"Tameness" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... anything," he said, "only what you would like me to think. Listen—when a man finds a wounded bird out in the winter woods, he'll bring it home to care for it. And he 'won't be thinking' the worse of its helplessness and tameness. Of course I know—but tell me your ...
— The Branding Iron • Katharine Newlin Burt
... the other hand, habit alone in some cases has sufficed; hardly any animal is more difficult to tame than the young of the wild rabbit; scarcely any animal is tamer than the young of the tame rabbit; but I can hardly suppose that domestic rabbits have often been selected for tameness alone; so that we must attribute at least the greater part of the inherited change from extreme wildness to extreme tameness, to habit and ...
— On the Origin of Species - 6th Edition • Charles Darwin
... alive with fairy wonders; wild canaries came to it—pure saffron, except their black-flecked wings,—the soldier-bird, so bold and scarlet,—robins were a drug in the market, and only tolerated for their tameness and vocal powers. But none could weary of the bluebirds, whose azure took so vivid a hue in flight, from the sun shining through ...
— Bluebell - A Novel • Mrs. George Croft Huddleston
... moves with the equal pace of boats on a Dutch canal. The effect is that of a host of flower-pots, the columns in a ledger, a tragedy by the Rev. Mr. Home; and it is heightened by the matchless triteness of the fabulist's reflections and the uncommon tameness of his drama. It is hard to believe that this is indeed the Gay of Polly and The Beggars' Opera. True, the dialects of his Peachum and his Lockit are in some sort one; his gentlemen of the road and his ladies ...
— Views and Reviews - Essays in appreciation • William Ernest Henley
... upon a fair or market-day, soon after the year 1746, where she gave vent to her political partiality, to the great offence of the rabble of that city. Being zealous in their loyalty when there was no danger, in proportion to the tameness with which they had surrendered to the Highlanders in 1745, the mob inflicted upon poor Jean Gordon no slighter penalty than that of ducking her to death in the Eden. It was an operation of some time, for Jean ...
— Guy Mannering, or The Astrologer, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... chooses to live. Peering at you through the green undergrowth with an eye that seems especially conspicuous because of its encircling white rim, it is at least as sociable and cheerful as any member of its family, and Mr. Bradford Torrey credits it with "winning tameness." "Wood-bird as it is," he says, "it will sometimes permit the greatest familiarities. Two birds I have seen, which allowed themselves to be stroked in the freest manner, while sitting on the eggs, and which ate from my hand as readily ...
— Bird Neighbors • Neltje Blanchan
... which are called the tame reindeer, but their tameness only consists in the fact that they are kept in herds together, and watched by men and dogs. They graze wherever they choose, and the men and the dogs have to follow them. When they are wanted for ...
— Peeps at Many Lands: Norway • A.F. Mockler-Ferryman
... Reve and her rather too fervid love would not get in the way of Storri's dinners at the Harleys'. For a time he should go there but once a week. When despair had chilled Dorothy to tameness he would go oftener. Just then he must give her terrors opportunity to do ...
— The President - A novel • Alfred Henry Lewis
... indeed, if Theodosius had purchased, by the loss of honor, a secure and solid tranquillity, or if his tameness had not invited the repetition of injuries. The Byzantine court was insulted by five or six successive embassies; [38] and the ministers of Attila were uniformly instructed to press the tardy or imperfect ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 3 • Edward Gibbon
... herds of Kiang (wild horse). These animals came quite close to us. They resembled zebras in shape and movement of body, but in colour they were mostly light brown. The natives regarded their near proximity as extremely dangerous; for their apparent tameness is often deceptive, enabling them to draw quite close to the unwary traveller, and then with a sudden dash seize him by the stomach, inflicting a horrible wound with their powerful jaws. Their graceful ...
— In the Forbidden Land • Arnold Henry Savage Landor
... prove too little exciting at the present time, and he can turn for relief to the epistle "Studiosus" addresses to "Alcander." If the lines of "The Minstrel" who hails, like Longfellow in later years, from "The District of Main," fail to satisfy him, he cannot accuse "R.T. Paine, Jr., Esq.," of tameness when ...
— Ralph Waldo Emerson • Oliver Wendell Holmes
... injured troops thus gallant BRUNSWICK spoke; 'Shall we with tameness bear the Gallic yoke! 'Will ye, O Veterans, inur'd to pains 'And toils of War, drag ignominious chains? 'Turn and behold! behold where hostile bands 'Seize on your properties, lay waste your lands, 'Your daughters, wives, snatch'd forcibly away, 'Slaves to proud Gallia's sons, ...
— Translations of German Poetry in American Magazines 1741-1810 • Edward Ziegler Davis
... on Friday (June 2) the good protestants met in Saint George's Fields, at the summons of Lord George Gordon; and marching to Westminster, insulted the lords and commons, who all bore it with great tameness. At night the outrages began by the demolition of ...
— The Diary and Letters of Madame D'Arblay Volume 1 • Madame D'Arblay |
