"Biped" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... which is also called man, and he is the subject of not a few lucubrations, more or less scientific. He is the legendary featherless biped, the zoon politikhon of Aristotle, the social contractor of Rousseau, the homo economicus of the Manchester school, the homo sapiens of Linnaeus, or, if you like, the vertical mammal. A man neither of here nor there, neither of this age nor of ...
— Tragic Sense Of Life • Miguel de Unamuno
... strolled into Russia; there he drove a pair of horses, one of whom put his head down and did the work; the other pranced and capricoled alongside, all unconscious of the trace. He seemed happier than his working brother; but the biped whose career corresponded with this playful animal's ...
— Christie Johnstone • Charles Reade
... and the hustle and bustle of the early morning hours so that regular habits are not formed, bring about a sluggish bowel. Indeed it is a cynicism amongst physicians that the proper definition of woman is "a constipated biped." ...
— The Nervous Housewife • Abraham Myerson
... quadrumana go on all fours, permit me to remind you that no one much values the great difference in the mode of locomotion, and consequently in structure, between seals and the terrestrial carnivora, or between the almost biped kangaroos and ...
— The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin, Volume II • Francis Darwin
... to consider the origin of man from the point of view of evolution, we are irresistibly drawn to the ape tribe as the next lower link in the long chain of development, and are led to consider the characteristics of the apes as the intermediate stage between the quadruped and the biped, the bridge crossing this great gulf in organic development. This is by no means to suggest that some one of the existing anthropoid apes is the direct ancestor of man. Such an idea has never been entertained by scientists. These animals cannot even fairly be ...
— Man And His Ancestor - A Study In Evolution • Charles Morris
... to be institutions in the Pines, and all the bogs for miles around the site of the first experiment were hired by sanguine farmers. But the cranberry-cultivator has one enemy, which is neither bird, nor worm, nor blight, but biped,—a Rat, two-legged, erect, or moderately so, talking, even, in audible and intelligible speech,—the Pine Rat, namely. Few but New Jerseymen, and of them chiefly those who dwell about the forest, have heard of this human species; it has not yet had its Agassiz ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, No. 19, May, 1859 • Various
... Major," broke in Jeekie in alarm. "If wonder, not live, if wonder, not be born, too much wonder about everywhere. Can't understand nothing, so give it up. Say, 'Right-O and devil hindermost!' Very good motto for biped in tight place. Better drown here than in City bucket shop. But no drown. Should be dead long ago, but Little Bonsa play the game, she not want to sink in stinking swamp when so near her happy home. Come out all right somehow, as from dwarf. ...
— The Yellow God - An Idol of Africa • H. Rider Haggard
... convenient to speak of the Social Organism, just as it is convenient to speak of the British Lion. But Britain is no more an organism than Britain is a lion. The moment we begin to give a nation the unity and simplicity of an animal, we begin to think wildly. Because every man is a biped, fifty men are not a centipede. This has produced, for instance, the gaping absurdity of perpetually talking about "young nations" and "dying nations," as if a nation had a fixed and physical span of life. Thus people will say that Spain has entered a final senility; they might ...
— What's Wrong With The World • G.K. Chesterton
... he who must be adored. And thus it is in fact that Hegel has been understood. In the spring of 1850, Henri Heine wrote as follows in the Gazette d'Augsbourg: "I begin to feel that I am not precisely a biped deity, as Professor Hegel declared to me that I was twenty-five years ago." The deification of man: such is the popular translation of the philosophy of the idea. Would you have a further proof of this? The following anecdote was current in my youth, when German idealism was at the height of its ...
— The Heavenly Father - Lectures on Modern Atheism • Ernest Naville
... with his teeth and bit it to the bone. Hawes yelled with pain and strove furiously to get his hand away, but Carter held it like a tiger. Hawes capered with agony and yelled again. The first to come to his relief was Mr. Eden. He was at the biped's side in a moment, and pinched his nose. Now, as his lungs were puffing like a blacksmith's bellows, his mouth flew open the moment the other breathing-hole was stopped, and Hawes got ...
— It Is Never Too Late to Mend • Charles Reade
... door, believing he had left the letter on the floor of Marshal Simon's room. But he had reckoned without Spoil-sport. Whether he thought it more prudent to bring up the rear, or, from respectful deference for a biped, the worthy dog had been the last to leave the room, and, being a famous carrier, as soon as he saw the letter dropped by Loony, he took it delicately between his teeth, and followed close on the heels of the servant, without the latter perceiving this ...
— The Wandering Jew, Complete • Eugene Sue
... went straight to Rotterdam, to take the bull by the horns. The bull was a biped, with a crown for horns. It was Philip the Good, duke of this, earl of that, lord of the other. Arrived at Rotterdam, Martin found the court was at Ghent. To Ghent he went, and sought an audience, but was put off and baffled by lackeys and pages. So he threw himself in his sovereign's ...
— The Cloister and the Hearth • Charles Reade
... was long ago remarked that the birds of remote islands, such as the Galapagos, which had never seen man, were at first not in the least afraid of him. It required, however, but a few generations of experience to show these creatures that the unfeathered biped was a singularly dangerous animal, and they at once and permanently adopted the habit of avoiding him. This incident of itself shows how quick birds are to learn certain large and important lessons. We see also the reverse of this education in fear in the rapid way in which birds ...
— Domesticated Animals - Their Relation to Man and to his Advancement in Civilization • Nathaniel Southgate Shaler
... understanding that the wooden-legged men in country parishes should be employed as postmen, owing to the great steadiness of demeanour which a wooden leg is generally found to produce. It may be that such men are slower in their operations than would be biped postmen; but as all private employers of labour demand labourers with two legs, it is well that the lame and halt should find a refuge in the less exacting service of the government. The one-legged man who rode his donkey into Nuncombe Putney would reach his post-office ...
— He Knew He Was Right • Anthony Trollope
... besides, am so attached to the very name of Mary, that as Johnson once said, "If you called a dog Harvey, I should love him;" so, if you were to call a female of the same species "Mary," I should love it better than others (biped or quadruped) of the same sex with a different appellation. She was an extraordinary woman: she could translate Epictetus, and yet write a song worthy of Aristippus. ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. 6 (of 6) - With his Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore
... Those Others were biped, quasi-human in form, closer in physical appearance to the colonists than to the mermen. And since none of Dalgard's people had penetrated this far to the north, nor had the mermen invaded this taboo territory until Sssuri had ...
— Star Born • Andre Norton
... he heard himself so freely criticised. In addition to the not very flattering remarks "the bounders of the Fifth" had to pass on his features, Plunger had to listen to terse descriptions of himself as "that ass, Plunger," "a mixed pickle," "a queer egg," "conceited young biped," ...
— The Hero of Garside School • J. Harwood Panting
... only from a bird. No lark this time, however, but a great black and white creature that flew into the cloak, and began walking round and round on the edge of it with a dignified stride, one foot before the other, like any unfeathered biped you could name. ...
— The Little Lame Prince - And: The Invisible Prince; Prince Cherry; The Prince With The Nose - The Frog-Prince; Clever Alice • Miss Mulock—Pseudonym of Maria Dinah Craik
... season of the year when the bricks and planks and things were liable to be torn out of her hand, her skirts blown over her head, and she left clinging for dear life to a scaffolding pole. I know the feminine biped and, you take it from me, that is not her notion of a honeymoon. In April or May, the sun shining, the air balmy—when, after carrying up to her a load or two of bricks, and a hod or two of mortar, ...
— Idle Ideas in 1905 • Jerome K. Jerome
... in his or her brain that the man who spoke those words, if ever there was a man who spoke them, can at this moment anni domini"—George liked to be correct—"1870, hear whatever silly words the Rev. Mr. Wingfold, or any other human biped, may think proper to address to him with his face buried in his blankets by his bedside or in his surplice over the pulpit-bible?—not to mention that they would have you believe, or be damned to all eternity, that every thought ...
— Thomas Wingfold, Curate • George MacDonald
... heard the flapping of wings and a hoarse, crocketing sound which puzzled him for the moment, but as it was repeated here and there, he knew it was the pheasants which haunted that part of the forest, flying up to their roosts for the night, to be safe from prowling animals—four-legged, or biped who walked the woods by night ...
— The Weathercock - Being the Adventures of a Boy with a Bias • George Manville Fenn
... had had a tracing of the prints, which his mother had taken from those in the snow in her garden, in Exmouth: that they were hoof-like marks—but had been made by a biped. ...
— The Book of the Damned • Charles Fort
... another form, the sensitive soul, and man by another form, the intellectual soul, it would follow that man is not absolutely one. Thus Aristotle argues, Metaph. viii (Did. vii, 6), against Plato, that if the idea of an animal is distinct from the idea of a biped, then a biped animal is not absolutely one. For this reason, against those who hold that there are several souls in the body, he asks (De Anima i, 5), "what contains them?"—that is, what makes them one? It cannot be said that they are united by the ...
— Summa Theologica, Part I (Prima Pars) - From the Complete American Edition • Thomas Aquinas
... stationary tub with soap, and brush, and scalding water. Then he scalded the brush. Then the tub again. Then, deliberately, and with the utter unconcern of the male biped he divested himself, piece by piece, of every stitch of covering wherewith his body was clothed. And he scrubbed them all. He took off his white leggings and his white cap and scrubbed those, first. He had seen the other boys follow that order of procedure. Then his ...
— Cheerful—By Request • Edna Ferber
... and, although neither hoarse nor shrill, it is no more musical than the crow of the other biped, who struts about on his widely-spread toes in the yard, to which Christina Fasch has come to feed the pigs. There are five of them, pink-nosed and yellow-coated, and they keep up a grunting and snarling chorus within their wooden enclosure, each struggling to ...
— The Empire Annual for Girls, 1911 • Various
... light of this celestial fire they learnt to see those celestial and eternal bonds between man and man, as of husband to wife, of father to child, of citizen to his country, and of master to servant, without which man is but a biped without feathers, and which are in themselves, being independent of the flux of matter and time, most truly facts as they are. And since that time, whatsoever household or nation has allowed these fires to become extinguished, has sunk down again to the level of the brutes: while ...
— Phaethon • Charles Kingsley
... absurd it is to require of us to draw it! And would not a country-bumpkin feel as much insulted, if we told him he was a "carnivorous ape," or a "mammiferous two-handed animal," as the French soldier did when his officer called him a biped? If we give man his old prerogative, a "rational animal," how many would refuse the title to pretty women and spendthrift sons, while others would most willingly ...
— History of English Humour, Vol. 2 (of 2) • Alfred Guy Kingan L'Estrange
... companion and constant friend of grave philosophers and thoughtful students. By the ancient Egyptians cats were held in the highest esteem; and we learn from Diodorus Siculus, their 'lives and safeties' were tendered more dearly than those of any other animal, whether biped or quadruped. 'He who has voluntarily killed a consecrated animal,' says this writer, 'is punished with death; but if any one has even involuntarily killed a cat or an ibis, it is impossible for him to escape death: the mob drags him to it, treating him with every cruelty, and sometimes ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 419, New Series, January 10, 1852 • Various
... are sinners? A simple question, but not so easy to answer. All men are sinners. But what is a man? A featherless biped? So was the plucked fowl of Diogenes. A man is—well a man; and a sinner is—well a sinner. And this is near enough for most people. But it does not satisfy a rational investigator, to say nothing of your born critic, who will go on splitting hairs till his head is as bare as a plate, and then ...
— Flowers of Freethought - (First Series) • George W. Foote
... days before and Guinevere had been a fish, then a helpless biped, and now suddenly, somewhere between my salad and coffee, she became an aquatic quadruped. Strangest of all, her hands were mobile, her feet useless; and when the dance was at an end, and she sank slowly to the bottom, she came to rest on ...
— Edge of the Jungle • William Beebe
... set out with our guns and game-bags, accompanied by the doctor's dog, Jumbo, who was almost as curious-looking as was his master—a perfect nondescript; but the doctor boasted that he had not his equal, was afraid of neither quadruped nor biped, and would face a jaguar, a bear, or a tamanoir (the large ant-eater), while he would stand to his point till he died of starvation, provided the bird chose to stay and be pointed at. We were now ...
— The Young Llanero - A Story of War and Wild Life in Venezuela • W.H.G. Kingston
... my best holt. Last spring I had a favorite speckled hen—she was the specklest biped which ever wore feathers. One day, I sot her on 300 eggs. That fowl done her level best and spread evry feather, but she hadent enuff elasticity to cover so much territory at ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 2., No. 32, November 5, 1870 • Various
... me!" said another. "It seems too good to be true; but she has the most stupid of husbands! Ah!—Buffon has admirably described the animals, but the biped called husband—" ...
— Analytical Studies • Honore de Balzac
... a jinrikisha, a two-wheeler, with a buggy top and poles for the biped horse to trot between, from Nagasaki to a fishing village over the mountains, five miles away, passing at the start through the Japanese quarter, long streets of shops, populous and busy, many diligent in light manufacturing ...
— The Story of the Philippines and Our New Possessions, • Murat Halstead
... will believe that the bat does suck the blood of cattle and horses, but denies that it will attack man! This is sheer nonsense. What difference to the vampire, whether its victim be a biped or quadruped? Is it fear of the former that would prevent it from attacking him? Perhaps it may never have seen a human being before: besides, it attacks its victim while asleep, and is rarely ever caught or punished in the ...
— Popular Adventure Tales • Mayne Reid
... onions in their pockets and a tear and a smile in their eyes. And when later in the day a drove of half a hundred oxen, horses, and mules, with their forage behind them, entered Kimberley they were greeted with a tumult of applause never meted out to royal pageant or conquering biped coming! A little whiskey, it was said, had been unearthed; but there was no evidence, circumstantial or oscillatory, to confirm this. Minor windfalls in the way of half-sovereigns, five pound notes, Kruger coins, and trousers ...
— The Siege of Kimberley • T. Phelan
... side, the two in front being sleeping-rooms for travellers, with a kitchen and other offices beyond, and at the back of all a stable, which occupies the whole width of the building. The consequence is, that all the animals, biped and quadruped, inhabiting the stable, must pass the traveller's door, who is regaled with the smell proceeding from the said stable, cook-rooms, &c.; all the insects they collect, and all the feathers from the fowls slaughtered upon the spot; the plan being, when parties arrive, to drive the ...
— Notes of an Overland Journey Through France and Egypt to Bombay • Miss Emma Roberts
... "masterpiece" should be marked Exhibit A in the mighty aggregation of Gall. That after millions of years experience in the creation business—after building the archangels and the devil; after making the man in the moon and performing other wondrous miracles, the straddling six-foot biped who wears a spike-tail coat and plug- hat, a silk surcingle and sooner tie; who parts his name on the side and his hair in the middle; who sucks a cane and simpers like a school-girl struggling with her first compliment; who takes it for granted that ...
— Volume 12 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann
... spite of their long service, were supposed to protect the occupants from cold and rain. The driver, perched on a plank seat like those of the worst Parisian "coucous," shared in the conversation by reason of his position between his victims, biped and quadruped. The equipage presented various fantastic resemblances to decrepit old men who have gone through a goodly number of catarrhs and apoplexies and whom death respects; it moaned as it rolled, and squeaked spasmodically. Like a traveller overtaken ...
— The Chouans • Honore de Balzac
... hybrid: and being equally disposed for hot discourse or for sleep, the deprivation of the one and the other forced him to seek amusement in his famous reading of character; which was profound among the biped equine, jockeys, turfmen, sharpers, pugilists, demireps. He fronted Woodseer with square shoulders and wide knees, an elbow on one, a fist on the other, engaged in what he termed the 'prodding of his eel,' or 'nicking of his man,' a method of getting straight at the riddle of ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... the sum of him, the all of him, the hairless biped who struggled upward from the slime and created love and law out of the anarchy of fecund life that screamed and squalled in the jungle. I am all that that man was and did become. I see myself, through the painful generations, ...
— The Jacket (The Star-Rover) • Jack London
... boat's crew elevated their trousers' legs also and slided down into the water. Each of us then straddled the neck of a Filipino standing in the water and was held by ankles to be steadied while our biped ...
— An Epoch in History • P. H. Eley
... for further training. If, on the contrary, the sight of the man maddened him—as was the case with three out of the five—the thrashing-and-hunger treatment had to be continued until the elephant began to understand that release from his situation could be afforded only by the terrible biped. ...
— Freeland - A Social Anticipation • Theodor Hertzka
... patted. It is a proof to me of his self-control that he never strikes out pugilistically, right and left, when addressed as one of 'My friends,' or 'My assembled friends;' that he does not become inappeasable, and run amuck like a Malay, whenever he sees a biped in broadcloth getting on a platform to talk to him; that any pretence of improving his mind, does not instantly drive him out of his mind, and cause him to toss his obliging patron like ...
— The Uncommercial Traveller • Charles Dickens
... Tierra del Fuego; and while it is of no importance to me to know that Tierra del Fuego is inhabited, it is of vital importance to know that the spirits of the departed, and also of those still occupying for a time the moveable biped telephone which we call our body, can, and given the right conditions do, communicate with the physical unconsciousness of the man in the street. It is a fact which properly apprehended would go ...
— Real Ghost Stories • William T. Stead
... and kindly and easily satisfied worshipper, was to be enthroned as the queen of his affections, to be adopted as the companion of his labors! The boy, led by the commonest instinct, the mere attraction of biped to its female, which accident had favored, had thrown away the dearest possession of manhood,—liberty,—and this bauble was to be his lifelong reward! And yet not a bauble either, for a pleasing person and a gentle and sweet nature, which ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... looked like a third-or fourth-generation Martian, of Andes Indian ancestry. He came forward and stood behind Gomes' chair, looking down at the instruments. His assistant stopped at the door. This assistant was not human. He was a biped, vaguely humanoid, but he had four arms and a face like a lizard's, and, except for some equipment on a ...
— Uller Uprising • Henry Beam Piper, John D. Clark and John F. Carr
... the cats, like the Saxons of old, finding themselves masters of the soil, became greater usurpers than the foes whom they had been called in to vanquish. These treacherous animals, and most unworthy allies, discovering that they could sustain themselves in freedom, without the aid of the biped population, fled into the least inhabited parts of the island, where they lived most royally upon young guinea fowl, and other wild poultry; regaling themselves occasionally upon eggs, or such other dainties as fell in the way of their most destructive claws. So numerous had this band of quadruped ...
— A Voyage Round the World, Vol. I (of ?) • James Holman
... pigskin? Surely a male biped need not dwell In a prejudiced pedantic prig's skin, Not to like that prospect passing well. CARLYLE, who scoffed at Man, had deemed it caddish To picture Woman as "a mere ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 98, March 22, 1890 • Various
... relative merits of their horses. Such then was the place and company in which our young friends found themselves, and were hardly noticed as they rang the bell to attract the attention of some one in the house. Their summons was, after a time, answered by a bare-armed, bearded, and greasy-looking biped of the genus homo, honoured by the confidence of the landlord, deigning to fill the post of waiter, and, from a deformity of his person, rejoicing in the soubriquet of ...
— Fern Vale (Volume 1) - or the Queensland Squatter • Colin Munro
... Mpongwe report, that the Njina tears off the toe-nails and the finger-nails of his human captives. We should not believe so scandalous an assertion without detailed proof; it is hardly fair to make the innocent biped as needlessly cruel as man. It is well known to the natives of the Old Calabar River by the name of "Onion." In 1860, the brothers Jules and Ambroise Poncet travelled with Dr. Peney to Ab Kuka, the last ...
— Two Trips to Gorilla Land and the Cataracts of the Congo Volume 1 • Richard F. Burton
... enough to venture in. At the farther end was the keeper, who did the showman, vainly endeavouring to go through his usual jogtrot description. His monotone was drowned every minute by the chorus of voices, each shouting out some new fact in natural history touching the biped or quadruped whom the keeper was attempting to describe. At that day a great deal of this sort of chaff was current, so that the most dunder-headed boy had plenty on the tip of his tongue. A small and indignant knot of townspeople, ...
— Tom Brown at Oxford • Thomas Hughes
... people, as distinct from those biped beasts we've found so far? I doubt it," Loudons replied, finishing his caffchoc and wiping his mustache on the back of his hand. "I think the whole eastern half of the country is nothing but forest like this, and the highest type of life is just about three cuts below Homo Neanderthalensis, ...
— The Return • H. Beam Piper and John J. McGuire
... impostor and biped animal already alluded to, actuated by an overweening desire of notoriety, and in order to catch the applause of some one, grovelling in the morasses of insignificance and vice, like himself, leaves his native ...
— The Hedge School; The Midnight Mass; The Donagh • William Carleton
... is waiting for his master, and his anxiety is disinterested. The biped cur was waiting for the first streak of dawn to slip away to some more distant and safe hiding-place and sally-port than the Dun Cow, kept by a woman who was devoted to Hope, to Walter, and to Mary, and had all her wits ...
— A Perilous Secret • Charles Reade
... the big public library. That pile of oyster-shells which is called a library is disgusting even to think of. What paper! What ink! What scrawling! And all that has been written! What rascal was it who said that man was a featherless biped?[51] And then, I met a pretty girl of my acquaintance, who is as beautiful as the spring, worthy to be called Floreal, and who is delighted, enraptured, as happy as the angels, because a wretch yesterday, a frightful banker ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo
... may be like, there are, and will be, two sides to human life. There is the material, commonplace, and in a sense, vulgar existence; there is also life's ideal side. Give a man, who is a man and not a mere biped animal, all the comforts and enjoyments of physical life, good food, good habitation, safety and health, even a clear intellect, and give him nothing else. Would he not scorn and weary of such a life as that, which merely adds empty day to empty day, ...
— Platform Monologues • T. G. Tucker
... biped in its paper cof- Fin, cramped and plump and neat, Had scratched its very toenails off In making ...
— Poems - Vol. IV • Hattie Howard
... below, nobody can imagine. But the valiant little animal kept steadily on, assisted by his owner, who followed and assiduously whacked him with a stout stick, and he reached the top much sooner than any of his biped following. One cannot have too many legs in Clovelly,—a centipede would find ...
— In the High Valley - Being the fifth and last volume of the Katy Did series • Susan Coolidge
... "primitive man," says: "Doubtless he was lower than the lowest of the savages of today—a powerful, cunning biped, with keen sense organs always sharper, in virtue of constant exercise, in the savage than in the civilized man (who supplements them by science), strong instincts, uncontrolled and fitful emotions, small faculty of wonder, and nascent ...
— A Series of Lessons in Gnani Yoga • Yogi Ramacharaka
... been christened, a good Anabaptist, named James, beheld the cruel and ignominious treatment shown to one of his brethren, an unfeathered biped with a rational soul, he took him home, cleaned him, gave him bread and beer, presented him with two florins, and even wished to teach him the manufacture of Persian stuffs which they make in Holland. Candide, almost ...
— Candide • Voltaire
... was only vaguely aware of the social gulf which yawned between the youngest son of the late Lord Bortledyne and the only daughter of Albert Edward Smith, mechanic. To the Professor she was Miss H. Sapiens—an agreeable, featherless plantigrade biped of the genus Homo. She was also thoroughly domesticated and cooked like an angel, a nice woman who apparently never knew that her husband had a Christian name, for she called him "Mr. Whitland" to the day of ...
— Bones in London • Edgar Wallace
... 'Vanity of vanities, all is vanity.' This cry he might be spared would he learn a lesson from the squirrel, who weighs his nuts and throws away the light, hollow shell.... And there are scarescrows, the harmlessness of which the human biped learns not in a a lifetime. How long is it since that horned, cloven-footed monster whom the monks made of Pan theos and called him Devil, was an object of fear? How 'the real, genuine, no mistake' (savin' his presence) must have laughed at his own ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I, No. V, May, 1862 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... Man is an illogical biped. Before Kirby had seen the glove on the table and associated it with the crime, his feeling had been that the gallows was the proper end of so cruel a murderer. Now he not only intended to protect Rose, but his heart was filled with pity for her. He understood her better than ...
— Tangled Trails - A Western Detective Story • William MacLeod Raine
... say of Huger shall receive due attention. Which Maria did your husband go for, the biped or the quadruped? It is impossible to determine from any thing in your letter. On the subject of busts you are more whimsical than even your father; just now you had something in view; but, on the 22d of February, "worse than any part ...
— Memoirs of Aaron Burr, Complete • Matthew L. Davis
... the heiress of Lipscombe Park to me?—a girl who might claim alliance with the wealthiest and noblest of the land—to me, who have just that rag of property, enough to keep from open shame one miserable biped? Can a man never make a general reflection upon one of the most general of all topics, without being met by a personal allusion? I thought you had been superior, Griffith, to this dull and ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Vol. 53, No. 331, May, 1843 • Various
... animal of erect stature, while those who have been in the habit of fixing their thoughts on something else, will form another common image of men, describing man, for instance, as an animal capable of laughter, a biped without feathers, a rational animal, and so on; each person forming universal images of things according to the temperament of his own body. It is not therefore to be wondered at that so many controversies have arisen amongst those philosophers who have endeavored to ...
— The Philosophy of Spinoza • Baruch de Spinoza
... cannot recommend that method, owing to the impossibility of putting on the break. The pace ultimately acquired is greater than is pleasant, and the roof is too near the floor to allow of any successful attempt to bring things to an end by the reassumption of a biped character. ...
— Ice-Caves of France and Switzerland • George Forrest Browne
... a blind faith in the future. Man must progress in the same way as communities; these reckoned their evolutions by centuries, but man by millions of years. How could a man of to-day be compared to the biped animal of prehistoric times, though bearing visibly the traces of the animalism from which he had lately emerged? Living in fellowship with his ancestors the monkeys, the principal difference being the first babblings of speech, and the first trembling ...
— The Shadow of the Cathedral • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... interruption, unless he has forgotten to lock the door; his memory and observation of afternoon teas past is stimulated by afternoon tea to come; and he is himself more like the Universal Man than on most other occasions. Featherless biped mammals that we are, what need have we in common that might conceivably provide a good and sufficient reason for the dolling up to which I am about to subject myself? Substantial food, less fleeting, however, than a lettuce or other sandwich and a dainty trifle of pastry; protective clothing; a ...
— The Perfect Gentleman • Ralph Bergengren
... pain, peril, and absurdity of the situation. Those four limbs of the quadruped, which, noway under the rider's control, nor sometimes under that of the creature they more properly belong to, fly at such a rate as if the hindermost meant to overtake the foremost; those clinging legs of the biped which we so often wish safely planted on the greensward, but which now only augment our distress by pressing the animal's sides—the hands which have forsaken the bridle for the mane—the body, which, instead of sitting upright on the centre of gravity, as old Angelo [a celebrated riding ...
— Quentin Durward • Sir Walter Scott
... often played Daniel in the lion's den there, assisted by a caste of small colored children. They were the lions, I, with the choice of parts, electing invariably to play the persecuted and finally triumphant biped. The fury of forty wild beasts was in my heart, as I pushed aside the prickly branches and crept into my lair. The den was paved with bricks, loosely laid. With a pointed stick I pried one up, and scooped out with my hands a grave deep enough to hold the hateful book with the ...
— When Grandmamma Was New - The Story of a Virginia Childhood • Marion Harland
... The only living biped they met in their walk was the unfortunate Harry Ap-Heather, with whom they fell in by the stepping-stones, who, seeing the girl of his heart hanging on another man's arm, and, concluding at once that they were "keeping company," fixed on her a mingled look of surprise, ...
— Crotchet Castle • Thomas Love Peacock
... his dress, and from the cravat to the well-polished boot, his costume was perfect. An effeminate, solemn-looking dandy outwardly—within, as ferocious and hard a human biped as ever disgraced the ...
— The Monctons: A Novel, Volume I • Susanna Moodie
... correlatives, and where names exist for each, there will be no interdependence if one of the two is denoted, not by that name which expresses the correlative notion, but by one of irrelevant significance. The term 'slave,' if defined as related, not to a master, but to a man, or a biped, or anything of that sort, is not reciprocally connected with that in relation to which it is defined, for the statement is not exact. Further, if one thing is said to be correlative with another, and the terminology ...
— The Categories • Aristotle
... Brutus-and-Cassius discourse between a shilling-buttoned-waistcoatteer of a porter and myself, which ended in my extending mercy to the suppliant coach-owners, and agreeing to accept a place for Monday. All well thus far. The biped knock of the post alighted on the door at twelve, and two letters were placed upon my German dictionary,—your own, which I at first intended to reply to viva voce, had not the second informed me of my brother's arrival in England, his short leave of absence, and his intention ...
— A Letter Book - Selected with an Introduction on the History and Art of Letter-Writing • George Saintsbury
... thou forever pip and whimper, and go cowering and trembling? Despicable biped!... Hast thou not a heart; canst thou not suffer whatsoever it be; and, as a Child of Freedom, though outcast, trample Tophet itself under thy feet, while it consumes thee? Let it come, then, I will meet it and defy it!' And as I so thought, there rushed like a stream ...
— The Will to Believe - and Other Essays in Popular Philosophy • William James
... a biped I felt sorry for. He was a little man with sandy hair and whiskers a good deal like mine. Henpecked?—well, toucans and flamingoes and pelicans all had their bills in him. He wiped the dishes and listened to my mistress tell about the cheap, ragged things ...
— The Four Million • O. Henry
... tragedy in itself. If man's supremacy is to be challenged at all let it be by a creature of flesh-and-blood, a big-brained biped who must kill to live. Better that by far than a ghostly flickering in the deepening dusk, a whispering and a flapping and a ...
— The Man the Martians Made • Frank Belknap Long
... pedestal, expedite, expediency, expedition, quadruped, impediment, biped, tripod, chiropodist, octopus, pew; (2) centiped, pedicle, pedometer, velocipede, sesquipedalian, antipodes, podium, ...
— The Century Vocabulary Builder • Creever & Bachelor
... visit, and requested me to send a syce (groom), with a saddle-horse, to meet him at a certain place on the road. The syce, Sidhoo, was a smart, open-chested, sinewy-limbed little fellow, a perfect model of a biped racer. He could run—as is the custom in the East—alongside his horse at a pace of seven or eight miles an hour, for a length of time that would astonish the best English ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 2, No. 12, May, 1851. • Various
... be a clam. It is very meet, right, and the bounden duty of every quadruped, biped and decapod ...
— Some Winter Days in Iowa • Frederick John Lazell
... but in the sun the icicles had begun to drop. The roofs in the shadow were covered with hoar frost; wherever there was shadow there was whiteness. But for all the cold, there was keen life in the air, and yet keener life in the two animals, biped and quadruped. ...
— The Marquis of Lossie • George MacDonald
... because of her husband's failures, his follies,—not the money mistakes. It was himself,—the petty nature he revealed in every act. For women like Margaret Pole can endure vice and folly and disappointment, but not a petty, trivial, chattering biped ...
— Together • Robert Herrick (1868-1938)
... resides in the fact that it is, as one might say, a biped among ideas. It marches to triumph on two feet, an Irish and an Imperial foot. If there were in Ireland no demand whatever for self-government it would, nevertheless, be necessary in the interests of the Empire to force it on her. The ...
— The Open Secret of Ireland • T. M. Kettle
... their white flags were flying in front and on both flanks, as far as one could see, and new ones seemed constantly joining the procession. Among them were several very large bucks with superb antlers, and these seemed very little afraid of the small, quiet biped in leaf-colored rig. They often paused to gaze back with bold, fearless front, as though inclined to call a halt and face the music; but when within a hundred yards, would turn and canter leisurely away. As the herd neared the summit of the low-lying ridge, I tried to make a reasonable guess ...
— Woodcraft • George W. Sears
... not,—nothing but whiffs of mephitic and lethal vapor ascending, as from a vast charcoal brazier. No lark or linnet or redbreast or mocking-bird could live, much less warble, in those carbonic times. The world, like a Mississippi steamer, was coaling, with an eye to the needs of its future biped passengers. The embryotic earth was then truly a Niflheim, or Mistland,—a dun, fuming region. Those were the days, perhaps, when Nox reigned, and the great mundane egg was hatching in the oven-like heat, from which the winged boy Eros leaped ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, Issue 15, January, 1859 • Various
... metaphor: as for example, the procuring of a private peace for a citizen who is weary of the privations of war; or the establishment of a city in Cloud-Cuckoo-Land where the birds shall regulate things better than the featherless biped, man; or the restoration of the eyesight of the proverbially blind god of Wealth. The attention of the audience is at once enlisted for the semblance of a plot by which the scheme is put into execution. ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol. 2 • Charles Dudley Warner
... attributes in Linnaeus's description of the Cat. To a similar cause the caterwauling of more than one species of this genus is to be referred;—except, indeed, that the poor quadruped is compelled to quarrel with its own pleasures, whilst the biped is supposed only to quarrel with ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley Volume I • Percy Bysshe Shelley
... been practising up in the woods for about a week, at what the minister had failed so deplorably in, the riding of the little black mare. At first he could absolutely do nothing with her; she would not be ridden by any male biped. But finally he adopted a suggestion of quick-witted Mistress Putnam. He put on a side saddle and a skirt, and rode the animal woman fashion—and all without the least difficulty. The little mare seeming to say ...
— Dulcibel - A Tale of Old Salem • Henry Peterson
... are a couple of pens, And whose head is an ant-hill of units and tens, Though Plato denies you, we welcome you still As a featherless biped, ...
— The Poetical Works of Oliver Wendell Holmes, Complete • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... loosely joined, had the dogged look of one that held some of his energy in reserve. A good pair, Mr. Elton concluded, and felt a sudden spasm of longing for a son—not that he would have exchanged Madeline for any trousered biped that walked, but it would be a great thing to own one such well of young masculine ...
— Jewel Weed • Alice Ames Winter
... stood a strange-looking figure of the biped species, to whom, however, at the moment, I paid little attention, but of whom I shall have plenty ...
— The Bible in Spain • George Borrow
... surgeon, I am told, did a very brilliant stunt; something like taking my eyes out, playing marbles with them, and getting them sewed back again all in three minutes and a half. The result to the patient is of course purely a minor consideration, but it may interest you to know that I can tell a biped from a quadruped, and may in time, by the aid of powerful glasses, be able to ...
— Mr. Opp • Alice Hegan Rice
... of our PEACOCK to say, But that, homeward, triumphant, he wing'd back his way, Proclaim'd his success to the whole Biped Nation, ...
— The Peacock and Parrot, on their Tour to Discover the Author of "The Peacock At Home" • Unknown
... say aloud, "There is the real benefactor," and I point to the ruin which the young man has become whom we used to know, to the miserable, darkened biped whose eyelids flutter in the daylight, who leans weakly against a tree in face of the festive crowd, as if it were an ...
— Light • Henri Barbusse
... the concentric strata a hybrid of Husky and seal. Holding up his transverse section under the light of the Aurora, the investigator would discover an Arctic roly-poly pudding with, instead of fruit and flour, a layer first of all of seal, then biped, seal in the centre, then biped, and seal again. This jam-tart combination is very self-sustaining and enduring. Deprived of food for three days at a stretch the Eskimo lives luxuriously on his own rounded body, as ...
— The New North • Agnes Deans Cameron
... acutely conscious and the finely unconscious. Mrs. Vivian's protege was a member of the former category; she belonged to the genus coquette. We all have our conception of the indispensable, and the indispensable, to this young lady, was a spectator; almost any male biped would serve the purpose. To her spectator she addressed, for the moment, the whole volume of her being—addressed it in her glances, her attitudes, her exclamations, in a hundred little experiments of tone and gesture ...
— Confidence • Henry James
... she met with the old man, who had seen her alight from the carriage, and had asked the mischievous Victor, "Who was the small biped Richard had ...
— Darkness and Daylight • Mary J. Holmes
... bodies had been buried in their watery tomb, not forgetting that of poor Ivan, who we all thought merited an honoured place by the side of his biped brethren of valour—well, after all this had been done the skipper had the pumps rigged and the decks sluiced down to wash away all traces of ...
— The Ghost Ship - A Mystery of the Sea • John C. Hutcheson
... waxes light the camp-fires flame up stronger if not brighter, and now you see real human figures moving about. These ominous black heaps scattered everywhere are, as it were, eggs, and out of each of them will crawl in due time a full-fledged biped. See yonder by that fire; one of them is even now in violent motion—evidently in the pangs of birth. Presto! a man emerges from it as it collapses to the ground. He goes straight to the fire, stirs it up, blows the sick embers, cuts ...
— Our campaign around Gettysburg • John Lockwood
... to where the biped native sat hunched. The creature was bent into an ungainly position, its body crooked at incongruous angles, in such a way as to allow most of its weight to rest on a packing-box at the base of a middle angle. Its stubby feet, on the ends of thin, pipelike legs, rested against the floor of the ...
— Vital Ingredient • Charles V. De Vet
... would seem, attach value—that he was "a rogue and a vagabond;" confessions which the Captain possibly deemed as absurd an act of "surplusage" as though he were to give a written declaration that he was a vertebrated animal and a biped. ...
— Cornelius O'Dowd Upon Men And Women And Other Things In General - Originally Published In Blackwood's Magazine - 1864 • Charles Lever
... classification of naturalists would be useless, for a biped and a reptile not unfrequently bear the same interpretation as emblems. The simplest plan will be to divide the Church menagerie into two large classes, real beasts and monsters; there is no creature that we may not include in one or the ...
— The Cathedral • Joris-Karl Huysmans
... was trying to get a nap in the easy chair, when, suddenly, close by them, as if in the very room, came an indescribable screech, an unearthly, long, shrill cock-a-doodle-do yell, such as only a fancy feathered biped can perform. ...
— Who Spoke Next • Eliza Lee Follen
... going," I said, and I began to cut out a white feather. "Yes, your ladyship, this is from the genuine bird on our own ostrich farm in the Fulham Road. Plucked while the ingenuous biped had its head in the sand. I shall put that round the brim," and ...
— Once a Week • Alan Alexander Milne
... music was agony to him; and it is remembered with what ludicrous solemnity he apostrophised his unhappy fate as one over whom a cloud of the darkest despair had just been drawn—a peacock had come to live within hearing distance from him, and not only the terrific yells of the accursed biped pierced him to the soul, but the continued terror of their recurrence kept his nerves in agonising tension ...
— The Book-Hunter - A New Edition, with a Memoir of the Author • John Hill Burton
... sizes smaller than himself, and of a half-starved jackass, harnessed together to the plow he was holding; occasionally the team was composed of the quadruped and a tattered and fierce-looking female biped, a more terrible object than even the man and boy and beast ...
— Records of a Girlhood • Frances Anne Kemble
... departed Ursa Major, and others of his fraternity welcomed the animal as a favorable omen. The bear walked quietly along to the Custom House, ascended the steps of the building, and became bewildered, as many a biped bear has done before him. He seemed to lose his sense of vision, and, no doubt, endeavoring to operate for a fall, walked over the side of the steps and broke his neck. He succeeded in his object, but it cost him dearly. The appearance of Bruin ...
— A Unique Story of a Marvellous Career. Life of Hon. Phineas T. • Joel Benton
... always accompanied by a brace at least of dogs in his morning visits; and it is not easy to determine on these occasions which is the most troublesome animal of the two, the biped ...
— Real Life In London, Volumes I. and II. • Pierce Egan
... the settlement lay the virgin bush, whilst outside the garden at the back, all was wild and rude as Nature had left it, except a small clearing I had made for the growth of maize, sweet potatoes, etc. Now this clearing had many enemies, and of many species, ranging from feathered and furred to biped. The cockatoos came down in such clouds as almost to whiten the ground, and made short work of the maize; the bandicoots and the township pigs dug up and devoured the sweet potatoes, just as they were becoming large enough for ...
— Australian Search Party • Charles Henry Eden
... bullock in a biped's boot, I iterate, is Billy! He crushes with a careless foot The ...
— The Poems of Henry Kendall • Henry Kendall
... appeared at the corner of the lane. She paused a moment aghast at the sight of the struggling gander, still enveloped in Ted's coat, and then, with extended hands and wildly-flapping drapery, hastened towards him—her aspect being not unlike that assumed by the unfortunate biped in question when he had first advanced ...
— North, South and Over the Sea • M.E. Francis (Mrs. Francis Blundell)
... common room with its rude benches and tables; a stone-paved court-yard with offices, doubtless at one period appropriated as stabling, but the ground floor of which is now penned off for some few choice biped occupants; while the story above, reached by a railed ladder, and, in fact, no more than a stable loft, is nightly crammed to the door with sweltering humanity. For the purpose of cleanliness there is no other ...
— A Tramp's Wallet - stored by an English goldsmith during his wanderings in Germany and France • William Duthie
... down the river. Colonel C——, commanding the post, had them arrested, and ordered them back. One of his own officers represented to him that these people had an order for the boat from General Garfield, and, becoming alarmed, he let them go upon their way. Soon, however, the biped hounds were on their track, in hot pursuit. Two slaves, married into these families, had escaped and followed this boat-load. Although their villainous masters had fought in the rebel army, they were furnished with passes to pursue their fleeing ...
— Incidents of the War: Humorous, Pathetic, and Descriptive • Alf Burnett
... seems to have been a keen sportsman; he regrets the not meeting with a single rebel, as he would the not meeting with a single hare or partridge; and he justly considers the human biped as fair game, to be hunted down by all who are properly qualified and licensed by government. To the English, perhaps, it may seem a strange subject of lamentation, that a general could not meet with a single rebel in the county of Wicklow, when they have so lately ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. IV • Maria Edgeworth
... (extinct); snake, serpent, viper, eft; asp, aspick^. [amphibians] frog, toad. [fishes] trout, bass, tuna, muskelunge, sailfish, sardine, mackerel. [insects] ant, mosquito, bee, honeybee. [arthropods] tardigrade, spider. [classification by number of feet] biped, quadruped; [web-footed animal] webfoot. flocks and herds, live stock; domestic animals, wild animals; game, ferae naturae [Lat.]; beasts of the field, fowls of the air, denizens of the sea; black game, black grouse; blackcock^, duck, grouse, plover, rail, snipe. ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... have been. Bed would have done me good, and the nurse is a darling, old enough to be Will's mother. But they put a biped by the name of Peter Measel in the bed next mine. He's a missionary on his own account, and keeps a diary. Seems be contributes to the funds of a Welsh mission in France, and they do what he says. He has all the ...
— The Eye of Zeitoon • Talbot Mundy
... all that trouble, Sime. You may be the best trailer in Texas; and no doubt you are, for a biped: still ...
— The Death Shot - A Story Retold • Mayne Reid
... slavery as immoral, or crime in itself, tell us that man was not intended for civilization, but to roam the earth as a biped brute? That he was not to raise his eyes to Heaven, or be conformed in his nobler faculties to the image of his Maker? Or will they say that the Judge of all the earth has done wrong in ordaining the means by which alone that end can be obtained? It is true ...
— Cotton is King and The Pro-Slavery Arguments • Various
... and adds his mellow whistle to the orchestra of the mocking-bird. This so-called lark is classed by most naturalists among the starlings, as are two of the blackbirds, which two he resembles in some of his habits, but not in migrating, being about as much of a continental as any other biped American. Nor is he like his cousins in changes of dress. Out of a dozen of the latter that may be brought down at a shot, you will scarcely find three exactly alike. They moult at the South, and the young pass gradually into adult plumage. The male redwing, up to his first autumn, is ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, December, 1885 • Various
... viper, eft; asp, aspick[obs3]. [amphibians] frog, toad. [fishes] trout, bass, tuna, muskelunge, sailfish, sardine, mackerel. [insects] ant, mosquito, bee, honeybee. [arthropods] tardigrade, spider. [classificatiopn by number of feet] biped, quadruped. flocks and herds, live stock; domestic animals, wild animals; game, ferae naturae[Lat]; beasts of the field, fowls of the air, denizens of the sea; black game, black grouse; blackcock[obs3], duck, grouse, plover, rail, snipe. ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... score, it would probably be somewhat different; for be it known that the husband of Mrs. Moggs is of the kind that is neither useful nor ornamental. He belongs to that division which addicts itself mainly to laziness—a species of the biped called husband, which unfortunately is not so rare that we seek for the specimen only in museums. We know not whether Montezuma Moggs was or was not born lazy; nor shall we undertake to decide that laziness is an inherent quality; but as ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol. XXXII No. 2. February 1848 • Various
... they would have turned upon a dog double her size, and done their best to toss him over the chestnut trees? What is it that the brutes see below the surface of the human being to inspire them with such respect and fear of this biped, even when he or she has just crawled out of the cradle? These bulls, by-the-bye, stopped and looked at me in a way that was anything but respectful, and I delayed the study of the metaphysical question until I could watch them from ...
— Wanderings by southern waters, eastern Aquitaine • Edward Harrison Barker
... particular pair of creatures of the sort they had occasionally eaten, a trifling thing of wood and sinew string and flint point, which was destined henceforth to make a decided change in the relative condition of the biped and quadruped hunters of the time. How could they know that something small and sharp would fly down and sting them more deeply than they had ever been stung before, that it would sting so deeply that their arteries might be cut, or their hearts pierced and that then they must lie down ...
— The Story of Ab - A Tale of the Time of the Cave Man • Stanley Waterloo
... say that we should have begun at first by dividing land animals into biped and quadruped; and since the winged herd, and that alone, comes out in the same class with man, we should divide bipeds into those which have feathers and those which have not, and when they have been divided, and the art of the management of mankind is brought to light, the time will have ...
— Statesman • Plato
... long and sweeping feather, Round the head of old Chanticleer:— Plumed and plumeless biped felt gust together, In a way they wouldn't ...
— The Youth's Coronal • Hannah Flagg Gould
... creation; Such ruffling of feathers, such pruning of coats, Such chirping, such whistling, such clearing of throats, Such polishing bills, and such oiling of pinions, Had never been known in the biped dominions. Peacock at Home. ...
— The Daisy Chain, or Aspirations • Charlotte Yonge
... Lancelot saw Mary Ann he did not remember having seen her before. This time she was a biped, and wore a white cap. Besides, he hardly glanced at her. He was in a bad temper, and Beethoven was barking terribly at the intruder who stood quaking in the doorway, so that the crockery clattered on the tea-tray she bore. With a smothered oath Lancelot ...
— The Grey Wig: Stories and Novelettes • Israel Zangwill
... various kinds, wild pigeons, ocpara (a very fine quail, much larger, fatter and plumper than the American pheasant), and the wild Guinea fowl, are among the most common biped game. ...
— Official Report of the Niger Valley Exploring Party • Martin Robinson Delany
... deep solitude their poverty, and there renew their garments. Judge then, reader, if you can, the consternation with which these once graceful creatures discovered that their retreat had been found out by that inquisitive biped, man—that they were actually caught in ...
— The Pioneers • R.M. Ballantyne
... in feet between a biped, a quadruped, and a centipede, and say whether the foot of Mr. Joseph Hume, being just as broad as it is long, may not be considered as ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 1, October 23, 1841 • Various
... years (he omitted to say that he had branded him and so knew his bird), teach his year-old boy to sing (the italics are mine). This hermit-inclined sparrow wanted to "desert the fields for a life in the woods," but his "wife would not consent." Many a featherless biped has had the same experience with his society-spoiled wife. The puzzle is, how did this masterly observer know that this state of affairs existed between this couple? Did the wife tell him, or the husband? "Hermit" often takes his visitors to a wood thrushes' ...
— Ways of Nature • John Burroughs
... and proved a very tolerable one. This is essential; for Spanish custom prevails in the inns, whose host considers his duty accomplished when he has provided ample stabling for the mules and dubious bedding for his biped guests. ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 6, No. 34, August, 1860 • Various
... it!" he would exclaim—"All this wondrous organisation of our planet for THAT! For a biped so stupid as to see nothing in his surroundings but conveniences for satisfying his stomach and his passions! We men are educated chiefly in order to learn how to make money, and all we can do with the money WHEN made, is to build houses to live in, eat as much ...
— The Secret Power • Marie Corelli
... of Oude and Rohilcund, was the colonel's starting-point;—and thence on St Patrick's day[6] he set forward for Hurdwar, at the head of a retinue, the members of which, both quadruped and biped, he enumerates seriatim, giving the pas to the former—a precedence perhaps well merited by steeds up to such a welter weight under the climate of India, over such a set of unredeemed and thriftless knaves as he describes his ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. 341, March, 1844, Vol. 55 • Various
... trunk, running out towards it into the water, crouched a wiry, black creature, of about average dog size, wriggling a long, restless tail, and apparently in the very act of springing at the long-legged biped in the water. Just now they were eying each other very intently; but from the splashed and bedraggled appearance of both, it was evident there had been recent hostilities, which, judging from the attitude of the combatants, ...
— Happy Days for Boys and Girls • Various
... in the plumed creation: Such ruffling of feathers, such pruning of coats; Such chirping, such whistling, such clearing of throats; Such polishing bills and such oiling of pinions Had never been known in the biped dominions. The TAYLOR BIRD offer'd to make up new clothes For all the young Birdlings, who wish'd to be Beaux: He made for the ROBIN a doublet of red, And a new velvet cap for the GOLDFINCH'S head; He added a plume to the WREN'S golden crest, And ...
— The Peacock 'At Home:' - A Sequel to the Butterfly's Ball • Catherine Ann Dorset
... while Spot barks and pussy mews, To move the cook's compassion, He takes his after-dinner snooze In genuine biped fashion. ...
— The Poems of Henry Kendall • Henry Kendall
... undoubtedly obtained a different view of things terrestrial than we do who claim the world's real estate in 1915, because they had no telegraph, no telephone, no electric light, no automobile, and no aeroplane. How they managed to live at all is a mystery to the twentieth century biped. Fancy having to cross the street to your neighbor's house when you wanted to ask him if he was going to the pioneer supper, and just think of having no "hello girl" to flirt with. The condition seems appalling. But what they lacked in knowledge and in indolent ...
— Skookum Chuck Fables - Bits of History, Through the Microscope • Skookum Chuck (pseud for R.D. Cumming)
... hot-bed of the fashionable world: he had taken root. Lions were generally annual, but Brummell was perennial, and quoted a letter from Walter Scott: "If you are celebrated for writing verses, or for slicing cucumbers, for being two feet taller, or two feet less, than any other biped, for acting plays when you should be whipped at school, or for attending schools and institutions when you should be preparing for your grave, your notoriety becomes a talisman, an 'open sesame,' which gives way to everything, till you are voted a bore, and discarded for a new plaything." ...
— Reminiscences of Captain Gronow • Rees Howell Gronow
... atrocious falsehoods and barefaced calumnies, and a Jack-Ass, which ties cannot be easily dissolved, the affinity or similitude is perceptible to an indifferent observer in the accent, pronunciation, modulation of the voice of the biped animal, and in the braying of the quadruped. This Jack-Ass you might also behold perambulating the streets of ———, a second Judas Iscariot—a houseless, homeless, penniless, forlorn fugitive, like ...
— The Hedge School; The Midnight Mass; The Donagh • William Carleton
... abbeys, studying other tourists provides a pleasant way of passing many an otherwise tedious hour. Certain of the European countries furnish some interesting types—notably Britain, which producing a male biped of a lachrymose and cheerless exterior, who plods solemnly across the Continent wrapped in the plaid mantle of his own dignity, never speaking an unnecessary word to any person whatsoever. And Germany: From Germany ...
— Europe Revised • Irvin S. Cobb
... private apartments; and rode off as—as a rescued Majesty, determined to be more cautious in Pandour Countries for the future! [Hildebrandt, Anekdoten, i. 1-7. Pandour proper is a FOOT-soldier (tall raw-boned ill-washed biped, in copious Turk breeches, rather barish in the top parts of him; carries a very long musket, and has several pistols and butcher's-knives stuck in his girdle): specifically a footman; but readers will permit me to use him withal, as here, in the ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XII. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... home with the Saturday night marketing—he feels the thrill of being one, or at least two-thirds, with this various, grotesque, pathetic, and surprising humanity. The sense of fellowship with every other walking biped, the full-blooded understanding that Whitman and O. Henry knew in brimming measure, comes by gulps and twinges to almost all. That is the essence of Lindsay's feeling about life. He loves crowds, companionship, plenty of sirloin and onions, and seeing his name in print. ...
— Shandygaff • Christopher Morley
... the day would break in about an hour's time; and during that hour, but always on the alert, we stretched ourselves upon the sand to rest, listening to every sound; for there was the possibility, we knew, of there being enemies, biped or quadruped, within a few yards of where ...
— The Golden Magnet • George Manville Fenn
... safely, though their boldness was that of ignorance, below gigantic trees nearly as tall as the space-ship standing on end. They saw a small furry biped, some twelve inches tall, which waddled insanely in the exact line of their progress and with no apparent hope of outdistancing them. They saw a gauzy creature with incredibly spindly legs. It flew from one tree-trunk to another, clinging to rough bark ...
— Operation: Outer Space • William Fitzgerald Jenkins
... had just the reverse effect of rarefied mountain air, and they seldom had to expand their lungs fully in order to breathe. The ground continued to be marked with very large footprints. Often the impressions were those of a biped like some huge bird, except that occasionally the creature had put down one or both forefeet, and a thick tail had evidently dragged nearly all the time it walked erect. Presently, coming to something they had taken for a large flat rock, they ...
— A Journey in Other Worlds • J. J. Astor
... the Gorilla and the Boy are numerous and striking. In most cases, the two animals have an equally pleasing exterior. They both have the ability to climb giddy heights, inaccessible to any other wingless biped. Their language is not dissimilar, the same unintelligible chatter being characteristic of both. As the argument proceeds, it will be seen that distinctive traits belonging to lower classes of the animal kingdom are totally extinct in the Gorilla, ...
— Punchinello, Vol.1, No. 4, April 23, 1870 • Various
... bespeak the good-will of the family, and recommend himself to their hospitality; but his vocabulary was soon increased—he became a great mimic—he could imitate the cries of every domestic animal—the voices of the servants: he could laugh, whistle, and scold, like any other biped around him. He was, in short, a match even for Kelly's renowned parrot: for although he could not, or would not, sing 'God save the King,' he was a proficient in 'Charlie is my Darling,' and other Jacobite airs, with which he never failed to ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 3, August, 1850. • Various
... elaborate display of their attractions moths, butterflies and beetles are just as fond as any belles of the ball-room. Now let us bear in mind that of all the creatures that share the earth with man, the one that stands next to him in intelligence is neither a biped nor a quadruped, but that king of the insect tribe, the ant, which can be a herdsman and warehouse-keeper, an engineer and builder, an explorer and a general. With all his varied powers the ant lacks a peculiarity ...
— Little Masterpieces of Science: - The Naturalist as Interpreter and Seer • Various
... stirred doubtfully. The driver leapt to the earth to hold their heads, and they became ungovernable. One horse reared up to his full height—the titanic and terrifying height of a horse when he becomes a biped. It was just enough to alter the equilibrium; the whole coach heeled over like a ship and crashed through the fringe of bushes over the cliff. Muscari threw an arm round Ethel, who clung to him, and shouted aloud. It was for such moments ...
— The Wisdom of Father Brown • G. K. Chesterton
... thrush, an ortolan, a beccafico, a robin-redbreast, or any other feathered and diminutive biped. He is not so ambitious as to expect a quail. Partridges he has heard of; of one, at least, a sort of phoenix, reproduced from its own ashes, and seen from time to time before an earthquake, or other great catastrophe. As to ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 55, No. 340, February, 1844 • Various
... Melesigenes-Wilbur, there are things in him incommunicable by stroke of birch! Did it ever enter that old bewildered head of thine that there was the Possibility of the Infinite in him? To thee, quite wingless (and even featherless) biped, has not so much even as a dream of wings ever come? 'Talented young parishioner'? Among the Arts whereof thou art Magister, does that of seeing happen to be one? Unhappy Artium Magister! Somehow a Nemean lion, fulvous, torrid-eyed, dry-nursed ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell • James Lowell
... else at the ridiculous simplicity of my emancipation. Yesterday at this hour I was a highly respectable if slightly pampered person with a shrewd sense of my own importance in the economic and social scheme; to-day I'm a mere biped—an instinct on legs, with nothing to recommend me but an amiable disposition and an ...
— Madcap • George Gibbs
... often called, a superior genus. Man is a species with reference to animal, but a genus with reference to the species Mathematician. Animal is a genus, divided into two species, man and brute; but animal is also a species, which, with another species, vegetable, makes up the genus, organized being. Biped is a genus with reference to man and bird, but a species with respect to the superior genus, animal. Taste is a genus divided into species, but also a species of the genus sensation. Virtue, a genus with reference to justice, temperance, etc., is one of ...
— A System Of Logic, Ratiocinative And Inductive • John Stuart Mill
... first and most thrilling motives of romance, the motive of As You Like It, the romance of wearing each other's clothes. Alas, that every advance of reason should mean a corresponding retreat of romance! It is only reasonable that woman, being—have you yet realised the fact?—a biped like her brothers, should, when she takes to her brothers' recreations, dress as those recreations demand; and yet the death of Rosalind is a heavy price to pay for the lady bicyclist. So soon as the two sexes wear the same clothes, they may as well wear nothing; the game of sex ...
— The Quest of the Golden Girl • Richard le Gallienne
... probable that aeronautics will ever come into play as a serious modification of transport and communication—the main question here under consideration. Man is not, for example, an albatross, but a land biped, with a considerable disposition towards being made sick and giddy by unusual motions, and however he soars he must come to earth to live. We must build our picture of the future from the ground upward; of ...
— Anticipations - Of the Reaction of Mechanical and Scientific Progress upon - Human life and Thought • Herbert George Wells
... all the neighbourhood with invitations. The halls were swept and adorned with the best suit of hangings. All the gentlemen, young and old, all the keepers and verdurers, were put in requisition to slaughter all the game, quadruped and biped, that fell in their way, the village women and children were turned loose on the blackberries, cranberries, and bilberries, and all the ladies and serving-women were called on to concoct pasties of many stories high, subtilties of wonderful ...
— Unknown to History - A Story of the Captivity of Mary of Scotland • Charlotte M. Yonge |
