"Bird of paradise" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... upper hoist-side corner; the upper triangle is red with a soaring yellow bird of paradise centered; the lower triangle is black with five white five-pointed stars of ...
— The 1990 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency
... gold bird of paradise dipped down her hair over one shoulder, trailing its smoothness like fingers of lace. She defied with ...
— The Vertical City • Fannie Hurst
... carry exceedingly heavy loads up these steep hills. Yesterday one woman had two large kits of taro, and a child of about two years on the top of all. Ruatoka shot eight blue pigeons and one bird of paradise to-day: the latter must be eaten with the best of all sauces—hunger. The natives pick up heads, legs, and entrails, turn them on the fire and ...
— Adventures in New Guinea • James Chalmers
... indulged in magnificent reveries of fame and glory and heroic action, of which career, indeed, his approaching departure was to be the commencement, the association of ideas led his recollection to those beings from whom he was about to depart. His fancy dropped like a bird of paradise in full wing, tumbling exhausted in the sky: he thought of his innocent and happy boyhood, of his father's thoughtful benevolence, his sweet mother's gentle assiduities, and Glastonbury's devotion; and he demanded aloud, in a voice of anguish, ...
— Henrietta Temple - A Love Story • Benjamin Disraeli
... while here and there an ox-eyed daisy glowed from out its somber company as a firefly shines through the dusk of twilight. In the midst of all this sat Nannie in her pretty suit trimmed in scarlet, looking like a bird of paradise amid a flock of sparrows and other soberly clad creatures. Indeed, she reminded one of a bird, with her head cocked on one side and her ...
— The Gentle Art of Cooking Wives • Elizabeth Strong Worthington
... ways in that particular were well known. A certain amount of license was usually given to him, both by Sir Magnus and Lady Mountjoy, and when he would become remarkable by the rapidity of his changes the only adverse criticism would come generally from Mr. Blow. "Another peerless Bird of Paradise," Mr. Blow would say. "If the birds were less numerous, Anderson might, perhaps, do something." But at the end of the week, on this occasion, even Sir Magnus perceived that Anderson was about ...
— Mr. Scarborough's Family • Anthony Trollope
... a private room; this ward is so full already, and there'll be more coming right along. A boy who wears velvet and feathers must belong to some rich family, who'll gladly pay for every attention. Poor, little, bedraggled bird of paradise!" ...
— Divided Skates • Evelyn Raymond
... the Flagship, the sun set exactly behind the purple island of Imbros, and as it disappeared sent out long flame-coloured streamers into the sky. The effect was that of a bird of Paradise bringing ...
— Gallipoli Diary, Volume I • Ian Hamilton
... the back, and was ready for her evening's escort at eight. There wasn't a hat in a grill room from one end of the Crooked Cow-path to the other that was more wildly barbaric than Hattie's, even in these sane and simple days when the bird of paradise has become the national bird. The buyer of suits for a thriving department store in a hustling little Middle-Western town isn't to be neglected. Whenever a show came to River Falls Hattie would look bored, pass a weary hand over her glossy coiffure and say: "Oh, yes. Clever little show. Saw ...
— Roast Beef, Medium • Edna Ferber
... charming illusion of the public that, comparatively speaking, any one can write prose. It is an earthly accomplishment, it is as walking is to flying—is it not stigmatised 'pedestrian'? Now, your true Bird of Paradise, which is the poet, must, metaphorically speaking, have no legs—as Adrian Harley said was the case with the women in Richard Feverel's poems. He must never be seen to walk in prose, for his part is, 'pinnacled dim in the ...
— Prose Fancies • Richard Le Gallienne
... a "tasty" article, and the pride with which Mr. Kantwise glanced back at it was quite delightful. The top of the table was blue, with a red bird of paradise in the middle; and the edges of the table, to the breadth of a couple of inches, were yellow. The pillar also was yellow, as were the three legs. "It's the real Louey catorse," said Mr. Kantwise, stooping down to go on with table number two, which was, ...
— Orley Farm • Anthony Trollope
... Madras, and here, as there, they were frequently adjacent to a cluster of low mud hovels. From the branches of the trees flitted birds of such fantastic shapes and plumage as to cause exclamations of surprise. Occasional specimens of the bird of paradise were seen, with its long and graceful tail-feathers glistening in the sun, presenting an array of bright colors never seen in confinement. The tall flamingos, in their bridal plumage, just touched with scarlet on either wing, like soldiers' epaulets, floated along the shores of the numerous ponds, ...
— Due West - or Round the World in Ten Months • Maturin Murray Ballou
... he moved, when, from behind the tree, was heard the shrill, brief, sonorous note, which the bird of paradise titters when it takes its flight—a cry which resembles that of the pheasant. This note was soon repeated, but more faintly, as though the brilliant bird were already at a distance. Djalma, thinking he had discovered the cause of the noise which had ...
— The Wandering Jew, Complete • Eugene Sue
... shell, feathers, bones and leaves. Both sexes take part in the building of these abodes of love, which are used for the courting parades. But an even more delightful example of the rare sexual delicacy in courtship is recorded by M.O. Beccari of a bird of Paradise of ...
— The Truth About Woman • C. Gasquoine Hartley
... kinds of beautiful birds. We could have shot enough in that walk to have kept us busy making skins for days, but we kept to the determination my uncle had made, not to shoot any more that day, except once, when the curious hoarse cry of some bird of paradise, answered by others at a distance, tempted ...
— Nat the Naturalist - A Boy's Adventures in the Eastern Seas • G. Manville Fenn
... these questions she noticed her dress. Mademoiselle Helbrun's plump figure was set off to full advantage in a black and white check silk dress, and she wore a wonderful arched hat with flowing plumes of the bird of paradise. She was a prima-donna every inch of her, standing on the steps of her hotel, whereas the operatic stage could hardly be distinguished at all in Evelyn's dress. With the black crepon skirt she wore a heliotrope ...
— Evelyn Innes • George Moore
... of elaborate dresses at luncheons has gone entirely out of fashion; and yet one does once in a while see an occasional lady—rarely a New Yorker—who outshines a bird of paradise and a jeweler's window; but New York women of distinction wear rather simple clothes—simple meaning untrimmed, not inexpensive. Very conspicuous clothes are chosen either by the new rich, to assure themselves of their own elegance—which is utterly lacking—or ...
— Etiquette • Emily Post
... Pompey, a little grinning negro Lord Peterborow gave her, with a bird of Paradise in his turbant, and a collar with his ...
— Henry Esmond; The English Humourists; The Four Georges • William Makepeace Thackeray
... all interesting, and many of them are beautiful, but the Scissor-tailed species of Texas is especially attractive. They are also known as the Swallow-tailed Flycatcher, and more frequently as the "Texan Bird of Paradise." It is a common summer resident throughout the greater portion of that state and the Indian Territory, and its breeding range extends northward into Southern Kansas. Occasionally it is found in southwestern Missouri, western Arkansas, and Illinois. It ...
— Birds Illustrated by Color Photography [May, 1897] - A Monthly Serial designed to Promote Knowledge of Bird-Life • Various
... so that it fell in soft folds, revealing and at the same time concealing her figure. He was anxious to read her face, but the lower part was snuggled into the fur of the deep collar and the upper part was shadowed by a broad-brimmed tulle hat, from which two bird of paradise plumes spread back like wings on the helmet of a viking. For the rest, she had white kid gloves, which reached up to her elbows. Outside the glove of the left hand she wore a bracelet; every time she stirred the stones struck fire in the semi-darkness. Her hands ...
— The Kingdom Round the Corner - A Novel • Coningsby Dawson
... "is a dish of bird of paradise eggs, served with the fat of a sucking deer, and a brawn of pickled salmon spawn. ...
— A Hungarian Nabob • Maurus Jokai
... of course," said Oliver impatiently. "That's the cry of the great bird of Paradise. Come along quietly, we must have ...
— Fire Island - Being the Adventures of Uncertain Naturalists in an Unknown Track • G. Manville Fenn
... commonplaces of conversation were interchanged, he could not but notice the floral appearance of the room. The ample white lace curtains were surmounted by festoons of artificial roses, caught up by a bird of paradise. On the ceiling was an exquisitely painted garland, from the centre of which hung a tasteful basket of natural flowers, with delicate vine-tresses drooping over its edge. The walls were papered with bright arabesques of flowers, interspersed with birds and ...
— A Romance of the Republic • Lydia Maria Francis Child
... two especially distinguished guests: the leading man of the "Bird of Paradise" company, playing this week at the Dodsworth Theater, and the mayor of Zenith, the Hon. ...
— Babbitt • Sinclair Lewis
... feeling of a narrow-minded and conventional hen who has brought a strange, intrepid duckling into the world; but her situation was still more wonderful, for she could only compare her sensations to those of some quiet brown Dorking who has brooded an ordinary egg and hatched a bird of paradise. Such an idea had crossed her mind more than once during the past fortnight, and it flashed to and fro this mellow October morning when Rebecca came into the room with her arms full of goldenrod and flaming ...
— Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... the sea. It is never seen on land; and naturalists have yet to discover where it reposes, and where it hatches its young; unless we adopt the idea of the poets, that it builds its nest upon the turbulent bosom of the deep. It is a sort of nautical sister of the fabled bird of Paradise, which was footless, and never alighted out of the air. Hundreds of miles from shore, in sunshine and in tempest, you may see the Stormy Petrel. Among the unsolvable riddles which nature propounds to mankind, we may reckon the question, Who is Mother Carey, and where ...
— Journal of an African Cruiser • Horatio Bridge
... to be believed blindly because (as they say) they transcend the understanding. Some, therefore, have imagined the spiritual to be like a bird flying above the air in an ether to which the sight of the eye does not reach; when yet it is like a bird of paradise, which flies near the eye, even touching the pupil with its beautiful wings and longing to be seen. By the sight of the eye ...
— Angelic Wisdom Concerning the Divine Love and the Divine Wisdom • Emanuel Swedenborg
... "Jack-Monkey!" would have been the first thoughts to pop into her judicious little head, and Sprigg might have chased her till he had worn his red moccasins slip-shod, and no more have caught her had he, indeed, been a monkey, chasing a dove or a bird of paradise. That he was spared such a humiliation was because he had become by strange chance an object of Manitou interest, and was not allowed to carry out the ridiculous programme he had proposed to himself. What a pity it is that many of us grown-up Spriggs can not become objects of similar interest, ...
— The Red Moccasins - A Story • Morrison Heady
... to grace her arrival at the court of Tunis. The princess was arrayed in bridal robes, woven in the most costly looms of the orient; her diadem sparkled with diamonds, and was decorated with the rarest plumes of the bird of paradise; and even the silken trappings of her palfrey, which swept the ground, were covered with pearls and precious stones. As this brilliant cavalcade crossed the bridge of the Tagus, all Toledo poured forth to ...
— Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, March 1844 - Volume 23, Number 3 • Various
... a man who possessed the most beautiful and noble Bird of Paradise—a bird of rare plumage and wonderful qualities—should suddenly see more beauty in an ordinary Cockatoo, whose only attraction was its yellow feathers—a Cockatoo that screamed monotonously as it swung backward and forward on its perch, and would eat sugar out of the hand of any stranger while it ...
— The Damsel and the Sage - A Woman's Whimsies • Elinor Glyn
... ears were delighted with the morning song of the bird of paradise; he was fanned by the last flutters of the sinking breeze, and sprinkled with dew by groves of spices, he sometimes contemplated the towering height of the oak, monarch of the hills; and sometimes caught the gentle ...
— Flowers and Flower-Gardens • David Lester Richardson
... friend. It was one of the sweet things she was always doing, with an intention in her own mind to make up for some lack or other which certainly her lover had not felt. When she alighted in the busy street people stared as though they had seen a white bird of Paradise; and coming into Mary Gray's room with a basket of roses in her hand she looked like ...
— Mary Gray • Katharine Tynan
... varieties of bird-life known in these latitudes, from the bird of paradise down to the tiny scarlet-beaked love-birds. There were always parrots and parrakeets ...
— The Ragged Edge • Harold MacGrath
... goose, oie; next it came to mean all the accessories of dress, ribbons, laces, feathers, and other small ornaments. In one of the old translations of Moliere petite oie is rendered by "muff," and Perdrigeon (see next note), I suppose, with a faint idea of perdrix, a partridge, by "bird of paradise feathers!!"] ...
— The Pretentious Young Ladies • Moliere
... of whom, a tall, muscular savage, marched in front of the others, who followed him with some degree of order. From the crown of his head to his waist he was plastered with a red pigment, his frizzled-out hair being ornamented with the plumes of the bird of Paradise. His dress, composed of tapa cloth, shells, and feathers, was more elaborate than any I had seen in the islands. In his hand he carried a spear tipped with white quartz. His followers were decked in similar fashion. Raising his right arm in token of friendship, ...
— Adventures in Southern Seas - A Tale of the Sixteenth Century • George Forbes
... constant minute variations, which are sufficient for Natural Selection to work with, could be sexually selected. We seem to require a series of bold and abrupt variations. How can we imagine that an inch in the tail of a peacock, or a quarter of an inch in that of the bird of paradise, would be noticed and preferred by ...
— Alfred Russel Wallace: Letters and Reminiscences, Vol. 1 (of 2) • James Marchant
... are indulged in by turkeys, the blue bird of paradise, the greater and lesser birds of paradise, the sage grouse and pinnated grouse, ruffed grouse, golden pheasant and ...
— The Minds and Manners of Wild Animals • William T. Hornaday
... daffodils, under the winter sun. Now and then they lunched uptown at some inexpensive restaurant that was still quiet and refined. The big hotels were far too costly but there were several pretty lunchrooms, "The Bird of Paradise," "The London Tearoom," and, most popular of all, "The ...
— Saturday's Child • Kathleen Norris
... of being, where the lavish hand of Plenty shall minister to the highest wish of Benevolence, and where the chill north wind of Prudence shall never blow over the flowery field of Enjoyment?" The design may be that of an Old Hawk, but the style is more suggestive of a Bird of Paradise. It is sometimes hard to fancy they are not gravely making fun of each other as they write. Religion, poetry, love, and charming sensibility, are the current topics. "I am delighted, charming Clarinda, with your honest enthusiasm for religion," ...
— Familiar Studies of Men & Books • Robert Louis Stevenson
... and sometimes a bird of paradise. Most girls are sparrows, of course—see that row of nurse-maids over there? They're sparrows—or are they magpies? And of course you've met canary ...
— The Beautiful and Damned • F. Scott Fitzgerald
... was throughout all the earth! I looked at my shoulders, and thought them broad enough to sustain those pictured towns and mountains; mine, too, was an elastic foot, as tireless as the wing of the bird of paradise; mine was then an untroubled heart, that would have gone singing ...
— The Seven Vagabonds (From "Twice Told Tales") • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... dispose of this question by a contemptuous fling at strong-minded women and hen-pecked husbands. The principle will gain more strength from the character of the arguments of its opponents than from any number of Bloomer conventions. The modern idea of the fashionable belle, floating like a bird of paradise through the soiree; the impersonation of motion and grace in the ball-room, indulging alternately in syncope and rapture over the marvelous adventures and despair of the hero of a mushroom romance, her rapid transition from one excitement to another, to fill up ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume I • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... and sharp as enchanted swords which had magically flowered, lilied the desert stretches, and there were strange red blossoms like drops of blood clinging to the points of long daggers. Bird of Paradise plants were there, too, well named for their plumy splendour of crimson, white, and yellow; and as the spring advanced the China trees brought memories of ...
— The Second Latchkey • Charles Norris Williamson and Alice Muriel Williamson
... the Hindu occupied the position of honor in the social stage, Norris found it hard to keep his attention fixed on that bird of paradise, who, at best, was sure to be but a temporary interest in these western states of America, where facts, not theories, loom large. The new young man's eyes wandered to the audience, made up of people like himself. The unknown catches us for an instant, ...
— Jewel Weed • Alice Ames Winter
... say nothing; but I don't think it's so nice—do you, Mrs. Lissman?—the first month what her mourning for her mother is up a yellow bird of paradise as big as a fan she has to ...
— Every Soul Hath Its Song • Fannie Hurst
... beautifully disguised search for admiration extended far and wide, and she found what she wanted sometimes in unexpected places, in sombre Oxford libraries, in time-worn deaneries, in East-End settlements, through which she flashed now and then like a bird of Paradise, darting across the murk of a strange black country on its way to golden regions, as well as in Mayfair, in the Shires, in foreign capitals, and on the ...
— December Love • Robert Hichens
... evaporated frivolity; flirtations lingered in every frill, and memories of old larks lurked in every furbelow. The hats had a jaunty list to port, and the colored slippers still held a dance within their soles. One old bird of paradise on Miss Jim's favorite bonnet had a chronic wink for the wickedness ...
— Mr. Opp • Alice Hegan Rice
... judgment, and in that of SOME GOOD JUDGES likewise, to that humbug Clarence Bulbul's ballads,)—to hear her, I say, sing these, was to be in a sort of small Elysium. Dear, dear little Fanny Dixon! she was like a little chirping bird of Paradise. It was a shame that storms should ever ruffle ...
— The Christmas Books • William Makepeace Thackeray
... birds!" Flirting the rustling plumage in her eyes— "Look here, thou vile predestined sinner, Doomed to be roasted for a dinner, Behold these lovely variegated dyes! These are the rainbow colors of the skies, That heaven has shed upon me con amore— A Bird of Paradise?—a pretty story! I am that Saintly Fowl, thou paltry chick! Look at my crown of glory! Thou dingy, dirty, dabbled, draggled jill!" And off goes Partlett, wriggling from a kick, With bleeding scalp ...
— The Humourous Poetry of the English Language • James Parton
... Henrietta, with an inquisitorial air, after the girls had decided that the slides on the bows of Lilly's dress were too small, and that her 'Bird of Paradise' was lovely enough to fly away with them all, 'Fanny, are you the 'bright, particular star' of ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. III, No IV, April 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... rather like a bird of paradise mating with an eagle. Yet the result was happy on the whole; for she had a thoroughly kindly nature, and a true heart. Within ten days before her death, Scott enters in his diary:—"Still welcoming me with a smile, and asserting she is better." ...
— Sir Walter Scott - (English Men of Letters Series) • Richard H. Hutton
... green with blue wavy stripes and spots (FISTULARIS SERRATUS) has the shape of a gar-fish, and to counterbalance a long tubular snout, a slender filament resembling the bare feather shaft of some bird of paradise extending from the tail. ...
— The Confessions of a Beachcomber • E J Banfield
... profitable tales in the world, I could tell tales of scores of queer doings there. All the high and low demireps of the town gathered there, from his Grace of Ancaster down to my countryman, poor Mr. Oliver Goldsmith the poet, and from the Duchess of Kingston down to the Bird of Paradise, or Kitty Fisher. Here I have met very queer characters, who came to queer ends too: poor Hackman, that afterwards was hanged for killing Miss Reay, and (on the sly) his Reverence Doctor Simony, whom my friend Sam Foote, of the 'Little Theatre,' bade to live even after ...
— Barry Lyndon • William Makepeace Thackeray
... "Like a celestial bird of Paradise. No one ever went better;—or I believe so well. You've been carried rather ...
— The Eustace Diamonds • Anthony Trollope
... The Regions of the Bird of Paradise. A Tale for Boys. With One Hundred and Eleven Illustrations. Crown 8vo, cloth, richly ...
— The Cockatoo's Story • Mrs. George Cupples
... which is more like that of an ape than of one of the piscine tribe; while its tail is divided into two lobes or blades, one of which is small and insignificant, and the other larger than the body of the animal, curling up at the end like the tail- feather of a bird of paradise. ...
— The Wreck of the Nancy Bell - Cast Away on Kerguelen Land • J. C. Hutcheson
... to the centre of the porch and stood sunning herself in a stray shaft of light, like a very bird of paradise. The "tempestuous petticoat," sky-blue and laced with silver, swelled proudly outwards, the gleaming satin bodice slipped low over the snowy shoulders and the heaving bosom, and the sleeves, trimmed with magnificent lace and looped with pearls, showed the rounded arms to perfection. ...
— Prisoners of Hope - A Tale of Colonial Virginia • Mary Johnston
... wings of ruby-red or gold, and dragonflies that picked out the undergrowth with fire. In the shadow overhead flew and chattered crowds of green paroquets and glossy crows, while here and there we could see a Bird of Paradise drooping its smart tail-feathers amid the foliage. A little further, and deep in the forest the ear caught the busy tap-tap of the woodpecker, the snap of the toucan's beak, or far away the deep trumpeting of the elephant. Once we startled a leopard ...
— Dead Man's Rock • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... and by sound some of our own songsters. It is often said that English birds have sober plumage; and so they have, compared with the parrots and the humming-birds that "flit about like living fires, scarce larger than a bee," and the wonderful bird of paradise, which the natives of New Guinea call "God's bird," because it shines with silver and gold—but still we have some very ...
— Twilight And Dawn • Caroline Pridham
... made thy ruddy hair A crown of gold, but on thy spirit-face There was no smile, only a tender grace Of love half doubt. Upon thy hand a rare Wild bird of Paradise perched fearlessly With radiant plumage and still, ...
— A Woman's Love Letters • Sophie M. Almon-Hensley
... time I have never known him to have an Easter hat or an Easter coat or an Easter pair of pants. I saw him at the Opera lately and his wife had on a seal skin sacque, and plain X. himself had on no gloves. Why should X. be compelled to carry through life a bird of paradise, while he appears in the sombre and often shiny costume of the more humble crow? And now that I have asked that audacious question, let me ask another: Why is it that as soon as the frost of age touches a man he commences to tone down his dress, and as soon as it ...
— Observations of a Retired Veteran • Henry C. Tinsley
... to have been taken from a King of France, while the English were masters there. We were shown here, among other things, the horn of a unicorn, of above eight spans and a half in length, valued at above 10,000 pounds; the bird of paradise, three spans long, three fingers broad, having a blue bill of the length of half an inch, the upper part of its head yellow, the nether part of a . . . colour; {16} a little lower from either side of its throat stick out some reddish feathers, ...
— Travels in England and Fragmenta Regalia • Paul Hentzner and Sir Robert Naunton
... a man admires nobility and intelligence in a woman; but in the concrete he always prefers a bird of Paradise to a wren, a decoration to an inspiration ...
— A Guide to Men - Being Encore Reflections of a Bachelor Girl • Helen Rowland
... who evidently felt qualms about the success of his part, had determined to make it comic, and appeared in the strange costume of a Mexican general, with a hat trimmed with white feathers, surmounted by a bird of paradise. Worse still, when he took off this hat he showed a wig in the form of a pyramid, a coiffure which was the special prerogative of Louis Philippe! The play was doomed. The Duke of Orleans, who was in one of the boxes, left the ...
— Honore de Balzac, His Life and Writings • Mary F. Sandars
... There sat the young King, under a canopy of state, five steps away, with his head bent down and aside, speaking with a sort of human bird of paradise—a duke, maybe. Hendon observed to himself that it was hard enough to be sentenced to death in the full vigour of life, without having this peculiarly public humiliation added. He wished the King would hurry about it—some of the gaudy people near by were becoming pretty ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... things ever grow "stale and rung-upon," however much the chilly hand of a pedantic psychology seeks to brush the bloom away from the wings of the bird of paradise? ...
— Suspended Judgments - Essays on Books and Sensations • John Cowper Powys
... such as his love is, and thence such as his life is, so that to transmute this life into the opposite is altogether to destroy the spirit. It were easier, says Swedenborg, to change a night bird into a dove, an owl into a bird of paradise, than to change a subject of hell into a subject of heaven after the line of death has been crossed. But why the crossing of that line should make such an infinite difference he does not explain; nor does he prove it ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger
... attention which has turned it eventually into a Belasco "offering." None of his collaborators will gainsay this genius of his. John Luther Long's novel was unerringly dramatized; Richard Walton Tully, when he left the Belasco fold, imitated the Belasco manner, in "The Bird of Paradise" and "Omar, the Tentmaker." And that same ability Belasco possesses to dissect the heart of a romantic piece was carried by him into war drama, and into parlour comedies, and plays of business condition. ...
— The Return of Peter Grimm • David Belasco |
