"Butterfly" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... stick in his mouth, he would move about his garden in a short hurried step, now stopping to contemplate a butterfly, a flower, or a snail, and now earnestly engaged in some new ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 12, - Issue 343, November 29, 1828 • Various
... misery increased with an accelerated ratio; and even after the desperate measure of destroying their companions, and eating the most nauseous aliments, the surviving fifteen could not hope for more than a few days' existence. A butterfly lighted on their sail the ninth day, and though it was held to be a messenger of good, yet many a greedy eye was cast upon it. Some sea-fowl also appeared; but it was impossible to catch them. The misery of the survivors increased with a rapidity which cannot be described; ...
— Thrilling Stories Of The Ocean • Marmaduke Park
... Tegucigalpa, Prale had talked to her and had danced with her twice. He judged her to be about twenty-eight, some ten years younger than himself. She was small and charming, not one of the helpless butterfly sort, but a woman who gave indication that she could care for ...
— The Brand of Silence - A Detective Story • Harrington Strong
... and goes irregularly from flower to flower; as the butterfly flutters in a zig-zag course from one sunny place on the garden wall to another—or, as an old woman runs from wrong omnibus to wrong omnibus, at the Elephant and Castle, before she can discover the right one; ...
— Hide and Seek • Wilkie Collins
... is that he was born, and born on the banks of the Rhine, at Dusseldorf, where his father was a merchant. In his "Reisebilder" he gives us some recollections, in his wild poetic way, of the dear old town where he spent his childhood, and of his schoolboy troubles there. We shall quote from these in butterfly fashion, sipping a little nectar here and there, without regard to ...
— The Essays of "George Eliot" - Complete • George Eliot
... though men, ignorant and prejudiced, may oppose its beginnings, there is no danger but they will at last fling around her conquering footsteps more lavish praises than ever greeted the opera's idol,—more perfumed flowers than ever wooed, with intoxicating fragrance, the fairest butterfly of the ball-room. ...
— Atlantic Monthly Vol. 3, No. 16, February, 1859 • Various
... a butterfly on the rhubarb-leaves perhaps caught his eye, or at last he cried himself to sleep. These fits were not often, but they caused a shadow in Mrs. Morel's heart, and her treatment of Paul was different from that of the ...
— Sons and Lovers • David Herbert Lawrence
... me, and we'll be friends,—real true friends. I haven't had a real true friend," said Miss Polly, perching herself on a ledge of rock, where, in her pink dress and flower-trimmed hat, she looked like a bright winged butterfly,—"not since I lost ...
— Killykinick • Mary T. Waggaman
... horns, which measures 5 ft. at the shoulder, and the Little Koodoo, a complete miniature of it existing alongside of it, and standing only 3 ft. 5 in. at the shoulder. Take the two common white butterflies of this country, the Large White and the Small White, also the Large Tortoiseshell butterfly and the small. Take the instance of many plant genera of which larger and smaller species are found growing side by side. The difference in size in these cases cannot be traced to any insufficiency of nutrition in the ...
— More Science From an Easy Chair • Sir E. Ray (Edwin Ray) Lankester
... half amused, half fascinated, and ruefully lost many of the mornings still left her by the Pratts and Gresleys in listening to the outpourings of this butterfly soul, which imagined every flower it involuntarily alighted on and drew honey from to ...
— Red Pottage • Mary Cholmondeley
... orange orchids or vanillas. Common to them were all the fantastic and enormous shapes with which Nature bedecks her robes beneath the fierce suns and fattening rains of the tropic forest. Common were forms and colors of bird, and fish, and butterfly, more strange and bright than ever opium-eater dreamed. The long processions of monkeys, who kept pace with them along the tree-tops, and proclaimed their wonder in every imaginable whistle, and grunt, and howl, had ceased to move their ...
— Westward Ho! • Charles Kingsley
... children taking their morning walk; and, above all, the liberty of London before two o'clock in the day, when the real London begins. I pat Brilliant's smooth, hard neck, and he shakes his head, and strikes an imaginary butterfly with one black fore-leg, and I draw my rein a thought tighter, and away we go, much to the admiration of that good-looking man with moustachios who is leaning on his umbrella close to the rails, and smoking the cigar of meditation as if ...
— Kate Coventry - An Autobiography • G. J. Whyte-Melville
... shining expanse of Silverwater, now lying unruffled by any breath of wind, went flickering a little blue butterfly, as blue as if a gentian blossom had taken to itself wings or a speck of sky had fluttered down to meet its bright reflection in the lake. It was a foolish expedition for the little explorer, so far from shore, and over that lonely, treacherous element which has such scant mercy ...
— Children of the Wild • Charles G. D. Roberts
... of the earth. The grass stood high above me, and the shadows of the tree-branches danced on my face. I looked up at the sky, with halfclosed eyes to bear the dazzling light. Bees buzzed over me, sometimes a butterfly passed, there was a hum in the air, greenfinches sang in the hedge. Gradually entering into the intense life of the summer days—a life which burned around as if every grass blade and leaf were a torch—I came to feel the longdrawn life of the earth back into ...
— The Story of My Heart • Richard Jefferies
... Now the butterfly dance followed the others. This was danced by the boys and girls together, and the pairs were equal in size, age and the color of their garments. When all the dances had ended, the dancers marched out with ...
— The Chinese Fairy Book • Various
... That butterfly did not, however, appear to be hovering from flower to flower in the parterres of rank and fashion. In the daily lists of guests at dinners, receptions, dances, balls, the name of Maltby figured never. Maltby had ...
— Seven Men • Max Beerbohm
... inscriptions, till I came to the tomb of Franz Clement, a young composer who died two or three years ago. On turning again my eye fell instantly on the word "Beethoven" in golden letters on a tombstone of gray marble. A simple gilded lyre decorated the pedestal, above which was a serpent encircling a butterfly—the emblem of resurrection. Here, then, moldered the remains of that restless spirit who seemed to have strayed to earth from another clime, from such a height did he draw his ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume V (of X) • Various
... Jones asked, much surprised. Then Mother told him a story about a caterpillar and a butterfly. ...
— All About Johnnie Jones • Carolyn Verhoeff
... yet fluttered away from that stagnant water. But alas, in the very effort to escape, she had caught the eye of the Professor; he sprang up—pond, animalcule all forgotten in the chase of this extraordinary butterfly. The fairy's courage failed her: her presence of mind vanished, and the wild gyrations of the owl, who, too late, realised the peril of his companion, only increased her confusion. In another moment she was ...
— 'That Very Mab' • May Kendall and Andrew Lang
... good faith and eagerness than we are wont to indulge in; so that it is probably easier to tease and exasperate them, which is amusing enough while it lasts. But no doubt it hurts them sometimes more than we are aware of; and, after all, breaking a butterfly on the wheel is poor pastime, and not a very athletic sport. The glory, too, to be won is so small that it scarcely compensates for the pain we inflict, and may, perchance, eventually feel. Is Achilles inclined to be proud of the strength of his arm, or the keenness of his falchion, ...
— Sword and Gown - A Novel • George A. Lawrence
... thought of what the future might bring forth, he reflected that if Edward Cossey's turn did come he was by no means sure that the ultimate triumph would rest with him. Ida de la Molle, to whatever extent her sense of honour and money indebtedness might carry her, was no butterfly to be broken on a wheel, but a woman whose dislike and anger, or worse still, whose cold, unvarying disdain, was a thing from which the boldest ...
— Colonel Quaritch, V.C. - A Tale of Country Life • H. Rider Haggard
... course: that's the sensible way of looking at it. Come, Mrs. Clandon: you can't quarrel with a mere butterfly like me. ...
— You Never Can Tell • [George] Bernard Shaw
... of me, my friend? See here. There are many great, beautiful butterfly moths here in this ...
— Trapped by Malays - A Tale of Bayonet and Kris • George Manville Fenn
... velvety red with white spots came floating along the surface of the corn, and played round his cap, which was a little higher, and was so tinted by the sun that the butterfly was inclined to settle on it. Guido put up his hand to catch the butterfly, forgetting his secret in his desire to touch it. The butterfly was too quick—with a snap of his wings disdainfully mocking the idea of ...
— The Open Air • Richard Jefferies
... around the stump corner and he saw a little animal chap, with blue rompers on, and a fur cap stuck back of his left ear, and this little animal chap was whistling away as merrily as a butterfly eating butterscotch candy. ...
— Uncle Wiggily and Old Mother Hubbard - Adventures of the Rabbit Gentleman with the Mother Goose Characters • Howard R. Garis
... home Amanda had chosen in Lancaster Gate. He was in the hall, the door stood open awaiting packing-cases from a van without. In the open doorway she shone, looking the smallest of dainty things. There was no effect of her coming but only of her having arrived there, as a little blue butterfly will suddenly alight on ...
— The Research Magnificent • H. G. Wells
... interfere with my dancing," Polly laughed. "Thanks, ever so much, Betty dear; I'll lend you my butterfly stockings when you ...
— Polly's Senior Year at Boarding School • Dorothy Whitehill
... absorbed air which your face has worn came from the interest of your studies, and that those studies were fitting you for the work I had planned for you. I wish now that you had never touched a book in your life. Better in my opinion to be the careless butterfly of society than the fanatic. I never expected to live to see my only child so blind to common-sense as to wish to follow such a monstrous theory as you have described. Money! Why, it is the power and possibility of the world. But what good are words? If you cannot see the folly ...
— A Romantic Young Lady • Robert Grant
... to understand. St. Jerome's love 'pale with midnight prayer' would be more believable than the butterfly Dora. Goodness, gracious! The idea of that man being in love! It pulls him down a bit. I thought he ...
— The Man Between • Amelia E. Barr
... Acrobat! The Most Marvellous Aeronaut of the Age! Little Boy-Butterfly, and Bambo ...
— Two Little Travellers - A Story for Girls • Frances Browne Arthur
... see her beloved Madge, who was silently watching her. Tania's usually pale cheeks glowed as scarlet as her sash. Unconsciously the little girl's movements were like those of a butterfly, a-flutter with the joy of the sunshine ...
— Madge Morton's Victory • Amy D.V. Chalmers
... of exuberant fertility. It is, reader, in Louisiana that these bounties of nature are in the greatest perfection. It is there that you should listen to the love-song of the mocking-bird, as I at this moment do. See how he flies round his mate, with motions as light as those of the butterfly! His tail is widely expanded, he mounts in the air to a small distance, describes a circle, and, again alighting, approaches his beloved one, his eyes gleaming with delight, for she has already promised to ...
— Southern Literature From 1579-1895 • Louise Manly
... cost and injustice of it all. The baby at La Panne—why should it go through life on stumps instead of legs? The boyish officer—why should he have died? The little sixteen-year-old soldier who had been blinded and who sat all day by the phonograph, listening to Madame Butterfly, Tipperary, and Harry Lauder's A Wee Deoch-an'-Doris—why should he never see again what I could see from the window beside him, the winter sunset over the sea, the glistening white of the sands, ...
— Kings, Queens And Pawns - An American Woman at the Front • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... have spoken or reasoned on the point, how heartily would he have said that he pined for his own dear mamma's judicious kindness and controul, under which he used to sport all day happy and joyful as a butterfly on a ...
— Brotherly Love - Shewing That As Merely Human It May Not Always Be Depended Upon • Mrs. Sherwood
... Madeira. A very sweet warbler it is, and the clear, flute-like notes sounded prettily among the roses. From blossom to blossom lovely butterflies flitted, perching quite fearlessly on the red clay walk just before me, folding and unfolding their big painted wings. Every day I see a new kind of butterfly, and the moths which one comes upon hidden away under the leaves of the creepers during the bright noisy day are lovely beyond the power of words. One little fellow is a great pet of mine. He wears pure white wings, with vermilion stripes drawn in regular horizontal lines across his back, ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, April, 1876. • Various
... far beyond denying consciousness to trees. Weismann insisted that the chick breaks out of its eggshell automatically; that the butterfly, springing into the air to avoid the pounce of the lizard, 'does not wish to avoid death; knows nothing about death,' what has happened being simply that a flight instinct evolved by Circumstantial Selection reacts promptly ...
— Back to Methuselah • George Bernard Shaw
... well-spring of poesy. Not that the journal is necessarily involved. No need to suppose that he even read it. But that she could make him see, and be moved by, what she had seen is proved by this: "17th.— ... I saw a robin chasing a scarlet butterfly this morning"; and "Sunday, 18th.— ... William wrote the poem on The Robin and the Butterfly." No, beautiful beyond praise as the journals are, it is certain that she was more beautiful than they. And what a discerning, illuminative eye she had! "As I lay ...
— In a Green Shade - A Country Commentary • Maurice Hewlett
... are! Just consider how you're insulting your mother! Ah, you stupid chatterbox! Is it right to dishonor your parents with such words? Was it for this I brought you into the world, taught you, and guarded you as carefully as if you were a butterfly? ...
— Plays • Alexander Ostrovsky
... so many kinds," continued the Queen earnestly. "Now in a butterfly race it's always best just to hold on and let them do as they like. It's not a bit of use trying to make them go straight. Rabbits are better in that way, but even rabbits are a little uncertain at times. Full of nerves. But have you ever tried swallow-racing?" she ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 159, August 4th, 1920 • Various
... attention quits it. And I next Descried our woman under breathless noon, Bathing in a clear lane of gliding water Whose banks seem lonely as the path of light Crossing mid ocean south of Capricorn. Her son steals warily after a butterfly And is as hushed with hope to capture it As are the birds with heat. An insect hum Circles the spot as round a cymbal's rim, Long after it has clanged, tingles a throb Which in a dream forgets the parent sound, Oppressed by this protracted and awe-filled ...
— Miscellany of Poetry - 1919 • Various
... glances underneath her rather heavy eyelashes. She has long, fair tresses, which spread out over her shoulders, her dainty breasts, her slender figure, her hips widening like the curves of a lyre, her two rounded thighs, the dimples around her knees, and her delicate feet. Not far from her mouth a butterfly is fluttering. The splendour of her body sheds around her a halo of brilliant mother-of-pearl; and all the rest of Olympus is bathed in a rosy dawn, which, by insensible degrees, reaches the ...
— The Temptation of St. Antony - or A Revelation of the Soul • Gustave Flaubert
... bad. I ain't averse—one more new word I've learned— Averse to tea, when tea is to be 'ad; An' when it comes I reckon that it's earned. It's jist a drink, as fur as I'm concerned, Good for a bloke that's toilin' on the land; But when a caller comes, 'ere I am turned Into a social butterfly, off-'and. ...
— Digger Smith • C. J. Dennis
... world, there are also guitars, and tomorrow it may be you and not he who sits on the moonlit porch; it may be he and not you who arrives late. Who knows? Tomorrow he may not show up till you have finished the Bedouin's Love Song and are annoying the local birds, roosting in the trees, with Poor Butterfly. ...
— A Damsel in Distress • Pelham Grenville Wodehouse
... 1888-9) of Old-Fashioned Tales. Edited by ALICE CORKRAN. Illustrated with nearly one hundred original wooden blocks and a coloured Frontispiece. Contents:—The Story of Punch and Judy: The Sleeping Beauty in the Wood: The Butterfly's Ball and the Grasshopper's Feast: Little Red Riding Hood: Hop o' my Thumb: Cinderella and her Little Glass Slipper: Gaffer Gray: a Christmas Ditty: The Apple-Pie Alphabet: Dr. Watts's Cradle Hymn: Peter Piper's Practical Principles: A Merry New ...
— Tales from the Lands of Nuts and Grapes - Spanish and Portuguese Folklore • Charles Sellers and Others
... straight out behind them. Again, there was the insect house, where she lifted the blinds of the little cages, and marveled at the purple circles marked upon the rich tussore wings of some lately emerged and semi-conscious butterfly, or at caterpillars immobile like the knobbed twigs of a pale-skinned tree, or at slim green snakes stabbing the glass wall again and again with their flickering cleft tongues. The heat of the air, and the bloom of heavy flowers, which swam in water or rose stiffly from great red jars, ...
— Night and Day • Virginia Woolf
... paddling for several minutes and the canoe drifted slowly on while the two boys gazed with delight at the novel beauty that surrounded them. The dark, stagnant water through which they drifted was nearly hidden from view by great white and gold water-lilies and the butterfly flowers of water hyacinths, the trees on either side stood like beautiful gray ghosts under their festoons of Spanish moss through which flashed the blazing hues of flowering orchids. Brilliant-hued paroquets and other birds flitted ...
— The Boy Chums in the Forest - or Hunting for Plume Birds in the Florida Everglades • Wilmer M. Ely
... forth from any of the quarters currently counted on. To-day, doubtless, the infant genius of American poetic expression, (eluding those highly-refined imported and gilt-edged themes, and sentimental and butterfly flights, pleasant to orthodox publishers—causing tender spasms in the coteries, and warranted not to chafe the sensitive cuticle of the most exquisitely artificial gossamer delicacy,) lies sleeping far away, happily unrecognized and uninjur'd by the coteries, the art-writers, the talkers and ...
— Complete Prose Works - Specimen Days and Collect, November Boughs and Goodbye My Fancy • Walt Whitman
... with inestimably good things; that is, the act of dying, and not merely the being dead. It is no doubt as necessary to the nature of the soul, to its psychology, its soul-life, as the changes of the worm, chrysalis, and butterfly, are to the insect. And thus, as in all other things, where sin abounded, grace much more abounds, and even death, like a cross, is turned into a ministration of ...
— Catharine • Nehemiah Adams
... Linda turned in at the walk leading to her home, but she passed the front entrance and followed around to the side. As she went she could hear voices in the living room and she knew that Eileen was entertaining some of her many friends; for Eileen was that peculiar creature known as a social butterfly. Each day of her life friends came; or Eileen went—mostly the latter, for Eileen had a knack of management and she so managed her friends that, without their realizing it, they entertained her many times while she entertained them once. Linda went to the kitchen, Laid her books and package ...
— Her Father's Daughter • Gene Stratton-Porter
... more sedate dances, because of that obtrusive tendency of the red sham to her skirt, Sissy was able to chaperon her senior all the more effectively at Crosby Pemberton's party. Irene danced like a thing whose vocation is motion. She was a twig in a rain-storm, a butterfly seeking sweets, a humming-bird whose wing beat the air with a very rhapsody of rhythm. She was on the floor with the first note Professor Trask struck, and she danced down the side of the little hall, when the waltz was over and all the other couples ...
— The Madigans • Miriam Michelson
... is no reason that there should be any harm in it. I would much rather he had some real business in hand than be merely a butterfly of fashion. You must not entertain that ...
— The Marriage of Elinor • Margaret Oliphant
... found it so yet," said Alice, "but when you have to turn into a chrysalis, you know, and then after that into a butterfly, I should think it'll feel a little ...
— Alice's Adventures Under Ground • Lewis Carroll
... playing had to yield first place to my regular work. I took up writing and that became paramount. I began to lose my pianoforte technique, and I should not like to say how many years it is since I lost the ability to play Liszt's arrangement of the Spinning Song from the "The Flying Dutchman," the "Butterfly" etude of Chopin and other works that I had had at my fingers' ends. Often, when I went to pianoforte recitals and heard these compositions played, I grieved over what I had lost—through sacrificing the pianoforte to ...
— The Pianolist - A Guide for Pianola Players • Gustav Kobb
... you put the spider's web back in its place, that once has been swept away? Can you put the apple again on the bough, which fell at our feet to-day? Can you put the lily-cup back on the stem, and cause it to live and grow? Can you mend the butterfly's broken wing, that you crushed with a hasty blow? Can you put the bloom again on the grape, or the grape again on the vine? Can you put the dewdrops back on the flowers, and make them sparkle and shine? ...
— Our Boys - Entertaining Stories by Popular Authors • Various
... summer, bringin' a lot of chums an' all kinds o' pets with her. She was just daffy over any kind of a wild animal from an Injun papoose to a white mouse; an' when she'd go back in the fall, Jabez had his hands full with parrots an' alligators an' butterfly coons an' sech—to say nothin' of a lot of potted flowers what was mighty ...
— Happy Hawkins • Robert Alexander Wason
... revelation had not yet broken on them, it can hardly be denied that they had some glimpses and a dawn of the life to come, from the many allegorical inventions which describe the transmigration of the soul. A butterfly on the extremity of an extinguished lamp, held up by the messenger of the gods intently gazing above, implied a dedication of that soul; Love, with a melancholy air, his legs crossed, leaning on an inverted torch, the flame thus naturally extinguishing itself, elegantly ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... ability to forget all and enjoy the moment. I have watched you for years. It has been so in the past, and will be so in the future. Other men who see me, men born to the plane, have the quality—call it butterfly if you will—to enjoy the 'now.' It appeals to me—I am of their manner born." Their eyes met and she finished slowly, "It's injustice to you, I know; but I ...
— A Breath of Prairie and other stories • Will Lillibridge
... his lady friend went off with his dearest companion, to whose purse she had taken a sudden liking. Villiers, deserted by all his acquaintances, sank lower and lower in the social scale, and the once brilliant butterfly of fashion became a billiard marker, then a tout at races, and finally a bar loafer with ...
— Madame Midas • Fergus Hume
... his senses strange delights and reeling agonies. He heard church bells, he caught at butterflies, he tumbled in new-mown hay, he wandered in a tropic garden. But in the hay a wasp stung him, and the butterfly changed to a curling black snake that struck at him and glided to a dark-flowing river full of floating ice, and up from the river a white hand was thrust, and it beckoned him—beckoned him. He shut his eyes and moved towards it, but ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... on a hot noontide, Psyche passed down a road, where, on each side The yellow cornfields lay, although as yet Unto the stalks no sickle had been set; The lark sung over them, the butterfly Flickered from ear to ear distractedly, The kestrel hung above, the weasel peered From out the wheat-stalks on her unafeard, Along the road the trembling poppies shed On the burnt grass their crumpled leaves and red; Most lonely was it, nothing Psyche knew Unto what land ...
— The Earthly Paradise - A Poem • William Morris
... and even J.-J. Rousseau, and gave it a body and a living interest, till it became the comedie-vaudeville, and then, discarding even the little snatches of song, the couplets that still marked its origin, spread its butterfly wings as the modern comedy ...
— Bataille De Dames • Eugene Scribe and Ernest Legouve
... it wasn't moderate. I don't like to see engaged young men going on in that way. I suppose I'm very old fashioned; but I think when a young man is engaged, he ought to remember it and to show it. It ought to make him a little serious, and he shouldn't be going about like a butterfly, that may do just as it ...
— The Claverings • Anthony Trollope
... one who loves the Art of Whistler should be without this handsome book; it contains works of Art of exquisite beauty; it contains a delightful picture of the outward Whistler that the man himself wished to be mistaken for the real thing—half butterfly, half ...
— Rembrandt • Mortimer Menpes
... boy and the old man laugh, and Tracy runs off after a passing butterfly, and Arthur goes on with talk to the baby and the other Gretchen beside him, until the former falls asleep, and he takes her to the crib he has had put in the bay window under the picture which smiles down upon the sleeping infant, whose guardian ...
— Tracy Park • Mary Jane Holmes
... to be instanced, "The Artist of the Beautiful," the lucidity of the parable is complete. The physical object is the butterfly; on its wings the tale moves, and perishes in its destruction. The moral idea lies in the exposition of achievement as a freeing of the artist's soul so that his work has become a thing of indifference ...
— Nathaniel Hawthorne • George E. Woodberry
... as if aware of his thoughts, the hand lifted, strayed over to touch the hair on his temples lightly as a butterfly, and came to rest on his shoulder, drawing him a little closer. He sat very still, thrilling to its touch. She might as well at that moment have laid her hand on his bare heart. He wondered how many more seconds he could bear it before he flung himself on his knees beside her and buried ...
— Kildares of Storm • Eleanor Mercein Kelly
... steps, and when the dancer had arrived in front of the stage, he raised slowly his rounded arms, stretched them gracefully backward and forward, moved his feet with precision and lightness, took a few small steps, made some battements and pirouettes, and disappeared like a butterfly. The whole had not lasted half a minute. The applause burst from every part of the house. I was astonished, and asked my friend the cause of all ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... head. "Yes," she whispered. "After all, I have some pride, you know. You mustn't presume to be the butterfly preaching contentment to the toad in ...
— The Valley of the Giants • Peter B. Kyne
... doubtful success, would be cut quite short, and the race would degenerate through the absence of that sexual selection for which the protracted preliminaries of love-making give opportunity. The willy-nilly disposition of the female in matters of love is as apparent in the butterfly as in the man, and must have been continuously favoured from the earliest stages of animal evolution down to the present time. It is the factor in the great theory of sexual selection that corresponds ...
— Inquiries into Human Faculty and Its Development • Francis Galton
... with his glasses, his white helmet and tennis-shirt, and a butterfly-net hung over his shoulder, was quite Oriental and picturesque; while Morton, with a broad straw hat on his cleanly shaven head, and a blue blouse belted with leather, enjoyed the thought that he looked like a cowboy, and perhaps ...
— Sara, a Princess • Fannie E. Newberry
... left from the brown patches where the scythes had left their marks; the butterflies fled in their butterfly fashion. ...
— Brave and True - Short stories for children by G. M. Fenn and Others • George Manville Fenn
... consummate art. About the hem it was embroidered with silver butterflies, irregularly disposed yet all seeming to flutter upward as if in the effort to reach her knees. These also decorated her low corsage and spread their wings upon her sleeves. She wore no jewels; and her only ornament was a large butterfly in silver, upon her breast, with diamond- and ruby-studded wings ...
— The Silver Butterfly • Mrs. Wilson Woodrow
... What hast thou to do, but to play the stop-gap, where honest men keep aloof! To stretch or shrink seven times in an instant, like the butterfly on a pin? To be privy registrar in chief and clerk of the jordan? To be the cap-and-bell buffoon on which your master sharpens his wit? Well, well, let it be so. I will carry you about with me, as I would a marmot ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... it were with me As with the flower; Blooming on its own tree For butterfly and bee Its summer morns: That I might bloom mine hour A ...
— Poems • Christina G. Rossetti
... me once that she could not take her eyes off a butterfly which was flitting about in the church all the time I was speaking of the resurrection of the dead. I told the people that in Greek there was one word for the soul and for a butterfly—Psyche; that I thought as the ...
— Annals of a Quiet Neighbourhood • George MacDonald
... Caen, getting a very good view of the two great abbayes[13] with their towers and spires quite sharply outlined against the clear blue sky. The train was full. At almost every station family parties got in—crowds of children all armed with spades, pails, butterfly nets, and rackets, all the paraphernalia of happy, healthy childhood. For miles after Caen there were long stretches of green pasture-lands—hundreds of cows and horses, some of them the big Norman dray-horses resting a little before beginning again their hard work, ...
— Chateau and Country Life in France • Mary King Waddington
... more often than not in some hazardous enterprise. Yet, for once in his life, and in the midst of the idlest of conversations, he gave himself away so utterly that even this woman with whom he was lunching—a very butterfly lady, indeed could not fail to perceive it. She looked at him in something like astonishment. Without the slightest warning his face had become set in a rigid stare, his eyes were filled with the expression of a man who sees into another world. The ...
— Peter Ruff and the Double Four • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... physical image that represents the moral truth: the minister's black veil, emblem of the secret of every human heart; the print of a hand on the heroine's cheek in "The Birthmark," a sign of earthly imperfection which only death can eradicate; the mechanical butterfly in "The Artist of the Beautiful," for which the artist no longer cares, when once he has embodied his thought. Zenobia in "The Blithedale Romance" has every day a hot-house flower sent down from a Boston conservatory ...
— Four Americans - Roosevelt, Hawthorne, Emerson, Whitman • Henry A. Beers
... every outer contact, so centred, in her significant self, on its one deep preoccupation. But there was no preoccupation now. Gerald's image passed before her and meant nothing more than the other things she looked at, while her mind drifted like an aimless butterfly from the flowers and the prints to the pretty old mirror—a gift of Gerald's—and hovered over the graceful feminine objects scattered upon the chairs and tables. The thought of Gerald stirred nothing more ...
— Franklin Kane • Anne Douglas Sedgwick
... Then a butterfly came and sat on a cluster of heliotrope and waved his crimson-banded wings in the hot sunshine. Hastings knew him for a friend, and before his eyes there came a vision of tall mulleins and scented milkweed alive with ...
— The King In Yellow • Robert W. Chambers
... stockinged feet, so nobody could hear—dances she and I made up together out of stories she used to tell me. The Shadow Dance and the Statue Dance which you saw, came out of those stories, and there are more you didn't see, which I do sometimes—a butterfly dance, the dance of the wheat, and two of the East, which were in stories she told me after we knew Cassim ben Halim. They are the dance of the smoke wreath, and the dance of the jewel-and-the-rose. I could dance quite well even in those days, because I loved ...
— The Golden Silence • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... of Gaiety and Innocence! The moment when the fatal fruit was eaten, They parted ne'er to meet again; and Malice Has ever since been playmate to light Gaiety, From the first moment when the smiling infant Destroys the flower or butterfly he toys with, To the last chuckle of the dying miser, Who on his deathbed laughs his last to hear His wealthy neighbour has become ...
— The Talisman • Sir Walter Scott
... ex-engine-driver was pulling a basketful of scarlet runners: that the prisoner had suddenly dropped his beans, dashed out into the road, and catching the mild gentleman by the throat had wrenched the butterfly net from his hand and belaboured him with the handle ...
— Noughts and Crosses • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... Samos. Corinth—mater statuariae—becomes a great nursery of art at an early time. Some time before the twenty-ninth Olympiad, Butades of Sicyon, the potter, settled there. The record of [231] early inventions in Greece is sometimes fondly coloured with human sentiment or incident. It is on the butterfly wing of such an incident—the love-sick daughter of the artist, who outlines on the wall the profile of her lover as he sleeps in the lamplight, to keep by her in absence—that the name of Butades the potter has come down to us. The father fills up the outline, ...
— Greek Studies: A Series of Essays • Walter Horatio Pater
... but with his outer senses then? Has not the inner soul, too, eye and ear, With which it can both see and hearken well? 'Tis true it is with eyes of flesh I see The richly glowing color of the rose; But with the spirit's eye I see within A lovely elf, a fairy butterfly, Who archly hides behind the crimson leaves, And singeth of a secret power from heaven That gave the flower brightness ...
— Early Plays - Catiline, The Warrior's Barrow, Olaf Liljekrans • Henrik Ibsen
... with unresting power, yonder innumerable congregation of suns in their mighty orbits, and yet stoops, with tender touch, to build up the petals of the anemone, and paint with rainbow hues the mealy wings of the butterfly. ...
— Caesar's Column • Ignatius Donnelly
... the same manner by each individual, performed with eager delight by each breed, and without the end being known,—for the young pointer can no more know that he points to aid his master, than the white butterfly knows why she lays her eggs on the leaf of the cabbage,—I cannot see that these actions differ essentially from true instincts. If we were to see one kind of wolf, when young and without any training, as soon as it scented its prey, stand motionless like ...
— On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection • Charles Darwin
... patient, happy effort to carry out. Beware that no one of them is repeated or continued so long at a time as to become a thing dreaded and disliked. Remember that the attention of a little child is like a constantly flitting butterfly that rests for only a moment or two on anything before dancing away to ...
— What the Mother of a Deaf Child Ought to Know • John Dutton Wright
... in the mind, is then concretely symbolized. It is a bold and happy stroke of artistic genius; but it in no way expresses or suggests the scientific facts of actual death. There is also a classic representation of death as a winged boy with a pensive brow and an inverted torch, a butterfly at his feet. This beautiful image, with its affecting accompaniments, conveys to the beholder not the verity, nor an interpretation, of death, but the sentiments of the survivors in view of their bereavement. The sad brow denotes the grief of the mourner, the winged insect the disembodied psyche, ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger
... were dotted beautiful houses set back in luxuriant gardens; round the bend of the river stood a house-boat known by the fascinating name of The Yellow Butterfly. The paint was white, but everything else was a rich, glowing yellow—yellow plants and flowers in baskets; yellow curtains to the windows; yellow cushions on the chairs; actually—if you can believe it—a yellow parakeet in a golden ...
— More about Pixie • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... Maizie," cried Suzanna, the while her small fingers dexterously wove the needle in and out. "It's a rose blossom. And when I recite in it on the last day of school my heart will be a butterfly sipping honey ...
— Suzanna Stirs the Fire • Emily Calvin Blake
... Grocery people like it, but you couldn't. You see you wasn't used to it. Well, I wasn't used to being young, and I couldn't seem to take any interest in it. I was strong, and handsome, and had curly hair,—yes, and wings, too!—gay wings like a butterfly. I went to picnics and dances and parties with the fellows, and tried to carry on and talk nonsense with the girls, but it wasn't any use; I couldn't take to it—fact is, it was an awful bore. What I wanted was early ...
— Captain Stormfield's Visit to Heaven • Mark Twain
... thread from the end of the bough under which I sat, in a direct line between me and the gateway. Very slowly, while I watched him, he descended for a couple of feet, swayed a little and hung still, as if irresolute. A butterfly, after hovering for a while over the wall's dry coping, left it and fluttered aimlessly across the garth, vanishing at length into the open doorway of ...
— Sir John Constantine • Prosper Paleologus Constantine
... day of the year when you need him most!" he muttered under his breath, as with the same exquisitely sensitive fingers that could have dissected like a caress the nervous system of a humming bird, or re-set unbruisingly the broken wing of a butterfly, he hurled his hundred and eighty pounds of infuriate brute-strength against the calm, chronic, mechanical stubbornness of that auto crank. "Damn!" he swore on the upward pull. "Damn!" he gasped on the downward push. "Damn!" he cursed and sputtered and spluttered. Purple with effort, bulging-eyed ...
— The White Linen Nurse • Eleanor Hallowell Abbott
... yelping, and looking wistfully over the swollen flood, which the poor thing had not the courage to brave. This day, for the first time, I heard the song of the Canada sparrow, a soft, sweet note, almost running into a warble. Saw a small, black velvety butterfly with a yellow border to its wings. Under a warm bank found two flowers of the houstonia in bloom. Saw frogs' spawn near Piny Branch, and ...
— Wake-Robin • John Burroughs
... lighted windows a powerful young fellow, in a butterfly collar and a corded smoking jacket, was walking up and down with a tall girl not unlike him in the face; but their faces were only to be seen in glimpses as they passed the drawing-room windows, and at not less regular intervals when a red light in the sky, the source ...
— The Camera Fiend • E.W. Hornung
... long with its pent-up message of Greece—the glory of her days, the beauty of temples and statues and tombs—was freed by the tale of his lips. The world was new-born for him. He lifted the empty fig-box, from which the child had set free the butterfly that had hung imprisoned in its grey cocoon throughout the long winter, and placed it carefully on the shelf. The lettering traced along its side was faded and dim; but he saw again the child's eyes lifted to it—the lips half-parted, the eager question and ...
— Mr. Achilles • Jennette Lee
... prim-faced man, flaxen-haired and leanjawed, between thirty and forty years of age, dressed in a gray suit and wearing a straw hat. A tin box for botanical specimens hung over his shoulder and he carried a green butterfly-net ...
— The Hound of the Baskervilles • A. Conan Doyle
... The butterfly dance is another specimen of the amusements with which the ladies of the Mikado's court while away their monotonous existence. As here shown, it is a private performance, of which the Empress and her principal attendants are the only spectators. The insects are personated by two of her ladies, ...
— Sketches of Japanese Manners and Customs • J. M. W. Silver
... realized it, and felt the pull, for days; but it didn't become insistent until yesterday, when I received a letter from a chap whom I have known for years. He's always had a good deal more money than was good for him, and been a sort of social butterfly. I liked him, although I didn't believe that he had a serious thought in his head, didn't think that he was capable of one, but ... here, read what he has written me," he concluded abruptly, as a temporary block forced their car to a stop beneath an electric light on Massachusetts Avenue. "The ...
— 'Smiles' - A Rose of the Cumberlands • Eliot H. Robinson
... you done?' the rose asked the butterfly. 'What have you done?' the mimosa blossom asked the little blue bird, whose wings fluttered amongst her leaves. 'You have taken love from me, love which ...
— The Great Prince Shan • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... its jewels shrivel to nothing on the way. Turtle-head is far different and I like it for its sturdiness, but most of all I like it because it is the hast of a small friend of mine, the Baltimore butterfly. In summer you may see this little fellow, a plaid of yellow and orange on black, the Baltimore colors, whence his name, flitting about, never far from the place where the turtle-head grows. If you see one you may be almost sure that the other is nearby. I have not ...
— Old Plymouth Trails • Winthrop Packard
... pages; and that, if it were once thus captured and expressed, a new and instructive relation might appear between men's thoughts and the phenomena of nature. This was the eagle that he pursued all his life long, like a schoolboy with a butterfly net. Hear him to a friend: "Let me suggest a theme for you—to state to yourself precisely and completely what that walk over the mountains amounted to for you, returning to this essay again and again until ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 3 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... the orchid has to select its own particular species of insect and cater for that, and the insect among all the flowers has to select the particular species of orchid; and how the insect, whether butterfly or bee or moth or gnat or ant, or any other of the numerous kinds of insect, and the orchid have to adapt themselves to each other—we see how marvellous the mutual adaptation of flower to insect and insect to flower must have been. We see how the ...
— The Heart of Nature - or, The Quest for Natural Beauty • Francis Younghusband
... said Peter, "and very curious. It's like a great butterfly's wing is n't it? But are n't ...
— The Cardinal's Snuff-Box • Henry Harland
... But, the butterfly you will say, a flying flower! I dream of one that should be as large as a hundred worlds, with wings whose shape, beauty, colors, and motion I cannot even express. But I see it ... it flutters from star to star, refreshing ...
— Library of the World's Best Mystery and Detective Stories • Edited by Julian Hawthorne
... years. His cheerfulness was so infectious, that Sylvia already began to forget her gloom, and hurried away to do her part. Putting on a short, girlish gown, kept for scrambles among the rocks, she improvised a pinafore, and braided her long hair a la Morlena Kenwigs, with butterfly bows at the ends. When she went down, she found her husband in garden jacket, collar turned over a ribbon, hair in a curly tumble, and jackknife in hand, seated on the rug before a roaring fire, and a semicircle ...
— Moods • Louisa May Alcott
... of his passion in the tone of a man who would have a rival's life if he crossed his path. The elderly butterfly of the Empire came down with his whole weight on the poor poet, and tried to frighten and crush him by his self-importance. He grew taller as he gave an embellished account of his perilous wanderings; but ...
— Lost Illusions • Honore De Balzac
... that!" said Mr. Belleville. "I know your hospitality never fails, Cousin Miranda. But you know me, too—a butterfly—here to-day, gone to-morrow! A summons from the Dunderblincks—races going on at their place, don't you know; midsummer fetes, that sort of thing—changed my plans. Mamma said, 'You will have to give up the Camp, Cheri!' 'No!' ...
— The Merryweathers • Laura E. Richards
... order of Nature, the butterfly had retired into a 'grubby' state. In other words, Vida had put on the plainest of her discarded mourning-gowns. From a small Tuscan straw travelling-toque, the new maid, greatly wondering at such instructions, had extracted an old paste buckle and some violets, leaving it 'not fit to be seen.' ...
— The Convert • Elizabeth Robins
... and went straight into the dressing room. A bronze dragon nailed by the tail to a bracket writhed away from the wall in calm convolutions, and held, between the conventional fury of its jaws, a crude gas flame that resembled a butterfly. The room was empty, of course; but, as he stepped in, it became filled all at once with a stir of many people; because the strips of glass on the doors of wardrobes and his wife's large pier-glass reflected him from head to foot, and multiplied his image into ...
— Tales of Unrest • Joseph Conrad
... like her mamma; as silly and frivolous a little flirt as ever sensible man was weak enough to marry. For," said she, "Mr. Home is a sensible man in his way, though not very practical: he is fond of science, and lives half his life in a laboratory trying experiments—a thing his butterfly wife could neither comprehend nor endure; and indeed" confessed my godmother, "I should not have liked ...
— Villette • Charlotte Bronte
... thy weak brain. But an hour agone enfranchised from Grub Street, thou must sing 'I'd be a butterfly.' Thou art vanity absolute, conceit beyond measure, and presumption out of all whooping. Yea, and but as a fool Pygmalion, not content with loving thine own handiwork, thou must needs fall in love with the goddess that breathed ...
— Dead Man's Rock • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... 'And for every human being we should aim at securing, so far as they can be attained, an eye as keen and piercing as that of the eagle; an ear as sensitive to the faintest sound as that of the hare; a nostril as far-scenting as that of the wild deer; a tongue as delicate as that of the butterfly; and a touch as acute as that of the spider. No man ever was so endowed, and no man ever will be; but all men come infinitely short of what they should achieve were they to make their senses what they might be made. The old have outlived their opportunity, and the diseased never had it; but ...
— Bunyan Characters - Third Series - The Holy War • Alexander Whyte
... through the long, long summer hours, The golden light should lie, And thick young herbs and groups of flowers Stand in their beauty by. The oriole should build and tell His love-tale, close beside my cell; The idle butterfly Should rest him there, and there be heard The ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 5 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... gaze, the gentle, hesitating backwardness of a book-raised man. There were tutors at Yale quite as colorless, characterless and indefinite, and immensely more forceful. In place of the revolver at his belt, it seemed as if Willie should have carried a geologist's pick, a butterfly-net, or a magnifying-glass: one was prepared to hear him speak learnedly of microscopy, or even, perhaps, of settlement work. As a cowboy he was utterly out of place, and it was quite impossible to take ...
— Going Some • Rex Beach
... it, and had realised a considerable sum. I could not help comparing myself to a chrysalis previous to its transformation. I had before been a caterpillar, I was now all ready to burst my confinement, and flit about as a gaudy butterfly. Another week I continued my prudent conduct, at the end of which I was admitted to my superior, in whose hands I placed a sum of money which I could very conveniently spare, and received his benediction and commendations for having weaned myself from my former excesses. With ...
— The Pacha of Many Tales • Frederick Marryat
... at the hotel door, and I was allowed to help the Contessa out, though the elder lady preferred the aid of the concierge. For the moment Gaeta had forgotten the claims of her companions, and remembered only mine. It is a butterfly way of hers to forget easily, and flutter with delight in a new corner of the garden, just because it ...
— The Princess Passes • Alice Muriel Williamson and Charles Norris Williamson
... a day old! I wonder if every butterfly comes into the world to find such queer things about him? I was born in prison. I can see right through my walls; but I can't find any door. Right below me (for I have climbed up the wall) lies a queer-looking, empty box. It is clear, ...
— St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, Vol. 5, September 1878, No. 11 • Various
... Barberin! With the next step my garden would be hidden from me. Suddenly on the road which led to our house from the village, I saw a white sunbonnet. Then it disappeared behind some trees, then it came in view again. The distance was so great that I could only see a white top, like a spring butterfly. It was going in and out amongst the trees. But there is a time when the heart sees better and farther than the sharpest eyes. I knew it was Mother Barberin. It was she. I was sure ...
— Nobody's Boy - Sans Famille • Hector Malot
... at Northampton, educated at Cambridge; designed for the law, but took to literature; owned and edited Once a Week; best known as the successful collaborateur of WALTER BESANT (q. v.) in such popular novels as "The Golden Butterfly," "Ready-Money ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... crossing the shop at his busy, swinging pace, gave her only a cursory glance. And when the cracked bell ceased to tremble on its curved ribbon of steel nothing stirred near Mrs Verloc, as if her attitude had the locking power of a spell. Even the butterfly-shaped gas flames posed on the ends of the suspended T-bracket burned without a quiver. In that shop of shady wares fitted with deal shelves painted a dull brown, which seemed to devour the sheen ...
— The Secret Agent - A Simple Tale • Joseph Conrad
... not six months old yet?" demanded the mother. "Here, take her, Aunt Sanna, and see if you ever got hold of anything nicer than that! Come, baby, give Aunt Sanna a little butterfly kiss!" And Julia swept the soft little face and unresponsive mouth across the older woman's face before she deposited the ...
— The Story Of Julia Page - Works of Kathleen Norris, Volume V. • Kathleen Norris
... by her large and luminous orbs. Yet not the more could I define that sentiment, or analyze, or even steadily view it. I recognized it, let me repeat, sometimes in the survey of a rapidly-growing vine—in the contemplation of a moth, a butterfly, a chrysalis, a stream of running water. I have felt it in the ocean; in the falling of a meteor. I have felt it in the glances of unusually aged people. And there are one or two stars in heaven—(one especially, a star ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 3 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... you mean. Don't distress yourself over that. You'll have your triumph to-night, Ladybird! Remember my dances, please, when you're besieged by the other fellows! Upon my word, you look such a perfect butterfly that I shall hardly dare lay a hand ...
— Captain Desmond, V.C. • Maud Diver
... it so beautifully that it was quite dazzling to look at. Little spiders spun golden threads around it, and then it was hung with fluttering veils and flags so delicately white that they glittered like snow in the moonshine. After that they took colors from the butterfly's wing, and sprinkled them over the white drapery which gleamed as if covered with flowers and diamonds, so that I could not recognize my sausage skewer at all. Such a maypole had never been seen in ...
— Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen • Hans Christian Andersen
... kindling soul like must; Where the turtles each spring their loves renew— The old, old story, "coo-roo, coo-roo," Mingles with the wooing note That bubbles from the song-bird's throat; Where on waves of rosy light at play, Mingle a thousand airy minions, And drifting as on a golden bay, The butterfly with his petal pinions, From isle to isle of his fair dominions Floats with the languid tides away; Where the squirrel and rabbit shyly mate, And none so timid but finds her fate; The meek hen-robin upon the nest Thrills to her lover's flaming ...
— Indian Legends of Minnesota • Various
... tree that we plant today What will you be when we're old and gray? "The savings bank of the squirrel and mouse, For robin and wren an apartment house, The dressing-room of the butterfly's ball, The locust's and katydid's concert hall, The school-boy's ladder in pleasant June, The school-girl's tent in the July noon. And my leaves shall whisper them merrily, A tale of the ...
— Ohio Arbor Day 1913: Arbor and Bird Day Manual - Issued for the Benefit of the Schools of our State • Various
... Still he could not forego the company of his sisters-in-law, especially as the eldest one was beautiful. Her honey was no less than her gall, and Nabendu's mind tasted at once the sweetness of the one and the bitterness of the other. The butterfly, with its bruised wings, buzzes round the flower in blind ...
— The Hungry Stones And Other Stories • Rabindranath Tagore
... that it seemed as if she would take a thousand years to get there. But as she passed crag after crag the animals below ceased making fun of her and began to shout encouragement. At last she reached the top. And then the Great Spirit turned her into a huge butterfly so strong that she flew down, with the boys ...
— Fifty-Two Story Talks To Boys And Girls • Howard J. Chidley
... on it. Its austerity suggested the Puritan rather than the classic conception of simplicity. The immense rooms were as chill as dungeons, and the forlorn little figure in black, lost in the loneliness of their bleakness, wandered to and fro among her retinue of servants like a butterfly beating its wings against ...
— Ridgway of Montana - (Story of To-Day, in Which the Hero Is Also the Villain) • William MacLeod Raine |
