"Worm" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... of its progress to be computed. The soul's advances are not made by gradation, such as can be represented by motion in a straight line, but rather by ascension of state, such as can be represented by metamorphosis,—from the egg to the worm, from the worm to the fly. The growths of genius are of a certain total character, that does not advance the elect individual first over John, then Adam, then Richard, and give to each the pain of discovered inferiority,—but ...
— Essays, First Series • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... Which are in love, will own with me No passion but a virtue 'tis. Few hear my word; it soars above The subtlest senses of the swarm Of wretched things which know not love, Their Psyche still a wingless worm. Ice-cold seems heaven's noble glow To spirits whose vital heat is hell; And to corrupt hearts even so The songs I sing, the tale I tell. These cannot see the robes of white In which I sing of love. Alack, But darkness shows in heavenly ...
— The Angel in the House • Coventry Patmore
... worshipper of Plutus has attempted (canker worm like) to blast the tender bloom of my reputation, by misrepresenting an occurrence that took place between us on the third inst.—I take this method, as the most salutary remedy, to put a stop to its dangerous ...
— The Olden Time Series, Vol. 4: Quaint and Curious Advertisements • Henry M. Brooks
... Some dishonest people worm themselves into almost every human organization. It is all the more shocking, however, when they make their way into a Government such as ours, which is based on the principle of justice for all. Such unworthy public servants ...
— State of the Union Addresses of Harry S. Truman • Harry S. Truman
... Confess—"It is enough." The world left 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
... friends to be sought and cherished, as useful auxiliaries, or pleasant accessories: in the very core of the cankered heart, that advocated this corrupting doctrine of expediency, lay unbelief; that worm which never died in the hearts of so many illustrious men of that period—the refrigerator of ...
— The Wits and Beaux of Society - Volume 1 • Grace Wharton and Philip Wharton
... a strange, shaggy young Adam, "I feel that my sins are forgiven me and that I am a child of God. I ask the prayers of all Christian people that I may continue faithful." He was a moonshiner who had destroyed his whisky and cut up his own copper worm and vats during the meeting. As he resumed his seat a little thin woman in a blue cotton dress sprang to her feet, hopped with the belligerent air of a fighting jaybird across the intervening space and lost herself in the ...
— A Circuit Rider's Wife • Corra Harris
... Charoba; there a throng Shone out in sunny whiteness o'er the reeds. Nor could luxuriant youth, or lapsing age Propped by the corner of the nearest street, With aching eyes and tottering knees intent, Loose leathery neck and worm-like lip outstretched, Fix long the ken upon one form, so swift Through the gay vestures fluttering on the bank, And through the bright-eyed waters dancing round, Wove they their wanton wiles and disappeared. Meantime, with pomp august ...
— Gebir • Walter Savage Landor
... from the worm to man, and much within you is still worm. Once were ye apes, and even yet man is more of an ape than any of ...
— Thus Spake Zarathustra - A Book for All and None • Friedrich Nietzsche
... like some poor little fledgling that has fallen out of the nest. His hands and feet would be freezing, and his breath coming with difficulty; until, look you, he would begin to cough, and disease, like an unclean parasite, would worm its way into his breast until death itself had overtaken him— overtaken him in some foetid corner whence there was no chance of escape. Yes, that is what his ...
— Poor Folk • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... 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 ...
— Select Speeches of Kossuth • Kossuth
... it was all the fairer for this. The young monk's faith that sees heaven laid open and beholds the angels, is something far below the power of the old monk who points them out to him. The ex-steward was like the old monk; he would have given his life to defend a worm-eaten shrine. ...
— The Jealousies of a Country Town • Honore de Balzac
... could just see the thing—like an elephant's trunk more than anything else—waving towards me and touching and examining the wall, coals, wood and ceiling. It was like a black worm swaying its blind ...
— The War of the Worlds • H. G. Wells
... 'neath crowns be now my theme? Shall I boast, ye princes, that ye dream?— While the worm the monarch's heart may tear, Golden sleep twines round the Moor by stealth, As he, at the palace, guards the ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... two bodies—the rudimental and the complete; corresponding with the two conditions of the worm and the butterfly. What we call "death," is but the painful metamorphosis. Our present incarnation is progressive, preparatory, temporary. Our future is perfected, ultimate, immortal. The ultimate ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 2 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... assented. "I wonder if she knows how to grow roses; they'll certainly die if she doesn't!" And Rachel crushed a worm under her foot ...
— Across the Years • Eleanor H. Porter
... what my art was to me, the great primal note by which I had revealed, first myself to myself, and then myself to the world, the great passion of my life, the love to which all other loves were as marsh water to red wine, or the glow worm of the marsh to the magic mirror of the moon.... Don't you understand now that your lack of imagination was the one really fatal defect of your character? What you had to do was quite simple, and quite clear before you; but hate had blinded you, and ...
— Oscar Wilde, Volume 2 (of 2) - His Life and Confessions • Frank Harris
... bird on the tree above him. Jimmy glanced up. "Chickie, Chickie, Chickie," he said. "I can't till by your dress whether you are a hin or a rooster. But I can till by your employmint that you are working for grub. Have to hustle lively for every worm you find, don't you, Chickie? Now me, I'm hustlin' lively for a drink, and I be domn if it seems nicessary with a whole river of drinkin' stuff flowin' right under me feet. But the old Wabash ain't runnin "wine and milk and honey" not ...
— At the Foot of the Rainbow • Gene Stratton-Porter
... of the United States would be more secure than they can be, as I humbly conceive, under the proposed new Constitution. You are sensible, Sir, that the Seeds of Aristocracy began to spring even before the Conclusion of our Struggle for the natural Rights of Men, Seeds which like a Canker Worm lie at the Root of free Governments. So great is the Wickedness of some Men, & the stupid Servility of others, that one would be almost inclined to conclude that Communities cannot be free. The few haughty Families, think They must ...
— The Original Writings of Samuel Adams, Volume 4 • Samuel Adams
... sun was shining Then they took my cherished form And they bore it to the church yard To consign it to the worm ...
— Preliminary Report of the Commission Appointed by the University • The Seybert Commission
... is obtained from the cocoons of several species of insects. These insects resemble strongly the ordinary caterpillars. At a certain period of its existence the silkworm gives off a secretion of jelly-like substance. This hardens on exposure to the air as the worm forces it out and winds it about ...
— Textiles • William H. Dooley
... pickerel, black bass, sheep-heads, mullets, suckers, eels, and a variety of other fish, are plentiful in these waters: the spring-creeks and mill-ponds yield plenty of spotted trout, from four ounces to a pound weight: they are easily caught either with the worm or fly. ...
— Twenty-Seven Years in Canada West - The Experience of an Early Settler (Volume I) • Samuel Strickland
... saw dimly through the smoke, a gray line, like some great worm, that would oppose ...
— The Khaki Boys Over the Top - Doing and Daring for Uncle Sam • Gordon Bates
... worm, truly acknowledge Thee to be the God of the satiated, the God of the wicked, the God of the impure, and that Thou hast ruined ...
— Selected Polish Tales • Various
... law? What less is it than the will and force of all employed for one; the savage sense of justice, disciplined and drilled till it can move in regular array, invincibly, to conquer wrong; surely too vast an engine to be employed on trifles. Who wants a wheel to break a butterfly upon; or, to crush a worm who calls for a pavior's rammer? Monsieur Montigny, listen. Mercy is Heaven's first attribute, and the executioner is the State's meanest, as well as last, servant; shall I, then, stoop to this, who ...
— The Advocate • Charles Heavysege
... it; it goes on profiting by the experience which it had before it was cut off, as much as though it had never been cut off at all. This will be more readily seen in the case of worms which have been cut in half. Let a worm be cut in half, and the two halves will become fresh worms; which of them is the original worm? Surely both. Perhaps no simpler cage than this could readily be found of the manner in which personality eludes us, the moment we try ...
— Selections from Previous Works - and Remarks on Romanes' Mental Evolution in Animals • Samuel Butler
... mine while I hold my life. (One with another.) O fool, will ye marry the worm for a ...
— Poems and Ballads (Third Series) - Taken from The Collected Poetical Works of Algernon Charles - Swinburne—Vol. III • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... as she stood there repressing under a stoical blankness of expression, emotions which he thought must sum up to a worm-wood ...
— A Pagan of the Hills • Charles Neville Buck
... the night were the watchers disturbed. Two convicts endeavored to worm their way up to the hut unseen but were quickly spotted by the captain who emptied his revolver at them without any other effect than to cause them to take to their heels. Aside from this incident the besieged ...
— The Boy Chums in the Forest - or Hunting for Plume Birds in the Florida Everglades • Wilmer M. Ely
... ring-worm previous to going to bed, and do not wash it off till morning. It will effect a cure if persevered in; sometimes in ...
— Directions for Cookery, in its Various Branches • Eliza Leslie
... the big object in the centre of the room—a complex object that somehow reminded him of his laboratory experiments in college. A step nearer, with his own and Carmena's candles upraised, gave him a clear view of the bulging copper boiler, the tubes and worm and fermenting vats. The air of the room was pervaded with ...
— Bloom of Cactus • Robert Ames Bennet
... His creatures? How can we take as a model a being whose Divine perfections are precisely contrary to human perfections? God, you say, is the sovereign arbiter of our destinies; His supreme power, that nothing can limit, authorizes Him to do as He pleases with His works; a worm, such as man, has not the right to murmur against Him. This arrogant tone is literally borrowed from the language which the ministers of tyrants hold, when they silence those who suffer by their violences; it can not, then, be the language of the ...
— Superstition In All Ages (1732) - Common Sense • Jean Meslier
... Heaven, beneath thy gorgeous blue, One heart so basely to itself untrue, So dead of pulse, and so insensate grown, It feels not such a cause dear as its own? Dwells there a being 'neath thine eye, oh, God! A fellow-worm from out the self-same clod, Whose fevered blood does not impatient boil, Fierce as a tiger's in the hunter's toil, To see degenerate men and States prolong, So foul a deed—so thrice accursed a wrong? Tell me, ...
— Autographs for Freedom, Volume 2 (of 2) (1854) • Various
... all things that live, From the crook'd worm to man's imperial form, And God-resembling likeness. The poor fly, That makes short holyday in the sun beam, And dies by some child's hand. The feeble bird With little wings, yet greatly venturous In the upper sky. The fish in th' ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb IV - Poems and Plays • Charles and Mary Lamb
... these, That have cleft my heart in twain? Must I, to the very lees, Drain thy bitter chalice, Pain? Silent grief all grief excels; Life and it together part— Like a restless worm it dwells ...
— Poems • George P. Morris
... motionless by the window, with wide open eyes, in the chill morning light. Suddenly a rending, bursting noise was heard in the ceiling. The crack widened into a chasm, and then, with a heavy thud, down fell a confused mass of old bricks, crumbling mortar, and rotten, worm-eaten wood full on the mattress he had just relinquished, scattering pulverised rubble in all directions, and covering the bed with a layer of horrible ...
— Austin and His Friends • Frederic H. Balfour
... it's what's coming that upsets me, ma'am. Eh, what suffering for my pretty lamb, and her that wouldn't have hurt a worm! Baby would be about six months old when she came in one day with him in her arms, and they were a picture. His little hand was fast in her hair. She always walked as if she'd wheels on her feet, that gliding and graceful. She had on a sort of sheeny ...
— Stories by English Authors: Orient • Various
... steers from the east, the waters rise, the mundane snake is coiled in joetun-rage. The worm beats the water, and the eagle screams: the pale of beak tears ...
— The Elder Eddas of Saemund Sigfusson; and the Younger Eddas of Snorre Sturleson • Saemund Sigfusson and Snorre Sturleson
... poison is nothing else than a worm, which feeds upon the purest substance of man, constantly gnaws his heart, makes the body die away, and does not forsake it even in the depth of the grave. It is certain that the bodies of those who have been poisoned, or who die of contagion, ...
— The Phantom World - or, The philosophy of spirits, apparitions, &c, &c. • Augustin Calmet
... buds or grafts, while very many have to be content with less. The difficulty is due, in part, to lack of skill; in part to lack of judgment in selecting good material with which to work; but in some regions it is due to the attacks of the bud-worm, Proteopteryx deludana, more than to anything else. The buds are eaten out and destroyed by this insect at the time they start into growth. In certain sections spring working of pecans has been abandoned entirely owing ...
— The Pecan and its Culture • H. Harold Hume
... the Schoolboy strews At noontide, when the form's forsook; A worm to thee the Delver throws, And Angler ...
— Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 475 - Vol. XVII, No. 475. Saturday, February 5, 1831 • Various
... the Count de Lille vanishes like a glow-worm in the darkness. I want tangible proofs by which I can arrest my enemies. Can you give ...
— Marie Antoinette And Her Son • Louise Muhlbach
... you—comes rather high; But since, apparently, you both begin To feel some pious promptings to the right, And fain would turn your faces to the light, Eternity seems all too long a term. So 'tis commuted to one-half. I'm quite Prepared, when that expires, to free the worm And quench the fire." And, civilly retreating, He left them holding their ...
— Black Beetles in Amber • Ambrose Bierce
... ten entrances 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 reins ...
— The Automobile Girls in the Berkshires - The Ghost of Lost Man's Trail • Laura Dent Crane
... stay here,' he continued gravely. 'And we both know it. I believe in your father and in his ultimate success. We must watch over him, we must see that Mrs. Murray does not worm his secret out of him again and steal what he finds. And you've got to know that when a man loves a girl as I love you, he is not going to tolerate any further interference from a lying, deceitful jade like that woman ...
— The Desert Valley • Jackson Gregory
... butt, and a worm may sting, And a child will sometimes stand; But a poor dead soldier of the King Can never ...
— The Years Between • Rudyard Kipling
... nonsense—Milton's nonsense, I believe—about "In native worth and honour clad, With beauty, courage, strength, adorned, Erect with front serene he stands, A MAN, the Lord and King of Nature all," and the suburban love-making of our first parents, and the lengthy references to the habits of the worm and the leviathan, and so on, are almost more than modern flesh and blood can endure. It must be conceded that Haydn evaded the difficulties of the subject with a degree of tact that would be surprising in anyone else than ...
— Old Scores and New Readings • John F. Runciman
... distant worlds! Distinguished link in being's endless chain! Midway from nothing to the Deity; A beam etherial, sullied, and absorbt! Though sullied and dishonoured still divine! Dim miniature of greatness absolute! An heir of glory! a frail child of dust! Helpless immortal! insect infinite! A worm! a god!—I tremble at myself, And in myself am lost. At home a stranger, Thought wanders up and down, surprised, aghast, And wondering at her own: How reason reels! O what a miracle to man is man! Triumphantly distressed! what joy! what dread! Alternately transported and alarmed! What can ...
— The Age of Pope - (1700-1744) • John Dennis
... 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
... blew very hard at night, I'd get up and go down to look how she weathered it, just as if I was at sea in her. Now and then I'd get some of the watermen to row me aboard of her, and leave me there for a few hours; when I used to be quite happy walking the deck, holding the old worm-eaten wheel, looking out ahead, and going down below, just as though I was in command of her. Day after day this habit grew on me, and at last my whole life was spent in watching her and looking after her,—-there was something so much alike in ...
— Charles O'Malley, The Irish Dragoon, Volume 1 (of 2) • Charles Lever
... running in, exclaiming, "O papa! there's a green worm eating all the leaves off the currant ...
— Driven Back to Eden • E. P. Roe
... showed any curiosity about the room or the world outside the windows, but sat on his door perch for hours, with a sharp eye to the worm supply. The appearance of the cup that held them was a signal for him to come down and beg for them, but his little mate never dared trust herself on the desk, though when I threw a worm on the floor she invariably ...
— In Nesting Time • Olive Thorne Miller
... no censor or police shall limit her boundary. The thoughts of men should be like the life- giving and beautifying sun, all-nourishing and all-enlightening; calling into existence and fructifying, not only the rich, and rare, and lovely, but also the noxious and poisonous plant and the creeping worm. These have also the right of life: if left to themselves, they soon die of their own insignificance or nothingness—die under the contempt of all ...
— Berlin and Sans-Souci • Louise Muhlbach
... legendary lore so invaluable to true history. Whenever, therefore, he happened upon a genuine Dutch family, snugly shut up in its low-roofed farmhouse under a spreading sycamore, he looked upon it as a little clasped volume of black-letter, and studied it with the zeal of a book worm. The result of all these researches was a history of the province during the reign of the Dutch governors, which he published some years since. There have been various opinions as to the literary character of his work, and, to tell the truth, it is not a whit better than it should be. Its chief ...
— Elson Grammer School Literature, Book Four. • William H. Elson and Christine Keck
... in cigarettes and highballs and haberdashery and candies and autos; and in its 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 ...
— Love's Pilgrimage • Upton Sinclair
... "I never hurt a worm," he murmured to himself, complacently. "No, I can lay my hand upon my heart and say, I ...
— Charlotte's Inheritance • M. E. Braddon
... be a retired silk-worm fancier, a chronic juryman, or something of the sort. But shiver my windshield if he wasn't a professor ...
— O. Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1920 • Various
... Poetry of Thomas Parnell Hesiod; or, the Rise of Woman Song Song Song Anacreontic Anacreontic A Fairy Tale, in the Ancient English Style To Mr Pope Health: an Eclogue The Flies: an Eclogue An Elegy to an Old Beauty The Book-Worm An Allegory on Man An Imitation of some French Verses A Night-Piece on Death A Hymn ...
— Poetical Works of Johnson, Parnell, Gray, and Smollett - With Memoirs, Critical Dissertations, and Explanatory Notes • Samuel Johnson, Thomas Parnell, Thomas Gray, and Tobias Smollett
... wicked first wife of Adam, and of the Not-Good Ones who hover about women in childbirth. So Moses was sent for, post-haste, to intercede with the Almighty. His piety, it was felt, would command attention. For an average of three hundred and sixty-two days a year Moses was a miserable worm, a nonentity, but on the other three, when death threatened to visit Malka or her little clan, Moses became a personage of prime importance, and was summoned at all hours of the day and night to ...
— Children of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... At any rate, the difference between their aspect and that of the sail-boat is that of a beetle and a butterfly. The acme of ugliness is reached in the freight ferry-boats, floating fragments of railroad, whose cars look like the joints of a monstrous creeping worm. ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, November 1885 • Various
... the chimney. The farther end of the room was completely filled by a four-post bedstead, with a scalloped valance for decoration. The walls were black; there was an opening to admit the light above the worm-eaten door; and here and there were a few stools consisting of rough blocks of beech-wood, each set upon three wooden legs; a hutch for bread, a large wooden dipper, a bucket and some earthen milk-pans, a spinning-wheel on the ...
— The Country Doctor • Honore de Balzac
... cause of all the species of animated nature which people the earth, the ocean, and the air. Born of electricity and albumen, the simple monad is the first living atom; the microscopic animalcules, the snail, the worm, the reptile, the fish, the bird, and the quadruped, all spring from its invisible loins. The human similitude at last appears in the character of the monkey; the monkey rises into the baboon, the baboon is exalted to the ourang-outang, and the chimpanzee, ...
— Modern Atheism under its forms of Pantheism, Materialism, Secularism, Development, and Natural Laws • James Buchanan
... The still small voice is surely to be found there, if any where. A sounding board is merely there for ceremony. It is secure from earthquakes, not more from sanctity than size, for 'twould feel a mountain thrown upon it no more than a taper-worm would. Go and see, but not without your spectacles. By the way, there's a capital farm house two thirds of the way to the Lover's Seat, with incomparable plum cake, ginger beer, etc. Mary bids me warn you not to read the Anatomy of Melancholy in your present low way. You'll ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb (Vol. 6) - Letters 1821-1842 • Charles and Mary Lamb
... Thorpe, "that the fellow knoweth not his business. He must have cold blood in his veins, as a worm hath. I might search the Decalogue a great while ere I came to his two commandments—'Thou shalt not sorrow,' and 'Thou shalt not love thy neighbour ...
— Robin Tremain - A Story of the Marian Persecution • Emily Sarah Holt
... the test clause be repealed, the Presbyterians may with the better grace get into employments, and the easier worm out those of ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, D. D., Volume IV: - Swift's Writings on Religion and the Church, Volume II • Jonathan Swift
... inhospitable to the benign octopus—centipede it became—that had its origin in the Parliament of Canada and wrecked one Tory Government. The penalty of transcontinental railways is that they require to have mortgages on governments. Presently the worm turns. But that usually costs more money than the mortgage. We are now paying off the mortgages of two great systems. The C.P.R. mortgage was paid long ago. The President of the C.P.R. is usually regarded as second only to the Premier in point of national management. ...
— The Masques of Ottawa • Domino
... year Sigmund deemed that the time for his testing was come, and once again he set an adder in the meal-sack and bade the lad bake bread. And the boy feared not the worm, but kneaded it with the dough and baked all together. So Sigmund cherished him as his own son, and he grew strong and valiant and loved ...
— The Story of Sigurd the Volsung • William Morris
... and women, merchant clerks and navy officers, dancing in its wake, arms about waist and crowned with garlands. Long ago darkness and silence had gone from house to house about the tiny pagan city. Only the street lamps shone on, making a glow-worm halo in the umbrageous alleys or drawing a tremulous image on the waters of the port. A sound of snoring ran among the piles of lumber by the Government pier. It was wafted ashore from the graceful ...
— The Ebb-Tide - A Trio And Quartette • Robert Louis Stevenson and Lloyd Osbourne
... of worldly goods to satisfy. 'Eat, drink,' might be said to his body, but to say it to his soul, and to fancy that these pleasures of sense would put it at ease, is the fatal error which gnaws like a worm at the root of every worldly life. The word here rendered 'take thine ease' is cognate with Christ's in His great promise, 'Ye shall find rest unto your souls.' Not in abundance of worldly goods, but in union with Him, is that rest to be found which the covetous ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... upon the largesse of the damned. There!—take for the nonce thy meed in honest coin." The Abbe gave him a piece of gold and passed within the gate. The sun now dropped from sight, leaving the villa terraces in sombreness, and brought into prominence glow worm and firefly and the sheen of ...
— Mistress Penwick • Dutton Payne
... was in shadow now, but there was a glow-worm light in her beautiful eyes that seemed faintly to illuminate her whole face. He sank down on the sofa at her side, no longer the brilliant and ambitious politician, but, it seemed to him, as hopelessly a dreaming, inexperienced boy as when he had given her the ...
— A Ward of the Golden Gate • Bret Harte
... cried he to Mr. Feathercock. "Wretched worm, you have tried to break the charm! Rejoice then, for you have succeeded and it is broken. But let despair follow upon the heels of your rapture, for it is broken in a way that you do not dream. Henceforth your turtle shall ...
— Library of the World's Best Mystery and Detective Stories • Edited by Julian Hawthorne
... in God through Christ, as touching the world to come; and as touching this world, to count "the grave my house, to make my bed in darkness, and to say to corruption, Thou art my father, and to the worm, Thou art my mother and my sister." That is, to familiarize these ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... words devoured; to me it seemed a weird event when I the wonder learnt; that the worm swallowed sentence of man (thief in the dark) document sure, binding and all. The burglar was never a whit the more wise for the words ...
— Anglo-Saxon Literature • John Earle
... from the art of singing, was at the age of sixteen turned out on the world. A compassionate barber, however, took him in, and Haydn dressed and powdered wigs down-stairs, while he worked away at a little worm-eaten harpsichord at night in his room. Unfortunate boy! he managed to get himself engaged to the barber's daughter, Anne Keller, who was for a good while the Xantippe of his gentle life, and he paid dearly for ...
— The Great German Composers • George T. Ferris
... while Calaf proceeds to China, where he engages in an intellectual contest with Princess Tourandocte (Turandot, i.e. Turandokht or Turan's daughter). When Turandot is on the point of defeat, she sends her confidante, a captive princess, to Calaf, to worm out his secret (his own name). The confidante, who is herself in love with Calaf, horrifies him with the invention that Turandot intends to have him secretly assassinated; but although he drops his name in his consternation, ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 6 • Richard F. Burton
... humanitarianism—beneficence to the lower grades of life. When love transcends the bounds of the human family it does not rise up toward God, it descends toward the lower orders of the animal world. "Show pity toward everything that exists," is its motto, and the insect and the worm hold a larger relative place in the Buddhist than in the Christian view. The question "Are ye not of more value than many sparrows?" might be doubtful in the Buddhist estimate, for the teacher himself, in his pre-existent states, had often been incarnate in inferior creatures. It is by no means ...
— Oriental Religions and Christianity • Frank F. Ellinwood
... explicit. Here are the orders that I have just received from the Admiral, in conference with other American and English naval commanders. A picked fleet from the allied navies has been selected for the attack on Zeebrugge. Our American submarines are to lead the way. We are expected to worm our way inside the enemy port and open the attack, Then the battleships will open fire on ...
— The Brighton Boys with the Submarine Fleet • James R. Driscoll
... her master. He had no power over her. She was the lady of Portray, and he could not interfere with her. If he intended to be sullen with her to the end, and to show his contempt for her, she would turn against him. "The worm will turn," she said to herself. And yet she did not think ...
— The Eustace Diamonds • Anthony Trollope
... and verdant pets, Ivy except, that on the aged wall Prays with its worm-like roots, and daily frets The crumbled tower it seems to league withal, King-like, worn down by its own coronal:— Neither in forest haunts love I to won, Before the golden plumage 'gins to fall, And leaves ...
— The Poetical Works of Thomas Hood • Thomas Hood
... to 4 feet. A hole on the north side ended at a crevice that led to a chamber higher up, from which, in turn, another crevice extended. All this space, even beyond the point to which a man could worm his way, was filled with fine earth and ashes containing much refuse. Worked objects were found at the greatest distance which could ...
— Archeological Investigations - Bureau of American Ethnology, Bulletin 76 • Gerard Fowke
... fear. He leaned there, holding fast by the railing, with his hearing made wonderfully acute, and his eyes staring blindly into the dense blackness beneath him. In another second he detected a faint glimmer, like a glow-worm deep down in the earth, and the voice, still muffled and low, came up to ...
— Fern's Hollow • Hesba Stretton
... one to warn her of the dangers abroad, so when she came to the railroad track she just settled upon it, with no more fear than if it were a twig. An ugly brown worm that had been sunning himself on a sleeper ...
— Harper's Young People, January 27, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... pigeons had made their roost, and flapped noisily out into the sunlight when he pushed open the door from below. Here he hunted among the mouldering things of the past until, oh, joy of joys! in an ancient oaken chest he found a great lot of worm-eaten books, that had belonged to some old chaplain of the castle in days gone by. They were not precious and beautiful volumes, such as the Father Abbot had showed him, but all the same they had their quaint painted pictures of ...
— Otto of the Silver Hand • Howard Pyle
... and perfect function of critic law, enabling instead of disabling, that it becomes truly Kingly, instead of Draconic: (what Providence gave the great, wrathful legislator his name?): that is, it becomes the law of man and of life, instead of the law of the worm and of death—both of these laws being set in changeless poise one against another, and the enforcement of both being the eternal function of the lawgiver, and true claim of every living soul: such claim being indeed strong to be mercifully hindered, ...
— The Crown of Wild Olive • John Ruskin
... vivid picturesqueness resulting largely from the causes of this astounding revolution. Have you been in Russia? Have you seen with your own eyes any phase of the violent contrasts which at last have caused the worm to turn? Our object being to study national characteristics as expressed in folk costume, folk song, folk dance, traditional customs and fetes, we consulted students of these subjects, whom we chanced to meet in London, Paris, Vienna and Buda Pest, with the result that we turned our ...
— Woman as Decoration • Emily Burbank
... admiration to others in motley imagery or quaint allusion, till the light of his genius shone into my soul, like the sun's rays glittering in the puddles of the road. I was at that time dumb, inarticulate, helpless, like a worm by the wayside, crushed, bleeding, lifeless; but now, bursting from the deadly bands that bound them, my ideas float on winged words, and as they expand their plumes, catch the golden light of other years. My soul has ...
— Dreamthorp - A Book of Essays Written in the Country • Alexander Smith
... left its trail of events. The sausage began to "spit." The sound was hardly out of its body, when poor Triplet writhed like a worm on a hook. "Spitter, spittest," went the sausage. Triplet groaned, and at last his inarticulate murmurs became words: "That's right, pit now, that is so reasonable to condemn a poor fellow's play before you have heard it out." Then, with a change of tone, ...
— Peg Woffington • Charles Reade
... Unto his asking, when that I it heard, And said, "It am I," and came to him near, And salued* him. Quoth he, "What dost thou here, *saluted So nigh mine owen flow'r, so boldely? It were better worthy, truely, A worm to nighe* near my flow'r than thou." *approach, draw nigh "And why, Sir," quoth I, "an' it liketh you?" "For thou," quoth he, "art thereto nothing able, It is my relic,* dign** and delectable, *emblem **worthy And thou my foe, and all my folk ...
— The Canterbury Tales and Other Poems • Geoffrey Chaucer
... silence, understanding dimly the sacred mysteries of each other's hearts, that needed not to be dragged to open day for inspection. In a pure friendship, faith is the highest element: with that there is supreme content; without it, distrust gnaws like a canker-worm. ...
— Hope Mills - or Between Friend and Sweetheart • Amanda M. Douglas
... must be excruciated, read that plaguy paper! 'Sblood! why didn't nature clap a pair of long ears and a tail upon me, that I might be a real ass, and champ thistles on some common, independent of my fellow-creatures? Would I were a worm, that I might creep into the earth, and thatch my habitation with a single straw; or rather a wasp or a viper, that I might make the rascally world feel my resentment. But why do I talk of rascality? folly, folly, is the scourge of life! Give me a scoundrel, so ...
— The Adventures of Peregrine Pickle, Volume I • Tobias Smollett
... that this Greenland shark is not really blind, though the sailors think so because it shows no fear at the sight of man. The pupil of the eye is emerald green; the rest of it is blue, with a white worm-shaped substance on the outside. This one was upwards of ten feet in length, and in form like a dog-fish. It is a great foe to the whale, biting and annoying him even when alive; and by means of its peculiarly-shaped mouth and teeth it ...
— Peter the Whaler • W.H.G. Kingston
... he took the other pole out of the bank, put on a fresh wriggling worm, and moved a little farther down the creek where ...
— The Little Shepherd of Kingdom Come • John Fox
... failure the prestige of the Hojo fell in a region where hitherto it had been untarnished—the arena of arms. The great Japanese historian, Rai Sanyo, compared the Bakufu of that time to a tree beautiful outwardly but worm-eaten at the core, and in the classical work, Taiheiki, the state of affairs is ...
— A History of the Japanese People - From the Earliest Times to the End of the Meiji Era • Frank Brinkley and Dairoku Kikuchi
... gone through many trials since we last met. When I left him in Khartoum ill with guinea-worm in the leg, he was on his way to Cairo; but after my departure he had been tempted by the slave-traders to re-engage in the infamous but engrossing career, and he too had become a slave-hunter. He had never received any pay, as the custom of the slavers was to pay their men in slaves. Mohammed had ...
— Ismailia • Samuel W. Baker
... I should love him, Diego, And love him heartily: nay, I should love my self, Or any thing that had but that good fortune, For to say truth, the Lawyer is a dog-bolt, An arrant worm: and though I call him worshipfull, I wish him a canoniz'd Cuckold, Diego, Now, if my ...
— The Spanish Curate - A Comedy • Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher
... yeast plant, a Protococcus, a common mould, a Chara, a fern, and some flowering plant; among animals we examine such things as an Amoeba, a Vorticella, and a fresh-water polype. We dissect a star-fish, an earth-worm, a snail, a squid, and a fresh-water mussel. We examine a lobster and a cray-fish, and a black beetle. We go on to a common skate, a cod-fish, a frog, a tortoise, a pigeon, and a rabbit, and that takes us about all the time we have to give. The purpose of this course ...
— Science & Education • Thomas H. Huxley
... some experience, Fosco, of your roundabout ways, and I am not so sure that you won't worm it out ...
— The Woman in White • Wilkie Collins
... it, the coral worms protrude themselves from holes that were before invisible. These animals are of a great variety of shapes and sizes, and, in such prodigious numbers, that, in a short time, the whole surface of the rock appears to be alive and in motion. The most common worm is in the form of a star, with arms from four to six inches long, which are moved about with a rapid motion, in all directions, probably to catch food. Others are so sluggish, that they may be mistaken for pieces of rock; and are generally of a dark color, from four to five inches ...
— The World of Waters - A Peaceful Progress o'er the Unpathed Sea • Mrs. David Osborne
... Baghdad?" And he answered, "Safe and secure." Cried he "Thou liest!" "How so, O Prince of True Believers?" asked the Emir. So he told him the case and added, "I charge thee to bring me back all the stolen things." Replied the Emir, "O Commander of the Faithful, the vinegar worm is of and in the vinegar, and no stranger can get at this place."[FN97] But the Caliph said, "Except thou bring me these things, I will put thee to death." Quoth he, "Ere thou slay me, slay Ahmad Kamakim, for none should know the robber and ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 4 • Richard F. Burton
... the rich appearance of those in England and Ireland, being generally filled with half-rotten stumps, scattered here and there among the growing corn, producing a most disagreeable effect. Then, instead of the fragrant quickset hedge, there is a "worm fence"—the rudest description of barrier known in the country—which consists simply of bars, about eight or nine feet in length, laid zig-zag on each other alternately: the improvement on this, and the ne plus ultra in the idea of ...
— A Ramble of Six Thousand Miles through the United States of America • S. A. Ferrall
... Butterington who first put me up to the idea. I asked him a simple question about the habits of the Sigalion Boa, a certain worm in whose ways I was taking an interest at the time, and he at once replied that he himself was not in the ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 159, August 25th, 1920 • Various
... of loss arises from the worm of the still. However careful in keeping the surrounding water cool, there is always one portion of vapor not condensed. This is made more sensible in the winter, when the cold of the atmosphere makes every vapor visible; upon examination, it will be seen ...
— The Art of Making Whiskey • Anthony Boucherie
... with a trowel, and a portion taken out at this point and cooled should present a rounded appearance. When well mixed the resultant product is emptied directly into wheel-frames placed underneath the outlet of the pan. It is important that the blades or worm of the agitating gear be covered with soap to avoid the occlusion of air and to prevent the soap ...
— The Handbook of Soap Manufacture • W. H. Simmons
... glow-worm golden In a dell of dew, Scattering unbeholden Its aerial hue Among the flowers and grass which screen it from ...
— O May I Join the Choir Invisible! - and Other Favorite Poems • George Eliot
... so I thought I'd go on into Smithtown and in the morning see this detective I'd been talking to. I went to Robert Waters's house. I've known him for a long time. I guess you know who he is. He's such a book worm I figured he might be up, and he wouldn't ask a lot of silly questions, being selfish like most people that live all the time with books. He came to the door, and I told him I wanted to spend the night. ...
— The Abandoned Room • Wadsworth Camp
... Roachback knows more about traps than half a dozen ordinary trappers; he knows more about plants and roots than a whole college of botanists. He can tell to a certainty just when and where to find each kind of grub and worm, and he knows by a whiff whether the hunter on his trail a mile away is working with guns, poison, dogs, traps, or all of them together. And he has one general rule, which is an endless puzzle to the hunter: ...
— The Biography of a Grizzly • Ernest Thompson Seton
... crave pardon,) this worm, (little animals, forgive the insult,) was raised to a higher life than he was born to, for he was raised to the society of blackguards. Some fortune—kind to him, cruel to us—has tossed him to the Secretaryship of State. Contempt has the property of descending, but stops far short ...
— Americanism Contrasted with Foreignism, Romanism, and Bogus Democracy in the Light of Reason, History, and Scripture; • William Gannaway Brownlow
... the "thing itself" which matters—the thing which "owes the worm no silk, the cat no perfume." Forked straddling animals are we all, as the mad king says in the play, and it is mere effeminacy and affectation to cover ...
— Suspended Judgments - Essays on Books and Sensations • John Cowper Powys
... you need not slip Into your hole, with such a skip; Drawing the gravel as you glide On to your smooth and slimy side. I'm not a crow, poor worm, not I, Peeping about your holes to spy, And fly away with you in air, To give my young ones each a share. No, and I'm not a rolling-stone, Creaking along with ...
— Pinafore Palace • Various
... pathway to the front of the house, one came upon its whitewashed walls, the low worm-eaten door deep set in its crooked lintels, and its two tiny windows, looking out on the sunny garden, every inch of which was neatly and carefully cultivated by Morva's own hands; for she would not allow her "little mother" to tire herself ...
— Garthowen - A Story of a Welsh Homestead • Allen Raine
... unable to classify it, and, being scientific men, they climbed into the whale-boat alongside and went ashore to see. And they saw something that was alive but which could hardly be called a man. It was blind, unconscious. It squirmed along the ground like some monstrous worm. Most of its efforts were ineffectual, but it was persistent, and it writhed and twisted and went ahead perhaps a score ...
— Love of Life - and Other Stories • Jack London
... word,' I pleaded. 'I don't give interviews,' he answered; and that was all—he continued looking over my head, and everybody else staring in front of them. They had turned to ice at my first word. If ever I felt like a frozen worm!" ...
— King Coal - A Novel • Upton Sinclair
... It feeds, however, with us, certainly, most on worms and insects. I am not sure how far the following account of its mode of dressing its dinners may be depended on: I take it from an old book on Natural History, but find it, more or less, confirmed by others: "It takes a worm by one extremity in its beak, and beats it on the ground till the inner part comes away. Then seizing it in a similar manner by the other end, it entirely cleanses the outer part, which alone ...
— Love's Meinie - Three Lectures on Greek and English Birds • John Ruskin
... what will become of you when you are dead? what will become of your body?" "If..." "No; that is no answer! You are to spell properly!" "Zu esen fuer wurm" ( food for worm.) "And, Lola ... your soul? do you know what that is?" "Ja, nur get in himmel!" ( yes (it) only goes to heaven!) "Did you hear people say that?" "Yes!" From this it would seem that any seeking after the dog's own sensations on the subject are useless. ...
— Lola - The Thought and Speech of Animals • Henny Kindermann
... analyze my feelings, to recall minutely and accurately the effect of this manifestation of the Eternal. But one should go to such a scene prepared to yield entirely to its influences, to forget one's little self and one's little mind. To see a miserable worm creep to the brink of this falling world of waters, and watch the trembling of its own petty bosom, and fancy that this is made alone, to act ...
— Summer on the Lakes, in 1843 • S.M. Fuller
... to her grave I saw him moving evermore A stealthy wanderer on the wave, A shrouded shadow on the shore, The worm his bondsman, and the brave ...
— Iolaeus - The man that was a ghost • James A. Mackereth
... with exceeding brilliancy of hue. A tiny white chapel stood in a corner of the enclosure. Two iron-grated windows let me see inside: it was a bare place, containing nothing but a wooden praying-desk, black and worm-eaten, an altar with its candles and no flowers, and above the altar a square picture brown with age. On the floor were scattered several pence, and in a vase above the holy-water vessel stood some withered hyacinths. As my sight became accustomed to the gloom, I could see from the ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece • John Addington Symonds
... with great emphasis, "as to that snake, I want you to understand this: yereafter in my estimation that snake is nothin' but an ornery angle-worm!" ...
— The Boy Scouts Book of Stories • Various
... bonnet downwards, detailing every process and stage of the manufacture. The bonnet, which was put on his head for this purpose, the coat, the silk-handkerchief, the cotton vest, were all traced respectively from the sheep, the egg of the silk-worm, and the cotton-pod. The buttons, which were of brass, were stated to be a composition of copper and zinc, which were separately and scientifically described, with the reasons assigned, (as good as could be given,) for their admixture, in the ...
— A Practical Enquiry into the Philosophy of Education • James Gall
... human nature didn't desire a sense of security; but, as it is, when I am artificially set up, I find that all I can do is to look at my own feet, and tremble lest I fall. Modern literature stimulates; it doesn't nourish. It makes you feel like a giant for a moment, but leaves you crushed like a worm, and without faith, without love, without hope. It excites you pleasurably, and when you see life through its medium you never suspect that the vision is distorted. It makes you think the Iconoclast the greatest hero, and causes you to feel that you share his glory when you help him with your ...
— Ideala • Sarah Grand
... seduction were disdained by her. She would not have stooped so low as Mainwaring's love, could she have commanded or allured it; she was willing to leave to Susan the husband reft from her own passionate youth, but leave him with the brand on his brow and the worm at his ...
— Lucretia, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... belief of the Japanese, who handled their armies by telephone when they drove back the Russians. Each body of Japanese troops moved forward like a silkworm, leaving behind it a glistening strand of red copper wire. At the decisive battle of Mukden, the silk-worm army, with a million legs, crept against the Russian hosts in a vast crescent, a hundred miles from end to end. By means of this glistening red wire, the various batteries and regiments were organized into fifteen divisions. Each group of three divisions was wired to a general, and the five ...
— The History of the Telephone • Herbert N. Casson
... "and paddles are better for one kind of navigation, and oars for another. Oars require greater breadth of water to work in. In a narrow, crooked stream flowing among logs and rocks, oars would not answer at all. But with a paddle a man can worm a boat ...
— Marco Paul's Voyages and Travels; Vermont • Jacob Abbott
... par excellence for worms. It may be repeated once a week, when there is a tendency in the patient to the development of worm symptoms, or, in other words, the breeding of worms. The idea held out by some that it is hurtful, or unimportant to remove the worms, in itself considered, is simply nonsense, and worse, for children are ...
— An Epitome of Homeopathic Healing Art - Containing the New Discoveries and Improvements to the Present Time • B. L. Hill
... denominate him a Traitor or a Fool. But how much more aggravated must be the folly and madness of those, who instead of worshipping GOD in the solemn assembly, "in spirit and in truth," can utter a lie TO HIM!! -in order to render themselves acceptable to a man who is a worm or to the son of a man who is ...
— The Writings of Samuel Adams, volume II (1770 - 1773) - collected and edited by Harry Alonso Cushing • Samuel Adams
... leg. A whisper ran down the line. The eyes of the men turned slowly at the sight of a single rider who advanced from the distant Union camp. He did not take the dusty road which swept in a wide, half-circle to where the waiting troopers sat in line, but jumped a low worm-fence and ...
— The Littlest Rebel • Edward Peple
... a gleam in his malignant eye, almost murderous. His foot was lifted to crush the worm in his path, and, could he have trodden it out of existence in secret, the deed would have been accomplished with exultation. His hatred for Madeleine had strengthened into a fierce passion as his fears that Maurice loved her threatened ...
— Fairy Fingers - A Novel • Anna Cora Mowatt Ritchie
... not their place, socially, in Irish every-day existence. There is little doubt but that after the monsters of the Primal Periods had been practically extinguished, a stray reptile, here and there, escaped the general doom, and, as Mr. Yeats says of his lug-worm, may have-sung with "its grey and muddy mouth" of how "somewhere to North or West or South, there dwelt a gay, exulting, gentle race" of Plesiosauridae, or Pterodactyli. Even thus may this record be regarded; ...
— Mount Music • E. Oe. Somerville and Martin Ross
... never but one at a time, and that lives five hundred years: and 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, ...
— The Ancient Church - Its History, Doctrine, Worship, and Constitution • W.D. [William Dool] Killen
... movement, could hear no sound. The guard did not move his head, and the other remained motionless, his face bent almost to his knees. Down below the horses stomped restlessly, and switched their tails. Watching each motion like a hawk, I saw Tom dip over the crest, and worm his way down behind the rock. Then he disappeared, until, as he cautiously arose to his feet, his head and shoulders emerged shadowy just beyond. Realizing he was ready, I got to my knees, gripping a pistol butt. Without a warning sound the Dragoon leaped, his arms ...
— My Lady of Doubt • Randall Parrish
... so to have wriggled and groped his way through the 'Straight gate and the narrow way that leadeth unto life,' than having two eyes and two arms, or two legs, to be cast into Hell, into the fire that never shall be quenched, where their 'worm dieth not, and the fire is not quenched.' Mark ix. 43. Well, then! will the believer say, what were all the miracles and prophecies of both the Old and the New Testament for those unquestionable miracles, and clearly-accomplished prophecies, if it were not that men should ...
— Ancient and Modern Celebrated Freethinkers - Reprinted From an English Work, Entitled "Half-Hours With - The Freethinkers." • Charles Bradlaugh, A. Collins, and J. Watts
... want to be let alone in their comfortable materialistic beliefs, even though those beliefs rend them, rive them, rack and twist them with vile, loathsome disease, and then sink them into hideous, worm-infested graves! The human mind does not want its undemonstrable beliefs challenged. It does not want the light of unbiased investigation thrown upon the views which it has accepted ready-made from doctor and theologian. Again, why? Because, my friends, ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking
... a black Caput Mortuum, of Oyl of Vitriol, with Oyl of Worm-word, and also with Oyl of ...
— Experiments and Considerations Touching Colours (1664) • Robert Boyle
... of those slick fellows who can worm out of almost anything. One or two fellows did make some sort of charges against him, but they all fell through. There are hundreds of swindlers in the oil business, and not one out of a dozen is ...
— The Rover Boys in the Land of Luck - Stirring Adventures in the Oil Fields • Edward Stratemeyer
... trifling with the secrets confided to you," Immelan went on. "You know very well that the woman who came to you last night is a spy whose whole time is spent in seeking to worm our secret from you." ...
— The Great Prince Shan • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... when it was lowered into the grave. Rashid represented the dead man's kindred with much dignity. He held something in his hand which he planted in the ground before going away. It was that crescent of plain deal at the end of a stick which is still to be seen in the midst of the worm-eaten crosses, in the shadow ...
— The New Book Of Martyrs • Georges Duhamel
... deposited in the bottom of the cradle. So the two things most prized in this world, gold and infant beauty, are both rocked out of their primitive stage, one to pamper pride, and the other to pamper the worm. Some forego cradles and bowls as too tame an occupation, and mounted on horses, half wild, dash up the mountain gorges and over the steep hills, picking the gold from the clefts of the rocks with their bowie knives,—a much better use to make of these instruments than picking the life ...
— The Exploring Expedition to the Rocky Mountains, Oregon and California • Brevet Col. J.C. Fremont
... fields battlefields, so many cheeks pale, when we pass before so many eyes red with weeping or closed in death: Oh! can the grave, that haven of salvation, be the last swallowing, unyielding whirlpool? No, the trampled worm dares raise itself towards its Creator, and say, "Thou durst not ...
— My New Curate • P.A. Sheehan
... 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
... sleep in it, was the room next to hers. It was a room Letty could well 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 ...
— Scottish Ghost Stories • Elliott O'Donnell
... you ever see anything so perfectly lovely as this place? And yet it is all living in a state of war and anarchy. The trees and plants against each other, all fighting for a place in the sun. The rabbit against the grass, the bird against the worm, the cat against the bird. There's no peace here really—it's full of terrors! Only the stream is taking it easy. It hasn't to live by taking life, and the very sound ...
— Father Payne • Arthur Christopher Benson
... night. The highway was but a streak of less palpable darkness; the hills on either hand scarcely detached themselves from the low, black ceiling of sky behind them. Sometimes the light of a farm-house window sparkled faintly, like a glow-worm, but whether far or near, he could not tell; he only knew how blest must be the owner, sitting with wife and children around his secure hearthstone,—how wretched his own life, cast adrift in the darkness,—wife, home, and ...
— The Story Of Kennett • Bayard Taylor |
