"Moth" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... the meanest things I ever did was when I was too small to know how cruel it was. It was so long ago that I could not talk plainly, but I remember distinctly what a stifling hot day it was. Mamma had been packing her furs away for the summer in moth-balls. You know how horridly those camphor things smell. I hung over her and asked questions every time she moved. She told me how the moth-millers lay eggs in the furs if they are not protected, and showed me an old muff ...
— The Little Colonel's House Party • Annie Fellows Johnston
... treasures upon earth, where moth and rust doth corrupt, and where thieves break through ...
— The Moscow Census - From "What to do?" • Lyof N. Tolstoi
... sunset hour, and the pretty child of James Eustis putting in this man's hand a gray moth. I think he was remembering, too, for his eyes of a sudden melted, as if he saw again her face that was so lovely and so young. Glancing at me, he ...
— Slippy McGee, Sometimes Known as the Butterfly Man • Marie Conway Oemler
... Mrs. MacDonald's best black cashmere dress, which had not been worn and would not be worn, except on great occasions, until next season, and had mechanically reduced it to the rate of second best. Moth-powder and moth-balls were exhausted in downstairs regions, but there was a store of both in the garret; and in her annoyance at having to ascend at an unprecedented time, and her vexation at an accident such as must happen in the best regulated families, Mrs. Muir had hurriedly returned with the ...
— The Heather-Moon • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... moth-like, and hurt by its flame—if they copy our vile vices, which are no part of our Christianity, but the remnants of our own original savagery cropping out in spite of Christianity—if so, is it surprising? Their eyes are bothered by the sudden change ...
— Quiet Talks with World Winners • S. D. Gordon
... Marriage." He was never more at home than when squeezing all the human traits and humour out of a given situation, which was subsidiary to the plot, yet in atmosphere complete in itself. The Hunter's drawing-room just after the funeral, in "The Climbers;" the church scene in "The Moth and the Flame," which for jocularity and small points is the equal of Langdon Mitchell's wedding scene in "The New York Idea," though not so sharply incisive in its satire; the deck on board ship in "The Stubbornness of Geraldine" (so beautifully burlesqued by Weber and Fields as "The Stickiness ...
— Representative Plays by American Dramatists: 1856-1911: The Moth and the Flame • Clyde Fitch
... just caught a moth in the flame of the candle. She carried it to the window. "You will come back soon, of course?" her ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science - Vol. XI, No. 27, June, 1873 • Various
... roving bee Keeps open house, and this Stainless and clear is, that in darkness she May lure the moth to ...
— Collected Poems 1901-1918 in Two Volumes - Volume I. • Walter de la Mare
... is cloven in vain; That not a moth with vain desire Is shriveled in a fruitless fire, Or but ...
— Poems with Power to Strengthen the Soul • Various
... in the middle of which an owl was heard calling its muffled note in the forest. A big moth whirred with a soft collision against one of the windows. Mrs. Bittacy started slightly, but no one spoke. Above the trees the stars were faintly visible. From the distance came the ...
— The Man Whom the Trees Loved • Algernon Blackwood
... knickerbockers, he noticed that his stockings had sagged, small-boy fashion, and formed a little roll of cloth just above his shoe tops. He pulled them up. How on earth had all that mud gotten there? In a moment he was at the head of the stairs, shouting, "Mother, Mother, Moth-a-a-a-r! Where are some clean stockings?" and went off to her room in search of them. His boots, too, were dusty and scratched; how long was it ...
— A Son of the City - A Story of Boy Life • Herman Gastrell Seely
... again!... I'm beginning to feel like those old ghosts about it. The same moth-eaten tune for three or four thousand years. I'd like a ...
— The Rhodesian • Gertrude Page
... after susceptible simpletons: all mouse-traps for the heart have again been set! And whenever I lift a curtain, a night-moth rusheth out of it. ...
— Thus Spake Zarathustra - A Book for All and None • Friedrich Nietzsche
... to the grass at your feet, For 'tis thick wid the tussocks of heather, an' blossoms and herbs that smell sweet If ye tread thim; an' maybe the white o' the bog-cotton waves in the win', Like the wool ye might shear off a night-moth, an' set an ould fairy to spin; Or wee frauns, each wan stuck 'twixt two leaves on a grand little stem of its own, Lettin' on 'twas a plum on a ...
— Penelope's Irish Experiences • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... ancient 'propped,' and the other two were emptied out on the track. From the dust they called their brother many names that are not to be found in school books; but he, laughing, had slid down and was cutting a twig from a neighbouring tree. 'A case-moth! A case-moth!' he cried. The fallen ones scrambled to their feet. 'What sort, Teddy? What ...
— Peeps At Many Lands: Australia • Frank Fox
... old school, had placed her there. The Easter holidays accounted for Giselle's unexpected arrival. Wrapped in a large cloak which covered up her convent uniform, she looked, as compared with the gay girls around her, like a poor sombre night-moth, dazzled by the light, in company with other glittering creatures of the insect race, fluttering with graceful movements, transparent wings ...
— Jacqueline, Complete • (Mme. Blanc) Th. Bentzon
... Ch'ing Wen's ire was actually stirred up, and her beautiful moth-like eyebrows contracted, and her lovely phoenix eyes stared wide like two balls. So she immediately shouted ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book II • Cao Xueqin
... days I lent her to the cook, to put into her pantry, but I have got her back again, and I would not part with her for a crown; no, not for the best silver crown that ever was coined in the Tower.' Then, through a little moth hole in the lining of the coat, I saw him lift her up, stroke her, and put her upon the back of one of the horses, where she stretched herself out, ...
— The Life and Perambulations of a Mouse • Dorothy Kilner
... also had a lot of moth; at present they have done nothing beyond eating a couple of ...
— The South Pole, Volumes 1 and 2 • Roald Amundsen
... the richness and taste displayed in all the details of this the scholar's sanctum. The very atmosphere of the chamber, filled with the perfume of the cedar wood employed as a specific against the ravages of the moth and bookworm, seemed to the young man redolent of midnight learning; and the superb front of the presiding god, calm in the grandeur of its ineffable benignity, who appeared to his excited fancy to smile serene ...
— The Roman Traitor (Vol. 1 of 2) • Henry William Herbert
... the stitch (as I am assured by ladies conversant with such mysteries) gives evidence of a now forgotten art, not to be discovered even by the process of picking out the threads. This rag of scarlet cloth—for time, and wear, and a sacrilegious moth had reduced it to little other than a rag—on careful examination, assumed the ...
— The Scarlet Letter • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... felt sure. "All the other animals are afraid of fire. Such exceptions as the moth are really not exceptions at all; the moth is simply driven so mad by the sight of flame that it commits suicide in it. Horses sometimes ...
— The Devolutionist and The Emancipatrix • Homer Eon Flint
... and you shall love The Holy City where the angels dwell. The gentle light of love will never bring The circling moth upon his dusty wing. No thief will steal, no rust corrode above, Nor in your heart—if ...
— Across the Sea and Other Poems. • Thomas S. Chard
... the simple moth doth blindly rush To reach the flame, its life oft pays the debt Of folly. Yet 'tis nobler thus to die Midst all the brightness of a waking life, Than from the world ooze out through darkened ways By beggarly instalments—none ...
— The Death of Saul and other Eisteddfod Prize Poems and Miscellaneous Verses • J. C. Manning
... against the friendly advances of her neighbours troubled the younger sister not at all. She remembered none of the past grandeur, the old Blake power of rule, and the stories of gallant indiscretions and powdered beaux seemed to her as worthless as the moth-eaten satin rags which filled the garret. She loved the familiar country children, the making of fresh butter, and honest admiration of her beauty; and except for the colourless poverty in which they lived, ...
— The Deliverance; A Romance of the Virginia Tobacco Fields • Ellen Glasgow
... man has ever struck can take it off. You ARE yourself and so BE yourself. Stick to it and abide by it. Passion or no passion, ecstasy or no ecstasy, urge or no urge, there's no goal outside you, where you can consummate like an eagle flying into the sun, or a moth into a candle. There's no goal outside you—and there's no God outside you. No God, whom you can get to and rest in. None. ...
— Aaron's Rod • D. H. Lawrence
... the lesser tadpole leaped from the water, wriggled its way to a damp heap of leaves, and slipped down between them. For tadpoles to take such action as this was as reasonable as for an orchid to push a fellow blossom aside on the approach of a fertilizing hawk-moth. This momentary co-operation, and the concerted elimination of the undesired tadpole, affected me as the thought of the first consciousness of power of synchronous rhythm coming to ape men: it seemed ...
— Edge of the Jungle • William Beebe
... whole time helping others. She represents the composite beauty, sweetness, and nobility of all those who scorn self for the sake of Love and her handmaiden Duty—of all those who seek the brightness of truth not as the moth to be destroyed thereby, but as the lark who soars and sings to the great sun. She is of those who have so much to give they want no time to take, and their name is legion. She is as full of beautiful possibilities as a perfect ...
— Pulpit and Press (6th Edition) • Mary Baker Eddy
... camphor) White crystalline compound, C10H8, derived from coal tar or petroleum and used in manufacturing dyes, moth repellents, and ...
— Mother's Remedies - Over One Thousand Tried and Tested Remedies from Mothers - of the United States and Canada • T. J. Ritter
... has. Of course, I wouldn't have done it for anything, though, so don't think I'm worse than I am. And really, really, I don't believe I'm exactly in love. I hope I'm not so foolish. It's just a kind of infatuated fascination of a moth—not for a candle, but for a great, brilliant motor lamp. I've seen them at night dashing themselves against the glass of our Bleriots once or twice when we've been out late, and I know how hopelessly they smash their ...
— Set in Silver • Charles Norris Williamson and Alice Muriel Williamson
... mine—the furniture I used, the plate I was served from, the carriage I occasionally drove out in, were all my own possessions—though, with a slow and moth-like process, I was gradually consuming these. For, at my majority, it was my determination to pay for my support in the intervening years, even if I sacrificed every thing in order to wipe out obligations. Ay, the very corn my horses were eating (what mockery to keep them at all!) was now furnished ...
— Miriam Monfort - A Novel • Catherine A. Warfield
... the place, occupying their spare time with hiding the more valuable things, and was calling around the corner to Miss Drexel the news of the capture of Vera Cruz, when Davies returned with the information that the horses consisted of a pair of moth-eaten skates that could be depended upon to lie down and die in the first ...
— Dutch Courage and Other Stories • Jack London
... of the gravel-walk She went while her robe's edge brushed the box; 10 And here she paused in her gracious talk To point me a moth on the milk-white phlox. Roses, ranged in valiant row, I will never think that she passed you by! She loves you, noble roses, I know; 15 But yonder, ...
— Selections from the Poems and Plays of Robert Browning • Robert Browning
... woman was bringing out clothes, which had been packed away, and spreading them out on the line to air. Presently an old uniform with worn trimmings was swinging its sleeves in the air and embracing a brocade gown; from behind it peeped a court-coat, with buttons stamped with coats-of-arms, and moth-eaten collar; and white kersymere pantaloons with spots, which had once upon a time clothed Ivan Nikiforovitch's legs, and might now possibly fit his fingers. Behind them were speedily hung some more in the shape ...
— Taras Bulba and Other Tales • Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol
... are the man to apply to in a difficulty. I never heard anything more ingenious than your suggestion, and I hope you may be able to prove it true. That is a splendid fact about the white moths (A single white moth which was rejected by young turkeys, while other moths were greedily devoured: "Natural Selection", 1875, page 78.); it warms one's very blood to see a theory thus almost proved ...
— Darwin and Modern Science • A.C. Seward and Others
... adventure—no matter how exemplary a husband he may be at home. If he is a man—of unusual character, he passes through the fire unscathed; if he is—just a man, he is attracted to the candle like the proverbial moth ...
— The Mask - A Story of Love and Adventure • Arthur Hornblow
... was saying, "am Pietro Moresco. I have-a da nice political posish, an' nice-a barber-shop on Mulberry-a Strit. Some-a day I getta on da force—da pollis-force. Sure t'ing. I been-a home to see ma moth. I go-a back to make-a da more mon." He pulled out from his corded bundle of red quilts and coats and rugs some bottles of cheap wine. "I getta place for all you men." He was beginning, thus early in the voyage of these would-be citizens, to prepare ...
— The Old Flute-Player - A Romance of To-day • Edward Marshall and Charles T. Dazey
... sin of Dives is the sin of hundreds to-day. He lived for himself alone, and he lived only for this world. He had sunk all his capital in his gold and silver, and purple and fine linen. He had no treasure laid up in Heaven. So when the moth and rust had done their work, and death had broken through like a thief and stolen all his earthly goods, he had nothing left. This parable is full of sharp contrasts. First, there is the contrast in the life of these two men. The one rich, ...
— The Life of Duty, v. 2 - A year's plain sermons on the Gospels or Epistles • H. J. Wilmot-Buxton
... subjects treated in this book is wonderful, even to me. It is a library of universal knowledge, and the facts contained in it are different from any other facts now in use. I have carefully guarded, all the way through, against using hackneyed and moth-eaten facts. As a result, I am able to come before the people with a set of new and attractive statements, so fresh and so crisp that an unkind word would wither ...
— Remarks • Bill Nye
... outlawed Robin Hood. They are in dire peril; yet we may not break Our vows of silence. Many a time Has Robin Hood by kindly words and deeds Done in his human world, sent a new breath Of life and joy like Spring to fairyland; And at the moth-hour of this very dew-fall, He saved a fairy, whom he thought, poor soul, Only a may-fly in a spider's web, He saved her from the clutches of that Wizard, That Cruel Thing, that dark old Mystery, Whom ye all know and ...
— Collected Poems - Volume Two (of 2) • Alfred Noyes
... storm of fortunes May trumpet to the world: my heart's subdu'd Even to the very quality of my lord: I saw Othello's visage in his mind; And to his honors and his valiant parts Did I my soul and fortunes consecrate. So that, dear lords, if I be left behind, A moth of peace, and he go to the war, The rites for which I love him are bereft me, And I a heavy interim shall support By his dear absence. Let me ...
— Othello, the Moor of Venice • William Shakespeare
... crowd clad in every kind of garment, ranging from a moth-eaten General's tunic to practically nothing at all. Indeed, one tall, thin fellow sported only a battered helmet of rusty steel that had drifted here from some European army, a moocha or waistbelt of catskins, and a pair of decayed tennis-shoes ...
— Smith and the Pharaohs, and Other Tales • Henry Rider Haggard
... since this was first done, and the latest fragment of this book is more than ten years old. You can see the creases of time in them, and, indeed, they were never properly rounded. Take them, however, collected and reprinted, as a token (the only token I can give) that the moth and rust of time have not eaten away the affection which I had for you all, and that those two thieves, Change and Death, which were so early busy with us, have not been able to undermine the house of our Love, nor abstract the treasure ...
— Memoranda Sacra • J. Rendel Harris
... three tables (5-7) of splendid butterflies, with their brilliant tints. The two tables (8, 9) ranged next in order to those upon which the butterflies are distributed, are covered with varieties of the moth. Here are the silkworm moth and its cocoon as kept in Siberia; the ghost moth of our hop grounds; the hawk moth, the death's head moth, and the large Brazilian ...
— How to See the British Museum in Four Visits • W. Blanchard Jerrold
... the clouds, they went, and down again, towards the defenseless Earth, that could not flee from the chariot of the Sun. Great rivers hid themselves in the ground, and mountains were consumed. Harvests perished like a moth that is ...
— The Children's Hour, Volume 3 (of 10) • Various
... I hope folks will quit handing all the credit to a lot of moth-eaten, mildewed, out-of-date, old, European dumps, and give proper credit to the famous Zenith spirit, that clean fighting determination to win Success that has made the little old Zip City celebrated in every land and clime, ...
— Babbitt • Sinclair Lewis
... instrument, and bent her face above him like a flower languid with the sun's rays. Suddenly the former smile suffused it, and, as the gondel-lied fell into a slow floating accompaniment, she sang with a swift, impetuous grace, and in a sweet, yet thrilling voice, the Moth Song. The shrill music and murmur from the parlors burst all at once in muffled volume upon the melody, and, turning, they both saw Marguerite standing in the doorway, like an angry wraith, and flitting back again. Mrs. Purcell laughed, but took ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 7, No. 39, January, 1861 • Various
... again, 'the dapping moth'. (45.) This word is well known to fishermen and fowlers, meaning 'to dip lightly and suddenly into water' but is uncommon ...
— Society for Pure English, Tract 5 - The Englishing of French Words; The Dialectal Words in Blunden's Poems • Society for Pure English
... creating, apt poetic words or phrases, is one of his special charms. Matthew Arnold says: "No one else in English poetry, save Shakespeare, has in expression quite the fascinating felicity of Keats." Some of his descriptive adjectives and phrases, such as the "deep-damasked wings" of the tiger-moth, have been called "miniature poems." In the eighty lines of the Ode to a Nightingale, we may note the "full-throated ease" of the nightingale's song, the vintage cooled in the "deep-delved earth," the ...
— Halleck's New English Literature • Reuben P. Halleck
... Averting his face quickly Bloom bends to examine on the halltable the spaniel eyes of a running fox: then, his lifted head sniffing, follows Zoe into the musicroom. A shade of mauve tissuepaper dims the light of the chandelier. Round and round a moth flies, colliding, escaping. The floor is covered with an oilcloth mosaic of jade and azure and cinnabar rhomboids. Footmarks are stamped over it in all senses, heel to heel, heel to hollow, toe to toe, feet locked, ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce
... symbolism, drawing the attention of His hearers to the analogies in the law we see working around us to the same law working in the spiritual world. The yearly harvest, the sower and his seed, the leaven in the loaf, the grain of mustard-seed, the lilies of the field, the action of fire, worms, moth, rust, bread, wine, and water, the mystery of the wind, unseen and yet felt—each one of these is shown to contain and exemplify a great and ...
— Mysticism in English Literature • Caroline F. E. Spurgeon
... and Fig lay panting on the sand, with his moth open, and looking up to his master as he wagged his tail, clearly implying, "Did not I do it well, master?" "Yes, my little dog, you did it nobly. And now you shall have some of this bread, of Simon's own baking, which I cannot eat myself; and Jonathan and I will finish this ...
— The Bushman - Life in a New Country • Edward Wilson Landor
... without its disadvantages. The importation of goods from Holland was forbidden in order to catch the smuggler; but the smuggler ignored the agreement as readily as he signed it. Yet for a time the association was no burden to the fair trader, who in anticipation had doubled his orders, or sold "old, moth-eaten goods" at high prices. The merchants were "great patriots," Chandler told John Adams, "while their old rags lasted; but as soon as they were sold at enormous prices, they were for importing." And in truth the fair trader's ...
— Beginnings of the American People • Carl Lotus Becker
... walked across the bit of even ground to the friendly trees and found ourselves in a thin strip of shadow. Beneath the trees, waiting for us, was the Indian maid. She would not speak or tarry, but flitted before us as dusk and noiseless as a moth, and we followed her into the darkness beyond the firelight. Here a wigwam rose in our path; the girl, holding aside the mats that covered the entrance, motioned to us to enter. A fire was burning within the lodge and it showed us Nantaquas ...
— The Literary World Seventh Reader • Various
... gulfs, the silver glint of the shield-like lakes, and the soft glow of Interlaken and the towns in the Rhone valley. Once he had been moved in spite of himself, as one of the huge German volors had passed in the night, a blaze of ghostly lights and gilding, resembling a huge moth with antennae of electric light, and the two ships had saluted one another through half a league of silent air, with a pathetic cry as of two strange night-birds who have no leisure to pause. Milan and Turin had been quiet, for Italy was organised on other principles ...
— Lord of the World • Robert Hugh Benson
... arguments. For that matter, I had plenty of fairly good reasons for suspecting them of containing the sense of direction. When the Hairy Ammophila (A Sand-wasp who hunts the Grey Worm, or Caterpillar of the Turnip-moth, to serve as food for her grubs. For other varieties of the Ammophila, cf. "Insect Life": chapter 15.—Translator's Note.) is searching for the Grey Worm, it is with her antennae, those tiny fingers continually fumbling ...
— The Mason-bees • J. Henri Fabre
... Bible she had brought, and from which she had previously been reading. "There is a verse there which tells us that we are to lay up riches in heaven, where neither moth nor rust doth corrupt, and where thieves do not break through and steal," she answered in an unaffected tone. "I should not expect interest, and I am very sure that I should be ...
— Ned Garth - Made Prisoner in Africa. A Tale of the Slave Trade • W. H. G. Kingston
... walls. There were several lively cats jumping about from coffin to coffin, and these were looked upon with a most compassionate and friendly air by my good monk, as assisting him to preserve the bones of his comrades from moth and mouse—whether the old Sicilian superstition with regard to the sacredness of the feline species had also anything to do with it, I cannot say. There is a saddening sort of feeling in entering these homes ...
— Fair Italy, the Riviera and Monte Carlo • W. Cope Devereux
... invented the like torment. It crucifies their souls, withers their bodies, makes them hollow-eyed, [1691]pale, lean, and ghastly to behold, Cyprian, ser. 2. de zelo et livore. [1692]"As a moth gnaws a garment, so," saith Chrysostom, "doth envy consume a man;" to be a living anatomy: a "skeleton, to be a lean and [1693]pale carcass, quickened with a [1694]fiend", Hall in Charact. for ...
— The Anatomy of Melancholy • Democritus Junior
... late addressed her in less bantering tones; for he had played, like the moth, around the taper until he had burnt his wings, and was fairly scorched by the flame of love. In spite of the remonstrances of his more conscientious cousin, he daily spent hours in leaning over her garden gate, enacting the lover to this rustic Flora. It ...
— Mark Hurdlestone - Or, The Two Brothers • Susanna Moodie
... will be to you a God." The covenant made with the father was renewed to the children. The father's death did not disannul the promise of the Lord. Death has no power in the realms of grace. His moth and his rust can never destroy the ministries of Divine love. Abraham died and was laid to rest, but the river of life flowed on, and the bounties of the Lord never failed. The village well quenches the thirst of many generations: and so is it through the ...
— My Daily Meditation for the Circling Year • John Henry Jowett
... clay-colored border. In the centre of each wing there is a long reddish-white spot, and on the tip of each fore-wing is a dark bluish eye. On the head are delicate feathered antennae. Mamma found a picture of the moth in a book. We are sure it belongs to the genus Attacus, and we think it is ...
— Harper's Young People, September 21, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... two pictures before us. One, on paper yellow with the moth of years, is the portrait of an actor in the costume of Richard III. What a classic face! English features are rarely cast in that antique mould. The head sits lightly on its columnar neck, and is topped with dark-brown curls, that cluster like the acanthus; ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 103, May, 1866 • Various
... while, for the sake of Shakspeare, to say that they were generally (as far as I remember always) made of horn; and therefore, when Holofernes says "Go, whip thy gig" (which means just the same as Mr. Oldbuck's "Sew your sampler, monkey!"), Moth replies, "Lend me your horn to make one, and I will whip about your infamy circum circa; a gig of a cuckold's horn!" It is enough to add that the gig was made of the tip of the horn, and looked, while spinning, like an inverted extinguisher. It was hollow, but my impression ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 76, April 12, 1851 • Various
... was in an exquisite taste which vulgarer generations have never yet succeeded in imitating. Nothing was concealed, but rather displayed with a half-cynical pride. All was moth-ridden, worm-eaten, fallen to decay—but it was of the Monarchy. Not half a dozen houses in Paris, where already the wealth, which has to-day culminated in a ridiculous luxury of outward show, was beginning to build new palaces, could show room after room furnished in the days of the Great ...
— The Last Hope • Henry Seton Merriman
... hath the candle singed the moth Of these deliberate fools, when they do choose, They bare their wisdom by their wit ...
— Shakspere, Personal Recollections • John A. Joyce
... are actually vibrating in sympathy, because they are in perfect harmony with the note given out by the voice; but none of the other strings are responding because they are out of harmony. With this simile in mind, let us consider the curious fact that a moth always lays its eggs on that particular plant upon which the caterpillars, when they hatch out of these eggs, must feed. The study of the Life History of Insects has always been of great interest to me, as I firmly believe that we are on the verge of a great discovery, and that the first indications ...
— Science and the Infinite - or Through a Window in the Blank Wall • Sydney T. Klein
... the assassin harassed and tormented him, and buzzed in his brain, like the moth which flies again and again against the window where it ...
— The Widow Lerouge - The Lerouge Case • Emile Gaboriau
... went away to California. There this tired creature, this civilised product of the slums, this thoughtful prostitute, this striving human being full of the desire for life and as eager for excellence as is the moth for the star, went into camp, and there, in the bosom of nature, her terrible fatigue was well expressed in the great sense of relief that resulted: a new birth, as it were, a refreshing reaction from slum life and ...
— An Anarchist Woman • Hutchins Hapgood
... to your grave in the wardrobe, And furnish a feast for the moth, Nell's glove shall betray its sweet secrets To younger, more innocent cloth. 'Tis time to put on your successor— It's made in a fashion that's new; Old coat, I'm afraid it will never Sit as easily on me ...
— Point Lace and Diamonds • George A. Baker, Jr.
... is written (Prov. 17:22): "A joyful mind maketh age flourishing: a sorrowful spirit drieth up the bones": and (Prov. 25:20): "As a moth doth by a garment, and a worm by the wood: so the sadness of a man consumeth the heart": and (Ecclus. 38:19): ...
— Summa Theologica, Part I-II (Pars Prima Secundae) - From the Complete American Edition • Saint Thomas Aquinas
... Let all hands come and rig the ship on old Simp. Tell him your troubles and ask him to help you out. He ain't got nothing better to do. Pitch into him; give him hell; he likes it. Come one, come all—all you moth-eaten, lousy stiffs from Stiffville. Come, tell Simp there's a reporter rubberin' around and you're scared to death. He'll sympathise ...
— American Sketches - 1908 • Charles Whibley
... are asleep? Sometimes the stars, sometimes the moon, sometimes the clouds, sometimes the wind, sometimes the snow, sometimes the frost, sometimes all of them together, are busy. Sometimes the owl and the moth and the beetle, and the bat and the cat and the rat, are all at work. Sometimes there are flowers in bloom that love the night better than the day, and are busy all through the darkness pouring out on the still air the scent they withheld during the ...
— Gutta-Percha Willie • George MacDonald
... The moth-fly, as he shot in air, Crept under the leaf, and hid her there; The katy-did forgot its lay, The prowling gnat fled fast away, The fell mosquito checked his drone And folded his wings till the Fay was gone, And the wily beetle dropped his head, And fell on the ground as if he were dead; They ...
— Choice Specimens of American Literature, And Literary Reader - Being Selections from the Chief American Writers • Benj. N. Martin
... small quantity of kerosene (coal oil). These two last substances will kill choice plants if used close to their roots, so use caution. An ingenious soul, rightly conceiving that the mole is highly sensitive to smells made a number of stiff pasteboard tubes and put in the center of each a stinking moth-ball. Buried in the runways there was a dearth of moles directly. I heartily approve of the mole's judgment in leaving moth-ball-scented premises. I ...
— The Mayflower, January, 1905 • Various
... humour; he, alas! can be dirty like the rest, when necessary: but humour he has of the highest quality. 'The Ordinary' is full of it; and Moth, the Antiquary, though too much of a lay figure, and depending for his amusingness on his quaint antiquated language, is such a sketch as Mr. Dickens need not have ...
— Plays and Puritans - from "Plays and Puritans and Other Historical Essays" • Charles Kingsley
... church. Sunday after Sunday he sat down and stood up with that small company, heard the voice of Mr. Torrance leaping like an ill-played clarionet from key to key, and had an opportunity to study his moth-eaten gown and the black thread mittens that he joined together in prayer, and lifted up with a reverent solemnity in the act of benediction. Hermiston pew was a little square box, dwarfish in proportion with the kirk itself, and ...
— Weir of Hermiston • Robert Louis Stevenson
... her for four-and-twenty hours, during which time she was to be kept without meat or drink. It was supposed that one of her imps would come during that interval and suck her blood. As the imp might come in the shape of a wasp, a moth, a fly, or other insect, a hole was made in the door or window to let it enter. The watchers were ordered to keep a sharp look out, and endeavour to kill any insect that appeared in the room. If any fly escaped, and they could not ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds • Charles Mackay
... and every other condition of life that I could think of on my way back to that unsavory asylum. So I dived into a pawnbroker's shop, where I was a stranger only upon my present errand, and within the hour was airing a decent if antiquated suit, but little corrupted by the pawnbroker's moth, and a new straw hat, on the top ...
— Raffles - Further Adventures of the Amateur Cracksman • E. W. Hornung
... Dora deserves—I said, or let you see as much, no matter which; I am no equivocator, nor do I now unsay or retract a word. You have my secret; but remember when first I had the folly to tell it you, same time I warned you—I warned you, Harry, like the moth from the candle—I warned you in vain. In another tone I warn you now, young man, for the last time—I tell you my promise to me is sacred—she is as good as married to White Connal—fairly tied up neck and heels—and so am I, to all intents and purposes; and if I thought it were possible you could ...
— Tales & Novels, Vol. IX - [Contents: Harrington; Thoughts on Bores; Ormond] • Maria Edgeworth
... learned a heap about how things were done in Wisconsin, but he didn't pick up much information about the habits of our Missouri fauna. When it came to cows, he had had a liberal education and he made out all right, but by and by it got on to ploughing time and Jeff naturally bought a mule—a little moth-eaten cuss, with sad, dreamy eyes and droopy, wiggly-woggly ears that swung in a circle as easy as if they ran on ball-bearings. Her owner didn't give her a very good character, but Jeff was too busy telling how much he knew about ...
— Letters from a Self-Made Merchant to His Son • George Horace Lorimer
... of the broken bottle. The man seized the neck of the bottle in a black, claw-like hand and gave it a preparatory flourish. He was a cadaverous little man, incredibly dirty, with mustaches and beard of a moth-eaten tow-color, and a purple flush on his cheeks. His uniform was clotted with mud. When the others crowded round him and tried to dissuade him, he said: "M'en fous, c'est mon metier," and rolled his eyes so that the whites flashed in the ...
— Three Soldiers • John Dos Passos
... and sisters when the sign of the Church was put upon him, and seen the sympathy of eye and hand that welcomed him to the blessed company, has not felt that for this poor, despised race there are riches laid up in that kingdom 'where neither moth nor rust doth corrupt, and where thieves do not break through nor steal'? Who that has stood in a Southern forest on some Sunday afternoon, in the early Southern spring, when the woods are resonant with the ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No 2, August, 1864 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... great real of difficulty in propagating these pistache trees. We have five different species of stock on which to grow them, and we ought to learn all the best varieties in the world. But unfortunately some of the best varieties in Sicily are infested with a moth which lays its eggs in the twigs just below the leaf scar and it is impossible for the entomologist to detect these eggs without destroying the buds. That apparently trivial circumstance has made it impossible for us to get these cuttings in from Sicily without sending a trained horticulturist ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Report of the Proceedings at the Eleventh Annual Meeting - Washington, D. C. October 7 AND 8, 1920 • Various
... Upon which, the Canoe was sold, and, I think, remains in being still. This Wood is very lasting, and free from the Rot. A Canoe of it will outlast four Boats, and seldom wants Repair. They say, that a Chest made of this Wood, will suffer no Moth, or ...
— A New Voyage to Carolina • John Lawson
... Republished in 'Natural Selection,' 1871.) to the Duke's criticisms, making some specially good remarks on those which refer to orchids. He shows how, by a "beautiful self-acting adjustment," the nectary of the orchid Angraecum (from 10 to 14 inches in length), and the proboscis of a moth sufficiently long to reach the nectar, might be developed by natural selection. He goes on to point out that on any other theory we must suppose that the flower was created with an enormously long nectary, and that then ...
— The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin, Volume II • Francis Darwin
... candid to himself. It may have been the sudden change from London air and London noise; something in the clear transparency of the April day, in the flute-like melody of the birds' song, in the dream-like beauty of the scene before him, that made all the moth and rust that had consumed the remembrances of the past more apparent. There was little of the treasure of heaven there,—it had mostly been nonsense or vanity or worse. He wanted, oh, how he wanted, to be able just for once to surrender himself to what was absolutely ...
— Robinetta • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... fringed with railings of stone so artistically wrought as to suggest the grill-work of the matchless Taj Mahal. Great gray monkeys descend from the mountain slope to feed from the hands of your guides; and they are not of the moth-eaten variety seen in captivity, but are freeborn denizens of the forest, whose coats glisten and whose curly tails are of ...
— East of Suez - Ceylon, India, China and Japan • Frederic Courtland Penfield
... cheek-bone were faded and hardened to a brick-red by listless days and a certain amount of ailing health. His imagination fastened at once on the glowing eyes, on the dainty curls rippling with light, on the dazzling fairness of her skin, and hovered about those bright points as the moth hovers about the candle flame. For her spirit made such appeal to his that he could no longer see the woman as she was. Her feminine exaltation had carried him away, the energy of her expressions, a little staled ...
— Lost Illusions • Honore De Balzac
... and that's better than meddling with the Fairies, to my mind. No! no!" she added, laughing, "if we had had one you'd have heard of it, whoever didn't, for I should have had some decent clothes made for him. I couldn't stand rags and old cloaks, messing and moth-catching, in ...
— The Brownies and Other Tales • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... goat is clearly of Jewish origin. Thus the Zohar relates that "Tradition teaches us that when the Israelites evoked evil spirits, these appeared to them under the form of he-goats and made known to them all that they wished to learn."—Section Ahre Moth, folio 70a (de ...
— Secret Societies And Subversive Movements • Nesta H. Webster
... twittered about the roof, built their nests, reared their young, held their congress along the eaves, and then winged their flight in search of another spring. The caterpillar spun its winding-sheet, dangled in it from the great buttonwood tree that shaded the house, turned into a moth, fluttered with the last sunshine of summer, and disappeared; and finally the leaves of the buttonwood tree turned yellow, then brown, then rustled one by one to the ground, and whirling about in little eddies of wind and dust, whispered that winter ...
— Tales of a Traveller • Washington Irving
... become of me without Amy remains to be proved. Laura, poor thing, looks like Patience on a monument. I wonder whether Philip's disgrace has anything to do with it. Hum! If mamma's old idea was right, the captain has been more like moth and candle than consistent with his prudence, unless he thought it "a toute epreuve". I wonder what came to pass last autumn, when I was ill, and mamma's head full of me. He may not intend it, and she may not know it, but I would by no means answer for Cupid's being guiltless ...
— The Heir of Redclyffe • Charlotte M. Yonge
... modest lamp, signifying to the passers-by that at all hours of the night the slightest favors (or fevers) were welcome. A youth who had freely partaken of the cup which cheers and likewise inebriates, following a moth-like impulse very natural under the circumstances, dashed his fist at the light and quenched the meek luminary,—breaking through the plate-glass, of course, to reach it. Now I don't want to go into minutiae at table, you know, but a ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes
... general opinion appears to be that the sexes are nearly equal, but in Italy, as I hear from Professor Canestrini, many breeders are convinced that the females are produced in excess. This same naturalist, however, informs me, that in the two yearly broods of the Ailanthus silk-moth (Bombyx cynthia), the males greatly preponderate in the first, whilst in the second the two sexes are nearly equal, or the females rather ...
— The Descent of Man and Selection in Relation to Sex • Charles Darwin
... his arms as they were wings and rode round about us on his pony with right merry demeanor, like a moth fluttering over us. Ann looked down, reddening for shame, and the blood rose to my cheeks likewise for maiden shyness; nevertheless I heard the King's deep, outlandish tones, and his noble wife's pleasant voice, ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... rent off robe and wreath, * so as a sloughing serpent doth, Laid them at the rhymer's feet, * shed down wreath and raiment both, Stood in a dim and shamed stole, * like the tattered wing of a musty moth. ...
— Poems • Francis Thompson
... sign to the dying if a dark winged moth make at the bed light and fall at it, but it be a good sign should a light winged one come thrice and go its way unharmed. Even if it do fall at it, it doth say nothing worse than the ailing one will soon die but that the ...
— The Evolution Of An English Town • Gordon Home
... out from Thabor. Across the plain, as he looked from the parapet, there was nothing. For a few yards there lay across the broken ground a single crooked lance of light from a half-closed shutter; and beneath that, nothing. To the north again, nothing; to the west a glimmer, pale as a moth's wing, from the house-roofs of Nazareth; to the east, nothing. He might be on a tower-top in space, except for that line of light and that grey glimmer that ...
— Lord of the World • Robert Hugh Benson
... lies In the cool hollow of thy breast, Thou moth-winged creature darkly fair; The very sun steals down to rest Within thy swaying tendrilled hair, And forest-flicker of ...
— The Lonely Dancer and Other Poems • Richard Le Gallienne
... alms-begging loblollies. To refuse to make obeisance was treason. The entire public thought of a vast section of the country has revolved around the figure of a worthless old grafter in a tattered gray shirt. Every question is settled when some moth-eaten ne'er-do-well lets out what is known as a 'rebel yell.' The most polished and profound speech conceivable is answered when a jackass mounts the platform and brays out something about the gallant boys in gray. The cry for progress, for material advancement, for moral and social ...
— Queed • Henry Sydnor Harrison
... Fields had been enclosed and farms had risen about it; but still the little church was one of the loneliest and remotest of fanes. So lonely and remote that the violent hand of Puritanism had almost passed it by, had been content at least with a rough blow or two, defacing, not destroying. Above the moth-eaten table that replaced the ancient altar there still rose a window that breathed the very secreta of the old faith—a window of radiant fragments, piercing the twilight of the little church with strange uncomprehended things—images that linked the humble chapel ...
— Helbeck of Bannisdale, Vol. II • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... respects interesting to us, more especially because they have varied largely at an early period of life, and the variations have been inherited at corresponding periods. As the value of the silk-moth depends entirely on the cocoon, every change in its structure and qualities has been carefully attended to, and races differing much in the cocoon, but hardly at all in the adult state, have been produced. With the races of most other domestic animals, the young resemble each other ...
— The Variation of Animals and Plants under Domestication - Volume I • Charles Darwin
... out the living-room light early. The light only made the night flying insects buzz and blunder at the window screens. And how is it that moth millers will get into the most closely screened house? This was ...
— Janice Day, The Young Homemaker • Helen Beecher Long
... gave the excuse her heart longed for, and her fingers rested for a moment, light as the moth itself, on his hair. There was something in the touch which made him open his eyes—uncomprehending at first, and then filled ...
— With Edged Tools • Henry Seton Merriman
... moth gave the excuse her heart longed for, and her fingers rested for a moment, light as the moth itself, on his hair. There was something in the touch which made him open his eyes—uncomprehending at first, and then filled with ...
— With Edged Tools • Henry Seton Merriman
... old and shabby my clothes are," smiled Peter. "It does not make much difference what I wear to the tannery if I can just have some flannel shirts, overalls, and rubber boots. I've packed away my white tennis suits in moth-balls, you know, since I went into ...
— The Story of Leather • Sara Ware Bassett
... smiling. 'We will do our cousins a better turn than they merit; we will keep their doors fast against thieves, and their household stuff from moth and mould and rust. For the infection, we run as little risk in that house as out of it.' So she bore me down with her will, the more easily since we had no choice but either to lodge in that house or in ...
— Andrew Golding - A Tale of the Great Plague • Anne E. Keeling
... chief teacher and the rest of the assembly had left me, some boys who were also engaged in the gymnasian exercise, followed me home, and stood near me for a little while as I was writing: and lo! at that instant they saw a moth running upon my paper, and asked in surprise what was the name of that nimble little creature? I said, "It is called a moth; and I will tell you some wonderful things respecting it. This little animal contains in itself as many members and viscera as there are in a camel, such as ...
— The Delights of Wisdom Pertaining to Conjugial Love • Emanuel Swedenborg
... happened that some of Mr. Prywell's most private and not at all professional papers—papers evidently, and on the face of them, connected with the state of the spy's own soul—came into my hands as good lot would have it just the other night. The moth-eaten chest was full of his old papers, but the pieces that took my heart most were, as it looked to me, actually gnashed through with his remorseful teeth, and soaked and sodden past recognition with his sweat and his tears and his agonising hands. But after some late hours over those remnants ...
— Bunyan Characters - Third Series - The Holy War • Alexander Whyte
... such men as Von Baer, Rathke, Reichert, Bischoff, and Remak, have almost completely unravelled them, so that the successive stages of development which are exhibited by a Dog, for example, are now as well known to the embryologist as are the steps of the metamorphosis of the silkworm moth to the school-boy. It will be useful to consider with attention the nature and the order of the stages of canine development, as an example of the process in the ...
— Lectures and Essays • T.H. Huxley
... ring-waves began to die away. Swimming hastily to the spot to try to discover what had happened, I found one of my woodpeckers floating motionless with outspread wings. All was over. Had I been a minute or two earlier, I might have saved him. He had glanced on the water I suppose in pursuit of a moth, was unable to rise from it, and died struggling, as I nearly did at this same spot. Like me he seemed to have lost his mind in blind confusion and fear. The water was warm, and had he kept still with his head a little above the surface, he would sooner or later have been wafted ashore. ...
— The Story of My Boyhood and Youth • John Muir
... to try to make an escape when a momentary cessation of hostilities was caused by the entrance of a moth-eaten, abstracted-looking man. As the two-year-old hailed him as "fadder", I gathered that he was the person responsible for the family now fighting ...
— Our Next-Door Neighbors • Belle Kanaris Maniates
... and Florimel glided in, the painter sprang to his feet to welcome her, and she flew softly, soundless as a moth, into his arms; for the study being large and full of things, she was not aware of the presence of Malcolm. From behind a picture on an easel, he saw them meet, but shrinking from being an open witness to their secret, ...
— The Marquis of Lossie • George MacDonald
... away these roaring boyes When they intend to rock licentious thoughts In a soft roome, where every long Cushion is Embroydered with old Histories of peace, And all the hangings of Warre thrust into the Wardrobe Till they grow musty or moth-eaten. ...
— Old English Plays, Vol. I - A Collection of Old English Plays • Various
... the caterpillar transformed into the butterfly. He had shuffled off the grog-shop, and fluttered into one of the brightest of Cleveland hotels. The bright-winged moth singes itself in the brilliant gaslight sometimes where the ...
— Three People • Pansy
... thousand scenes flashed through Valmond's brain, before his eyes, while the great wheel of torture went round, and he was broken, broken-mended and broken again, upon it. Spinning—he was for ever spinning, like a tireless moth through a fiery air; and the world went roaring past. In vain he cried to the wheelman to stop the wheel: there was no answer. Would those stars never cease blinking in and out, or the wind stop whipping the swift clouds past? So he went on, endless years, driving through space, ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... If you can catch sight of him before the light fades too much you will see the white bar which crosses each wing beneath and looks exactly like a hole, as if the bird had transparencies in his pinions as has the polyphemus moth. Many a summer afternoon I have seen nighthawks circling erratically above Boston Common, and there their cry has sounded like a plaint. No doubt these birds fly there by choice and bring up their young on the tops of Back Bay buildings ...
— Old Plymouth Trails • Winthrop Packard
... lead and he knew he must go very slowly, as he had some very keen men to deal with. Again he went to a private room and worked back to Mr. Woodford Dunne. He had played his little game around the men and determined to let them play moth ...
— Cad Metti, The Female Detective Strategist - Dudie Dunne Again in the Field • Harlan Page Halsey
... "The moth comes to the candle. Your warning was useless," said Gerard. "Night after night I have walked this avenue with Kathleen O'Connor. Now she is tired ...
— Grey Town - An Australian Story • Gerald Baldwin
... was an old woman,—very old, for a period wherein few lived to old age; she had long outlived her husband, and had seen the funerals of nearly all her children. The greater part even of her earthly treasures were already safe where moth and rust corrupt not, and her own feeling of earnest longing to rejoin them grew daily stronger. It was for the daughter's sake alone that she cared to live now; the daughter to whom men had left only God and that ...
— The White Rose of Langley - A Story of the Olden Time • Emily Sarah Holt
... my cap, Away the moth flew. Buskins for a fairy prince, Brogues for his son, Pay me well, pay me well, ...
— Journeys Through Bookland V3 • Charles H. Sylvester
... a true man first. And he who gave this counsel knew well enough what he said, for it was our Saviour himself, who in the sixth chapter of St. Matthew saith, "Hoard not up your treasures in earth, where the rust and the moth fret it out and where thieves dig it out and steal it away. But hoard up your treasures in heaven, where neither the rust nor the moth fret them out, and where thieves dig them not out nor steal them away. For where thy treasure is, there is ...
— Dialogue of Comfort Against Tribulation - With Modifications To Obsolete Language By Monica Stevens • Thomas More
... that magic threshold, he becomes transfigured; he was the street Arab, he becomes the titi.[18] Theatres are a sort of ship turned upside down with the keel in the air. It is in that keel that the titi huddle together. The titi is to the gamin what the moth is to the larva; the same being endowed with wings and soaring. It suffices for him to be there, with his radiance of happiness, with his power of enthusiasm and joy, with his hand-clapping, which resembles a clapping of wings, to confer on that narrow, dark, fetid, sordid, unhealthy, hideous, ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo
... led her from the flat of the delicatessen merchant, through various shabby lairs, into the pension of a vaudeville favorite of prehistoric fame. The house was dilapidated, and the brownstone front had the moth-eaten look ...
— We Can't Have Everything • Rupert Hughes
... woollen garments and pieces, and the quilts made of these were of grateful warmth in bleak New England. All kinds of commonplace garments and remnants of decayed gentility were pressed into service in these quilts: portions of the moth-eaten and discarded uniforms of militia-men, worn-out flannel sheets dyed with some brilliant home-dye, old coat and cloak linings, well-worn petticoats. A magnificent scarlet cloak worn by a lord mayor of London and brought ...
— Home Life in Colonial Days • Alice Morse Earle
... annoyed by Lawrence Hyde's manner. Not so Jack Bendish, sprawling in a deck chair which had no sound pair of notches: not so his wife, Laura's sister, Yvonne of the Castle, curled up on a moth-eaten tigerskin rug, and clad in raiment of brown and silver which even Mr. Stafford would not have credited to Chapman's General Drapery and Grocery Stores. Isabel was innocently surprised when the Bendishes found they had ...
— Nightfall • Anthony Pryde
... (Scrophulariaceae) Great Mullein, Velvet or Flannel Plant or Aaron's Rod; Moth Mullein; Butter-and-eggs or Yellow Toadflax; Blue or Wild Toadflax or Blue Linaria; Hairy Beard-tongue; Snake-head, Turtle-head or Cod-head; Monkey-flower; Common Speedwell, Fluellin or Paul's Betony; American Brooklime; Culver's-root; Downy False Foxglove; Large Purple Gerardia; ...
— Wild Flowers Worth Knowing • Neltje Blanchan et al
... beautiful apparition, with loose and streaming hair, seemed rather to fly than run, as her light and rapid steps, full of eagerness and animation, scarcely touched the earth while darting after the gaudy insect. How graceful she is, as, halting for an instant beneath the coquettish moth, she looks up to behold its gold-and-purple wings dancing round her head, mocking and playing with its gay pursuer! She thinks she has caught it; but, alas! the edge of her net only touched the butterfly's wings, and away it dashes, over hedge and copse, far, far beyond her reach! How beautiful ...
— The Poor Gentleman • Hendrik Conscience
... you will observe them to meet together, consult among themselves, and commence an entire new plan of operations. Bees, also, are always prepared to meet any new difficulty. If the sphinx atropos, or death's head moth, forces its way into the hive, the bees are well known, after having killed it with their stings, to embalm the dead body with wax—their reason for this is, that the body was too large for them to remove through the passage by which it entered, and they would avoid the unpleasant ...
— Olla Podrida • Frederick Marryat (AKA Captain Marryat)
... through it,' said Rex, 'and most of us have survived the change. With insects, the caterpillar turns into the pretty moth. With Korps students, the butterfly becomes sooner or later a crawling, philistine grub. The moral superiority of the worm over the moth is manifest in his works. Have ...
— Greifenstein • F. Marion Crawford
... retorted. "I don't require the shave, thank goodness, but I certainly need a bath—and clothes. I wish I had the gray suit that's probably getting all moldy and moth-eaten at the Pine River cabin. I wonder if I can get anything ...
— North of Fifty-Three • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... these nocturnal moths is the richly-coloured Acherontia Satanas, one of the Singhalese representatives of our Death's-head moth, which utters a sharp and stridulous cry when seized. This sound has been conjectured to be produced by the friction of its thorax against the abdomen;—Reaumur believed it to be caused by the rubbing of the palpi against the tongue. I have never been able to observe either motion, and Mr. E.L. ...
— Sketches of the Natural History of Ceylon • J. Emerson Tennent
... much as the tightness of the ropes allowed, were the cause of the booming sound we had heard. Something alive was tearing frantically about inside, banging against the stretched canvas in a way that made me think of a great moth dashing against the walls and ceiling of a room. The tent bulged ...
— Three More John Silence Stories • Algernon Blackwood
... that justifieth Me; who will contend with Me? let us stand together: who is Mine adversary? let him come near to Me. 9. Behold, the Lord God will help Me; who is he that shall condemn Me? lo, they all shall wax old as a garment; the moth shall eat them up.'—ISAIAH l. ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Isaiah and Jeremiah • Alexander Maclaren
... Moth. By Woden, God of Saxons, From whence comes Wensday, that is, Wodnesday, Truth is a thing that I will ever keep Unto thylke day in which I creep ...
— The Antiquary, Complete • Sir Walter Scott
... object the reconciliation of man to God. But it is a soul rejoicing fact, that of the precious things brought forth by the sun of righteousness, the hope of immortality is its most precious jewel. This makes every thing valuable. Hence we may lay up our treasures where neither moth nor rust can corrupt, nor thieves break through and steal. Here God's bright favour will never grow dim, nor will our love and gratitude ever decay. Do you see this celestial form leaning on her anchor, and while the raging waves of a restless sea dash against ...
— A Series of Letters In Defence of Divine Revelation • Hosea Ballou
... little girl he had seen that morning in the garden. She was still dressed in the shabby old frock and pinafore, and as she came creeping in, threading her way deftly amongst the young ladies in starched muslins and gay ribbons who were fluttering about, she made the effect of a little brown moth who had strayed into the midst of a swarm of brilliant butterflies. No one took any notice of her, and she made her way up to the large round table which had been pushed into the far corner of the room, and ...
— My Little Lady • Eleanor Frances Poynter
... demonstrated. For this reason canning of corn is not undertaken in this State, and for the same reason most of the green corn ears sold in our markets have the tops of the ears amputated. It is sometimes possible to escape the worm by planting rather late, so that the ears shall develop after the moth, which is parent of the worm, ...
— One Thousand Questions in California Agriculture Answered • E.J. Wickson
... distraction till the table round was scattered with little broken leaves. He wanted to keep out of that atmosphere of emotion which surrounded Elinor at the piano. But it attracted him, all the same, as the light attracts a moth. To get away from that, to make the severance which so soon must be a perfect severance, was the only true policy he knew; for what was he to her, and what could she be to him? He had already said everything which a man in his position ...
— The Marriage of Elinor • Margaret Oliphant
... herself inside a cupboard full of old lumber. The dust was thick, and surely had not been disturbed for years. Some broken chairs with moth-eaten seats were piled together, and some ancient boxes lay full of rubbish. Straw, old books, hanks of rope, and other miscellaneous things occupied the corner. There was a door opposite, without either ...
— The Madcap of the School • Angela Brazil
... reflections since my eyes are too bad to read. I stare at the ceiling, and if a moth comes on it—and just now that happened, or I would not have thought of mentioning it—I watch the pair of them, the moth and its leaping shadow, as they whirl from square to square of the smoke-ripened ceiling. This keeps ...
— A Diary Without Dates • Enid Bagnold
... a large death's head moth advanced from the obscure outer air, wheeled twice round the lantern, flew straight at the candle, and extinguished it by the force of the blow. Wildeve had just thrown, but had not lifted the box to see what he had cast; and now it ...
— The Return of the Native • Thomas Hardy
... for himself he won't, but he will be like the foolish moth, and won't be contented till he has singed his wings. I will look about me and see where to bestow myself ...
— The Young Bank Messenger • Horatio Alger
... would be matter of wonder to you, to see a man assaulted with all the power of hell, and yet to come off a conqueror! Is it not a wonder to see a poor creature, who in himself is weaker than the moth, to stand against and overcome all devils, all the world, all his lusts and corruptions? (Job 4:19). Or if he fall, is it not a wonder to see him, when devils and guilt are upon him, to rise again, stand upon his feet ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... Pawkins, whose health had been bad for some time, published some work upon the "mesoblast" of the Death's Head Moth. What the mesoblast of the Death's Head Moth may be, does not matter a rap in this story. But the work was far below his usual standard, and gave Hapley an opening he had coveted for years. He must have worked night and day to make ...
— The Stolen Bacillus and Other Incidents • H. G. (Herbert George) Wells
... see that the hope and the desire of returning home and to one's former state is like the moth to the light, and that the man who with constant longing awaits with joy each new spring time, each new summer, each new month and new year—deeming that the things he longs for are ever too late in coming—does not perceive ...
— The Notebooks of Leonardo Da Vinci, Complete • Leonardo Da Vinci
... I with"—O'er his branches just then something flew; It seemed like moth, large and grayish of hue. But it was a Fairy. Her voice soft did sound, "Be the tree that bears apples all ...
— The Adventures of A Brownie - As Told to My Child by Miss Mulock • Miss Mulock
... of this habit when they imagine themselves in danger. For instance, the "fever worm," the larva of one of our common moths,—the Isabella tiger-moth,—is a noted death-feigner, and will "pretend dead" on the slightest provocation. Touch this grub with the toe of your boot, or with the tip of your finger, or with a stick, and it will at once curl up, to all appearances ...
— The Dawn of Reason - or, Mental Traits in the Lower Animals • James Weir
... return to the beautiful room from which she had fled that very morning, she could not bring herself to seek his charity or ask his pity. She realised well enough that one such as she could never hope to win a look of love from him; but like the moth that hovers round the flame which brings it danger she nevertheless determined to see ...
— Adrien Leroy • Charles Garvice
... as it was, that something ought to be done; that something was wrong in him somewhere; that it ought to be set right somehow—a feeling which every one in the pew shared, except one. His heart was so moth-eaten and rusty, with the moths and the rust which Mammon brings with him when he comes in to abide with a man, that there was not enough of it left to make the terrible discovery that the rest of it was gone. Its owner did not know that there was anything amiss ...
— Alec Forbes of Howglen • George MacDonald |
