"Chameleon" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... a guessing contest—impulsive today, he has to be repressed; phlegmatic tomorrow, he has to be stimulated; and he may be sanguine the next day. There never was a pleasanter boy to work with, but like the chameleon you are never ...
— The Boy and the Sunday School - A Manual of Principle and Method for the Work of the Sunday - School with Teen Age Boys • John L. Alexander
... fellow-students he was gay, amiable, up to a certain point even frivolous; then, as each companion in turn complained, a curtain seemed to drop, a colorless wrap of unintelligibility enveloped him like a chameleon's changing skin; the youth, as if he lived another life on another plane, ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1920 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... one needs a new syntax, all being anomalous. With the Indians the argument does not conclude by induction, since no one is like to himself; for, in the short circuit of a day, he changes into more colors than a chameleon, takes more shapes than a Proteus, and has more movements than a Euripus. [332] He who has most to do with them, knows them least. In short, they are an aggregate of contrarieties, and the best logician cannot reconcile them. They are ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898 - Volume 40 of 55 • Francisco Colin
... his claims to genius. He had considerable literary talents, by which he was distinguished at Oxford; but he was so dreadfully afraid of passing for a pedant, that when he came into the company of the idle and the ignorant, he pretended to disdain every species of knowledge. His chameleon character seemed to vary in different lights, and according to the different situations in which he happened to be placed. He could be all things to all men—and to all women. He was supposed to be a favourite ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. III - Belinda • Maria Edgeworth
... or a Peter with many sides. He changes colours like a chameleon, and his coat like a snake. He is a Proteus of a Peter. He was at first sublime, pathetic, impressive, profound; then dull; then prosy and dull; and now dull—oh so very dull! it ...
— Peter Bell the Third • Percy Bysshe Shelley
... events of our lives are chameleon-hued: their colors vary according to the light by which we view them. Thus Eve, who the night before had seen nothing but happiness in the final arrangement between Adam and herself, awoke on the following morning ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 26, July 1880. • Various
... which are unclean unto you among the creeping things that creep upon the earth: the weasel, and the mouse, and the great lizard after its kind, and the gecko, and the land crocodile, and the sand-lizard, and the chameleon. These are they which are unclean to you among all that ...
— Mr. Gladstone and Genesis - Essay #5 from "Science and Hebrew Tradition" • Thomas Henry Huxley
... of whose curves almost touched across the nose. I saw the rose-tinted ivory of her skin and the long jet lashes curving in a great sweep from her full white lids, and I thought full sure that Venus herself was before me. My gaze halted for a moment at the long eyes which changed chameleon-like with the shifting light, and varied with her moods from deep fathomless green to violet, and from violet to soft voluptuous brown, but in all their tints beaming forth a lustre that would have stirred the soul of an anchorite. Then I noted the beauty of her clean-cut ...
— Dorothy Vernon of Haddon Hall • Charles Major
... sensed there were touches about it that differentiated it from anything turned out locally. With the dress she looked more womanly, older, than in the boyish breeches. Miss Nicholson had made some changes also, but she had a chameleon-like faculty of blending with the background that preserved her alike from being criticized or conspicuous. As she shook hands with Miranda the two presented marked contrasts. Miranda was twentieth-century-western, of equal rights and equal enterprise; Miss Nicholson mid-Victorian, ...
— Rimrock Trail • J. Allan Dunn
... sir," said I. "But, surely, if you are the young gentleman with whom I spent the hours yesterday, you have the chameleon art of changing your appearance; I never could ...
— The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner • James Hogg
... to other lodgings at the beginning of each quarter of the year, so traversing till doomsday, being impotent of staying in one place, and finding some ease by so purning [journeying] and changing habitations. Their chameleon-like bodies swim in the air near the earth with bag and baggage; and at such revolution of time, seers, or men of the second sight (females being seldom so qualified) have very terrifying encounters with them, even on highways; who, therefore, ...
— Folk-Lore and Legends - Scotland • Anonymous
... they really were; and according to the interest which had been last exerted over his flexible mind, the King would change from an indulgent to a strict and even cruel father, from a confiding to a jealous brother, or from a benignant and bountiful to a grasping and encroaching sovereign. Like the chameleon, his feeble mind reflected the colour of that firmer character upon which at the time he reposed for counsel and assistance. And when he disused the advice of one of his family, and employed the ...
— The Fair Maid of Perth • Sir Walter Scott
... lively pink reflection from the upper atmosphere; the vast variety of tints with which the greens and the reds, the purples and the fiery crimsons of the western sky tincture the receptive surface of the neutral-hued granites; and the chameleon-shiftings of the dying day, as it sinks into the arms of night. Nor less admirable are the feats of the fairy Refraction. The mighty curtain seems to rise and fall as if by magic: it imitates, as ...
— The Land of Midian, Vol. 2 • Richard Burton
... much excited now, evidently; he relinquished my unwilling hand coldly—on which he had, doubtless, missed the conspicuous ring, significant of my engagement. His chameleon eyes seemed to emit sparks of phosphorescent fire, as if every one of the dull-yellow sparks therein had become suddenly ignited. I saw then, for the first time, what his ire could be, and what reason ...
— Miriam Monfort - A Novel • Catherine A. Warfield
... and the invalid public would not seek life itself, in these days of luxurious travel, at the cost of a twelve hours' stage-ride. However, as long as the couple had a roof over their heads and the Springs continued to plop and vomit their strange, chameleon-colored slime, Leander would continue to bring home the sick and the suffering for Polly and the Springs to practice on. Health became his hobby, and in time, with isolation thrown in, it began to invade his common ...
— The Desert and The Sown • Mary Hallock Foote
... Olga. "Life is any color one wishes, and sometimes the color one does not wish. Very pale at times, gray, yellow and at times red—oh, so red! The soul is the chameleon which absorbs and reflects it. Today," she signed, "my chameleon has taken a vacation." She rose abruptly and threw out her arms with ...
— Madcap • George Gibbs
... man has said in every age," I protested. "But our Dante baffles me. He changes his moods as a chameleon changes his coat, and feeds each mood so full. Yesteryear he was mad for the open air, and the games, and the joy of life. To-day he is mewed in the cloisters of knowledge. He is damned in his Latin. I will wait no more ...
— The God of Love • Justin Huntly McCarthy
... "satisfied" with him, but since her lady-in-waiting, too, was, I might, after all, fare no better than Berri, if Henry was a toad, "his skin spotted like a serpent's, oily like a negro's, changeable like a chameleon, with a turned up nose and disproportionate mouth." Yet I hardly believe that, like my cousin, I would say anent a rival: "Whoever would not be satisfied with him, would be hard ...
— Secret Memoirs: The Story of Louise, Crown Princess • Henry W. Fischer
... besought him that he might be permitted so to do. Whereunto Pantagruel would not give consent, but commanded him to depart thence speedily and begone as he had told him, and to that effect gave him a boxful of euphorbium, together with some grains of the black chameleon thistle, steeped into aqua vitae, and made up into the condiment of a wet sucket, commanding him to carry it to his king, and to say unto him, that if he were able to eat one ounce of that without drinking after it, he might then be able to resist him without any ...
— Gargantua and Pantagruel, Complete. • Francois Rabelais
... speaking, they moved from shadow to sunlight, and from sunlight to shadow, down the road to the great pine-tree. The white and purple flowers lay in her hand and along her bended arm; from the folds of her dress, of some rich and silken stuff, chameleon-like in its changing colors, breathed the subtle fragrance of the perfume then most in fashion; over the thin lawn that half revealed, half concealed neck and bosom was drawn a long and glossy curl, carefully let to escape from the waved and banded ...
— Audrey • Mary Johnston
... languishing in lodgings there, and visited by all the town, except Fareham and his wife. De Malfort had lain for a fortnight at Lady Castlemaine's house, alternately petted and neglected by his fair hostess, as the fit took her, since she showed herself ever of the chameleon breed, and hovered betwixt angel and devil. His surgeon told him in confidence that when once his wound was healed enough to allow his removal, the sooner he quitted that feverish company the better it would be for his chance of a speedy convalescence. ...
— London Pride - Or When the World Was Younger • M. E. Braddon
... this learned body, was a fat, flabby, pale man, in a surtout which looked green one minute, and brown the next, with a velvet collar of the same chameleon tints. His forehead was narrow, his face wide, his head large, and his nose all on one side, as if Nature, indignant with the propensities she observed in him in his birth, had given it an angry tweak which it had never ...
— The Pickwick Papers • Charles Dickens
... of curiosity; it may have been abandoned to its fate, and left to hide itself among the numerous corners and crevices which are found among the timbers of a vessel's hold? It might procure sustenance in the bilge-water, or in the ballast rubbish, or perhaps, like the chameleon, ...
— The Boy Tar • Mayne Reid
... difficulties I am liable to encounter. The human heart, which will be the subject of my letters, presents so many contrasts, that whoever lays it bare must fall into a flood of contradictions. You think you have something stable in your grasp, but find you have seized a shadow. It is indeed a chameleon, which, viewed from different aspects, presents a variety of opposite colors, and even they are constantly shifting. You may expect to read many strange things in what I shall say upon this subject. I will, however, give you my ...
— Life, Letters, and Epicurean Philosophy of Ninon de L'Enclos, - the Celebrated Beauty of the Seventeenth Century • Robinson [and] Overton, ed. and translation.
... had not grown as rapidly as had Miss Carrington. The actor estimated that it had suffered as few actual changes since the departure of its solitary follower of Thespis as had a stage upon which "four years is supposed to have elapsed." He absorbed Cranberry Corners and returned to the city of chameleon changes. ...
— The Voice of the City • O. Henry
... such as Marie Boyer and Gabrielle Fenayrou, who may be described as passively criminal, chameleon-like, taking colour from their surroundings. By the force of a man's influence they commit a dreadful crime, in the one instance it is matricide, in the other the murder of a former lover, but neither of the women is profoundly vicious or criminal in ...
— A Book of Remarkable Criminals • H. B. Irving
... in The Two Gentlemen of Verona (Act ii., Sc. I), has the following: Speed. ...Why muse you, sir? 'tis dinner-time. Val. I have dined. Speed. Ay, but hearken, sir; though the chameleon, love, can feed on the air, I am one that am nourished by my victuals, and would fain have meat. O, be not like your mistress; be moved, ...
— Sganarelle - or The Self-Deceived Husband • Moliere
... The irreverent school-boys of Autun and Brienne gave the nickname "straw nose"—paille-au-nez—to both the brothers. The pronunciation, therefore, was probably as uncertain as the form, Napaille-au-nez being probably a distortion of Napouillone. The chameleon-like character of the name corresponds exactly to the chameleon-like character of the times, the man, and the lands of his birth and of his adoption. The Corsican noble and French royalist was Napoleone de Buonaparte; the ...
— The Life of Napoleon Bonaparte - Vol. I. (of IV.) • William Milligan Sloane
... the chancel of so many of our ancient churches have proved a fruitful source of discussion among archaeologists, and numerous theories have been advanced respecting their use. Perhaps the words of the chameleon in the fable might be addressed to many who have attempted to account for their existence, "You all are right and all are wrong"—right in your supposition that they were thus used; but wrong in maintaining that this was the exclusive purpose. Some ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 34, June 22, 1850 • Various
... were never a great eater, Janie, but latterly you live, like the chameleon, on air. Surely your health cannot be good, with such a poor appetite;—your ...
— Jane Sinclair; Or, The Fawn Of Springvale - The Works of William Carleton, Volume Two • William Carleton
... days and weeks. In the evening at the halting place, Tonton was brought into my tent, with the goat, which furnished her the greater part of her meals, and her inseparable friend, a large chameleon, captured by Michel, and responding or not responding to the ...
— International Short Stories: French • Various
... a heavenly Chameleon, The airy child of vapour and the sun, Brought forth in purple, cradled in vermilion, Baptized in molten gold, and swathed in dun, Glittering like crescents o'er a Turk's pavilion, And blending every colour into one, Just like a black eye in a recent ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 6 • Lord Byron
... carefully back. His clothes were excellent, with a precise detail. Everything about him was conspicuously correct in the English fashion. But the man was not English. One could not say from what race he came. Among the races of Southern Europe he could hardly have been distinguished. There was a chameleon quality strongly dominant in ...
— The Sleuth of St. James's Square • Melville Davisson Post
... neighbourhood! Why, you wouldn't find another such chameleon in the whole of Russia! I've never seen anything like it in my life, though I know a good bit about women, too. I have known regular devils in my time, but I never met anything like this. It is, as you say, by insolence and cynicism she ...
— The Duel and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... and coming up to the time of his death, in which I find fifty-five newspaper articles written by him, of from one to three columns in length, presenting, in his own terse, humorous, glowing, vigorous, convincing way, all sides of this chameleon-hued question; now analyzing the amendment and the laws to enforce it, turning aside here to answer the cavil of some carping critic, then to demolish and bury some blatant political defender of the whisky element; arraigning the Governor, ...
— Personal Recollections of Pardee Butler • Pardee Butler
... "'tis plain to see No maid but a chameleon is she, For here we have her brown and green and blue, And if not brown then rosy is her hue, And, if not red, why then 'tis very plain That brown she is or blue or green again. Now fain, sir, would I ask and question whether She e'er is seen ...
— The Geste of Duke Jocelyn • Jeffery Farnol
... artist, "what else should I call what has so often filled me with the deepest rapture? The Greek language has no more fitting expression for the grand and lofty things that hovered before me, and which I called by that chameleon of a word. Yet I have a different meaning from what appears before you at its sound. Were I to call it truth, you would scarcely understand me, but when I conjure before my soul the image of Alexandria, with all that springs from it, all that is ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... body by its mischievous guerilla tactics, by its little, active, imp-like agents—morbid impulses. We thus find that there is a deep truth in utilitarianism, after all—the rose-color romancings of chameleon writers. To make a man a clear-judging member of society, doing wise actions in the present moment, and saying wise and beautiful things for all time, a great indispensable is—to see that the house that his spirit has received ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Vol. 3, July, 1851 • Various
... turtles (Trionyx Egypticus and Trionyx Euphraticus), iguanas (Stellio vulgaris and Stellio spinipes), geckos, especially the Egyptian house gecko (O. lobatus), snakes, such as the asp (Coluber haje) and the horned snake (Coluber cerastes), and the chameleon. The Egyptian turtle is a large species, sometimes exceeding three feet in length. It is said to feed on the young of the crocodile. Both it and the Euphrates turtle are of the soft kind, i.e., of the kind which has not the shell complete, but unites the upper and under portions by ...
— The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 5. (of 7): Persia • George Rawlinson
... the architect, Chabrol, brought them back again to much their original outlines. Through all its changes of tenure and political vicissitudes little transformation took place as to the ground plan, or sky-line silhouette, of the chameleon palace of cardinal, king and emperor, and while in no sense is it architecturally imposing or luxurious, it is now, as ever in the past, one of the most distinctive ...
— Royal Palaces and Parks of France • Milburg Francisco Mansfield
... married a very beautiful, very shrewd, and very wicked Roman donzella, Lorenza Feliciani by name; and the worthy couple, combining their various talents, and regarding the world as their oyster, at once proceeded to open it in the most scientific style. I cannot follow this wonderful human chameleon in all his transformations under his various names of Fischio, Melissa, Fenice, Anna, Pellegrini, Harat, and Belmonte, nor state the studies and processes by which he picked up sufficient knowledge of physic, chemistry, the hidden properties ...
— The Humbugs of the World • P. T. Barnum
... of us was a sleepy, bald-headed man upon whose shining, nodding, snoring pate several flies were resting in quiet enjoyment of the sermon. All at once, this toothsome collection attracted the attention of a very large bright-eyed chameleon admirer who launched himself through the air upon said bald head in pursuit of his dinner. With a yell of fear, the sleeper struck the animal with his huge hand, sending the long tailed frolicsome creature heels over head directly upon the clergyman's ...
— The Gentleman from Everywhere • James Henry Foss
... peer, as well as himself, took her hue, like the chameleon, from surrounding objects: her manners were not governed by her mind but were solely directed by external circumstances. At court, humble, resigned, patient, attentive: at balls, masquerades, gaming-tables, and routs, gay, sprightly, ...
— Nature and Art • Mrs. Inchbald
... dampness, too, was deadly—there were always puddles of water on the floor, and a sickening odor of moist flesh in the room. The people who worked here followed the ancient custom of nature, whereby the ptarmigan is the color of dead leaves in the fall and of snow in the winter, and the chameleon, who is black when he lies upon a stump and turns green when he moves to a leaf. The men and women who worked in this department were precisely the color of the "fresh ...
— The Jungle • Upton Sinclair
... fiendish cleverness. Well, you have the two men combined in one man. Ivery was the best brain Macgillivray and I ever encountered, the most cunning and patient and long-sighted. Combine him with the other, the chameleon who can blend himself with his environment, and has as many personalities as there are types and traits on the earth. What kind of enemy is that to have ...
— Mr. Standfast • John Buchan
... coquetries while she amused Bert, for whom Miss Nancy had no time. They seemed to Bert, whose youth had known responsibility and hardship, a marvellously happy and light- hearted crowd. They laughed continuously, and they extracted from the chameleon city pleasures that were wonderfully innocent and fresh. It was as if these young exiles had brought from their southern homes something of leisure, something of spaciousness and pure sweetness ...
— Undertow • Kathleen Norris
... abounded rivalled the birds and flowers in brilliancy of color. The scales of some of them glittered like precious stones, and gleams of gold and silver seemed to come from them as they swam around the ships, while the dolphins taken from the water changed color like the chameleon. ...
— Historical Tales - The Romance of Reality - Volume III • Charles Morris
... Then when we were outside the old Palace we heard that the Kaiser's "strong-for-peace" policy had been of no avail, that the Czar had insulted his messenger, and that now war was inevitable. We ourselves, chameleon-like, assumed the German colour. We believed what we were told, and felt sorry for the man who was called upon unwillingly to shed his nation's blood. On our way back to the hotel Kitty and I went to see Mr. Schermerhorn's cousin, Miss ...
— An Account of Our Arresting Experiences • Conway Evans
... Hindustan' who went to SEE him. No two people ever pronounce them the same color, yet each individual is perfectly honest in his belief that they are black, or dark brown, or dark blue, or deep gray, or SEA green. Maybe Nature designed me for a chameleon but changed her mind when she had ...
— Peggy Stewart: Navy Girl at Home • Gabrielle E. Jackson
... elephants can hardly be haled from the sight of the waste, or the roe buck from gazing at red cloth, so there was no object that could so much allure the wavering eyes of this Thracian called Acestes, as the surpassing beauty of the Princess Lydia, yea, so deeply he doted, that as the Chameleon gorgeth herself with gazing into the air, so he fed his fancy with staring on the heavenly face of his Goddess, so long dallying in the flame, that he scorched his wings and in time consumed his whole body. Being thus passionate, having none so familiar ...
— A History of English Literature - Elizabethan Literature • George Saintsbury
... Why should I not be as graceful, as easy? I would make a desperate effort to "assume a virtue if I had it not." I, too, sauntered elegantly, lifted my hat killingly, and approached my charmer just as if I didn't realize that I was turning all the colors of the chameleon. ...
— The Blunders of a Bashful Man • Metta Victoria Fuller Victor
... a threadbare saying that the environment moulds the man. Yet, much more than the philosophers have contended, there are chameleon tendencies in the strongest character, and one finely determining to coerce his surroundings is quite likely to end by realizing that the surroundings have appealed to unsuspected color-changings in himself. Thus it may chance that the fairest fighter, finding himself sufficiently kicked and ...
— The Honorable Senator Sage-Brush • Francis Lynde
... all sides. Her head, which bore itself as if quite unaware that a suit for three hundred and fifty thousand francs damages was suspended over it like the sword of Damocles, was covered with a mass of rich auburn-colored hair. She is as changeable as a chameleon in the matter of her hair: I never see her twice ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 26, September 1880 • Various
... sake of argument, that you can drink with safety to yourself, can you drink with safety to others? 'No man liveth to himself.' We are all a kind of chameleon, and naturally derive a tinge from that which is near us. Our friend attributes his early drunkenness to the influence and example of his father. You should view your drinking habits in the light of these passages of Scripture, ...
— The Hero of the Humber - or the History of the Late Mr. John Ellerthorpe • Henry Woodcock
... sir; though the chameleon 160 Love can feed on the air, I am one that am nourished by my victuals, and would fain have meat. O, be not like your mistress; ...
— Two Gentlemen of Verona - The Works of William Shakespeare [Cambridge Edition] [9 vols.] • William Shakespeare
... he begged of her. "I'm a good deal like a chameleon; I unconsciously change my color to suit my surroundings. When we first met I saw that you took me for one thing, and since then I've tried not to show you ...
— Heart of the Sunset • Rex Beach
... entrance into any place, they do not hesitate to make what promises may be demanded of them, possessing as they do the art of escape by lying with equivocations and mental reservations' (ib. vol. ii. p. 147). 'The Jesuit is a man of every color; he repeats the marvel of the chameleon' (ibid. p. 105). 'When they play a losing game, they yet rise winners from the table. For it is their habit to insinuate themselves upon any condition demanded, having arts enough whereby to make themselves masters of those who bind them by prescribed rules. They ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volumes 1 and 2 - The Catholic Reaction • John Addington Symonds
... "Chameleon spirit—at once contributing to the misery of our existence and adding to its fancied bliss—at once detested and a charm, to be eschewed and to be practised—that, with thy mystic veil, dimmest the bright beauty of virtue, and concealest the dark deformity of vice— imperishable, ...
— The King's Own • Captain Frederick Marryat
... Venice—the magic city—there were days of mists, silvery and gray, when life took on the indistinctness and indecision of a dream; as there were days less lucent, when sea and sky melted in an indistinguishable line and the chameleon tints of the marshes mellowed into a monotonous gray surface—when the wonted brilliancy of the sunset clouds, and the glittering domes and campaniles were only faint gray shadows on the gray whiteness of ...
— A Golden Book of Venice • Mrs. Lawrence Turnbull
... another species of lizard, is still more curious. You must know that the chameleon is a lumbering lazy animal, who feeds on flies and other swift insects, and who would, therefore, be constantly liable to go without his dinner but that his tongue serves him for a hunting weapon, like those of the wood-pecker and the ant-eater. When ...
— The History of a Mouthful of Bread - And its effect on the organization of men and animals • Jean Mace
... age of the soul of man? As she hath the virtue of the chameleon to change her hue at every new approach, to be gay with the merry and mournful with the downcast, so too is her age changeable as her mood. No longer is Leopold, as he sits there, ruminating, chewing the cud of reminiscence, that staid agent of publicity and holder ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce
... sways, millions with a nod To abject slavery, buying men up As toys for knaves to play with in the game Of life; where Truth is kicked from foot to foot, Till in bewilderment she cries aloud And swears to save her life she is a lie; Where Love and Hate, in masquerading guise, Pell-mell dance on; chameleon Charity, In all its varying phases, crawls along— Now shrinking up dark courts in russet tint, And then, in bold and gaudy colours dresst Which publish trumpet-tongued its whereabouts, It takes a garish stand before the world And calls itself an angel. Thus for aye— ...
— The Death of Saul and other Eisteddfod Prize Poems and Miscellaneous Verses • J. C. Manning
... mobility; instability, unstable equilibrium; vacillation &c. (irresolution) 605; fluctuation, vicissitude; alternation &c. (oscillation) 314. restlessness &x. adj. fidgets, disquiet; disquietude, inquietude; unrest; agitation &c. 315. moon, Proteus, chameleon, quicksilver, shifting sands, weathercock, harlequin, Cynthia of the minute, April showers[obs3]; wheel of Fortune; transientness &c. 111[obs3]. V. fluctuate, vary, waver, flounder, flicker, flitter, flit, flutter, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... left her lip, When a light, boyish form, with trip Fantastic, up the green walk came, Prankt in gay vest to which the flame Of every lamp he past, or blue Or green or crimson, lent its hue; As tho' a live chameleon's skin He had despoiled, to robe him in. A zone he wore of clattering shells, And from his lofty cap, where shone A peacock's plume, there dangled bells That rung as he came dancing on. Close after him, a page—in dress And shape, his miniature express— An ample basket, ...
— The Complete Poems of Sir Thomas Moore • Thomas Moore et al
... is known under various names, such as the green lizard, the fence lizard and the alligator lizard. It is called alligator lizard from its resemblance to a young alligator. This lizard is found in the southeastern United States from North Carolina to Florida. The common colors of the American Chameleon or the Anolis, which is its scientific name, are brown and green. These colors vary with conditions. When asleep, for instance, this little reptile is green above and white below, and when fighting or frightened it becomes green; at other times it is brown. Raymond L. Ditmars, Curator of ...
— Pathfinder - or, The Missing Tenderfoot • Alan Douglas
... India. They are adapted for life on trees, where they hunt insects with great deliberateness and success. The protrusible tongue, ending in a sticky club, can be shot out for about seven inches in the common chameleon. Their hands and feet are split so that they grip the branches firmly, and the prehensile tail rivals a monkey's. When they wish they can make themselves very slim, contracting the body from side to side, so that they are not very readily seen. In other circumstances, ...
— The Outline of Science, Vol. 1 (of 4) - A Plain Story Simply Told • J. Arthur Thomson
... and orange chromates of lead, for instance, withstanding as they do the action of the sunbeam, become by time, foul air, and the influence of other pigments, inferior to the ochres. So the dazzling scarlet of iodine and mercury must yield the palm of excellence to the more sober vermilion, being a chameleon colour, subject to the most sudden and opposite changes. And the blues of cobalt, as always tending to greenness and obscurity, cannot ...
— Field's Chromatography - or Treatise on Colours and Pigments as Used by Artists • George Field
... type of chameleon-like girl whose vagaries and "sweet uncertainties" form the theme of many short stories, in most of which she is pictured as ...
— How to Analyze People on Sight - Through the Science of Human Analysis: The Five Human Types • Elsie Lincoln Benedict and Ralph Paine Benedict
... effectually disappeared so soon as he began to declaim or to recite. The histrionic in him declared itself, rising dominant. Given a character to impersonate, big swelling words to say, fine sentiments to enunciate, he changed to the required colour chameleon-like. You forgot—at least the feminine portion of his audience, almost without exception, forgot—that his round light-brown eyes stared uncomfortably much; that his nose, thin at the root and starting with handsome aquiline promise, ended in a foolish button-tip. Forgot that his ...
— Deadham Hard • Lucas Malet
... these basins were almost as colorless as the water itself (the light color of the fish is due to their chameleon-like power of modifying their hue to imitate their surroundings)—this mimicry is so perfect that after looking into one of these stone basins, the rounded smooth sides of which offered no shade or nook where a trout might hide, I was ready to declare ...
— The Black Wolf Pack • Dan Beard
... to Gratton. Now, here in her father's log house in the mountains, she wondered that she could have done so. Did men change colour like chameleons, shifted from one environment to another? Or was it she who had been unstable, she who was the chameleon? A queer sensation which had been hers before, and which she was to know more than once in days to follow, mastered her. It seemed that within her, coexistent and for ever in conflict, there were two Glorias: a girl who was very young, spoiled, vain, and selfish; a girl ...
— The Everlasting Whisper • Jackson Gregory
... brief. The Yogis have discovered the reason of the wondrous capacity of the chameleon to assume the appearance of plumpness or of leanness. This animal looks enormous when his lungs are filled with air, but in his normal condition he is quite insignificant. Many other reptiles as well acquire the possibility of swimming across large rivers quite easily by the same ...
— From the Caves and Jungles of Hindostan • Helena Pretrovna Blavatsky
... species. One is popularly known as the chameleon on account of its rather showy colours, but does not really belong to that family. And a beautiful grass-snake, which, as it is limbless, is often mistaken for a tree-snake, is also of ...
— The Heart of Nature - or, The Quest for Natural Beauty • Francis Younghusband
... and she never recovers until she has had tea. But it was a charming lane, with views by and by of wide, purple moorland, sunset-red with new heather; and the sky had turned from bluebell azure to green and rose, in a wonderful, chameleon way, which it seems that the sky has in Cornwall. I suppose it was a Celtic habit! All about us billowed a profusion of wild beauty; and though for a long time there was nothing alive in sight except a flock of bright pink sheep, my stage-managing ...
— Set in Silver • Charles Norris Williamson and Alice Muriel Williamson
... who sets his heart upon a woman Is a chameleon, and doth feed on air; From air he takes his colors—holds his life,— Changes with every wind,—grows lean or fat, Rosy with hope, or green with jealousy, Or pallid with despair—just as the gale Varies from North to South—from heat to cold! Oh, woman! woman! thou shouldst have few sins ...
— The Lady of Lyons - or Love and Pride • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... indescribable flavor. An ordinary bread pudding becomes veritably a queen of puddings as, indeed, it is called, merely by having a layer of jam through its center and a simple icing spread over the top. Ordinary pea soup exhibits chameleon-like possibilities merely through the addition of a little celery-root, a dash of curry or the admixture of a few spoonfuls of minced spinach, and tomato soup has for most an appeal that even this favorite of soups never had before when just the right amount of thyme is added while it simmers, ...
— Twenty-four Little French Dinners and How to Cook and Serve Them • Cora Moore
... said Allen, catching up the dog and holding him to the lamp, while Janet observed that he was a sort of chameleon, for his body, which had been black, was now yellow, and his chops which had been tan, had ...
— Magnum Bonum • Charlotte M. Yonge
... She is a chameleon sort of girl but she is not rare. So often she is sweet and lovable. Almost without exception she is obliging, a jolly companion, fearless and frank. One often finds her a girl of talent and natural ability. She is the very opposite of the ...
— The Girl and Her Religion • Margaret Slattery
... the only persons of my acquaintance who resemble the chameleon, in being able to keep one eye directed upwards to heaven, and the other downwards to the good things of ...
— Lectures of Col. R. G. Ingersoll - Latest • Robert Green Ingersoll
... laughed and waved his hand. "Oh, ma'am, you are a chameleon. The other day you desired nothing better than monsieur's demise. Now at the news of it you grow venomous. I vow I cannot keep pace with your changes. I must withdraw from your intimacy. 'Tis too exacting for my poor vigour. ...
— The Highwayman • H.C. Bailey
... more. The Other, as she called it—giving the entity a thought-form that implied complete alienage—had a strangely chameleon-like method of feeding. It lived on life-force, as well as I could understand, draining the vital powers of a mammal vampirically. And it assumed the shape of its prey as it fed. It was not possession, in the strict sense of the word. It ...
— Where the World is Quiet • Henry Kuttner
... to the banquet of the Caesars, his color changed like that of the chameleon; pale at first, then red, afterwards black, he at last assumed the mild livery of Venus and the Graces, (Caesars, p. 309.) This image, employed by Julian in his ingenious fiction, is just and elegant; but when he considers this change of character as real and ascribes it to the power ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 1 • Edward Gibbon
... the bank, wedged no doubt between trunks or boulders. As I began to draw myself up out of the wash, a resinous bough thrown on the fire warned me the Indians were roused, and I flattened again like a chameleon on the slippery incline. They came as far as the rill and stood looking across, then went down-stream, no doubt to see whether the trunk had stranded on the riffles below the cataract. But they were back before ...
— The Rim of the Desert • Ada Woodruff Anderson
... great streamers of scarlet—rose flames that had dissolved into echoes of fulfillment; diamond burgeonings that melted into silver symphonies like mist entangled Pleiades transmuted into melodies; chameleon harmonies to ...
— The Metal Monster • A. Merritt
... unlock the rosewood box and let her see them. She had never worn the ring—it was much too large for her. Aunt Comfort and her mother had each thought that it was foolish to buy a gold ring that she could outgrow. "If it was a chameleon ring I wouldn't care," said Aunt Comfort; "but it does seem a pity when it's a real gold ring." So the ring was bought a little too large for Comfort's mother. She was a very small woman, and Comfort ...
— Comfort Pease and her Gold Ring • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... up the lace sunshade and long gloves which her friend had lent her. "There was not much more that was genuine about her character—that was her very own, I mean—than there is about my appearance at this moment. She was always the dearest little chameleon in the world, taking everybody's colour in the most flattering way, and giving back, I must say, a most charming reflection—if you'll excuse the mixed metaphor; but when one got her by herself, with no reflections to catch, ...
— The Fruit of the Tree • Edith Wharton
... a man of universal moods and like a chameleon took color and force from every object he touched. The draughts he took from the deep flowing wells of nature made no diminution in the volume of his thought, that rushed through his seething brain like an underground cataract ...
— Shakspere, Personal Recollections • John A. Joyce
... don't suppose that every one can live, chameleon-like, on air, or worse still, on false quantities. Ha, ha, ha! And those pictures too. That snow is more violet ...
— A Mere Accident • George Moore
... preaching, he was dwelling in the midst of a Hard-shell community; and, perhaps, like the overwhelming majority of mankind, from enlightened to savage, from Christian to fetich, Burlman Reynolds was but chameleon to his surroundings. Yet, notwithstanding the somber complexion of his new vocation, and the more than somber complexion of his creed, outside of the pulpit his reverence was as genial, jolly, and joky as the cheeriest, smilingest, comfortingest, most latitudinarian ...
— Burl • Morrison Heady
... he said. "On the Pennsylvania line we cornered you; but you changed garb and shape and speech, almost under our eyes—as a chameleon changes color, matching the leaf it hides on.... I halted at that squatter's house—sure of you at last—and the pretty squatter's daughter cooked for us while we hunted you in the hills—and when I returned she gave me her bed ...
— Special Messenger • Robert W. Chambers
... many-colored, sunshine-loving creatures, in infinite variety, flit about the bungalow, some with such gaudy spread of wing as to tempt pursuit. Large bronze and yellow beetles walk through the short grass with the coolness and gait of domestic poultry. Occasionally a chameleon turns up its bright eye, as though to take our measure. The redundancy of insect and reptile life is wonderful in ...
— Foot-prints of Travel - or, Journeyings in Many Lands • Maturin M. Ballou
... girl," he informed me in confidence. "Thinks no end of herself, and always trying to hang on to some woman with a title, even if she's only a baronet's wife. Some ill-natured woman has nicknamed her the Chameleon—because she changes her dresses so often and is so fond of bright colours. But she's a good old sort," he added. "Always pretty free with her tips. ...
— The Count's Chauffeur • William Le Queux
... of Scripture we have thus considered are those mainly depended on in support of the Calvinistic doctrine of election. The doctrine, like the chameleon, has different shades, according to the school. The high predestinarians, or, as they are called, "supra -lapsarians," maintain, as we have seen, that God created a certain number to be saved, and a ...
— The Doctrines of Predestination, Reprobation, and Election • Robert Wallace
... willing victim, with no affectation of martyrdom. The few who met him in Edinburgh drawing-rooms found him prodigal of tongue, somewhat puzzling with his wholesale enthusiasms, absurd flights of fancy, theories he had to propound, and ever ready to change like a chameleon to tone with his surroundings. The spritish, fantastic youth impressed those he encountered, even when he was one of the unfledged eaglets hatched in the ancient eyrie of his precipitous city, whom Browning tells us are not counted "till there is a rush of wings, and lo! they are flown," ...
— Robert Louis Stevenson • E. Blantyre Simpson
... locked up; the coal-cellar, the candle-box, the salt-box, the meat-safe, were all padlocked. There was nothing that a beetle could have lunched upon. The pinched and meagre aspect of the place would have killed a chameleon. He would have known, at the first mouthful, that the air was not eatable, and must have given up ...
— The Old Curiosity Shop • Charles Dickens
... particularly his superiors. He knew how to govern under the appearance of obeying. He possessed exquisite tact in appreciating the characters of those far above him in rank and beneath him in intellect. He could accommodate himself with great readiness to the idiosyncrasies of sovereigns. He was a chameleon to the hand which fed him. In his intercourse with the King, he colored himself, as it were, with the King's character. He was not himself, but Philip; not the sullen, hesitating, confused Philip, however, but ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... as ever to interpret. The most skilled physiognomist could not read it. More than one emotion seem struggling within his breast, mingling together, or succeeding each other, quick as the changing hues of the chameleon. Now, as if cupidity, now remorse, anon the ...
— The Flag of Distress - A Story of the South Sea • Mayne Reid
... being. Like certain protection-seeking animals, she is always the colour of the rock, the husband-rock, in whose shadow she lives. Sometimes, of course, she is her own rock; but in such cases man is never her chameleon to a like degree or indeed in a like manner. Such adaptability is not one of the forms of his greatness, and even when he achieves it, it is not becoming ...
— The Romance of Zion Chapel [3d ed.] • Richard Le Gallienne
... great gilded and brocaded chairs, she must buy clothes which suited Monte Carlo as all this florid splendour of ornamentation suited it. She did not put this in words, but like all women possessed of "temperament," had in her something of the chameleon, and instinctively wished to match her tints with ...
— The Guests Of Hercules • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... would discriminate in the Territories wherever it is needful to assert the right of citizens.... I have heard many a siren's song on this doctrine of non-intervention; a thing shadowy and fleeting, changing its color as often as the chameleon."[785] ...
— Stephen A. Douglas - A Study in American Politics • Allen Johnson
... species is but too prolific, she exalts a corrosive liquid to such a degree as to carry death and dissolution into all living substances which it may happen to penetrate. This deadly reptile has some resemblance to the chameleon; his head, almost triangular, is big in proportion to his body; the eyes are very large, the tongue is flat, covered with small scales, and the end is rounded; the teeth are sharp, and so strong that, according to Bontius, they are able ...
— Palestine or the Holy Land - From the Earliest Period to the Present Time • Michael Russell
... succeeded in accumulating a considerable sum of money, but as he had tasted the bitter poison of destitution, and had for a very long time earned the heavy load of poverty upon his back, and fearing to lose his property by the chameleon-like changes of fortune, he took up his money on a certain night, carried it out of the city, and buried it under a tree. After some time had passed be began sorely to miss the presence of his treasure, and betook himself to the tree to refresh his eyes with the sight of it. But when he ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 2 • Richard F. Burton
... and cooing of the newly-married couple filled him with horror. Anger, shame, pity, and despair seized upon him by turns. He fell into a forlorn condition, forsaking his books, eating little save of the chameleon's dish, the air, drinking deep of Rhenish, letting his long, black locks go unkempt, and neglecting his dress—he who had hitherto been "the glass of fashion and the mould of form," as Ophelia had prettily said ...
— A Midnight Fantasy • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... think about exporting it? To the former question, the journal especially devoted to the subject has, to the best of our belief, never condescended a reply; although, like the celebrated argument on the colour of the chameleon, no two persons, perhaps, have the same idea of it. In what then, does civilisation consist, and how is it to be generally promoted? Does it, as Sir E.L. B—— would doubtlessly assure us, does it lie in a strict adherence to the last month's fashions; ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 1, Complete • Various
... "you are right, Pickle," and he focussed upon it a little old-fashioned single opera-glass which he carried in his pocket. "That's a chameleon, sure enough; and a big one too, I should say, though it's the first one I ever ...
— The Ocean Cat's Paw - The Story of a Strange Cruise • George Manville Fenn
... say the likeness is good, but it has a vastly life-like look and is like all the other pictures you have seen of my chameleon face. Let that be as it will, the compliment is none the less, and, provided the artist does not mean to serve me up as a specimen of American wild beasts, I shall thank him for it. To be followed twelve posts ...
— Samuel F. B. Morse, His Letters and Journals - In Two Volumes, Volume I. • Samuel F. B. Morse
... and had taught him the elementary things, because that was what she was paid for, corrected his table manners and tried to make him the kind of boy that she would have preferred to be herself had nature fortunately not decided the matter otherwise, and chameleon-like, Jerry reflected her tepor, her supineness and femininity. She recounted his virtues with pride, while I questioned her, hoping against hope to hear of some prank, the breaking of window-panes, the burning of a haystack or the explosion of a ...
— Paradise Garden - The Satirical Narrative of a Great Experiment • George Gibbs
... chameleon-hued satin, so artfully woven, with a warp of golden thread and woof of crimson silk, that, as with every change of light and shade, it glowed in ruby coals or blazed in amber flames; and as with every motion of her graceful form it flashed around her, she seemed to be clothed ...
— Cruel As The Grave • Mrs. Emma D. E. N. Southworth
... instead of human meanings)—there are masked words abroad, I say, which nobody understands, but which everybody uses, and most people will also fight for, live for, or even die for, fancying they mean this or that, or the other, of things dear to them: for such words wear chameleon cloaks—"groundlion" cloaks, of the color of the ground of any man's fancy: on that ground they lie in wait, and rend him with a spring from it. There never were creatures of prey so mischievous, never diplomatists so ...
— Harvard Classics Volume 28 - Essays English and American • Various
... She would have excited satiety itself, and chained inconstancy. To have Clarimonde was to have twenty mistresses; ay, to possess all women: so mobile, so varied of aspect, so fresh in new charms was she all in herself—a very chameleon of a woman, in sooth. She made you commit with her the infidelity you would have committed with another, by donning to perfection the character, the attraction, the style of beauty of the woman who appeared to please you. She returned my love a hundred-fold, and it was ...
— Clarimonde • Theophile Gautier
... the white colouring. Two other explanations have, however, been suggested: first, that the prevalent white of the arctic regions directly colours the animals, either by some photographic or chemical action on the skin, or by a reflex action through vision (as in the chameleon); secondly, that a white skin checks radiation and keeps the animals warm. But there are some exceptions to the rule of white colouring in arctic animals which refute these hypotheses, and confirm the author's. ...
— Logic - Deductive and Inductive • Carveth Read
... brown and copper colour, from two inches to two feet and a half long, are ever and anon rustling among the fallen leaves and crossing the path before you, whilst the chameleon is busily employed in chasing insects round the ...
— Wanderings In South America • Charles Waterton
... look-out; and if you don't do your duty, I will blow you up also." Foaming and roaring with rage, Bombay said he would not stand being thus insulted. I then gave him a dig on the head with my fist. He squared up, and pouted like an enraged chameleon, looking savagely at me. I gave him another dig, which sent him staggering. He squared again: I gave him another; till at last, as the claret was flowing, he sulked off, and said he would not serve me any more. I then gave Nasib orders ...
— The Discovery of the Source of the Nile • John Hanning Speke
... did; unless, perhaps, it was the poor blind poet, Philip Marston, who, being so deeply stricken, needed to love and to be loved more sorely than I, to whom Fate has been kind. And yet I should find it difficult to say wherein lay the charm of Rossetti’s chameleon-like personality. So with other men and women I could name. This is not so in regard to the great man now lying dead at Aldworth. Nothing is easier than to ...
— Old Familiar Faces • Theodore Watts-Dunton
... representatives in Europe did not see the danger, and that they were impressed by the foreign officers who came among them, was perfectly natural. Men are the creatures of the time in which they live, and take their color from the conditions which surround them, as the chameleon does from the grass or leaves in which it hides. The rulers and lawmakers of 1776 could not cast off their provincial awe of the natives of England and Europe as they cast off their political allegiance to the British king. The ...
— George Washington, Vol. I • Henry Cabot Lodge
... Selpdorf was inclined to under-rate Madame de Sagan's points. Isolde was not only wonderfully pretty, but she was endowed with a superficial cleverness, and kindliness and tact, all of which rendered her irresistible to nine men out of ten. A moral chameleon, Isolde almost always believed in herself and her own moods, therefore it was little wonder that the men whose phases of humour she reflected believed in her also, and moreover thought her as adorable and as full of ...
— A Modern Mercenary • Kate Prichard and Hesketh Vernon Hesketh-Prichard
... Greek equivalent of which is "reo," and means the method or order of service to the gods, whereas, "ceremony" may mean anything and everything, from the terms of a brutal prize fight to the conduct of divine service within the church. But, no such chameleon-like definition or construction can properly be placed upon the word "rite," for it means distinctly, if it means anything at all, the serious usage and sacred method of conducting service in honor of the gods, or of superiors, and requires the attendance ...
— The Light of Egypt, Volume II • Henry O. Wagner/Belle M. Wagner/Thomas H. Burgoyne
... cherries, he seems eating them, and gaily flinging the stones at Scapin; or with a rueful countenance he is trying to catch a fly, and with his hand, in comical despair, would chop off the wings before he swallows the chameleon game. These, with similar Lazzi, harmonise with the remonstrance of Scapin, and re-animate it; and thus these "Lazzi, although they seem to interrupt the progress of the action, yet in cutting it they slide back into it, and connect or tie the whole." These Lazzi are ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. II (of 3) - Edited, With Memoir And Notes, By His Son, The Earl Of Beaconsfield • Isaac D'Israeli
... persons, as by their niceness in apparel, for which I say most nations do not unjustly deride us, as also for that we do seem to imitate all nations round about us, wherein we be like to the polypus or chameleon; and thereunto bestow most cost upon our arses, and much more than upon all the rest of our bodies, as women do likewise upon their heads and shoulders. In women also, it is most to be lamented, that they do now ...
— Chronicle and Romance (The Harvard Classics Series) • Jean Froissart, Thomas Malory, Raphael Holinshed
... illustrate the modifications made necessary in tint by different exposure to light, by supposing that some one member of the family prefers yellow to all other colours, one who has enough of the chameleon in her nature to feel an instinct to bask in sunshine. I will also suppose that the room most conveniently devoted to the occupation of this member has a southern exposure. If yellow must be used in her room, the quality of it should be very different from that which could be ...
— Principles of Home Decoration - With Practical Examples • Candace Wheeler
... however, they were undisturbed, the only thing that excited any attention being the continual renewal of the blood-stain on the library floor. This certainly was very strange, as the door was always locked at night by Mr. Otis, and the windows kept closely barred. The chameleon-like colour, also, of the stain excited a good deal of comment. Some mornings it was a dull (almost Indian) red, then it would be vermilion, then a rich purple, and once when they came down for family prayers, according to the simple rites of the Free American Reformed Episcopalian ...
— Lord Arthur Savile's Crime and Other Stories • Oscar Wilde
... feelings toward the brave men who had served with him are shown by a note in his diary, which was probably not intended for any other eye than his own: "Nov. 7. I had the comfort of making an old AGAMEMNON, George Jones, a gunner into the CHAMELEON brig." ...
— The Life of Horatio Lord Nelson • Robert Southey
... I knew him South, I knew him East and West— I knew him all so well I knew not which I knew the best. His eyes, I recollect, were gray, and black, and brown, and blue, And, when he was not bald, his hair was of chameleon hue; Lean, fat, tall, short, rich, poor, grave, gay, a blonde and a brunette— Aha, amid this London fog, John Smith, I see you yet; I see you yet, and yet the sight is all so blurred I seem To see you in composite, or as in a waking dream, Which are you, John? I'd like to know, ...
— John Smith, U.S.A. • Eugene Field
... and the man who holds his in both. Some temperaments always lean their heads on their hands when they are weary, and others support their chins. A determined character sets her feet down firmly and decidedly at every step—though of course it needn't be thumping—while a dependent chameleon kind of a woman minces along uncertainly. Why, sometimes just from the angle at which a person lifts his head to listen, you can tell if he has executive ability ...
— Beatrice Leigh at College - A Story for Girls • Julia Augusta Schwartz
... fright, and never stopped on the road till they reached Paris, which they did in about a fortnight; this dreadful conflagration had such an effect upon them that they were incapable of taking the least refreshment for three months after, but, chameleon-like, ...
— The Surprising Adventures of Baron Munchausen • Rudolph Erich Raspe
... times they darted, tail first, with the rapidity of an arrow, from one side of the pool to the other, at the same instant discoloring the water with a dark chestnut-brown ink. These animals also escape detection by a very extraordinary, chameleon-like power of changing their color. They appear to vary their tints according to the nature of the ground over which they pass: when in deep water, their general shade was brownish-purple, but when placed on the land, or in ...
— A Book of Natural History - Young Folks' Library Volume XIV. • Various
... "can be adjusted to harmonise with changes in the environment or to correspond with the differences between the environment of different individuals." The seasonal change of colour in northern animals is a well-known instance of the former, and the chameleon's alterations ...
— The Naturalist in Nicaragua • Thomas Belt
... little nose like a Piedmont truffle, are most comical. Tufts of hair, curly as Astrakhan fur, fall over her face in the most picturesque and unexpected way, hiding first one eye and then the other, so that she has the most peculiar appearance imaginable and squints like a chameleon. ...
— My Private Menagerie - from The Works of Theophile Gautier Volume 19 • Theophile Gautier
... is moving at all; though its eyes, which can move in different directions at the same moment, and its long thin tongue, so clever at catching the insects on which it feeds, are constantly in motion; but for its eyes and tongue, the Chameleon looks as if it were as dead as the withered branch to ...
— Twilight And Dawn • Caroline Pridham
... his "Symbolical Painting of the Four Elements," represents the sea by fishes, the earth by moles, fire by a salamander, and air by a camel! Evidently he mistook the chameleon (which traditionally lives on air) for ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama, Vol 1 - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook • The Rev. E. Cobham Brewer, LL.D.
... is just what prophecy declared that she would be, the apostasy of the latter times.(1005) It is a part of her policy to assume the character which will best accomplish her purpose; but beneath the variable appearance of the chameleon, she conceals the invariable venom of the serpent. "Faith ought not to be kept with heretics, nor persons suspected of heresy,"(1006) she declares. Shall this power, whose record for a thousand years is written in the blood of the saints, be now acknowledged as ...
— The Great Controversy Between Christ and Satan • Ellen G. White
... its mute performers, and demands their wider recognition. He ventures to hold that as much talent is necessary to constitute a tolerable figurant as to make a good actor. He describes the figurant as a multiform actor, a dramatic chameleon, compelled by the special nature of his occupation, or rather by its lack of special nature, to appear young or old, crooked or straight, noble or base-born, savage or civilised, according to the good pleasure of the dramatist. "Thus, when ...
— A Book of the Play - Studies and Illustrations of Histrionic Story, Life, and Character • Dutton Cook
... thousand other birds flitting to and fro in their aerial city and chirping to each other. Two tiny squirrels have just run along a branch nearly over my head, in a desperate hurry apparently, their tails cocked over their backs, and a sky blue chameleon is standing on the trunk near where it parts. There is always a breeze in this great tree; the leaves are always moving, and there is a continuous rustle and murmur up there. A mango-tree and tamarind near by are quite still. Not a breath ...
— The Soul of a People • H. Fielding
... the Fern Owl; Mr. Rennie's interesting Notes on the Cleanliness of Animals; Mechanism of the Voice in Singing; the Vision of Birds of Prey; New species of British Snake; Animalculae in Snow; Habits of the Chameleon; Peculiarity of the Negro Stomach; Growth of Spanish Flies; British Pearl Fishery on the Conway; the cause of Goitre; seat of the sense of touch and taste; stones found in the stomach of Pikes; Learned Poodles at Paris; Faculties of Domestic Animals; Increase of Mankind; Larva of ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 17, No. - 488, May 7, 1831 • Various
... in a tight corner and believed that she might thereby escape. While, as for the name—ah! that certainly was a difficulty not to be easily got over; a ship could scarcely change the name painted on her stern as easily as a chameleon changes his colour, without affording some indication that the change had been made. Still, the slavers were up to all sorts of extraordinary dodges, and—well, I would at least inspect the Virginia's papers, and satisfy myself that they ...
— A Middy of the Slave Squadron - A West African Story • Harry Collingwood
... One day the Chameleon (palas [132]) and the Monitor-lizard (ibid [133]) were out in a deep forest together. They thought they would try scratching each other's backs to make pretty ...
— Philippine Folk-Tales • Clara Kern Bayliss, Berton L. Maxfield, W. H. Millington,
... Ay, this same is she. [POINTING TO CELIA.] Out, thou chameleon harlot! now thine eyes Vie tears with the hyaena. Dar'st thou look Upon my wronged face?—I cry your pardons, I fear I have forgettingly transgrest Against the dignity of ...
— Volpone; Or, The Fox • Ben Jonson
... his office door, he locked this adamantine, quibbling, frankly penurious, tyrannical man of business inside, and the chameleon does not change its color with greater ease than Sprudell took on another and distinct personality. On the instant he became the "good fellow," his pink face and beaming eyes radiating affability, conviviality, ...
— The Man from the Bitter Roots • Caroline Lockhart
... "Here we four women—Mrs. Grinnell, and Mrs. Winthrop and Leonore and myself—have been quarrelling over you, and each insisting you are something different. I believe you are not a bit firm and stable, as people say you are, but a perfect chameleon, changing your tint according to the color of the tree you are on. Leonore was the worst, though! She says that you talk and joke a great deal. We could ...
— The Honorable Peter Stirling and What People Thought of Him • Paul Leicester Ford
... thing may be black in one light, and white in another, for what I know. Of all fools the positive philosophers seem to me the worst; and the most abject kind of conceit is that of alleged consistency. Why will you insist on a definiteness which has so little place in nature? The world is a chameleon, and you and I are ...
— A Pessimist - In Theory and Practice • Robert Timsol
... nourishing, is relaxing, and sufficiently difficult of digestion. Lending itself, as it does, he says, in all the flowery imagery of the French tongue and manner, "to so many metamorphoses, it may be called, without exaggeration, the chameleon of the kitchen. Who has not eaten calf's head au naturel, simply boiled with the skin on, its flavour heightened by sauce just a little sharp? It is a dish as wholesome as it is agreeable, and one that the most inexperienced cook may serve with success. Calf's feet a la poulette, au gratin, ...
— The Book of Household Management • Mrs. Isabella Beeton
... through the vineyards, stole away privily through the province of Bordeaux, and escaped safe to the forest of Arden. Being come thither, they were glad they had so good a harbor: but fortune, who is like the chameleon, variable with every object, and constant in nothing but inconstancy, thought to make them mirrors of her mutability, and therefore still crossed them thus contrarily. Thinking still to pass on by the by-ways to get to Lyons, they chanced ...
— Rosalynde - or, Euphues' Golden Legacy • Thomas Lodge
... without the inward Life and Power which are always the mark of true religion. These "mimical Christians" reform their looks, instruct their tongues, take up the fitting set of duties and system of opinions, underprop their religion with sacred performances; "chameleon-like, they even turn their insides to whatever hue and colour" is demanded of religion; they "furnish this domestick Scene of theirs with any kind of matter which the history of religion affords them"—only, however ...
— Spiritual Reformers in the 16th & 17th Centuries • Rufus M. Jones
... grows dull, because he is sickly; age has not yet begun to impair him; nor is he such a chameleon as to take immediately the colour of his company. When you see him again you will find him reanimated. Most men have their bright and their cloudy days; at least they have days when they put their powers into action, and days when they suffer them ...
— Dr. Johnson's Works: Life, Poems, and Tales, Volume 1 - The Works Of Samuel Johnson, Ll.D., In Nine Volumes • Samuel Johnson
... landlady of the Inn, a Mrs. Nature, if I understood him aright. This person was still comely, though of uncertain age, wore cherry ribbons, smiled rather vacantly from vague, wonderful, indescribable eyes that seemed to change colour, like the chameleon, according to that ...
— Henry Brocken - His Travels and Adventures in the Rich, Strange, Scarce-Imaginable Regions of Romance • Walter J. de la Mare
... this temperament has grown the self-consciousness, the uneasy vanity, the "touchiness" which has made Germany of late years the despair of the diplomats all over the world. She has become a chameleon-like menace to peace everywhere in the world. What she wants, what will offend her dignity, when she will feel hurt, what amount of consideration will suffice, when she will change color to match a changed situation, and in what color she will choose to hide her ...
— Germany and the Germans - From an American Point of View (1913) • Price Collier
... place of the historical God-Man, Modernism gives us the history of the Church as an object of reverence. We are bidden to contemplate an institution of amazingly tough vitality but great adaptability, which in its determination to survive has not only changed colour like a chameleon but has from time to time put forth new organs and discovered new weapons of offence and defence. We ask for evidence that the Church has regenerated the world; and we are shown how, by hook or by crook, it has succeeded in safeguarding its own interests. Ecclesiastical historians are ...
— Outspoken Essays • William Ralph Inge
... pleasure with Hatty. Happiness did not make her selfish, nor did new scenes and varied experiences shut out home memories, for Bessie was not one of those feeble natures who are carried out of themselves by every change of circumstances, neither had she the chameleon-like character that develops new tendencies under new influences; at The Grange she was just the same simple, kindly Bessie Lambert as she ...
— Our Bessie • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... vision, which was in most antipathy to the god they had framed. Thus also the sect of the AEolists possessed themselves with a dread and horror and hatred of two malignant natures, betwixt whom and the deities they adored perpetual enmity was established. The first of these was the chameleon, sworn foe to inspiration, who in scorn devoured large influences of their god, without refunding the smallest blast by eructation. The other was a huge terrible monster called Moulinavent, who with four strong arms waged eternal battle with all their divinities, dexterously turning to avoid ...
— A Tale of a Tub • Jonathan Swift |
