"Birdlike" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... chapel of Lincoln's Inn, where, on entering, we found a class of young choristers receiving instruction from their music-master, while the organ accompanied their strains. These young, clear, fresh, elastic voices are wonderfully beautiful; they are like those of women, yet have something more birdlike and aspiring, more like what one conceives of the singing of angels. As for the singing of saints and blessed spirits that have once been human, it never can resemble that of these young voices; for no duration of heavenly enjoyments will ever quite take the ...
— Passages From the English Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... saw a group of gorilla creatures parallelling their course back amongst the forest growth, but if Naida observed the animals, she paid no attention. The one thing which had any effect upon the company was the appearance, presently, of two vast, birdlike creatures. As these things approached, Naida signaled to all to crouch beneath the shelter of a tall rock ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, December 1930 • Various
... after chair on his hands—his limbless body now thrown back from the shoulders, and now thrown forward to keep the balance—in a manner at once wonderful and horrible to behold. "Dexter's Leap-frog!" he cried, cheerfully, perching himself with his birdlike lightness on the last of the prostrate chairs when he had reached the further end of the room. "I'm pretty active, Mrs. Valeria, considering I'm a cripple. Let us drink to the hanging of Mrs. Beauly in another ...
— The Law and the Lady • Wilkie Collins
... hesitated, then impelled by some strange power, left the highway and slipped into the forest of the swamp, shrinking, yet following the song hungrily and half forgetting his fear. A harsher, shriller note struck in as of many and ruder voices; but above it flew the first sweet music, birdlike, abandoned, and ...
— The Quest of the Silver Fleece - A Novel • W. E. B. Du Bois
... curiously with brightening, birdlike eyes. He didn't like Drennen; God knows he had little enough reason to see any good in this gaunt, wolf-like man. There was a dry cackle in the old man's voice as he spoke again, the door closing slowly so that only half of his face ...
— Wolf Breed • Jackson Gregory
... felt rather than seen the figure which had slowly wedged through the crowd at one side and now stood beside him. He knew that it was Olga Tcherny, but he had not dared to look at her, though he was quite sure that her head was perched on one side in the birdlike pose she found effective, and that her eyes, mocking and mischievous, were searching him intently. But he went on extravagantly, searching his wits ...
— Madcap • George Gibbs
... newcomer had a very definite shape. It resembled a cross between a bird and a lizard, its shape resembling a bird, as did tiny rudimentary wings and a long beak, while the scaly covering and the fact that it had four legs instead of two bore out the idea that it might be a lizard. Its huge birdlike beak was armed with three rows of long sharp teeth with which it was tearing at our captor. The purple amoeba was holding its assailant with a dozen of its thrown out feelers which were wrapped about the body and legs ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science July 1930 • Various
... the departed specs," cried David, also sitting straight and peering with his keen blue eyes in a birdlike way along the sward. "It's a mysteri—oh, Great Caesar!" then he fell on his back on the campus, and rolled and laughed, to bring up red and shining, only to tumble over and ...
— Five Little Peppers Grown Up • Margaret Sidney
... came down the trail he had broken, with a pack on his back, the man heard her birdlike carol in the clear frosty air. He emptied his chest in a deep shout, and she was instantly at the window, waving him a welcome with ...
— Ridgway of Montana - (Story of To-Day, in Which the Hero Is Also the Villain) • William MacLeod Raine
... explored the Memorial Hall, filled with busts of celebrated Bavarians, most of whose names they read for the first time, and they finished by going from booth to booth, admiring the costumes of the Tyrolese, their gymnastic dances, their birdlike warbling and trilling. ...
— The Dead Command - From the Spanish Los Muertos Mandan • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... to this root and rationale of a joke, the English language already contains quite as good a joke. It is not necessary to say, 'Some bird'; there is a far finer irony in the old expression, 'Something like a bird.' It suggests that the speaker sees something faintly and strangely birdlike about a bird; that it remotely and almost irrationally reminds him of a bird; and that there is about ostrich plumes a yard long something like the faint and delicate traces of a feather. It has every quality of imaginative irony, except that nobody even imagines it to be ironical. ...
— What I Saw in America • G. K. Chesterton
... in a few words he recounted his goings and his comings, his efforts and his failures. Laure followed the recital with swift, birdlike nods of understanding; her dark ...
— The Winds of Chance • Rex Beach
... not end abruptly at a snow line, but pushed green fingers upward through passages between old lava flows, on whose black wrinkled surfaces nothing grew. The faint hum of insects and the piping calls of the birdlike mammals added to the impression of remoteness. It was hard to believe that scarcely twenty kilometers from this primitive microcosm was the border of the highly organized and ...
— The Lani People • J. F. Bone
... Then Mr. and Mrs. Mason were introduced to Mr. and Mrs. Nelson Smith. They, it seemed, had been married in the early winter, just as Knight and Annesley had been. And to add to the strangeness of the coincidence, which drew birdlike exclamations from Jean Waldo, George and Kitty were starting for Kansas City that afternoon. They were going by the same train in which the Nelson ...
— The Second Latchkey • Charles Norris Williamson and Alice Muriel Williamson
... face was a trifle pale now. Her birdlike eyes darted from one to another of the trio, quickly taking in the situation. Too concerned to make any apology for her unannounced entrance, she teetered hastily to Big ...
— The Rich Little Poor Boy • Eleanor Gates
... Brindley summoned her pupils and her musical friends. Mildred resumed the lessons with Jennings. There was no doubt about it, she had astonishingly improved during the summer. There had come—or, rather, had come back—into her voice the birdlike quality, free, joyous, spontaneous, that had not been there since her father's death and the family's downfall. She was glad that her arrangement with Donald Keith was of such a nature that she was really not bound to go on with it—if he should ever come back and remind ...
— The Price She Paid • David Graham Phillips
... could easily have aroused by choosing one of the young engineers as a companion in her evening adventure. He chuckled. And Mary Standish, hearing the smothered note of amusement, gave to her head that swift little birdlike tilt which he had observed once before, in the presence of Captain Rifle. But she said nothing. As if challenged, she calmly ...
— The Alaskan • James Oliver Curwood
... forthcoming to awaken the slumbering echoes in the ancient pile, and the sweet old sentiments in the people's hearts. Some of the lay clerks had been choristers themselves, and amongst them was one who had been especially noted, as a boy for his birdlike treble. It seemed a thousand pities when it broke; but as he reached maturity, he found himself able to sing again, and eventually he developed a very true, if not very powerful tenor voice, and rose in time to be the leading tenor in ...
— The Heavenly Twins • Madame Sarah Grand
... over the job cheerily and tunelessly, glancing now and again with a keen, birdlike intelligence towards the motionless figure twenty yards away that sat with bent head broiling in the sun. His task seemed a hopeless one, but he tackled it as if he enjoyed it. His brown hands worked with a will. He was plainly one to make the best of things, and not to ...
— The Tidal Wave and Other Stories • Ethel May Dell
... letter to the editor of the Enquirer John Aubrey Jones said: "What an inspiration it was to see and hear Mrs. Blake-Alverson sing. Physically infirm, but vocally strong and pregnant, her pure, limpid birdlike notes thrilled and stirred the soul and tears to the eyes did unbidden come. It was eloquence sublime set to the all-subdivining rhythmical harmony of divine music, rendered by a master whose spirit was enwrapped. The writer felt an uplift in patriotic ...
— Sixty Years of California Song • Margaret Blake-Alverson
... into the sunset, a strange, plaintive, birdlike note pierced the still evening air. His head lifted quickly, yet he did not look in the direction of the sound, which came from the woods behind the house. He did not stir, and his eyes half-closed, as though he hesitated what to do. The call was not that ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... silence and listened, entranced, for ever: and occasionally, too, she turned to Captain Armine, and appealed on some point to his knowledge or his taste. It seemed to him that he had never listened to sounds so sweetly thrilling as her voice. It was a birdlike burst of music, that well became the sparkling sunshine of ...
— Henrietta Temple - A Love Story • Benjamin Disraeli
... while I lay close to the peephole, but not daring to move aside the red plants that obscured it. Once or twice I heard a faint pitter-patter like the feet of the dog going hither and thither on the sand far below me, and there were more birdlike sounds, but that was all. At length, encouraged by the ...
— The War of the Worlds • H. G. Wells
... leave him here, dear. Poor, poor Carrick," and she threatened to sob. Carter slipped his arm about her comfortingly. As though returning, birdlike, to its nest, her head cradled itself against his shoulder, her arm timidly sought his neck and for one brief ...
— Trusia - A Princess of Krovitch • Davis Brinton
... that these tracks recall other animals besides Birds, with which they have been universally associated. And seeing, as we do, that so many of the early types prophesy future forms, it seems not improbable that they may have belonged to animals which combined with reptilian characters some birdlike features, and also some features of the earliest and lowest group of Mammalia, the Marsupials. To sum up my opinion respecting these footmarks, I believe that they were made by animals of a prophetic type, belonging to the class of Reptiles, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, August, 1863, No. 70 - A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics • Various
... Her motions when she was on her feet were birdlike, yet there was the same unsteadiness in her walk as in Cap'n Ira's. Only, at the moment, he did not see it, for his eye was glued ...
— Sheila of Big Wreck Cove - A Story of Cape Cod • James A. Cooper
... beautiful brook rushed and foamed. Here at last Jean tasted water that rivaled his Oregon springs. "Ah," he cried, "that sure is good!" Dark and shaded and ferny and mossy was this streamway; and everywhere were tracks of game, from the giant spread of a grizzly bear to the tiny, birdlike imprints of a squirrel. Jean heard familiar sounds of deer crackling the dead twigs; and the chatter of squirrels was incessant. This fragrant, cool retreat under the Rim brought back to him the dim recesses of Oregon forests. After all, Jean felt ...
— To the Last Man • Zane Grey
... only child she must have weaned me late, for I have vague memories of her soft white breasts filled with milk. I slept in a little wickerwork cot placed near her bed, so that she could reach me if I uncovered myself in the night. She used to say I was like a bird, having something birdlike in my small dark head and the way I held it up. Certainly I remember myself as a swift little thing, always darting to and fro on tiptoe, and chirping about our chill and ...
— The Woman Thou Gavest Me - Being the Story of Mary O'Neill • Hall Caine
... the grounds there issued strange birdlike air-craft of different designs—in fact only a few of the machines were practicable at all. The others were destined for the scrap-heap. Their owners, however, all fairly beamed with pride, as their various masterpieces were trundled ...
— The Boy Aviators' Treasure Quest • Captain Wilbur Lawton
... and twitted Santerre on his obsequiousness towards women. Valentine, mollified by the compliment, soon recovered her birdlike gayety, and such free and easy conversation ensued between the trio that Mathieu felt both stupefied and embarrassed. In fact, he would have gone off at once had it not been for his desire to obtain from his landlord a promise to repair the ...
— Fruitfulness - Fecondite • Emile Zola
... argonaut seeks no improvement upon his aerial raft. Like the bow and arrow, it long ago reached perfection, and, though he may cherish some choice and secret recipe for varnish or be the inventor of an improved valve, he generally builds with a birdlike reliance on instinct and tradition. Gas-bag, netting, concentrating-ring, basket, valve, anchor, drag-rope and exploding cord,—what has the century of ballooning added to its essentials? how can coming centuries improve this perfection of simplicity? ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 26, August, 1880 - of Popular Literature and Science • Various
... out his one hand, he inclosed her two clasped ones within it, as the little voice ran over an utterly unintelligible form of childishly clipped Latin, sounding, however, sweet and birdlike from the very liberties the little memory had taken in twisting its mellifluous words into a rhythm of her own. And there was catchword enough for Richard to recognize and follow it, with bonnet ...
— The Prince and the Page • Charlotte M. Yonge
... lighting into still more dazzling cleanliness a broad flight of marble steps which led by a half turn to unknown regions above. Young people were crowding into the elevator, girls in dainty costumes predominating. They seemed wondrously flowerlike and birdlike to the plainsman, and brought back his school days at the seminary, and the time when he was at ease with young people like this. He had gone far from them now—their ...
— The Eagle's Heart • Hamlin Garland
... the river. He pulled her shawl about her, masterfully yet with gentleness, and then, as though it was the most natural thing in the world, he drew her to him until she rested against his shoulder. And she remained there, trembling, in suspense, glancing at him quickly, in birdlike, pleading glances, as though praying him to be kind. He took no notice after that, so the act seemed less like a caress than a matter of course. He began to talk, half-humorously, and little by little, as ...
— Conjuror's House - A Romance of the Free Forest • Stewart Edward White
... is true of his models it is no less true of his methods. Though simplicity and spontaneity are among the most obvious of the qualities of his work, it is not to be supposed that such effects were obtained by a birdlike improvisation. "All my poetry," he said, "is the effect of easy composition but laborious correction," and the careful critic will perceive ample evidence in support of the statement. We shall see in the next chapter with what pains ...
— Robert Burns - How To Know Him • William Allan Neilson
... more or less birdlike in speech and movements; but the Douglas is preeminently so, possessing, as he does, every attribute peculiarly squirrelish enthusiastically concentrated. He is the squirrel of squirrels, flashing from branch to branch of his favorite evergreens crisp and glossy and undiseased ...
— The Mountains of California • John Muir
... opinion," he asked sarcastically, and cocking his funny birdlike head on one side, "tried to sell diamond earrings ...
— The Old Man in the Corner • Baroness Orczy
... Mrs. Parr put in, "whether we wish to be or not." She spoke with such feeling that the others were moved to laughter. For some time she had been looking from Leigh to Felicity with that birdlike movement of the head, until she had made a woman's great discovery, that her friend was not indifferent to his admiration. Without going so far as to wish Felicity to marry him, she was deeply pleased that he seemed to have driven away the more unworthy fancy. This ...
— The Mayor of Warwick • Herbert M. Hopkins
... Blacktail, bounding, bounding at that famous beautiful, birdlike, soaring pace, mother and young tapping the ground and sailing to land, and tap and sail again. And away went the greyhounds, low coursing, outstretched, bounding like bolts from a crossbow, curving but little and dropping only to be shot again. They were straining hard; the Blacktail seemed ...
— Wild Animals at Home • Ernest Thompson Seton
... Prince danced with her," laughed Sophia. Her good spirits were rising, in spite of herself, under the influence of the liveliness with which Miss Bennett's mind had darted, birdlike, into its own element. ...
— What Necessity Knows • Lily Dougall
... her voice in imitation of the call, the Colonel thought it certainly very sweet and birdlike. At least as SHE gave it. With his remembrance of the grim deacon he had doubts as to the melodiousness of HIS utterance. He gravely made her ...
— Openings in the Old Trail • Bret Harte
... result of the harrowing experience of the loop, yet with terra firma once more under foot, he quickly regained his composure. Strutting about with great show and braggadocio, he strove to impress his followers with the mere nothingness of so trivial a feat as flying birdlike thousands of yards above the jungle, though it was long until he had thoroughly convinced himself by the force of autosuggestion that he had enjoyed every instant of the flight and was already far advanced ...
— Tarzan the Untamed • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... glare of noon, more in the evening, and the most important class of big, exquisitely lovely ones only at night. This explains why so many people never have seen them, and it is a great pity, for the nocturnal, non-feeding moths are birdlike in size, flower-like in rare and complicated colouring, ...
— Moths of the Limberlost • Gene Stratton-Porter
... realised. When the low notes sank lower and lower with their soft wail of delicious woe, she bent forward into the dark, dreading that something would be lost in the very struggle of listening; then, after a pause, a pure human tone would break the stillness, and soaring, birdlike, higher and higher, seem to mount to heaven itself, and, "piercing its starry floors," lift poor scarred Lydia's soul to the very gates of infinite bliss. In the gentle moods that stole upon her in those summer twilights ...
— A Village Stradivarius • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... is courtship,' the old man answered. His head leaned forward with a birdlike intentness; he listened with one hand held out as if to still any sound in the room. They heard footsteps from the floor above, a laugh and voices. 'Now Margot talks to him from ...
— The Fifth Queen • Ford Madox Ford
... girl with eyes of heavenly blue, Sings through the old place, ignorant of all; Her angel face, her cheerful, birdlike call Thrilling the heart to life ...
— The Poets' Lincoln - Tributes in Verse to the Martyred President • Various
... gloated over the money, her birdlike claw clutched it; she 'crooned' over it, sang to it, rolled it in a morsel of flannel, and put it away ...
— Our Home in the Silver West - A Story of Struggle and Adventure • Gordon Stables
... snow-dance. The days passed on, and the morning before Christmas Eve came. Gretchen having tidied up the little room—for Granny had taught her to be a careful little housewife—was off to the forest, singing a birdlike song, almost as happy and free as the birds themselves. She was very busy that day, preparing a surprise for Granny. First, however, she gathered the most beautiful of the fir branches within her reach to take the next ...
— The Children's Book of Christmas Stories • Various
... was cleared away, he took down the guitar, and sung several ballads, the old "General" accompanying him with his rich deep bass, and Alice with her clear birdlike alto; and the sweet melody of the trio's voices called forth round after round of rapturous applause from the road-agents camped upon the slope, and from the Utes who were lounging here and there among the flower-beds of the valley. But of ...
— Deadwood Dick, The Prince of the Road - or, The Black Rider of the Black Hills • Edward L. Wheeler
... the janitor of this splendid mansion!" Mary Rose told her joyously, although there was a trace of awe in her birdlike voice. The mansion seemed so very, very large to her. "Is janitor the same as owner, Mrs. Black? It's—it's——" she drew a deep breath as if she found it difficult to say what it was. "It's wonderful! ...
— Mary Rose of Mifflin • Frances R. Sterrett
... bay for fifteen minutes by its long beak which is a really formidable weapon. As food the cranes were perfectly delicious when stuffed with chestnut dressing and roasted. Each one provided two meals for three of us with enough left over for hash and our appetites were by no means birdlike. ...
— Camps and Trails in China - A Narrative of Exploration, Adventure, and Sport in Little-Known China • Roy Chapman Andrews and Yvette Borup Andrews
... had been passed from hand to hand and returned to their owner; then, rotund, chipper and birdlike as ever, began his cross-examination much like a woodpecker attacking a stout stump. The witness had been an old friend of Mr. Appleboy's, had he not? Tunnygate admitted it, and Tutt pecked him again. Never had done him any wrong, had he? Nothing in particular. Well, any wrong? Tunnygate hesitated. ...
— Tutt and Mr. Tutt • Arthur Train |
