"Tortoise" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... contingencies. If they had protected their country by their courage or adorned it by their studies, they would have merited, and under a king of such learning and such equity would have received in some sort, their reward. I look upon them as so many old cabinets of ivory and tortoise-shell, scratched, flawed, splintered, rotten, defective both within and without, hard to unlock, insecure to lock up again, ...
— Imaginary Conversations and Poems - A Selection • Walter Savage Landor
... one respect the two representatives of the War Office in the House of Commons are singularly alike. When answering their daily catechism both wear spectacles—Mr. FORSTER an ordinary gold-rimmed pair, Mr. MACPHERSON the fearsome tortoise-shell variety which gives an air of antiquity to the most youthful countenance; and each, when he has to answer an awkward "supplementary," begins by carefully taking off his glasses and so giving himself an extra moment or two ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 152, February 28, 1917 • Various
... elegant patterns. They are passionately fond of flowers, the dark and abundant tresses of their hair being always decorated with them, either real or artificial. Their only other adornments are a tortoise-shell comb of delicate workmanship, and a long steel pin with a ball of red coral in the end, passing through their rich raven hair. They use powder about their necks and shoulders pretty freely, and sometimes colour the under lip ...
— In Eastern Seas - The Commission of H.M.S. 'Iron Duke,' flag-ship in China, 1878-83 • J. J. Smith
... not six days of extreme heat, and the evenings, nights, and mornings are usually cool. Gold is found in all parts, although not in large quantities, but it must exist where there are traces of it. Throughout the whole island there is a great deal of wax and much tortoise-shell. Rice is sowed in all parts, and in some places in great quantities. They raise fowl, goats, and swine in all the villages, and wax they do not save. There is a great quantity of wild game, which is excellent, growing larger than in ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898 - Volume X, 1597-1599 • E. H. Blair
... mouth of that valise yawned, the two men leaped forward so that their heads came together resoundingly and absurdly, but not before the bag had exposed its surface articles: a pair of tortoise-shell military brushes, a packet of documents, and a precious silver and lapis-lazuli box about the dimensions of a playing card, the kind usually dedicated to such elusive addenda as stamps, collar buttons, or sewing box in a lady's ...
— Star-Dust • Fannie Hurst
... some animals have acquired wings instead of legs, as the smaller birds, for the purpose of escape. Others great length of fin, or of membrane, as the flying fish, and the bat. Others great swiftness of foot, as the hare. Others have acquired hard or armed shells, as the tortoise ...
— Zoonomia, Vol. I - Or, the Laws of Organic Life • Erasmus Darwin
... southward of the shore, to a place called Cape Gracias a Dios, where there was a large lagoon or lake, which received the emptying of two or three very fine large rivers, and abounded much in fish and land tortoise. Some of the native Indians came on board of us here; and we used them well, and told them we were come to dwell amongst them, which they seemed pleased at. So the Doctor and I, with some others, went with them ashore; and they took us to different places to view the land, in order ...
— The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano, Or Gustavus Vassa, The African - Written By Himself • Olaudah Equiano
... age goes my shipping parish cannot compare with a cathedral city; but antiquity is not the same as richness of experience. One remembers the historic and venerable tortoise. He is old enough, compared with us. But he has had nothing so varied and lively as the least of us can show. Most of his reputed three hundred years is sleep, no doubt, and the rest vegetables. In the experience of Wapping, ...
— London River • H. M. Tomlinson
... forms of sea-life moved among the marine growths,—some beautiful in form and color, others hideous. Once, while he watched a school of smaller fish playing around a huge sea-turtle, they disappeared as if by signal and the tortoise drew in his scaled head and sank to rest on the bottom as a swordfish swam majestically over the spot, then darted into deeper waters. There were clams as ...
— Terry - A Tale of the Hill People • Charles Goff Thomson
... seemed to strike our host. He shot his head out of the mist with a queer tortoise-like motion he sometimes had, and blinked ...
— Tales Of Men And Ghosts • Edith Wharton
... usually Nester or Little Fellow. It was the old story of the tortoise and the hare. The Little Fellow was from the first destined to win. His steady advance, now on this flank, now on that, just back of the vanguard pushing westward, had marked the end of all our earlier frontiers. ...
— The Passing of the Frontier - A Chronicle of the Old West, Volume 26 in The Chronicles - Of America Series • Emerson Hough
... appreciate his altruism and he never enlightened them. He took his punishment, loyally refusing to peach on his chums. That was one reason Donald was such a favorite with his classmates. There was not a fellow in the school who had more friends. To be sure they called him "slow coach", "old tortoise", "fatty", and bestowed upon him many another gibing epithet, frankly telling him to his face that he was a big idiot. Nevertheless they did not conceal from him that he was the sort of idiot they ...
— Paul and the Printing Press • Sara Ware Bassett
... Pau in Bearn, where the old Commandant had failed, the new one (a Grammont, native to them) is met by a Procession of townsmen with the Cradle of Henri Quatre, the Palladium of their Town; is conjured as he venerates this old Tortoise-shell, in which the great Henri was rocked, not to trample on Bearnese liberty; is informed, withal, that his Majesty's cannon are all safe—in the keeping of his Majesty's faithful Burghers of Pau, and do now lie pointed on ...
— The French Revolution • Thomas Carlyle
... and in the month of August, September, or later, it is probable some might be taken by landing a party of men, who should silently watch for their coming on shore at dusk. I do not know the kind of turtle most common in the Strait; at Booby Isle they were hawkes-bill, which furnish the finest tortoise shell, but are small and not ...
— A Voyage to Terra Australis Volume 2 • Matthew Flinders
... are unreal, and that all movement and change is a mere "seeming"—not a reality. What men call motion is only a name given to a series of conditions, each of which, considered separately, is rest. "Rest is force resistant; motion is force triumphant."[457] The famous puzzle of "Achilles and the Tortoise," by which he endeavored to prove the unreality of motion, has been rendered familiar ...
— Christianity and Greek Philosophy • Benjamin Franklin Cocker
... their heavy rounded helmets fitting closely to the head and neck, and surmounted by crests of waving plumes, they were, in truth, men of brass, invulnerable to any Oriental weapon. Drawn up in close array beneath their "tortoise," they received almost unhurt the hail of arrows and stones hurled against them by the lightly armed infantry, and then, when their own trumpet sounded the signal for attack, and they let themselves fall with their whole weight ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 8 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... Salabat we went to another, where I furnished myself with cloves, cinnamon, and other spices. As we sailed from this island we saw a tortoise twenty cubits in length and breadth. We observed also an amphibious animal like a cow, which gave milk; its skin is so hard that they usually make bucklers of it. I saw another, which had the shape and ...
— The Junior Classics, V5 • Edited by William Patten
... She might have gone from it ten minutes before. It was redolent of her presence. The little intimate details were as she had left them. A bowl of bronze chrysanthemums stood on the dressing table where lay the tortoise-shell toilet articles given her by Miss Craven. A tiny clock ticked companionably on the mantelpiece. The pain in his eyes deepened as they swept the room with hungry eagerness to take in every particular. Her room! The room from which his unworthiness had barred ...
— The Shadow of the East • E. M. Hull
... they were so. In the twenty-fourth chapter there is a ridiculous descent from the sublimity of the two preceding. We are told that the possessor of entire sincerity is like a spirit and can foreknow, but the foreknowledge is only a judging by the milfoil and tortoise and other auguries! But the author recovers himself, and resumes his theme about sincerity as conducting to self-completion and the completion of other men and things, describing it also as possessing ...
— THE CHINESE CLASSICS (PROLEGOMENA) Unicode Version • James Legge
... pen over the lines with inconceivable rapidity, the writer occasionally glancing over his left arm at the document he was copying. The tortoise-shell cat sat at her master's feet with an air of self-importance and a look which seemed to say, "woe be to him who ...
— Marguerite Verne • Agatha Armour
... disgust, we found that the column was attached to the main army, and that we had to move step by step to the will of the chief. I knew very little about military tactics, but it was a strange kind of pursuit, and made me think of a tortoise chasing ...
— At the Point of the Sword • Herbert Hayens
... cousin for the descendant of so many Emperors of the West! The mistress was completely gained over, and easily carried her point with Louis, who had, indeed, wrongs of his own to resent. His feelings were not quick; but contempt, says the Eastern proverb, pierces even through the shell of the tortoise; and neither prudence nor decorum had ever restrained Frederic from expressing his measureless contempt for the sloth, the imbecility, and the baseness of Louis. France was thus induced to join the coalition; and the example of France determined ...
— Critical and Historical Essays, Volume III (of 3) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... not be alarmed if in the evening, when the fire is burning brightly and you are chatting gayly beside it, he should take off one of your shoes and stockings, put your foot on his lap, and in a moment of forgetfulness carry irreverence so far as to kiss it; if he likes to pass your large tortoise-shell comb through your hair, if he selects your perfumes, arranges your plaits, and suddenly exclaims, striking his forehead: "Sit down there, darling; I have an idea how to arrange ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... fossil species which were extinct before man was created, and hence "indicate a faint and shadowy knowledge of a previous state of organic existence." The Hindoos dreamed that the earth rested on an elephant, and the elephant on a tortoise, and the tortoise on a serpent; and though it may be an unimportant coincidence, it will not be out of place here to state, that a fossil tortoise has lately been discovered in Asia large enough to support an elephant. I confess that I am partial to these wild fancies, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 56, June, 1862 • Various
... to consider the fact of a few species having survived{332} amidst a number of extinct forms (as is the case with a tortoise and a crocodile out of the vast number of extinct sub-Himalayan fossils) as strongly opposed to the view of species being mutable. No doubt this would be the case, if it were presupposed with Lamarck ...
— The Foundations of the Origin of Species - Two Essays written in 1842 and 1844 • Charles Darwin
... patient who has confidence in him, than the most learned and experienced whom he is not so acquainted with. Nay, even the very choice of most of their drugs is in some sort mysterious and divine; the left foot of a tortoise, the urine of a lizard, the dung of an elephant, the liver of a mole, blood drawn from under the right wing of a white pigeon; and for us who have the stone (so scornfully they use us in our miseries) the excrement of rats beaten to powder, and such like trash and fooleries which rather carry ...
— The Essays of Montaigne, Complete • Michel de Montaigne
... tell Mulligan's dog to his face what he thought of him. He had hardly set a paw in it when an infuriated ball of fur lit somewhere out of space on to his back, cursing and spitting and tearing the hair out in slathers. This new enemy was my wife's tortoise-shell kitten Emmeline, whose existence I had for the moment forgotten, but who owns that backyard and whose permission ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 152, June 6, 1917 • Various
... pathway of the river—should just now be closed, and while Mr. Yerkes looks out on it from his offices in the Hotel Cecil, Londoners have to look to him to see if he or Pierpont Morgan will not open it to them again. What a pleasant alternative from the asphyxiating Underground or the tortoise-moving omnibus would not a fast, comfortably fitted line of river steamers be! It seems inconceivable that, with such a waterway and such primitive and inadequate alternative means of travel, the people should stand its being closed. What a great, stimulating, ...
— Impressions of a War Correspondent • George Lynch
... feet that crept like those of a tortoise, as the sullen minutes dragged by, leaden-clogged and tardy. But the evening came at last. And with it, knocking at the door of the Bishop's quadrangle and interrupting my long talk with Dessauer, lo! a messenger, ...
— Red Axe • Samuel Rutherford Crockett
... the Great Lizard to be summoned, and when he arrived, the King inquired, "Was it you, Lizard, wearing your sword?" The Great Lizard replied, "Assuredly it was, your Majesty." "And why were you wearing your sword?" The Great Lizard replied, "Your slave wore it forasmuch as your slave saw that the Tortoise had donned his coat of mail." So the Tortoise was summoned likewise. "Why did you, Tortoise, don your coat of mail?" The Tortoise replied, "Your slave donned it forasmuch as your slave saw the King-crab trailing his three-edged pike." Then the King-crab was sent for. "Why were you, King-crab, trailing ...
— Childhood's Favorites and Fairy Stories - The Young Folks Treasury, Volume 1 • Various
... raising the water over the banks, they can cut down saplings for bark to feed upon, without going out much upon the land; and when they are obliged to go out upon land for this food they frequently are caught by the wolves. As the beaver can run upon land but little faster than a water tortoise, and is no fighting animal, if they are any distance from the water they become an ...
— The Land of the Miamis • Elmore Barce
... into an unused tower dimly lighted, hung with cobwebs, and filled with old red velvet furniture. I sat down on a sofa, and before long became conscious that I was being gazed upon by a haughty young woman, with an aristocratic nose, large dark eyes, hair caught back by tortoise-shell combs under a peculiar head-dress, having a gleam of gold directly on the top. Her gown was of dark green, with white puffs let into the sleeves below the elbows; around her tapering waist was a narrow belt of jewels; the front ...
— Shapes that Haunt the Dusk • Various
... she saw a grave Chinaman standing on a stage-like platform. He wore a long coat, beautifully flowered, and a hat with a turned up brim. Balanced on his nose were enormous tortoise-shell spectacles. A ragged gray moustache drooped from the corners of his mouth and a ragged wisp of whisker hung from his chin. She was informed by Ah Cum that the Chinaman was one of the literati and that he was expounding the deathless philosophy of ...
— The Ragged Edge • Harold MacGrath
... stung him as they rushed by, and it seemed to him that millions of fish were darting here and there, snapping at something. It was rice. Gradually it dawned on Piang that he had reached his goal; the tortoise had reached it first, and the secret lay hidden in that dark thing at ...
— The Adventures of Piang the Moro Jungle Boy - A Book for Young and Old • Florence Partello Stuart
... the neat, shining, dimpling little Advocate turned his bright eyes from one to the other of us, and tapped his tortoise-shell snuffbox with a kind of elvish joy. It was clear that we were better ...
— The Dew of Their Youth • S. R. Crockett
... must do! There is the kurage (jellyfish). He is certainly ugly to look at, but he is proud of being able to walk on land with his four legs like a tortoise. Let us send him to the Island of ...
— Young Folks Treasury, Volume 2 (of 12) • Various
... difference between our disorders. Mr. M—e has been long afflicted with violent spasms, colliquative sweats, prostration of appetite, and a disorder in his bowels. He is likewise jaundiced all over, and I am confident his liver is unsound. He tried the tortoise soup, which he said in a fortnight stuffed him up with phlegm. This gentleman has got a smattering of physic, and I am afraid tampers with his own constitution, by means of Brookes's Practice of Physic, and some dispensatories, ...
— Travels Through France and Italy • Tobias Smollett
... June is hotter than any other hot day. It finds us cruelly unguarded. After we have been gently baked awhile, the crust thus acquired makes us somewhat tortoise-like and quiescent. If we were condemned to suffer thirty-nine stripes, or even only as many as belong to our flag, would it or would it not be a privilege to take them by degrees, say one on the first ...
— Gifts of Genius - A Miscellany of Prose and Poetry by American Authors • Various
... that decidedly uncomplimentary penwiper, where the ass's head declares "There are two of us;" while every child had some absurdity to show; and Miss Moy's shrieks of delight were already audible at a tortoise-shell pen-holder ...
— The Three Brides • Charlotte M. Yonge
... (Salt-woman) was in the west, and her house was of the substance of a mirage; the youth Co'nen[)i]li (Water-sprinkler) danced before her door. In the north Cqaltlaqale[1] made a house of green duckweed, and S[)i]stel' (Tortoise) lay at that door. ...
— Navaho Houses, pages 469-518 • Cosmos Mindeleff
... the tiger, the animal most cherished by the Coreans is the tortoise. To it are applied all the good qualities that the tiger wants; for example, thoughtfulness, a retiring nature, humility, gentleness, steadiness, and patience; these being all symbolised by this shelled amphibious animal, which, in the minds of many Eastern ...
— Corea or Cho-sen • A (Arnold) Henry Savage-Landor
... to be had for money. I wonder where Chalkpit's, the milkman's arms, came from? I suppose you can buy 'em at the same place. He used to drive a green cart; and now he's got a close yellow carriage, with two large tortoise-shell cats, with their whiskers as if dipped in cream, standing on their hind legs upon each door, with a heap of Latin underneath. You may buy the carriage if you please, Mr. Caudle; but unless your arms are ...
— Mrs. Caudle's Curtain Lectures • Douglas Jerrold
... the chicks, the ducks and the drakes and the geese and the ganders proudly waddling back and forth, among and around the fluffy ducklings and goslings, and the bull-pup sound asleep by the side of the tortoise-shell cat. Probably he will think of some particular milking-time when the calm, contented serenity of the barn-yard was suddenly disturbed by the unexpected descent in its midst of a neighboring peacock, who, apparently unconscious of the ...
— Frenzied Finance - Vol. 1: The Crime of Amalgamated • Thomas W. Lawson
... countenance nor made one fearful to set foot upon it. It was a jolly, chummy sort of carpet that seemed to say, "Walk on me all you want to, and don't be afraid to spill your crumbs; I like crumbs." A very large tortoise-shell cat lay stretched along the arm of the couch, half asleep, and purred as Eve dipped her fingers in the long fur. The windows on the side of the room were open and the draperies swayed gently with the little breeze. Wade, seated at the other end of the couch from his hostess, ...
— The Lilac Girl • Ralph Henry Barbour
... had effected all the necessary repairs, and then steered westward for Admiralty Island, calling at various islands on our way, trading with the wild natives for coco-nut oil, copra, ivory nuts, pearl-shell and tortoise-shell, and doing very poorly; for a large American schooner, engaged in the same business, had been ahead of us, and at most of the islands we touched at we secured nothing more than a few hundredweight of ...
— The Call Of The South - 1908 • Louis Becke
... lipped her cup again, raised, drank a sip and gigglegiggled. Miss Douce, bending over the teatray, ruffled again her nose and rolled droll fattened eyes. Again Kennygiggles, stooping, her fair pinnacles of hair, stooping, her tortoise napecomb showed, spluttered out of her mouth her tea, choking in tea and laughter, coughing with ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce
... perhaps better than the repast: still they had turtle-soup (Shell and Tortoise, to be sure, but still turtle-soup); while the wines were supplied by the well-known firm of 'Wintle & Co.' Jawleyford sank where he got it, and pretended that it had been 'ages' in his cellar: 'he really had such a stock that he thought he should never ...
— Mr. Sponge's Sporting Tour • R. S. Surtees
... is there to display the praises of industry, and to extol its advantages, in the acquisition of power and riches, or in raising what we call a FORTUNE in the world? The tortoise, according to the fable, by his perseverance, gained the race of the hare, though possessed of much superior swiftness. A man's time, when well husbanded, is like a cultivated field, of which a few acres produce more of what is useful to life, than extensive ...
— An Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Morals • David Hume
... row of bullets on the rude shelf near the window will give a dull gleam, whilst our old acquaintance, the axe, will wink as if a dozen eyes were strewn along its sharp, bright edge. And then the brown and tortoise-shell cat belonging to the "old woman" will partake of the lustre; and the old woman herself—a little, active, bustling body, will be seated in one corner of the fire-place, after having swept clean the hearth; and "Sport" will have ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXIII No. 3 September 1848 • Various
... entertained by the mind which induces us to act, this tells us nothing. It is like the case of the Indian philosopher(23), who, being asked what it was that kept the earth in its place, answered, that it was supported by an elephant, and that elephant again rested on a tortoise. He must be endowed with a slender portion of curiosity, who, being told that uneasiness is that which spurs on the mind to act, shall rest satisfied with this explanation, and does not proceed to ...
— Thoughts on Man - His Nature, Productions and Discoveries, Interspersed with - Some Particulars Respecting the Author • William Godwin
... own the roost cultivated people accepted the remains of a gigantic batrachian[4] as those of a man who had witnessed the flood, and it was the same with a tortoise found in Italy scarcely thirty years ago. Dr. Carl, in a work published at Frankfort[5] in 1709, took up another theory, and, such was the general ignorance at the time, he used long arguments to prove that the fossil bones were the ...
— Manners and Monuments of Prehistoric Peoples • The Marquis de Nadaillac
... kept in the great medicine lodge are four sacks of water, called Eeh-teeh-ka, sewed together, each of them in the form of a tortoise lying on its back, with a bunch of eagle feathers attached to its tail. "These four tortoises," they told me, "contained the waters from the four quarters of the world—that those waters had been contained therein ever ...
— The Antediluvian World • Ignatius Donnelly
... Part of it, by indulging himself in all Manner of expensive Pleasures. It was but seldom that an Inferior was suffer'd to speak to him; but not a Soul durst contradict him: No Peacock was more gay; no Turtle more amorous; and no Tortoise more indolent and inactive. He made false Glory and false Pleasures his ...
— Zadig - Or, The Book of Fate • Voltaire
... and of a Canienga mother. That he was not of pure Canienga blood is shown by the fact, which is remembered, that his father had had successively three wives, one belonging to each of the three clans, Bear, Wolf, and Tortoise, which composed the Canienga nation. If the father had been of that nation (Canienga), he would have belonged to one of the Canienga clans, and could not then (according to the Indian law) have married into it. He had seven sons, including Dekanawidah, who, with their families, dwelt ...
— The Iroquois Book of Rites • Horatio Hale
... Chaudhri. The section names are very mixed, some being those of eponymous Brahman gotras, as Sandilya, Kaushik and Bharadwaj; others those of Rajput septs, as Karchhul; while others are the names of animals and plants, as Barah (pig), Baram (the pipal tree), Nag (cobra), Kachhapa (tortoise), and a number of other local terms the meaning of which has been forgotten. Each of these sections, however, uses a different mark for branding cows, which it is the religious duty of an Agharia to rear, and though the marks now ...
— The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India - Volume II • R. V. Russell
... voyages: Aina, Dolores, and Sjermanna! They wore heavy beads of red coral round their necks and in their ears. And about the garden lay gigantic conch-shells, in which one could hear the surging of the ocean, and tortoise-shells as big as a fifteen-pound loaf, and whole great ...
— Pelle the Conqueror, Complete • Martin Andersen Nexo
... bar, full to overflowing with honest British yeomen—many of them in a similar condition—that Baxter sought. His goal was the genteel dining-room on the first floor, where a bald and shuffling waiter, own cousin to a tortoise, served luncheon to those desiring it. Lack of sleep had reduced Baxter to a condition where the presence and chatter of the house party were insupportable. It was his purpose to lunch at the Emsworth Arms and take a nap in ...
— Something New • Pelham Grenville Wodehouse
... life to old people, I think their friends should endeavor to accommodate them in that as well as anything else. When they have long lived in a house, it becomes natural to them; they are almost as closely connected with it as the tortoise with his shell; they die if you tear them out. Old folks and old trees, if you remove them, 'tis ten to one that you kill them, so let our good old sister be no more importuned on that head; we are growing old fast ourselves, and shall expect the same kind of indulgences; if we ...
— True to His Home - A Tale of the Boyhood of Franklin • Hezekiah Butterworth
... rain, the snow, the hail, the lightning and the tempest. A vast giant, turned to stone by his magic, lies asleep at his feet. The island called by the Ojibways the Mak-i-nak (the turtle) from its tortoise-like shape, lifts its huge form in the distance. Some "down-east" Yankee, called it "Pie-Island," from its (to his hungry imagination) fancied resemblance to a pumpkin pie, and the name, like all bad names, sticks. ...
— Legends of the Northwest • Hanford Lennox Gordon
... old friend Moreno, at Havana," said Captain Brand, as he sat down on the settee, and with a pretty tortoise-shell knife cut round the seals. "Ah! what says he? 'Happy to inform you,' is he? 'Packages of French silks seized by custom-house on account of informal invoice and clearance.' Why didn't the fool forge others, then? Well, what next? 'Schooner "Reel," from Barbadoes, with cargo of rum and ...
— Captain Brand of the "Centipede" • H. A. (Henry Augustus) Wise
... but every two persons, a man and a woman, or two men, face each other, the one moving forward, the other backward, and all keeping step to the music of the singers, who are now, however, aided by a a couple of tortoise or turtle shell rattlers, or an aboriginal drum. At regular intervals there is a sort of cadence in the music, during which a change of position by all the couples takes place, the one who had been moving backward taking the place of the one ...
— Legends, Traditions, and Laws of the Iroquois, or Six Nations, and History of the Tuscarora Indians • Elias Johnson
... fresh-water tortoise in the West Indies; it has a long neck and flat feet, and weighs 10 to ...
— The Sailor's Word-Book • William Henry Smyth
... of so wise a savour, and gilded surrounding objects seemed inevitably to need to be when Miss Barrace—which was the lady's name—looked at them with convex Parisian eyes and through a glass with a remarkably long tortoise-shell handle. Why Miss Barrace, mature meagre erect and eminently gay, highly adorned, perfectly familiar, freely contradictions and reminding him of some last-century portrait of a clever head without powder—why Miss Barrace should have been ...
— The Ambassadors • Henry James
... the good fortune to bring up, altogether, four more small jars of olives, another ham, a carboy containing nearly three gallons of excellent Cape Madeira wine, and, what gave us still more delight, a small tortoise of the Gallipago breed, several of which had been taken on board by Captain Barnard, as the Grampus was leaving port, from the schooner Mary Pitts, just returned from a sealing voyage in ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 3 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... have not yet even touch'd on all the Advantages that our Country has received, from the Dublin Society's Premiums; which was one of my chief Reasons, for having consider'd Ireland as upon the Recovery, when I went under-ground like a Tortoise, to be raised again when the Summer comes, after a long Sleep. I need not be very particular on so known and confest a Fact, as the extraordinary Improvements they have made amongst us, in a vast Variety of Articles. We are told Solomon's Writings were so extensive, that he wrote from the ...
— A Dialogue Between Dean Swift and Tho. Prior, Esq. • Anonymous
... at least not to the extent I did now when I was saying good-bye to it for ever. Unless indeed there should prove to be still lovelier sunrises beyond the dark of death! Then I went into our hut, and as Stephen, who had the nerves of a rhinoceros, was still sleeping like a tortoise in winter, I said my prayers earnestly enough, mourned over my sins which proved to be so many that at last I gave up the job in despair, and then tried to occupy myself by reading the Old Testament, a book to which I ...
— Allan and the Holy Flower • H. Rider Haggard
... which Avila renders "en dicha cueva," seems a compound of y, actun, zabin. The last is the name of the weasel; actun means both a cave and a stone house. By some it is supposed to be a compound of ac, tortoise, and tun, stone, a cave resembling a hollow ...
— The Maya Chronicles - Brinton's Library Of Aboriginal American Literature, Number 1 • Various
... strings in hollow shells. The first stringed instruments were said to be made of tortoise-shells with strings ...
— Keats: Poems Published in 1820 • John Keats
... the tail, the flat head of which was furnished with numerous suckers, by which it attached itself so firmly to any object as to be torn to pieces rather than abandon its hold. In this way the Spaniards witnessed the taking of a tortoise of enormous size. The same mode of fishing is said to be employed on the eastern coast of Africa. The natives led the Admiral to suppose that the sea was full of islands south and west, and that Cuba ran to the ...
— Notable Voyagers - From Columbus to Nordenskiold • W.H.G. Kingston and Henry Frith
... parts, then linger over the melody; there were movements that she would play with tenderness and others with little bursts of passion. She bent over the piano, then rose again, the light playing on the top of her tortoise-shell comb one moment, while the next moment it could scarcely be seen in her black hair. The two candles on the piano flickered to the noise, throwing a light over her profile or sending their flame over her forehead, her cheeks, and her chin. The shadow from her ear-rings—two coral balls—trembled ...
— Rene Mauperin • Edmond de Goncourt and Jules de Goncourt
... amulets, necklaces, and bracelets of bones, shells, and beads of mother-of-pearl, tortoise-shell, &c. which are worn by both sexes. The women also wear on their fingers neat rings made of tortoise-shell, and pieces in their ears about the size of a small quill; but ear ornaments are not commonly worn, though ...
— A Voyage Towards the South Pole and Round the World, Volume 1 • James Cook
... tortoise is perhaps the most remarkable of all the animals of the desert. It is rare, and little is known of its habits except that it lives in the most arid valleys of southeastern California, far removed from any water. This tortoise has a ...
— The Western United States - A Geographical Reader • Harold Wellman Fairbanks
... presaging the future, and the practice derives interest from the fact that a precisely similar custom has prevailed in Mongolia from time immemorial. Subsequently this device was abandoned in favour of the Chinese method, heating a tortoise-shell; and ultimately the latter, in turn, gave way to the Eight Trigrams of Fuhi. The use of auguries seems to have come at a later date. They were obtained by playing a stringed instrument called koto, by standing at a cross-street ...
— A History of the Japanese People - From the Earliest Times to the End of the Meiji Era • Frank Brinkley and Dairoku Kikuchi
... ferocious zest, like a warrior attacking the enemy, flashing his tortoise snuff-box as if it were his sword. When away from his books or when reading some of the fantastic tales in them he was meek and gentle as a little bird. No sooner did he come across a fine bit of reasoning than he would ...
— The Rise of David Levinsky • Abraham Cahan
... then, moving toward the dresser, drawing the large tortoise-shell pins from the smooth coil of ...
— Star-Dust • Fannie Hurst
... embellished by the unwonted addition of pound cake and sweet pickles, the dress-maker's sharp swarthy person stood out vividly between the neutral-tinted sisters. Miss Mellins was a small woman with a glossy yellow face and a frizz of black hair bristling with imitation tortoise-shell pins. Her sleeves had a fashionable cut, and half a dozen metal bangles rattled on her wrists. Her voice rattled like her bangles as she poured forth a stream of anecdote and ejaculation; and her round black eyes jumped with acrobatic velocity from one face to another. Miss ...
— Bunner Sisters • Edith Wharton
... all beings! more than all, The Gods on thee for aid may call. Ward off, O mighty-armed! our fate, And bear up Mandar's threatening weight." Then Vishnu, as their need was sore, The semblance of a tortoise wore, And in the bed of Ocean lay The mountain on his back to stay. Then he, the soul pervading all, Whose locks in radiant tresses fall, One mighty arm extended still, And grasped the summit of the hill. So ranged among the Immortals, he Joined in ...
— The Ramayana • VALMIKI
... fairy godmother like Miss Stella leading the fun, it was a party to be remembered. There were marches and games, there was blind man's buff through the jewel-lit maze, there was a Virginia reel to music gay enough to make a hundred-year-old tortoise dance. There was the Jack Horner pie, fully six feet round, and fringed with gay ribbons to pull out the plums. Wonderful plums they were. Minna Foster drew a silver belt buckle; her little sister, a blue locket; Dud, a scarf-pin; Jim, a pocketknife ...
— Killykinick • Mary T. Waggaman
... each side with ten large stone animals. The path was much shorter than that visited in Nankow, and the carving of the animals was less perfect. The avenue ended with a gateway of three arches, which we did not pass through, but which contained a memorial tablet mounted on a huge tortoise; beyond this there was a long oblong building with an effective terrace roof; doors were placed in each corner of the walled enclosure. At the back rose an immense mound which covers the tomb. From a high tower overlooking the mound, we had a view ...
— Travels in the Far East • Ellen Mary Hayes Peck
... good clock for a better one, till at last he possessed a timepiece in Boule's first and best manner, for Boule had two manners, as Raphael had three. In the first he combined ebony and copper; in the second—contrary to his convictions—he sacrificed to tortoise-shell inlaid work. In spite of Pons' learned dissertations, Schmucke never could see the slightest difference between the magnificent clock in Boule's first manner and its six predecessors; but, for Pons' sake, Schmucke was even more careful among ...
— Cousin Pons • Honore de Balzac
... you were willing! if you were only willing! ... I have a pavilion on a promontory, in the midst of an isthmus between two oceans. It is wainscotted with plates of glass, floored with tortoise-shells, and is open to the four winds of Heaven. From above, I watch the return of my fleets and the people who ascend the hill with loads on their shoulders. We should sleep on down softer than clouds; we should drink cool draughts out of the rinds of fruit, and we gaze at the sun through a canopy ...
— The Temptation of St. Antony - or A Revelation of the Soul • Gustave Flaubert
... mystery to all but the fraternity. He sold that negro for two thousand dollars, and then put him for ever out of the reach of all pursuers; and they can never graze him unless they can find the negro; and that they cannot do, for his carcass has fed many a tortoise and cat-fish before this time, and the frogs have sung this many a long day to the ...
— Diary in America, Series Two • Frederick Marryat (AKA Captain Marryat)
... suspended, and all hands turned out for the day to hunt and fish, in which they were often unsuccessful, for although there was plenty of game in the forest, it was too widely scattered to be available. Ricardo, and Alberto occasionally brought in a tortoise or anteater, which served us for one day's consumption. We made acquaintance here with many strange dishes, amongst them Iguana eggs; these are of oblong form, about an inch in length, and covered with a flexible shell. The lizard lays about two score of them in ...
— The Naturalist on the River Amazons • Henry Walter Bates
... of his solicitude, though, as the habit of taking snuff had but just come into vogue, there were no collections of them, and no beau had ever dreamed of criticizing a box, as did Lord Petersham, as, 'a nice Summer box.' ... Those of the middle classes were chiefly of silver, or tortoise-shell, or mother-of-pearl; sometimes of 'aggat' or with a 'Moco Stone' in the lid. A beau would sometimes either have a looking-glass, or the portrait of a lady inside ...
— The Palmy Days of Nance Oldfield • Edward Robins
... dinner frock, she put on a white silk gown which turned her into a pale spirit flitting hither and thither in the silver dusk. Still Knight had not come. She pulled out the four great tortoise-shell pins which held up her hair, and let it tumble over her shoulders. As she began to twist it into one heavy plait, she walked to the window and stood ...
— The Second Latchkey • Charles Norris Williamson and Alice Muriel Williamson
... inevitably upon a series of partly discordant and partly harmonious stimuli—the will no longer "acts," or "moves."... Formerly it was thought that man's consciousness, his "spirit," offered evidence of his high origin, his divinity. That he might be perfected, he was advised, tortoise-like, to draw his senses in, to have no traffic with earthly things, to shuffle off his mortal coil—then only the important part of him, the "pure spirit," would remain. Here again we have thought out the thing better: to us consciousness, or "the spirit," appears as a symptom ...
— The Antichrist • F. W. Nietzsche
... Bristol. Servant Brompy. Alert, gentle, smiling, winning young brown creature as ever was. Beautiful shining black hair combed back like a woman's, and knotted at the back of his head —tortoise-shell comb in it, sign that he is a Singhalese; slender, shapely form; jacket; under it is a beltless and flowing white cotton gown—from neck straight to heel; he and his outfit quite unmasculine. It was an ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... and the water is as clear as it was the day it was put in. If, spite of everything, the seawater fail, then try a fresh-water aquarium. Use your tank for the pond instead of the ocean; and in the spotted newt, the tortoise, the tadpole, the caddis-worm, and the thousand other inhabitants of our inland ponds and brooks, with the weeds among which they live, you will find as much entertainment as in watching the wonders of ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Number 9, July, 1858 • Various
... the Garuda is Gajakurmasin, "elephant-cum-tortoise-devourer," because said to have swallowed both when engaged in a contest with ...
— The Travels of Marco Polo, Volume 2 • Marco Polo and Rustichello of Pisa
... in her chair. A sham tortoise-shell hairpin dropped from her untidy hair on to the floor with a little clatter. Her veil parted at the top from her hat. Little Alfred, terrified by an angry frown from the cornet player, was hastily returning fragments of partially ...
— The Double Life Of Mr. Alfred Burton • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... spoken which could only have come to them—through you! Celestino Rey has been outgeneraled by a clever American girl, but he has also been betrayed by a South American cat—the tortoise-shell ...
— Fate Knocks at the Door - A Novel • Will Levington Comfort
... forty miles a day. There is not a horse in the world that would have the endurance to go half the distance in the same time and keep it up day after day. For the first week or ten days the horse would be far ahead but, like the fable of the hare and the tortoise, after a while the tortoise would pass the hare and get ...
— Outdoor Sports and Games • Claude H. Miller
... dining parties come thick, and interfere with work extremely. I am, however, beforehand very far. Yet, as James B. says—the tortoise comes up with the hare. So Puss must make a new start; but not this week. Went to see the exhibition—certainly a good one for Scotland—and less trash than I have seen at Somerset-House (begging pardon of the pockpuddings). There is a beautiful thing ...
— The Journal of Sir Walter Scott - From the Original Manuscript at Abbotsford • Walter Scott
... hill, and decked with chains of gold, and capable of shaking the saintship of anchorites, being decked with thin attire, appeared highly graceful. And her feet with fair suppressed ankles, and possessing flat soles and straight toes of the colour of burnished copper and high and curved like tortoise back and marked by the wearing of ornaments furnished with rows of little bells, looked exceedingly handsome. And exhilarated with a little liquor which she had taken, and excited by desire, and moving in diverse attitudes ...
— Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa Bk. 3 Pt. 1 • Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa
... bones, with eyes small but keen and penetrating, and an expression of countenance resembling at once the polecat and the fox. His head, supported by a long and flexible neck, issued from his large black robe, balancing itself with a motion very much like that of the tortoise thrusting his head out of his shell. He began by asking M. Bonacieux his name, age, condition, ...
— The Three Musketeers • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... to make a point of absolutely ignoring Pritchard's presence. Elizabeth was the one exception. She was carrying a tiny Chinese spaniel under one arm; with the fingers of her other hand she held a tortoise-shell mounted monocle to her eye, and stared directly at the two men. Presently she came languidly ...
— The Tempting of Tavernake • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... rested on thy spacious nape; Upon thy neck, like a mere mole, it stood: O thou that took'st for us the Tortoise-shape, Hail, Keshav, hail! Ruler of ...
— Indian Poetry • Edwin Arnold
... 16-17). Hence deemed an island. A basking whale would readily suggest the Krakan and Cetus of Olaus Magnus (xxi. 25). Al-Kazwini's famous treatise on the "Wonders of the World" (Ajaib al-Makhlukat) tells the same tale of the "Sulahfah" tortoise, the colossochelys, for ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 6 • Richard F. Burton
... was, in the time of the old Roman station here, I became aware that I have never known till now, what it is to be lazy. A dormouse must surely be in very much the same condition before he retires under the wool in his cage; or a tortoise before he ...
— Pictures from Italy • Charles Dickens
... shatter'd beech sublime He stood, Still'd with his waving arm the babbling flood; "To Man's dull ear," He cry'd, "I call in vain, "Hear me, ye scaly tenants of the main!"— 250 Misshapen Seals approach in circling flocks, In dusky mail the Tortoise climbs the rocks, Torpedoes, Sharks, Rays, Porpus, Dolphins, pour Their twinkling squadrons round the glittering shore; 255 With tangled fins, behind, huge Phocae glide, And Whales and Grampi swell the distant tide. Then kneel'd the hoary Seer, to heaven address'd ...
— The Botanic Garden. Part II. - Containing The Loves of the Plants. A Poem. - With Philosophical Notes. • Erasmus Darwin
... that came in his way. Two half-grown llamas, which are naturally as quiet and timid as sheep, bit each other very furiously, until they foamed at the mouth. And, lastly, a large mastiff made his appearance, walking in a slow, measured gait, with a sleek tortoise-shell cat on his back; and she, in turn, was surmounted by a mouse, which formed the ...
— A Voyage to the Moon • George Tucker
... strength and power in your limbs! Now, I am going to send the Heavy-Weight-White-Hope Brigade for a four-mile run, and you go with them. Oh, don't protest; they are all shot-putters and hammer-throwers, but Butch, and they can't run fast enough to give a tortoise a fast heat. Take 'em out two miles and back, Butch, and jog all the way; don't let 'em loaf! ...
— T. Haviland Hicks Senior • J. Raymond Elderdice
... in front, on which there was a two- spouted kettle full of sake, some sake bottles, and some cups, and on another there were some small figures representing a fir-tree, a plum-tree in blossom, and a stork standing on a tortoise, the last representing length of days, and the former the beauty of women and the strength of men. Shortly a zen, loaded with eatables, was placed before each person, and the feast began, accompanied by the ...
— Unbeaten Tracks in Japan • Isabella L. Bird
... said old Mrs Durby, taking off her tortoise-shell spectacles and laying down her work, "I thought of going next week, if it ...
— The Iron Horse • R.M. Ballantyne
... reaching the earth. Here we find depicted with childlike simplicity and directness the Vedic conception of Indra overcoming the demon Vritra. Stempell describes this scene as "the elephant-headed god B standing upon the head of a serpent";[141] while Seler, who claims that god B is a tortoise, explains it as the serpent forming a footstool for the rain-god.[142] In the Codex Cortes the same theme is depicted in another way, which is truer to the Indian conception of Vritra, as ...
— The Evolution of the Dragon • G. Elliot Smith
... Close to this was a little round deal table, on which would be set the miller's single glass of gin and water, which would be made to last out the process of his evening smoking, and the candle, by the light of which, and with the aid of a huge pair of tortoise-shell spectacles, his wife would sit and darn her husband's stockings. She also had her own peculiar chair in this corner, but she had never accustomed herself to the luxury of arms to lean on, and ...
— The Vicar of Bullhampton • Anthony Trollope |
