and of all the reasons, and of all the unreasons.... Blasts of wind from the abyss; sightless and raging forces issuing from the seething depths of animalism; a ...
— The Forerunners • Romain Rolland
... they guessed his presence before they saw him. And sometimes it happened that the catch was nothing but a few sea crabs, who would half devour the other unfortunate fish imprisoned with them. Another day a great octopus appeared, and Esperance grew pale with fright at sight ...
— The Idol of Paris • Sarah Bernhardt
... to be won. It is a dark presage of the battle morrow. Behind grim redan and salient, the footsore troops rest from the day's indecisive righting. The foeman is not idle; all night long, rumbling trains and busy movements tell that "Uncle Billy Sherman" never sleeps. His blue octopus crawls and feels its way unceasingly. The ragged gray ranks, whose guns are their only pride, whose motto is "Move by day; fight always," are busy ...
— The Little Lady of Lagunitas • Richard Henry Savage
... for old Miss Pollie Bumpus? She live all by herself, and she 'bout a million years old, and Doctor Sanford ain't never brung her no chillens 'cause she ain't got 'er no husban' to be their papa, and she got a octopus in her head, and she poor as a post and ...
— Miss Minerva and William Green Hill • Frances Boyd Calhoun
... patriotism, his love of home and country, called to him. For a moment the longing to take his part in helping England to drive back this huge fighting octopus, which was longing to stretch out its tentacles all over Europe, ...
— All for a Scrap of Paper - A Romance of the Present War • Joseph Hocking
... illustration. The octopus, or devil-fish, belongs to a widely different class of animals from a true fish; and yet its eye, in general appearance, looks wonderfully like the eye of a true fish. Now, Mr. Mivart pointed to this fact as a great difficulty in the way ...
— Darwin, and After Darwin (Vol. 1 and 3, of 3) • George John Romanes
... screen of men, and in front of the screen, little patrols with scouts ahead. When all were in the position the G.O.C. signalled "Advance." An army on the move is a fascinating sight. It is like an octopus—the main body with a thousand tendrils, or arms, thrown out. These recoil as they touch the enemy, telling the brain ...
— The Kangaroo Marines • R. W. Campbell
... headache-fiend had entered into full possession, had perched itself in the centre of consciousness, and seemed to Flint's excited nerves to be working its octopus claws in and out among the folds ...
— Flint - His Faults, His Friendships and His Fortunes • Maud Wilder Goodwin
... The Octopus must watch his ways and guard his awful arms, And keep his eyes peeled mighty close around the Kansas farms; The days of peace are over there! too long the robber-trust Has rifled all their pocket-books and left them but a crust; But Kansas has a sudden way of stopping all the fun, When ...
— Oklahoma Sunshine • Freeman E. (Freeman Edwin) Miller
... that the New Labor Party is established (and in Chicago recently they polled more votes than the Socialists), we wonder what the old machine will do to combat this new octopus that threatens the big vote that used to belong to 'US.' Answer: Teach the working class real Socialism, the ...
— The Red Conspiracy • Joseph J. Mereto
... red road from the bungalow, looking like a huge beehive with its heavy enveloping roof of thatch, that was Jean Baptiste's head-quarters, was a particularly sacred pipal of huge growth. It was an extraordinary octopus-like tree, and most sacred, for perched in the embrace of its giant arms was a shrine that had been lifted from its base in the centuries of the ...
— Caste • W. A. Fraser
... 'Deserta petrels,' the cagarras (Puffinus major, or sheerwater), the rabbits, the goats that have now run wild, and possibly a seal. A poisonous spider is here noticed by the guide-books, and the sea supplies the edible pulvo (octopus) and the dreaded urgamanta. This huge ray (?) enwraps the swimmer in its mighty double flaps and drags him to the bottom, paralysing him by the wet shroud and the dreadful stare of its ...
— To the Gold Coast for Gold - A Personal Narrative in Two Volumes.—Vol. I • Richard F. Burton
... too late, for two Spanish galleons ranged alongside and swung grappling irons into his rigging in order to close with the moving vessel. The Englishmen struck at them with oars and hand-spikes, knocking the tentacles of the on-coming octopus aside, and, with sails flying and shots rattling, the Judith bore ...
— Famous Privateersmen and Adventurers of the Sea • Charles H. L. Johnston
... all the reaches of the valley, leaving blood and destruction in its path; the leviathan, with tentacles of steel clutching into the soil, the soulless Force, the iron-hearted Power, the monster, the Colossus, the Octopus. ...
— The Octopus • Frank Norris
... leading with the ogre of the King's wrath forever hanging over me; Prince George's intrigues, octopus-like, enmeshing me! ...
— Secret Memoirs: The Story of Louise, Crown Princess • Henry W. Fischer
... dreadful life, writhing in aimless excitement, although there was no work for them to do. In a few seconds the fish was torn asunder and engulfed—those inky eyes the while unwinking and unmoved. A darker, livid hue passed fleetingly over the pallid body of the octopus. Then it slipped back under the shelter of the rock; and the writhing tentacles composed themselves once more to stillness upon the bottom, awaiting the next careless passer-by. Once more they seemed mere inert trailers of weed, not worth ...
— Kings in Exile • Sir Charles George Douglas Roberts
... Harlan. "Mr. Chester. A young giant with a grip like an octopus. 'The fairest ornament of her sex.' Never, never heard of him before. Some old flame of Dorothy's, who has discovered her whereabouts and brazenly followed ...
— At the Sign of the Jack O'Lantern • Myrtle Reed
... of Health Bill was in the Commons some objection was raised to the multiplicity of powers conferred upon it. But if certain noble lords could have their way the measure would become a veritable octopus, stretching its absorptive tentacles over all the Departments of State. It would take over the inspectorship of factories from the Home Office, the control of quack medicines from the Privy Council and the relief of the poor from the Local Government Board. Fortunately ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, May 14, 1919 • Various
... the leader-writer on The Plainsman, took a half-column in which to point out in emphatic and vigorous Western phrase the dangers that threatened the commonwealth in this very evident coalition of the railroad octopus and the machine. ...
— The Honorable Senator Sage-Brush • Francis Lynde
... deals in harmonies, who only matches stars with angels, or lambs with spring flowers, he indeed may be frivolous; for he is taking one mood at a time, and perhaps forgetting each mood as it passes. But a man who ventures to combine an angel and an octopus must have some serious view of the universe. The man who should write a dialogue between two early Christians might be a mere writer of dialogues. But a man who should write a dialogue between an early Christian and the Missing Link would have to be a philosopher. The more widely different the ...
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton • Maisie Ward
... whiteness drew nearer. It boiled and bubbled with the ferocity of one of the hot lava cauldrons of Mercury. Changing shape rapidly, it threw out long streamers that writhed and twisted like the arms of an octopus. ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, November, 1930 • Various
... Jimson, I guess," the captain said, as they wended their way homeward; "but he's got as many ways of holdin' a feller as an octopus. And lemme tell you, that's a plenty! Arms seem to grow on devilfish 'while you ...
— Cap'n Abe, Storekeeper • James A. Cooper
... A score or more Of guests," the hostess said, "We'll have the Poodle Sing Yankee Doodle, A-standing on his head. And when this through, Good Parrot, you, Please show them how you swear." "Oh, dear; don't cuss," Cried the Octopus, And he walked off ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume I. (of X.) • Various
... profound shade of a giant ilex tree engulfed him. Like a great wooden octopus, it spread ...
— Crome Yellow • Aldous Huxley
... the Black Sea to the Arctic Ocean. Then I would think of my native land as a beautiful mermaid, about whom the giant's cold, chilly arms were slowly creeping, and I feared that some day those arms would crush her. That day has come. The helpless mermaid lies prostrate in the clutch of the octopus. Not that the constitution of Finland has been annulled, as has been so often erroneously stated, and quite generally believed. The Russian Government has made only a few inroads upon it. The great ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 21 - The Recent Days (1910-1914) • Charles F. Horne, Editor
... imagination, but he could feel their first frail tentacles wrapping themselves around his will, and drawing him towards Lucerne. As the day went on the tentacles grew stronger, till by evening there might have been a very octopus behind them. If this were so that night, he wondered what would happen on the following day, when the octopus began to pull. On one point he was determined. He would not go; never would he allow Madame Riennes to put him to sleep again, and what was much worse to make him kiss her. ...
— Love Eternal • H. Rider Haggard
... act of life in a fashion which may well put to shame many of us. Remember how Paul had to deal at length with the duty of the Corinthians in view of the way in which every meal was a sacrifice to some god, and how the same permeation of life with religion is found in all these 'false faiths.' The octopus has coiled its tentacles round the whole body of its victim. Bad and sad and mad as idolatry is, it reads a rebuke to many of us, who keep life and religion quite apart, and lock up our Christianity in our pews with our prayer-books ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Isaiah and Jeremiah • Alexander Maclaren
... and turn like a thing alive; tall, feathery plumes, as white as snow, or as green as emerald, toss to and fro, and make obeisance to old Neptune. Sea onions, with stems thirty feet long, and bulbous air-filled sacks, reach out their long snaky arms, like an octopus, and woe to the swimmer who becomes entangled ...
— Byways Around San Francisco Bay • William E. Hutchinson
... the joys and miseries of celebrity when they have passed the age of forty know how to defend themselves. They are at the beginning of a series of small worries, thunderbolts hidden under flowers, but they know how to hold in check that monster advertisement. It is a sort of octopus with innumerable tentacles. It throws out on the right and on the left, in front and behind, its clammy arms, and gathers in through its thousand little inhaling organs all the gossip and slander and praise ...
— My Double Life - The Memoirs of Sarah Bernhardt • Sarah Bernhardt
... fighting an octopus. My competitors all were arrayed against me with a force I had never before experienced. They spared no effort to crush the man who had beaten them over and over again in battles for commercial supremacy. It was their turn now and they ...
— The Romance and Tragedy • William Ingraham Russell
... am convinced that your friend is none other than the picturesque and romantic criminal whose octopus hand is upon almost every great theft in Europe, and whom the police always fail to catch, so elusive and ...
— Mademoiselle of Monte Carlo • William Le Queux
... upreared, standing like a scaled tower a hundred feet above the rift, its eyes scanning that movement I had seen along the course of its lair. There was a hissing; the crown of horns fell, whipped and writhed like the tentacles of an octopus; the towering length ...
— The Moon Pool • A. Merritt
... no effort to describe it. This wonderful thing is yet more "all over the shop" than its kindred. Its dorsal sepal measures three inches in length, its "tail," five inches, with an enormous lip between. They term it the Squid Flower, or Octopus, in Mexico; and a good name too. But in place of the rather weakly colouring habitual it has a grand decision of character, though the tones are like—pale yellow and greenish; its raised spots, red and deep green, are distinct as ...
— About Orchids - A Chat • Frederick Boyle
... came no answer. I set my teeth, and struggled to free myself until the veins in my forehead were knotted and my bonds cut into the flesh. But, alas! I was held as in the tentacles of an octopus. Every limb was gripped, so that already a numbness had overspread them, while my senses ...
— Hushed Up - A Mystery of London • William Le Queux
... in quite a lively adventure. He was about to dive over from the side of the sloop into the cool water for a bath, when he saw some dark object moving on the bottom and checked himself. It was well that he did so for the object proved to be an octopus, or devil fish, edging its way nearly under the sloop toward the shore. Its great tentacles stretched out nine or ten feet from its round body and a more repulsive or dangerous looking creature is hard to be imagined. One of the crew, who was an experienced fisherman, ...
— The Story of Paul Boyton - Voyages on All the Great Rivers of the World • Paul Boyton
... earthquake, the volcano, the cyclone; the shark, the viper, the tiger, the octopus, the poison berry; and the deadly loathsome germs of cholera, consumption, typhoid, smallpox, and the black death. God has permitted famine, pestilence, and war. He has permitted martyrdom, witch-burning, slavery, massacre, torture, and human sacrifice. He has for millions of years ...
— God and my Neighbour • Robert Blatchford
... of the octopus around Black Bill,' says I. And then I told him about the deputy sheriff, and how I'd described him to the deputy, and what the deputy ...
— Options • O. Henry
... impression, and a good photograph is better than any number of them. However, it disputes with that of Rio Janeiro, the name of the "finest harbour in the world"—whatever that may mean exactly. In shape it somewhat resembles a huge octopus, the innumerable creeks and inlets branching out like so many feelers, yet there can scarcely be said to be a centre from which they radiate. Numberless steamers ply all day to various points, mostly starting from the "Circular Quay," the principal wharf of the city. Small ...
— Six Letters From the Colonies • Robert Seaton
... from which he was dangling shifted their grip slightly, turning Powell's body in the air so that he could look up and get his first glimpse of the thing that had captured him. He shuddered at what he saw. The creature was a hideous combination of octopus and giant bat. ...
— Devil Crystals of Arret • Hal K. Wells
... in his reflections to try to disentangle the more prominent of Mr. Swenson's limbs from about him. By this time he was sure that he had never met anyone he disliked so intensely as Mr. Swenson—not even his Aunt Adeline. The man was a human octopus. Sam could count seven distinct legs twined round him and at least as many arms. It seemed to him that he was being done to death in his prime by a solid platoon of Swedes. He put his whole soul into one last effort ... something seemed to give ... he was free. Pausing only ...
— Three Men and a Maid • P. G. Wodehouse
... to jog his memory, concerning his part in the affray, but to his dismay he found that Sheeley had already been summoned to the office of the prosecuting attorney. In every direction he turned he encountered the octopus of the law. ...
— A Romance of Billy-Goat Hill • Alice Hegan Rice
... three obvious ways in which the increasing hold of the Ph.D. Octopus upon American life can be ...
— Memories and Studies • William James
... house, namely, a battle with her long-ago baby-love, and her father's love too—Henrietta.—Henrietta, so strangely powerful, so amazingly persistent—Henrietta who enclosed you in arms, apparently so soft but furnished with suckers, octopus arms adhering, never letting you go? She had played with the idea of this intrusion of Henrietta's and its effect upon Miss Felicia, at first as something amusing. It ceased to ...
— Deadham Hard • Lucas Malet
... all in a heap in the coal. Then he climbed up on the right-hand side of the cab and took charge of things himself. There were myriads of tracks stretching out before him like the long arms of some giant octopus, but all traffic was suspended on account of the strike and the main line was clear. The train flew down the line like a scared rabbit and in thirty minutes reached the camp at Blake Park. I had arrived there that morning ...
— Danger Signals • John A. Hill and Jasper Ewing Brady
... I have loved the Octopus, Since we were boys together. I love the Vulture and the Shark: I ...
— Greybeards at Play • G. K. Chesterton
... : objekto, ajxo, (aim) celo. oblige : devigi; fari komplezon. observe : rimarki; vidi, observi. obstinate : obstina. obstruct : bari, obstrukci. obtain : ricevi, akiri, havigi al si. occasion : okazo, okazigi. occur : okazi. octopus : okpiedulo. off : for, de. offend : ofendi. offence : ofendo, kulpo, peko. offer : propono. office : ofico, oficejo, kontoro. officer : oficisto, (milit.) oficiro. officiate : funkcii; dejxori; servi kiel. offspring ...
— The Esperanto Teacher - A Simple Course for Non-Grammarians • Helen Fryer
... birds and beasts and fishes whose appetites and digestions are normal. Paris alone is the analogical apotheosis of the octopus. Product of centralisation carried to an ad absurdum, it fairly represents the devil fish; and in no respects is the resemblance more curious than in the ...
— Dracula's Guest • Bram Stoker
... line in his senior's cheek flickered with a hinted smile. "None of the kind that run after him, lie in wait for him, buzz round him like wasps about a honey-bowl. I've developed muscle getting the boy out of amatory scrapes, with the Society octopus, with the Garrison husband-hunter, with the professional man-eater, theatrical or music-hall; and the latest, most inexpressible She, is always the loveliest woman ...
— The Dop Doctor • Clotilde Inez Mary Graves |
