"Preen" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... an' gear an' land an' mair, He'd gie them a' to get the preen That preened the flowers in till my hair ...
— Songs of Angus and More Songs of Angus • Violet Jacob
... own mind. I will look about and find some seclusion that thou mayest look and sate thine eyes upon Royalty; and thou wilt gaze and gaze and make mental annotations, and to-morrow thou wilt begin to preen thy feathers preparatory to flying forth; but first thou must lie down and sleep three full hours, 'tis then the ball will be at its height, and thou wilt feel refreshed and ready to amuse me with thy observations. 'Twill ...
— Mistress Penwick • Dutton Payne
... she murmured, and thinned the frail top from the other side. A pale, damp, creased thing hoisted itself feebly on to the comb. Sacharissa's note changed at once. "No time to waste! Go up the frame and preen yourself!" she said. "Report for nursing-duty in my ward to-morrow evening at six. Stop a minute. What's the matter with your third ...
— Actions and Reactions • Rudyard Kipling
... of my garden Blackbirds and throstle and wren, Wet your dear wings in the tears that are Spring's And so to your singing again! Birds in my blossoming orchard, Chaffinch and goldfinch and lark, Preen your bright wings, little happy live things; The May trees grow white in ...
— The Rainbow and the Rose • E. Nesbit
... lie, and lie especially innocently, to those who preen themselves before them on political hobby horses. Here they agree with anything you want. I shall tell her to-day: Away with the modern bourgeois order! Let us destroy with bombs and daggers the capitalists, landed proprietors, and the bureaucracy! She'll warmly agree with ...
— Yama (The Pit) • Alexandra Kuprin
... King to his fathers' place, Where the tombs of the Sun-born stand: Where the gray apes swing, and the peacocks preen On fretted pillar and jewelled screen, And the wild boar couch in the house of the Queen On the drift ...
— The Works of Rudyard Kipling One Volume Edition • Rudyard Kipling
... wings, shook the ash from its tail, and began to preen itself. Every movement was like the flash of ...
— David and the Phoenix • Edward Ormondroyd
... who may, The scorching sun with rage unslaked My golden body well has baked. So in my age all black I'd grown, My beauteous glint and gleam was gone, Till I at length, despised by all, Was lifted from my pedestal. Ah well! 'tis thus we run our race, Another now must have my place. Go strut, and preen, but don't forget What court the wind ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VII. • Various
... a woodtick, anything that gets something for nothing. I batten on the mangy hides of the workingmen. I don't have to gamble. I don't have to work. My father left me enough of his winnings.—Oh, don't preen yourself, my boy. Your folks were just as bad as mine. But yours lost, and mine won, and so you plow in ...
— The Valley of the Moon • Jack London
... divan, and looking out through the vermilion doors, I used to surprise a pair of swallows dropping down from their nest in the cedar-beams to preen themselves on the fountain's edge or in the channels of the pavement, for the roof was full of birds who came and went through the broken panes of the clerestory. Usually they were my only visitors, but one morning just ...
— In Morocco • Edith Wharton
... pastime—following without prejudice the leading of a chain of pure logic. He despised self-deceivers. He always kept himself free from prejudice and all its wiles. He took life as he found it; but he did not excuse it and himself with the familiar hypocrisies that make the comfortable classes preen themselves on being the guardians and saviours of the ignorant, incapable masses. When old Lockyer said one day that this was the function of the "upper classes," Norman retorted: "Perhaps. But, if so, how do they perform it? Like the brutal old-fashioned farm family that takes care of its insane ...
— The Grain Of Dust - A Novel • David Graham Phillips
... no man, indeed, who is wholly resistant to female beauty, and I know of no man, even among those engaged professionally by aesthetic problems, who habitually and automatically distinguishes the genuine, from the imitation. He may doit now and then; he may even preen himself upon is on unusual discrimination; but given the right woman and the right stage setting, and he will be deceived almost as readily as a yokel fresh from ...
— In Defense of Women • H. L. Mencken
... us; in fact I do not think he really left the ship, but simply sought a secluded perch, secure from prying observation. He reappeared upon the port stay, and proceeded to preen himself and observe the ship's course. He is evidently bound for Aden, casting glances of quiet unconcern on Perim and the coast ...
— A Holiday in the Happy Valley with Pen and Pencil • T. R. Swinburne
... me hasten to add that these men claim no especial merit for their altruism and unselfishness. They do not pose before the world as philanthropists. They do not strut about and preen themselves as who would say: "See what a noble man am I! See how I sacrifice myself for the welfare of society!" The attitude of cant and pose is entirely alien to the spirit of true service. Their delight ...
— Craftsmanship in Teaching • William Chandler Bagley
... nine o'clock; from ten to twelve they preferred the marshes in order to feed upon goose grass and goose weed, as well as upon the roots and seeds of other aquatic plants. Then from noon to four o'clock they sought the lakes to preen themselves; while from four to six they returned to the sandy beaches and then resorted to the marshes in which to spend the night. That was the usual procedure for from ten to fifteen days, then away they went to their more northern ...
— The Drama of the Forests - Romance and Adventure • Arthur Heming
... the metrical version. No that I would preen my faith to that clink neither; but it's bonny, and easier to mind. "Who go to sea in ships," ...
— The Merry Men - and Other Tales and Fables • Robert Louis Stevenson
... present in certain cases, e.g. in some nocturnal birds of prey. It seems certain that it is by sight, not by smell, that the eagles gather to the carcass; but perhaps there is more smell in birds than they are usually credited with. One would like to experiment with the oil from the preen gland of birds to see whether the scent of this does not help in the recognition of kin by kin at night or amid the darkness of the forest. There may be other senses in birds, such as a sense of temperature and a sense ...
— The Outline of Science, Vol. 1 (of 4) - A Plain Story Simply Told • J. Arthur Thomson
... drum was the stub of a dry limb about the size of one's wrist. The heart was decayed and gone, but the outer shell was hard and resonant. The bird would keep his position there for an hour at a time. Between his drummings he would preen his plumage and listen as if for the response of the female, or for the drum of some rival. How swift his head would go when he was delivering his blows upon the limb! His beak wore the surface perceptibly. When he wished to change the key, ...
— A Year in the Fields • John Burroughs
... her head as a pigeon would preen its feathers, stood up to see her train sweep the floor, sat down again to watch the stained satin folds crumple themselves about her feet, and was at last so overcome by it all that she threw her arms around Sam, to his intense ...
— Felix O'Day • F. Hopkinson Smith
... turned its brown to green After three nights of humming rain, And in the valleys peck and preen Linnets with ...
— Flame and Shadow • Sara Teasdale
... mildest in a perversion of the natural feminine instincts of love and service, and an appearance of the masculine instincts of self-expression and display. Alone among all female things do women decorate and preen themselves and exhibit their borrowed plumage (literally!) to attract the favor of the male. This ignominy is forced upon them by their position of economic dependence; and their general helplessness. As all broader life is made to depend, for them, ...
— The Forerunner, Volume 1 (1909-1910) • Charlotte Perkins Gilman
... kind these cargo captains were bound to preen themselves. They bought at frequent intervals, not at all like the ways of another group—not cargo captains—of whom one of our American warrant officers said: "You buy and buy and buy, and they drink and drink and drink. It comes time for them to buy, and ...
— The U-boat hunters • James B. Connolly
... depths reflected in their pellucid clearness the water plants growing at its edge and the enclosing shrubs and trees. The turf bordering it was velvet-thick and green, and a few flag-steps led down to the water. Birds came there to drink and bathe and preen and dress their feathers. He knew there were often nests in the bushes—sometimes the nests of nightingales who filled the soft darkness or moonlight of early June with the wonderfulness of nesting song. Sometimes a straying ...
— The Shuttle • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... some of our seagoing chorus girls when they attempt to assume the light and airy graces of the real article. Some of the men have so deeply entered into their parts that they have attained absolute self-forgetfulness, with the result that they leap and preen about in a manner quite startling to the dispassionate spectator. My career so far has not been a personal triumph. In the middle of a number, the other night, the dancing master clapped his hands violently together, a signal he uses when he wants ...
— Biltmore Oswald - The Diary of a Hapless Recruit • J. Thorne Smith, Jr.
... may hate the big balls, but are nevertheless a great deal in the movement as regards other gay pastimes) watch them with quiet approbation. Many a New York husband is quite willing that his wife shall cut her own grandmother if that relative be not "desirable." The men have not time to preen their social plumes quite so strenuously; they are too busy in money-getting, and of a sort which nearly always concerns the hazard of the Wall Street die. And yet quite a number of the men are arrant snobs, refusing to associate with, often even to notice, others whose dollars ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 20, July, 1891 • Various
... you dearest birdlings in America! Preen your feathers, and stretch the Birds' nest a little, if you please, and let Uncle Jack in for the holidays. I am coming with such a trunk full of treasures that you'll have to borrow the stockings of ...
— The Birds' Christmas Carol • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... bird—in fact, a very slick bird. It was his soul's delight to preen his unctuous feathers and to shiver them into the most effective and comfortable position, to settle his head between his shoulders, and, with moistened lips, to view his little world from dreamy, half-closed eyes. This, however, only happened in restful ...
— Blue Goose • Frank Lewis Nason
... pride of the garden was its dovecote, formed of a large cider-barrel on a mast. The barrel was pierced with pigeon-holes, and fitted with ledges on which the birds stood to preen themselves. Mr Pinsent did not profess himself a fancier. His columbarium—a mixed collection of fantails and rocketers—had come to him by a side-wind of business, as offset against a bad debt; but it pleased him to sit ...
— Corporal Sam and Other Stories • A. T. Quiller-Couch
... to most in young birds," said another elderly hen, "is their appearance. Some of them do nothing all day but preen their feathers. Look at the over-studied arrangements of their wing flights, and the affected exactness of their tail feathers! One looks in vain for sweetness and simplicity in ...
— Dot and the Kangaroo • Ethel C. Pedley
... might resume male attire en route, but in case of exciting suspicion among the servants he had still to masquerade as Betty Burke till he left the house. Mrs. Macdonald, her daughter, and Miss Flora all came up to assist at his toilet, for 'deil a preen could he put in,' as his hostess expressed herself. He laughed so heartily over his own appearance that they could hardly get his dress fastened. Before he left the room he permitted Flora Macdonald to cut off a lock of his hair, which she divided with Mrs. MacLeod. ...
— The True Story Book • Andrew Lang
... in the metrical version. No' that I would preen my faith to that clink neither; but it's bonny, and easier to mind. 'Who go to sea in ships,' ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson, Volume XXI • Robert Louis Stevenson |
