"Metamorphosis" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... its peculiar beauty of holiness; but that beauty is the expression of its essential truth, and the essence itself is so strong that it bestows upon its embodiment even the power of partial metamorphosis with all other vital relations. How many daughters have in the devotion of their tenderness, become as mothers to their own fathers! Who has not known some sister more of a wife to a man than she for whose sake he neglected ...
— Paul Faber, Surgeon • George MacDonald
... of the metamorphosis of forces, which was begun a century ago by Count Rumford when he recognized heat as a mode of molecular motion, was consummated about the middle of the century, when Doctor Joule showed mathematically just how much heat ...
— The Life Radiant • Lilian Whiting
... myself with one of my two white shirts, and with the change of raiment which had been tight squeezed in my portmanteau. The old overcoat was the best part of it, as in a finite world it often is. I sold my felt hat to Zekiel, and appeared with a light travelling-cap. I do not know how Fausta liked my metamorphosis. I only know that, like butterflies, for a day or two after they go through theirs, I ...
— The Man Without a Country and Other Tales • Edward E. Hale
... The higher Enthusiasm of man's nature is for the while without Exponent; yet does it continue indestructible, unweariedly active, and work blindly in the great chaotic deep: thus Sect after Sect, and Church after Church, bodies itself forth, and melts again into new metamorphosis. ...
— Sartor Resartus, and On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and the Heroic in History • Thomas Carlyle
... began to be so excessively fond of him, that the little fellow was obliged to caution them at last—for the good, as he said, of society; he recommended them to draw lots, for he could not gratify them all; but promised when his metamorphosis was complete, that the one chosen should become the happy Mrs. Poinsinet; or, to ...
— The Paris Sketch Book Of Mr. M. A. Titmarsh • William Makepeace Thackeray
... delay of a moment in the fulfilling of the command. But the gratitude that disobeys an injunction, that does what the man is told not to do, and so plunges into the irretrievable, is a virtue that needs a development amounting almost to a metamorphosis. ...
— Miracles of Our Lord • George MacDonald
... through the fulfilment of certain hard conditions, the non-compliance wherewith on the part of her earthly swain threatens her with the direst penalties; her lover fails in the test, which consists in this, that, however evil and repulsive she may appear to him (in the metamorphosis which she has to undergo), he shall not reject her in his unbelief. In Gozzi's tale the fairy is changed into a snake; the remorseful lover frees her from the spell by kissing the snake, and thus wins her for his ...
— The Opera - A Sketch of the Development of Opera. With full Descriptions - of all Works in the Modern Repertory • R.A. Streatfeild
... be a boy again like Dick, and accordingly he had become a perfect duplicate, even to the contents of the pockets. Evidently nothing on the face of things showed the slightest difference. Yet—and here lay the sting of the metamorphosis—he was conscious under it all of being his old original self, in utter discordance with the youthful form in which ...
— Vice Versa - or A Lesson to Fathers • F. Anstey
... seal!—motto and all. And the ignorant, sprawling hand is gone; he sports a secretary, evidently—a secretary with a most confident swing and flourish to his pen. Oh indeed, our fortunes are improving over there—our meek tramp has undergone a metamorphosis." ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... usually dull eyes, though the spasmodic twitching testified to nerves still unsteady. When he held out his trembling hand, she took it as though in a trance. She saw that it was difficult for him to speak. It was impossible for her. The suggested metamorphosis was ...
— The Seventh Noon • Frederick Orin Bartlett
... too late in the season, of course, for much new growth in the vegetable beds; but the half-hearted attention of John-Ed, junior, had never brought about this metamorphosis, Tunis well knew. He went on to the Latham house, feeling well pleased. Aside from all other considerations, he was glad to know that his Machiavellian plan had ...
— Sheila of Big Wreck Cove - A Story of Cape Cod • James A. Cooper
... Then they undertook, by repeating their arguments, to destroy the effect of the prophetic warning to which the king had just listened. They succeeded but too well. "That instant," says Henry of Anjou, "we perceived a sudden change, a strange and wonderful metamorphosis in the king. He placed himself on our side, and adopted our opinion, going much beyond us and to more criminal lengths; since, whereas before it was difficult to persuade him, now we had to restrain him. For, rising and addressing us, while imposing silence upon us, ...
— History of the Rise of the Huguenots - Volume 2 • Henry Baird
... Hotel. "On a general Judgment—A new System of communicating Scientific Information in a Tabular form—On the Study of the Law and Medicine—On Apoplexy," and the general business of the University, are very grave matters for little more than 100 pages. "On the Metamorphosis of Plants," by Goethe, is more attractive; but Magazine readers do not want the lumber of law and medicine—the dry material of parchment, or the blood and filth of the physiological chair. How different too, is all this from the pleasantry and attic wit of "The Etonian," into whose ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 14, Issue 394, October 17, 1829 • Various
... weakness of his faith. He loves peace as his life, for he fears a sword in his soul. If he cut his finger he looketh presently for the sign, and if his head ache he is ready to make his will. A report of a cannon strikes him flat on his face, and a clap of thunder makes him a strange metamorphosis. Rather than he will fight he will be beaten, and if his legs will help him he will put his arms to no trouble. He makes love commonly with his purse, and brags most of his maidenhead. He will not marry but into a ...
— Character Writings of the 17th Century • Various
... woman, with a pair of splendid blue gossamer wings to his shoulders—one of the aldermen found himself with a naiad's tail, and he fell flat on the terrace, with great violence; all of them, men and women, were transformed into some shape or another—and the more strange the metamorphosis, the louder they all laughed and shouted. Some indeed were very much alarmed; particularly one little woman, who whispered to her neighbour, that she believed she was a ...
— Olla Podrida • Frederick Marryat
... his abode therein; the hut was empty, but clean and compact, and it was with no little pleasure that the Assessor took possession of it, and seated himself with Petrea on the only bench which it possessed. Petrea sighed. What a miserable metamorphosis of her ...
— The Home • Fredrika Bremer
... mirror was the brother Anselmo. "Is this a face," said I, communing with myself, "to be disfigured with a vile tonsure? are these limbs to be hid under the repulsive garment of a monk?" Again I surveyed myself, and it was with difficulty that I could tear myself away from contemplating my metamorphosis. I was indeed a butterfly. At last I determined upon sallying forth. I locked up my monastic dress and descended the staircase. I must acknowledge that it was with trepidation I ventured into the street, ...
— The Pacha of Many Tales • Frederick Marryat
... unproved and untenable. It pleases and satisfies superficial views, but confronted with the facts of nature, it vanishes like a baseless vision. Man is sui generis, sole and exclusive in organization, without pre-existing type or affinity to other species; and his alleged recent metamorphosis from a monkey, and his first and far more distant one from a snail or a tadpole, are paradoxes only worthy ...
— An Expository Outline of the "Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation" • Anonymous
... who shall decide?" It is contended by one group of scientists that the water lily, which shows the plainest metamorphosis of some sort, has developed its stamens from petals - just the reverse of Nature's method, other botanists claim. A perfect flower, we know, may consist of only a stamen and a pistil, the essential organs, all other parts being desirable, but of only secondary importance. ...
— Wild Flowers, An Aid to Knowledge of Our Wild Flowers and - Their Insect Visitors - - Title: Nature's Garden • Neltje Blanchan
... pressed-glass punch bowl, purchased out of Nicholas's—aged fourteen—pig-bank savings. An enlarged crayon of her twins from a baby picture. A patent rocker which she kept in the kitchen. (It fitted her so for the attitude of peeling.) Two bisque plaques, with embossed angels. Another chair capable of metamorphosis into a ladder. And ...
— The Vertical City • Fannie Hurst
... cases, to distinct external influences; which are assuredly competent to alter the character of the tegumentary covering, to change colour, to increase or diminish the size of muscles, to modify constitution, and, among plants, to give rise to the metamorphosis of stamens into petals, and so forth. But however they may have arisen, what especially interests us at present is, to remark that, once in existence, many varieties obey the fundamental law of reproduction that like tends to produce like; and their offspring ...
— Darwiniana • Thomas Henry Huxley
... description of Sabine, sitting in state as a queen, is given in the opening of song v. of Drayton's Polyolbion, and the tale of her metamorphosis is recorded at length in song vi. Milton in Comus, and Fletcher in The Faithful Shepherdess, refer to the transformation ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook, Vol. 3 • E. Cobham Brewer
... gendarme, who still breathed heavily, and dragging him to our bed of leaves, covered him up, threw off his own clothes, which he tied in a bundle, and gave to me to carry, and put on those of the gendarme. I could not help laughing at the metamorphosis, and asked O'Brien what he intended. "Sure, I'm a gendarme, bringing with me a prisoner, who has escaped." He then tied my hands with a cord, shouldered his musket, and off we set. We now quitted ...
— Peter Simple and The Three Cutters, Vol. 1-2 • Frederick Marryat
... streets. Pascal fixed a penetrating look on the madwoman, and then on his father and uncle. His professional instinct was getting the better of him, and he studied the mother and the sons, with all the keenness of a naturalist observing the metamorphosis of some insect. He pondered over the growth of that family to which he belonged, over the different branches growing from one parent stock, whose sap carried identical germs to the farthest twigs, ...
— The Fortune of the Rougons • Emile Zola
... in her white dress, just as she is, but Denise overrules so great a blunder, and when Grandon returns he finds a pale little nun in black, with a close bonnet and long veil. Cecil has come with him, and is shocked at this strange metamorphosis. She ...
— Floyd Grandon's Honor • Amanda Minnie Douglas
... romantic love does not undergo a metamorphosis in marriage is the first of five mistakes I have undertaken to correct in this chapter. The second is summed up in Westermarck's assertion ...
— Primitive Love and Love-Stories • Henry Theophilus Finck
... a disagreeable one, for, though the Emperor's remark that he had yielded to the rare charm of this woman was not true, his kindly heart had become warmly attached to Barbara. For the first time he saw in her the suffering which often causes a metamorphosis in certain traits in a sick person's character extend their transforming power to the entire nature. Passionate love for her art gave her the ability to maintain with punctilious exactness the silence which ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... bowed himself out as the Austrian entered the king's presence. For the first time in two years the chancellor felt that the destiny of Lutha was safe in the hands of her king. What had caused the metamorphosis in Leopold he could not guess. He did not seem to be the same man that had whined and growled at their ...
— The Mad King • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... been sixteen we had been just of an age and contemporaries altogether. Now we were a year and three-quarters older, and she—her metamorphosis was almost complete, and I was still only at the beginning of a man's ...
— In the Days of the Comet • H. G. Wells
... more prepossessing from its expression of frankness than from the regularity of its features,—he stopped short, held out his hand, and said, with a gay laugh, as he glanced over the parson's threadbare and slovenly costume, "My poor Caleb!—what a metamorphosis!—I should not have ...
— Night and Morning, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... be that they underwent some classic metamorphosis, translated to a rainless paradise, where they dreamed of battalions for ever inspected and the ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 158, April 28, 1920 • Various
... possibilities over in my mind I left the house, in a state of black melancholy, hoping to revive my spirits in the fresh air, but scarcely had I set foot upon the public promenade when a girl, by no means homely, met me, and, calling me Polyaenos, the name I had assumed since my metamorphosis, informed me that her mistress desired leave to speak with me. "You must be mistaken," I answered, in confusion, "I am only a servant and a stranger, and am by no means worthy of such ...
— The Satyricon, Complete • Petronius Arbiter
... magical power of superstition and supernatural notions, they would succeed, perhaps, in transforming to vices those happy dispositions that nature has given you. Believe me, Madam, you would gain nothing by such a metamorphosis. Rather be what you really are. Extricate yourself as soon as possible from that state of incertitude and languor, from that alternative of despondency and trouble, in which you are immersed. If you will only take your reason and virtue ...
— Letters to Eugenia - or, a Preservative Against Religious Prejudices • Baron d'Holbach
... Prater of Vienna. I fill my pipe very quietly, take out my ink-stand and pens, seat myself in the corner of my sofa, read, correct, and now for the first time really set about thinking what I have written. To see this origin of a book, this metamorphosis of manuscript into print, is a delight to which I give myself up entirely. Look you, this melancholy pleasure, which would have furnished the departed Voss with worthy matter for more than one blessed Idyl—(the more ...
— Hyperion • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
... the greatest adaptation and facility on the part of actor and stage manager. The "Yotsuya Kwaidan" in the stage representation presents a number of critical scenes in which both qualities are severely strained. Rapid metamorphosis is a sine qua non. And it ...
— The Yotsuya Kwaidan or O'Iwa Inari - Tales of the Tokugawa, Volume 1 (of 2) • James S. De Benneville
... he walked up to Wharton, and said, with some gravity, "Now, sir, may I beg to examine the quality of that wig? And if I could persuade you to exchange this old surtout for that handsome blue coat, I think you never could witness a more agreeable metamorphosis." ...
— The Worlds Greatest Books - Vol. II: Fiction • Arthur Mee, J. A. Hammerton, Eds.
... noteworthy writer on military affairs in England must have come as somewhat of a shock. To those whose knowledge of Mr. Belloc's writings was confined to The Path to Rome or the Cautionary Tales, who thought of him as essayist or poet, this must have seemed a strange metamorphosis indeed. Even those who were conversant with his study of the military aspects of the Revolution and had noticed the careful attention paid by Mr. Belloc to military matters in various books could scarcely have been prepared for such an avalanche ...
— Hilaire Belloc - The Man and His Work • C. Creighton Mandell
... on those of the man on the boulevard. He reproduced the manner of this ragged fashionable, his grotesque calm, his ridiculous dignity; and having induced his fellow-actor, Serres, to get up a like metamorphosis for the part of Bertrand, the piece ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science Volume 15, No. 89, May, 1875 • Various
... extremely complex antennae; but they have a closed and imperfect mouth, and cannot feed: their function at this stage is, to search by their well-developed organs of sense, and to reach by their active powers of swimming, a proper place on which to become attached and to undergo their final metamorphosis. When this is completed they are fixed for life: their legs are now converted into prehensile organs; they again obtain a well-constructed mouth; but they have no antennae, and their two eyes are now reconverted into a minute, single, and very ...
— On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection • Charles Darwin
... not wish to threaten you, young lady,' he resumed, 'and I think, besides, that I can trust your kind face. Will you promise me not to reveal this metamorphosis ...
— Railway Adventures and Anecdotes - extending over more than fifty years • Various
... of true Reptiles. These are distinguished, as a class, from the Amphibians, by the fact that they are air-breathers throughout the whole of their life, and therefore are at no time provided with gills; whilst they are exempt from that metamorphosis which all the Amphibia undergo in early life, consequent upon their transition from an aquatic to a more or less purely aerial mode of respiration. Their skeleton is well ossified; they usually have horny or bony plates, singly or in combination, developed in ...
— The Ancient Life History of the Earth • Henry Alleyne Nicholson
... the parasites are sucked up with the blood of the victim. Once inside the stomach they soon free themselves from the inclosing sheath and make their way through the walls of the stomach and enter the muscular tissue, particularly the thoracic muscles. Here they undergo a metamorphosis and increase enormously in size, some attaining one-sixteenth ...
— Insects and Diseases - A Popular Account of the Way in Which Insects may Spread - or Cause some of our Common Diseases • Rennie W. Doane
... directly you were married, you felt quite different, but no wonderful metamorphosis had come about so far. She felt just herself, save for a dull sort ...
— The Beggar Man • Ruby Mildred Ayres
... speaks of "twittle-twattles that I had learned in ale-houses and at the Theatre of Lanham and his fellows." Again, Nash, in Pierce Penniless (1592), writes: "Tarleton at the Theatre made jests of him"; Harrington, in The Metamorphosis of Ajax (1596): "Which word was after admitted into the Theatre with great applause, by the mouth of Master Tarleton"; and the author of Tarlton's Newes out of Purgatory (c. 1589) represents Tarleton ...
— Shakespearean Playhouses - A History of English Theatres from the Beginnings to the Restoration • Joseph Quincy Adams
... who wrote of Erec and Enide, and translated into French the commands of Ovid and the Art of Love, and wrote the Shoulder Bite, [22] and about King Mark and the fair Iseut, [23] and about the metamorphosis of the Lapwing, [24] the Swallow, and the Nightingale, will tell another story now about a youth who lived in Greece and was a member of King Arthur's line. But before I tell you aught of him, you shall hear of his father's ...
— Four Arthurian Romances - "Erec et Enide", "Cliges", "Yvain", and "Lancelot" • Chretien de Troyes
... and energy for one grand effort and gave her a kick that sent her clean across the river. On landing she was converted into the mass of rock which remains to this day a memorial of her viciousness and a warning to all future scolds. The metamorphosis was effected by the Tshaumen, but how the necessary force was acquired to send her across the river (here about half a mile wide), or whether the kick was administered by the Tshaumen or the husband, my narrator could not say. He was altogether at a loss ...
— Klondyke Nuggets - A Brief Description of the Great Gold Regions in the Northwest • Joseph Ladue
... his hand, and, directly he did so, it happened as on the previous evening, that a metamorphosis took place in the very abysses of my being. I woke from my torpor, as he put it, I came out of death, and was alive again. I was far, yet, from being my own man; I realised that he exercised on me a degree of mesmeric force which I had never dreamed that one creature ...
— The Beetle - A Mystery • Richard Marsh
... not innocently, as children with dolls, but guiltily and darkly, as the idolatrous Jews with their pictures on cavern walls, which men had to dig to detect. The justice we do not execute, we mimic in the novel and on the stage; for the beauty we destroy in nature, we substitute the metamorphosis of the pantomime, and (the human nature of us imperatively requiring awe and sorrow of some kind) for the noble grief we should have borne with our fellows, and the pure tears we should have wept with them, we gloat over the pathos of the police court, and gather ...
— Harvard Classics Volume 28 - Essays English and American • Various
... is based upon a denial of the axiom that the satisfaction of one want breeds another want. Experience does not teach the decay but the metamorphosis of individuality. Under socialised industry progress in the industrial arts would be slower and would absorb a smaller proportion of individual interest, in order that progress in the finer intellectual and moral arts might ...
— The Evolution of Modern Capitalism - A Study of Machine Production • John Atkinson Hobson
... one of sunny brightness, which added to the uncertainty of his changing expression. Surely, his very features changed their form, his jaw looked sometimes large and sometimes small; and the little ripple in his nose was a preparation for metamorphosis. When he turned his head quickly his hair seemed to shake out light, and some persons thought they saw decided genius in this coruscation. Mr. Casaubon, on ...
— Middlemarch • George Eliot
... shows what conditions must prevail in any given place in order that fossils shall be formed, how unusual such conditions are, and how probable it is that fossils once imbedded in sediment of a sea-bed will be destroyed by metamorphosis of the rocks, or by denudation when the strata are raised above the water-level. Add to this the fact that only small territories of the earth have been explored geologically, he says, and it becomes clear that the paleontological record as we now possess it shows but a mere fragment of the ...
— A History of Science, Volume 3(of 5) • Henry Smith Williams
... to anything final but tendency; but tendency appears on all hands; planet, system, constellation, total nature is growing like a field of maize in July; is becoming something else; is in rapid metamorphosis. The embryo does not more strive to be man, than yonder burr of light we call a nebula tends to be a ring, a comet, a globe, and parent of new stars." "In short, the spirit and peculiarity of that impression nature makes on us is this, that it does ...
— Ralph Waldo Emerson • Oliver Wendell Holmes
... The belief in metamorphosis involves opinions on the subject of death which are worth a moment's pause. Death is a problem to all men, to the savage as to the most civilized. Least of any can the savage look upon it as extinction. He emphatically believes ...
— The Science of Fairy Tales - An Inquiry into Fairy Mythology • Edwin Sidney Hartland
... only has Metropolisville gone, but the unsettled state of society in which it grew has likewise disappeared—the land-sharks, the claim speculators, the town-proprietors, the trappers, and the stage-drivers have emigrated or have undergone metamorphosis. The wild excitement of '56 is a tradition hardly credible to those who did not feel its fever. But the most evanescent things may impress themselves on human beings, and in the results which they thus produce become immortal. There is a last page to all ...
— The Mystery of Metropolisville • Edward Eggleston
... mica, chlorite, etc., etc., are due not to original deposition, but to segregation; and this is I consider the point which I have established. This is very odd, but I suspect that great metamorphic areas are generally derived from the metamorphosis of clay-slate, and not from alternating layers of ordinary sedimentary matter. I think you have exactly put the chief difficulty in its strongest light—viz. what would be the result of pure or nearly pure layers of very different mineralogical composition being metamorphosed? ...
— More Letters of Charles Darwin Volume II - Volume II (of II) • Charles Darwin
... ship's spars were projected as dusky shadows against the Milky Way. Now, the sea was ablaze with opaline light, and the yards and sails were painted in faint tints of blue on a background of ebony. The metamorphosis was sudden and wonderful beyond description! The polar aurora seemed to have left its home in the higher regions of the atmosphere and descended in a sheet of vivid electrical fire upon the ocean. ...
— Tent Life in Siberia • George Kennan
... what her state of mind would have been, if she had seen him thus coupled with Diva. She would have suspected (rightly in all probability) some loathsome intrigue against herself. And the cream of it was that until she chose, nobody could possibly find out what had caused this metamorphosis so paralysing to inquiring intellects, for Major Benjy would assuredly never tell anyone that there was a reconciliation, due to his apology for his rudeness, when he had stood by and permitted an intoxicated Puffin to suggest disgraceful bargains. Tilling—poor ...
— Miss Mapp • Edward Frederic Benson
... away from their elder sisters. They have been carried along by a love of sport, and by the set of fashion's tide, not stopping to ask themselves whither they are floating. They do not realize all the importance of their acts nor the true meaning of their metamorphosis. ...
— Worldly Ways and Byways • Eliot Gregory
... way in which he could explain the metamorphosis was that the guests were imbued with the spirit of discontent that prevailed throughout the world in the years following the war. The theory did not make his position easier, however, nor alter the fact ...
— The Dude Wrangler • Caroline Lockhart
... philosophizing upon it, and can find many reasons why knowledge received through the ear makes a more ready and lasting impression, than when it comes through the eye. He tries to apply the method to Arithmetic and Geography, and in a short time is forming plans for the complete metamorphosis of his school. When engaged in hearing a recitation, his mind is distracted with his schemes and plans; and instead of devoting his attention fully to the work he may have in hand, his thoughts are wandering continually to new schemes and fancied ...
— The Teacher - Or, Moral Influences Employed in the Instruction and - Government of the Young • Jacob Abbott
... tadpoles. The instinct promptly changes with the structure, without supernatural interposition,—just as Darwin would have it, if the development of a variety or incipient species, though rare, were as natural as a metamorphosis. ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. VI.,October, 1860.—No. XXXVI. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... discoursed of altogether. These subjects are a certain set of ancient beliefs, for example the belief in clairvoyance, in 'hauntings,' in events transcending ordinary natural laws. The peculiarity of these beliefs is, that they have survived the wreck of faith in such elements of witchcraft as metamorphosis, and power to cause tempest or drought. To study such themes is 'impious,' or 'superstitious,' or 'useless'. Yet to a pathologist, or anthropologist, the survivals of beliefs must always be curious and attractive ...
— Cock Lane and Common-Sense • Andrew Lang
... ruffian, "Jim Robinson," "a little man, stockish, oily, and red in the face, a jaunty fellow, too, with a certain shabby air of coxcombry even in his travel-stained attire,"—and how accurately does he describe the metamorphosis of this nauseous grub into a ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, August, 1863, No. 70 - A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics • Various
... prisoner would be acquitted of the graver charges, or that at most he would be permanently displaced from all office and declared incapable thenceforth to serve the State. The triumph of the Contra-Remonstrants since the Stadholder had placed himself at the head of them, and the complete metamorphosis of the city governments even in the strongholds of the Arminian party seemed to render the permanent political disgrace of the Advocate ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... had been accustomed to see in sordid attire, surrounded with the incumbrances of his trade, was decked out for the occasion in a full-dress suit, with a wig of majestic and voluminous structure. Clarke was, as it appears, so much struck with the whimsical nature of this unexpected metamorphosis, and the extraordinary solemnity of his kinsman's demeanour, as to have felt impelled, almost immediately upon entering the room, to snatch the wig from the alderman's head, and throw it against the ceiling: after which this eminent person immediately escaped, ...
— Thoughts on Man - His Nature, Productions and Discoveries, Interspersed with - Some Particulars Respecting the Author • William Godwin
... tree? That, too, might undergo a metamorphosis in the minds of men. The conquerors would see their aboriginal slaves of the old race still haunting the tree, making stealthy offerings to it by night: and they would ask the reason. But they would not be told. The secret would be guarded; such secrets were guarded, ...
— Scientific Essays and Lectures • Charles Kingsley
... the pressed man, in spite of all his ruses and protestations, was rated and absorbed into that vast agglomeration of men and ships known as the fleet. Here he underwent a speedy metamorphosis. It was not that he lost his individuality and became a mere unit amongst thousands. Quite the contrary. Friends, creditors or next-of-kin, concocting petitions on his behalf, set forth in heart-rending terms the many disabilities he suffered from, together ...
— The Press-Gang Afloat and Ashore • John R. Hutchinson
... formerly inexplicable, are satisfactorily explained by these recently discovered properties of porous bodies. The metamorphosis of alcohol into acetic acid, by the process known as the quick vinegar manufacture, depends upon principles, at a knowledge of which we have arrived by a ...
— Familiar Letters of Chemistry • Justus Liebig
... with a T, and Kalo is usually Taro. It is a very musical language. Each syllable and word ends with a vowel, and there are none of our rasping and sibilant consonants. In their soft phraseology our hard rough surnames undergo a metamorphosis, as Fisk into Filikina, Wilson into Wilikina. Each vowel is distinctly pronounced, and usually with the Italian sound. The volcano is pronounced as if spelt Keel-ah-wee-ah, and Kauai as if Kah-wye-ee. The name Owhyhee for Hawaii had its origin ...
— The Hawaiian Archipelago • Isabella L. Bird
... metamorphosis, which, now that you are tolerably well versed in the history of mineral and vegetable substances, I leave to your judgment to explain. Do you imagine that vegetables can be ...
— Conversations on Chemistry, V. 1-2 • Jane Marcet
... of finest diamonds—a splendid toilette indeed, as fresh and radiant as the morning dew upon the meadows. When they set out on the love-path, that is. When they came home from it, and from all the fatigues and fervors of the German, a metamorphosis. The gauzy dress was so fringed and trodden on and torn that it seemed to hold together, like many an ill-assorted marriage, by the cohesion of habit alone; the hair—Madge Wildfire's was of more respectable appearance; the powder had ...
— Lippincott's Magazine. Vol. XII, No. 33. December, 1873. • Various
... "A sad metamorphosis," he said. "I had rather read of nymphs changed into laurel and gushing springs. I am come to take you, sir, before the officers of the Company aboard this ship, when, if you have aught to say for yourself, you may say it. ...
— To Have and To Hold • Mary Johnston
... many and delighted all. All sorts of rumours began to be whispered about. Sagacious persons opined that Vassily Ivanovitch had till then been crushed under the weight of some secret trouble, that he saw chances of returning to the capital... but the true cause of Vassily Ivanovitch's metamorphosis was guessed by ...
— The Jew And Other Stories • Ivan Turgenev
... Halbert had concluded his bold speech, the White Lady stood before him with the same pale, fixed, and melancholy aspect, which she usually bore. He had expected the agitation which she exhibited would conclude in some frightful metamorphosis. Folding her arms on her bosom, the ...
— The Monastery • Sir Walter Scott
... saw, in Malebolge, a strange encounter between a human form and a serpent. The enemies, after cruel wounds inflicted, stood for a time glaring on each other. A great cloud surrounded them, and then a wonderful metamorphosis began. Each creature was transfigured into the likeness of its antagonist. The serpent's tail divided itself into two legs; the man's legs intertwined themselves into a tail. The body of the serpent put forth arms; the arms of the man shrank into his body. At length the serpent stood up ...
— Critical and Historical Essays, Volume III (of 3) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... hue which suggests a convivial nature. After this was accomplished, and the baron had convinced himself by a careful examination in the mirror that he was transformed into a charming, gay, young fellow, he began a similar metamorphosis of his costume. Taking the diamond pin from his lace jabot he hid it under his vest, which he buttoned to the necktie. Then removing the light silk long-skirted dress-coat, he turned it completely ...
— A Conspiracy of the Carbonari • Louise Muhlbach
... water ... with our ears that deceive us, for they transmit to us the vibrations of the air in sonorous notes. They are fairies who work the miracle of changing that movement into noise, and by that metamorphosis give birth to music, which makes the mute agitation of nature musical ... with our sense of smell which is smaller than that of a dog ... with our sense of taste which can scarcely distinguish ...
— Masterpieces of Mystery, Vol. 1 (of 4) - Ghost Stories • Various
... enemies to discredit the accuracy of his observations. "Looking on Saturn," says he, "within these few days, I found it solitary, without the assistance of its accustomed stars, and, in short, perfectly round and defined like Jupiter; and such it still remains. Now, what can be said of so strange a metamorphosis? Are the two smaller stars consumed like the spots on the sun? Have they suddenly vanished and fled? or has Saturn devoured his own children? or was the appearance indeed fraud and illusion, with which the glasses have for so long a time mocked me, and so many ...
— The Martyrs of Science, or, The lives of Galileo, Tycho Brahe, and Kepler • David Brewster
... Apuleius, as ample internal evidence shows, is borrowed from the East. The groundwork of the tale is the metamorphosis of Lucius of Corinth into an ass, and the strange accidents which precede his recovering the ...
— Vikram and the Vampire • Sir Richard F. Burton
... to deposit their spawn in its native surroundings. Once more, crabs pass their earlier larval stages as free-swimming crustaceans, somewhat shrimp-like in appearance, and as agile as fleas: it is only by gradual metamorphosis that they acquire their legs and claws and heavy pedestrian habits. Now there are certain kinds of crab, like the West Indian land-crabs (those dainty morsels whose image every epicure who has visited the Antilles still enshrines with ...
— Science in Arcady • Grant Allen
... development of the Daika era. For the main features of that development were that the entire nation became the public people of the realm and the whole of the land became the property of the Crown, the hereditary nobles being relegated to the rank of State pensioners. This metamorphosis entailed taking an accurate census of the population; making a survey of the land; fixing the boundaries of provinces, districts, and villages; appointing officials to administer the affairs of these local divisions, and organizing the central government ...
— A History of the Japanese People - From the Earliest Times to the End of the Meiji Era • Frank Brinkley and Dairoku Kikuchi
... have three independent sources of evidence which are so entirely different from each other that there is almost no likeness between them. One is written in the rocks, one in bone and muscle, while the third is recorded in the evanescent and changing pages of embryology and metamorphosis. Yet each tells the same story. Each tells of a history of this machine from simple forms to more complex. Each tells of its greater and greater differentiation of labour and structure as the periods of time passed. Each tells of ...
— The Story of the Living Machine • H. W. Conn
... long strands into switches, and began to wind those around his skull. Necklace, fetich, and the plume that adorned his sidelock, he put in the quiver. He was now so far transformed that any one, Nacaytzusle excepted, might have taken him in the night for a Navajo warrior. This metamorphosis was performed rapidly, but without anxious haste or confusion. The howls had meanwhile been repeated. They sounded nearer than before from the east, the south, and the southeast. Nacaytzusle alone, to judge from the signals ...
— The Delight Makers • Adolf Bandelier
... matter of being shut in, and a house without cobwebbed shadows became a place bereft of decent seclusion. About him, now, all this undesirable metamorphosis was taking place. ...
— The Tyranny of Weakness • Charles Neville Buck
... a different view of the subject. It suggests the idea that most translations are metamorphoses to the worse, like that of a living person into a dead tree, or at least of a superior into an inferior being. In Pope's "Iliad," you have the metamorphosis of an eagle into a nightingale; in Dryden's "Virgil," you have a stately war-horse transformed into a hard-trotting hackney; in Hoole's versions of the Italian Poets, you have nymphs nailed up in timber; while, on the other hand, in Coleridge's "Wallenstein," you ...
— The Poetical Works of Addison; Gay's Fables; and Somerville's Chase • Joseph Addison, John Gay, William Sommerville
... "A metamorphosis more strange Than all his books can vapour;" "To what" (quoth squire) "shall Ovid change?" ...
— English Satires • Various
... One feels by instinct that the master hand has been here. Although aware that good fortune had wrought a marked change in Anne, Monsignor was utterly taken aback by a transformation as remarkable in its way as the metamorphosis of Horace Endicott. ...
— The Art of Disappearing • John Talbot Smith
... influences, to notions more closely akin to its understanding. Residence in Canaan, among related Semitic tribes that had long before separated from the Israelites, and adopted altogether different views and customs, produced a far greater metamorphosis in the character of the Israelites than the sojourn in Egypt. After the first flush of victory, when the unity of the Israelitish people had been weakened by the particularistic efforts of several of the tribes, the ...
— Jewish History • S. M. Dubnow
... the noblesse de l'Empire was laughed at and taken en grippe. Here was, in reality, the first wide breach made in France in the edifice of good-breeding and good-manners; and those who have been eye-witnesses to the metamorphosis will admit that the guillotine of Danton and Robespierre did even less to destroy le bon ton of the ancien regime than was achieved by the guard-room habits and morals of Bonaparte's glorious troopers, rushing, as they did, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 10, August, 1858 • Various
... said the landlord at this; but Don Fernando told him to hold his tongue and on no account interrupt Don Quixote, who continued, "I say in conclusion, high and disinherited lady, that if your father has brought about this metamorphosis in your person for the reason I have mentioned, you ought not to attach any importance to it; for there is no peril on earth through which my sword will not force a way, and with it, before many days are over, I will bring your ...
— Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... a firmness of surface which does not let the glamour rub off; but stories in which there is a hint of the beauty just beyond the palpable—or of a dignity suggestive of developed literature—are sorely hurt in their metamorphosis, and should be protected from it. ...
— Stories to Tell Children - Fifty-Four Stories With Some Suggestions For Telling • Sara Cone Bryant
... another strange but unmistakable impression which replied: "I can understand your thoughts but not your babble." "Are you able," she continued telepathically, "to give an explanation of this extraordinary metamorphosis?" "The only information I can offer," answered I, "will be cheerfully given. My name is John Convert, late seaman aboard the schooner Brawl, bound from Sydney to London. Last night I was thrown overboard ...
— Born Again • Alfred Lawson
... a kind of metamorphosis of the ordinary nutritive processes and in this manner, it may proceed insidiously for a long period, so that a large part of the tissue of the lungs shall be replaced by tubercular deposit without any other sign than an increasing difficulty of respiration." These views ...
— Scientific American Supplement, Vol. XV., No. 388, June 9, 1883 • Various
... often foil the highest skill! Listen to an old man; I am speaking quite seriously. Rodion"—(on saying which Porphyrius Petrovitch, who was hardly thirty-five years of age, seemed all of a sudden to have aged, a sudden metamorphosis had taken place in the whole of his person, nay, in his very voice)— "to an old man who, however, is not wanting in candor. Am I or am I not candid? What do you think? It seems to me that a man could hardly be more so—for do I not reveal confidence, and that without the prospect of reward? ...
— The Most Interesting Stories of All Nations • Julian Hawthorne
... longer. She had been changed from living flesh and blood to something more impalpable than air. She had promised to marry him, and she remained indifferent because, being no woman, she could not suffer a woman's pain; because, by her metamorphosis, there was no fear of that promise's fulfilment. It seemed only fair to tell him, but when he came to her, she shook ...
— Moor Fires • E. H. (Emily Hilda) Young
... despair to violent enmity against culture, when, in a moment of desperation, there was no one at hand to show them how to attain it. It is not the worst and most insignificant people whom we afterwards find acting as journalists and writers for the press in the metamorphosis of despair: the spirit of some well-known men of letters might even be described, and justly, as degenerate studentdom. How else, for example, can we reconcile that once well-known 'young Germany' with its present degenerate successors? Here we discover a need ...
— On the Future of our Educational Institutions • Friedrich Nietzsche
... greatly exercised about the sorceress and her magic, he importunes the girl to procure from her mistress a magic salve which will transform him at will into an owl. By mistake he receives the wrong salve; and instead of the bird metamorphosis which he had looked for, he undergoes an unlooked-for change into an ass. In this guise, and in the service of various masters, he has opportunities of observing the follies of men from a novel standpoint. His adventures are numerous, and he hears many strange stories, the ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol. 2 • Charles Dudley Warner
... but although the outside world might no longer recognise the heroes of the play, Javanese knowledge of national tradition easily pierced the flimsy disguise, and credited their deified heroes with a new power of metamorphosis. The fantastic play lasts so far into the night that the prolonged libretto is brought to a summary conclusion by the hostess, since European nature can stand no more, though the rapt attention of the Malay would continue ...
— Through the Malay Archipelago • Emily Richings
... North, to have been removed, and that a new era of unity in this respect had thereupon straightway begun. It seems to have been little understood by the North at the time, and since, for that matter, that Negro slavery in the South would die hard, and that it has a fatal gift of metamorphosis (ability to change its form without changing its nature), and that while it had under the well-directed stroke of the national arm disappeared as chattel slavery, it would reappear, unless hindered, as African serfdom throughout the Southern States, and that they would ...
— Modern Industrialism and the Negroes of the United States - The American Negro Academy, Occasional Papers No. 12 • Archibald H. Grimke
... it occurred to the Grand-Vizier that, during their metamorphosis, laughter was prohibited; he shared his anxiety on this head with the Caliph. "By Mecca and Medina! that were a sorry jest, if I am to remain a stork. Bethink thyself, then, of the foolish word, for ...
— The Oriental Story Book - A Collection of Tales • Wilhelm Hauff
... under the title of Baphomet. In any case it failed to spread, and it is uncertain whether the New and Reformed Palladium, also an androgyne order, with which we shall presently be concerned, is a metamorphosis or reconstruction of the original institution, but a connection of some kind is affirmed. For a period exceeding sixty years we hear little of the legendary Palladium; but in 1801 the Israelite Isaac Long is said ...
— Devil-Worship in France - or The Question of Lucifer • Arthur Edward Waite
... abandonment of the iron cup, the powder being left to act on the lead itself. Two or three channels cut around the neck of the bullet helped to keep the point in line, and aided at the same time the fastening of the cartridge. Thus came its final metamorphosis to the buzzing little torment that has been at intervals for the last twenty years flying over all the continents and ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science Vol. XV., No. 85. January, 1875. • Various
... will be seen that the brutality Heppner displayed at home he could successfully repress when on duty. But the most remarkable thing about this man, who behaved like a brute to his wife, and had no affection for his comrades, was the metamorphosis he underwent if the horses were in question. Towards those beautiful animals he showed an almost womanly tenderness. They all knew him, and he loved them all, though naturally he had his favourites among them. There was Udo, a light-brown gelding, who could kneel ...
— 'Jena' or 'Sedan'? • Franz Beyerlein
... the theology of the day would fall before the standard of him who had got even the insects. And let any one set about studying these creatures carefully, and he will see the force of the remark. We learn the tremendous doctrine of metamorphosis from the insect world; and have not the bee and the ant taught man wisdom from the first? I was highly edified the past summer by observing the ways and doings of a colony of black hornets that established themselves under one of the projecting gables of my house. This hornet has ...
— Birds and Poets • John Burroughs
... be annoyed at this mingling of praise and badinage, especially when she relieved me from all sense of intrusion. Moreover, she looked so brilliant, so sparkling and happy, that I watched her, amazed at the metamorphosis from her ordinarily calm, intellectual ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 16, No. 97, November, 1865 • Various
... Thesaurus, p. 135, gives s. v. [Hebrew: apvd], under 2, the signification statua, simulacrum idoli, and, besides the passages under consideration, refers to Jud. viii. 27, xvii. 5, xviii. 14, 17. But one requires only to examine these passages a little more minutely, to be convinced that the metamorphosis of Jehovah into an idol is as little justified as the changing of the mantle into a statue. From the personal character of Gideon, who was so zealous for the Lord against the idols, we cannot at all think of idolatry in Jud. viii. 27. In the Dissertations ...
— Christology of the Old Testament: And a Commentary on the Messianic Predictions, v. 1 • Ernst Wilhelm Hengstenberg
... One life! One life out of two lives; one nature out of two natures! Mysterious and extraordinary metamorphosis. She had brought her nature to his, and he his nature to hers, and they were to mingle and become one nature.... Absurdly and inappropriately his mind picked up and presented to him the grotesque words, "High Jinks and Low Jinks." A note of laughter was irresistibly tickled ...
— If Winter Comes • A.S.M. Hutchinson
... five years of readjustment and metamorphosis, I marvel at the cool philosophy with which two adventurous young scapegraces settled the question of a little ...
— Diane of the Green Van • Leona Dalrymple
... of railway have sufficed to accomplish its metamorphosis. Once in Upper Egypt, on the borders of Nubia, there was a little humble town, rarely visited, and wanting, it must be owned, in ...
— Egypt (La Mort De Philae) • Pierre Loti
... Alcatraz, a pelican), the name of a genus of aquatic birds (Diomedea), closely allied to the petrels, and belonging, like them, to the order Tubinares. In the name Diomedea, assigned to them by Linnaeus, there is a reference to the mythical metamorphosis of the companions of the Greek warrior Diomedes into birds. The beak is large, strong and sharp-edged, the upper mandible terminating in a large hook; the wings are narrow and very long; the feet have no hind toe, and the three anterior toes are completely webbed. ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... to the proposal, and the chief was so kind as to assist my friend and his family in effecting that very day the desired metamorphosis. My hair was cut off, and my head shaved, with the exception of a spot on the crown, of about twice the diameter of a crown piece. My face was painted with three or four different colours; some parts of it red, and others black. A shirt was provided ...
— Pioneers in Canada • Sir Harry Johnston
... Bottom; by Mr. Partridge. This is a commanding work, and extremely rich in the colouring. The Queen of the Fairies is represented reposing on a grassy bed, and near her is seated the formidable Bottom, in his ludicrous metamorphosis: he is placed in such a situation, that her majesty must see him before any other object when she awakes. At a little distance Puck is displayed laughing at the trick he has played on the queen, and seems to anticipate ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 17, No. 478, Saturday, February 26, 1831 • Various
... or two later, though it is not completed for a period of five or six years. During this time the most profound alterations take place in nearly all parts of the body; the mind undergoes a similar metamorphosis, so that often the child so carefully watched from babyhood seems entirely superseded by ...
— The Renewal of Life; How and When to Tell the Story to the Young • Margaret Warner Morley
... Reptiles, for instance, there are two groups,—those devoid of scales, with naked skin, laying numerous eggs, but hatching their young in an imperfect state, and the Scaly Reptiles, which lay comparatively few eggs, but whose young, when hatched, are completely developed, and undergo no subsequent metamorphosis. Yet, notwithstanding this difference in essential features of structure, and in the mode of reproduction and development, there is such an external resemblance between certain animals belonging to the two groups that they were associated together even by so eminent a naturalist as Linnaeus. ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 54, April, 1862 • Various
... Christians for Jesus—only terror. Some of them, who were true negroes, had images, simple but grotesque. Their strongest belief was in the power of medicines acting as charms. They fully recognized the existence of the soul after death. Some of them believed in the metamorphosis of certain persons into alligators or hippopotamuses, or into lions. This belief could not be shaken by any arguments—at least on the part of man. The negroes proper interested him greatly; they were numerous, prolific, and could not be extirpated. He almost ...
— The Personal Life Of David Livingstone • William Garden Blaikie
... metaphor a parallel is drawn between the life of man and the metamorphosis of a caterpillar into a butterfly; but the comparison may be more just as well as more novel, if for its former term we take the mental progress of the race. History shews that the human mind, fed by constant accessions of knowledge, periodically grows too large for its theoretical coverings, ...
— Thomas Henry Huxley; A Sketch Of His Life And Work • P. Chalmers Mitchell
... general analogy of nature, to suppose that our solar system was once a nebulous mass; that it gradually condensed, that it broke up into that wonderful group of harmoniously rolling balls we call planets and satellites, and that then each of these underwent its appointed metamorphosis, until at last our own share of the cosmic vapour passed into that condition in which we first meet with definite records of its state, and in which it has since, with ...
— Lectures and Essays • T.H. Huxley
... to those whose learning is the only armory which can supply weapons adequate to the maintenance of the struggle, let us see if we cannot explain the idea which causes it; nor consider its verification to lie in the metamorphosis of an ape ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 108, October, 1866 • Various
... said the Count, "here they run well into one another. In two years the building itself will put on a proper appearance, there will be a complete metamorphosis in beauty and improvement. I shall show you the drawings, and I shall show you the architect, for he ...
— Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen • Hans Christian Andersen
... the gorgeous House of the Sun; its walls were constructed of the ancient stones; the altar was raised on the spot where shone the bright image of the Peruvian deity, and the cloisters of the Indian temple were trodden by the friars of St. Dominic.6 To make the metamorphosis more complete, the House of the Virgins of the Sun was replaced by a Roman Catholic nunnery.7 Christian churches and monasteries gradually supplanted the ancient edifices, and such of the latter as were suffered to remain, despoiled ...
— History Of The Conquest Of Peru • William Hickling Prescott
... class of Reptiles, those only are included in the order of Batrachians which undergo a metamorphosis before attaining maturity; and as they offer the only example amongst Vertebrate animals of this marvellous transformation, they are justly considered as the lowest in the scale, with the exception of fishes, which remain during life in that stage of development ...
— Sketches of the Natural History of Ceylon • J. Emerson Tennent
... that the charming woman before him exercising so cleverly all the arts of society, as if born to the purple, and the light-headed, frivolous, little wife of the Central's engineer were one and the same person? The metamorphosis seemed incredible. ...
— Jane Cable • George Barr McCutcheon
... the visitor to Woodhall Spa sees skirting the railway, has passed through more than one metamorphosis. Now confined by banks, which have been alternately renewed and broken down at different periods, before the drainage of the Fens, it spread over all that level tract of country, meandering by its many islands and through its oozy channels and meres, the resort of countless flocks of ...
— Records of Woodhall Spa and Neighbourhood - Historical, Anecdotal, Physiographical, and Archaeological, with Other Matter • J. Conway Walter
... bent contributed the main elements of my personality. I was a countryman dyed in the wool, yea, more than that, born and bred in the bone, and my character is fundamentally reverent and religious. The religion of my fathers underwent in me a kind of metamorphosis and became something which would indeed have appeared like rank atheism to them, but which was nevertheless full of the very essence of true religion—love, reverence, wonder, unworldliness, and devotion to ideal truth—but in no way identified ...
— My Boyhood • John Burroughs
... the soul, passing from one abode to another, and leaving its first body for a new one, ever changing its appearance and its dwelling, guided by the Creator's beams, from transmigration to transmigration, from metamorphosis to metamorphosis, pursues the palingenesic ...
— Reincarnation - A Study in Human Evolution • Th. Pascal
... straight-backed chair. He had abandoned his sprawling attitudes, for fear, I suspect, of spoiling his new clothes. The position, however, not making for ease of conversation, he presently took up a book and began to read, while I amused myself idly by making a furtive sketch of him. Since his metamorphosis he was by no means the entertaining companion of his unregenerate days. He himself was oppressed, I fancy, by his own correctitude. The eternal reading which filled so much of his life did not afford him the same wholehearted enjoyment now, as it did when he lolled dishevelled, ...
— The Beloved Vagabond • William J. Locke
... one of those which reminds one of the life of an animal undergoing a metamorphosis. Once it had evidently been a rather nice residential section. The movement of population uptown had left it stranded to the real estate speculators, less desirable to live in, but more valuable for the future. The moving in of anyone who could be got to live there had led to rapid deterioration ...
— The Ear in the Wall • Arthur B. Reeve
... recognize in that polished smile of a man in official life the almost bestial mouth which had been foaming but a moment before; he gazed with amazement on that fantastic and alarming metamorphosis, and he felt as a man might feel who should behold a tiger converted into ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo
... those Inquisitorial times, from its independence, and horrible from its antagonism to Aristotle, the Atlas of the church. This was no less than pure Pantheism,—God in and through all, the infinite Intelligence. Deus est monadum monas—nempe entium entitas. This creed, by an incomprehensible metamorphosis, was styled, in the language of the day, Atheism; its promulgation, even its conception, was pronounced a crime whose penalty was death. And Bruno, who, from the depths of infamous superstition, had risen into the pure light of heaven, to a theory whose principles, though they might not ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol I, Issue I, January 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... hearth-brush. Hair—what sort of hair? of a hog; and the wooden handle—of poplar or cedar or white oak. At one time a troop of swine munching mast in a grove of oaks, transformed by those magicians, carpenters and butchers, into hearth-brushes. A whimsical metamorphosis, upon my faith! ...
— Jane Talbot • Charles Brockden Brown
... by the late Mr. Dannreuther which will be useful as an introduction, and ought to be familiar to all who are interested in modern developments of music. Mr. Dannreuther there treats of the type of variation peculiar to Beethoven, which he compares to the metamorphosis of insects or of the organs of plants: "It is not so much the alteration of a given thought, a change of dress or of decoration, it is an actual creation of something new and distinct from out of a given germ." He then ...
— Wagner's Tristan und Isolde • George Ainslie Hight
... nn changed into gg for the sake of euphony. Should this conjecture, for it is nothing else, be well founded, one of the most poetical ideas in the whole range of mythology would, in this plodding, practical, spilling-jenny age of ours, have thus undergone a most singular metamorphosis." ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 212, November 19, 1853 • Various
... and turning your eyes from the atrocious metamorphosis, exclaim it is chance—it is fate; arbitrary sounds and sterile syllables, with which no distinct idea can ever be associated. Alas! are there not imperceptible threads by which a regulating hand guides us through a crooked labyrinth from causes to effects, and prepares in silence the ...
— Amerigo Vespucci • Frederick A. Ober
... been a habit of her mind; it was more a habit of her class than sincerity. But she had reached a point in her mental strife where she could not stand before Rust and let him believe she was noble and faithful when she knew she was neither. Would not the next step in this painful metamorphosis of her character be a fierce and passionate repudiation of ...
— The Call of the Canyon • Zane Grey
... Her metamorphosis was gradual but complete. I imagine that her first reluctance to essay an acquaintance with society arose out of embarrassment and bashfulness. At any rate she no sooner discovered how small a bluff was necessary for success than she ...
— The "Goldfish" • Arthur Train
... in the system of the graminivora, whose food contains relatively so small a proportion of the constituents of blood, the process of metamorphosis in existing tissues, and consequently their restoration or reproduction, must go on far less rapidly than in the carnivora. Otherwise, a vegetation a thousand times as luxuriant would not suffice for their sustenance. Sugar, gum, and starch, which form so large a proportion of their food, would ...
— The World's Greatest Books - Volume 15 - Science • Various
... have made half a million by a good book? What if I have kept a gambling-house? From the back parlour of an oyster-shop my hazard table has been removed to this palace. Had the play been foul, this metamorphosis would never have occurred. It is true I am an usurer. My dear sir, if all the usurers in this great metropolis could only pass in procession before you at this moment, how you would start! You might find some Right Honourables ...
— Henrietta Temple - A Love Story • Benjamin Disraeli
... certain species of moth mines leaves, and eating away the cellular structures, causes them to twist irregularly, and eventually spins on the spot a cocoon of green silk in which it undergoes metamorphosis. A local caterpillar, too, converts the tough harsh leaves of a fig-tree (FICUS FASCICULATA) into a close and perfect scroll by an elaborate system of haulage, spinning silken strands as required, having ...
— The Confessions of a Beachcomber • E J Banfield
... vitality, as they are destined to gradual disintegration and decay in the course of life; it is they that are on the way of being cast out of the organism, when they have once run through the scale of retrograde metamorphosis; and it is they that give rise to what we have called the smell of the animal. What lives in them is ...
— Five Years Of Theosophy • Various
... covered with short stiff hair instead of fur: he gives a curious account of a cat from Algoa Bay, which had been kept for some time on board and could be identified with certainty; this animal was left for only eight weeks at Mombas, but during that short period it "underwent a complete metamorphosis, having parted with its sandy-coloured fur." A cat from the Cape of Good Hope has been described by Desmarest as remarkable from a red stripe extending along the whole length of its back. Throughout an immense area, namely, the Malayan archipelago, Siam, Pegu, and Burmah, ...
— The Variation of Animals and Plants under Domestication - Volume I • Charles Darwin
... soon as it was decreed I must make appearance in the grand monde, hopeless of success in exhibiting myself in the' costume Franais, I gave over the attempt, and ventured to come forth as a gothic Anglaise, who never heard of, or never heeded the reigning metamorphosis. ...
— The Diary and Letters of Madame D'Arblay Volume 3 • Madame D'Arblay
... seem as if the physical ecstasy of the dance and the sensuous joy of all nature's finery had breathed their spirit into the aspiration and that the beauty of leaf and flower, all of them familiar forms of the god's metamorphosis—accessible to their touch and for the regalement of their senses—had brought such nearness and dearness, of affection between goddess and worshiper that ...
— Unwritten Literature of Hawaii - The Sacred Songs of the Hula • Nathaniel Bright Emerson
... wide, without side aisles, and is much lower than the nave. It is impossible to speak of this choir without indignation. My good friend—the whole of this interior has recently undergone rather a martyrdom than a metamorphosis. The sides are almost entirely covered with Grecian pilasters and pillars; and so are the ornaments about the altar. What adds to the wretched effect of the whole, is, a coat of white-wash, which was liberally bestowed upon it some forty years ago; and which ...
— A Bibliographical, Antiquarian and Picturesque Tour in France and Germany, Volume Two • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... at her, "you're surprised at my metamorphosis. I allow myself a month every year of my native heath, heather-mixture, and burr —I like to do the thing up brown. The rest of the time I'm a Gothamite, of necessity. Some time, when I've made my pile, I shall revert for keeps, and settle down into ...
— The Nest Builder • Beatrice Forbes-Robertson Hale
... princess, though beautiful, was touched with disdain. Every attitude was one of dignity and hauteur. Her words, though not lacking intelligence, were commonplace, and her voice was that of her father's daughter. Yolanda was a girl; the princess was a woman. The metamorphosis was complete, and Max's hallucination, I felt sure, would be cured. The princess's face was not burned on his heart, whatever might be true of Yolanda's. I can give no stronger testimony to the marvellous quality of the change this girl had wrought in herself than to tell you ...
— Yolanda: Maid of Burgundy • Charles Major
... by Mr. Kemble, and prefixed as a motto to his alteration of one of Shakspeare's plays. Is Mr. Kemble not aware, how many drops of Shakspeare are lost, and how much false wine obtruded in their place, in this metamorphosis? It would be an endless task to point out all the beautiful and sublime passages omitted by Tate: but to point out all the absurdities he has introduced, would be more endless. As Mr. Kemble professes, however, such a wish, I will just remind him, before I conclude, of what perhaps he has forgotten, ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor, Vol. I, No. 5, May 1810 • Various
... forth for alcohol, in that it delays in any of these hypothetical ways, tissue-change, will conclude that it has no such power in a salutary sense, and that it is unwarrantably assumed that to retard tissue metamorphosis (change) is ...
— Alcohol: A Dangerous and Unnecessary Medicine, How and Why - What Medical Writers Say • Martha M. Allen
... to form some manly resolution; but she was kept in leading strings by the need for money. And so, slowly and in spite of the ambitious protests and grievous recriminations of her own mind, she underwent the provincial metamorphosis here described. Each day took with it a fragment of her spirited determination. She had laid down a rule for the care of her person, which she gradually departed from. Though at first she kept up with the ...
— Parisians in the Country - The Illustrious Gaudissart, and The Muse of the Department • Honore de Balzac
... the most remarkable points about the dinner was the peculiar metamorphosis of Mrs. Pickett from the brooding silent woman he had known to the gracious ...
— Death At The Excelsior • P. G. Wodehouse
... agitated with an exceeding agitation; but He wrote on it, "In the name, etc.," and its agitation subsided. When the formula was first revealed to the Prophet, he said, "I am safe from three things, earthquake and metamorphosis and drowning;" and indeed its virtues are great and its blessings too many to enumerate. It is told of the Prophet that he said, "There will be brought before God, on the judgment day, a man with whom He shall reckon and finding no good deed to his account, shall order him to the fire; but the man ...
— The Book Of The Thousand Nights And One Night, Volume IV • Anonymous
... disappeared, leaving the central globe visible only. He was unable to assign any reason for this peculiar occurrence, which caused him much perplexity, and he expresses himself thus: 'What is to be said concerning so strange a metamorphosis? Are the two lesser stars consumed after the manner of the solar spots? Have they vanished and suddenly fled? Has Saturn, perhaps, devoured his own children? Or were the appearances, indeed, illusion or fraud, with which the glasses have so long deceived ...
— The Astronomy of Milton's 'Paradise Lost' • Thomas Orchard
... of the larger and more prosperous of these farms, showed us everything, and regaled us abundantly with the fresh milk warm from the cow. Here we saw an instance of the social metamorphosis taking place in these progressive districts. The mistress of the house, a bright clever woman, occupied all day with the drudgery of the farm-house, is fairly educated; and, though now neatly dressed ...
— Holidays in Eastern France • Matilda Betham-Edwards
... showed the same metamorphosis in its inmates. A lame boy to whom she had once given a pair of crutches had a new wheel-chair, and the crutches were thrown in a corner. A sick child for whom she had bought some prepared food, which it had not been able to ...
— A Manifest Destiny • Julia Magruder
... into use, thought that the devil brought tobacco into England in a coach. One of the first tracts wholly devoted to tobacco is entitled Nash's "Lenten Stuffe." The work is dedicated to Humphrey King, a tobacconist, and is full of curious sayings in regard to the plant. Another work, entitled "Metamorphosis of Tobacco," and supposed to have been written by Beaumont, made its appearance about this time. Samuel Rowlands, the dramatist, wrote two works on tobacco; the first is entitled "Look to it, for I'll Stabbe Ye," written in 1604; the other volume is a ...
— Tobacco; Its History, Varieties, Culture, Manufacture and Commerce • E. R. Billings
... what booke is that she tosseth so? Boy. Grandsier 'tis Ouids Metamorphosis, My mother gaue ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare
... the last blow Ditty did land. Drew's brain cleared suddenly. Hot rage filled his heart. He forgot his surroundings. He forgot that Ruth stood by to see his metamorphosis from a civilized man into an uncivilized one. He forgot everything but the leering face of the lying scoundrel before him, and he proceeded to change that face into ...
— Doubloons—and the Girl • John Maxwell Forbes
... so mournfully intoned brought solace and surcease from sorrow. The sisters of charity moved among the throng with grave, pale faces, mere shadows of their earthly selves, as though they had undergone the first stage of the great metamorphosis which is promised. To them, who had already buried health, vitality and passion, was not this chant to the dead, this strange intoning of words, sweeter than the lullaby crooned by a nurse to a child, more stirring than the patriotic hymn ...
— The Strollers • Frederic S. Isham
... little ready money, and as I moved across the camps to be abruptly challenged by the sentries I was surprised to see them change their demeanour when I showed my "pass." They shook hands heartily and warmly congratulated me upon my good fortune. It was a strange metamorphosis and it ...
— Sixteen Months in Four German Prisons - Wesel, Sennelager, Klingelputz, Ruhleben • Henry Charles Mahoney
... the manners, and the vices of the priests of the Syrian goddess are very humorously described by Apuleius, in the eighth book of his Metamorphosis.] ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 1 • Edward Gibbon
... men—fierce enough and warlike in their aspect at all times—had now rendered themselves doubly so by putting on broad belts with pistols therein, and tucking up their sleeves to the shoulders, thereby displaying their brawny arms as if they had dirty work before them. This strange metamorphosis was finally completed, when Manton, with his own hands, ran up to the peak of the mainsail a bright scarlet flag with the single word "AVENGER" on ...
— Gascoyne, The Sandal Wood Trader - A Tale of the Pacific • R. M. Ballantyne
... senna, the purchase of a surreptitious moment, and was now dispensing the brilliant comestibles with much ill-subdued glee. One mouth, that had bitten off the head of a checkerberry chanticleer, was convulsed with the acidulous tickling of sweetened laughter, till the biter was bit and a metamorphosis into the animal of attack seemed imminent; at the hands of another a warrior in barley-sugar was experiencing the vernacular for defeat with reproving haste and gravity; and there was yet another little omnivorous creature that put out both hands for indiscriminate snatching, and made ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 7, No. 39, January, 1861 • Various
... of parts might be ex- pected from arefaction, deep burial, or charcoal. The greatest antiquities of mortal bodies may remain in putrefied bones, whereof, though we take not in the pillar of Lot's wife, or metamorphosis of Ortelius, some may be older than pyramids, in the putrefied relicks of the general inundation. When Alexander opened the tomb of Cyrus, the remaining bones discovered his pro- portion, whereof urnal fragments afford but a bad conjecture, ...
— Religio Medici, Hydriotaphia, and the Letter to a Friend • Sir Thomas Browne |
