"Feline" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... When one has tasted the bitter draught of certainty, one does not suffer less. Yet one walks toward it, barefooted, on the heated pavement, heedless of the heat. The motives which led Boleslas to choose the French novelist as the one from whom to obtain his information, demonstrated that the feline character of his physiognomy was not deceptive. He understood Dorsenne much better than Dorsenne understood him. He knew him to be nervous, on the one hand, and perspicacious on the other. If there ...
— Cosmopolis, Complete • Paul Bourget
... one of some size, and Clare saw at a glance that its horses were in fair condition. The front part of the little procession had already gone by, and an elephant was passing at the moment with a caravan—of feline creatures, as Clare afterwards learned, behind him. He drew it with absolute ease, but his head seemed to be dragged earthward by the weight of his trunk, as he plodded wearily along. A world of delight woke in the heart of the boy. He had read much about strange beasts, ...
— A Rough Shaking • George MacDonald
... if the gulf were bridged! What late, What all undreamed-of hurdle-winners Might blossom from a natural hate Of forming parts of feline dinners? ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 146, January 28, 1914 • Various
... as concerns my party you are the most desirable Pretender we could possibly imagine." And thereupon he gave the Prince a pass out of Scotland.] but this was doubted; and in any event, such battues being comparatively rare, he by ordinary appeared to regard the universe with a composed and feline indifference. ...
— Gallantry - Dizain des Fetes Galantes • James Branch Cabell
... emotions, Doctor Ralph Dexter went home. Finding that the carriage was not in use, he set forth alone upon his feline quest, reflecting that Araminta herself was not much more than a little grey kitten. Everywhere he went, he was regarded with suspicion. People denied the possession of cats, even while cats were mewing in defiance of the assertion. Bribes ...
— A Spinner in the Sun • Myrtle Reed
... her face and back. A leg shot up, from the middle of her back apparently, as a signal that they might talk. A moment later she composed herself into that attitude of dignified security possible only to the feline species. She made the fourth that inhabited this world within a world. Rogers, glancing up suddenly from observing her, caught—-for the merest fraction of an instant—a flash of starfire in the air. ...
— A Prisoner in Fairyland • Algernon Blackwood
... two shuffling dancers padded something on four feet. The canine-feline creature was more than just a head; it was a loose-limbed, graceful body fully eight feet in length, and the red eyes in the prick-eared head were those of a killer.... Words issued from between those curved fangs, words which Dane might ...
— Voodoo Planet • Andrew North
... closed carriage with her silvery voice in his ear instead of the keen silence of the winter air, would have been torture. Von Rosen wondered at himself for disliking Mrs. Edes in particular, whereas he disliked most women in general. There was something about her feline motions instinct with swiftness, and concealed claws, and the half keen, half sleepy glances of her green-blue eyes, which irritated him beyond measure, and he was ashamed of being irritated. It implied a power over him, and yet it was certainly not a physical power. It was subtle and pertained to ...
— The Butterfly House • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... But there was a certain subtle something about the Peruvian which inspired in the young man a feeling almost akin to terror. The eyes, for instance, had a distinctly tigerish look about them, and the man's whole personality was strongly suggestive of a feline nature. Those deep-set dark eyes, Jim knew instinctively, could, at times, flash forth lightnings deadly in their intensity; while that low, purring voice could also take on a note of such deadly menace as would make the hearer's blood curdle. The steel-pointed claw beneath the velvet ...
— Under the Chilian Flag - A Tale of War between Chili and Peru • Harry Collingwood
... two men whom she observed at the soiree musicale; but she would never have felt moved to any kittenish display to attract their notice—to any feline or feminine wiles to express herself toward them. Their personality attracted her in an agreeable way. Her fancy selected them, and she was glad when a lull in the music gave them an opportunity to meet her and talk with her. Often on the street the glance of strange eyes had lingered in her ...
— The Awakening and Selected Short Stories • Kate Chopin
... point Huguette, who had been following the narrative with a feline ferocity, caught up a wine-jug and made to throw it at the poet's head, but was dexterously disarmed by Guy Tabarie before the vessel had time to quit her fingers. Sulkily she plumped herself down on her stool ...
— If I Were King • Justin Huntly McCarthy
... at a distance of thirty yards. I knew it was neither bear nor deer that they were running after, and as I had observed a path through the canes, I leaped upon my saddle, and followed the chase, wondering what it could be, as, had the animal been any of the smaller feline species, it would have kept to the briars, where dogs have never the least ...
— Monsieur Violet • Frederick Marryat
... on questions of policy, Mr. Serge and Mr. Angora were bitterly jealous of each other, and a rupture was imminent. Under the circumstances, Mr. Cashmere, while assuring everybody of his whole-hearted support, had a private reservation of judgment to be finally settled by the directional feline saltation. ...
— Marge Askinforit • Barry Pain
... said was later evidenced; for when Thomas Cathcart Blake entered the front door of his residence that night and started up the stairs, he was met by an excited feline, followed by three equally excited children. And the cat, on seeing him, its cosmogony disrupted to such an extent that it felt itself no longer able to distinguish friend from foe, tried to turn back with the result that its first pursuer fell over it. There was the added result ...
— A Fool There Was • Porter Emerson Browne
... means that he is hungry, and, moreover, that he is so sure of his kill that he cares not if all the world knows that his belly is empty. It has something strangely horrible in its tone, for it speaks of that cold-blooded, dispassionate cruelty which is only to be found in perfection in the feline race. These sleek, smooth-skinned, soft-footed, lithe, almost serpentine animals, torture with a grace of movement, and a gentleness in strength which has something in it more violently repugnant to our natures than any sensation with ...
— In Court and Kampong - Being Tales and Sketches of Native Life in the Malay Peninsula • Hugh Clifford
... wolf pack, were long since out of the way. But yonder a mountain sheep had been killed by a puma, or other big feline, and the wolves had picked its bones after the Master of the Chase ...
— On a Torn-Away World • Roy Rockwood
... beast, and fish, thus account for the loud cries which we heard at night in every 'bush.' King Leo, having lost his mother, commanded by proclamation all his subjects to attend her funeral, and none failed save Orson. One evening his Feline Majesty, when going his rounds, found the delinquent upon the ground, and roughly demanded the reason why. Orson, shuffling towards the nearest tree, pleaded in all humility, 'O King, is thy beloved parent really ...
— To The Gold Coast for Gold, Vol. II - A Personal Narrative • Richard Francis Burton and Verney Lovett Cameron
... he ran deeper into the wood upon an alarm, occasionally found his neck in a noose suspended across his path. For rabbiting, the lurcher was and is the dog of all others. He is as cunning and wily in approaching his game as if he had a cross of feline nature in his character. Other dogs trust to speed; but the lurcher steals on his prey without a sound. He enters into the purpose of his master, and if any one appears in sight remains quietly ...
— The Amateur Poacher • Richard Jefferies
... naked under her transparent dress of gauze, which fell in straight folds as far as the gold bracelets on her slender wrists, with languor in her rich voice, and something undulating and feline in the rhythmical swing of her wrist and hips. Tatia Caroly was singing one of those sweet Creole songs which call up some far distant fairy-like country, and unknown caresses, for which the ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume II (of 8) • Guy de Maupassant
... the tales of shame, The constant runnings of evil fame, Foul, and dirty, and black as ink, That her ancient cronies, with nod and wink, Poured in her horn like slops in a sink: While sitting in conclave, as gossips do, With their Hyson or Howqua, black or green, And not a little of feline spleen, Lapped up in "Catty packages," too, To give a zest to the sipping and supping; For still by some invisible tether, Scandal and Tea are linked together, As surely as Scarification and Cupping; Yet never since Scandal drank Bohea - Or sloe, or whatever it happened to be, For ...
— Playful Poems • Henry Morley
... incorruptible Robespierre is not wanting, now when the brunt of battle is past; in a stealthy way the seagreen man sits there, his feline eyes excellent in the twilight. Also understand this other, a single fact worth many: that Marat is not only there, but has a seat of honour assigned him, a tribune particuliere. How changed for Marat; lifted from his dark cellar into this luminous 'peculiar tribune!' ...
— The French Revolution • Thomas Carlyle
... costumes for the new piece to be made, all the time flashing looks at him, watchful, humble, adoring, ready to come at his summons of word or hand. Finally, the materials thrown into hiding places, the dresses heaped on the sofa, she came toward him—a lithe, feline stealing across the carpet—and slipped down on the floor at ...
— Treasure and Trouble Therewith - A Tale of California • Geraldine Bonner
... Romayne and Stella together, after first exacting a promise of the strictest secrecy from his wife. She felt herself bound—doubly bound, after what she had now discovered—to respect the confidence placed in her; and this at the time when she had betrayed herself to Stella! With a woman's feline fineness of perception, in all cases of subterfuge and concealment, she picked a part of the truth out of the whole, and answered harmlessly ...
— The Black Robe • Wilkie Collins
... again quickly and softly, but somebody was inside the room, somebody who had a light, feline step, and John felt the prickling of the hair at the back of his neck. He longed for a weapon, something better than only his two hands, but he was reassured when the intruder, speaking ...
— The Forest of Swords - A Story of Paris and the Marne • Joseph A. Altsheler
... an elementary schoolmaster or a tailor is a man for a' that, is quite universally accepted in the best circles even in this year of grace? Betty, now a grown girl in the cynical stage, revenges herself with feline savagery on the knight of the shears for the imagined ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Volume 152, March 21, 1917 • Various
... voice, of moving about noiselessly, of remaining mute and motionless on a chair with expressionless, open eyes. But, when she raised an arm, when she advanced a foot, it was easy to perceive that she possessed feline suppleness, short, potent muscles, and that unmistakable energy and passion slumbered in her soporous frame. Her cousin having fallen down one day in a fainting fit, she abruptly picked him up and carried him—an ...
— Therese Raquin • Emile Zola
... is a nest-robber I have no evidence, but that feline mew of hers, and that flirting, flexible tail, suggest something ...
— Birds and Bees, Sharp Eyes and, Other Papers • John Burroughs
... the Magazine of Art, M. H. Spielman, in an article on the Royal Academy Exhibition, 1903, writes: "What the dog is to Mr. Riviere, to Madame Ronner is the cat. With what unerring truth she records delightful kittenly nature, the feline nobility of haughty indifference to human approval or discontent, the subtlety of expression, and drawing of heads and bodies, the exact quality and tone of the fur, the expressive eloquence of the tail! With all her eighty years, Madame Ronner's hand, vision, and sensibility have not diminished; ...
— Women in the fine arts, from the Seventh Century B.C. to the Twentieth Century A.D. • Clara Erskine Clement
... would take care of that in short order. Tom was a big, black, bobtailed cat eleven years old who had lived with Ed since he was a kitten. Not having any feline companionship to distract him, his only interest was hunting mice. Generally he killed a lot more than he could eat, racking the surplus in neat piles beside the trail, on the doorstep, or on a slab in the cellar. He was the best mouser ...
— Cat and Mouse • Ralph Williams
... forgets sometimes that he is anything but a child." And all the time the essayist is dropping phrases which surely are unforgettable, striking us alike by their truth and their pregnance—"this beautiful, wild, feline poetry, wild because left to range the wilds."—"His Muse has become a veritable Echo, whose body has dissolved from about her voice."—"He stood thus at the very junction-lines of the visible and the invisible, and could ...
— Personality in Literature • Rolfe Arnold Scott-James
... characteristic save utter vacuity. In his own line he was perfect. No commission that could be intrusted to him would draw from him a remark or a look of surprise. He executed precisely what he was told, and fulfilled the minutest duties of his station irreproachably, with a noiseless, feline activity. He was like the war-horse of ...
— Guy Livingstone; - or, 'Thorough' • George A. Lawrence
... was the only course to pursue with these chattering girls, who were full of scratches and jealousies, and who would have taken advantage of weakness with rapid unscrupulousness. So the little stout woman, feline and easily exasperated, was a good person to control the room. Her kindness might be part of her vanity, but it was not assumed. She loved her work, and she was always glad to praise good work from the girls, and to encourage it by favouritism ...
— Coquette • Frank Swinnerton
... pointed shoulders and a face like that of a pole-cat, her features singularly sunken and attenuated, it was not easy to tell her age; she looked as near fifteen as thirty, although she was in reality only nineteen, four years younger than her husband. There was much feline slyness in the depths of her little black eyes, which suggested gimlet holes. Her low, bumpy forehead, her slightly depressed nose with delicate quivering nostrils, her thin red lips and prominent ...
— The Fortune of the Rougons • Emile Zola
... cruelly reproached her and when her native melancholy deepened into outbursts of despair. Finally there occurred an incident which is more or less obscure in parts. The Duchesse de Bouillon, a great lady of the court—facile, feline, licentious, and eager for delights—resolved that she would win the love of Maurice de Saxe. She set herself to win it openly and without any sense of shame. Maurice himself at times, when the tears of Adrienne proved wearisome, flirted with ...
— Famous Affinities of History, Vol 1-4, Complete - The Romance of Devotion • Lyndon Orr
... to it, heart and soul; my whole being thrilled with the passionate outpourings of a spirit freed. My voice trembled in the upper bars of a feline love-song, quavered, descended, swelling again into an intimation that I brooked no rival, and ...
— In Search of the Unknown • Robert W. Chambers
... the proverb 'a cat may look at a king' and adopt the realistic view that the king's being is independent of the cat's witnessing. This assumption, which amounts to saying that it need make no essential difference to the royal object whether the feline subject cognizes him or not, that the cat may look away from him or may even be annihilated, and the king remain unchanged,—this assumption, I say, is considered by my ingenious colleague to lead to the absurd practical consequence that the two beings can never later acquire any possible ...
— A Pluralistic Universe - Hibbert Lectures at Manchester College on the - Present Situation in Philosophy • William James
... obedience really society event museum penal recess superior feline nausea precedence resource theater frequent negro precise sacrilegious theology mechanic ...
— Orthography - As Outlined in the State Course of Study for Illinois • Elmer W. Cavins
... this silence was presently broken by a recurring sound like breathing, interrupted occasionally by inarticulate and stertorous gasps. It was not the quick, panting, listening breath of some stealthy feline or canine animal, but indicated a larger, slower, and more powerful organization, whose progress was less watchful and guarded, or as if a fragment of one of the fallen monsters had become animate. At times this life seemed to take visible form, but as vaguely, as ...
— Frontier Stories • Bret Harte
... seated with Miss Wilson in the study, correcting examination papers, heard in the distance a cry like that of a cat in distress. She ran to the door and listened. Presently there arose a prolonged wail, slurring up through two octaves, and subsiding again. It was a true feline screech, impossible to localize; but it was interrupted by a sob, a snarl, a fierce spitting, and a scuffling, coming unmistakably from a room on the floor beneath, in which, at that hour, the ...
— An Unsocial Socialist • George Bernard Shaw
... the front of the house and there was a closed door between the front and the back halls on both floors. But Janice heard Olga's big, flat feet land upon the floor almost instantly. That feline wail had evidently brought the Swedish girl out of her ...
— Janice Day, The Young Homemaker • Helen Beecher Long
... the captain, sternly tapping the note with his forefinger. "I see the cunning of insanity, the suspicion of insanity, the feline treachery of insanity in every line of this deplorable document. There is a far more alarming reason, sir, than I had supposed for Mrs. Lecount's behavior to my niece. It is clear to me that Miss Bygrave resembles some other lady who has seriously offended ...
— No Name • Wilkie Collins
... a description. She was very slight and rather tall, with a great deal of the Contessa's grace, moving lightly as if she scarcely touched the ground, but like a bird rather than a cat. There was nothing in her of the feline grace of which we hear so much. Her movements were all direct and rapid; her feet seemed to skim, not to tread, the ground with an airy poise, which even when she stood still implied movement, always light, untiring, full ...
— Sir Tom • Mrs. Oliphant
... attributes by no means exclusive to her lover, but were occasionally seen among other less favored and even equally dangerous Americans, Dona Rosita assented with less objection than Joan anticipated. "Besides, dear," said Joan, eying her with feline watchfulness, "it is four years since you've seen him, and surely the man has either shaved since, or else he took a ridiculous vow never to do it, and then he would be more ...
— The Argonauts of North Liberty • Bret Harte
... one of his quick feline pounces, he placed the slipper upon the blood mark on the sill. It exactly corresponded. He smiled in silence ...
— The Valley of Fear • Arthur Conan Doyle
... the owner of a canary, Friskie at once showed feline propensities; she wanted that bird, and saw no reason why she should be denied it. But when, from various tokens, Friskie learned that we valued it, she never again evinced any desire for the canary. And when, afterward, we raised a nest of birdlings, the little cat ...
— Holiday Stories for Young People • Various
... Khan rolled upon the califs—men and women and children—clothed in tatters, half nude and wholly naked; slant-eyed Chinese, sloe-eyed Malays, islanders black and brown and yellow, fierce-faced warriors of the Solomons with grizzled locks fantastically bedizened; Papuans, feline Javans, Dyaks of hill and shore; hook-nosed Phoenicians, Romans, straight-browed Greeks, and Vikings centuries beyond their lives: scores of the black-haired Murians; white faces of our own Westerners—men and women and children—drifting, eddying—each stamped with that mingled ...
— The Moon Pool • A. Merritt
... the route these sounds accompanied the two riders—that is, the wailing of the jackals, mingled with the more fearful utterance of the great feline denizens of the desert. All at once, however, these noises became stilled, as a sound of a far different nature indicated the presence of some human being interfering in this scene of the desert. It was the crack of a gun, but with that quick sharp report ...
— Wood Rangers - The Trappers of Sonora • Mayne Reid
... the control board, black and alien, standing tall as a man on short hind legs. Yellow eyes blazed in a feline face. ...
— Cry from a Far Planet • Tom Godwin
... old dog, trying to jump up on him, but falling back every time without being able to reach his face, and Beelzebub seemed to welcome them both—showing no evidence of the antipathy usually existing between the feline and canine races; on the contrary, receiving Miraut with marks of ...
— Captain Fracasse • Theophile Gautier
... approached the door a mighty clatter was audible within, and Mrs. Jenny held the boy's hand in a tightened grasp, fearful of devilry. As they stood irresolute to advance or retreat, a big cat dashed out at the doorway with a feline imprecation, and the wizard appeared, revengefully waving a stick, ...
— Julia And Her Romeo: A Chronicle Of Castle Barfield - From "Schwartz" by David Christie Murray • David Christie Murray
... dreadful shock to feline nerves, no doubt, but that white kitten was no ordinary animal. Its little heart beat bravely when it rose to the surface, and, before its young master came up, it had regained the bank. But, alas! what a change! It went into the stream a fat, round, comfortable ...
— Martin Rattler • R.M. Ballantyne
... filled the pail and held it with great dexterity to her lips. She drank a little, extracted a lace handkerchief from some hidden pocket, dipped its point in the water, and wiped her face delicately, after a certain feline fashion. Then, catching sight of some small object in the fork of a bush above her, she quickly pounced upon it, and with a swift sweep of her hand under her skirt, put on HER FALLEN SLIPPER, and stood ...
— From Sand Hill to Pine • Bret Harte
... There is something feline about a man's love for old, familiar things. I know that it is a popular misconception to compare women with cats and men with dogs. But the analogy ...
— 'Oh, Well, You Know How Women Are!' AND 'Isn't That Just Like a Man!' • Irvin Shrewsbury Cobb
... something that is colossal and monstrous. M. Thiers has no suspicion of this, and pursues the even tenour of his way. All his life he has been stroking cats, and coaxing them with all sorts of cajolling processes and feline ways. To-day he is trying to play the same game, and does not see that the animals have grown beyond all measure and that it is wild beasts that he is keeping about him. A strange sight it is to see this little man ...
— The Memoirs of Victor Hugo • Victor Hugo
... is altogether different from the fierce glare seen in the eyes of many of our animals, especially the feline race, which seems to enlarge the eyes to enormous orbs of brilliant light. In the Martians it is simply a colourless, soft, and liquid glow which has a different effect on eyes of different colours; but it is charming ...
— To Mars via The Moon - An Astronomical Story • Mark Wicks
... the intention of deceiving or to "show off." Have we not "Mock Turtle Soup," Mouton a la Chasseur, mutton prepared to taste like venison, "chicken" salad made of veal or of rabbit? In Europe even today much of the traditional roast hare is caught in the alley, and it belongs to a feline species. "Roof hare." ...
— Cooking and Dining in Imperial Rome • Apicius
... clear space to Persimmon Sneed. He was a little, slim, wiry man, with light, sleek hair, pink cheeks, high cheek-bones, and a bony but blunt nose. He had a light eye, gray, shallow, but inscrutable, and there was something feline in his aspect and glance, at once smooth and caressing ...
— The Mystery of Witch-Face Mountain and Other Stories • Charles Egbert Craddock
... eyebrows and the long curving lashes of the heavy lids beneath them, the rounded cheeks, smooth as a ripe fruit, the firm, shapely chin, the snake-like poise of the head, the long bending neck, and the feline smile; all of these combined made such a dream-vision as he had never seen before, and to tell the truth, notwithstanding its beauty, for that could not be doubted, never wished to see again. Somehow ...
— The Yellow God - An Idol of Africa • H. Rider Haggard
... usually a chase, and the war-cry is so peculiar and apparently so incongruous that it is fairly laughable. It is a rough breathing, like the "huff" of an angry cat, and a serious dispute between the birds reminds one of nothing but a disagreement in the feline family. If the stranger does not take the hint, and retire at the first huff, he is chased, over and under trees and through branches, so violently that leaves rustle and twigs are thrust aside, as long as the patience or wind holds out. On one occasion the defender ...
— In Nesting Time • Olive Thorne Miller
... down the multitude of steps that told how deep was the moat they had just crossed, where the last of them nearly broke his neck by rolling almost from top to bottom, they reached the outermost, the brick gate, and so left the awful region of enchantment and feline fury commingled. Not until the castle was out of sight, and their leader had sunk senseless on the turf by the roadside, did they dare a backward look. The moment he came to himself they started again for home, at what poor speed they could make, and reached the Crown ...
— St. George and St. Michael • George MacDonald
... with feline stealth BRUNO MECHELKE enters the room at this moment. He has on his Sunday duds, a sprig of lilac in his hat and a great bunch of it in his hand. JOHN drums with his fingers on the window and ...
— The Dramatic Works of Gerhart Hauptmann - Volume II • Gerhart Hauptmann
... faded engraving which was over the mantel, and which represented a banquet held by one of the ancient English kings. With glassy eyes she stared at this picture representing the joys of living. She did not notice that Borgert had followed her with his feline step. ...
— A Little Garrison - A Realistic Novel of German Army Life of To-day • Fritz von der Kyrburg
... slowly with that noiseless, cat-like tread of his which she had always hated, perceiving in it a true index to his character: the prowl of a beast of prey, furtive, cowardly, cruel. It was so: Victor was as feline and as vicious as a jungle-cat. Watching him with this thought in mind, one could almost credit old tales of beasts bewitched and walking in ...
— Red Masquerade • Louis Joseph Vance
... seemed somewhat like a lioness before, striding and chafing in her regal rage, she is again, it must be confessed, a little like one now, but presenting a different aspect of the great feline, a sort of cruelty, a need to torment before sacrificing. "What would King Mark say if I were to slay his best servant, the most faithful of his retainers, who won for him crown and land? Does it seem to you such a paltry matter, that for ...
— The Wagnerian Romances • Gertrude Hall
... imparted itself to the man's mood. In the spiritual, as in the material world, are signs and presages of night. Rarely meeting her look, and whenever he did so conscious of the indefinable dread with which, despite their feline beauty, her eyes always affected him, Jenner Brading listened in silence to the story told by Irene Marlowe. In deference to the reader's possible prejudice against the artless method of an unpractised historian the author ventures to substitute his ...
— The Collected Works of Ambrose Bierce, Vol. II: In the Midst of Life: Tales of Soldiers and Civilians • Ambrose Bierce
... cruel chins, thickened by tufts of beard. All of black granite, images of Sekhet (who was the Goddess of War, and in her hours the Goddess of Lust), they have the slender body of a woman, which makes more terrible the great feline head surmounted by its high bonnet. Eight or ten, or perhaps more, they are more disquieting in that they are so numerous and so alike. They are not gigantic, as one might have expected, but of ordinary human stature—easy ...
— Egypt (La Mort De Philae) • Pierre Loti
... animals are shown as sleeping or reclining, and there is a cat sitting, a goat feeding, a deer scratching its side and a pheasant walking, among others, but the tragic note is struck in most of them. Probably the best works are to be found among those pieces representing members of the feline race, which were always the subject of Barye's most thorough study. The sculptures of horses are also very numerous, and it strikes one at first as curious that, after all the rebuffs he received from the academic faction, who recognized no animals but the horse and lion as worthy of representation ...
— The American Architect and Building News, Vol. 27, Jan-Mar, 1890 • Various
... jaguar Does not in its arboreal gloom Distil so rank a feline smell As Grishkin in ...
— Poems • T. S. [Thomas Stearns] Eliot
... putting on a pair of spectacles, betook himself to the perusal of an old folio volume, the leaves of which he turned over so gently that not the slightest sound could possibly disturb the patient. All his manifestations were gentle and soft, but of a simplicity most unlike the feline softness which we are apt to associate with a noiseless tread and movement in the male sex. The sunshine came through the ivy and glimmered upon his great book, however, with an effect which a little disturbed the patient's ...
— Doctor Grimshawe's Secret - A Romance • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... her cunning sauces, and, after all, cared as little what he ate as any other healthy young man, boasted of his housekeeper continually by skilful allusions, till the honest wives of his fathers and brethren were outraged and grew feline, as any natural woman will if a servant is flung in her face in this ...
— Kate Carnegie and Those Ministers • Ian Maclaren
... that they tried the walnut trick again, and Jim was eager to see the "circus." But the cat remembered; she drove her teeth deep into Hall's hand and fought with a feline fury that is always terrifying. Jim was gazing in big-eyed silence, when Hall, enraged, thrust the cat into the leg of a boot and growled, "I'll fix yer biting," and held her teeth to the grindstone till the body in the ...
— The Preacher of Cedar Mountain - A Tale of the Open Country • Ernest Thompson Seton
... be forgiven if, besides showing almost religious veneration for their feline friend—who reciprocates this in his own way—they have also the utmost terror of him. Whenever I went for long walks outside the town with Coreans, I noticed that when on the narrow paths I was invariably left to bring up the rear, although I was a quicker ...
— Corea or Cho-sen • A (Arnold) Henry Savage-Landor
... Not that she was astonishingly beautiful, but she was tall and just good-looking enough to allow her to consider herself a beauty. Her chief attraction was her form, which, if somewhat flat-chested, had a feline flexibility rarer and more seductive than she imagined. She was content to believe that nature had fashioned her to play the part in life which, she knew, was hers of right. Her name, even, was most appropriate—dignified. ...
— Elder Conklin and Other Stories • Frank Harris
... to her feet. All the feline joy of her languorous ease seemed to have departed. She was quivering and nervous. She ...
— The Pawns Count • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... high-backed armchair, reclined, fast asleep, a woman of about thirty years of age, her face the very picture of health and freshness. Upon her knees lay a large cat, with her paws folded under her, and her eyes half-closed, purring in that significant manner which, according to feline habits, indicates perfect contentment. The two friends paused before the window in complete amazement, while Planchet, perceiving their astonishment, was in no little degree secretly ...
— Louise de la Valliere • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... the Merevale's part of the House. Mrs Prater had expressed a hope that she would have some tea before catching her train. With tea it is usual to have milk, and with milk it is usual, if there is a cat in the house, to have feline society. Captain Kettle, which was the name thought suitable to this cat by his godfathers and godmothers, was on hand early. As he stood there pawing the mat impatiently, and mewing in a minor key, Mrs Williamson felt that here was the cat for her. ...
— Tales of St. Austin's • P. G. Wodehouse
... city of Caneville, I lately drew the materials of a Bear's Biography. From the same source I now derive my "Adventures of a Dog." My task has been less that of a composer than a translator, for a feline editoress, a Miss Minette Gattina, had already performed her part. This latter animal appears, however, to have been so learned a cat—one may say so deep a puss—that she had furnished more notes than there was original matter. Another peculiarity ...
— The Adventures of a Dog, and a Good Dog Too • Alfred Elwes
... that barrier she must and would. Whatever scruples may have been aroused by his appeal to her she banished. No integer of the impressionable sex had ever yet won from her such a battle. None ever should: and assuredly not this one. The Great American Pumess was now all feline. ...
— The Clarion • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... daughter faced each other, Hattie, seated quietly in the bay-window, smiled at the two—so amazingly unlike. It was as if an aristocratic, velvet-footed feline were bristling before a great, good-tempered St. Bernard. In a curious way, too, and in a startling degree, each woman subtracted sharply from the other. In the presence of Sue, Mrs. Milo's petiteness became weakness, her dainty trimness accentuated her helplessness, her delicate coloring looked ...
— Apron-Strings • Eleanor Gates
... just dismissed from the log schoolhouse beyond the pines, was taking her afternoon walk. Observing an unusually fine cluster of blossoms on the azalea-bush opposite, she crossed the road to pluck it, picking her way through the red dust, not without certain fierce little shivers of disgust and some feline circumlocution. And then she came ...
— Short Story Classics (American) Vol. 2 • Various
... the invisible grimalkin that even now trips people up on the stairs of the old mansion which President Madison and his wife, Dolly, occupied, at the corner of Eighteenth Street and New York Avenue, after the White House was burned by the British. That, indeed, is altogether another story; but the feline spook of the Capitol possesses attributes much more remarkable, inasmuch as it has the appearance of an ordinary pussy when first seen, and presently swells up to the size of an elephant before the eyes of ...
— The Best Ghost Stories • Various
... as light on his feet and as quick and graceful as a cat, but there was nothing feline about his appearance. He stood well over six feet in his stockings and tipped the beam close to the two hundred mark. Not one ounce of fat was on his huge frame. So fine was he drawn that unless one looked closely he would never suspect the weight of bone and muscle that his unobtrusive ...
— Astounding Stories, May, 1931 • Various
... Berber suddenly appeared in the tent, dressed wonderfully in white panne, with a barbaric mottle of black and white civet-skins flung over one shoulder, and a tight-drawn cap of the fur, apparently held in place by the great claws of some feline mounted in heavy gold. She wore circles of fretted gold in her ears, and carried a tall ebony stick with a gold handle, Louis Quatorze fashion. From her huge civet muff a gold purse dangled. She looked at once more conventional and more dynamic than Mary had seen ...
— The Nest Builder • Beatrice Forbes-Robertson Hale
... insects in short mimosa tangle up to the knee, I disturbed a strange-looking animal, about the size of a sheep, brownish colour, long tail, short legs, feline in aspect and movement, but quite strange to me. I took my gun and shot it dead—yes, quite dead. Away tore my boy as fast as his legs would carry him, terrified beyond measure at what I had done! What, indeed? ...
— Adventures in Many Lands • Various
... when he turned to find Sarah watching, stiff and uncompromising, from the doorway, he remembered with painful certainty her attitude toward his propensity to pick up any stray that might catch him in a moment of too pronounced mellowness—stray human or feline ...
— Then I'll Come Back to You • Larry Evans
... she fell to criticising it afresh. It had been painted with amazing skill and insight. All the beauty was there, the exquisite tinting of flesh, the beautiful curve of cheek and throat and shoulder. But, behind the lovely physical presentment, Nan felt she could detect the woman's soul—predatory, feline, and unscrupulous. It was rather original of Maryon to have done that, she thought—painted both body and spirit—and it was just like that cynical cleverness of his to have discerned so exactly the soulless type of woman which ...
— The Moon out of Reach • Margaret Pedler
... there, with such an experience as mine, that receives these things at the hands of his city butcher and meets them on his table, who does not wish for the moment that he was a boy, and seated at his mother's board, that he might shake off the phantom canine and feline that rise on his plate, and call in one ...
— Life in Canada Fifty Years Ago • Canniff Haight
... head was electric with feline expression; his ears stood up, his eyes sent out green sparks; hair and whiskers were on end; he devoured poor little Cheeps already with his gaze; his tail grew huger, ...
— The Other Girls • Mrs. A. D. T. Whitney
... expressed natural kindness, her pretentious exaggeration was exalted enthusiasm. I alone had scrutinized her grimacings, and stripped away the thin rind that sufficed to conceal her real nature from the world; her trickery no longer deceived me; I had sounded the depths of that feline nature. I blushed for her when some donkey or other flattered and complimented her. And yet I loved her through it all! I hoped that her snows would melt with the warmth of a poet's love. If I could only have ...
— The Magic Skin • Honore de Balzac
... for the Kabyle of more vulgar position, take away his haik and his bornouse, trim the points of his beard, and we have a perfect German head. Beside these we set a representative Arab head, sketched in the streets of Algiers. See the feline characteristics, the pointed, drooping moustache and chin-tuft, the extreme retrocession of the nostrils, the thin, weak and cruel mouth, the retreating forehead, the filmed eye, the ennui, the terrestrial detachment, of the Arab. He is a dandy, a creature ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Volume 11, No. 26, May, 1873 • Various
... kindnesses and cruelties alternately, impartially, and in order, but heartless severities or overwhelming generosities in lawless caprice. Man's case is always that of the prodigal's favourite or the miser's pensioner. In her unfriendly moments there seems a feline fun in her tricks, begotten by a foretaste of her ...
— A Pair of Blue Eyes • Thomas Hardy
... piety inclined, Then recreation might have claimed his mind. The harmless game that shows the feline greed To cinch the shorts and make the market bleed[A] Is better sport than victimizing Creed; And a far livelier satisfaction comes Of knowing Simon, autocrat of thumbs.[B] If neither worthy work nor play command This gentleman of ...
— Black Beetles in Amber • Ambrose Bierce
... so the weeks passed. To earn something seemed but a slowly approaching necessity, and the weeks grew to months. He was never idle, for his tastes were strong, and he had delight in his pen; but so sensitive was his social skin, partly from the licking of his aunt's dry, feline tongue, that he shrunk from submitting anything he wrote to Harold Sullivan, who, a man of firmer and more world-capable stuff than he, would at least have shown him how things which the author saw and judged from the inner ...
— Home Again • George MacDonald
... that the fox-terrier always knew its feline friend in the dark, and was always able to distinguish it from other cats. These, when they appeared, were always ferociously charged and driven away; and one day, in its eagerness to get at a strange cat, the dog nearly hurt its little companion. ...
— Harper's Young People, November 11, 1879 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... hostility to Spain; discountenancing, without absolutely forbidding, their proposed absorption by France; intimating, without promising, an ultimate and effectual assistance from herself. Meantime, with something of feline and feminine duplicity, by which the sex of the great sovereign would so often manifest itself in the most momentous affairs, she would watch and wait, teasing the Provinces, dallying with the danger, not quite prepared as yet to abandon the prize to Henry or ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... was too short to make sure of either the one or the other. If the wealthy maiden was really a worthy soul she did not let her nephew know it. Corporeally she was angular and iron-grey, with a summary tongue and wintry temper, chastened by a fondness for feline favourites. Unluckily, I was always falling foul of the latter, and my aunt continually fell foul of me in consequence. Crabbed age and youth could not live together in our case on account of cats. Age, ...
— The Idler, Volume III., Issue XIII., February 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly. Edited By Jerome K. Jerome & Robert Barr • Various
... characteristic of the lady herself. The artist would have found it a little too luxurious for good taste— a little over-toned in the richness of draperies, the heavy scent of flowers, the subtleties of half-screened divans—there was something more than feminine—something feline. To Raymond Owen, however, it was ideal. The dimmed ruby lights, the suggestive shadows of the tapestries, were in tune with the surreptitious mind of the secretary. But there remained for him a picture that he admired more—Mlle. ...
— The Perils of Pauline • Charles Goddard
... two platforms, the first, with a small fountain, being reached by three steps, the second a step higher. The platform was supported by demons, "guebre" figures all round, and columns resting on the backs of feline animals. On the upper platform was spread an ...
— Across Coveted Lands - or a Journey from Flushing (Holland) to Calcutta Overland • Arnold Henry Savage Landor
... subtlety they were unmatched by either—deep, strange, receding, cavernous eyes which contemplated you as might those of a cat looking out of a dark hole, and suggesting all the artfulness that has ever distinguished the feline family. He had a strange mop of black hair sweeping down over a fine, low, white forehead, and a skin as pale and bluish as poor health might make it; but there was, nevertheless, resident here a strange, resistant, capable force that ...
— The Financier • Theodore Dreiser
... excused herself, went to her room, and cried half the night. It was not the shame of having been forcibly kissed that sickened her of herself, but the unforgettable, unforgivable fact that toward the last of that furious kissing she had found a certain low feline pleasure in the kisses. She wished that she might die, or, infinitely better, that ...
— The Penalty • Gouverneur Morris
... his lay, practising trills and preparing half-imitations, which, at some other time, sitting on the topmost twig, he shall hilariously seem to improvise before all the world. Can it be that he is really in some slight disgrace with Nature, with that demi-mourning garb of his,—and that his feline cry of terror, which makes his opprobrium with boys, is part of some hidden doom decreed? No, the lovely color of the eggs which his companion watches on that laboriously builded staging of twigs shall vindicate this familiar companion from any suspicion of original sin. Indeed, it is ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 10, Number 59, September, 1862 • Various
... It was not, however, till the year 1819 that he first came to live at Sutton. His earliest recollection was, as he used to tell us, playing on the terrace with the great ginger- coloured tom-cat, "King George." We always supposed this feline magnifico to have derived from some stock imported by the first Sir Henry when he was Master of the Household to George III. As my readers will see, King George's successor, in the true "mode" of his race, sits in a purely detached ...
— The Adventure of Living • John St. Loe Strachey
... same sheep-dogs, and we wish we could say as much for "the curs of low degree," that just at the same hour begin to prowl up and down St. Giles's, and to and fro in it, seeking what they may devour, with the fear of the Alderman of Cripplegate Within before their eyes. The feline kind, however, have reason to think themselves in more danger at the first round of the watering cart, for we have often rescued an unsuspicious tortoise-shell from the felonious designs of a skin-dealer, ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction. - Volume 19, No. 536, Saturday, March 3, 1832. • Various
... is a figure fearsomely Celtic in its hideousness, resembling the gargoyles which peer down upon the traveller from the carven 'top-hamper' of so many Breton churches. Black and menacing of countenance, these demon-folk are armed with feline claws, and their feet end in hoofs like those of a satyr. Their dark elf-locks, small, gleaming eyes, red as carbuncles, and harsh, cracked voices are all dilated upon with fear by those who have met them upon lonely heaths or unfrequented roads. They haunt the ancient dolmens ...
— Legends & Romances of Brittany • Lewis Spence
... the scalp over his forehead. In this frightful condition the hunter grappled with the raging beast, and struggling for life, they rolled together down a steep declivity. All this passed so rapidly, that the other boor had scarcely time to recover from the confusion in which his feline foe had left him, to seize his gun, and rush forward to aid his comrade, when he beheld them rolling together down the steep bank in mortal conflict. In a few moments he was at the bottom with them, but too late to save ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 10, Issue 267, August 4, 1827 • Various
... from her grave, To this frenzied hunt she hies, In her hands the gory head Which with feline joy ...
— Atta Troll • Heinrich Heine
... Fondly taking his feline friend in his arms, he softly strokes her back, and gazes lovingly into the soft green eyes that look responsively into his, and rebukes her not when, in impulsive love, she rubs her cold nose against his burning cheek, and wipes her ...
— Punchinello, Vol. II. No. 38, Saturday, December 17, 1870. • Various
... boat-race:—"'We have won at last,' cried Julia, all on fire, 'and fairly; only think of that!'" Through every sentence that he jots down runs a vein of gentle satire on the sex. Every specimen that he has drawn from it possesses feline characteristics: if provoked, they scratch; if happy, they purr; when they move, it is with the bodies of panthers; when they caress their children, it is like snakes; and in every single one of his books the women listen, behind the door, ...
— Atlantic Monthly,Volume 14, No. 82, August, 1864 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... the deep recesses of the forests of Maine, evidently belonging to the feline race, which, on account of its ferocity, is significantly called "Indian Devil"—in the Indian language, "the Lunk Soos;" a terror to the Indians, and the only animal in New England of which they stand in dread. You may speak of the moose, the bear, and the wolf even, and the red man is ready for ...
— Thrilling Adventures by Land and Sea • James O. Brayman
... was nothing, of course, to be bored, for when she was not gay she was always bored; but there was a deeper discontent in her whole attitude that that which comes from mere ennui, an aggressive discontent, sentient rather than passive, a kind of feline alertness which needed only an immediate incentive to become dangerous. Upon the dressing-table beside her was Hermia Challoner's telegram, explaining her failure to reach Trouville; in her fingers a letter from a friend in ...
— Madcap • George Gibbs
... Alan's fingers tensed on his pocket blaster. Swift shadowy forms moved quickly in the shrubs and the growling became suddenly louder. He fired twice, blindly, into the undergrowth. Sharp screams punctuated the electric blue discharge as a pack of small feline creatures leaped snarling and clawing ...
— Survival Tactics • Al Sevcik |
