"Carbuncle" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Saracen from Sarraguce Lord of one half the city—Climorin, Unlike a Baron; he received the faith Of Ganelon, and sealed the treacherous bond By pressing on his lip a kiss—Besides Unto him gave his sword and carbuncle. "I will," said he, "put your great France to shame And from the Emperor's head shake off the crown!" Mounted on Barbamouche that faster flies Than hawk or swallow on the wing, he spurs His courser hard, and dropping on its neck The rein, ...
— La Chanson de Roland • Lon Gautier
... the opera was due to many causes. Some liked it for its barely veiled allusions on politicians. "Robin of Bagshot, alias Gorgon, alias Bluff Bob, alias Carbuncle, alias Bob Booty," was very obviously intended for Walpole and his "dear charmers" for his wife and Molly Skerrett. It may well be believed that the song, "How happy could I be with either" brought down the house; and the highwayman must have evoked ...
— Life And Letters Of John Gay (1685-1732) • Lewis Melville
... to admit strange things for truths, yet I am not very forward to reject them as impossibilities, and therefore I would not discourage any from making further Inquiry, whether or no there be Really in Rerum natura, any such thing as a true Carbuncle or Stone that without Rubbing will shine in the Dark. For if such a thing can be found, it may afford no small Assistance to the Curious in the Investigation of Light, besides the Nobleness and Rarity of the ...
— Experiments and Considerations Touching Colours (1664) • Robert Boyle
... which the piety of that day had heaped upon it. The beauties of the shrine were pointed out by the prior, who named the giver of the several jewels. Many of these were of enormous value, especially a huge carbuncle, as large as an egg, which had been offered to the memory of St. Thomas by Louis VII. of France, who visited the shrine in A.D. 1179, after having thrice seen the Saint in a vision. A curious legend, thoroughly in keeping with the mystic halo of miraculous power which surrounds the martyred archbishop's ...
— The Cathedral Church of Canterbury [2nd ed.]. • Hartley Withers
... neck, from the ears downwards, are of a rich scarlet. The crown of the head is scarlet, and between the lower mandible and the eye, and close to the eye, there is a part which has a fine blue appearance; the skin which juts out behind the neck, like a carbuncle, is partly blue and partly orange. The bill is orange and black. Round the bottom of the neck is a broad ruff of soft, downy, ash-grey feathers, and the back and tail-coverts are of a bright lawn. The middle wing-coverts and tail-feathers are ...
— The Western World - Picturesque Sketches of Nature and Natural History in North - and South America • W.H.G. Kingston
... large as a walnut, in the course of a day; others had a similar number of carbuncles; others had both buboes and carbuncles, which generally appeared in the groin, under the arm, or near the breast. Those who were affected[134] with a shivering, having no buboe, carbuncle, spots, or any other exterior disfiguration, were invariably carried off in less than twenty-four hours, and the body of the deceased became quickly putrified, so that it was indispensably necessary to bury it a few hours after dissolution. ...
— An Account of Timbuctoo and Housa Territories in the Interior of Africa • Abd Salam Shabeeny
... said a fourth robber, of very dark complexion and singularly small bright eyes, 'I am an Indian, and I believe in the great golden figure with carbuncle eyes, ...
— Alroy - The Prince Of The Captivity • Benjamin Disraeli
... black and red, but shining in rich golden brown, with strings of nut-brown sausages about his portly breast. Here was cranberry sauce, not in a bowl, but moulded in the wheat-sheaf mould, and glowing like the Great Carbuncle. Here was an Alp of potato, a golden mountain of squash, onions glimmering translucent like moonstones, the jewels of the winter feast, celery tossing pale-green plumes—good gracious! celery enough ...
— The Wooing of Calvin Parks • Laura E. Richards
... peculiar to Milton; it is an outburst of the gladness of the company of believers. Every one has at least read the glorious poem; but were I to leave it out I should have lost, not the sapphire of aspiration, not the topaz of praise, not the emerald of holiness, but the carbuncle of delight from the high priest's breast-plate. And I must give the introduction too: it is the cloudy grove of an overture, whence rushes the ...
— England's Antiphon • George MacDonald
... the senior partner, Mr. Turnbull. He was a stout, florid man, with a bald crown, a heavy watch-chain of the best gold festooned across the wide space between waistcoat-button-hole and pocket, and a large hemispheroidal carbuncle on a huge fat finger, which yet was his little one. He was close-shaved, double-chinned, and had cultivated an ordinary smile to such an extraordinary degree that, to use the common hyperbole, it reached from ear to ear. By nature he was good-tempered and genial; but, having devoted every mental ...
— Mary Marston • George MacDonald
... made of precious stones, where he met Abraham, who also recommended himself to his prayers; Joseph, the son of Jacob, did the same in the fourth heaven, which was all of emerald; Moses in the fifth, which was all of adamant; and John the Baptist in the sixth, which was all of carbuncle; whence he ascended into the seventh, which was of divine light; and here he found Jesus Christ. However, it is observed that here he alters his style; for he does not say that Jesus Christ recommended himself ...
— The Book of Religions • John Hayward
... at the light, they saw the king's mark on the shoulder, a bright cross, brighter than gold, sparkling like a carbuncle stone. Then Ubbe knew that Havelok was a king's son, and he guessed that he must be ...
— The Junior Classics, V4 • Willam Patten (Editor)
... rejoice to see his drab workroom swarm with these brightly-colored fluttering human butterflies; he bore their visits as visitations, displaying the chastened resignation Job probably showed toward the latest ultra-sized carbuncle. ...
— Slippy McGee, Sometimes Known as the Butterfly Man • Marie Conway Oemler
... men-eating wolves, for the bordering of them: and of this stuff were they made, by the appointment of the Cabalists of Sanlouand. As for the rings which his father would have him to wear, to renew the ancient mark of nobility, he had on the forefinger of his left hand a carbuncle as big as an ostrich's egg, enchased very daintily in gold of the fineness of a Turkey seraph. Upon the middle finger of the same hand he had a ring made of four metals together, of the strangest fashion that ever was seen; so that the steel did not crash against ...
— Gargantua and Pantagruel, Complete. • Francois Rabelais
... under your torrid sun, O gleaming carbuncle? Have you the bucolic tastes of your rival in finery, the Splendid Phanaeus? Can you be a knacker, a worker in putrid sausage-meat, like Phanaeus Milon? Vainly do I consider you and marvel at you: your equipment tells ...
— The Glow-Worm and Other Beetles • Jean Henri Fabre
... at length, "the Great Carbuncle is there, hidden in some crevice of those mountains; and the Great Stone Face is there, and oh! so many wonderful things. Some day we will go there, you and I; sometime when you are quite, quite strong, you know. And we will ...
— Hildegarde's Holiday - a story for girls • Laura E. Richards
... of May they were at Quarry Farm, and Clemens, laid up there with a carbuncle, was preparing for his long tour. The outlook was not a pleasant one. To Mr. Rogers he wrote: "I sha'n't be able to stand on the platform before we start west. I sha'n't get a single chance to practice my reading; but will have to appear in Cleveland without the essential preparation. ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... help, one long wish of his soul was gratified, and did not hunger or thirst any more. Some uncertain footing at Court, namely, was at length vouchsafed him:—uncertain; for the Most Christian Majesty always rather shuddered under those carbuncle eyes, under that voice "sombre and majestious," with such turns lying in it:—some uncertain footing at Court; and from the beginning of 1745, his luck, in the Court spheres, began to mount in a wonderful and world-evident manner. On grounds tragically silly, as he thought ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XVI. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—The Ten Years of Peace.—1746-1756. • Thomas Carlyle
... all the riches this place contains, as well as the carbuncle of Giamschid, shall ...
— The Works of Lord Byron: Letters and Journals, Volume 2. • Lord Byron
... of helping the tissues is by removing the focus of infection, and when this can be done, as for example in a carbuncle or an anthrax pustule, the infected area may be completely excised. When the focus is not sufficiently limited to admit of this, the infected tissue may be scraped away with the sharp spoon, or destroyed by caustics or by the actual cautery. If this is ...
— Manual of Surgery - Volume First: General Surgery. Sixth Edition. • Alexis Thomson and Alexander Miles
... attentively, begins to flash the hidden meaning, a meaning, perhaps, the writer did not care to express formally and in set terms, and which he merely suggests and leaves the reader to make out for himself. If you have the book I am writing about, turn up "David Swan," "The Great Carbuncle," "The Fancy Show-box," and after you have read these, you will ...
— Dreamthorp - A Book of Essays Written in the Country • Alexander Smith
... in the VIIth century before our era, is given in Ezekiel[31] where addressing the king of Tyre, he says: "Thou art covered with precious stones of all kinds, with the ruby, emerald, diamond, hyacinth, onyx, jasper, sapphire, carbuncle, sardonyx and gold. The wheels and drills of the lapidaries, were prepared in thy service for the day ...
— Scarabs • Isaac Myer
... smallest of which was larger than a pigeon's egg. On alabaster tables lay amethysts, topazes, rubies, beryls, and all other precious stones, wrought by the hands of skilful artists, beyond power of computation. The room was lighted by a carbuncle, which, from the end of the hall, poured its ever-living light, brighter than the rays of noontide, but cooler than the gentle radiance of the dewy moon. This was a sore trial to the Rabbi; but he was strengthened from above, ...
— Eastern Tales by Many Story Tellers • Various
... W(ales) is said to have a kind of carbuncle. Mr. Delme told me that Lady B(etty) had heard from her mother, and that she talked of being here in April. Indeed I see no feasibility in any other scheme, although many would to her passions ...
— George Selwyn: His Letters and His Life • E. S. Roscoe and Helen Clergue
... detected a look in his friend's face which excited his suspicion, and was about to slip a stiletto into him when Crioni saved himself by explaining that that look was only an expression of supreme and happy astonishment. Stammato made Crioni a present of one of the state's principal jewels—a huge carbuncle, which afterward figured in the Ducal cap of state—and the pair parted. Crioni went at once to the palace, denounced the criminal, and handed over the carbuncle as evidence. Stammato was arrested, tried, and condemned, with the old-time Venetian promptness. He was hanged between the two ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... chamber of the "Horizon" "a stone trough, in which lay a stone statue in human form, enclosing a man who had on his breast a golden pectoral, adorned with precious stones, and a sword of inestimable value, and on his head a carbuncle of the size of an egg, brilliant as the sun, having characters which no man can read." All the Arab authors, whose accounts have been collected by Jomard, relate in general the same story; one can easily recognize from this description the sarcophagus still in its place, a stone case in ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 2 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... great numbers of monkeys leaping about the trees, and on the mountains there are lions, tigers, and ounces. There are but few elephants, of which we only saw three, but they abound farther inland. The negroes told us of a strange beast, which our interpreter called a carbuncle, which is said to be often seen, but only in the night. This animal is said to carry a stone in his forehead, wonderfully luminous, giving him light by which to feed in the night; and on hearing the slightest noise he presently conceals ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. VIII. • Robert Kerr
... place," as it happens, is very near to mine, and I find something to love in a man who can never forget it. He was a cockscomb, he was an ass; but he preferred the West of England to Italy. He called James I., our king, the "refulgent carbuncle of Christendom," and Prince Charles "the most glittering chrysolite of our English ...
— In a Green Shade - A Country Commentary • Maurice Hewlett
... the borders of the wood walk, scarlet flames of sumach sprang out, vivid, from among the lingering green; and birches trembled with their golden plumes; and bronzed ash boughs, and deep crimsons and maroons and chocolate browns and carbuncle red that crowned the oaks with richer and intenser hues, made up a wealth and massiveness of beauty wherein eye and thought reveled and ...
— Faith Gartney's Girlhood • Mrs. A. D. T. Whitney
... the clear light of her hills, Full of the sound of a hundred waters falling; And poureth his desire out, belike, Upon that queen the wealth of the world hath clad, Babylon, for whose golden bed the gods Wrangle like young men with great gifts and boasts; Whose mind is as a carbuncle of fire, Full of the sound ...
— Emblems Of Love • Lascelles Abercrombie
... turned in the middle of the night, I fell out on the floor, and when I turned he fell out. And there we were, fallin' in and fallin' out like two drunken sailors all night long. And when mornin' came, every bone in my body was as sore as a carbuncle. ...
— Duty, and other Irish Comedies • Seumas O'Brien
... which there was a statue [of stone] like a man, and within it a man upon whom was a breastplate of gold set with jewels; upon this breastplate was a sword of inestimable price, and at his head a carbuncle of the bigness of an egg, shining like the light of the day; and upon him were characters writ with a pen,[251] which no man understood"[252]—a description stating, down to the so-called "statue," mummy-case, or cartonage, and the hieroglyphics upon the cere-cloth, ...
— Archaeological Essays, Vol. 1 • James Y. Simpson
... Arch of Triumph, which Stanislas built in honour of his daughter's marriage with Louis XV; through the Carriere, where the tops of tall copper-beeches caught the light with dull red gleams, like the glow of a carbuncle; past the sleeping palace of Stanislas, into the old "nursery garden" of the Pepiniere, to the sombre Porte de la Craffe whose two huge, pointed towers and great wall guard the old town of ...
— Everyman's Land • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... of historical romance, as in the story of the stern old regicide who suddenly appears from the woods to head the colonists of Massachusetts in a critical emergency; then he tries his hand at a bit of allegory, and describes the search for the mythical carbuncle which blazes by its inherent splendour on the face of a mysterious cliff in the depths of the untrodden wilderness, and lures old and young, the worldly and the romantic, to waste their lives in the vain effort to discover it—for ...
— Hours in a Library, Volume I. (of III.) • Leslie Stephen
... celestial substance of his temples, his golden palaces, his splendid cities where angels disport themselves; they laugh at his groves of miraculous trees, his gardens where the flowers speak and the air is white, and the mystical stones, the sard, carbuncle, chrysolite, chrysoprase, jacinth, chalcedony, beryl, the Urim and Thummim, are endowed with motion, express celestial truths, and reply by variations of light to questions put to them ('True Christian Religion,' 219). Many noble souls will not ...
— Seraphita • Honore de Balzac
... what's this?" cried Hodges, running his hand down the left side of the porter, and meeting with a large lump. "Can it be a carbuncle?" ...
— Old Saint Paul's - A Tale of the Plague and the Fire • William Harrison Ainsworth
... women reclining on richly embroidered sofas; yet here, too, all was profound silence. A superb banqueting-hall next met his astonished gaze; then a silent kitchen; then granaries loaded with forage; then a stable crowded with motionless horses. The whole place was brilliantly lighted by a carbuncle which was suspended in one corner of the reception-room; and opposite stood an archer, with his bow and arrow raised, in the act of taking aim at the jewel. As the priest passed back through this hall, he saw a diamond-hilted knife lying on a marble table; and wishing to carry away something ...
— Myths and Myth-Makers - Old Tales and Superstitions Interpreted by Comparative Mythology • John Fiske
... traveller was compelled to admit that, "when there was no moon, a pale but distinct light was invariably reflected from a mountain in that quarter, and from no other." It has now died out—this superstition, which corresponds with the carbuncle of Hoy and others of ...
— Two Trips to Gorilla Land and the Cataracts of the Congo Volume 1 • Richard F. Burton
... of medicine ought to be absolutely exhausted and shown not to be true, until we take to others which have less analogy in their favour. And there are some diseases most assuredly in which it turns out to be perfectly correct. There are some forms of what are called malignant carbuncle which have been shown to be actually effected by a sort of fermentation, if I may use the phrase, by a sort of disturbance and destruction of the fluids of the animal body, set up by minute organisms which are the cause of this destruction and of this disturbance; ...
— Lectures and Essays • T.H. Huxley
... nearly an hour since sunset, but the twilight still lingers in softened radiance, mellowing the mountain-scenery. The camp-wagons are drawn up on a low pebbly shelf at the foot of the hills, and the kindled fire has set a great carbuncle in the standing pool. A spring branch oozes out of the rocky turf, and flows down to meet a shallow river fretting over shoals. The road we have followed hangs like a rope-ladder from the top of the hills, sagging down in the irregularities till it reaches the river-bed, where it flies ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XII. No. 31. October, 1873. • Various
... a slough in the throat, or the mortified part of a carbuncle, if it be kept moist and warm, as during its abhesion to a living body, it will soon putrify. This, and the origin of contagion from putrid animal substances, seem to have given rise to the septic and antiseptic theory of ...
— Zoonomia, Vol. I - Or, the Laws of Organic Life • Erasmus Darwin
... Fool found himself in a vast vaulted room, lit by the light of a single carbuncle set in the centre of the dome above. In the middle of the marble floor was a great basin twenty paces broad, and filled to the brim with money such as he had found in the brazen vessel ...
— Twilight Land • Howard Pyle
... have been bathed, and the corns cut, a drop or two of juice be squeezed over the corn from the fresh pulp of a radish on several consecutive days, this will wither and [457] disappear. Also Radish roots sliced when fresh, and applied to a carbuncle will promote its healing. An old Saxon remedy against a woman's chatter was to "taste at night a root of Radish when fasting, and the chatter will not be able to harm him." In some places the Radish is ...
— Herbal Simples Approved for Modern Uses of Cure • William Thomas Fernie
... walls fifteen feet thick, out of the ruins of its mosques. The king, who fought upon an elephant, was badly wounded and fled. Further, on hearing of the victory, the King of Siam, from whom Malacca had been "usurped by the Moors," sent to the conqueror a cup of gold, a carbuncle, and a sword inlaid with gold. This conquest was vaunted of as a great triumph of the Cross over the Crescent, and as its result, by the year 1600 nearly the whole commerce of the Straits had fallen into the hands ...
— The Golden Chersonese and the Way Thither • Isabella L. Bird (Mrs. Bishop)
... inhale the odour of myrrhodion, which makes the weak die. You shall bathe your body in the lake of pink oil of the Island of Juno. You shall see sleeping under the primroses the lizard who awakens all the centuries when at his maturity the carbuncle falls from his forehead. The stars glitter like eyes, the cascades sing like lyres, an intoxicating fragrance arises from the opening flowers. Your spirit shall expand in this atmosphere, and it will show itself in your heart as well as ...
— The Temptation of St. Antony - or A Revelation of the Soul • Gustave Flaubert
... Here was "Muster" Hill, the farmer he had worked for these seventeen years, dying of a sudden, with a carbuncle on the neck, and the farm to be given up at Michaelmas. He—John Bolderfield—had been working on for the widow; but, in his opinion, she was "nobbut a caselty sort of body," and the sooner she and her children were taken off ...
— Bessie Costrell • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... as house-painting beside the green of bird's plumage or of clear water. No diamond shows colour so pure as a dewdrop; the ruby is like the pink of an ill-dyed and half-washed-out print, compared to the dianthus; and the carbuncle is usually quite dead unless set with a foil, and even then is not prettier than the seed of a pomegranate. The opal is, however, an exception. When pure and uncut in its native rock, it presents the most lovely colours that can be seen in the world, except those ...
— Lectures on Art - Delivered before the University of Oxford in Hilary term, 1870 • John Ruskin
... In a case of carbuncle the gangrenous disorganization of the skin and cellular tissue becomes very soon confined to a small spot; the dead parts are separated from the living tissues; the fever is hushed; the disorganizations which it threatens are averted; a healthy suppuration ...
— Apis Mellifica - or, The Poison of the Honey-Bee, Considered as a Therapeutic Agent • C. W. Wolf
... College And now she is dead—& I can never tell her. And of the article: "I read it to the cat Been on the verge of being an angel all my life Carbuncle is a kind of jewel Compliment that helps us on our way Defeat waits somewhere for every conqueror Don't reform any more. It is not an improvement Edited manuscript-by a half wit Embroidery line Every man is strong until his price is named Feverish desire to admire the newest thing Flood-tide ...
— Widger's Quotations from Albert Bigelow Paine on Mark Twain • David Widger
... great carbuncle ball Red in the cavern of a sombre cloud,— And in her garden, where the dense weeds crowd. Among her dying asters stands the Fall, Like some lone woman in a ruined hall, Dreaming of desolation and the shroud; Or through decaying woodlands ...
— Weeds by the Wall - Verses • Madison J. Cawein
... sufficient validity to dispose of any mere question of authenticity. All that he attempted was hypothesis, which he invited us to controvert. He might as well have desired me to demonstrate that the sun is not a carbuncle. On the modus operandi, and the powers of his art, the doctor was more explicit. There were a great many gradations in quality in his somnambules, some being better and some worse; and there was also a good deal of difference in the intensity ...
— Recollections of Europe • J. Fenimore Cooper
... which played tunes by steam, which stood even then in the Cathedral of Rheims; how he discovered in the Campus Martius at Rome wondrous treasures, and a golden king and queen, golden courtiers and guards, all lighted by a single carbuncle, and guarded by a boy with a bent bow; who, when Gerbert's servant stole a golden knife, shot an arrow at that carbuncle, and all was darkness, ...
— Hereward, The Last of the English • Charles Kingsley
... these terms," said the Armenian. "Let me cure the captive, and of the one hundred purses, a moiety shall belong to yourself. Ay! so confident am I of success, that I deem it no hazard to commence our contract by this surety." And so saying, the Armenian took from his finger a gorgeous carbuncle, and offered it to the eunuch. The worthy dependent of the Seraglio had a great taste in jewellery. He examined the stone with admiration, and placed it on his finger with complacency. "I require no inducements to promote the interests of science, ...
— The Rise of Iskander • Benjamin Disraeli
... stones bright and pure, With carbuncle and sapphire, Kalsedonys and onyx clere, Sette in golde newe; Diamondes and rubies, And other stones of ...
— Needlework As Art • Marian Alford
... might have cast herself down anywhere—as befitted a tomb. The place was dry and warm, and cunningly pierced for air, so that it was always fresh, and lacked only sunlight. There the witch fed her upon milk, and wine dark as a carbuncle, and pomegranates, and purple grapes, and birds that dwell in marshy places; and she played to her mournful tunes, and caused wailful violins to attend her, and told her sad tales, thus holding her ever in ...
— Stephen Archer and Other Tales • George MacDonald
... applied with linnen dipp'd therein: nay, the acorns themselves eaten fasting, kill the worms, provoke urine, and (some affirm) break even the stone it self. The coals of oak beaten and mingled with honey, cures the carbuncle; to say nothing of the viscus's, polypods, and other excrescences, of which innumerable remedies are composed, noble antidotes, syrups, &c. Nay, 'tis reported, that the very shade of this tree is so wholesome, ...
— Sylva, Vol. 1 (of 2) - Or A Discourse of Forest Trees • John Evelyn
... the twelve sons of Jacob upon them, one name upon each. No two of these gems were alike: (12) the first, to bear the name of Reuben, was like sardius; the second, for Simon, like topaz; the third, Levi, like emerald; the fourth, Judah, like carbuncle; the fifth, Issachar, like sapphire; the sixth, Zebulon, like jasper; the seventh, Dan, like ligure; the eighth, Naphtali, like amethyst; the ninth, Gad, like agate; the tenth, Asher, like chrysolite; the eleventh, Joseph, like beryl; and ...
— THE LEGENDS OF THE JEWS VOLUME IV BIBLE TIMES AND CHARACTERS - FROM THE EXODUS TO THE DEATH OF MOSES • BY LOUIS GINZBERG |
