"Dormouse" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... mathematical genius, had been able to pay his way through Cambridge University by the scholarships and prizes which he had won. One beautiful little dark-eyed daughter of seven was playing in a West End Theatre as the dormouse in "Alice in Wonderland." She was second fiddle to Alice herself, also, and could sing all her songs. Her pay was some five pounds a week, poor enough for the attraction she proved, but more than all the rest of the family put together earned. At that ...
— A Labrador Doctor - The Autobiography of Wilfred Thomason Grenfell • Wilfred Thomason Grenfell
... persons were quite overcome by the idea of the journey. Madame Bonaparte, mere, supported the fatigues of this memorable day with the greatest courage; but Madame Bonaparte, Consulesse, did not show any. The two young ladies who sat in the dormouse, Mademoiselle Hortense and Madame Lavallette, were rival candidates for a bottle of Eau de Cologne; and every now and then the amiable M. Rapp made the carriage stop for the comfort of his poor little sick heart, ...
— Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte, Complete • Louis Antoine Fauvelet de Bourrienne
... ye fools," whispered Long Allen to his mates; "by Saint Christopher, you will make our Dickon go beside himself, and we shall have his dagger presently fly at our costards. Leave him alone; in less than a minute he will sleep like a dormouse." ...
— The Talisman • Sir Walter Scott
... NEWTON, felt a little twinge; she called a waiting-maid, who had only time to hold out her apron, and catch a little Girl, whom they carried to its cradle. The Mother arranged her papers, went to bed; and the whole of that (TOUT CELA) is sleeping like a dormouse, at the hour I write to you." My guardian angels, "poor I sha'n't have so easy a delivery of my CATILINA" (my ROME SAVED, for the confusion of old Crebillon and the cabals)! [—OEuvres,—lxxiv. 57 ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XVI. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—The Ten Years of Peace.—1746-1756. • Thomas Carlyle
... took up natural history and a whole lot of other subjects at the same time, and one can't remember everything, can one? I used to know the difference between the Sardinian dormouse and the ordinary kind, and whether the wry-neck arrives at our shores earlier than the cuckoo, or the other way round, and how long the walrus takes in growing to maturity; I daresay you knew all those sorts of things once, but I bet you've ...
— Beasts and Super-Beasts • Saki
... which would have been worse than travelling them. It is not my interest, however, to put such thoughts in your head about its being 'all for the best'; and I would rather hope (as I do) that what I lost by one chance I may recover by some future one. Winters shut me up as they do dormouse's eyes; in the spring, we shall see: and I am so much better that I seem turning round to the outward world again. And in the meantime I have learnt to know your voice, not merely from the poetry but from the kindness ...
— The Letters of Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett, Vol. 1 (of 2) 1845-1846 • Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett
... like sardines. Men were retching and groaning, cussing and growling. At last I found a coil of rope. It was a huge coil with a hole in the centre—something like a large bird's nest. I got into this hole and curled up like a dormouse. Here I did not feel the cold so much, and lying down I didn't feel sick. The moon glittered on the great gray billows. The cattle-boat heaved up and slid down the mountains. She pitched and rolled and slithered sideways down the wave-slopes. And so ...
— At Suvla Bay • John Hargrave
... dormouse squats and eats Choice little dainty bits Beneath the spreading roots of a broad lime; Nibbling his fill he stops from time to time And listens ...
— Poems • Christina G. Rossetti
... accustomed, and has been accustomed for hundreds of years, to perform prodigies of labor during two short periods of sowing and harvest, and to spend the immensely long and monotonous winter in a hibernation like that of the snake or the dormouse. There is a much greater difference between a Russian workman's normal output and that of which he is capable for a short time if he sets himself to it, than there is between the normal and exceptional output of an Englishman, whose temperate climate has ...
— The Crisis in Russia - 1920 • Arthur Ransome
... Shee did shew fauour to the youth in your sight, onely to exasperate you, to awake your dormouse valour, to put fire in your Heart, and brimstone in your Liuer: you should then haue accosted her, and with some excellent iests, fire-new from the mint, you should haue bangd the youth into dumbenesse: this was look'd for at your hand, and this was ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare
... had he fancied that thereby he might be remembered. A peach—a blushing, rich-flavored fruit, nestling in the trellis work on the garden-wall, hidden beneath its long, green leaves,—this little vegetable production, that a dormouse would nibble up without a thought, was sufficient to recall to the memory of this great monarch the mournful shade of the last ...
— The Man in the Iron Mask • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... in the summer, comparatively speaking. Its nature is the reverse of that of the dormouse. Warm ambient air, loiterings abroad, gardenings, flowers to talk about, and preserves to make, soothed the wicked imp to slumber in the parish of Hollingford in summer-time. But when evenings grew short, and ...
— Wives and Daughters • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... elicited the explanation, riddled by sobs, that Hester could never take an interest in life again, could never raise herself even to a sitting position, nor dry her eyes on her aunt's handkerchief, unless she were allowed to go to tea with Rachel and see her dormouse. ...
— Red Pottage • Mary Cholmondeley
... she saw the half-awake little passenger; but she was very good-natured, whipped off Eyebright's boots, hat, and jacket, in a twinkling, and tucked her into a little berth, where in three minutes she was napping like a dormouse. There was a great deal of whistling and screeching and ringing of bells when the boat left her dock, heavy feet trampled over the deck just above the berth, the water lapped and hissed; but not one of these things did Eyebright hear, nor ...
— Eyebright - A Story • Susan Coolidge
... mopus[obs3]; do-little faineant[Fr], dummy, sleeping partner; afternoon farmer; truant &c. (runaway) 623: bummer|!, loafer, goldbrick, goldbicker, lounger, lazzarone[It]; lubber, lubbard[obs3]; slow coach &c. (slow.) 275; opium eater, lotus eater; slug; lag|!, sluggard, slugabed; slumberer, dormouse, marmot; waiter on Providence, fruges consumere natus[Lat]. V. be inactive &c. adj.; do nothing &c. 681; move slowly &c. 275; let the grass grow under one's feet; take one's time, dawdle, drawl, droil[obs3], lag, hang back, slouch; loll, lollop[obs3]; lounge, poke, loaf, loiter; go to sleep ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... boisterously. "Here, come out, you lazy old rascal; we're just going on a bit of a trip. Where are you? Oh, I say, you do like playing dormouse." ...
— Steve Young • George Manville Fenn
... negative qualities rare in the eighteenth century—an intense and cruel truthfulness, an absolute disinterestedness, a constitutional contempt for all the vanities and baseness of the world. They tried to talk to him, to lend him books, to awaken him out of this dormouse sleep of the intellect, to break the spell which weighed him down. All in vain. He continued his life of dull dissipation and dull wanderings, through Italy, Germany, France, England, far into Spain, Portugal, Russia, and even Finland. Periodic fits of depression ...
— The Countess of Albany • Violet Paget (AKA Vernon Lee)
... dusty road Strewed acorns on the lea; And one took root and sprouted up, And grew into a tree. Love sought its shade at evening-time, To breathe its early vows; And Age was pleased, in heights of noon, To bask beneath its boughs. The dormouse loved its dangling twigs, The birds sweet music bore— It stood a glory in its place, ...
— Childhood's Favorites and Fairy Stories - The Young Folks Treasury, Volume 1 • Various
... not forget to tell you that a bat is like a dormouse in one respect: it does not fly away to a warm, country when the cold is coming, and the insects are getting scarce, but goes off to sleep in a barn, or belfry, or cave, and sleeps on all through the winter, needing neither food nor drink. There are many ...
— Twilight And Dawn • Caroline Pridham
... south-west wind sweeping through them with the tune of running waters in its course. It is a well-practised ear that can tell whether the sound it hears be that of gently falling waters, or of wind flowing through the branches of firs. Sutherland's heart, reviving like a dormouse in its hole, began to be joyful at the sight of the genial motions of Nature, telling of warmth and blessedness at hand. Some goal of life, vague but sure, seemed to glimmer through the appearances around him, and ...
— David Elginbrod • George MacDonald
... Heaven, and cry, What Nonsense is that Fool talking? Will the Bell never ring for Prayers? We have an eminent Lady of this Stamp in our Country, who pretends to Amusements very much above the rest of her Sex. She never carries a white Shock-dog with Bells under her Arm, nor a Squirrel or Dormouse in her Pocket, but always an abridg'd Piece of Morality to steal out when she is sure of being observ'd. When she went to the famous Ass-Race (which I must confess was but an odd Diversion to be encouraged by People of Rank and Figure) ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... to include in this volume "The Awakening of the Dormouse," "The Purple Emperor," "The Harvest Mouse," and "The Trivial Fortunes of Molge," I have to thank the Editor of the Girl's Realm, and for "The Story of a Field Vole," and "The Passing of the Black Rat," I am indebted to the courtesy of the ...
— "Wee Tim'rous Beasties" - Studies of Animal life and Character • Douglas English
... brighter, happier eyes than those I have so fondly dreamed of. Oh, mother! mother! Draw me close, hold me tight. Earth has no peace so holy as the blessed rest in a mother's clasping arms. After the long winter of separation, it is so sweet to bask in your presence, thawing like a numb dormouse in the sunshine of May. I knew I should find joy in the reunion, but how deep, how full, anticipation failed to paint; and only the blessed ...
— Infelice • Augusta Jane Evans Wilson
... your old garb of melancholy; 'twill express You envy those that stand above your reach, Yet strive not to come near 'em. This will gain Access to private lodgings, where yourself May, like a politic dormouse—— ...
— The Duchess of Malfi • John Webster
... down, it was to her that his thoughts went. The child had grown into a fat young woman, heavy and white. Her intelligence, dull in the first instance, had become still more obscured through the inertia of a dormouse's existence, the carelessness of a father given over to business, the use of opium-saturated tobacco and of preserves made from rose-leaves, the torpor of her Flemish blood, re-enforced by Oriental indolence. Furthermore, she was ill-bred, gluttonous, sensual, ...
— The Nabob • Alphonse Daudet
... to old Mr. John Taylor, Who "thinks he might pass as a dormouse," (Three years in bed ...
— The Great Big Treasury of Beatrix Potter • Beatrix Potter
... said, "I apologize. Read. I'm as predisposed as I can be toward anything conceived by that little dormouse of a person ...
— Star-Dust • Fannie Hurst
... Lady Shalem was the Grafin von Tolb, a well-dressed woman of some fifty-six years, comfortable and placid in appearance, yet alert withal, rather suggesting a thoroughly wide-awake dormouse. Rich, amiable and intelligent were the adjectives which would best have described her character and her life-story. In her own rather difficult social circle at Paderborn she had earned for herself the reputation of being one of the most tactful and discerning hostesses ...
— When William Came • Saki
... obtain a specimen; we saw the animal only through a telescope, and judged it to be the Capra Columbiana, or Rupicapra Americana Blainville, so often spoken of. Lastly, we have to mention a small kind of hare, not so large as a rabbit, found in great abundance among the bushes, and a dormouse ...
— A New Voyage Round the World, in the years 1823, 24, 25, and 26, Vol. 2 • Otto von Kotzebue
... bum-gunshot at the walnut-tree taper, as is usual in his country of Mirebalais. Slacking, therefore, the topsail, and letting go the bowline with the brazen bullets, wherewith the mariners did by way of protestation bake in pastemeat great store of pulse interquilted with the dormouse, whose hawk's-bells were made with a puntinaria, after the manner of Hungary or Flanders lace, and which his brother-in-law carried in a pannier, lying near to three chevrons or bordered gules, whilst he was clean out of heart, drooping and crestfallen by the too narrow sifting, ...
— Gargantua and Pantagruel, Complete. • Francois Rabelais
... wind and current, they concealed themselves on deck under a black tarpaulin—that is to say, it had been black, but wind and weather had reduced it to a dirty brown—and there, adopting for the occasion the habits of the dormouse, the bear, the caterpillar, and other ephemeral productions, they lay torpid. But the moment the vessel touched the quay, profiting by the commotion, they emerged, and signed certificates with chalk on my portmanteau; ...
— A Terrible Temptation - A Story of To-Day • Charles Reade
... right, right hand ambidextrous, dexterity Dico speak, say abdicate, verdict *Dies day diary, quotidian Dignus worthy, fitting dignity, condign Do, datum give condone, data *Doceo, doctum teach document, doctor *Dominus lord dominion, danger *Domus house domicile, majordomo *Dormio sleep dormant, dormouse Duco lead traduce, deduction *Duo two dubious, duet Durus hard durable, obdurate Eo, itum go exit, initial Error, erratum wander erroneous, aberration Facio, feci, factum make, do manufacture, affect, sufficient, ...
— The Century Vocabulary Builder • Creever & Bachelor
... suggested that the child should do it for her. Little Roger jumped up, boxed his brother's ears in a decided manner, and finally, burying his small hands in Edmund's light curly hair, gave him a dose of sensation which would have roused a dormouse. ...
— The White Rose of Langley - A Story of the Olden Time • Emily Sarah Holt
... out a snug little nest in the bark and curl up in it like a dormouse, wrapped in this rug, which one of the men gave me. Besides, every morning early I take a plunge and a swim in the stream, and that makes me warm ...
— John Halifax, Gentleman • Dinah Maria Mulock Craik
... passed on. We learn more from each other than from books. I was unconsciously affected by your example. You dared to stretch out both hands to life and grasp it; you accepted the spontaneous natural living wisdom of your instincts when I was rolled up like a dormouse in the dead wisdom of codes and formulas, dogmas and opinions. I never told you how I became a priest. I did not know until quite lately. I think I began to suspect my vocation ...
— The Lake • George Moore
... summer-time at last," said the elder Dormouse, as he took a nut from his store of provisions and cracked it, "and we may now leave our winter's bed." "I don't believe it," replied the younger. "The wind blows cold; I ...
— The Comical Creatures from Wurtemberg - Second Edition • Unknown
... seven, with eyes black and sparkling as those of a dormouse, had just seen Tantaine in the doorway and pointed him ...
— Caught In The Net • Emile Gaboriau
... kind of place usually assigned to a gate-porter in Paris. Certain keys were hanging on the wall, to which he now added the gate key; and his patchwork-covered bed was in a little inner division or recess. The whole had a slovenly, confined, and sleepy look, like a cage for a human dormouse; while he, looming dark and heavy in the shadow of a corner by the window, looked like the human dormouse for whom it was ...
— Great Expectations • Charles Dickens
... which we have framed for ourselves. Imagine yourself as a sportsman, spear in hand, pursuing the wild V.C. through fire and water, or patiently stalking the wary K.C.B., or laying snares for the gentle C.I.E.; or else as a humble industrious dormouse lining a warm nest for the winter of your life in Bath or Tunbridge Wells; or as a gay butterfly flitting from flower to flower while the sunshine of your brief day may last; or simply as a prisoner toiling at the treadmill because you must: the well in the garden ...
— Behind the Bungalow • EHA
... stage of self-trance," says Dr. Paul. "In this state the Yogis, like the bat, the hedge-hog, the marmot, the hamster and the dormouse, acquire the power of supporting the abstraction of atmospheric air, and the privation of food and drink. Of Samadhi or human hibernation there have been three cases within the last twenty-five years. The first case occurred in Calcutta, the second in Jesselmere, and the third in the Punjab. ...
— From the Caves and Jungles of Hindostan • Helena Pretrovna Blavatsky
... said, 'whenever my poor father thought any part of the Dominie's dress wanted renewal, a servant was directed to enter his room by night, for he sleeps as fast as a dormouse, carry off the old vestment, and leave the new one; nor could any one observe that the Dominie exhibited the least consciousness of the change put upon him on ...
— Guy Mannering, or The Astrologer, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... Allan, on whose harum-scarum high spirits Mr. Hawbury's hospitality had certainly not produced a sedative effect. "Hear him, doctor! one would think he was ninety! Bed, you drowsy old dormouse! Look at that, and think of bed if ...
— Armadale • Wilkie Collins
... and the door having closed behind Clem Sypher, he thrust the check beneath the bedclothes, curled himself up and went to sleep like a dormouse. ...
— Septimus • William J. Locke
... to know if you roll up when you sleep, or lie flat," Peter said, not feeling at all anxious to go. "Aunt Dorothy always called me a dormouse at night—" ...
— Queensland Cousins • Eleanor Luisa Haverfield
... through a dusty road strewed acorns on the lea; And one took root and sprouted up, and grew into a tree. Love sought its shade, at evening time, to breath its early vows; And age was pleased, in heats of noon, to bask beneath its boughs; The dormouse loved its dangling twigs, the birds sweet music bore; It stood a glory in its place, ...
— The World's Best Poetry Volume IV. • Bliss Carman
... that any person should desire to fondle so prickly a creature as a hedgehog, or so diabolical a mammalian as the bloodthirsty flat-headed little weasel, seems very odd. Spiders, too, are uncomfortable pets; you can't caress them as you could a dormouse; the most you can do is to provide your spider with a clear glass bottle to live in, and teach him to come out in response to a musical sound, drawn from a banjo or fiddle, to take a fly from your fingers and go back ...
— Lords of the Housetops - Thirteen Cat Tales • Various
... flowers. If it were not for the spring before it, the flower-root would rot in the ground, the tree canker at the core; the bird would speed south never to return; the insect would not retreat under shelter in the rain; the dormouse would not hibernate, the ant collect its stores, the bee its honey. There could be no life without expectation; and a life without hope in man or woman is that of a machine—not even that of an ...
— The Broom-Squire • S. (Sabine) Baring-Gould
... down to table, and the fairy rang the little brass bell twice, and the weeny dwarf brought in two boiled snails in their shells, and when they had eaten the snails he brought in a dormouse, and when they had eaten the dormouse he brought in two wrens, and when they had eaten the wrens he brought in two nuts full of wine, and they became very merry, and the fairyman sang "Cooleen dhas," and the dwarf sang "The little ...
— Irish Fairy Tales • Edmund Leamy
... Hunter's as "a project which, if realized, he expected would make his fortune."[4] With this not altogether admirable object in view, his experiments upon freezing animals were doubtless made. A dormouse, confined in a cold mixture, he tells us, "showed signs of great uneasiness; sometimes it would curl itself into round form to preserve its extremities and confine the heat, and finding that ineffectual, ...
— An Ethical Problem - Or, Sidelights upon Scientific Experimentation on Man and Animals • Albert Leffingwell
... gardened, blacked the abbe's boots, went on errands, chopped the wood, drove the carriole, and fetched the oats, straw, and hay from Prebaudet. He sat in the antechamber during the evening, where he slept like a dormouse. He was in love with Josette, a girl of thirty, whom Mademoiselle would have dismissed had she married him. So the poor fond pair laid by their wages, and loved each other silently, waiting, hoping for mademoiselle's own marriage, as ...
— An Old Maid • Honore de Balzac
... punch, an after that he slept like a dormouse; unfortunately, sleep dissipated his exhilaration, and when he awoke his gaiety had left him. He had the fatal custom of reflecting; his reflections saddened him; he was revenged, but what then? He thought ...
— Samuel Brohl & Company • Victor Cherbuliez
... saucy long-haired boys rejoice To do the manager's commands. At morn 'tis not with empty hands The country pays its call, but some Bring honey in its native comb, Or cones of cheese; some think as good A sleepy dormouse from the wood; And honest tenants' big girls bring Baskets with ...
— Life in the Roman World of Nero and St. Paul • T. G. Tucker
... spakin' was no use, he went on with his story.—By the same token, it was the story of Jim Soolivan and his ould goat he was tellin'—an' a pleasant story it is—an' there was so much divarsion in it, that it was enough to waken a dormouse, let alone to pervint a Christian goin' asleep. But, faix, the way my father tould it, I believe there never was the likes heerd sinst nor before for he bawled out every word av it, as if the life was fairly leavin' him thrying ...
— J. S. Le Fanu's Ghostly Tales, Volume 4 • Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu
... rather a washed-out specimen, but, I say, that fat fellow looks rather a sport. You know, the man like a dormouse." ...
— The Loom of Youth • Alec Waugh
... refreshingly. Awoke, and up an hour before being called; but dawdled three hours in dressing. When one subtracts from life infancy (which is vegetation),—sleep, eating, and swilling—buttoning and unbuttoning—how much remains of downright existence? The summer of a dormouse. ...
— The Works of Lord Byron: Letters and Journals, Volume 2. • Lord Byron
... their precursors: it is now conducted wholly by aliens—by Frenchmen!!! who are said to have realized 80,000L. within a very short space of time; and that a certain nobleman, whose name is not Dormouse, has serious reason to remember that ...
— Real Life In London, Volumes I. and II. • Pierce Egan
... From the colour, shape, size, and manner of nesting, I make no doubt but that the species is nondescript. They are much smaller, and more slender, than the mus domesticus medius of Ray, and have more of the squirrel or dormouse colour; their belly is white, a straight line along their sides divides the shades of their back and belly. They never enter into houses; are carried into ricks and barns with the sheaves, abound in harvest; and ...
— The Natural History of Selborne, Vol. 1 • Gilbert White
... their having been contemporaneous with the bear or rhinoceros, on the ground of Man being a species of more modern date, I ought equally to doubt the co-existence of all the other living species, such as the red deer, roe, wild cat, wild boar, wolf, fox, weasel, beaver, hare, rabbit, hedgehog, mole, dormouse, field-mouse, water-rat, shrew, and others, the bones of which he had found scattered everywhere indiscriminately through the same mud with the extinct quadrupeds. The year after this conversation I cited Schmerling's opinions, and the facts bearing on the antiquity of Man, ...
— The Antiquity of Man • Charles Lyell
... sallow skin without colour, dark lank hair, and strong features—so much for her person; and not less unpropitious for heroism seemed her mind. She was fond of all boy's plays, and greatly preferred cricket not merely to dolls, but to the more heroic enjoyments of infancy, nursing a dormouse, feeding a canary-bird, or watering a rose-bush. Indeed she had no taste for a garden; and if she gathered flowers at all, it was chiefly for the pleasure of mischief—at least so it was conjectured from her always preferring those which she was forbidden to take. ...
— Persuasion • Jane Austen
... clear, candid eyes. It soon learned to know the voice of "gran'mere," and would turn from its young mother's bosom to stretch its arms to Reine Allix. It grew fair and strong, and all the ensuing winter passed its hours curled like a dormouse or playing like a puppy at her feet in the chimney-corner. Another spring and summer came, and the boy was more than a year old, with curls of gold, and cheeks like apples, and a mouth that always smiled. He could talk a little, and tumbled ...
— Stories By English Authors: France • Various
... to go running about en chemise, like the girl in the tale of the 'Midsummer Eve,' where she pulls the Saint Johns-wort flower, and has her wish to hear all the creatures talk. I liked it much, and Yvon slept so like the dormouse that he never heard me creep in and out. It was hard to bring much water, but the poor cabbages were so glad, and Mother Lobineau felt that ...
— Aunt Jo's Scrap-Bag • Louisa M. Alcott
... shadow that he may figure out how much longer he may sleep. But that I take to be a mere literary furnishing, like the chuck part of the animal's name, brought from England with the pioneers and adapted to use in this country. Probably it is said in England of the dormouse, which also sleeps winters, as does the woodchuck, though I believe lightly compared with our animal. The woodchuck is far too sound a sleeper to wake up on a February ...
— Old Plymouth Trails • Winthrop Packard
... was little suggestive of the fairy in Jerry as she tumbled through the door at that moment, Pepperpot held high in her arms and Bigboy leaping at her side. They rudely disturbed the Maltese—Dormouse, Jerry called her—and then occupied in sprawling fashion the strip ...
— Highacres • Jane Abbott
... a dormouse lived in the wood with his mother. She had made a snug little nest, but Sleepy-head, as she called her little mousie, loved to roam about among the grass and fallen leaves, and it was a hard task to keep him at home. One day the mother went off as usual to look for food, leaving ...
— How to Tell Stories to Children - And Some Stories to Tell • Sara Cone Bryant
... sir,' said the old gentleman, 'has conferred upon me the ancient title o' grandfather vich had long laid dormouse, and wos s'posed to be nearly hex-tinct in our family. Sammy, relate a anecdote o' vun o' them boys, - that 'ere little anecdote about young Tony sayin' as he WOULD smoke a pipe unbeknown ...
— Master Humphrey's Clock • Charles Dickens
... magnifying-glasses, dropping matches into the water-jug, and so on, how can we possibly say that 'it is impossible to distinguish between waking hallucinations and those of sleep' (p. 300)? If so, it is impossible to distinguish between sleeping and waking altogether. We are all like the dormouse! Herr Parish is reasoning here a priori, without any personal knowledge of the facts; and, above all, he is under the 'dominant idea' of his ...
— The Making of Religion • Andrew Lang
... the squirrel, field mouse, and dormouse, are store-keepers by nature. The larder is placed at a convenient distance from the nest in which these little animals sleep, and if forgotten, or accidentally left unused, the nuts, seeds, &c., often taken root and grow. Many a spreading chestnut, sturdy oak, ...
— Chatterbox, 1905. • Various
... table set out under a tree in front of the house, and the March Hare and the Hatter were having tea at it: a Dormouse was sitting between them, fast asleep, and the other two were using it as a cushion, resting their elbows on it, and talking over its head. 'Very uncomfortable for the Dormouse,' thought Alice; 'only, as it's asleep, I suppose it ...
— Alice's Adventures in Wonderland • Lewis Carroll
... know what it is yet," grinned Elfreda. "The idea just came to me. I suppose," she continued reflectively, "we could have all the animals, like the March Hare, for instance, and the Dormouse. Then there's the Mock Turtle and the Jabberwock. No, that's been done to death. Besides, it's in 'Through the Looking Glass.' We could have the Griffon, though, and then, there's the Duchess, the King, the Queen, and the Mad Hatter. ...
— Grace Harlowe's Third Year at Overton College • Jessie Graham Flower
... its loose boxes. No one knew how he lived or how he got his horses. He had, however, a very pretty knack of selling them, and certainly paid Mr. Horsball regularly. He was wont to vanish in April, and would always turn up again in October. Some people called him the dormouse. He was good-humoured, good-looking after a horsey fashion, clever, agreeable, and quite willing to submit himself to any nickname that could be found for him. He liked a rubber of whist, and was supposed to make something out of bets with bad players. He rode very carefully, and was altogether ...
— Ralph the Heir • Anthony Trollope
... hurry for the adventure. She has slow-moving eyes, with sleepy, drooping eyelids that blink at you. She has a rather sleepy, rather drooping nose. Her shoulders droop; her small head droops, slightly, half the time. If she were not so slender she would be rather like a pretty dormouse half-recovering from its torpor. You insist on the determination of her little thrust-out underlip, only to be contradicted by her gentle and ...
— A Journal of Impressions in Belgium • May Sinclair
... I really will work, with such a dear beautiful box!" cried Kate, opening it, and again peeping into all its little holes and contrivances. "Here is the very place for a dormouse to sleep in! And who is the ...
— Countess Kate • Charlotte M. Yonge
... said Girdlestone, stirring his tea thoughtfully, "when we lived in the City as 'prentice lads together, we shared a room above the shop. He used to have a dormouse that he was very fond of. All his leisure time was spent in nursing the creature and cleaning its cage. It seemed to be his only pleasure in life. One night it was running across the floor, and I put ...
— The Firm of Girdlestone • Arthur Conan Doyle
... it, Major, but what that matter now since you and I alive? Plenty more where they come from. Not dead though, think only sleep, no like cold, like dormouse. But never mind cannibal pig. They serve our turn, if they live, live; if they die, die and God have mercy on souls, if cannibal have soul. Ah! here we are," and from beneath six inches of water he dragged up the tin box containing Little Bonsa, from ...
— The Yellow God - An Idol of Africa • H. Rider Haggard
... frightened, looked from side to side to try and discover where these words could come from, but he saw nobody. The donkeys galloped, the coach rattled, the boys inside slept, Candlewick snored like a dormouse, and the little man seated on the box sang between ...
— Pinocchio - The Tale of a Puppet • C. Collodi
... Dormouse attended, but cold and forlorn; And the Gnat slowly winded his shrill little horn; And the Moth, who was griev'd for the loss of a sister, Bent over the body, and ...
— The Butterfly's Funeral - A Sequel to the Butterfly's Ball and Grasshopper's Feast • J. L. B.
... within a Convent, there Lay passive as a dormouse in mid winter. That was no life for me—I was o'erthrown But ...
— The Poetical Works of William Wordsworth - Volume 1 of 8 • Edited by William Knight
... immediately put into a great commotion. They had no light. They called a council to debate upon the matter, and to appoint some one to go and cut the cord—for this was a very hazardous enterprise, as the rays of the sun would burn whoever came so near to them. At last the dormouse undertook it—for at this time the dormouse was the largest animal in the world. When it stood up it looked like a mountain. When it got to the place where the sun was snared, its back began to smoke and burn with the intensity of the heat, and the top of ...
— The Myth of Hiawatha, and Other Oral Legends, Mythologic and Allegoric, of the North American Indians • Henry R. Schoolcraft
... greyhound course, the hound in chase, Whilst little dormouse sleepeth out her eyne; The lambs and rabbits sweetly run at base,[68] Whilst highest trees the little squirrels climb, The crawling worms out creeping in the showers, And how the snails do climb the ...
— England's Antiphon • George MacDonald
... out after her from the corner of the big sofa, where he lay curled up like a dormouse, "if you would do your best on my dress, instead of making me wear this old suit, it would strike a better average in ...
— Flint - His Faults, His Friendships and His Fortunes • Maud Wilder Goodwin
... His wooing was very hopeless. And all the time he courted the imperious rose, who should be peeping at him from her home in the hedge but as plump and as sleek a little Miss Dormouse as ever you saw, and her ...
— The Holy Cross and Other Tales • Eugene Field
... the scientific name of the Australian Dormouse Phalangers, or little Opossum- or Flying-Mice, as they are locally called. See Opossum, Opossum-mouse, and Phalanger. They are not really the "Flying"-Mice or Flying-phalanger, as they have only an incipient ...
— A Dictionary of Austral English • Edward Morris
... prayers, and should remain absorbed in devotion until midnight. In obedience to the directions of this saintly person, I kept myself awake as well as I could till eleven o'clock. I then got on my knees with great fervour, and I blush to confess it, immediately fell as fast asleep as a dormouse. This went on for several nights, when Father Deveaux finding that my midnight devotions were rather too much for me, was so obliging as to prescribe another species of pious exercise, in a letter which he wrote to me ...
— A Fair Penitent • Wilkie Collins
... finding herself safe in greenwood shade Removed from noise, and, for her tranquil breast (Knowing her lover was beside her laid) No further thoughts, no further cares molest, Olympia lap in slumber so profound, No sheltered bear or dormouse sleeps ...
— Orlando Furioso • Lodovico Ariosto
... dormice which eat it all. I destroyed a great number of these animals, notwithstanding which the fruit still diminished. I watched the gardener's motions so narrowly, that I found he was the great dormouse. He lodged at Montmorency, whence he came in the night with his wife and children to take away the fruit he had concealed in the daytime, and which he sold in the market at Paris as publicly as if he had brought it from a garden of his own. The wretch whom I loaded with kindness, whose children ...
— The Confessions of J. J. Rousseau, Complete • Jean Jacques Rousseau
... either spoke. The old priest broke the silence. He was a gentle-faced old man, not unlike a very shrewd and wide-awake dormouse; and his white hair stood out in a mass beneath his biretta. But the words he used were unintelligible, though ...
— Dawn of All • Robert Hugh Benson
... soothingly, "the little imp is as lazy as a dormouse and as mischievous as a monkey. I'll warrant the hiding was his due, and that more of the like would ...
— Men of Iron • Ernie Howard Pyle
... which resemble nothing so much as a packing-case with a pair of shafts attached. But these are all; for work has practically ceased in the agricultural regions, and a period of hibernation has begun, when, like the dormouse, rancher and farmer alike pass their slack time in repose from the arduous labors ...
— The Night Riders - A Romance of Early Montana • Ridgwell Cullum
... soft bed and the blazing fire in his room—he stripped back the light-excluding curtains forgetful of Defence of the Realm Acts, and opened all the windows wide, to the horror of Peddle in the morning—slept like an unperturbed dormouse. When Peddle woke him, he lay drowsily while the old butler filled his bath and fiddled about with drawers. At last aroused, he ...
— The Rough Road • William John Locke
... Carlyle,—Two* unanswered letters filled and fragrant and potent with goodness will not let me procrastinate another minute, or I shall sink and deserve to sink into my dormouse condition. You are of the Anakim, and know nothing of the debility and postponement of the blonde constitution. Well, if you shame us by your reservoir inexhaustible of force, you indemnify and cheer some of us, or one of us, by ...
— The Correspondence of Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson, 1834-1872, Vol II. • Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson
... was such a disposition for sleep exhibited by the whole of the party, not excluding the Squire himself, that Mrs Inglis very soon began to talk about bed; and toe had to talk very loudly, too, for Harry had curled himself up in the great easy chair, dormouse fashion; Fred was sitting at the table with a book, whose leaves he was keeping from flying open by resting his head upon them; while Philip was seated on a small ottoman by his father's knees, and resting against them, fast asleep, as was also the ...
— Hollowdell Grange - Holiday Hours in a Country Home • George Manville Fenn
... to "Alice in Wonderland," Mr. Savile Clarke's play at the Prince of Wales's Theatre. The first act (Wonderland) goes well, specially the Mad Tea Party. Mr. Sydney Harcourt is a capital Hatter, and little Dorothy d'Alcourt (aet. 61/2) a delicious Dormouse. Phoebe Carlo is a splendid Alice. Her song and dance with the Cheshire Cat (Master C. Adeson, who played the Pirate King in "Pirates of Penzance") was a gem. As a whole the play ...
— The Life and Letters of Lewis Carroll • Stuart Dodgson Collingwood
... Summer, lingering half-forlorn, On Autumn loves to lean, And fields of slowly yellowing corn Are girt by woods still green; When hazel-nuts wax brown and plump, And apples rosy-red, And the owlet hoots from hollow stump, And the dormouse makes its bed; When crammed are all the granary floors, And the Hunter's moon is bright, And life again is sweet indoors, And logs again alight; Ay, even when the houseless wind Waileth through cleft and chink, ...
— Lyra Heroica - A Book of Verse for Boys • Various
... six months previously bought a dormouse in a cage at a bazaar, and after idolizing it for a week had forgotten all about it. Her husband had rescued it half starved; his assistant had fed it up in the laboratory, and they had tried a few experiments on it with ...
— Mrs. Warren's Daughter - A Story of the Woman's Movement • Sir Harry Johnston
... a special coach If one ant-eater goes; The dormouse wants a sleeping car; The chickens shun ...
— Zodiac Town - The Rhymes of Amos and Ann • Nancy Byrd Turner
... that the eye-glass youth is not Canon Dormouse, the clerical-looking gentleman not the Master of the Scalpers' Company, and so on. Oh, they are ...
— The Confessions of a Caricaturist, Vol 2 (of 2) • Harry Furniss
... and not even so much. Tell your little mother, just that. Then I shall see you at last, all I want to for two days. Do you know that you are INACCESSIBLE in Paris? Poor old fellow, did you finally sleep like a dormouse in your cabin? I would like to give you a little of my sleep that nothing, not even a ...
— The George Sand-Gustave Flaubert Letters • George Sand, Gustave Flaubert
... ('Post-hypnotic suggestion.') But a savage is born to his kin-totem. A man is born a wolf of the Delawares, his totem is the wolf, he cannot help himself. But after, or in, his medicine fast and sleep, he may choose a dormouse or a squirrel for his manitou (tona, nagual) or private protecting animal. These are quite separate from totems, as Mr. Max Muller ...
— Modern Mythology • Andrew Lang
... the dormouse in Alice's teapot. There is very little left of me. I had no idea your niece had such a taste for argument, Cunliffe. I take it rather unkindly that I was ...
— Uncle Max • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... Grove, "and in this way: before we begin the battle, I will come up to your worship fair and softly, and give you three or four buffets, with which I shall stretch you at my feet and rouse your anger, though it were sleeping sounder than a dormouse." ...
— Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... would have been white if he hadn't been a charcoal-burner, kissed Barty on both cheeks, and gave him a huge bag full of some kind of forest berry that is good to eat; also a young cuckoo (which Barty restored to liberty an hour later); also a dormouse and a large green lizard; also, in a little pasteboard box, a gigantic pale green caterpillar four inches long and thicker than your thumb, with a row of shiny blue stars in relief all along ...
— The Martian • George Du Maurier
... age, leading the life I do, how can that be possible? I rise at five o'clock, winter and summer; I go to bed at ten or eleven; I eat to satisfy my hunger, which is not very great, it is true; I sing like a lark all day, and at night I sleep like a dormouse: I have a mind free, joyful, and contented, with the certainty of plenty of work, because my employers are pleased with what I have done. Why should I be sick! What an ...
— The Mysteries of Paris V2 • Eugene Sue
... the blue fly, Hum, quoth the bee, Buz and hum they cry, And so do we: In his ear, in his nose, thus, do you see? He ate the dormouse, else it was he. ...
— A Nonsense Anthology • Collected by Carolyn Wells
... want a long sleep; I was wakened very early this morning, and there is so much of the dormouse about me, that if I am cheated out of a single half hour of my usual allowance, I am fit for ...
— Mabel's Mistake • Ann S. Stephens
... I am not a detective"—said the doctor carelessly, looking at Faith, who kept as quiet as a dormouse. "If it had been my business I suppose I ...
— Say and Seal, Volume I • Susan Warner
... to find the Butterfly's Ball in full action. Fly had become a Butterfly by the help of a battered pair of fairy wings, stretched on wire, which were part of the theatrical stock. 'The shy little Dormouse' was creeping about on all fours under a fur jacket, with a dilapidated boa for a long tail, but her 'blind brother the Mole' had escaped from her, and had been transformed into the Frog, by means of a spotted handkerchief over his back, and tremendous leap-frog ...
— The Two Sides of the Shield • Charlotte M. Yonge
... with me; you would lose nothing by the change, believe me. The hostler who has just quitted me came here eight months ago all in tatters, and as lean as a shotten herring, and now he has two very good suits of clothes, and is as fat as a dormouse; for you must know, my son, that in this house there are excellent vails to be got ...
— The Exemplary Novels of Cervantes • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... which he carpeted with soft mosses brought from another part of the wood. This done, he lay down flat on his back, and looked dreamily up at the pretty green roof made by the juniper boughs overhead. "I dess I'll take a nappy now," he murmured, and in five minutes was sleeping as soundly as a dormouse. Two striped squirrels, which may or may not have been the same which he had seen in the early morning, came out on a bough not a yard from his head, chattered, winked, put their paws to their noses and made disrespectful remarks to each other ...
— Nine Little Goslings • Susan Coolidge
... popular fads. Turn about is fair play. It is time for some of you to tell me what just now most interests this country-side. My idea of country life is that it is about as exciting as the winter sleep of a dormouse or of a hibernating bear; but for all I know, it may be as lively in its way as life in town; you may be agog over some occurrence as important to you as a change of Palace Prefects would be at Rome. Speak out somebody, if there is ...
— Andivius Hedulio • Edward Lucas White
... surroundings. There are, however, certain mammals which are exceptions, being warm-blooded during the summer, but cold-blooded during the winter when they hibernate; such are the hedgehog, bat and dormouse. John Hunter suggested that two groups should be known as "animals of permanent heat at all atmospheres" and "animals of a heat variable with every atmosphere," but later Bergmann suggested that they should be known ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 2, Part 1, Slice 1 • Various
... went home and got supper, strained and skimmed milk, set a sponge for bread, and slept all night like a dormouse. George Tucker ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I, No. 1, Nov. 1857 • Various
... sea-turtles are very fierce; and although they have no teeth, their jaws are so strong that they can bite a walking-stick in half. Land-tortoises are quite harmless; they only attack the insects they feed upon. They go to sleep, like the dormouse, in the winter, but they do not make a burrow; they cover themselves with earth by scraping it up and throwing it over their bodies. In doing this they would find their heads and tails very much in the way if it were not that they are able to draw them in between ...
— Happy Days for Boys and Girls • Various
... resemble them both in burrowing habits and more or less in shape, which closely approaches the familiar and ungraceful guinea-pig outline. The vulpine phalanger does duty for a fox; the fat and sleepy little dormouse phalanger takes the place of a European dormouse. Both are so ridiculously like the analogous animals of the larger continents that the colonists always call them, in perfect good faith, by the familiar names of the old-country creatures. The ...
— Falling in Love - With Other Essays on More Exact Branches of Science • Grant Allen
... our Civil Surgeon at Meridki, and we called him "Dormouse," because he was a round little, sleepy little man. He was a good Doctor and never quarrelled with any one, not even with our Deputy Commissioner, who had the manners of a bargee and the tact of a horse. ...
— The Works of Rudyard Kipling One Volume Edition • Rudyard Kipling
... she only returned after some ten minutes. "Home," she then said to Burton, climbing heavily into the car. "Yes, there he was, sleeping as peaceful as a dormouse in his silk pyjamas," she remarked. "I startled him some, I reckon, when I waked him up. No, he don't know anything about her. Wanted to jump up and look for her when I told him she was missing. Keep still, Mercedes—what do you mean by bouncing about like ...
— Tante • Anne Douglas Sedgwick
... awake? Donakins! I say, old sport, do stir yourself and blink an eye! What a dormouse you are! D'you want shaking? Rouse up, ...
— A Patriotic Schoolgirl • Angela Brazil
... vig'rous stroke on stroke Striking, till, when he stopt, his back seem'd broke, And the strong arm dropt nerveless. What of that? There was a treasure hidden in his hat— A plaything for the young ones. He had found A dormouse nest; the living ball coil'd round For its long winter sleep; and all his thought As he trudged stoutly homeward, was of nought But the glad wonderment in Jenny's eyes, And graver Lizzy's quieter surprize, When he should yield, by guess, and kiss, and prayer, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXVIII. February, 1843. Vol. LIII. • Various
... 3. The dormouse consumes but little of its food during the rigour of the season, for they roll themselves up, or sleep, or lie torpid the greatest part of the time; but on warm sunny days experience a short revival, and take a little food, and then relapse into their former state." (Pennant Zoolog. p. 67.) Other ...
— Zoonomia, Vol. I - Or, the Laws of Organic Life • Erasmus Darwin
... roses made like pillows and laid under the patient's head, are mentioned by [4354]Cardan and Mizaldus, "to anoint the soles of the feet with the fat of a dormouse, the teeth with ear wax of a dog, swine's gall, hare's ...
— The Anatomy of Melancholy • Democritus Junior
... to housekeepers as "Demerara" under your very eyes; and another equally attractive, rapidly revolving machine in which the molasses, by centrifugal force, detaches itself from the sugar, and runs of its own accord down its appointed channels to the rum distillery, where Alice's Dormouse would have had the gratification of seeing a real treacle-well. In this latter place, where the smell of the fermenting molasses is awful, only East Indian coolies can be employed, a West Indian negro being unable to withstand ...
— Here, There And Everywhere • Lord Frederic Hamilton
... the third son of the Vicar of Berkeley, in Gloucestershire, where he was born, May 17, 1749. Before he was nine years of age he showed a growing taste for natural history, in forming a collection of the nests of the dormouse; and when at school at Cirencester he was fond of searching for fossils, which abound in that neighborhood. He was articled to a surgeon at Sudbury, near Bristol, and at the end of his apprenticeship came to London, ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 6 of 8 • Various
... the snowy pastures, of those happy dreamers that lie under the sod, of dormice and all that race of dormant creatures, which have such a superfluity of life enveloped in thick folds of fur, impervious to cold. Alas, the poet too is, in one sense, a sort of dormouse gone into winter quarters of deep and serene thoughts, insensible to surrounding circumstances; his words are the relation of his oldest and finest memory, a wisdom drawn from the remotest experience. Other men lead a starved existence, meanwhile, like hawks, that would fain keep on the wing, ...
— A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers • Henry David Thoreau
... and was in a hurry to look at the invalid first. Razumihin informed him that Raskolnikov was sleeping like a dormouse. Zossimov gave orders that they shouldn't wake him and promised to ...
— Crime and Punishment • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... brothers, and had gathered primroses and violets in the springtime. She could recognize the group of tall elms, and knew that if she kept to the right she might creep through a hole in the hedge, and make her way across some fields into the high road. As quietly as some little dormouse or night animal she ...
— The Madcap of the School • Angela Brazil
... "Little Dormouse. There she lies at the end of the sofa, covered by my shawl. She has been sleeping ever since breakfast. I think she only wakes up to amuse papa. But she is beginning to stretch herself, and ...
— Flora Lyndsay - or, Passages in an Eventful Life • Susan Moodie
... in such a country as this?" inquired Harry Blount. "Look around you! There's nothing green but the sea itself. There isn't anything eatable within sight,—not so much as would make a dinner for a dormouse!" ...
— The Boy Slaves • Mayne Reid
... set out under a tree in front of the house, and the March Hare and the Hatter were having tea at it; a Dormouse was sitting ...
— Alice in Wonderland • Lewis Carroll |
