"Insect" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... out of their gold, and give them gin and smallpox in exchange. But, so soon as true servants of Heaven shall enter these Edens, and the Spirit of God enter with them, another spirit will also be breathed into the physical air; and the stinging insect, and venomous snake, and poisonous tree, pass away before the power ...
— Proserpina, Volume 2 - Studies Of Wayside Flowers • John Ruskin
... dollars would have purchased everything in sight. The floor was bare, while the walls and ceiling were literally covered with blood marks and splotches. Each mark represented a violent death—of an insect, for the place swarmed with vermin, a plague with which no person could ...
— The People of the Abyss • Jack London
... places of which they told me, none captivated and charmed my imagination so much as the Coral Islands of the Southern Seas. They told me of thousands of beautiful fertile islands that had been formed by a small creature called the coral insect, where summer reigned nearly all the year round,—where the trees were laden with a constant harvest of luxuriant fruit,—where the climate was almost perpetually delightful,—yet where, strange to say, men were wild, bloodthirsty ...
— The Coral Island - A Tale Of The Pacific Ocean • R. M. Ballantyne
... earth came the scent of living growing things. The leaves of the great maples in the court-house grounds rustled in the spring breeze, there was the soft incessant hum of insect life, and over all the white wonderful moonlight. But he had no part in this universal renewal—he was to die his purposeless unheroic death in the morning. For himself he could almost believe he no longer cared; he had fully accepted the idea. He had even taken his farewell of the few in ...
— The Just and the Unjust • Vaughan Kester
... such piercing sorrow mars The pewee's life of cheerful ease! He sings, or leaves his song to seize An insect sporting in the bars Of mild bright light that gild the trees. A very poet he! For him All pleasant places still and dim: His heart, a spark of heavenly fire, Burns with undying, sweet desire: And so he sings; and so his song, Though heard not by the hurrying throng, Is solace to ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, No. 72, October, 1863 • Various
... are especially interesting, as regards not only their bionomic interdependence but also the analogies of their geographical distribution. It should be noted that butterflies are the chief agents in securing the continued existence of such alpine flowers as depend on insect fertilization, the other insect fertilizers being mostly wanting at great ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... if by magic. Beautiful whip-snakes were gleaming in the sun: they hold on by a few coils of the tail round a twig, the greater part of their body stretched out horizontally, occasionally retracting, and darting an unerring aim at some insect. The narrowness of the gorge, and the excessive steepness of the bounding hills, prevented any view, except of the opposite mountain face, which was one dense forest, in which the wild ...
— Himalayan Journals (Complete) • J. D. Hooker
... Nerrinyeri. p. 2. "Every tribe, regarded by them as a family, has its ngaitge, or tutelary genius or tribal symbol, in the shape of some bird, beast, fish, reptile, insect, or substance. Between individuals of the same tribe no marriage can take place." Among the Narrinyeri kindred is reckoned (p. 10) on the father's side. See also (p. 46) ngaitge Samoan aitu. "No man or woman will kill their ngaitge," ...
— Myth, Ritual, and Religion, Vol. 1 • Andrew Lang
... I rose from my blankets this morning, after a sleepless night, I do not think there was an inch square of my body that did not exhibit the inflammation consequent upon a puncture by a flea, or some other equally rabid and poisonous insect. Small-pox, erysipelas, measles, and scarlet-fever combined, could not have imparted to my skin a more inflamed and sanguineous appearance. The multitudes of these insects, however, have been generated by Indian ...
— What I Saw in California • Edwin Bryant
... seen one, but we all have read about the Glow-worm, the remarkable insect which has the power of exhibiting a bright light in the dusk of evening. In England we have two species of insects that are called by this name, which properly belongs only to a kind of wingless beetle, found along the hedgerows and moist banks during the summer. The other insect ...
— Chatterbox, 1906 • Various
... in brake or bosky avenue. Whate'er birds did or dreamed, this bird could say. Then down he shot, bounced airily along The sward, twitched in a grasshopper, made song Midflight, perched, prinked, and to his art again. Sweet Science, this large riddle read me plain: How may the death of that dull insect be The life of yon ...
— The Poems of Sidney Lanier • Sidney Lanier
... all that I had missed seeing at the various places where they had touched: they talked to me with provoking fluency of the culture of manioc; of the root of cassada, of which tapioca is made; of the shrub called the cactus, on which the cochineal insect swarms and feeds; and of the ipecacuanha-plant; all which they had seen at Rio Janeiro, besides eight paintings representing the manner in which the diamond and gold mines in the Brazils are worked. Indeed, upon cross-examination, ...
— Tales & Novels, Vol. 2 • Maria Edgeworth
... the land while they sat there, and before them the great yellow equatorial moon rose slowly over the trees. With the darkness came a greater silence, for the myriad insect life was still. This great silence of Central Africa is wonderfully characteristic. The country is made for silence, the natives are created to steal, spirit-ridden, devil-haunted, through vast tracks of lifeless ...
— With Edged Tools • Henry Seton Merriman
... raise and manage the silk-worm, they reaped nothing but their trouble for their pains. They tore up the mulberry-trees they had planted, and, in spite of De Serres, asserted that the northern climate was not adapted for the rearing of that tender insect. The great Sully, from his hatred of all objects of luxury, countenanced the popular clamour, and crushed the rising enterprise of De Serres. The monarch was wiser than the minister. The book had made sufficient noise to reach the ear of Henry IV.; who desired ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. II (of 3) - Edited, With Memoir And Notes, By His Son, The Earl Of Beaconsfield • Isaac D'Israeli
... things—organisms, as they are called—he cannot explain to you at all. When he meddles with them, he always ends like the man who killed his goose to get the golden eggs. He has to kill his goose, or his flower, or his insect, before he can analyse it; and then it is not a goose, but only the corpse of a goose; not a flower, but only the dead stuff of ...
— Madam How and Lady Why - or, First Lessons in Earth Lore for Children • Charles Kingsley
... from beholding vanity," says a good man, when he sees a display of graceful ornament. What, then, must he think of the Almighty Being, all whose useful work is so overlaid with ornament? There is not a fly's leg, nor an insect's wing, which is not polished and decorated to an extent that we should think positive extravagance in finishing up a child's dress. And can we suppose that this Being can take delight in dwellings and modes of life or forms of worship where every thing ...
— Sunny Memories of Foreign Lands V2 • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... the determination of a mechanical effect. (We do not pretend to know what Dr. Zimmermann means by this.) Lord John Murray undertook to shape some black wax into the appearance of a spider, with a view to observe whether the antipathy would take place at the simple figure of the insect. He then withdrew for a moment, and came in again with the wax in his hand, which he kept shut. Mr. Matthews, who in other respects was a very amiable and moderate man, immediately conceiving that his friend really had a spider ...
— Practical Education, Volume II • Maria Edgeworth
... might be fresh and sparkling for the coffee she was to make for the early breakfast. Above the eastern hills the sun was rising, coloring everything with a rosy tinge, and the air was full of the song which summer sings, of flowers and happy insect life, when she is at her best. But the woman neither heard the song nor saw the sunshine, her heart was so heavy with thoughts of the parting which was ...
— The Cromptons • Mary J. Holmes
... wove many kinds of cotton cloth, sometimes using as a dye the rich crimson of the cochineal insect. They made a more expensive fabric by interweaving the cotton with the fine hair of rabbits, and other animals; sometimes embroidering with pretty designs of flowers and birds, etc. The special art of the Aztec weaver was ...
— The Story of Extinct Civilizations of the West • Robert E. Anderson
... now against certain insect plagues which once afflicted him, and the brilliant professor laid his head on an old cork fender and slept like an infant. He did not return until next evening; he went without books, tobacco, alcohol, and conversation, and he never had an afterthought ...
— A Dream of the North Sea • James Runciman
... with minnows, crawfish, etc., they represent about ninety per cent of the trout's regular diet. Considering this fact, it is obvious that nymphs will take trout throughout the entire season. It will greatly surprise the novice to learn of the great amount of underwater insect life present in any stream. Next time you go fishing, hold your landing net close to the bottom, in a foot or so of fast water. Reach upstream and loosen the stones and gravel. Raise your landing net, and notice the numerous nymphs that have been washed from under the stones, and have attached ...
— How to Tie Flies • E. C. Gregg
... impassioned—attentiveness, an attentiveness which soon transcends all consciousness of yourself, as separate from and attending to the thing seen; this is the condition of success. As to the object of contemplation, it matters little. From Alp to insect, anything will do, provided that your attitude be right: for all things in this world towards which you are stretching out are linked together, and one truly apprehended will be ...
— Practical Mysticism - A Little Book for Normal People • Evelyn Underhill
... pore insect that's tryin to look like a hoss, but that ain't even got the skin of one, I reckon ye'll be good arter this," she finished, and threw a pack over the back of the now thoroughly subdued pack-mule. "Git started, ye folks, and don't say nothin' to me, for I'm li'ble to git mad arter ...
— Grace Harlowe's Overland Riders in the Great North Woods • Jessie Graham Flower
... he spoke, for the first time, a sudden misgiving, like the pinch of an insect, brushed Barron's consciousness. He had not, as a matter of fact, examined the Dawes letter very carefully, having been, as he now clearly remembered, in a state of considerable mental excitement during the whole time it was in his possession ...
— The Case of Richard Meynell • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... will jump off on somebody else. When we came here we were flealess, but every person we have come near to seems to have contributed some fleas to us, until now we are loaded down with them, and we find in our room at the hotel a box of insect powder, which, is charged in with the candles. The king, who is a boy about three years older than I am, is full of fleas, too, and he jumps around from one place to another, like he was shaking himself to get rid of them. He gets ...
— Peck's Bad Boy Abroad • George W. Peck
... tells us that among the Amazulu, when cattle are lost, and the boys see the bird called Isi pungumangati sitting on a tree, "they ask it where the cattle are, and go in the direction in which it points with its head." The insect known as the mantis, or "praying insect," is used for a similar purpose (417. 339). In the Sollinger forest (Germany), on St. Matthew's day, February 24, the following practice is in vogue: A girl takes a girl friend upon her back and carries her to the nearest ...
— The Child and Childhood in Folk-Thought • Alexander F. Chamberlain
... at the mouth of the Amazon were perhaps the most remarkable, as well as the most bloodthirsty animals which abounded in that region. They were remarkable not only for size, but for voracity and numbers. This insect is a pest in every climate. I have found them troublesome on the bar of the Mississippi in the heat of summer; and at the same season exceedingly annoying while navigating the Dwina on the way to Archangel. In the low lands of ...
— Jack in the Forecastle • John Sherburne Sleeper
... him. Nature, in none of its phases, could appear insignificant to his fertile and mellow soul. When he could not soar in the high regions of contemplative philosophy, he stooped as low as the little child whose rosy cheek he patted, and who then became to him a teacher and a study. An insect crawling on a leaf,—a bit of grass bringing the joy of its short life around the stones of the pavement,—a cloud floating over the meadows,—a murmur of voices in the air,—the wings of a butterfly, or the thundering of the storm above the lake,—all and ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 16, No. 97, November, 1865 • Various
... All diligence of spirit.] "With the whole bent of my mind." A happy phraseology; in ridicule, at the same time that it was in conformity with the style of the airy, affected insect ...
— Hamlet • William Shakespeare
... Little, flitting, white-fire insect Little, dancing, white-fire creature, Light me with your little candle, Ere upon my bed I lay me, Ere in sleep I ...
— The Song Of Hiawatha • Henry W. Longfellow
... called. In tropical countries they grow to a large size, but nothing like these. They are filled, in the cup, with a sort of sticky, sweet mixture, and this attracts insects. When one enters the cup the top flap folds over, and the hapless insect is caught there. The plant actually devours it, nature providing a sort of vegetable digestive apparatus. These giant plants are the same, and they seem large enough to take in a man, to ...
— Five Thousand Miles Underground • Roy Rockwood
... be a great many of them," answered Arthur, "and it is supposed that new ones are constantly being formed by the labours of the coral insect. A bare ledge of coral first appears, just at the surface; it arrests floating substances, weeds, trees, etcetera; soon the sea-birds begin to resort there; by the decay of vegetable and animal matter a thin soil gradually covers the foundation of coral; a cocoa-nut ...
— The Island Home • Richard Archer
... the whip-poor-will complained over the tops of the woodland in near and far cadence through the warm moonlit air. Beside this and the throb of insect voices there was no sound. "I came out this evening," said Finney, "to tell you that last March in Ohio I saw her." His voice fell at the pronoun ...
— The Mormon Prophet • Lily Dougall
... some young birch saplings grew close by. One of these leaves suddenly rose up and began to move of itself, as it seemed; an ant had seized it, and holding it by the edge travelled on, so that as the insect was partly hidden under it, the leaf appeared to move alone, now over sticks and now under them. It reminded me of the sight which seemed so wonderful to the early navigators when they came to a country where, as they first thought, the leaves ...
— Nature Near London • Richard Jefferies
... three long, open windows subdued the sun-glare, yet the very odour of the cut flowers in the room seemed oppressive, while without could be heard the busy hum of insect life. ...
— The House of Whispers • William Le Queux
... discovery by one of their number of the active infectant in fever and ague. It has been found in the dust-like spores of a marsh plant—the Pamella. In Paris, at the same time, a woman of rank claims to have discovered the cause of cholera in a microscopic insect, developed in low and filthy localities. Her details were so minute, that the Academy of Science, which began by laughing at the introduction of the matter, has been compelled to listen, and the subject is ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume II • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... walks which furnished him with such a fund of accurate observation of the sights and sounds of the natural world. No man has a keener eye for a bird than he, nor a quicker ear to distinguish between their songs; and no unusual sound of insect life escapes his scrutiny,—he is keenly alert to know what is going on under his feet as well as over his head. The most modest flower does not escape his eye, nor any peculiarly marked leaf, nor any rich bed of leafy mould. He ...
— Home Life of Great Authors • Hattie Tyng Griswold
... sketch attractively and simply the wonders of reptile and insect existences, the changes of trees, rocks, rivers, clouds, and winds. This is done by a family of children writing letters, both playful and serious, which are addressed to all children whom the ...
— Rollo in Scotland • Jacob Abbott
... from the nearest point of land. There are several accounts of insects having been blown off the Patagonian shore. Captain Cook observed it, as did more lately Captain King of the Adventure. The cause probably is due to the want of shelter, both of trees and hills, so that an insect on the wing with an off-shore breeze, would be very apt to be blown out to sea. The most remarkable instance I have known of an insect being caught far from the land, was that of a large grasshopper (Acrydium), ...
— The Voyage of the Beagle • Charles Darwin
... guards, towards his prison. He had not gone many paces when his attention was attracted towards a man who, just as he came abreast of where he was lying, turned over and grabbed at the air with his hand as though to catch some flying insect. The fellow's action was so out of keeping with the laziness of his attitude that Helmar glanced more keenly at him, and was astonished to see him looking hard at him. Immediately it flashed across his mind that he had seen the man before, but where he could not say. However, the recognition ...
— Under the Rebel's Reign • Charles Neufeld
... of both ova and fry is the Dytiscus marginalis, whether this insect be in the larval or adult stage. I think that I should hardly be wrong in going even further and saying that D. marginalis is very dangerous to trout early in their yearling stage. The accompanying illustration shows a larva of Dytiscus which has caught a young trout. ...
— Amateur Fish Culture • Charles Edward Walker
... the Carnivores—"les animaux nuisibles"—the defects of Buffon's higgledy-piggledy plan are almost ludicrously evident, for flesh-eaters, fruit-eaters, insect-eaters, and gnawers rub shoulders with colossal indifference. Doubtless, however, this is to us all the more conspicuous, because use and wont have made readers of the present day acquainted with the advantages of classification, which it is but fair to ...
— The World's Greatest Books - Volume 15 - Science • Various
... his head; and the real state of things now became so obviously apparent that he could no longer get away from the undeniable fact: Arsene Lupin was not dead! Arsene Lupin whom he had hurled into the bowels of the earth and crushed as surely as an insect is crushed with a hammer; Arsene ...
— The Teeth of the Tiger • Maurice Leblanc
... interest than an advertisement of the sale of second-hand furniture. Whether he killed Von Koren next day or left him alive, it would be just the same, equally useless and uninteresting. Better to shoot him in the leg or hand, wound him, then laugh at him, and let him, like an insect with a broken leg lost in the grass—let him be lost with his obscure sufferings in the crowd of ...
— The Duel and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... be like the Persian insect powder—it would be easier to buy it. But it has a handsome pink flower and you must surely ...
— Ethel Morton's Enterprise • Mabell S.C. Smith
... and insect life there runs what is recognized as the law of protective assimilation. It represents the necessity under which a creature lives to pretend to be something else as a condition of continuing to be itself. The rose-colored flamingo, ...
— The Mettle of the Pasture • James Lane Allen
... encountered them walking through the unfrequented by-paths of the Retiro, at a respectable distance from her mother, who lingered opportunely to examine the first opening buds of flowers or some curious insect. Mothers, at this critical period of courtship, are under an obligation to be admirers of the works of nature. The young pair of turtle-doves would pause when they caught sight of me and greet me blushingly. I cannot conceal from you that, ...
— First Love (Little Blue Book #1195) - And Other Fascinating Stories of Spanish Life • Various
... publishing in a dogmatic volume the improvised lecture by which you lent enchantment to one of those evenings which are rest after seeing Rome. You do not know, perhaps, that most of our professors live on Germany, on England, on the East, or on the North, as an insect lives on a tree; and, like the insect, become an integral part of it, borrowing their merit from that of what they feed on. Now, Italy hitherto has not yet been worked out in public lectures. No one will ever give me credit for my literary ...
— Cousin Betty • Honore de Balzac
... and, when a reader has assimilated from any given book his own proper nourishment and pleasure, the rest of the book is so much oyster shell. The end of true reading is the development of individuality. Like a certain water insect, the reader instinctively selects from the outspread world of books the building materials for the house of his soul. He chooses here and rejects there, and remembers or forgets according to the formative desire of his nature. Yet it often happens that he forgets ...
— The Guide to Reading - The Pocket University Volume XXIII • Edited by Dr. Lyman Abbott, Asa Don Dickenson, and Others
... autumn approaches. The songsters of the seed-time are silent at the reaping of the harvest. Other minstrels take up the strain. It is the heyday of insect life. The day is canopied with musical sound. All the songs of the spring and summer appear to be floating, softened and refined, in the upper air. The birds, in a new but less holiday suit, turn their faces southward. The swallows flock and go; the bobolinks flock and go; silently and unobserved, ...
— Wake-Robin • John Burroughs
... plumage and discolours; others, more reserved and less frivolous, keep their glamour and prestige for a much longer time. For the rest, the latter seem to me to rejoice without being vain in their advantages. And at bottom, what should any insect gain by ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... There are now sundry claimants to the honour of having here fathered the modern industry. Some say that in 1823 a retired intendant introduced from Mexico the true terciopelo, or velvet-leaf, together with the Mexican cochineal, the coccus cacti hemipter, [Footnote: The male insect is winged for flight. The female never stirs from the spot where she begins to feed: she lays her eggs, which are innumerable and microscopic, and she leaves them in the membrane or hardened envelope which she has secreted.] ...
— To the Gold Coast for Gold - A Personal Narrative in Two Volumes.—Vol. I • Richard F. Burton
... thing to get familiar with these diseases and see what you are up against, because all through the history of nut culture, and so forth, one of the basic defects has been the failure to appreciate the importance of insect and disease factors. And we are very much in need of more basic research along those lines, but I agree with Dr. Crane that at present we have a limited amount to show ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Incorporated 39th Annual Report - at Norris, Tenn. September 13-15 1948 • Various
... with impartial interest at this industrial cannibalism," returned Perry, sarcastically. "Eat or be eaten that's what enlightened self-interest has come to. After all, Ralph would say, it is nature, the insect world over again, the victim duped and crippled before he is devoured, and the lawyer—how shall I put it?—facilitating the processes of ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... spared himself nothing,—slurred over nothing; spurned himself, as it were, for the meanness, in which he had wallowed that night. How firm he had been! how kind! how masterful!—pluming himself on his man's strength, while he held her in his power as one might hold an insect, played with her shrinking woman's nature, and trampled it under his feet, coldly and quietly! She was in his way, and he had put her aside. How the fine subtile spirit had risen up out of its agony of shame, and ...
— Margret Howth, A Story of To-day • Rebecca Harding Davis
... machines he tore the plants bit from bit, until they were reduced to pulp, just as the insect reduced the leaves in the process ...
— The Great Round World and What Is Going On In It, Vol. 1, No. 35, July 8, 1897 - A Weekly Magazine for Boys and Girls • Various
... the locust, mainly from the desire to seek its subjugation and destruction, and, whilst much general biological information has been written upon the subject, there are things which we do not yet know about this insect or its habits. We do not know what precise influences cause their migration, nor do we know what is the exact length of life of the locust or its breeding power, or the precise locality in any country which may be defined as its permanent abode. Locusts are classified ...
— Argentina From A British Point Of View • Various
... gingerly did so. The Chemist held the insect by its wings over the sugar. "Will someone lend me ...
— The Girl in the Golden Atom • Raymond King Cummings
... some huge insect with a buzz of whirring wings, flew overhead, dropping multi-coloured stars from its tail. Then our ...
— "Contemptible" • "Casualty"
... Catholic mind; the very hay made upon the lawn, the fat and tallow of the beef and mutton allowed, must be paid for and accounted upon oath. It is true, this economy in miniature cannot sufficiently be commended, particularly at a time when only the insect defaulters of the Treasury, your Hunts and your Chinnerys, when only those "gilded bugs" can escape the microscopic eye of ministers. But when you come forward, session after session, as your paltry pittance is ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. 6 (of 6) - With his Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore
... take flight and find a mate across a county so as to perpetuate its race a hundred miles from home. Our volume closes with a sketch of the singular ties which thus bind together the fortunes of blossom and insect, so that at last the very form of a flower may be cast in the mould of its winged ally. A word is also spoken regarding the singular relations of late detected between the world of vegetation and minute ...
— Little Masterpieces of Science: - The Naturalist as Interpreter and Seer • Various
... high their flourish'd heads between, and wrought Mosaic, under foot the violet, Crocus, and hyacinth, with rich inlay Broider'd the ground, more colour'd than with stone Of costliest emblem other creature here, Beast, bird, insect, or worm, durst enter none, Such was their awe of man. In shadier bower More sacred and sequester'd, though but feign'd, Pan or Sylvanus never slept, nor nymph Nor Faunus haunted. Here, in close recess, With flowers, garlands, and sweet smelling herbs, Espoused Eve deck'd first her nuptial ...
— Flowers and Flower-Gardens • David Lester Richardson
... during the rainy season, draining as it does two extensive slopes. No sooner had we pitched our camp, built a boma of thorny acacia, and other tree branches, by stacking them round our camp, and driven our animals to grass; than we were made aware of the formidable number and variety of the insect tribe, which for a time was another source of anxiety, until a diligent examination of the several species ...
— How I Found Livingstone • Sir Henry M. Stanley
... shadowgraph closely, "has already been established by the well-known English scientist, Dr. Hall Edwards. He has been experimenting with the method of using X-rays recently discovered by a German scientist, by which radiographs of very thin substances, such as a sheet of paper, a leaf, an insect's body, may be obtained. These thin substances, through which the rays used formerly to pass without leaving an impression, can now ...
— The Gold of the Gods • Arthur B. Reeve
... weighing out prayers for me, Without hearing the plates of meat [17] Of a slop, who pinched him for "d. and d." [18] And disturbing a peaceful beat, And I smiled as I closed my two mince pies [19] In my insect promenade; For out of his nibs I had taken a rise, [20] And his stay on the spot ...
— Musa Pedestris - Three Centuries of Canting Songs - and Slang Rhymes [1536 - 1896] • John S. Farmer
... commiseration rather than of relief. Worthless clay that the man was, it seemed petty now to have been so disturbed over his living on, for such satisfactions as his poor fragment of life gave him. Like the insignificant insect which preyed on its own petty world, he had, maybe, his rights to his prey. At all events, now that he had ceased to trouble, it was foolish to have any feeling of disgust, of reproach, of hatred. God and life had made him so, as God and life had ...
— The Web of Life • Robert Herrick
... hardens into rock; or the leaf that fixes its form and impress in the bed of coal; or like the bowlder that forms the pencil point of a mighty iceberg, scratching the rocks in its movement across a submerged plain, destined to be upheaved as a continent in some future convulsion; or like the coral insect, which, in forming his separate cell, unconsciously assists in laying the foundation of islands and vast regions of solid earth; we, the creatures of the hour, all unconscious of the record we are making, leave imperishable ...
— The Continental Monthly , Vol. 2 No. 5, November 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... and I study it alive; you turn it into an object of horror and pity, whereas I cause it to be loved; you labour in a torture-chamber and dissecting-room, I make my observations under the blue sky, to the song of the Cicadae (The Cicada Cigale, an insect akin to the Grasshopper and found more particularly in the south of France.—Translator's Note.); you subject cell and protoplasm to chemical tests, I study instinct in its loftiest manifestations; you pry into ...
— The Wonders of Instinct • J. H. Fabre
... looked, for the first time in his life, quite sane. 'We talk about ourselves,' he said, 'as though we were the end of creation. I get tired listening to myself sometimes. Pah!' he continued, 'for all we know the human race may die out utterly and another insect take our place, as possibly we pushed out and took the place of a former race of beings. I wonder if the ant tribe may not be the future inheritors of the earth. They understand combination, and already have an extra sense that we lack. If ...
— Sketches in Lavender, Blue and Green • Jerome K. Jerome
... all about, and I don't like that Hallam," she said. "He's an insect. A crawling one with slimy feet, and to pin a big diamond in front of one as he does is horrible taste. Give me the book, Nellie. It reads like our cypher. Oh, yes. 'Instructions to hand. No legal improvements ...
— Alton of Somasco • Harold Bindloss
... the surplus is and where it is. Will you decide what men shall live, what men shall die? It may be that in the sight of heaven, you are more worthless and less fit to live than millions like this poor man's child. Ah, God! to hear the insect on the leaf pronouncing on the too much life among his hungry ...
— An Inevitable Awakening • ARTHUR JUDSON BROWN
... The Food insisted on escaping with the pertinacity of a thing alive. Flour treated with the stuff crumbled in dry weather almost as if by intention into an impalpable powder, and would lift and travel before the lightest breeze. Now it would be some fresh insect won its way to a temporary fatal new development, now some fresh outbreak from the sewers of rats and such-like vermin. For some days the village of Pangbourne in Berkshire fought with giant ants. Three men were bitten and died. There would ...
— The Food of the Gods and How It Came to Earth • H.G. Wells
... attributes emotions to plants and souls to bees, might wrap a drama of destiny about this insect. She would command a leading place in a cast which included the butterfly that gave silk to the world, the mosquito that helped to prove the germ theory of disease, and the caterpillar that loosed the apple which revealed the law of ...
— How To Write Special Feature Articles • Willard Grosvenor Bleyer
... of spring flowers, and so followed out the season. She made special pets of the birds, locating nest after nest, and immediately projecting herself into the daily life of the occupants. "No one," she says, "ever taught me more than that the birds were useful, a gift of God for our protection from insect pests on fruit and crops; and a gift of Grace in their beauty and music, things to be rigidly protected. From this cue I evolved the idea myself that I must be extremely careful, for had not my father tied a 'kerchief over my mouth when he lifted me for a peep ...
— At the Foot of the Rainbow • Gene Stratton-Porter
... him? No, Let him go, Never hurt an insect so; But no doubt He flies out Just to gad about. Now you see his wings of silk Drabbled in the baby's milk; Fie, oh fie, Foolish fly! How ...
— Children's Literature - A Textbook of Sources for Teachers and Teacher-Training Classes • Charles Madison Curry
... far as he could gather from the descriptions she gave him from time to time, was going to be rather difficult to find. He feared also that it would be a very insect-ridden place, and that their calm pursuits would often be interrupted by things like earwigs. It was to be ancient, and much thatched and latticed and rose-overgrown. It was, too, to be very small; the ...
— The Princess Priscilla's Fortnight • Elizabeth von Arnim
... this, that the slightest act of charity, even in the lowest class of persons, such as saving the life of an insect out of pity, that this act ... shall bring to the doer of it ...
— The Essence of Buddhism • Various
... those rocks, may lie there till the ravens pick your bones; the anxious glance round the lake to see if the fish are moving; the still more anxious glance through your book to guess what they will choose to take; what extravagant bundle of red, blue, and yellow feathers, like no insect save perhaps some jewelled monster from Amboyna or Brazil—may tempt those sulkiest and most capricious of trout to cease for once their life-long business of picking leeches from among those Syenite cubes which will ...
— Prose Idylls • Charles Kingsley
... plant or animal, save from the germ or seed of some previous plant or animal of the same species. Nor has a single instance of the transmutation of species ever been proved. Every beast, bird, fish, insect and plant brings forth after its kind, and has done so since its creation. No law of Natural Philosophy is more firmly established than this, That there is no spontaneous generation, nor transmutation of species. It is true there is a regular gradation of the various ...
— Fables of Infidelity and Facts of Faith - Being an Examination of the Evidences of Infidelity • Robert Patterson
... Providence we are permitted to bustle about in our immediate little circle like the ant, running hither and thither with all the sublime conceit of that insect. We pick up, as he does, a burden which on close inspection will be found to be absolutely valueless, something that somebody else has thrown away. We hoist it over obstructions while there is usually a short way round; we fret and sweat and fume. Then ...
— Barlasch of the Guard • H. S. Merriman
... Gemma moved restlessly. "Orazio, per carita! Your hand is so hot and sticky! I shall change places with Carmela," she said. She released her fingers from the young man's grasp with the air of one crushing a forward insect or removing a bramble from the path, and she actually beckoned ...
— Olive in Italy • Moray Dalton
... of strange plants. There were countless reptiles and insects. The latter were thicker built than those of Earth—consequently still more disgusting, and some of them were of enormous size. One monstrous insect, as large as a horse, stood right in the centre of their path without budging. It was armour-plated, had jaws like scimitars, and underneath its body was a forest of legs. Tydomin gave one malignant look at it, and sent it crashing ...
— A Voyage to Arcturus • David Lindsay
... white elephant, having red eyes, which glare like a flame of fire. In this country there is a certain species of small vermin, which attaches itself to the trunks of the elephants, to suck their blood, by which many elephants die. The skull of this insect[24] is so hard as to be impenetrable to a musket shot. They have on their livers the figures of men and women, which the natives call Toketa, resembling a mandrake; and it is affirmed, that whoever has one of these about him cannot ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. II • Robert Kerr
... of those bird-men out of sight I come back to earth with an odd feeling of being merely a crawling insect. Anne," he said, turning to his wife, "do you remember the first time I took you for a buggy ride in Avonlea—that night we went to the Carmody concert, the first fall you taught in Avonlea? I had out little black mare with the white star on her forehead, ...
— Rilla of Ingleside • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... such news as he was bringing to the Sovereigns might not be lost. It seemed to him that the strong desire he felt to bring such great news, and to show that all he had said and offered to discover had turned out true, suggested the fear that he would not be able to do so, and that each stinging insect would be able to thwart and impede the work. He attributes this fear to his little faith, and to his want of confidence in ...
— The Northmen, Columbus and Cabot, 985-1503 • Various
... raw, but never had eggs, boiled, fried, or poached, tasted so nice before! He had just finished his meal, and was wishing that a third egg had remained in the ruined nest, when a slight sound like the buzzing of an insect made him look round, and there, within a few feet of him, was the big black weasel once more, looking strangely bold and savage-tempered. It kept staring fixedly at Martin out of its small, wicked, beady black eyes, and snarling so as to show its white sharp teeth; ...
— A Little Boy Lost • Hudson, W. H.
... vicious slap and flew straight for Sary's red head. She unceremoniously ducked and ran. But the insect buzzed after her with evil intent, so Sary ran for her sanctuary, slamming the screen door safely between herself and her pursuer. The audience watching beside the table ...
— Polly of Pebbly Pit • Lillian Elizabeth Roy
... expected of him; his food must be roots and fruit, his clothing of bark fibres; he must spend his time in reading the Vedas; he is to practise austerities by exposing himself to heat and cold; he is to beg food but once a day; he must be careful not to destroy the life of the smallest insect; he must not taste intoxicating liquors. A Brahman who has thus mortified his body by these modes is exalted into the divine essence. This was the early creed of the Brahman before corruption set in. And in these things ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume I • John Lord
... his room and had little heart for study. It was a cosey room now. His landlady had hung rude pictures on the wall and given him a rag carpet. On the table were pieces of clear quartz and tourmaline and, about each window-frame, odd nests of bird or insect—souvenirs of wood-life and his travel with the drove. There, too, on the table were mementos of that first day of his teaching,—the mirror spectacles with which he had seen at once every corner of the schoolroom, the sling-shot and bar ...
— Darrel of the Blessed Isles • Irving Bacheller
... perish. His predecessor in office had already decided the question in favor of national dismemberment, by denying to it the right of self-defense and self-preservation—a right which belongs to the meanest insect. ...
— Masterpieces of Negro Eloquence - The Best Speeches Delivered by the Negro from the days of - Slavery to the Present Time • Various
... observed to bend in a watchful manner over the grass, and, gradually assuming the position of a quadruped, fall plump upon his hands and knees. Having achieved this feat, he would rise with a grasshopper between his finger and thumb; a tin box being then held open by the other, the unlucky insect was carefully introduced to the interior, and the lid closed sharply—some such remark attending each capture as that "That one was safe," or, "There went another;" and the mystery of the whole proceeding being explained by the fact that these same incarcerated grasshoppers were intended to ...
— Hudson Bay • R.M. Ballantyne
... is unjustified, and only irritates the sufferer, rouses his antagonism, and undermines his confidence in the judgment of his adviser. He knows that the sensations are there. To call them imaginary is like telling one who inspects an insect through a microscope that the claws do not look enormous; they do look enormous—through the microscope—but this does not make them so. The worrier must learn to realize that he is looking at his sensations, as he does everything else, through ...
— Why Worry? • George Lincoln Walton, M.D.
... little coral insect, obeying the blind instinct of its nature, adds particle to particle, and builds a house for itself at the same time that it helps to construct a continent; so we, obeying the voice of God, in every little duty, performed not ...
— The Elements of Character • Mary G. Chandler
... rifle, took the position assigned to her, and there was no more conversation for the next two hours, no sound other than that from the insect life and the occasional whinney of a pony. The minds of the Overlanders, however, were active. They were pondering over these persistent attacks on them, and Grace, for one, became finally convinced that Lieutenant Wingate was not overstating ...
— Grace Harlowe's Overland Riders Among the Kentucky Mountaineers • Jessie Graham Flower
... Nayland Smith were stealthily retracing their steps, the former keeping the light directed upon the hideous insect, which now began running about with that horrible, febrile activity characteristic of the species. Suddenly came a sharp, staccato report.... Sir Lionel had scored a hit with ...
— The Hand Of Fu-Manchu - Being a New Phase in the Activities of Fu-Manchu, the Devil Doctor • Sax Rohmer
... chasms which when the world was young had felt the surge of the restless seas. No form of life winged its way through the darkness and called to its mate. No beast of prey rent the air with its challenge. No insect chirped. No slimy shape crawled over the rocks. Dark and solemn, mysterious and still, the earth sped ...
— Omega, the Man • Lowell Howard Morrow
... coupled with the very unusual character of the details at the outer extremities of the figures, leads to the surmise that each part of the design is a conventional representation of some life form, a bird, an insect, or perhaps ...
— A Study Of The Textile Art In Its Relation To The Development Of Form And Ornament • William H. Holmes
... mountain wooded to the peak, the lawns And winding glades high up like ways to Heaven, The slender coco's drooping crown of plumes, The lightning flash of insect and of bird, The lustre of the long convolvuluses That coil'd around the stately stems, and ran Ev'n to the limit of the land, the glows And glories of the broad belt of the world, All these he saw; but what he fain had seen He could not see, the kindly human face, Nor ever hear a kindly voice, ...
— English Critical Essays - Nineteenth Century • Various
... in the downs, awaiting a fair wind to carry her into the port of London. This collier (a schooner) was named the "Butterfly," perhaps because the owner had a hazy idea that there was some resemblance between an insect flitting about from flower to flower and a vessel sailing from port to port! Black as a chimney from keelson to truck, she was as like to a butterfly as a lady's hand is to ...
— The Lifeboat • R.M. Ballantyne
... The loveliness which makes that special person the veritable Rose of the World to us exists but in our imagination. It is no rose that we adore—only at the best a bedeguar, of which the origin is a disagreeable little insect. We believe in the exquisite harmony of those atoms which have arranged themselves to form the thing we love. And we marry our human ideal, expecting the unbroken continuance of that harmony. But the discord comes; colours clash; the jarring note ...
— The Idler, Volume III., Issue XIII., February 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly. Edited By Jerome K. Jerome & Robert Barr • Various
... years before his marriage, in a broker's office, with no other means than the meagre salary of a clerk. But he was a man to whom misfortune had early taught the truths of life, and he followed the strait path with the tenacity of an insect making for its nest; he was one of those dogged young men who feign death before an obstacle and wear out everybody's patience with their own beetle-like perseverance. Thus, young as he was, he had all the republican virtue of poor peoples; he was sober, saving of his time, an enemy to pleasure. ...
— Ferragus • Honore de Balzac
... is the name of a sort, kind, or class, of beings or things; as, Beast, bird, fish, insect,—creatures, ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown
... made the same guess as the pale-face youth, but with a more profound belief in the prodigious capacity of the Shawanoe, he fixed upon a point further down stream and closer to the other bank for his reappearance; but the seconds lengthened into minutes and nothing was seen. The wing of the flitting insect, had it glanced against the surface, would have caused a crinkle or two which the watchful eyes of the Sauk would have detected, but as it was, his vision, roaming back and forth, and here and there over the calm surface, saw ...
— Footprints in the Forest • Edward Sylvester Ellis
... agricultural operations and could not be placated until a shrine was built in its honour; that in the time of the Emperor Kogyoku, the people of the eastern provinces devoted themselves to the worship of an insect resembling a silkworm, which they regarded as a manifestation of the Kami of the Moon; that the Emperor Keiko (A.D. 71-130) declared a huge tree to be sacred; that in the days of the Empress Suiko (A.D. 593-628), religious rites were performed before cutting down a tree supposed ...
— A History of the Japanese People - From the Earliest Times to the End of the Meiji Era • Frank Brinkley and Dairoku Kikuchi
... Barotse valley, rains had fallen and the woods had put on their gayest hue. Flowers of great beauty grew everywhere. "The ground begins to swarm with insect life, and in the cool, pleasant mornings the place rings with ...
— A Book of Discovery - The History of the World's Exploration, From the Earliest - Times to the Finding of the South Pole • Margaret Bertha (M. B.) Synge
... perform, tho' you, it woulde seeme, have none. I must away to make Honey.' Then the Childe, abasht, went to the Ant. He sayd, 'Will you play with me, Ant?' The Ant replied, 'Nay, I must provide against the Winter.' In shorte, he found that everie Bird, Beaste, and Insect he accosted, had a closer Eye to the Purpose of their Creation than himselfe. Then he sayd, 'I will then back, and con my Task.'—Moral. The Moral of the foregoing Fable, my deare Aunt, is this—We must love Work better ...
— Mary Powell & Deborah's Diary • Anne Manning
... Creation kreitajxo. Creator kreinto. Creature estajxo. Credence kredo. Credible kredebla. Credit kredito. Creditor kreditoro. Credulity kredemo. Creed kredo. Creep rampi. Creole Kreolo. Crest tufo. Crevice fendo—ajxo. Crew maristaro. Cricket (insect) grilo. Crime krimo. Criminal krimulo. Criminally kriminale. Crimson rugxega. Cripple kripligi. Cripple kriplulo. Crippled kripla. Crisis krizo. Crisp friza. Critic kritikisto. Criticism kritiko. Croak bleki. Crockery fajenco. Crocodile ...
— English-Esperanto Dictionary • John Charles O'Connor and Charles Frederic Hayes
... animals are at rest it is possible to observe some kind of motion in them. Trees and stones never move unless acted upon by external force, while the infant and the tiniest insect can execute a great variety of movements. Even in the deepest sleep the beating of the heart and the motion of the chest never cease. In fact, the power to execute spontaneous movement is the most ...
— A Practical Physiology • Albert F. Blaisdell
... bore, what a responsibility he had assumed. At home there was one who knew,—for he was betrothed. A large, long-legged spider was crawling over the floor and drew near his foot; he was in the habit of treading on this loathsome insect, but to-day he tenderly raised his foot that it might go in peace whither it would. His voice was as gentle as a collect, his eyes said incessantly that all men were good, his hands made a humble movement out of his pockets up to his hair to stroke ...
— A Happy Boy • Bjornstjerne Bjornson
... indigestible food even for a bear's stomach. Anyhow, it was following with mighty strides in the track of the fugitives. It caught sight of me and stopped, astonished, as if it were thinking, 'What sort of insect can that be?' I went on to within easy range; it stood still, looking hard at me. At last it turned its head a little, and I gave it a ball in the neck. Without moving a limb, it sank slowly to the ice. I now let loose some of ...
— Farthest North - Being the Record of a Voyage of Exploration of the Ship 'Fram' 1893-1896 • Fridtjof Nansen
... larva is transformed into the pupa or nymph, which is distinguishable principally by the shortness of its antennae and the presence of wing pads. After a brief existence the pupa emerges from the ground, and, holding on to a plant stem by means of its powerful front legs, sets free the perfect insect through a slit along the median dorsal line of the thorax. In some cases the pupa upon emerging constructs a chimney of soil, the use of which is not known. In one of the best-known species, Cicada septemdecim, from North America, the lifecycle ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 3 - "Chitral" to "Cincinnati" • Various
... to mark the greater breaks in sentences, when the lesser breaks are marked by semicolons. "You have called yourself an atom in the universe; you have said that you are but an insect in the solar blaze: is your present pride consistent with these professions?" "A clause is either independent or dependent: independent, if it forms an assertion by itself; dependent, if it enters into some ...
— The Verbalist • Thomas Embly Osmun, (AKA Alfred Ayres)
... insect Aristotle gives a copious account. He describes two separate species, which we still recognize easily; a larger one and the better singer, the other smaller and the first to come and last to go with the summer season. ...
— The Legacy of Greece • Various
... said Henry, extending his brawny arm: "I will have no more close hugs—no more bodkin work, like last night. I care little for a wasp's sting, yet I will not allow the insect to come near me if I ...
— The Fair Maid of Perth • Sir Walter Scott
... far off above the pale wattlings of a fold: but as he wound on—and on into the Plain there was no sign of man in all the hot landscape, and no motion but the bicker of the stream over its stony bed, and the hum of insect life busy on its millions of dark and tiny vibrant wings. Not a breath of wind stirred among these grassy valleys, and Lawrence, feeling warm, had sat down by a pool under a sapling birchtree, when he heard a step on the path. ...
— Nightfall • Anthony Pryde |
