"Centipede" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... a black-beetle, or a wood-louse, or a centipede? There are lots of insects more offensive than the grasshopper, and personally I would much rather be called a grasshopper than an earwig, which gets into people's sponges and frightens them ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 159, July 21, 1920 • Various
... the mountain with its Mediterranean flora, so rich that it recalled the Corsican maquis; full of beautiful fungi and varied insects, where, under the flat stones exposed to the burning sun, the centipede burrowed and the scorpion slept; where a special fauna abounded—of curious dung-beetles, scarabaei, the Copris, the Minotaur, etc.—which only a little farther north grow rapidly scarcer and then ...
— Fabre, Poet of Science • Dr. G.V. (C.V.) Legros
... useless, but if not, all are useless. 'The neck of the crane may seem too long to some idle on-lookers, but there is no surplus in it. The limbs of the tortoise may appear too short, but there is no shortcoming in them.' The centipede, having a hundred limbs, can find no useless feet; the serpent, having no foot, ...
— The Religion of the Samurai • Kaiten Nukariya
... a long, dislocated trunk of a wild Banian; like a huge centipede crawling on its hundred branches, sawn of even lengths for legs. This table was set out with wry-necked gourds; deformities of calabashes; and shapeless trenchers, dug out ...
— Mardi: and A Voyage Thither, Vol. II (of 2) • Herman Melville
... the splash As of some hideous engine whose brazen teeth smash 145 The thin winds and soft waves into thunder; the screams And hissings crawl fast o'er the smooth ocean-streams, Each sound like a centipede. Near this commotion, A blue shark is hanging within the blue ocean, The fin-winged tomb of the victor. The other 150 Is winning his way from the fate of his brother To his own with the speed of despair. Lo! a boat Advances; twelve rowers with the impulse of thought Urge on the keen keel,—the ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley Volume I • Percy Bysshe Shelley
... many poisonous reptiles in this country, but few accidents happen either to the aborigines, or the colonists from their bite. Of these the centipede, tarantula, scorpion, slow-worm, and the snake, are the most to be dreaded; particularly the latter, since there are, I believe, at least thirty varieties of them, of which all but one are ...
— Statistical, Historical and Political Description of the Colony of New South Wales and its Dependent Settlements in Van Diemen's Land • William Charles Wentworth
... distant lands, what tropical forests did I not behold in my dreams! At that time, near the garden bench, in some of the crevices in the stone wall, there dwelt many a big ugly black spider ever on the watch, peeping out of his nook ready to pounce upon any giddy fly or wandering centipede. One of my amusements consisted in tickling the spiders gently, very gently, with a blade of grass or a cherry stalk in their holes. Mystified, they would rush out, fancying they had to deal with some sort of prey, whilst I would rapidly draw back my hand in disgust. Well, ...
— Madame Chrysantheme • Pierre Loti
... tremendously. "It's going like cutting butter with a hot knife. I started cross-examining today. I gave him three and a half hours of it, straight off the ice, and I'm not through with him yet. Not half. If he had as many legs as a centipede he'd still not have one left to stand on when I'm through with him. I doubt he'll have his marrow bones to crawl out on, the way he's crumpling up. Even old Hounslow at his worst can't possibly misdirect the jury, the way I've gummed their noses on ...
— This Freedom • A. S. M. Hutchinson
... The centipede runs across my head, The vinegaroon crawls in my bed, Tarantulas jump and scorpions play, The broncs are grazing far away, The rattlesnake gives his warning cry, And the coyotes sing their lullaby, While I sleep soundly ...
— Songs of the Cattle Trail and Cow Camp • Various
... by warning them of the fact that they are unpalatable food, as is believed to be the case with the colors of certain brilliantly-colored caterpillars; it may be in other ways. In Kirby and Spence one case is recorded in which the phosphorescence of the common phosphorescent centipede (Geophilus electricus) was actually seen apparently to serve as a means of defence against an enemy. "Mr. Shepherd," says that authority, "once noticed a scarabeus running round the last-mentioned insect when shining, as if wishing, but afraid to attack it." In the case of the jelly-fishes, ...
— Young Folks' Library, Volume XI (of 20) - Wonders of Earth, Sea and Sky • Various
... ocean rolled. Fool! I am the Fates' lieutenant; I act under orders. Look thou, underling! that thou obeyest mine.—Stand round me, men. Ye see an old man cut down to the stump; leaning on a shivered lance; propped up on a lonely foot. 'Tis Ahab—his body's part; but Ahab's soul's a centipede, that moves upon a hundred legs. I feel strained, half stranded, as ropes that tow dismasted frigates in a gale; and I may look so. But ere I break, yell hear me crack; and till ye hear THAT, know ...
— Moby Dick; or The Whale • Herman Melville
... once thought to play a trick on Charles Darwin. They took the body of a centipede, the wings of a butterfly, the legs of a grasshopper and the head of a beetle, and glued these together to form a weird monster. With the composite creature in a ...
— Jokes For All Occasions - Selected and Edited by One of America's Foremost Public Speakers • Anonymous
... or hairy, cat-like creature that on the cloud-edges beats his drums in crash, roll, or rattle; the earthquake-fish or subterranean bull-head or cat-fish that wriggles and writhes, causing the earth to shiver, shudder and open; the ja or dragon centipede; the tengu or long-nosed and winged mountain sprite, which acts as the messenger of the gods, pulling out the tongues of fibbing, lying children; besides the colossal spiders and mythical creatures of the old story-books; the ...
— The Religions of Japan - From the Dawn of History to the Era of Meiji • William Elliot Griffis
... in sheepskins and warm materials, had sheepskin caps on their heads; there was he with his bare arms, in well-worn grey trousers, his shirt fastened together at the neck with a piece of wood. Sitting among them, defenceless as a centipede, without anyone belonging to him, puffing clouds of smoke, he inwardly blessed this adventure, in which everything had turned out so well. The Cossacks looked at the fire, and they too said: 'This is very nice, ...
— Selected Polish Tales • Various
... does, the only thing is to bolt at once, for neither man nor beast may withstand the fire-ant and live. When at length the traveller stops to rest, he must take care to examine the camping ground to see that neither centipede nor scorpion is there. ...
— Harper's Young People, January 6, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... dislocated and was lying powerless in your mouth. Cold shivers begin to creep downwards from the nape of your neck and all up you at the same time, until they seem to meet in the small of your back. About this time you feel as if a centipede, all of whose feet have been carefully iced, has begun to run about in the roots of your hair. The next agreeable sensation is the breaking out of a cold sweat all over. Then you are certain that some one has cut the muscles at the back of your knees. Your mouth begins ...
— The Story of My Life - Recollections and Reflections • Ellen Terry
... of the West are now being cut up into small farms. The nester has come, and come to stay. Gone is the buffalo, the Indian warwhoop, the free grass of the open plain;—even the stinging lizard, the horned frog, the centipede, the prairie dog, the rattlesnake, are fast disappearing. Save in some of the secluded valleys of southern New Mexico, the old-time round-up is no more; the trails to Kansas and to Montana have become grass-grown or lost ...
— Cowboy Songs - and Other Frontier Ballads • Various
... the great Sierra, with spreading ridge and foothill, like some huge, sprawling centipede, its granite back unbroken for a thousand miles. Frost-torn peaks, of every height and bearing, pierce the blue wastes above. Their slopes are dark with forests of sugar pines and giant sequoias, the mightiest of trees, in whose silent aisles one ...
— California and the Californians • David Starr Jordan
... truth about constipation, indigestion, insomnia, and the other functional disturbances common to nervous folk, you can do, no better than to commit to memory and store away for future reference that choice limerick of the centipede, which so admirably sums up the whole matter ...
— Outwitting Our Nerves - A Primer of Psychotherapy • Josephine A. Jackson and Helen M. Salisbury
... on Molly, in a reflective tone, "that you can make a catch; but you can try. There is the chaplain—horrid old centipede! And there's old Walford"—Molly never favoured any man with a Mr to his name—"an ugly, spiteful old bear that nobody'll have: he's rich enough; and he might look your way if you play your cards well. Any way, you'll not have much chance else; so you'd better keep your eyes pretty ...
— The Maidens' Lodge - None of Self and All of Thee, (In the Reign of Queen Anne) • Emily Sarah Holt
... warn of danger. For the same purpose he make a serpent pass in front of the prahu, or a rusa cry in the middle of the day. At night this cry is immaterial. The most inauspicious of all omens is the appearance of a centipede. If a man in a ladang is confronted with such an animal he at once stops work there and takes up ...
— Through Central Borneo: - An Account of Two Years' Travel in the Land of Head-Hunters - Between the Years 1913 and 1917 • Carl Lumholtz
... service that I lost my leg—'twas but a runaway accident with two fiery little ponies in Philadelphia! But, indeed," he goes on, still laughing, "I do not miss it greatly, and can get around as easily as though I were a centipede and had a hundred ...
— Calvert of Strathore • Carter Goodloe
... had she spot or taint, Bitter had been thy punishment Tied to the hornet's shardy wings, Tossed on the pricks of nettles' stings, Or seven long ages doomed to dwell With the lazy worm in the walnut-shell; Or every night to writhe and bleed Beneath the tread of the centipede; Or bound in a cobweb dungeon dim, Your jailer a spider huge and grim, Amid the carrion bodies to lie Of the worm, and the bug and the murdered fly: These it had been your lot to bear, Had a stain been found on the earthly fair. Now list and mark our mild decree Fairy, this your ...
— Selections From American Poetry • Various
... the traveller as other tropical countries in which ferocious animals abound. Hardly a tree or a shrub can be found that does not contain or conceal some stinging abomination. The whole of these are not, of course, deadly, but a tarantula bite, or a centipede sting, will cripple a strong man for weeks, while a feeble constitution stands a fair chance of succumbing. But of all these pests, none can equal the snakes, which not only swarm, but seem to have no fear of man, selecting dwellings by choice for an ...
— Australian Search Party • Charles Henry Eden
... a Centipede went out to take a walk; The Centipede said frankly, "I will listen while you talk, But I may appear distracted, or assume a vacant stare, Because to keep my feet in step ...
— The Jingle Book • Carolyn Wells |
