"Parrot" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... vivacity be mistaken for exuberance. It is no more surely indicative of the latter than is the laugh of a parrot. One of the chief advantages of the Teutonic over the Latin type of man is that the Latin is tempted to waste his precious vital overplus through a continuous display of vivacity, while the less demonstrative ...
— The Joyful Heart • Robert Haven Schauffler
... has just sent me a beautiful bird with the most gorgeous plumage of the brightest scarlet and blue. It is called a huacamaya, and is of the parrot species, but three times as large, being about two feet from the beak to the tip of the tail. It is a superb creature but very wicked, gnawing not only its own pole, but all the doors, and committing great havoc amongst the plants, besides trying to bite every one who approaches it. It pronounces ...
— Life in Mexico • Frances Calderon De La Barca
... us tasks which we have already finished. Some review there must be, for certain things are specially hard to keep in mind, and have to be gone over and over, lest they fade into forgetfulness. But there must be continued progress in a life school. There is no parrot repetition, sing-song, meaningless, of words that have ceased to be vital. New lessons are to be learned as fast as the old ones are understood. Of what use to set Polly tasks to develop her bravery, when ...
— Polly Oliver's Problem • Kate Douglas Smith Wiggin
... we'll all live to see the day when you're a millionaire, laying the foundation-stone of some of these big things the Aberdeen men build, and speechifying away to the rising generation of how ye began life with nothing but a stuffed Demerary parrot in your pocket. Willie, can't ye lend me some kind of a gun, that I may get him a few of these highly-painted fowl of the air? If I had but old Barney at my elbow now—GOD rest his soul!—we'd give a good account ...
— We and the World, Part II. (of II.) - A Book for Boys • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... glad to know what can be given to her parrot when it pulls its feathers off. The bird in question is now quite bare, and has been so for some time past, although well in health.—[We fear you have been giving him meat, or too much of rich nuts and biscuits. Parrots should have no meat, and plain food. Get him ...
— Little Folks (November 1884) - A Magazine for the Young • Various
... together with the rudiments of intelligence and will. They all seem created after one plan, as if their varieties were the gradulations of a single original type. We recognize kindred forms of experience and modes of expression in ourselves and in them. Now the man seems a travesty of the hog, the parrot, the ape, the hawk, or the shark; now they seem travesties of him. As we gaze at the ruminating ox, couched on the summer grass, notice the slow rhythm of his jaw, and the wondering dreaminess of his eyes, ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger
... of one old gentleman is his parrot, and another chatters incessantly about his pupils. Some of the singers—the serious order of singers—are as namby-pamby off the stage as they are on it, unless revelling in "sweet sounds;" they are too fond of humming tunes, solfaing, and rehearsing graces in society; ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 10, No. 272, Saturday, September 8, 1827 • Various
... Leland Junior is carrying on a pronounced flirtation with a little Greek girl, and Lilian and Barndale are each enjoying their own charming spiritual discomforts. They say little, but, like the famous parrot, they think the more. Concerning one thing, however, Mr. Barndale thinks long and deeply, pulling his tawny beard meanwhile. Lilian, gazing with placid-seeming spirit on the deep, is apparently startled by the ...
— An Old Meerschaum - From Coals Of Fire And Other Stories, Volume II. (of III.) • David Christie Murray
... very poor-looking house. This structure, stuck on to the wall of an enormously large one, badly stuccoed, of no depth, and immensely high, has all its windows on the street, and bears some resemblance to a parrot's perch. On each floor are two rooms, let as separate flats. There is a narrow staircase clinging to the wall, queerly lighted by windows which mark its ascent on the outer wall, each landing being indicated by a stink, one of the most odious peculiarities ...
— Scenes from a Courtesan's Life • Honore de Balzac
... roof—which does not particularly commend the roof to bird-lovers, I know. I often wish the sparrow an entirely different bird, but I never wish him entirely away from the roof. When there is no other defense for him, I fall back upon his being a bird. Any kind of a bird in the city! Any but a parrot. ...
— Roof and Meadow • Dallas Lore Sharp
... above, Where silver ripples break the stream's Long blue, from some roof-sheltering grove A hidden parrot scolds ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 3 (of 4) • Various
... things right. I told him that she had merely repeated, like a parrot, the words she had heard me say and that she knew no particulars whatever, because I had mentioned none. I explained that she had affected, out of crazy spite against him, to know what she really did NOT know—that ...
— The Woman in White • Wilkie Collins
... Martinists with exuberant high spirits. Among these Nash was long thought to have held a very prominent place, for the two most brilliant tracts of the entire controversy, "Pap with an Hatchet," 1589, and "An Almond for a Parrot," 1590, were confidently attributed to him. These are now, however, clearly perceived to be the work of a much riper pen, ...
— The Vnfortunate Traveller, or The Life Of Jack Wilton - With An Essay On The Life And Writings Of Thomas Nash By Edmund Gosse • Thomas Nash
... themselves that he ought to be well hanged for the slur flung at their order. "Take these men away!" exclaimed the king in the height of his passion, which he was saved from further betraying by the uplifted hand of the priests; "and tomorrow morning at parrot-wink let them be well hanged in the plaza." The king and the priests now retired in great confusion, which so astounded General Potter and his secretary that they must needs inquire what it all meant, for their difference of tongues left a gloomy void between them. And when it was explained ...
— The Life and Adventures of Maj. Roger Sherman Potter • "Pheleg Van Trusedale"
... on the highway, met a huge elephant, bearing his royal master and his suite, and also his favorite cat and dog, and parrot and monkey. The great beast and his attendants were followed by an admiring crowd, taking up all of the road. "What fools you are," said the Rat to the people, "to make such a hubbub over an elephant. Is it his great bulk that you so much admire? It can only frighten ...
— Aesop's Fables - A New Revised Version From Original Sources • Aesop
... Old Javvers has the thing now, and I suppose he is almost as proud of it as I am. It is a masterpiece, Bellows. It has all the silly clumsiness of your pelican, all the solemn want of dignity of your parrot, all the gaunt ungainliness of a flamingo, with all the extravagant chromatic conflict of a mandarin duck. Such a bird. I made it out of the skeletons of a stork and a toucan and a job lot of feathers. Taxidermy of that kind is just pure joy, Bellows, ...
— The Stolen Bacillus and Other Incidents • H. G. (Herbert George) Wells
... take our dear Bessie to Avonmouth. He said there was a girl there of a strong spirit, independent and thorough-going, and thinking for herself. He said, 'to be sure, she generally thinks wrong, but there's a candour and simplicity about her that make her wildest blunders better than parrot commonplace,' and he thought your reality might impress his sister. Even then I gathered ...
— The Clever Woman of the Family • Charlotte M. Yonge
... and a great parrot was visible on the branch of a sumach, which stretched over the railings of the low wall of the pagoda garden. "O you appropriate bird,-you surely ...
— Magnum Bonum • Charlotte M. Yonge
... the tribunal demanded "who the boy was with the bleeding nose?" and "why were halberdiers admitted?" Veronese replied that they were the sort of servants a rich and magnificent host would have about him. He was then asked why he had introduced the buffoon with a parrot on his hand. He replied that he really thought only Christ and His Apostles were present, but that when he had a little space over, he adorned it with imaginary figures. This defence of the vast and crowded canvas did not commend itself, and he was asked if he ...
— The Venetian School of Painting • Evelyn March Phillipps
... whatever share of imagination, observation, and insight an ordinary person may be heir to. To a teacher of languages there comes a time when the world is but a place of many words and man appears a mere talking animal not much more wonderful than a parrot. ...
— Under Western Eyes • Joseph Conrad
... half concealed by its own garden. Now convert your linden into graceful palm, your apples into oranges, your gooseberry-bushes into bananas, your thrush which sings in its wicker cage into a gray parrot whistling on a rail; ... sprinkle this with strange and powerful perfumes; place in the west a sun flaming among golden clouds in a prussian-blue sea, dotted with white sails; imagine those mysterious and unknown sounds, those breathings of the earth-soul, ...
— History of the Negro Race in America From 1619 to 1880. Vol 1 - Negroes as Slaves, as Soldiers, and as Citizens • George W. Williams
... Mr. Marston tragically. "There's an old darky preacher up at Richmond who says it does, and I'm sure I think more of his old fog-horn blasts than I do of your parrot tones. Ah! Si, this is the last time that I shall ever fool with good raw material. However, don't let this bother you. As I remember, you used to sing well. I'm going to have some of my friends up at my rooms ...
— The Strength of Gideon and Other Stories • Paul Laurence Dunbar
... of grammars, these young people fell to reading the native poets, and began with Tasso—a course of studies well calculated to produce more results than one; but Brown did not understand Italian, though he was a splendid musician, and repeated it like a parrot. Besides, what did Eliza know about Tasso, Petrarch, Dante, or any of those wild fellows that ...
— The Old Countess; or, The Two Proposals • Ann S. Stephens
... Great Mountain, a name given to one of the early French governors, and continued to be used generally for the French as long as they held Canada. The story means a parrot probably.] ...
— Traditions of the North American Indians, Vol. 3 (of 3) • James Athearn Jones
... blankets, rough boxes, piled newly purchased stores, ready-made doors, window sashes heaped ready for the waggons, slow-moving, apathetic figures sitting and eating, an infernal squawking of parrots, sometimes a wailing of babies. Repatriation went on to a parrot obligato, and I never hear a parrot squawk without a flash of South Africa across my mind. All the prisoners, I believe, brought back parrots—some two or three. I had to spread these people out, over a country still grassless, with teams of war-worn ...
— The Passionate Friends • Herbert George Wells
... trip, Mister Kirby?" Stein peered at him over a pair of old-fashioned, steel-bowed spectacles which perched on his sharp parrot's beak of a nose. ...
— Rebel Spurs • Andre Norton
... populous, mysterious air-shaft kept a parrot. It woke Kedzie early in the morning with hysterical laughter that pierced the ears like steel saws. There was something uncannily real but hideously mirthless in its Ha-ha-ha! It would gurgle with thick-tongued idiocy: "Polly? Polly? Polly wanny ...
— We Can't Have Everything • Rupert Hughes
... rest, and makes it part of the general harmony. The Arctic lichen is found growing under the shadow of the palm on the rocks of the tropical serra, and the song of the thrush and the tap of the woodpecker mingle with the sharp discordant cries of the parrot and paroquet. ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 105, July 1866 • Various
... with the passing of the hours he gave expression to one solitary cry—"For God's sake shoot me!" The wail, uttered with parrot-like repetition and in a tone which bored into the soul, stirred the prisoners within earshot in a strange manner. They clapped their hands over their ears to shut out the awful sound, and shut their eyes to prevent the revolting spectacle burning into their brains. The man's face was ...
— Sixteen Months in Four German Prisons - Wesel, Sennelager, Klingelputz, Ruhleben • Henry Charles Mahoney
... this monotony with the exercise of reason on the part of the creature repeating the word. Here, then, immediately arose the idea of a non-reasoning creature capable of speech; and very naturally, a parrot, in the first instance, suggested itself, but was superseded forthwith by a Raven as equally capable of speech, and infinitely more in keeping with ...
— Edgar Allan Poe's Complete Poetical Works • Edgar Allan Poe
... Sundays, too," said she. Then she called out to him, in her high-pitched treble, which sounded odd coming from her soft circumference of throat. Maud's voice ought, by good rights, to have been a rich, husky drone, instead of bearing a resemblance to a parrot's. "Say, Wollaston Lee," she called out, and the boy approached perforce, lifting his hat—"say," said Maud, "I hear you and Maria eloped last ...
— By the Light of the Soul - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... would say nothing about it. I said she need not worry herself. She is quite twenty-eight, you know, Mamma, so I suppose she knows best; but I should hate a religion that obliged me to kiss White Ferret curates in a parrot-house, shouldn't you? ...
— The Visits of Elizabeth • Elinor Glyn
... him, and he exclaimed in a harsh, croaking voice, 'One eye!' Thereupon two or three queer people poked their heads out of the coach window. There was one old woman with false teeth, in an unpleasant state of decay, and a voice like a parrot. 'One eye!' she shrieked, as she gazed on me with an eye as stony as the coachman. A pale, simpering miss smirked in my face, and cried, 'One eye!' and a military gentleman, with a ghastly frown, hissed ...
— The Three Brides, Love in a Cottage, and Other Tales • Francis A. Durivage
... some reason or other; so I have relinquished the idea, though I think it is a mistake. It would be an irreparable loss to science if they should get away. The old one is tamer than it was and can laugh and talk like a parrot, having learned this, no doubt, from being with the parrot so much, and having the imitative faculty in a high developed degree. I shall be astonished if it turns out to be a new kind of parrot; and yet I ought not to be astonished, for it has already been everything else it could ...
— The $30,000 Bequest and Other Stories • Mark Twain
... overhead with the lines of their jutting balconies, chimneys, and cornices; and now glancing toward the canal, where he could see the noiseless black boats meeting and passing. There was no sound in the calle save his own footfalls and the harsh scream of a parrot that hung in the sunshine in one of the loftiest windows; but the note of a peasant crying pots of pinks and roses in the campo came softened to Don Ippolito's sense, and he heard the gondoliers as they hoarsely jested together and gossiped, ...
— A Foregone Conclusion • W. D. Howells
... inductions by simple enumeration. Reasons having some reference to the canons of scientific investigation have been attempted to be given, however unsuccessfully, for some of these propositions; but to the multitude of those who parrot them, the enumeratio simplex, ex his tantummodo quae praesto sunt pronuncians, is the sole evidence. Their fallacy consists in this, that they are inductions without elimination: there has been no real comparison of instances, nor even ascertainment of the material ...
— A System Of Logic, Ratiocinative And Inductive • John Stuart Mill
... unpleasantly set off by deep folds on each side of his mouth. The round orbits of his eyes radiated fine wrinkles. More than ever he recalled an irritable and staring fowl—something like a cross between a parrot and an owl. He still manifested an outspoken dislike for "intriguing fellows." He seized every opportunity to state that he did not pick up his rank in the anterooms ...
— The Point Of Honor - A Military Tale • Joseph Conrad
... at a hundred yeares of age, and this day a poore woeman being a hundred and three yeares and a weeke old sent to mee to giue her some ease of the colick. The macrobii and long liuers which I haue knowne heere haue been of the meaner and poorer sort of people. Tho. Parrot was butt a meane or rather poore man. Your brother Thomas gaue two pence a weeke to John More, a scauenger, who dyed in the hundred and second yeare of his life; and 'twas taken the more notice of that the father of Sir John Shawe, who marryed my Lady Killmorey, and liueth ...
— Selected English Letters (XV - XIX Centuries) • Various
... entered a door marked "Buckeye Comedies. Jeff Baird, Manager." The outer office was vacant, but through the open door to another room she observed Baird at his desk, his head bent low over certain sheets of yellow paper. He was a bulky, rather phlegmatic looking man, with a parrot-like crest of gray hair. He did not look up as the girl entered. She stood a moment as if to ...
— Merton of the Movies • Harry Leon Wilson
... for myself. Earlier than that, "Robinson Crusoe" had been read aloud to me, in an abbreviated form, no doubt. I remember the pictures of Robinson finding the footstep in the sand, and a dance of cannibals, and the parrot. But, somehow, I have never read "Robinson" since: it ...
— Adventures among Books • Andrew Lang
... he was dressed! He wore tight red trousers, a red and blue turban on his head, and a tight jeweled tunic, covered with pearl buttons. His sash was green, dotted with purple spots. He had purple parrot feathers at his waist and ...
— Fil and Filippa - Story of Child Life in the Philippines • John Stuart Thomson
... There was a parrot in a corner of the dining-room, and, when prayers were over, Mrs. ——— praised it very highly for having been so silent; it being Poll's habit, probably, to break in upon the sacred exercises with unseemly interjections and remarks. ...
— Passages From the English Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... wore top-boots on all occasions, and had never worn a black silk neckerchief; and it was his pride that he remembered all the principal plays of Shakspeare from beginning to end—and so he did. The result of this parrot-like accomplishment was, that he was not only perpetually quoting himself, but that he could never sit by, and hear a misquotation from the 'Swan of Avon' without setting the unfortunate delinquent right. ...
— Sketches by Boz - illustrative of everyday life and every-day people • Charles Dickens
... tone," or "poeytic temperament." She assured me that her son was the youngest boy in the United States to play Brahms and Beethoven successfully. At first I thought that she was prattling these words parrot fashion, but I soon realized that, to a considerable extent, at least, she ...
— The Rise of David Levinsky • Abraham Cahan
... fact, as it is truly said by a great philosopher, 'Nature has no mind.' Every man who addresses her is compelled to force upon her for a moment the loan of his own mind. And if she answers a question which his own mind puts to her, it is only by such a reply as his own mind teaches to her parrot-like lips. And as every man has a different mind, so every man gets a different answer. Nature ...
— Kenelm Chillingly, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... again and again through the old Spelling-book, and learnt by heart what was called the 'fore part of the book'—some dry rules of orthography, which never conveyed the slightest idea to my mind, although I repeated them, parrot-like, without missing a word, and which the teacher never thought of explaining to me. From the spelling-book I was in time promoted to the New Testament (not as easy reading as might have been selected, by the ...
— The Story of a Summer - Or, Journal Leaves from Chappaqua • Cecilia Cleveland
... featherwork, had been swung judiciously in a corner that caught the early sun; for the mornings are cool in Sulaco. The cluster of flor de noche buena blazed in great masses before the open glass doors of the reception rooms. A big green parrot, brilliant like an emerald in a cage that flashed like gold, screamed out ferociously, "Viva Costaguana!" then called twice mellifluously, "Leonarda! Leonarda!" in imitation of Mrs. Gould's voice, and suddenly took refuge in immobility and silence. Mrs. Gould reached ...
— Nostromo: A Tale of the Seaboard • Joseph Conrad
... don't forget to pay for it! Shut up! Call again! I'm all right! Hurra!" And the parrot—for it was a large and handsome parrot—hopped upon a chair, from the floor where he had been strutting about, and looked at the company with eyes as sharp as ...
— Little Mittens for The Little Darlings - Being the Second Book of the Series • Frances Elizabeth Barrow
... there are numbers of parrots, and cockatoos, to fill the air with their screams. In England, these birds are thought a great deal of, but in Australia, they are killed to make into pies, or into soup. Parrot-pie and cockatoo-soup, are common dishes there. However, many of the parrots and cockatoos, are caught by the blacks, and sold to the English, who send them to ...
— Far Off • Favell Lee Mortimer
... floor. With no temptations to look about her, and relieved of her weekly task, Marjory gave her whole attention to Mr. Mackenzie, trying to understand his meaning instead of mechanically taxing her memory, parrot-like, with his words. She watched the noble old face with its lines of kindliness and patience, the eyes now liquid with pity for the sorrowful wrongdoer, now flashing with indignation as he spoke of the unrepentant and the careless, then softening again as he expressed ...
— Hunter's Marjory - A Story for Girls • Margaret Bruce Clarke
... in teaching them to recite what they do not understand! whilst, seated on benches, all in their best array, the mammas listen with astonishment to the parrot-like prattle, uttered in solemn cadences, with all the pomp of ignorance and folly. Such exhibitions only serve to strike the spreading fibres of vanity through the whole mind; for they neither teach children to speak fluently, nor behave ...
— A Vindication of the Rights of Woman - Title: Vindication of the Rights of Women • Mary Wollstonecraft [Godwin]
... this strange event held her, as it were, suspended, body and spirit, high up on the hill which had seen the ancient peoples, the Romans, Gauls, Saracens, and all, and still looked out towards the flat Camargue. Here in her three rooms, with a little kitchen, the maid Augustine, a parrot, and the Paris Daily Mail, she dwelt as it were marooned by a world event which seemed to stun her. Not that she worried, exactly. The notion of defeat or of real danger to her country and to France never entered her head. She only grieved quietly over the dreadful ...
— Tatterdemalion • John Galsworthy
... to tell. To hear her dear tongue robb'd of such a joy, Made the well-spoken nymph take such a toy, That down she sunk: when lightning from above Shrunk her lean body, and, for mere free love, Turn'd her into the pied-plum'd Psittacus, That now the Parrot is surnam'd by us, Who still with counterfeit confusion prates Naught but news common to the common'st mates.— This told, strange Teras touch'd her lute, and sung This ditty, that ...
— Hero and Leander and Other Poems • Christopher Marlowe and George Chapman
... respects to the wants of cavalry, as these little guns. With a large command, it is always well enough to have two or four pieces of longer range and yet of light draught, such as the three-inch Parrot—but if I were required to dispense with one or the other, I would choose to retain the former. They can be drawn (with a good supply of ammunition in the limbers), by two horses over any kind of road. They ...
— History of Morgan's Cavalry • Basil W. Duke
... structure, the provisions for the flight of birds, and for the movements of fishes; with instances of arrangements to suit particular conditions—the long neck of the swan, the minute eye of the mole, the beak of the parrot, the sting of the bee—all furnishing an ever accumulating body of irrefutable evidence to attest the existence and operation of ...
— God and the World - A Survey of Thought • Arthur W. Robinson
... Ghita lifted her formidable talons by way of complying with the first and last requisite of eloquence, Bratti, who had come up a minute or two before, had been saying to his companion, "What think you of this pretty parrot, Nello? Doesn't his tongue ...
— Romola • George Eliot
... suggestion that Socialism means a compulsory 'share out' may be rightly dismissed as an idle scare. The most bitter opponent of Socialism must at least admit that there is a stronger argument to be met than that implied by the parrot-cry of 'spoliation.' Socialism has, at any rate, so far advanced as to be allowed the ordinary courtesies of debate. We may oppose it tooth and nail, but we must confront argument with argument and not ...
— New Worlds For Old - A Plain Account of Modern Socialism • Herbert George Wells
... Friday the debate was continued with much life on the Ministerial side of the House. It was very easy for them to cry Faction! Faction! and hardly necessary for them to do more. A few parrot words had been learned as to the expediency of fitting the great and increasing Church of England to the growing necessity of the age. That the CHURCH OF ENGLAND would still be the CHURCH OF ENGLAND was repeated till weary listeners were sick of the ...
— Phineas Redux • Anthony Trollope
... themselves in a huge windowless room roofed with opaque glass. The floor was inlaid in a mosaic of uneven tiles which appeared to be of different shades of black. The walls, from roof to floor, were hung with shimmering green silk of the shade of a parrot's wing. There were no show-cases or other evidences of commercialism, but about the room were set couches of black japanned wood, upon which rested flat mattresses covered in the same green as the walls. On these silk cushions in black and vermilion were piled. The only other furniture ...
— The Nest Builder • Beatrice Forbes-Robertson Hale
... the present ferry, a "big giant" alone could have been equal to such a task. In 1775, Sergeant Thompson, as overseer of Government works, was charged with erecting the palisades, fascines and other primitive contrivances to keep out Brother Jonathan, who had not yet learned the use of Parrot or Gatling guns and torpedoes. Later on, we find the sturdy Highlander an object of curiosity to strangers visiting Quebec —full of siege anecdotes and reminiscences—a welcome guest at the Chateau in the ...
— Picturesque Quebec • James MacPherson Le Moine
... said the parrot in the window. The grey cat thought it was speaking to the tortoiseshell, and the tortoiseshell was certain it meant the grey. Which do you ...
— Pussy and Doggy Tales • Edith Nesbit
... The Three Little Pigs The Boy and the Nuts Diamonds and Toads The Honest Woodman The Thrifty Squirrel The Pied Piper How the Robin's Breast King Midas became Red The Town Musicians The Old Woman and her Raggylug Pig Peter Rabbit The Sleeping Apple The Boy who cried "Wolf" The Cat and the Parrot ...
— Stories to Tell to Children • Sara Cone Bryant
... some pretension, there are only two or three who can pronounce their Arabic Quran. And while they have learned to pronounce, in the ancient tongue, their beloved book, they do not understand the meaning of what they say, and merely parrot the whole ritual. But a break has been made from this inane method of worship, and their holy book has now been translated into one vernacular ...
— India, Its Life and Thought • John P. Jones
... them for wasps' nests, but the party insisted that they saw parrots come out of them, and that no doubt young parrots were in the nests. Immediately there was great excitement, for Manuel had all along wanted to capture a parrot to take home with him. The party stopped, and stones were thrown to drive out the birds, but with no result. Finally Mariano climbed the tree, creeping out along the branches almost to the nest; just at that moment an unusually well-aimed stone ...
— In Indian Mexico (1908) • Frederick Starr
... this well-governed and happy community, not every man's opinion was free from error, nor every man's temper free from prejudice and passion. Those who insisted that my bamboo music was only a parrot-like imitation of their speech accused those who held that I was really rational of the crime of exalting a Batrachian into equality with "rational animals with sentiments of justice and piety"; and the accused party, after a little ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 102, April, 1866 • Various
... genera of the perchers are peculiar to Australia; and the brush-like tongues of many species, formed for extracting the honey from flowers, have been classed amongst the Australian anomalies. The parrot tribe is the most attractive to strangers, and eleven species, belonging to not less than eight genera, are found in Tasmania. The green and rose-hill parrots (Platycercus flaviventris, Temm., and P. eximius, Shaw) occur in immense flocks in some places, ...
— The History of Tasmania, Volume I (of 2) • John West
... fallen eye of the plaice, the helpless rotundity of the sunfish, the mournful gape and rolling glance of the goldfish, the furious and ineffective mien of the barndoor fowl, the wild grotesqueness of the babyroussa and the wart-hog, the crafty solemn eye of the parrot,—if such things as these do not testify to a sense of humour in the Creative Spirit, it is hard to account for the fact that in man a perception is implanted which should find such sights pleasurably entertaining from infancy upwards. I suppose the root of the matter is that, insensibly ...
— At Large • Arthur Christopher Benson
... to imitate is itself instinctive. Young animals, notably the monkey and the child, fall spontaneously to imitating when they reach a certain age. Imitation shows itself to be instinctive in the case of the mocking bird, the parrot, etc. Furthermore, the mechanism of this function of imitation is now very well known. The principle of psychology recognised above under the phrase Kinaesthetic Equivalents, teaches us that the idea of a movement, coming into the mind through sight or some other sense, stirs up the proper ...
— The Story of the Mind • James Mark Baldwin
... queer chap and no mistake, Mr Blackburn. He will sit for hours, saying never a word but: 'Billy, pass me that,' or 'Billy, take hold of this,' and then all of a sudden he'll begin to chatter like a parrot." ...
— The Strange Adventures of Eric Blackburn • Harry Collingwood
... nothing happened. Then the hand was caught, not by the dogs, but by Mrs. Merrit's gray parrot. The bird was in the habit of periodically removing the pins that kept its seed and water tins in place, and of escaping through the holes in the side of the cage. When once at liberty Peter would show no inclination ...
— Famous Modern Ghost Stories • Various
... was begun. The hero pranced into the open square to the tune of a minor dirge, not knowing a single sentence of his part; the prompter, kneeling down before a flaring candle, told him what to say; he repeated in parrot-like fashion, and then pranced off the square to slow dirge-like music. Now the heroine minced in from the opposite corner to slow music with her satin train sweeping in the dust; though carefully raised when she crossed the sacred ...
— An Ohio Woman in the Philippines • Emily Bronson Conger
... the tall form of a flamingo, his scarlet colour contrasting with the green leaves of the water-lily. Songsters were trilling in every tree. The mock-bird, perched upon the highest limb, was mimicking the monotonous tones of the parrot. The toucans and trogons flashed from grove to grove, or balanced their bodies under the spray of the jet d'eau; while the humming-birds hung upon the leaves of some honeyed blossom, or prinkled over the parterre like ...
— The Rifle Rangers • Captain Mayne Reid
... high society. For to-day, however, she would allow it; and they must shut him in the empty cage that was standing in the window. "Perhaps he will amuse my good Polly," added the lady, looking with a benignant smile at a large green parrot that swung himself backwards and forwards most comfortably in his ring, inside a magnificent brass-wired cage. "To-day is Polly's birthday," said she with stupid simplicity: "and the little brown field-bird must ...
— Andersen's Fairy Tales • Hans Christian Andersen
... difference between the fiction and what we believe would have been the reality is significant. De Foe, even in 'Robinson Crusoe,' gives a very inadequate picture of the mental torments to which his hero is exposed. He is frightened by a parrot calling him by name, and by the strangely picturesque incident of the footmark on the sand; but, on the whole, he takes his imprisonment with preternatural stolidity. His stay on the island produces the same state of mind as might be due to a dull Sunday in Scotland. For ...
— Hours in a Library, Volume I. (of III.) • Leslie Stephen
... large parrots were found coming from the north-east, to feed upon the berries of a shrub growing on the sea coast, although no parrots were seen for two or three hundred miles on either side, either to the east or to the west, they must, therefore, have come from the interior. Now the parrot is a bird that often frequents a mountainous country, and always inhabits one having timber of a better description and larger growth than the miserable shrubs met with along the coast; it is a bird too that always lives within reach of permanent fresh-water, as rivers, lakes, creeks, ...
— Journals Of Expeditions Of Discovery Into Central • Edward John Eyre
... rather sketchy suggestions of Mrs. Standish, the girl had prefigured Aunt Abby as a skittish female of three-score years and odd; a gabbling creature with a wealth of empty gesticulation and a parrot's vacant eye; semi-irresponsible, prone to bright colours and an ...
— Nobody • Louis Joseph Vance
... an idea. Billie, why can't you and I teach Jimmie to climb a tree? If we pick out one with branches close together I'm sure he could get up it. We can help him, and he can take hold of some limbs in his bill, like a parrot takes hold of ...
— Lulu, Alice and Jimmie Wibblewobble • Howard R. Garis
... has cherished in its innermost bosom a memory so warm, so strong, as to assert itself at last with a force that fired and burst the little breast in which it had unconsciously smothered. Witness Campbell's little poem, "The Parrot," the incident of which he learned in the Island of Mull, from the family to whom the bird belonged,—an incident which inspired the poet to a strain so touchingly sweet that I cannot resist the temptation to quote ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 16, No. 93, July, 1865 • Various
... little exotic about her. Her green and gold plumage gave her a touch of the fantastic and the bizarre. Prevailingly, she arrayed herself in flowers that ran all the shades from cream and lemon to yellow and orange. She was like a parrot among more ...
— Angel Island • Inez Haynes Gillmore
... when my mother sent me on errands to McKenney's grocery store, or for a pitcher of milk to old Mrs. Triffit's, who kept a fascinating green parrot hanging under an arbour of musk cluster roses, it was my habit to run five or six blocks out of my way, and measure my growing height against the wall of the enchanted garden. On the worn bricks, unless they have crumbled ...
— The Romance of a Plain Man • Ellen Glasgow
... ten dollars and a box of cigars fer the bunch; and him jest settin' there laughin' like a plumb fool and tellin' me I didn't need to worry, they'd all vote Republican fer nothin'! Talked like a parrot: 'Vote a Republican! Republican eternal!' Republican! Faugh, he don't know no more why he's a Republican than a yeller dog'd know! I went around to-night, when he was out, thought mebbe I could fix it up with the others. No, sir! Couldn't git nothing out of 'em except some ...
— In the Arena - Stories of Political Life • Booth Tarkington
... Walter was not there, would come and lean against the doorpost, resting his weary wig as near the shoe-buckles of the guardian genius of his trade and shop as he could. But no fierce idol with a mouth from ear to ear, and a murderous visage made of parrot's feathers, was ever more indifferent to the appeals of its savage votaries, than was the Midshipman ...
— Dombey and Son • Charles Dickens
... Both Parrot and La Potherie recount traditions of the ancient superiority of the Algonquins over the Iroquois, who formerly, it is said, dwelt near Montreal and Three Rivers, whence the Algonquins expelled them. They withdrew, first to the neighborhood of Lake Erie, then to that of Lake Ontario, ...
— The Jesuits in North America in the Seventeenth Century • Francis Parkman
... was surrounded in a moment, and brought up on the piazza. Here she sat, turning her head from side to side, like a lean and pensive parrot, and struggling ...
— Hildegarde's Neighbors • Laura E. Richards
... the ever: no, no, Orlando, men are April when they woo, December when they wed: maids are May when they are maids, but the sky changes when they are wives: I will be more jealous of thee than a Barbary cock-pigeon over his hen; more clamorous than a parrot against rain; more newfangled than an ape; more giddy in my desires than a monkey; I will weep for nothing, like Diana in the fountain, and I will do that when you are disposed to be merry; I will laugh like a hyen, and that when ...
— Characters of Shakespeare's Plays • William Hazlitt
... Parrot in the ship Hannah, opportunity offers to acknowledge receipt of your kind favour with two boxes of books agreeable to invoice, which were very thankfully acceptable to our Brother Andrew, as well as to myself, and were delivered ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Vol. I. Jan. 1916 • Various
... a parrot-mouth. Some folks like 'em." Here the dealer would pull open the creature's flabby lips, and discover a beak like that of a polyp; and the cleansing process on the grass or trousers would ...
— Buying a Horse • William Dean Howells
... were killed. Of the fifteen from our plantation, one boy of about my age was struck by a parrot shell while climbing from the boat into the fort. We were told of the perils we were to meet, both before and after we reached our destination. For one of the most disheartening things was the sad report of the survivors of those whose places we were to fill. As the rowboats ...
— My Life In The South • Jacob Stroyer
... expected to feel, the marvellous beauty of the results he got by his dodges, the marvellous expressiveness of his music. These old doctors may be forgiven, and, being long dead, they care very little whether they are forgiven or not. But the modern men who parrot-like echo their verdicts cannot and should not be forgiven. We know now that the stiff contrapuntal school marked a stage in development of music which it was necessary that music should go through. The modern men who ...
— Old Scores and New Readings • John F. Runciman
... this last he incurred strictures from the Inquisition more severe than those of Kugler upon Tintoretto's Last Supper, and possibly with as much reason, it being objected that the introduction of German soldiery, buffoons, and a parrot was "irreligious." His Family of Darius, now in the National Gallery, was one of ...
— Six Centuries of Painting • Randall Davies
... about your German mentality," I told myself, "you've got it all here! You've only got to be a parrot like the rest and you'll be as ...
— The Man with the Clubfoot • Valentine Williams
... baggage depart, Arthur turned, and resisting the importunities of beggars, guides, and parrot-sellers, who had not yet recognized him as an old hand, made his way towards the Quinta Carr. How well he knew the streets and houses, even to the withered faces of the women who sat by the doors, ...
— Dawn • H. Rider Haggard
... But it isn't quite as easy as all that, my dear fellow. In times of unrest power comes automatically more and more into the hands of the man who can talk; men like Ramage, and others of his kidney. A few meaningless but high flown phrases; a few such parrot cries as 'Down with the Capitalist and the Future is for the Worker,' and you've got even the steadiest man unsettled. . . . Especially if he's one of a crowd; mob psychology is the devil. . . ." Sir James paused and stared out of the window. "I don't fear ...
— Mufti • H. C. (Herman Cyril) McNeile
... "Mr. Parrot—that is the gentleman you saw downstairs—said that you would stay here, and ordered a room to be prepared for you; and dinner is ready. I am sure ...
— Held Fast For England - A Tale of the Siege of Gibraltar (1779-83) • G. A. Henty
... Vandersee—would come!" panted Mrs. Goring. "What can I say to you, Captain? I understand, perfectly, your emotions. Yet I can only repeat what seems to you a parrot cry, that Miss Sheldon shall not suffer one jot at Leyden's hands, except the suffering that must come with disillusionment. I say it again, and I swear it by the God that shall kill me if ...
— Gold Out of Celebes • Aylward Edward Dingle
... alone, the same old Selkirk or Robinson Crusoe, without a man Friday, without even a parrot and goats; alone in his once familiar hotel and his office, in a city where he was distinctly of the native sort, where he had seen, it seemed to him, every one of the great "sky-scraping" buildings rise from foundation-stone to turret, ...
— The Wolf's Long Howl • Stanley Waterloo
... countries and ages, if nature had not made an original distinction between these breeds of men.... In Jamaica, indeed, they talk of one Negro as a man of parts and learning; but it is likely he is admired for slender accomplishments, like a parrot who speaks a few words ...
— Hume - (English Men of Letters Series) • T.H. Huxley
... as disrespect for another man's god. Women took an almost unholy delight in describing some of their undesirable acquaintances, in Mark Twain's phrase, as neither quite refined, nor quite unrefined, but just the kind of person that keeps a parrot! ...
— Mark Twain • Archibald Henderson
... not escape the notice of Herr Cornet, and discovering that I wished to present my wife with a parrot, he managed to procure a very fine bird, which he gave me as a parting gift. I carried it with me in its narrow cage on my melancholy journey home, and was touched to find that it quickly repaid my care and became very much attached to me. Minna greeted me with great ...
— My Life, Volume I • Richard Wagner
... case a parrot, being carried away by a kite, uttered the invocation dear to his mistress, "Sancte Thoma adjuva me," and was miraculously rescued. In another, a merchant of Groningen, having purloined an arm of St. John the Baptist, grew ...
— Life of St. Francis of Assisi • Paul Sabatier
... the other book about Minnie's pet parrot, that she used often to ride with her mother in the afternoon. There was nothing she liked better than to take Fidelle and Tiney out with her. Sometimes Mrs. Lee allowed this; but when she was intending to make calls she feared the pets ...
— Minnie's Pet Cat • Madeline Leslie
... (art. "Ticklishness," Dictionary of Psychological Medicine), "local titillation of the skin, though in parts remote from the reproductive organs, plainly acts indirectly upon them as a stimulus. Thus, Harvey records that, by stroking the back of a favorite parrot (which he had possessed for years and supposed to be a male), he not only gave the bird gratification,—which was the sole intention of the illustrious physiologist,—but also caused it to reveal its ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 4 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... they have very great forests and maintain themselves almost entirely on the fruit of the trees; they have no domicile, nor fixed settlements that are known; there are very great rivers, and the land is so useless that it paid all its tribute to the lords in parrot feathers.[97] ...
— An Account of the Conquest of Peru • Pedro Sancho
... once made for Oswald, and, of course, he couldn't wear them; some bags of odd buttons for people who like sewing these things on; a lot of foreign stamps, gardening tools, Dicky's engine, that won't go, and a stuffed parrot, but ...
— Oswald Bastable and Others • Edith Nesbit
... degree the diversities of representation which, according to the differences of individual character, must ever prevail in the conceptions which we form and which we preach of this Gospel of Jesus Christ. I want no parrot-like repetition of a certain set of phrases embodied, however great may be their meanings, in every sermon. And I would that the people to whom those truths are true would make more allowance than they sometimes do for ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: Romans Corinthians (To II Corinthians, Chap. V) • Alexander Maclaren
... him! These west-country yokels, to fancy that they can do Tom Thurnall! It's adding insult to injury, as Sam Weller's parrot has it." ...
— Two Years Ago, Volume I • Charles Kingsley
... of his good things were being repeated about the town. Whenever he heard of an instance of this kind, he would keep that particular remark in mind and analyze it at home in private. At first he could not see that the remark was anything better than a parrot might originate; but by and by he began to feel that perhaps he underrated his powers; and after that he used to analyze his good things with a deal of comfort, and find in them a brilliancy which ...
— The Gilded Age, Complete • Mark Twain and Charles Dudley Warner
... was solved: Joko, Alice's parrot, having secretly stolen from his quarters, sat on the rung of a chair and played the evil ...
— The Indian Lily and Other Stories • Hermann Sudermann
... hostelrie, And at its side a garden, where the bear, The stealthy catamount, and coon agree To work deceit on all who gather there; And when Augusta—that unconscious fair— With nuts and apples plieth Bruin free, Lo! the green parrot claweth her back hair, And the gray monkey grabbeth fruits that she On her gay bonnet wears, and laugheth ...
— Complete Poetical Works of Bret Harte • Bret Harte
... the west is owned by John Parrot. It contains about seventeen thousand acres, and lies on the east bank of the Sacramento River. It contains about four thousand acres of first-class wheat or corn land; the remainder is composed of excellent pasturage; ...
— Northern California, Oregon, and the Sandwich Islands • Charles Nordhoff
... George sat staring at the little bowing flames of the juniper branches and Olivia was taking her tea. Then in came Mrs. Hastings, a very literal interfering goddess, and her bonnet was frightfully awry so that the parrot upon it looked shockingly coquettish and irreverent and lent to her dignity a flavour of ill-timed waggishness. But it must be admitted that Mrs. Hastings and everything that she wore were "les antipodes des graces." She was followed ...
— Romance Island • Zona Gale
... big whalebone over the grave Omnok, the hunter, had made for his father. Little White Fox had seen some of these strange folks when he was with his mother a few days before. She had told him that they belonged to the Sea Parrot family. "There is a very large family of them," she had said. "They live almost anywhere on the ocean most of the year, but they ...
— Little White Fox and his Arctic Friends • Roy J. Snell
... behind the snowy spray of the fountain, reappear again on the other side, and then vanish in the bushes. I felt as though I had been left alone in the world and were about to be lost forever; I listened for some bird or other creature, and was happy to hear the shriek of a parrot and the hissing of the fountain through the ...
— The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries - Masterpieces of German Literature Vol. 19 • Various
... Tooni, who could not understand it; but Sonny Sahib perversely refused to talk in his own tongue. She did all she could to help him. When he was a year old she cut an almond in two, and gave half to Sonny Sahib and half to the green parrot that swung all day in a cage in the door of the hut and had a fine gift of conversation; if anything would make the baby talk properly that would. Later on she taught him all the English words she remembered herself, which ...
— The Story of Sonny Sahib • Sara Jeannette Duncan
... a few words of regret at her bad luck," continued Ella, "a sharp voice called out from a back room, 'Almiry! Almiry! come here.' It sounded very like a cross parrot, but it was the old lady, and while I put on my hat I heard her asking who was in the shop, and what we were 'gabbin' about.' Her daughter told her, and the old soul demanded to 'see the gal;' so I went in, being ready for fun as usual. It was a ...
— A Garland for Girls • Louisa May Alcott
... hours; the heats are higher and more regular; and the retorts easier kept clear of carbon. The coke drawn from the top retort is sufficient for fuel. My oven would hold four retorts; and the same fuel would heat this number just as well as the three. I used only the coke from Cowdenheath parrot coal for this setting; but had to mix it with Burghlee coke for the old system ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 601, July 9, 1887 • Various
... a centered cross of three equal bands - the vertical part is yellow (hoist side), black, and white and the horizontal part is yellow (top), black, and white; superimposed in the center of the cross is a red disk bearing a sisserou parrot encircled by 10 green, five-pointed stars edged in yellow; the 10 stars represent the ...
— The 2003 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency |
