"Worm" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... all very well for the Rev. Vernon Manningtree, when discussing this incident with the Dean, to dismiss Doggie with a contemptuous shrug and call him a little worm without any spirit. The unfortunate Doggie remained a human soul with a human destiny before him. As to his lack ...
— The Rough Road • William John Locke
... personalities' have often more of Mr. Hyde than of Dr. Jekyll in their composition. It used to be admitted that, when 'possessed,' Mrs. Piper would cheat when she could—that is to say, she would make guesses, try to worm information out of her sitter, describe a friend of his, alive or dead, as 'Ed.,' who may be Edgar, Edmund, Edward, Edith, or anybody. She would shuffle, and repeat what she had picked up in a former sitting with the same person; and the vast majority of her answers ...
— The Making of Religion • Andrew Lang
... reading-matter one found the leisure-class world, and the leisure-class idea of all other worlds. Young Blanchard himself was in the most "exclusive" society; and if one stayed close to him, one might worm his way past the warders. Among the regular contributors to the "Beau Monde" and to "Macintyre's", there were a dozen men who had risen by this method; and some of them had been real writers at the outset—had started with a fund ...
— Love's Pilgrimage • Upton Sinclair
... only a wood-worm," he said to himself, "and I cannot fly like a bird, but the yellow bird has been good to me, and I will do what ...
— The Book of Nature Myths • Florence Holbrook
... the leaves are falling crimson And the worm is off its feed, When the rag weed and the jimson Have agreed to go to seed, When the air in forest bowers Has a tang like Rhenish wine, And to breathe it for two hours Makes you feel you'd like to dine, ...
— A line-o'-verse or two • Bert Leston Taylor
... worm, ringed around with dark purple stripes. Isn't it queer? In that corner is a trumpet, splendidly colored inside. That shape over there must be a fool's cap, one mass of sheeny tints inside. Here are beautifully rounded ...
— Lord Dolphin • Harriet A. Cheever
... to me, and helpful to my friends and companions. I will not knowingly cause pain or suffering to any person. I will extend my protection and kindness to all animals and every dumb and helpless thing, remembering that pain is pain wherever felt, in a worm as well as in a man. Especially will I show my best courtesy to aged and infirm persons, and to all such as may need help. It will be my high privilege to render service to any who are unfortunate, crippled, or in distress, I will ...
— How to Teach Religion - Principles and Methods • George Herbert Betts
... might love; Fairy! had she spot or taint, Bitter had been thy punishment. Tied to the hornet's shardy wings; Tossed on the pricks of nettles' stings; Or seven long ages doomed to dwell With the lazy worm in the walnut-shell; Or every night to writhe and bleed Beneath the tread of the centipede; Or bound in a cobweb dungeon dim, Your jailer a spider huge and grim, Amid the carrion bodies to lie, Of the worm, and the ...
— The Culprit Fay - and Other Poems • Joseph Rodman Drake
... when you know that your strength is lost on Christ? For it is hard for thee to kick against the pricks; and, verily, the longer it takes you to go, the worse it will go with you. Begone, then: take flight, thou venomous hisser, thou lying worm, thou begetter of vipers!"(353) ...
— History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom • Andrew Dickson White
... The thing was done, and badly done. Angela saw herself a worm, and Nick noble as a tall pine-tree of the mountains. Still, it was best that the break should have come, ...
— The Port of Adventure • Charles Norris Williamson and Alice Muriel Williamson
... Andalusian air, burning with its witness-clouds of human souls at rest,—surely, for these some sacred care might have been left in our thoughts, some quiet space amidst the lapse of English waters? Nay, not so. We have stern keepers to trust her glory to—the fire and the worm. Never more shall sunset lay golden robe on her, nor starlight tremble on the waves that part at her gliding. Perhaps, where the low gate opens to some cottage-garden, the tired traveller may ask, ...
— Great Pictures, As Seen and Described by Famous Writers • Esther Singleton
... did not betray any of the excitement a white boy does on such an occasion. He solemnly pulled in his line, and when it was almost in, a good-sized pickerel squirmed off the hook, and flopped back into the water. And now Injun showed no disappointment. He seriously examined the worm on his hook, to see that it was intact, then cast the line ...
— Injun and Whitey to the Rescue • William S. Hart
... seemed to perceive as if a sort of vision had radiated from the old walls; there seemed to be the rustling of garments and the sound of voices in the deserted rooms; the pattering of feet on the worm-eaten staircase; the light of still, shady summer afternoons, a hundred years ago, seemed to fall through the casements and lie upon the floor. There was an interest to every thing about the house, even to the ...
— Sunny Memories Of Foreign Lands, Volume 1 (of 2) • Harriet Elizabeth (Beecher) Stowe
... elusive worm that feverish youth known as Tacks the Human Catastrophe, had finally succeeded in prying the rock loose and immediately thereafter Uncle Peter dropped his rod with a yell of terror and proceeded to ...
— Back to the Woods • Hugh McHugh
... quite as lief, in my present state of mind, touch a yard-long wriggling ground-worm, or a fat wood-louse, as paper that his fingers have pressed; but I overcome my repulsion, and unfold ...
— Nancy - A Novel • Rhoda Broughton
... continue it. However, I recovered my health; but a neglected cold, and continual inquietude during the last two months, have reduced me to a state of weakness I never before experienced. Those who did not know that the canker-worm was at work at the core cautioned me about suckling my child too long. God preserve this poor child, and render her ...
— Mary Wollstonecraft • Elizabeth Robins Pennell
... angles to it. The ground before us was open for more than half a mile. It sloped down gently, then it rose gradually to a long, bare ridge, or slight elevation of ground, which extended parallel to our front. The road was enclosed by an old-time staked and ridered fence, of the "worm" pattern. On our right, and on the other side of the road, was a thick forest of tall trees, in which the 43rd Illinois was posted. The cemetery was thickly studded with tall, native trees, and a few ornamental ones, such as cedar and pine. Soon ...
— The Story of a Common Soldier of Army Life in the Civil War, 1861-1865 • Leander Stillwell
... eyes on the toes of her shoes. Small shoes they were. Cheerfully would he have lain down right there on the floor and let her wipe those selfsame shoes upon him. It would have been a positive pleasure. He felt so worm-like he almost wriggled. Slowly, oh, very slowly, he lifted his eyes ...
— The Heart of the Range • William Patterson White
... difference of viewpoint, the eternity of difference between the middle and the end of the earth. As the days passed, and the crust grew deeper upon the "Beeg Snows," the tragedy progressed rapidly toward finality. At first Jan did not understand. The others did not understand. When the worm of the Englishman's sin revealed itself it struck them with a ...
— Back to God's Country and Other Stories • James Oliver Curwood
... believer in Providence, myself, Tom; an' what's more, I try to live up to my (adj.) religion. I'm sure I don't want to see any pore (fellow) chained up in fire an' brimstone for millions o' millions o' years, an' a worm tormentin' him besides; but I don't see what the (adj. sheol) else they can do with Alf. Awful to think of it." Mosey sighed piously, then resumed, "Grand dog you got since I seen you last. Found the (animal), ...
— Such is Life • Joseph Furphy
... Mary, turning the sun-bonnet's limp front toward the questioner and then to the disjointed fence on her nearer side; "that's what I've been wondering for days. They've been ordinary worm ...
— Dr. Sevier • George W. Cable
... vessel. The apple was large, and red, and pleasant to the eye. Then said be: "Behold, this apple hath rested on gold, and its form is very beautiful." And he presented it to the stranger, the friend of his youth. The stranger cut the apple in two; and behold, in the middle of it there was a worm! ...
— Celtic Literature • Matthew Arnold
... breeding may then be transferred to the mantle-cavity of the female. Cuvier himself knew nothing of the nature or the function of this separated arm, and indeed, if I am not mistaken, it was he who mistook it for a parasitic worm. But Aristotle tells us of its use and its temporary development, and of its structure in detail, and his description tallies closely with the accounts of the ...
— The Legacy of Greece • Various
... where we were quaking with anxiety, when the ground opened in front of us and a black and white cat leapt out, its hair standing on end, and miauing frightfully. At its heels was a wolf, who had almost seized it, when the cat changed itself into a worm, and, piercing the skin of a pomegranate which had tumbled from a tree, hid itself in the fruit. The pomegranate swelled till it grew as large as a pumpkin, and raised itself on to the roof of the gallery, from which it fell into the court and was broken into bits. ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments • Andrew Lang.
... caddis-worm, with a beautifully built house, in the roots of the Water-Soldier, and I'm going to look along the edge for some shells. We must have shell-fish, you know, to keep the aquarium ...
— Brothers of Pity and Other Tales of Beasts and Men • Juliana Horatia Gatty Ewing
... change soon to take place. At first he could not endure its mention, but she said, earnestly: "My son, I am not dying. I am just entering on the true, real, eternal life—a life which is as much beyond this poor feeble existence as the sun is brighter than a glow-worm. I shall soon clasp my dear husband to my heart again, and, oh, ecstasy! I shall soon in reality see the Saviour whom I now ...
— Barriers Burned Away • E. P. Roe
... Hourly afflict: merely, thou art death's fool; For him thou labour'st by thy flight to shun, And yet runn'st toward him still. Thou art not noble; For all the accommodations that thou bear'st Are nursed by baseness. Thou'rt by no means valiant; 15 For thou dost fear the soft and tender fork Of a poor worm. Thy best of rest is sleep, And that thou oft provokest; yet grossly fear'st Thy death, which is no more. Thou art not thyself; For thou exist'st on many a thousand grains 20 That issue out of dust. Happy thou art not; For what thou hast not, still thou ...
— Measure for Measure - The Works of William Shakespeare [Cambridge Edition] [9 vols.] • William Shakespeare
... believed herself a monster of iniquity and felt certain of eternal damnation. Then God's hatred of sin was emphasized and his irreconcilable position toward the sinner so justified that one felt like a miserable, helpless, forsaken worm of the dust in trying to approach him, even ...
— Eighty Years And More; Reminiscences 1815-1897 • Elizabeth Cady Stanton
... purpose. The greater speed of the French as a body is somewhat hard to account for, because, though undoubtedly with far better lines, the practice of coppering the bottom had not become so general in France as in England, and among the French there were several uncoppered and worm-eaten ships.[213] The better sailing of the French was, however, remarked by the English officers, though the great gain mentioned must have been in part owing to Rodney's lying-by, after the action of the 9th, to refit, due probably to the greater injury received by the small body of his ...
— The Influence of Sea Power Upon History, 1660-1783 • A. T. Mahan
... be examined with a view to ascertain what repairs they needed. Some had been injured by the storms which they had encountered on the way from Marseilles or by accidents of the sea. Others had become worm-eaten and leaky by lying in port. Richard caused them all to be put thoroughly in repair. He also caused a number of battering engines to be constructed of timber which his men hauled from the forests around the base of Mount AEtna. These engines were ...
— Richard I - Makers of History • Jacob Abbott
... had to sleep in it for several nights, and made the acquaintance of thousands of rats and other pests. There was only one staircase, by which some hundreds of troops had to find access and egress. A curious fact was that the fumes of the spirit had eaten so into the woodwork, which was generally worm-eaten and rotten, that to strike a light near it was to incur the danger of igniting it and burning the building down. But our boys found a walled-in yard in the background covered by a tarred roof which had no windows, and this they converted into a smoke-room. Roominess and a covering offered ...
— A Soldier's Sketches Under Fire • Harold Harvey
... are expressed sometimes, by "weeping, and gnashing of teeth," as Mat. 8.12. Sometimes, by "the worm of Conscience;" as Isa.66.24. and Mark 9.44, 46, 48; sometimes, by Fire, as in the place now quoted, "where the worm dyeth not, and the fire is not quenched," and many places beside: sometimes by "Shame, and contempt," as Dan. 12.2. "And many of them that sleep in the dust of the Earth, shall ...
— Leviathan • Thomas Hobbes
... groans that ancient tree, and the Jotun Loki is loosed. The shadows groan on the ways of Hel, until the fire of Surt has consumed the tree. Hrym steers from the east, the waters rise, the mundane snake is coiled in jotun-rage. The worm heats the water, and the eagle screams; the pale of beak tears carcases; the ship Naglfar is loosed. Surt from the south comes with flickering flame; shines from ...
— A Daughter of the Snows • Jack London
... specimens" hung on such occasions were flagrant frauds. Sketch after sketch, study after study, was sent in to him as master of ceremonies until, in his own words, he became so "fed up with post-impressionism that he could not stand another daub of the stuff!" The worm turned eventually, and he vowed to teach those "artists" a short, sweet lesson. He knew nothing about painting, being a writer by trade, but he had the run of several studios and could collect paint as he willed. After fortifying himself with a sufficiency ...
— Greenwich Village • Anna Alice Chapin
... look. Do you mind when you did that over and over again the first time, to see my eyes? I'm not going to say another word about—about Miss Milk-and-Water, if that's what angers you. She could never understand my Sim, or love the very worm he tramps on as I do. Now look at me smiling; ain't I brave? Would any one know to see me that my heart was sore? Be kind to me, Sim, oh! be kind to me; you should be kind to me, with all ...
— Doom Castle • Neil Munro
... rest for a light to the peoples. . . . Hearken unto me, ye that know righteousness, the people in whose heart is my law; fear ye not the reproach of men, neither be ye dismayed at their revilings. For the moth shall eat them up like a garment, and the worm shall eat them like wool: but my righteousness shall be forever and my salvation unto all generations." Righteousness was the aspect of Deity that appealed to the second Isaiah, and it was he that spoke words of comfort to our people ...
— The Menorah Journal, Volume 1, 1915 • Various
... newspapers of the country, to future generations of men, who shall there seek to learn the successive and gradual steps by which the social fabric shall be built up on the foundations of human thought and action. Like the worm that crawls over the mud ere it hardens into rock; or the leaf that fixes its form and impress in the bed of coal; or like the bowlder that forms the pencil point of a mighty iceberg, scratching the rocks in its movement ...
— The Continental Monthly , Vol. 2 No. 5, November 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... replica of the original. We have here one of the earliest examples of differentiation. That injured multicellular organisms should be able by regrowth to repair their loss in an analogous phenomenon; thus an earth-worm cut by a spade does not necessarily suffer loss, but the head part grows a tail and the decapitated portion produces a head; sponges, which do not normally propagate by division, may be cut in pieces ...
— The Truth About Woman • C. Gasquoine Hartley
... fate, had so brilliantly been evaded by me. Oh, how many traps there are in the life of man! Like a cunning fisherman, fate catches him now with the alluring bait of some truth, now with the hairy little worm of dark falsehood, now with the phantom of life, now with the phantom ...
— The Crushed Flower and Other Stories • Leonid Andreyev
... me up a rickety, worm-eaten staircase, to a small room above that which we had just left; and indicating one of the two beds therein as the one belonging to her Jean, and the one, therefore, which I was to occupy, bade me good-night ...
— Under the Meteor Flag - Log of a Midshipman during the French Revolutionary War • Harry Collingwood
... answered his father, frankly. "Now run off with you, you've planned it well." So Jasper, made happy for the day, rushed back to his seat. A hand not over clean was laid on it, and a tall individual, who was pouring out very bad provincial French at a fearful rate, was just about to worm himself into it. Polly, who sat next, had turned around to view the scenery from the other side, and ...
— Five Little Peppers Abroad • Margaret Sidney
... meanwhile, and ranging the country. Men that will tear up track are quite capable of picking off a sentry. A giant chestnut gives us little dots of shade from its pigmy leaves. The country about us is open and newly ploughed. Some of the worm-fences are new, and ten rails high; but the farming is careless, and the ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 7, No. 44, June, 1861 • Various
... rekeying just as well as other service bureaus and proved handy as well. AM shipped them the books, which they would photocopy on a book-edge scanner. They would perform the markup on photocopies, return the books as soon as they were done with them, perform the keying, and return the material to AM on WORM disks. ...
— LOC WORKSHOP ON ELECTRONIC TEXTS • James Daly
... There is one abominable course pursued in effecting this. The violence used in stripping down the tendon is so great, and the lacerated fibrous substance is put so much on the stress, and its natural elasticity is so considerable, that it recoils and assumes the appearance of a dying worm, and the dog is said to have been wormed. For the sake of humanity, as well as to avoid the charge of ignorance, it is to be hoped that this practice ...
— The Dog - A nineteenth-century dog-lovers' manual, - a combination of the essential and the esoteric. • William Youatt
... remenant were hanged, more and less, That were consenting to this cursedness.* *villainy Here men may see how sin hath his merite:* *deserts Beware, for no man knows how God will smite In no degree, nor in which manner wise The worm of conscience may agrise* frighten, horrify Of wicked life, though it so privy be, That no man knows thereof, save God and he; For be he lewed* man or elles lear'd,** *ignorant **learned He knows not how soon he shall be afear'd; Therefore I rede* you this counsel ...
— The Canterbury Tales and Other Poems • Geoffrey Chaucer
... would scarcely have left a man upon his feet. The nature of their advance was foolhardy in the extreme, and at the time that Captain Griffin wished to fire they were practically helpless. A Virginia worm-fence was in their path, and so frightened, nervous, and excited were they that, instead of tearing it down, they began clambering over it until by weight and numbers it ...
— His Sombre Rivals • E. P. Roe
... girl. "You did not shoot him. Stafford did not hire you to do it. You didn't come here, pretending that you had been bitten by a rattler, so that you might have a chance to worm yourself into my brother's favor—and then shoot him. You haven't been hanging around Bear Flat all summer, pretending to look for stray Two Diamond cattle. You haven't been trying to make a fool of me——" Her voice trembled and her ...
— The Two-Gun Man • Charles Alden Seltzer
... It seems to me that I could live if I could see a river. Oh, this desert! These perpetual rocks! Not a green thing to cool one's eyes. Not a drop of water. I seem to be drying up, like a worm ...
— Overland • John William De Forest
... only two out of infinite varieties of existence, not only analogous to matter and analogous to mind, but of kinds which we are not competent so much as to conceive—in the midst of which, indeed, we might be set down, with no more notion of what was about us, than the worm in a flower-pot, on a London balcony, has of the life of the ...
— Life and Matter - A Criticism of Professor Haeckel's 'Riddle of the Universe' • Oliver Lodge
... care only for their own present, and not for the future of their country! the future, in which they have to live immortally by children and children's children, with whose glory and happiness and power they ought now to sympathize. Men or nations secluded are like the silk-worm, which secretes itself in a self-woven case, and at length creeps out to die. So will it at length be with the nation which is wrapped up ...
— Select Speeches of Kossuth • Kossuth
... "You were expected to worm your way into their circles, to feel them out. To contact their own underground, if one exists. To ferret out definite information on how they would react if we began definite changes in the status ...
— Frigid Fracas • Dallas McCord Reynolds
... sent him those alligator pants that have created such a sensation in years gone by. It is true they are a little bit fringy about the bottoms, and the knees are worn through, and concealment, like a worm in the bud, has gnawed the foundation all out of them, but in a little town like Mauston, such things will not be noticed. John, take them, in welcome, and when the cold winds—but you better carry bricks in your coat tail pockets. ...
— Peck's Compendium of Fun • George W. Peck
... blue to the verge of the horizon. The Norman farms scattered through the plain seemed at a distance like little woods inclosed each in a circle of thin beech-trees. Coming closer, on opening the worm-eaten stile, one fancied that he saw a giant garden, for all the old apple-trees, as knotted as the peasants, were in blossom. The weather-beaten black trunks, crooked, twisted, ranged along the inclosure, displayed beneath the sky their glittering domes, ...
— A Comedy of Marriage & Other Tales • Guy De Maupassant
... you cry?" he asked. "You look ugly like that. There's nothing the matter with me. Oh, fie!" he suddenly exclaimed, "that rose is worm- eaten, and this one is quite crooked. After all, they're ugly roses. They're like the box ...
— Journeys Through Bookland V2 • Charles H. Sylvester
... days and nights, working by day on rock-pile or in field, sleeping by night in the corner of a friendly fence of worm-eaten rails, fanned by the delicate hair of the pale blue grasses, he came ...
— The Way of the Wind • Zoe Anderson Norris
... can spare you," answered Humphreys. "And I would advise you to go immediately after breakfast, for, as you know, 'it is the early bird that catches the worm.' But how do you propose to set about your quest? ...
— The Adventures of Dick Maitland - A Tale of Unknown Africa • Harry Collingwood
... and degeneracy, than the "reef-building polypifer"—to give him his scientific name. He is the hobo of the animal world, but, unlike the hobo, he does not even tramp for a living. He exists as a sluggish and gelatinous worm; he attracts to himself calcareous elements from the water to make himself a house—mark you, the sea does the building—he dies, and he leaves his house behind him—and a reputation for industry, beside which the reputation ...
— The Blue Lagoon - A Romance • H. de Vere Stacpoole
... Chamisso, to your criticism, and not seek to elude it. I have long visited myself with the heaviest judgment, for I have fed the devouring worm in my heart. This terrible moment of my existence is everlastingly present to my soul; and I can contemplate it only in a doubting glance, with humility and contrition. My friend, he who carelessly takes a step out of the straight path, is imperceptibly impelled into ...
— Peter Schlemihl • Adelbert von Chamisso
... waiting only for Austria to give the signal; pray do not keep us waiting too long, for we men of the Lower Innthal, too, are all ready and armed. An enormous worm of insurrection, as it were, is creeping through the Lower Inn valley, and the worm has four heads, which look toward all quarters of the world. One head is Rupert Wintersteller, of Kirchdorf; the second is Jacob Sieberer, of Thiersen; the ...
— Andreas Hofer • Lousia Muhlbach
... bring them out. Now a baby is not born with instincts of this character,—it has not even the instinct to help itself; it cannot find the breasts that were made for it; it is more helpless than the baby cat or dog or worm. Therefore a baby in whose brain the potential faculty of reason is slumbering must of necessity begin its career wholly dependent upon the supervision and love of its mother, until such time as it may be capable of reasoning for itself. Motherhood is therefore the supreme privilege of womanhood. ...
— The Eugenic Marriage, Vol 2 (of 4) - A Personal Guide to the New Science of Better Living and Better Babies • W. Grant Hague
... whose control, while the train makes its running, is but nominal, is then the first to suffer!" He saw himself in the man's place. "Poor glow-worm!" he cried, "he may change the green light in his tail to red—or was it red to begin with? but it is no use! Those proletarian forces descending upon him from the rear are quite blind in their purpose: it is merely dead weight and impetus that send them along." And then he pulled ...
— King John of Jingalo - The Story of a Monarch in Difficulties • Laurence Housman
... the Staff was quartered at Radzivilow Castle, and I explored the place while the Prince and Monsieur Goochkoff did their business. The old, dark hall, with armour hanging on the walls and worm-eaten furniture covered with priceless tapestry, would have made a splendid picture. A huge log fire burning on the open hearth lighted up the dark faces of the two Turkestan soldiers who were standing on guard at the ...
— Field Hospital and Flying Column - Being the Journal of an English Nursing Sister in Belgium & Russia • Violetta Thurstan
... of the steep was the road that runs from Clochonne to Narjec. And there, moving from the former towards the latter, went a troop of horsemen, followed by a foot company of arquebusiers. They trailed along, like a huge dark worm on the yellow way, following the turns of the road. Seen from above, their figures ...
— An Enemy To The King • Robert Neilson Stephens
... who availed himself of every opportunity to worm out secrets, and to make himself necessary by forced ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... threatened to send the ship down; two breakings of that heart which men carry in their purse. I laughed, and the world laughed also. But I was then thoughtless, and the world is malicious. My father and the member, though they had "never told their love," felt the blow "like a worm in the bud," and from that night I ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXXII. - June, 1843.,Vol. LIII. • Various
... matter of mine. God, the great conservative power of the Universe, when he established the right, saw to it that it should always be the safest and best. He never laid upon a poor finite worm the staggering load of following out into infinity the complex results of his actions. We may rest on the bosom of Infinite Wisdom, confident that it is enough for us to do justice, he will see to it that ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society
... take her turn at facing the ordeal, and I had to drill and coach her for it. I had a vision of the poor lady going in to her niece, and suddenly collapsing. Then there would begin a cross-examination, and Sylvia would worm out the truth, and we might have a case of puerperal fever on our ...
— Sylvia's Marriage • Upton Sinclair
... his hands. "It was an unlucky day that I ever cast eyes on his ugly face for the first time, and now he's after coming back again to pick me up in the middle of the Indian Ocean, just as a big black crow does a worm ...
— James Braithwaite, the Supercargo - The Story of his Adventures Ashore and Afloat • W.H.G. Kingston
... am blessed with the resignation of the Psalmist (II Samuel XV, 26), the sublime grace of the pious Hezekiah (II Kings XX, 19)? If Hezekiah could bear the cruel visitation of his erring upon his sons, why should I, poor worm that I am, repine? ...
— A Book of Burlesques • H. L. Mencken
... the door of the first room at the head of the stairs. It had once been the apartment of some servitor; now it contained furniture of the gorgeous days of Louis XIV, with all the colour gone from its tapestry, all the woodwork grey and worm-eaten. ...
— The Last Hope • Henry Seton Merriman
... educator, and an emancipator of human liberty and human thought. The hypocrite stood in awe of his judgment. When he indicted him to be arraigned before the great bar of public opinion he dipped his pen in acid that seared the eyeballs, and wrote their sentence diluted with worm-wood and gall. It is not small wonder that the Judas Iscariots and the ...
— Volume 12 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann
... Olifant and the Letaba dwell in my memory as the loveliest. In those one-time almost inviolate retreats were to be found everything best calculated to delight the heart of the hunter or the lover of nature. I am, of course, assuming winter as the season, for in summer the worm "that pierces the liver and blackens the blood" made these regions almost uninhabitable for Europeans. But from June to October, inclusive, the country was healthy, the sky rarely held a cloud, the sun shone mildly, and the night was seldom, if ...
— Reminiscences of a South African Pioneer • W. C. Scully
... had enclosed him the coils fell from Ned, a writhing mass upon the ground; and a second blow from Tom's sword severed the head from the body. Even now, the folds writhed and twisted like an injured worm; but Tom struck, and struck, until the fragments lay, with only a slight quivering motion in ...
— Under Drake's Flag - A Tale of the Spanish Main • G. A. Henty
... of the nematodes is summarized in Table 2. It should be noted that of the 17 worms constituting the maximum infection by Thelandros, only one was an adult worm; the maximum number of adult Thelandros in any one host was five. Similarly, the heaviest Oswaldocruzia infection, 15 worms, consisted of immature individuals; the maximum number of adult worms in any ...
— Natural History of the Salamander, Aneides hardii • Richard F. Johnston
... no sacrifice, Mrs. Morton." Lady Ushant was as meek as a worm, but a worm will turn. And though innocent, she was quick enough to perceive that at this, their first meeting, the other old woman was endeavouring to turn ...
— The American Senator • Anthony Trollope
... believe was haunted, for she had never seen another equally gloomy. The ceiling was low and sloping, the window tiny, and the walls exhibited all sorts of odd nooks and crannies. A bed, antique and worm-eaten, stood in one recess, a black oak chest in another, and at right angles with the door, in another recess, stood a wardrobe that used to creak and groan alarmingly every time Letty walked a long the passage. Once she heard a chuckle, a low, diabolical chuckle, which she fancied came from ...
— Scottish Ghost Stories • Elliott O'Donnell
... infinite, can so give order and form to the universe. Who else or what else is able to foresee and provide all things needful for the food and clothing of man, - food from the fruits of earth and from animals, and clothing from the same? How marvelous that so insignificant a creature as the silk-worm should clothe in silk and splendidly adorn both women and men, from queens and kings to maidservants and menservants, and that insignificant insects like the bees should supply wax for the candles by which temples and palaces ...
— Angelic Wisdom Concerning the Divine Love and the Divine Wisdom • Emanuel Swedenborg
... which expresses the essential structural character of the highest animal cover all the rest, as the statement of its powers and faculties covered that of all others? Very nearly. Beast and fowl, reptile and fish, mollusk, worm, and polype, are all composed of structural units of the same character, namely, masses of protoplasm with a nucleus. There are sundry very low animals, each of which, structurally, is a mere colourless ...
— Autobiography and Selected Essays • Thomas Henry Huxley
... when the time of its dissolution draws near that it must die, it makes itself a nest of frankincense, and myrrh, and other spices, into which, when its time is fulfilled, it enters and dies. But its flesh putrefying breeds a certain worm which, being nourished with the juice of the dead bird, brings forth feathers; and when it is grown to a perfect state, it takes up the nest in which the bones of its parent are, and carries it from Arabia into Egypt to a city called Heliopolis; and flying in open day, in the sight ...
— The Ancient Church - Its History, Doctrine, Worship, and Constitution • W.D. [William Dool] Killen
... worm! Go home, frog!" he yelled, and mournful cries succeeded to his kind invitation. At the same time his young sister, propelled by a violent push of his fist, stumbled into the outer room and grasped the dress of ...
— The Delight Makers • Adolf Bandelier
... away in the Bishop's trap with his son, Harry, controlling the fat pony, whose small fore-hoof pawed impatiently on the asphalt. Angel and I had donned old jerseys and The Seraph a clean holland pinafore, against which he pressed an empty treacle tin where a solitary worm reared an anxious ...
— Explorers of the Dawn • Mazo de la Roche
... old book-worm, supposed to be engaged in writing some mighty and learned work, who lived in a cottage on the Nearminster road. The children knew it and its owner very well, for it was not more than half a mile from the rectory, and they passed it whenever they drove into Nearminster. Its casement ...
— Penelope and the Others - Story of Five Country Children • Amy Walton
... wonderingly. Did Mrs. Winnie mean to imply that her husband had asked her to try to worm his business secrets out of him? That was what she seemed to imply. "I told him I never talked business with my friends," she said. "He can ask you himself, if he chooses. But what DOES it all ...
— The Metropolis • Upton Sinclair
... forehead. Each child has been likened to a cask whose staves represent trees growing on hills distant and widely separated; some staves are sound and solid, standing for right-living ancestors; some are worm eaten, standing for ancestors whose integrity was consumed by vices. At birth all the staves are brought together in the infant cask—empty, but to be filled by parents and teachers and friends. As the waste-barrel in the alley is filled with refuse and filth, so the orphan ...
— A Man's Value to Society - Studies in Self Culture and Character • Newell Dwight Hillis
... great-hearted women—angels of self-sacrifice," said Denis, after she had left the room. "You make me feel such a mean and contemptible worm." ...
— Grey Town - An Australian Story • Gerald Baldwin
... afraid, it's my last night! Let's drink to our good understanding. They'll bring the wine at once.... I brought this with me." (Something made him pull out his bundle of notes.) "Allow me, panie! I want to have music, singing, a revel, as we had before. But the worm, the unnecessary worm, will crawl away, and there'll be no more of him. I will commemorate my day of joy ...
— The Brothers Karamazov • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... nothing of all this. They had not tasted a worm for a month, except when a sod of the bank fell in, through cracks of the sun, and the way cold water has of licking upward. And even the flies had no flavor at all; when they fell on the water, they fell flat, and on the palate they tasted ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol. 5 • Various
... suspended over the doorway. Some superstition is probably attached to the possession of these, for although I frequently tried to purchase one at a fancy price the owners would never sell this primitive timekeeper which was generally warped and worm-eaten with age. I never ...
— From Paris to New York by Land • Harry de Windt
... spade, With pictures full, of wax and of wool; Their livers I stick, with needles quick; There lacks but the blood, to make up the flood. Quickly, dame, then bring your part in, Spur, spur upon little Martin, Merrily, merrily, make him sail, A worm in his mouth, and a thorn in his tail, Fire above, and fire below, With a whip in your hand, to make him go. Ben Johnson's Works, by Gifford, vol. vii. ...
— Discovery of Witches - The Wonderfull Discoverie of Witches in the Countie of Lancaster • Thomas Potts
... a tribune designed or ornamented by Michael Angelo, stands a sort of throne, composed of precious materials, and supported by four gigantic figures. A glory of seraphim, with groups of angels, shed a brilliant light upon its splendors. This throne enshrines the real, plain, worm-eaten wooden chair, on which St. Peter, the prince of the apostles, is said to have pontificated; more precious than all the bronze, gold, and gems with which it is hidden, not only from impious, but holy eyes, and which once only, in the flight ...
— Anecdotes of Painters, Engravers, Sculptors and Architects and Curiosities of Art (Vol. 3 of 3) • S. Spooner
... the stationary White-Light of Barataria. Otherwise the place is bleakly uninteresting: a wilderness of wind-swept grasses and sinewy weeds waving away from a thin beach ever speckled with drift and decaying things,—worm-riddled timbers, dead porpoises. ...
— Chita: A Memory of Last Island • Lafcadio Hearn
... share. And, when at length the embargo was taken off, by neglecting to send notice of it to Charlestown, the Carolina fleet was detain'd near three months longer, whereby their bottoms were so much damaged by the worm that a great part of them foundered ...
— The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin • Benjamin Franklin
... living being." What animals are conscious of personality? Any of our cousins of the monkey tribe? Is the horse conscious of personality, or the ox, the cat or the dog? If so, does the skunk have personality, the mouse, the flea, the worm, the tadpole, the microscopic animal? If so, do our other cousins have personality,—the trees, the vines, the flowers, the thorn and the brier, the cactus and the thistle, and the microscopic disease germs? If so, when did personality begin? With the first primordial germ? If so, were there ...
— The Evolution Of Man Scientifically Disproved • William A. Williams
... friend—I say not, King? Is thy heart so light and lean a thing, So loose in faith and faint in love? I bade thee Stand to me, help me, hold my hand in thine And give my heart back answer. This it is, Old friend and fool, that gnaws my life in twain - The worm that writhes and feeds about my heart - The devil and God are crying in either ear One murderous word for ever, night and day, Dark day and deadly night and deadly day, Can she love thee who slewest her ...
— Rosamund, Queen of the Lombards • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... coast. Long he went; and at length was aware of a pleasant green, And the stems and shadows of palms, and roofs of lodges between There sate, in the door of his palace, the king on a kingly seat, And aitos stood armed around, and the yottowas {1g} sat at his feet. But fear was a worm in his heart: fear darted his eyes; And he probed men's faces for treasons and pondered their speech for lies. To him came Tamatea, the basket slung in his hand, And paid him the due obeisance standing as vassals ...
— Ballads • Robert Louis Stevenson
... appears to be identical with shirk, for which we find earlier sherk. We find Ital. scrocco (whence Fr. escroc), Ger. Schurke, Du. schurk, rascal, all rendered "shark" in early dictionaries, but the relationship of these words is not clear. The palmer, i.e. pilgrim, worm is so called from his wandering habits. Ortolan, the name given by Tudor cooks to the garden bunting, means "gardener" (Lat. hortus, garden). It comes to us through French from Ital. ortolano, "a gardener, ...
— The Romance of Words (4th ed.) • Ernest Weekley
... there he died! And when I heard my name Sigh'd forth with life, I would not brook my fear Of the other! With a worm I balked his fame. What else was ...
— The Darrow Enigma • Melvin L. Severy
... are. My father had a daughter loved a man, as I perhaps, were I a woman, should love your lordship.' 'And what is her history?' said Orsino. 'A blank, my lord,' replied Viola: 'she never told her love, but let concealment, like a worm in the bud, feed on her damask cheek. She pined in thought, and with a green and yellow melancholy, she sat like Patience on a monument, smiling at Grief.' The duke inquired if this lady died of her love, but to this question Viola returned an evasive answer; as probably she had feigned ...
— Tales from Shakespeare • Charles and Mary Lamb
... his gun, but in place of the clean, well-oiled fowling piece, he found an old firelock lying by him, the barrel incrusted with rust, the lock falling off, and the stock worm-eaten. He now suspected that the grave revelers of the mountain had put a trick upon him and, having dosed him with liquor, had robbed him of his gun. Wolf, too, had disappeared, but he might have strayed away after a squirrel or partridge. He whistled after him, ...
— The Literary World Seventh Reader • Various
... lost, and that assuredly it was God who had inspired him with the idea of going to the army. From that time Boufflers fell into a disgrace from which he never recovered. He had the courage to appear as usual at the Court; but a worm was gnawing him within and destroyed him. Oftentimes he opened his heart to me without rashness, and without passing the strict limits of his virtue; but the poniard was in his heart, and neither ...
— The Memoirs of Louis XIV., His Court and The Regency, Complete • Duc de Saint-Simon
... Shelley's earnestness—better instructed; Keats's sensibility—guarded and armed; Wordsworth's Christianized love of Nature; and Coleridge's Christianized view of philosophy—to his own fancy, language, melody, and purpose; a lofty ideal of man the spirit, to a deep sympathy with man the worm, toiling, eating, drinking, struggling, falling, rising, and progressing, amidst his actual environments; and become the Magnus Apollo ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 3, August, 1850. • Various
... I," says Sigurd, "yet know I the fashion of this worm, and how that none durst go against him, so huge and evil ...
— The Story of the Volsungs, (Volsunga Saga) - With Excerpts from the Poetic Edda • Anonymous
... it was pleasant to sit holding Muriel's hand and watching the ill-concealed efforts of Mr. Albert Potter to hide his mortification. Albert was a mechanic in the motor-works round the corner, and hitherto Roland had always felt something of a worm in his presence. Albert was so infernally strong and silent and efficient. He could dissect a car and put it together again. He could drive through the thickest traffic. He could sit silent in company without having ...
— A Man of Means • P. G. Wodehouse and C. H. Bovill
... cursed knowing dog, and I believe the father of Brazen; how readily he found an old act of parliament to my purpose, as soon as I told him I would make it worth his study; and the thoughts of a pension will make him search his old worm-eaten statute books from the reign of King Arthur down to this present time; how he raises objections too to make me think his mind is ever bent on study to serve me. The shaking of the treasury keys is a fine bait. [Rings the bell.] Charters, magna chartas, bill of rights, acts of assembly, ...
— The Fall of British Tyranny - American Liberty Triumphant • John Leacock
... confess that I was greatly puffed up with the praises of men. I was proud of the sorriest things: of jumping a brook, when't was my horse jumped it, and had jumped it better with a fly on his back than the poor worm Me; of my good looks, forgetting that God gave them me; and besides, I am no beauty, when all is done; it is all their flattery. And at my Lady Munster's dinner I pridefully walked out before Mistress Davies, the rich cheesemonger's ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 100, February, 1866 • Various
... it. It was "dogged" that did it; "awfully hard work" sometimes. In reference to an attempt of his to define intelligence, which he regarded as unsatisfactory, after remarking that he tried to observe what passed in his own mind when he did the work of a worm, he writes: "If I come across a professed metaphysician, I will ask him to give me a more technical definition with a few big words, about the abstract, the concrete, the absolute, and the infinite. But sincerely, I should be grateful for any suggestions; for it will hardly do to assume that every ...
— Life of Charles Darwin • G. T. (George Thomas) Bettany
... "natural" but strictly genuine and more interesting than paint, Jack replied that "natural" things are not always beautiful; that paint, which makes no pretense of being anything but paint, is as genuine as shellac or varnish, and that if the object is to be interesting, the bark, the knots, the worm-holes, and, if possible, the worms themselves should be displayed. "Besides," said he, "if we decide on hard wood, who shall choose the kinds? There's beech, birch and maple; cherry, whitewood and ebony; ash and brown ash and white ash ...
— The House that Jill Built - after Jack's had proved a failure • E. C. Gardner
... the flying summer; and the coccus that fall from the fruit trees to float on their buoyant cottony down—a summer snow. Fils de la Vierge are these, and sacred. The man who can needlessly set his foot on a worm is as strange to my soul as De Quincey's imaginary Malay, or even his "damned crocodile." The worm that one sees lying bruised and incapable on the gravel walk has fallen among thieves. These little lives do me good and not harm. I smell the ...
— Birds in Town and Village • W. H. Hudson
... voyage [20] in 1601, narrates that on the sea-sands of the Island of Sombrero, in the East Indies, he "found a small twig growing up like a young tree, and on offering to pluck it up it shrinks down to the ground, and sinks, unless held very hard. On being plucked up, a great worm is found to be its root, and as the tree groweth in greatness, so doth the worm diminish, and as soon as the worm is entirely turned into a tree it rooteth in the earth, and so becomes great. This transformation is one of the strangest wonders that I saw in all my travels: for ...
— The Voyage of the Beagle • Charles Darwin
... people have ever tried to rob me of the honour and credit of killing it. The 'Jumping Frog' was the first piece of writing of mine that spread itself through the newspapers and brought me into public notice. Consequently, the 'Saturday Press' was a cocoon and I the worm in it; also, I was the gay-coloured literary moth which its death set free. This simile has ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... that might have been sapphire, save for its wistful translucence. And on the teapoy in the window stood two dainty baskets of clean willow, in which we had that day brought home chestnuts from the wood;—mine was full of nuts, but they were small and angular and worm-eaten, as the fruitage of a wet season might well be; hers scantily freighted, but every nut round, full, and glossy, perfect from its cruel husk, a specimen, a type of its kind. And on the handle of the basket hung a little kid glove. I looked at it closely; the tiny finger-tops and oval ...
— Atlantic Monthly Vol. 3, No. 16, February, 1859 • Various
... empty What that poor mouthful crams. His heart is builded For pride, for potency, infinity, All heights, all deeps, and all immensities, Arras'd with purple like the house of kings,— To stall the grey rat, and the carrion-worm Statelily lodge. Mother of mysteries! Sayer of dark sayings in a thousand tongues, Who bringest forth no saying yet so dark ...
— God and Mr. Wells - A Critical Examination of 'God the Invisible King' • William Archer
... Italians, Serbs, and French, and intrigued, so soon as the Prince was appointed, to obtain power over him. He bargained to be one of those who went to invite the Prince to Albania, and, accompanied by a party of Albanians, many of them better men than himself, he went to Neu Wied. How he contrived to worm himself into the Prince's confidence is a mystery. But he did, and in a luckless moment for the Prince, induced him to make Durazzo his capital. There he would be completely in the hands of Essad. He was welcomed at Durazzo by rejoicing Albanians, who knew ...
— Twenty Years Of Balkan Tangle • Durham M. Edith
... look at "Major Piff," who bent his terrible, scornful gaze upon him, making poor Tom feel like an insignificant worm. But the imperious Prussian's stare netted him not half so much in the matter of valuable data as Tom derived from his rather timid scrutiny. Yet he would almost have preferred to face the muzzle of a field-piece rather than wither ...
— Tom Slade Motorcycle Dispatch Bearer • Percy Keese Fitzhugh
... Grace and her rooster made the best start. Ruth's turkey refused to stir; he had found a fat worm on the ground in front of him. His attention was riveted to that. Ruth flapped her blue silk ...
— The Automobile Girls in the Berkshires - The Ghost of Lost Man's Trail • Laura Dent Crane
... merchandise to an immoderate amount. It would be a great acquisition to England, if His Majesty were to negociate with the Emperor of Marocco for the port of Santa Cruz; for the province of Suse produces in abundance olive oil, almonds, and gums; worm-seed, annis-seed, cummin-seed, and orchilla; oranges, grapes, pomegranates, figs, melons, &c. This port was farmed, during the reign of Muley Ismael, for an annual stipend. It is the key to 322 Sudan, and a communication might be opened on an extensive scale from hence ...
— An Account of Timbuctoo and Housa Territories in the Interior of Africa • Abd Salam Shabeeny |
