"Scimitar" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... avail," said Blue Beard, "you must die"; then, taking hold of her hair with one hand, and lifting up his scimitar with the other, he was going to ...
— The Fairy Tales of Charles Perrault • Charles Perrault
... coat with cartridge cases in the breast and trimmed and lined with fur, a silver-lace belt round his waist, white gloves with fur backs, and green trousers with a silver stripe down the legs; yellow boots, a curved scimitar behind, and a richly-jewelled dagger in his belt in front completed his costume. He was a very fine-looking fellow, and was most evidently aware of the fact. He was on good terms with every one, and laughed and chatted with all the officers ...
— Fred Markham in Russia - The Boy Travellers in the Land of the Czar • W. H. G. Kingston
... cutlery (I tried my scimitar with the common officers’ swords belonging to our fellows at Malta, and they cut it like the leaf of a novel). Well (to the dragoman), tell the Pasha I am exceedingly gratified to find that he entertains such ...
— Eothen • A. W. Kinglake
... disturbed,—his great glittering coils quivered so violently, as to shake the rod on which he was twined, . . and when his Priestess raised her mesmeric reproving eyes toward him, he bent back his head rebelliously, and sent a vehement hiss through the silence, like the noise made by the whirl of a scimitar. ...
— Ardath - The Story of a Dead Self • Marie Corelli
... sharp night, with a thin moon, like a scimitar, hanging bright in the sky, and a myriad of intense stars blinking in the heavens, above the steep roofs and spiral chimneys of Brandon Hall, and the ...
— Wylder's Hand • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... Norsemen. For ordinary life, Harald's chief duties would be to lounge about the palace, keeping guard, wearing helmet and buckler and bearskin, with purple underclothes and golden clasped hose; and bearing as armor a mighty battle-axe and a small scimitar. Such was the life led by Harald, till one day he had a message from his father, through a new recruit, calling him home to join an expedition to the western seas. "I hear, my son," the message said, "that your good emperor, whom may the gods preserve, is sorely ill and may die any day. ...
— Tales of the Enchanted Islands of the Atlantic • Thomas Wentworth Higginson
... my slender side The pistol and the scimitar, And in my maiden flower and pride Am come to share the tasks of war. And yonder stands my fiery steed, That paws the ground and neighs to go, My charger of the Arab breed,— I took ...
— Poems • William Cullen Bryant
... tightly wound about her that she might as well have been wearing a wet silk bathing-suit, so far as concealing her figure was concerned. Whenever she caught my eye she smiled mischievously. I should have liked to have seen more of her, but an unamiable-looking sentry armed with a large scimitar prevented. ...
— Where the Strange Trails Go Down • E. Alexander Powell
... authority of Capt. Hutton and others. For the wild Pembrokeshire goats, see the 'Field,' 1869, p. 150.), rear on their hind legs, and then not only butt, but "make a cut down and a jerk up, with the ribbed front of their scimitar-shaped horn, as with a sabre. When the O. cycloceros attacked a large domestic ram, who was a noted bruiser, he conquered him by the sheer novelty of his mode of fighting, always closing at once with his adversary, and catching him across the face and nose with a sharp drawing jerk of the ...
— The Descent of Man and Selection in Relation to Sex • Charles Darwin
... pressed back, glanced round to see why support did not arrive, and saw that there were already thirty feet of water between the two vessels. He was about to spring overboard, when the Moors made a desperate rush, his guard was beaten down, a blow from a Moorish scimitar fell on his head, ...
— By England's Aid • G. A. Henty
... the fiendish spectacle below. The Kalmucks, reduced by this time from about six hundred thousand souls to two hundred thousand, and after enduring for two months and a half the miseries we have previously described—outrageous heat, famine, and the destroying scimitar of the Kirghises and the Bashkirs, had for the last ten days been traversing a hideous desert, where no vestiges were seen of vegetation, and no drop of water could be found. Camels and men were already so overladen, that it was ...
— Narrative And Miscellaneous Papers • Thomas De Quincey
... ship alongside one of the enemy, grappled with her and boarded. Decatur was the first over the side and a desperate hand-to-hand combat followed. The pirate captain, a gigantic fellow, soon met Decatur face to face, and stood on tiptoe to deal him a tremendous blow with his scimitar. Decatur rushed in under the swinging sword, grappled with him, and they fell to the deck together, when another Tripolitan raised his scimitar to deal the American a fatal blow. A young sailor named Reuben James, himself with both arms disabled from sword cuts, seeing ...
— American Men of Action • Burton E. Stevenson
... HASSAN: Ibrahim's scimitar Drew with its gleam swift victory from Heaven, To burn before him in the night of battle— 365 ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley Volume I • Percy Bysshe Shelley
... fell, a fiery scimitar out of the darkness, and twice again it careened at the vitals ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, March 1930 • Various
... came up to them, we fired our pistols in their faces, and then drew; but they fled in the greatest confusion imaginable; the only stand any of them made was on our right, where three of them stood, and, by signs, called the rest to come back to them, having a kind of scimitar in their hands, and their bows hanging at their backs. Our brave commander, without asking any body to follow him, galloped up close to them, and with his fusil knocked one of them off his horse, killed the second with his pistol, and the third ran away; ...
— The Life and Adventures of Robinson Crusoe (1808) • Daniel Defoe
... Saladin; and tucking up the sleeve of his gown, showed his arm, thin indeed and spare, but which constant exercise had hardened into a mass consisting of nought but bone, brawn, and sinew. He unsheathed his scimitar, a curved and narrow blade, which glittered not like the swords of the Franks, but was, on the contrary, of a dull blue colour, marked with ten millions of meandering lines, which showed how anxiously the metal had been welded by the armourer. Wielding this weapon, apparently ...
— The Ontario Readers - Third Book • Ontario Ministry of Education
... when t'ward the Christian west The fell invasion of the Saracen Headed its course with crimson scimitar; Supplanting the mild precepts of the Cross With those of lust, of hate ...
— Mountain idylls, and Other Poems • Alfred Castner King
... "Qu-wheek, qu-wheek!" sounded through the grave stillness of this last night of May. The moon at her curve's summit floated at peace on the blue surface of the sky, a great closed water-lily. And Martin saw through the trees scimitar-shaped reeds clustering black along the pool's shore. All about him the may-flowers were alight. It was such a night as makes dreams real and turns ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... from the Royal Guard, and still wore their blue cloaks. The excessively whimsical get-up of the officers put the finishing touch to this motley show. Most of them had adopted the Mameluke dress—white turbans, huge trousers, yellow boots, a sun embroidered on their backs, and a scimitar. After the Zouaves I saw the squadron of "Chasseurs Algeriens," the nucleus of the future "Chasseurs d'Afrique," march past. They wore Turkish dress and turbans too, all but their commanding officer, a big bearded artillery captain, who wore a burnous and Arab pistols over his uniform. His name was ...
— Memoirs • Prince De Joinville
... his defeat, pale Reschid speaks. Among the dead we mourned a thousand Greeks. Lone from the field the Pasha fled afar, And, musing, wiped his reeking scimitar; His two dead steeds upon the sands were flung, And on their ...
— Poems • Victor Hugo
... varied shapes—sometimes its tail was broad, with one bright and curving edge, the other fainter and finer, the whole making up a stupendous semi-circular blade-like object. Later, the tail was shaped like a scimitar, and later again, it ...
— The Astronomy of the Bible - An Elementary Commentary on the Astronomical References - of Holy Scripture • E. Walter Maunder
... ran in, one behind the other, foaming over the hidden rocks, splashing wildly against the grim wall of granite that stood sharp-edged to withstand them. It was curved like a scimitar, that rock, and within its curve there slept, when the tide was low, a pool. When the tide rose the waters raged and thundered all around the rock, but when it sank again the still, deep pool remained, unruffled as a mountain tarn and ...
— The Tidal Wave and Other Stories • Ethel May Dell
... stretched on a couch of dyed lion skins, and a gerfalcon perched upon his wrist. Behind him stood a brass- turbaned Nubian, naked down to the waist, and with heavy earrings in his split ears. On a table by the side of the couch lay a mighty scimitar of steel. ...
— A House of Pomegranates • Oscar Wilde
... of the wanderers poor who knelt on the flints and the sands, When the mighty and merciless Moor was lord of the Lady of Lands. Where the African scimitar flamed, with a swift, bitter death in its kiss, The fathers, unknown and unnamed, found God in cathedrals like this! The glow of His Spirit—the beam of His blessing—made lords of the men Whose food was the ...
— The Poems of Henry Kendall • Henry Kendall
... his confession; that what ever he should then say to the prejudice of his accuser, would be disbelieved; and that when after a few hours the poison should take effect, no inquisition would be made into the death of a criminal, whom the bow-string or the scimitar would otherwise have been employed to destroy. But he now hoped to derive new merit from an act of zeal, which ALMORAN had approved before it was known, by condemning his rival to die, whose death he had already insured: 'May the wishes of my lord,' said he, 'be always anticipated; and may it be ...
— Almoran and Hamet • John Hawkesworth
... until, in the end, his wife persuaded him, and he accepted pledges of good faith. After this they met, and Syennesis gave Cyrus large sums in aid of his army; while Cyrus presented him with the customary royal gifts—to wit, a horse with a gold bit, a necklace of gold, a gold bracelet, and a gold scimitar, a Persian dress, and lastly, the exemption of his territory from further pillage, with the privilege of taking back the slaves that had been seized, wherever they might chance ...
— Anabasis • Xenophon
... that she was married to the Blue Beard of nursery annals, and that on his return from his memorable journey he had caught her in the act of displaying the mysterious cupboard to Miss Letitia. As he waved his scimitar over her head, he seemed unaccountably to assume the form and features of the tutor. In her agitation the poor woman could think of no plea against his severity, except that the cupboard was already crammed with the corpses of his previous wives, and there was no room for her. ...
— The Brownies and Other Tales • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... as you say, this will not be like fighting in the desert, when man singles out man, and one's life depends as much upon the intelligence and quickness of the horse as upon one's skill with spear and scimitar. Two of my followers shall take our three horses back to our camp in the desert. You and Sidi are already mounted. One of the men shall give me his horse, and shall ride on Sidi's; each will then have but one to lead. If my son and I are killed, the two horses will be valuable ...
— At Aboukir and Acre - A Story of Napoleon's Invasion of Egypt • George Alfred Henty
... to do next when a body of some twoscore horsemen swept down upon them. The leader might have been either Turk or Frank. He was as dark as a Saracen and wore the chain-mail, scimitar and light helmet of the heathen, but he spoke Levantine rather too well for a Moor, and with ...
— Masters of the Guild • L. Lamprey
... walk into this valley, which seems to have been made by the flashing scimitar of the river that cuts through the mountain. Ah! you in England, and in Belgium still less, do not know what scenery is, what Nature is when she is natural. You could as soon guess at a tiger from the cat on the hearthstone. You do not know; but, being a poet, you can dream. ...
— The Letters of Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Volume II • Elizabeth Barrett Browning
... or distinguish the separate stroke of its wings. At the same time, the chimney swifts sweep by me like black arrows, on wings apparently as stiff as if made of tin or sheet-iron, now beating the air, now sailing. In some way they suggest winged gimlets. How thin and scimitar-like their wings are! They are certainly ...
— Under the Maples • John Burroughs |
