"Starling" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... life. He walked away from his unhappy home, and, sick not only of his own existence but of everybody else's, turned aside down Gaswork Lane to avoid the town, and, crossing the wooden bridge that goes over the canal to Starling's Cottages, was presently alone in the damp pine woods and out of sight and sound of human habitation. He would stand it no longer. He repeated aloud with blasphemies unusual to him that he would stand ...
— The Country of the Blind, And Other Stories • H. G. Wells
... crumbs as far as her short arm would send them, and managed to hit an indignant old starling squarely in the eye. ...
— Brother and Sister • Josephine Lawrence
... languages in part owe their origin, but in the cases of forced imitation, the mere acquisition of a vocal trick, they only serve to illustrate that power of imitation, and are without significance. Sterne's starling, after his cage had been opened, would have continued to complain that he could not get out. If the bird had uttered an instinctive cry of distress when in confinement and a note of joy on release, ...
— Sign Language Among North American Indians Compared With That Among Other Peoples And Deaf-Mutes • Garrick Mallery
... magpie drooping across from elm to elm; young rooks that have escaped the hostile shot blundering up into the branches; missel thrushes leading their fledglings, already strong on the wing, from field to field. An egg here on the sward dropped by a starling; a red ladybird creeping, tortoise-like, up a green fern frond. Finches undulating through the air, shooting themselves with closed wings, and ...
— The Life of the Fields • Richard Jefferies
... cried Denys impatiently, "will you believe what a jackdaw in a long gown has heard from a starling in a long gown, who heard it from a jay-pie, who heard it from a magpie, who heard it from a popinjay; or will you believe what I, a man with nought to gain by looking awry, nor speaking false, have seen; nor heard with the ears which are given us to gull us, but seen with these sentinels mine ...
— The Cloister and the Hearth • Charles Reade
... a time; but I suppose he knew his own business best, and I must say that if she had been MY wife, I never could have left her endearing and bright face behind. They drew the Clock Room. Alfred Starling, an uncommonly agreeable young fellow of eight-and-twenty for whom I have the greatest liking, was in the Double Room; mine, usually, and designated by that name from having a dressing-room within it, with two large and cumbersome windows, which no wedges ...
— The Signal-Man #33 • Charles Dickens
... than four pounds starling; that's twenty dollars your currency, if I reckon right," said Jack, giving his hat a twirl ...
— Manuel Pereira • F. C. Adams
... see, mine own sweet jewel, What I have for my darling: A robin-redbreast and a starling. These I give both in hope to move thee; Yet thou say'st ...
— Lyrics from the Song-Books of the Elizabethan Age • Various
... appearance. It consisted of four persons, and these were derived from three orders of the animate creation. Two were human. The third was an aged starling, for whose convenience a wicker cage hung in one corner; but the owner was hopping in perfect freedom about the hearth, and occasionally varying that exercise by pausing to give a mischievous peck to the tail of the fourth, a very large white and tan dog. ...
— One Snowy Night - Long ago at Oxford • Emily Sarah Holt
... Macbane's wrists, whistling all the while softly a popular air, lively in itself, with a cadence so plaintive that it might have been a penitential psalm. No romantic school-girl opening the cage to her pet starling ever displayed more hesitation and reluctance than Mr. Fitchett setting ...
— Guy Livingstone; - or, 'Thorough' • George A. Lawrence
... of his own. Years of observation have shown that the weather does control the habits of some birds—birds of distinct and regular methods of life. Two such are common—the nutmeg pigeon and the metallic starling. Both species leave this part of the North during the third week of March, flying in flocks to regions nearer the equator. For several weeks the starlings train themselves for the long Northern flight and its perils, dashing with impetuous speed through the forest and wheeling up into ...
— Tropic Days • E. J. Banfield
... the mynah, hoopoe, vulture, robin, phoebe bird, bluebird, swallow, barn owl, flicker, oriole, jay, magpie, crow, purple grackle, starling, stork, wood pigeon, Canada goose, mallard, pintail, bob white and a few other species have accepted man at his face value and endeavored to establish with him a modus vivendi. The mallard and the graylag goose are the ancestors of our domestic ducks and geese. The jungle fowls have given us ...
— The Minds and Manners of Wild Animals • William T. Hornaday
... Giotto's time an angel was a complete creature, as much believed in as a bird; and the way in which it would or might cast itself into the air, and lean hither and thither upon its plumes, was as naturally apprehended as the manner of flight of a chough or a starling. Hence Dante's simple and most exquisite synonym for angel, "Bird of God;" and hence also a variety and picturesqueness in the expression of the movements of the heavenly hierarchies by the earlier ...
— Giotto and his works in Padua • John Ruskin
... A starling never reveals the richness of its hues until we see it in the sunlight. A duty never discloses its beauties until we set it in the light of the Lord. It is amazing how a dull road is transfigured when the sunshine falls ...
— My Daily Meditation for the Circling Year • John Henry Jowett
... every city, That for years with ceaseless din, Hath reverst the starling's ditty, Singing out "I can't ...
— The Complete Poems of Sir Thomas Moore • Thomas Moore et al
... birds until now, the crow did not know what kind of bird this was, but as he faced the new-comer he had a sort of shiver in his heart that warned him to beware an enemy. Indeed, it was none other than the Blue Jay that had appeared so suddenly, and he had arrived that morning because the starling had told him of the thefts that had taken place, and the Blue Jay is well known as the policeman of the forest and ...
— Twinkle and Chubbins - Their Astonishing Adventures in Nature-Fairyland • L. Frank (Lyman Frank) Baum
... his pony; and after smoothing his cravat, the smart Etonian sauntered up to the door, and startled the solitude of the place with a loud peal from the modern brass knocker,—a knock which instantly brought forth an astonished starling who had built under the eaves of the gable roof, and called up a cloud of sparrows, tomtits, and yellow-hammers, who had been regaling themselves amongst the litter of a slovenly farmyard that lay in full sight to the right of the house, fenced off by a primitive paintless wooden ...
— My Novel, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... scarcely quit their nests in the day, as hawks and owls; and that such birds as doves, which only lay one or two eggs, and sit immediately after, have their eggs white. The bright blue or bright green egg belongs to birds which make their nests in holes, as the starling, or construct them of green moss, or place them in the midst of grass, but always well covered. The eggs of many gallinaceous birds, that make their nests carelessly in the grass, are of a pale and less decided ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 14, No. 406, Saturday, December 26, 1829. • Various
... starlings in a cage;" and he looked as if he was smiling at the well-known speech of the starling; but he did not quote it. "My mother is now saying that Mr Hope finds time for everything: and she is right. He will help us. You must see Hope, and you must like him. He is the great boast of the place, next to the ...
— Deerbrook • Harriet Martineau
... possibly conceive what is above nature is indeed so palpably true as to deserve a place among philosophical axioms. Imagination itself, however lofty, wild, or daring its flights, cannot quit the universe—matter is its prison, where, like Sterne's starling, it is 'caged and can't get out.' Fortunately, however, imagination, though a prisoner, has abundance of room to legitimately exercise itself in. But, is it not obvious that if, as Des Cartes and D'Alembert contended, the 'imitations of imagination ...
— An Apology for Atheism - Addressed to Religious Investigators of Every Denomination - by One of Its Apostles • Charles Southwell
... half an hour, Starling," said Chiltern, and led Honora up the stairs into the east wing, where he flung open one of the high mahogany doors on the south side. "These are your rooms, Honora. I have had Keller do them all over for you, and I hope you'll like them. If you ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... usual are rich in facts. Your letters make almost a little volume on my table. I daresay you hardly knew yourself how much curious information was lying in your mind till I began the severe pumping process. The case of the starling married thrice in one day is capital, and beats the case of the magpies of which one was shot seven times consecutively. A gamekeeper here tells me that he has repeatedly shot one of a pair of jays, and it has always been immediately replaced. I begin to think ...
— More Letters of Charles Darwin Volume II - Volume II (of II) • Charles Darwin
... children still, and Aldonza was of a nature that was slow to take offence, while it was quite true that Dennet had been free from jealousy of the jackdaw, and only triumphant in Stephen's prowess and her own starling. ...
— The Armourer's Prentices • Charlotte M. Yonge
... feet, what can a bull wish for more?" Contentment! Nothing with vitality must, or ever will be contented, save a vegetable, or a toad in the centre of a rock, and he probably is sighing, with Sterne's starling, ...
— Confessions of an Etonian • I. E. M.
... with that spirit was combined an active and subduing sweetness which could often conquer, as by a sudden spell, those whom the boy loved. Towards those, however, whom he did not love he could be vindictive. His relative, the laird of Raeburn, on one occasion wrung the neck of a pet starling, which the child had partly tamed. "I flew at his throat like a wild-cat," he said, in recalling the circumstance, fifty years later, in his journal on occasion of the old laird's death; "and was torn from him with no little ...
— Sir Walter Scott - (English Men of Letters Series) • Richard H. Hutton
... warm valleys. I do not remember seeing it at Mussoorie, which is 6500 to 7000 feet, although at 5200 feet on the same range it is abundant during summer. Its notes and flight are very much those of the Starling (Sturnus vulgaris), and it delights to take a short and rapid flight and return twittering to perch on the very summit of the forest trees. I have never seen it on the ground, and its food appears ...
— The Nests and Eggs of Indian Birds, Volume 1 • Allan O. Hume
... we inhabited for a fortnight or more, and where we spent Xmas Day, was a good cut above Dranoutre. Except for the first three days, when we lived with a doctor,—and his stove smoked frightfully till we discovered a dead starling in the pipe,—we dwelt in exceeding comfort, comparatively speaking. It was a brewer's house, about the biggest in the village—which was three times the size of Dranoutre,—with real furniture in it, ...
— The Doings of the Fifteenth Infantry Brigade - August 1914 to March 1915 • Edward Lord Gleichen
... a curlieu and a pewit, and on the 9th we caught a land-bird, very much resembling a starling. ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 12 • Robert Kerr
... grumble at our feet, the table cry: 'Fetch my belongings for me; I am bare.' A clatter! Something in the attic falls. A ghost has lifted up his robes and fled. The loitering shadows move along the walls; Then silence very slowly lifts his head. The starling with impatient screech has flown The chimney, and is watching from the tree. They thought us gone for ever: mouse alone Stops in the middle of the floor to see. Now all you idle things, resume your toil. Hearth, put your ...
— Georgian Poetry 1916-17 • Various
... The starling flew to his mother's window stane, It whistled and it sang; And aye the ower word o' the tune Was—"Johnie ...
— Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border, Vol. II (of 3) • Walter Scott
... himself, and we will boil him, for it does not become thee to dirty thy hands."—"Very well," said the serpent; "he shall make the boiling water ready!" So they ordered the little Tsar to go and chop wood and get the hot water ready. Then he went and chopped wood, but as he was doing so, a starling flew out and said to him, "Not so fast, not so fast, little Tsar Novishny. Be as slow as thou canst, for thy dogs have gnawed their way ...
— Cossack Fairy Tales and Folk Tales • Anonymous
... baskets were full, her fowls fed, her goat foddered, her starling's cage cleaned, her hut door locked, and her wooden shoes clattering on the sunny road into the city, Bebee was almost content again, though ever and again, as she trod the familiar ways, the tears dimmed her eyes as she remembered ...
— Bebee • Ouida
... examined witnesses, made arrests in every quarter, and created a consternation in the camps of the saints greater than any they had ever witnessed before, since Mormondom was born. At last accounts terrified elders and bishops were decamping to save their necks; and developments of the most starling character were being made, implicating the highest Church dignitaries in the many murders and robberies committed upon the Gentiles ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... the Starling, "sticks and grass, every one knows how to do that! Of course, of course! Tell us ...
— The Curious Book of Birds • Abbie Farwell Brown
... not lazy, but his thoughts were always wandering. Learning did not interest him. He had other things to think about: would the last leaves in the garden have fallen when he got home from school at noon? And would the starling, for whom he had nailed the little box high up in the pine-tree, come again next spring? It had picked off all the black berries from the elderberry, and had then gone away screaming; if it did not find any more elderberries, what would it eat then? And the boy's heart was heavy ...
— The Son of His Mother • Clara Viebig |
