"Carbuncle" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... twelve other gems, engraving the names of the twelve sons of Jacob upon them, one name upon each. No two of these gems were alike: (12) the first, to bear the name of Reuben, was like sardius; the second, for Simon, like topaz; the third, Levi, like emerald; the fourth, Judah, like carbuncle; the fifth, Issachar, like sapphire; the sixth, Zebulon, like jasper; the seventh, Dan, like ligure; the eighth, Naphtali, like amethyst; the ninth, Gad, like agate; the tenth, Asher, like chrysolite; the eleventh, Joseph, like beryl; and ...
— THE LEGENDS OF THE JEWS VOLUME IV BIBLE TIMES AND CHARACTERS - FROM THE EXODUS TO THE DEATH OF MOSES • BY LOUIS GINZBERG
... his coat back on, but he clung to his weapons—there was no telling when the Indians might start an uprising. Probably at the moment it would have deeply pained him to learn that the only Indian uprising reported in these parts in the last forty years was a carbuncle on the back of the neck of Uncle Hopi Hooligan, the gentle copper-colored floorwalker of the white-goods counter in the Hopi ...
— Roughing it De Luxe • Irvin S. Cobb
... custom still followed by their descendants. The ladies even wreathed them in the bands of their head-dresses. Rabelais speaks of the rings Gargantua wore because his father desired him to "renew that ancient mark of nobility." On the forefinger of his left hand he had a gold ring, set with a large carbuncle; and on the middle finger one of mixed metal, then usually made by alchemists. On the middle finger of the right hand he had "a ring made spire-wise, wherein was set a perfect balew ruby, a pointed diamond, and a ...
— Rambles of an Archaeologist Among Old Books and in Old Places • Frederick William Fairholt
... Sarrazin was there, of Sarraguce, Of that city one half was his by use, 'Twas Climborins, a man was nothing proof; By Guenelun the count an oath he took, And kissed his mouth in amity and truth, Gave him his sword and his carbuncle too. Terra Major, he said, to shame he'ld put, From the Emperour his crown he would remove. He sate his horse, which he called Barbamusche, Never so swift sparrow nor swallow flew, He spurred him well, and down the reins he threw, Going to strike ...
— The Song of Roland • Anonymous
... as the clear light of her hills, Full of the sound of a hundred waters falling; And poureth his desire out, belike, Upon that queen the wealth of the world hath clad, Babylon, for whose golden bed the gods Wrangle like young men with great gifts and boasts; Whose mind is as a carbuncle of fire, Full of the sound ...
— Emblems Of Love • Lascelles Abercrombie
... with the detained sunshine of the summer; and along the borders of the wood walk, scarlet flames of sumach sprang out, vivid, from among the lingering green; and birches trembled with their golden plumes; and bronzed ash boughs, and deep crimsons and maroons and chocolate browns and carbuncle red that crowned the oaks with richer and intenser hues, made up a wealth and massiveness of beauty wherein eye and ...
— Faith Gartney's Girlhood • Mrs. A. D. T. Whitney
... well as gentlemen, called on Lord Salisbury, presumably on quite a different matter, but led up to Lord Randolph. Lord Salisbury, seeing through their object, asked the question, "Have any of you ever had a carbuncle on the ...
— The Confessions of a Caricaturist, Vol. 1 (of 2) • Harry Furniss
... diablerie of the sort. My comrade Pierce Scotton, who was an Oberst in the Imperial cavalry brigade, did pay him a rose noble to have his future expounded. If I remember aright, the stars said that he was over-fond of wine and women—he had a wicked eye and a nose like a carbuncle. 'They foretold also that he would attain a marshal's baton and die at a ripe age, which might well have come true had he not been unhorsed a month later at Ober-Graustock, and slain by the hoofs of his own troop. Neither the planets nor even the experienced ...
— Micah Clarke - His Statement as made to his three Grandchildren Joseph, - Gervas and Reuben During the Hard Winter of 1734 • Arthur Conan Doyle
... perhaps, the writer did not care to express formally and in set terms, and which he merely suggests and leaves the reader to make out for himself. If you have the book I am writing about, turn up "David Swan," "The Great Carbuncle," "The Fancy Show-box," and after you have read these, you ...
— Dreamthorp - A Book of Essays Written in the Country • Alexander Smith
... a dream in which she was told that she was destined to be the caliph's wife, and thereby to possess the carbuncle of Giamsched, and the treasures of the pre-Adamite sultans, indulged doubts on the mode of her being, and scarcely could believe that she was dead. She rose one morning while all were asleep, and having wandered some ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol. I • Various
... of Golden Wasps, whose dazzling splendour, worthy of the wealth of Golconda, clashes with the dingy colour of their haunts. To deceive the eyes of their bird-tyrants, the Swift, the Swallow, the Chat and the others, these Chrysis-wasps, who glow like a carbuncle, like a nugget in the midst of its dark veinstone, certainly do not adapt themselves to the sand and the clay of their downs. The Green Grasshopper, we are told, thought out a plan for gulling his enemies by identifying himself in colour with ...
— The Mason-bees • J. Henri Fabre
... they pointed to the lizard playing in the sun and escaping at their approach,—behavior which has won him the title of "the friend of man." "Proving, too, how well he knows him," said Emile. They watched the frogs, who, less distrustful, returned to the surface of the pond, winking their carbuncle eyes as they sat upon the water-cresses. The sweet and simple poetry of Nature permeated these two souls surfeited with the conventional things of life, and filled them with contemplative emotion. Suddenly Blondet shuddered. Turning to the countess ...
— Sons of the Soil • Honore de Balzac
... in a surprisingly agile manner, For the wind through the keyhole kept saying, "Spruggins! Spruggins!" behind him. The fire in his bedroom burned brightly. The room with its crimson bed and window curtains Was as red and glowing as a carbuncle. It was still and warm. There was no wind here, for the windows were fastened; And no moon, For the curtains were drawn. The candle flame stood up like a pointed pear In a wide brass dish. Mr. Spruggins sighed with content; He was safe at home. The fire glowed—red and yellow roses In the black ...
— Men, Women and Ghosts • Amy Lowell
... word. "'Tis conscience that makes cowards of us all." He felt on his cheek the sharp points of Eleanor's fingers, and did not know who might have seen the blow, who might have told the tale to this pestilent woman who took such delight in jeering him. He stood there, therefore, red as a carbuncle and mute as a fish; grinning sufficiently to show his teeth; an ...
— Barchester Towers • Anthony Trollope
... their ingenuity to explaining the stones of the breastplate of Aaron, and those that shine in the foundations of the New Jerusalem, as described by St. John; indeed, the walls of Sion are set with the same jewels as the High Priest's pectoral, with the exception of the carbuncle, the ligure, agate, and onyx, which are named in Exodus, and replaced in the Book of Revelation by chalcedony, sardonyx, chrysoprase, ...
— The Cathedral • Joris-Karl Huysmans
... women, one of twenty-six and the other of fifty years, and in them the pustules were well marked, and the general symptoms similar to the other cases. The latter patient said she had been bitten by a fly upon the back d the neck, at which part the carbuncle appeared; and the former, that she had also been bitten upon the right upper arm by a gnat. Upon inquiry, Wagner found that the skin of one of the infected beasts had been hung on a neighboring wall, and thought it very possible that the insects might have been attracted to ...
— Andersonville, complete • John McElroy
... keenness. When the young warrior would perform the edge-feat withal, it was the same whether he cut with his shield or his spear or his sword. Next he put round his head his crested war-helm of battle and fight and combat, [5]wherein were four carbuncle-gems on each point and each end to adorn it,[5] whereout was uttered the cry of an hundred young warriors with the long-drawn wail from each of its angles and corners. [W.2583.] For this was the way that the fiends, the goblins ...
— The Ancient Irish Epic Tale Tain Bo Cualnge • Unknown
... senior partner, Mr. Turnbull. He was a stout, florid man, with a bald crown, a heavy watch-chain of the best gold festooned across the wide space between waistcoat-button-hole and pocket, and a large hemispheroidal carbuncle on a huge fat finger, which yet was his little one. He was close-shaved, double-chinned, and had cultivated an ordinary smile to such an extraordinary degree that, to use the common hyperbole, it reached from ear to ear. By nature he was good-tempered ...
— Mary Marston • George MacDonald
... with the wayward pranks of a fancy which seems a little too restive to be entirely controlled by his artistic sense; but they possess much dramatic truth and power. He delights in the supernatural element, but approaches it from the gentler human side. In "The Carbuncle," only, we find something of that weird, uncanny atmosphere which casts its glamour around the "Tam O'Shanter" of Burns. A more satisfactory illustration of his peculiar qualities is "The Ghost's Visit on the ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 54, April, 1862 • Various
... rounded or acuminate, and has but one point of suppuration; a carbuncle is large, flattened, intensely painful, often with grave systemic disturbance, and has, moreover, several ...
— Essentials of Diseases of the Skin • Henry Weightman Stelwagon
... the Sun was raised high, on stately columns, bright with radiant gold, and carbuncle that rivals the flames; polished ivory covered its highest top, {and} double folding doors shone with the brightness of silver. The workmanship {even} exceeded the material; for there Mulciber had carved the ...
— The Metamorphoses of Ovid - Vol. I, Books I-VII • Publius Ovidius Naso
... busie among themselves in bartering for Features; one was trucking a Lock of grey Hairs for a Carbuncle, another was making over a short Waste for a Pair of round Shoulders, and a third cheapning a bad Face for a lost Reputation: But on all these Occasions, there was not one of them who did not think the new Blemish, as ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... have ridiculed the celestial substance of his temples, his golden palaces, his splendid cities where angels disport themselves; they laugh at his groves of miraculous trees, his gardens where the flowers speak and the air is white, and the mystical stones, the sard, carbuncle, chrysolite, chrysoprase, jacinth, chalcedony, beryl, the Urim and Thummim, are endowed with motion, express celestial truths, and reply by variations of light to questions put to them ('True Christian Religion,' ...
— Seraphita • Honore de Balzac
... from Memory Hawthorne gives an intimation of the tale which he might write and did afterward write of The Great Carbuncle. The paper is interesting as showing what were the actual experiences out of which he ...
— The Great Stone Face - And Other Tales Of The White Mountains • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... alias Bluff Bob, alias Carbuncle, alias Bob Booty, one of Macheath's gang of thieves, and a favorite of Mrs. Peachum's.—Gay, ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook, Vol. 3 • E. Cobham Brewer
... maner Jowell is to me lyke certayne Ne so profytable to mortall creature I passe all ryches and cause a man refrayne His mynde from synne, and of his ende be sure There is no treasoure nor precious stone so pure Carbuncle Ruby ne adamond in londe nor see Nor other ...
— The Ship of Fools, Volume 1 • Sebastian Brandt
... recommended by some writers on the first day, where the inflammation was supposed to be attended with sufficient arterial strength, which might perhaps sometimes happen, as the bubo seems to be a suppuration; but the carbuncle, or anthrax, is a gangrene of the part, and shews the greatest debility of circulation. Whence all the means before enumerated in this genus of diseases to support the powers of life are to be administered. ...
— Zoonomia, Vol. II - Or, the Laws of Organic Life • Erasmus Darwin
... against Dill that was some sorer than a carbuncle and it relieved its feelings by inventing punishments should he ever return to the camp which in ingenuity rivalled the tortures of the Inquisition. Bruce, too, often speculated concerning Dill, for it looked as though he had purposely betrayed Sprudell's interest. ...
— The Man from the Bitter Roots • Caroline Lockhart
... rock By more than human art; she did not knock, The door stood always open, large and wide, Grown o'er with woolly moss on either side, And interwove with ivy's nattering twines, Through which the carbuncle and diamond shines. Not set by Art, but there by Nature sown At the world's birth, so star-like bright they shone. They served instead of tapers to give light To the dark entry, where perpetual Night, Friend to black deeds, and sire of ...
— Specimens with Memoirs of the Less-known British Poets, Complete • George Gilfillan
... of historical romance, as in the story of the stern old regicide who suddenly appears from the woods to head the colonists of Massachusetts in a critical emergency; then he tries his hand at a bit of allegory, and describes the search for the mythical carbuncle which blazes by its inherent splendour on the face of a mysterious cliff in the depths of the untrodden wilderness, and lures old and young, the worldly and the romantic, to waste their lives in the vain effort to discover it—for the carbuncle is the ideal which mocks our pursuit, ...
— Hours in a Library, Volume I. (of III.) • Leslie Stephen |
