"Orchid" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... year sold the largest half of his country seat—Spencer Wood—to the Government, as a gubernatorial residence for the hospitable and genial Earl of Elgin, reserving the smaller half (now owned by the writer), on which he built conservatories, vineries, a pinery, orchid house, &c., far more extensive than those of Spencer Wood proper. Though the place was renowned for its magnificence and princely hospitality in the days of Lord Elgin, there are amongst the living plenty to testify to the fact that ...
— Picturesque Quebec • James MacPherson Le Moine
... this cup are the various indications of pleasure and social enjoyment. These being shown by the cake and butterfly, while the orchid in conjunction predicts that the consultant's personal charm and power of attraction will result in a future of wealth and ...
— Telling Fortunes By Tea Leaves • Cicely Kent
... very far from the Arcadian condition, in which I meet people here at every step. You are intricate; you are like an orchid, one stem of which has a flower in the form of a butterfly, while the next seems like a ...
— The Argonauts • Eliza Orzeszko (AKA Orzeszkowa)
... snob (somewhere he defends the snob in an essay): rich food ("half-mourning" [artichoke hearts and truffles], "filet of reindeer," a cygnet in its plumage bearing an orchid in its beak, "heron's eggs whipped with wine into an amber foam," "mashed grasshoppers baked in saffron"), rich clothes, rich people interest him. There is no poverty in his books. His creatures do not toil. They cut coupons ...
— The Merry-Go-Round • Carl Van Vechten
... the housekeeper's room at Monkland there lived a magpie who had once sought shelter in an orchid-house from some pursuer. As soon as they thought him wedded to civilization, they had let him go, to see whether he would come back. For hours he had sat up in a high tree, and at last come down again ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... exquisite adaptations, on which this notion of a supernatural Artificer has been founded. His book is a repository of the most startling facts of this description. Take the marvellous observation which he cites from Dr. Krueger, where a bucket, with an aperture serving as a spout, is formed in an orchid. Bees visit the flower: in eager search of material for their combs, they push each other into the bucket, the drenched ones escaping from their involuntary bath by the spout. Here they rub their backs against the viscid stigma of ...
— Fragments of science, V. 1-2 • John Tyndall
... those orchids who make it their business to imitate a fly with their petals. This lie they dispose so cunningly that real flies, thinking the honey is being already plundered, pass them without molesting them. Watching intently and keeping very still, methought I heard this orchid speaking to the offspring which she felt within her, though I saw them not. "My children," she exclaimed, "I must soon leave you; think upon the fly, my loved ones, for this is truth; cling to this great thought in your passage through life, for it is the one thing needful; once lose ...
— Alps and Sanctuaries of Piedmont and the Canton Ticino • Samuel Butler
... and hung about with leaves. Nothing is beautiful here, but everything is curious. It is a curiosity shop, where one pays with the sweat of one's brow, with the languor of one's body, and the remembrance of one's past, for the sight of an orchid shaped like a bird, or a flower shaped like a jug, or a bird whose flight is ...
— The Pools of Silence • H. de Vere Stacpoole
... old Priscilla Friday and patiently enduring Robin Clifford were more likely to be hurt than gratified. For a silence had fallen between that past life, which had been like a wild rose blossoming in a country lane, and the present one, which resembled a wonderful orchid flower, flaming in heat under glass,—and though she wrote to Robin now and again, and he replied, his letters were restrained and formal—almost cold. He knew too well how far she was removed from him by ...
— Innocent - Her Fancy and His Fact • Marie Corelli
... was counterfeit. Everything was on Homer P. Mellinger. That man could find rolls of bills concealed in places on his person where Hermann the Wizard couldn't have conjured out a rabbit or an omelette. He could have founded universities, and made orchid collections, and then had enough left to purchase the colored vote of his country. Henry and me wondered what his graft was. One evening ...
— Cabbages and Kings • O. Henry
... sense can perceive. But that of Chelone glabra, as modest and withdrawn as the flower itself, seems hardly to belong in the swamp for all the beauty of the place. It should rather be that of some delicately nurtured plant, some rare orchid of sheltered conservatories, it is so ...
— Old Plymouth Trails • Winthrop Packard
... as Spring, And green, with little singings in the grass, And pheasants flying, Gold, green and red, Great, narrow, lovely things, As if an orchid had snatched wings. There are strange birds like blots against a sky Where a sun is dying. Beyond the river where the hills are blurred A cloud, like the one word Of the too-silent sky, stirs, and there stand Black trees on either hand. Autumn in Oregon is wet and new As ...
— The Second Book of Modern Verse • Jessie B. Rittenhouse
... deserts of the most wearisome ennui. For weeks, perhaps, those who were not fortunate enough to be living hard and getting fatigued every day in the boats were yawning away their existence in an atmosphere only comparable to that of an orchid-house, a life in view of which that of Mariana in the ...
— The Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley Volume 1 • Leonard Huxley
... and glass, around a magnificent orchid in the centre, and a rose by every plate, was spread in the dining-room, sweet sounds and scents coming in through the widely-opened glass doors of the conservatory, while a bright wood fire, still pleasant to look at, shone in ...
— Magnum Bonum • Charlotte M. Yonge
... along the well-kept paths among the rhododendra and through the private gate into the woods where the bluebells and common orchid were in profusion. Never before had I tasted so completely the fine sense of privilege and ownership. And all this has to end, I told myself, all ...
— Tono Bungay • H. G. Wells
... experimenting incessantly with the same object in view. Lyell and Hooker were in his confidence, and in Lyell's letters we meet with references such as the following, dated November 13, 1854: "You probably know about this (the remarkable orchid, Catasetum), which will figure in C. Darwin's book on 'Species,' with many other 'ugly facts,' as Hooker, clinging like me to the orthodox faith, calls these and other abnormal vagaries," showing at the same time how completely Darwin was the leader, while his friends, advanced ...
— Life of Charles Darwin • G. T. (George Thomas) Bettany
... feminine figure in conformation, and yet one that looked competent to transcend the usual feminine incompetencies. So far she measured to a high but customary standard. But her face was as exotic as an orchid. It was long, narrow, and pale with three accents to redeem it from what that ordinarily implies—lips of a brilliant carmine, eyes of a deep sea-green, and eyebrows high, arched, clean cut, narrow as though drawn by a camel's-hair brush. Indeed, in civilization no one would have believed ...
— The Leopard Woman • Stewart Edward White et al |
