"Civet" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... completely the same model as hardly to differ, save in size and colour, are the lions, tigers, leopards, jaguars, pumas, ocelots, lynxes, and wild-cats of different kinds. What are commonly called pole-cats are not really cats, but belong to a different "family;" while civet-cats are not cats in the strict sense of that term. Civet-cats pertain to a group of beasts called Viverrines (Viverridae), to which all ichneumons and mongouses (which appear to have been the domestic cats of the ancient Romans) as well as the ...
— The Contemporary Review, Volume 36, September 1879 • Various
... know. At 6 o'clock each day life begins with him. He follows rigidly the conventions of dress and manners; but in the business of poking his nose into places where he does not belong he could give pointers to a civet cat or a jackdaw. He is the man who has chased Bohemia about the town from rathskeller to roof garden and from Hester street to Harlem until you can't find a place in the city where they don't cut their spaghetti with a knife. Your 'Man About ...
— The Four Million • O. Henry
... fantastical phrases do become an honest lover," said Phoebe, indignantly. "Dost think that Mary Burton prizes these weary labyrinthine sentences—all hay and wool, like the monstrous swelling of trunk hose? Far better can I read in Master Lilly's books. Thinkest thou I came hither to smell civet? Nay—I love better the honest odor of cabbages in mine aunt's kitchen! And all this finery—this lace—this satin and this ...
— The Panchronicon • Harold Steele Mackaye
... twenty-eight years old, married, and living in a house at Tooting, where he had also been active in foundation of a chapel. From hose factor he had become merchant adventurer in trade with Spain, and is said by one writer of his time to have been a "civet-cat merchant." Failing then in some venture in 1692, he became bankrupt, and had one vindictive creditor who, according to the law of those days, had power to shut him in prison, and destroy all power of recovering his loss and putting himself straight with the world. Until ...
— An Essay Upon Projects • Daniel Defoe
... a solid; and it has an aroma by virtue of which it secures the attention and commands the respect of the most casual passer-by. It is more than just cheese. I should call it mother-of-cheese. It is to other and lesser cheeses as civet cats are to canary birds—if you get what I mean; and in its company the most boisterous Brie or the most vociferous Camembert you ever saw becomes ...
— Eating in Two or Three Languages • Irvin S. Cobb
... sat by, on the very steps of his throne, as he solemnly gave out his royal command! and laughed aloud under his very nose—the shallow, silly, pompous little snob—and longed to pull it! and tried to disinfect his greasy, civet-scented, full-bottomed wig with wholesome whiffs from ...
— Peter Ibbetson • George du Marier et al
... parts of reptiles to disordered persons. The heart of a toad, suspended by a blue ribbon round the neck, will cure the king's evil. Rape seed, sown with cursing and imprecation, grows better, we are told, than when the seed is blessed. If one wear a girdle of civet-cat skin in battle, he will escape unhurt. Those skilled in such secrets say they can be easily explained. In their arguments they point to the antipathy of certain natural things, animate and inanimate, ...
— The Mysteries of All Nations • James Grant
... no inhibitions: their pretended inhibitions serve exactly the same purpose as the civet-cat's scent of musk, the peacock's gorgeous tail, the glow-worm's lamp. A woman's inhibitions are invitations. Women do not exist—per se. They are merely the vehicles of existence. If they fail to reproduce their ...
— Captivity • M. Leonora Eyles
... species are known from the Indo-Malay region, of which about eight are found also in Burma and India. Among these are the tiger, leopard, a tiger-cat, civet, and otter; while out of the twenty genera of Malayan Carnivora, thirteen are represented in India by more or less closely allied species. As an example, the Malayan bear is represented in North India by the Tibetan bear, both of which may be seen alive ...
— The Malay Archipelago - Volume I. (of II.) • Alfred Russel Wallace
... frightened eyes, that were justly so, he pushed back the jewelled hilt and threw his arm about her and drew her close, so close she was well-nigh crushed by his warm and passionate embrace and choked by pulverulent civet as her face was pressed against the folds of his steenkirk. She felt the tumultuous beating of his heart, and 'twas a great, new feeling came to her and she trembled and swayed, and loved and hated both, in one brief moment and drew from him and looked with angry eyes. ...
— Mistress Penwick • Dutton Payne
... man fair and free To pass those young maids lightly by, Nay, would you burn him quick, not he; Like broom-horsed witches though he fry, They are sweet as civet in his eye; But trust them, and you're fooled anon; For white or brown, and low or high, Good luck has he that deals ...
— Poems & Ballads (Second Series) - Swinburne's Poems Volume III • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... must have been a Zibet, a specie not unlike the American civet. It is a cat, but not what is known as the 'wildcat,' and can ...
— The Wonder Island Boys: Exploring the Island • Roger Thompson Finlay
... tolerably copious, but little is known of the natural history of a great part of the plateau; a native tribe, prone to human sacrifices, is talked of. Tigers are common, and bears are numerous; they have, besides, the leopard, panther, viverine cat, and civet; and of the dog tribe the pariah, jackal, fox, and wild dog, called Koa. Deer are very numerous, of six or seven kinds. A small alligator inhabits the hill streams, said to be a very different animal from either ...
— Himalayan Journals (Complete) • J. D. Hooker
... other gems, besides a great quantity of pearls; many silk textiles of all colors—taffetas, damasks, satins, silk grograms, and velvets—and raw silk; a quantity of white and black cotton cloth; amber, civet, musk, and storax. Thence arises annually great gain to the royal treasury, on account of the many considerable duties which are paid and collected—both when the ships leave the said city of Manila, and their islands and ports, and in that of Acapulco; and later, when ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898, Volume XXV, 1635-36 • Various
... thee, but do thou pardon her misdeed for our sakes.' When Janshah heard this, he cried out and fell down fainting, whereat the King marvelled and they sprinkled on his face rose water mingled with musk and civet, till he came to himself and, looking at Princess Shamsah, said, 'Praised be Allah who hath brought me to my desire and hath quenched the fire of my heart!' Replied she, 'May He preserve thee from the Fire!, but now tell me, O Janshah, what hath befallen thee since our parting and how thou ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 5 • Richard F. Burton
... scrupulously cut open by the brigands. The gold brought to Ghadames consists chiefly of women's ear-rings, hoop and drop ear-rings. Some of the drops are hollow and contain little matters which rattle, and perfumed with small quantities of atar, or of zebed, (civet). The workmanship is rude and clumsy, but the gold is of the finest quality, though small and unpolished, something as the Malta gold is worked. The Rais collects the gold from those who cannot ...
— Travels in the Great Desert of Sahara, in the Years of 1845 and 1846 • James Richardson
... he laughs likewise, and supplies me with ample food to ridicule the worthy Parisians. We leave the Palais-Royal through the main gate, and I observe another crowd of people before a shop, on the sign-board of which I read "At the Sign of the Civet Cat." ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... Calamus a quarter of a pound, Benjamin one half pound, Storax half a pound, Civet a quarter of an ounce, Cloves a quarter of a pound, Musk one half ounce, Oyl of Orange flowers one ounce, Lignum Aloes one ounce, Rosewood a quarter of a pound, Ambergreece a quarter of an ounces. To every pound of Roses put a pound of powder; the bag must be of Taffity, or ...
— A Queens Delight • Anonymous
... in my hand and flung it into the leaping flames of the newly lighted fire. There was a faint perfume about it that sickened me—a subtle odor like that of a civet cat when it moves stealthily after its prey through a tangle of tropical herbage. I always detested scented note-paper—I am not the only man who does so. One is led to fancy that the fingers of the woman who writes upon ...
— Vendetta - A Story of One Forgotten • Marie Corelli
... questioned whether anything can be conscious of its own flavor. Whether the musk-deer, or the civet-cat, or even a still more eloquently silent animal that might be mentioned, is aware of any personal peculiarity, may well be doubted. No man knows his own voice; many men do not know their own profiles. Every one remembers Carlyle's famous "Characteristics" article; ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I., No. 3, January 1858 - A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics • Various
... into a froth, take the froth as it riseth, and drop it into the sugar by little and little, grinding it still round in a marble mortar and pestle, till it be throughly moistened, and wrought thin enough to drop on plates; then put in some ambergriese, a little civet, and some anniseeds well picked, then take your pie plates, wipe them, butter them, and drop the stuff on them with a spoon in form of round cakes, put them into a very mild oven and when you see them be hard and rise a little, take them out and ...
— The accomplisht cook - or, The art & mystery of cookery • Robert May
... fragrance calling for the very life of their race to the whirring hawkmoths. The tiny miller who, through the hours of glare has crouched beneath a leaf, flutters upward, and the trail of her perfume summons her mate perhaps half a mile down wind. The civet cat, stimulated by love or war, fills the glade with an odor so pungent that it seems as if the other senses must ...
— Edge of the Jungle • William Beebe
... good look, but was engulphed in an oshun of hot galls, who kinder steamed again. The gas, close over our heads, nigh made our brains bile over, so sez I, "Let's make tracks out of this, Squire. It ain't civet (Schakspar) here. This parfume of humanity ...
— The Complete Works of Artemus Ward, Part 7 • Charles Farrar Browne
... Sometimes, reeking with civet-oil, he crept to her door, eavesdropped, pondered the quality of her sighs, stood hesitant, then stealthily withdrew, grinding his ...
— O. Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1920 • Various
... does flattery mine; And all your courtly civet-cats can vent, Perfume to you, to me is excrement. But hear me further—Japhet,[218] 'tis agreed, Writ not, and Chartres scarce could write or read, In all the courts of Pindus guiltless quite; But pens can forge, my friend, that cannot write; And must no egg in Japhet's face ...
— The Poetical Works Of Alexander Pope, Vol. 1 • Alexander Pope et al
... from the fillet bound round his injured brow. The other was an antiquated coxcomb, aping the airs and graces of a youthful gallant, attired in silks and velvets fashioned in the newest French mode, and exhaling a mingled perfume of civet, musk, and ambergris; and in him Aveline recognised the amorous old dotard, who had stared at her so offensively during the visit she had been forced ...
— The Star-Chamber, Volume 2 - An Historical Romance • W. Harrison Ainsworth
... discretion, to excite people unto laughter, as Silenus himself, who was the foster-father of good Bacchus, was wont to do; but within those capricious caskets were carefully preserved and kept many rich jewels and fine drugs, such as balm, ambergris, amomon, musk, civet, with several kinds of precious stones, and other things of great price. Just such another thing was Socrates. For to have eyed his outside, and esteemed of him by his exterior appearance, you would not have given the peel of an onion for him, so deformed he was in body, and ridiculous ...
— Gargantua and Pantagruel, Complete. • Francois Rabelais
... northeast and southwest. It is more than three hundred leguas in circumference. The southern part lies in six degrees of north latitude. It has many gold mines, as those say who have seen them, although they are but little worked, and many cinnamon trees and much civet. ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898 • Emma Helen Blair
... ship aromatic drugs and cosmetics and healing powders and ointments and plasters and precious metals and rich stuffs and rugs of Yemen leather, not to be borne of mule or camel, and all manner of otters and spices and perfumes, civet and ambergris and camphor and Sumatra aloes-wood, and tamerinds[FN333] and sparrow-olives to boot, such as are rare to find in this country." When she heard talk of sparrow- olives her heart longed for them and she said to the ship-master, ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 3 • Richard F. Burton
... for the neighbouring farmers and small proprietors. The breakfast always took place at the keeper's house. We had arranged one room as a dining-room, and the keeper's wife was a very good cook; her omelette au lard and civet de lievre, classic dishes for a shooting breakfast, were excellent. The repast always ended with a galette aux amandes made by the chef of the chateau. I generally went down to the kennels at the end of the day, and it was a ...
— Chateau and Country Life in France • Mary King Waddington |
