"Starling" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... gathered and she swooped amongst them pulling feathers off their backs and out of their wings. Soon there was a heap of feathers on the ground—pigeons' feathers and pie's feathers, crane's and crow's, blackbird's and starling's. The King of Ireland's Son quickly gathered them into his bag. The falcon flew to another place and gave her bird-call again. The birds gathered, and she went amongst them, plucking their feathers. The King's Son ...
— The King of Ireland's Son • Padraic Colum
... came of a Suffolk family—one of whom settled in Nottinghamshire. The famous "starling" was ...
— Henry Esmond; The English Humourists; The Four Georges • William Makepeace Thackeray
... starling flew to his mother's window stane, It whistled and it sang, And aye, the ower word of the tune Was 'Johnnie tarries lang.' —JOHNNIE ...
— The Chaplet of Pearls • Charlotte M. Yonge
... not prove anything. A parrot or a starling can talk, too; that does not make them human beings by ...
— Comedies • Ludvig Holberg
... plaint, Or the starling's courtship quaint, Heart made much of; 'twas a boon Won from silence, and too soon Wasted in the ample air: Building rooks far distant were. Scarce at all would speak the rills, And I saw the idle hills, In their amber hazes deep, Fold themselves ...
— Poems by Jean Ingelow, In Two Volumes, Volume I. • Jean Ingelow
... a starling," I said. "Can't you see its nice shiny black-and-green plumage, and its yellow bill like a blackbird? Leave the poor little thing alone, ...
— Afloat at Last - A Sailor Boy's Log of his Life at Sea • John Conroy Hutcheson
... merino sheep brought from Spain, via Saxony and Australia, is the basis of the flocks. The black swan and magpie represent the birds of New Holland. The Indian minah, after becoming common, is said to be retreating before the English starling. The first red deer came from Germany. And side by side with these strangers and with the trees and plants which colonists call specifically "English"—for the word "British" is almost unknown in the Colony—the native flora is beginning to be cultivated in gardens and grounds. ...
— The Long White Cloud • William Pember Reeves
... His life from God. And why is it of consequence that we should look to that? Because Christ Jesus had in that the starling-point of His whole life. He said: "The Father sent me;" "The Father hath given the Son all things;" "The Father hath given the Son to have life in Himself." Christ received it as His own life, just as God has ...
— The Master's Indwelling • Andrew Murray
... little Bijou, who leaped about, and barked, and whined with delight at having her out of doors again. There was a seat in the wall, and her ladies spread cushions and cloaks for her to sit on it, warmed as it was by the sun; and there she rested, watching a starling running about on the turf, his gold-bespangled green plumage glistening. She hardly spoke; she seemed to be making the most of the repose of the fair calm day. Humfrey would not intrude by making her sensible of his presence, but he watched ...
— Unknown to History - A Story of the Captivity of Mary of Scotland • Charlotte M. Yonge
... nowhither, not even to see my dear aged Mother, but sitting still here under the Autumn sky such as I have it; in these vacant streets I am lonelier than elsewhere, have more chance for composure than elsewhere! With Sterne's starling I repeat to myself, "I can't get out."—Well, hang it, stay in then; and ...
— The Correspondence of Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson, - 1834-1872, Vol. I • Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson
... Toledan maid came with us, talking and singing incessantly, like a sweet-voiced starling. We rested on the farther side and looked back at the towering city, glorious in the sunset, its spires aflame, its long lines of palace and convent clear in the level rays, its ruins softened in the gathering shadows, the lofty bridge hanging transfigured over the glowing river. Before ...
— Castilian Days • John Hay
... worth in the fashion; there was no wit in the plan,'" murmured the Poet. The rooms were too small even for a Deputy-Director-General, and he knew that not one of the silk-stockinged, short-skirted, starling-voiced young women with bare arms and regimental badges, who acted as secretaries to Deputy-Director-Generals, would consent to walk up four flights of creaking, uncarpeted stairs to the dusty sparrows' nest on the housetop that ...
— Defenders of Democracy • Militia of Mercy
... had a singular appearance. It consisted of four persons, and these were derived from three orders of the animate creation. Two were human. The third was an aged starling, for whose convenience a wicker cage hung in one corner; but the owner was hopping in perfect freedom about the hearth, and occasionally varying that exercise by pausing to give a mischievous peck to the tail of the fourth, a very large white and tan dog. The dog appeared so familiarised with ...
— One Snowy Night - Long ago at Oxford • Emily Sarah Holt
... something like our English starling's—a signal that had been agreed upon between Lancelot and me. In a very few seconds he was ...
— Marjorie • Justin Huntly McCarthy
... you were life, my darling, And I your love were death, We 'd shine and snow together Ere March made sweet the weather With daffodil and starling And hours of fruitful breath; If you were life, my darling, And I your ...
— Victorian Songs - Lyrics of the Affections and Nature • Various |
