"Carrion" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... whether they were away in the lumber woods or not—would lay a hand on him. I will say plainly that I was more than thankful to hand him over to his mother. I had spilt over myself a bottle of some nameless and abominable brew that I'd mistaken for liniment, and my clothes smelt like carrion; also the lean-to I had lived in was so dirty that I scratched from suspicion all day long, except when I was yawning from a week of hardly closing my eyes. Altogether, as I said, I was dog-tired, if it were not from walking, and I might have stayed at ...
— The La Chance Mine Mystery • Susan Carleton Jones
... likewise be a volunteer contributor, it Would be vain for me to endeavour to prevent such a design. Whoever has been so ill advised as to throw himself on the public, must pay such a tax in a pamphlet or magazine when he dies; but, happily, the insects that prey on carrion are still more short-lived than the carcases were, from which they draw their nutriment. Those momentary abortions live but a day, and are thrust aside by like embryos. Literary characters, when not illustrious, are known ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole, V4 • Horace Walpole
... scarcely have expected to find the smallest specimens of the feathered tribe inhabiting the same region as the mighty, coarse-feeding condor; but whereas the latter pounces down on his carrion banquet into the plains below, the little humming-bird seeks his food from the bright flowers which clothe the mountainside, or the minute ...
— The Western World - Picturesque Sketches of Nature and Natural History in North - and South America • W.H.G. Kingston
... found stranded on the beaches of Cape Cod and Long Island. Old colonial records are full of the lawsuits growing out of these pieces of treasure-trove, the finder, the owner of the land where the gigantic carrion lay stranded, and the colony all claiming ownership, or at least shares. By 1650 all the northern colonies had begun to pursue the business of shore whaling to some extent. Crews were organized, boats kept in readiness on the beach, and whenever ...
— American Merchant Ships and Sailors • Willis J. Abbot
... Alas! sin never smelled so to any man alive as it smells to the broken-hearted. You know wounds will stink: but [there is] no stink like that of sin to the broken-hearted man. His own sins stink, and so doth the sins of all the world to him. Sin is like carrion; it is of a stinking nature; yea, it has the worst of smells; however, some men like it (Psa 38:5). But none are offended with the scent thereof but God and the broken-hearted sinner. 'My wounds stink, and ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... trenches, digging the flying sap by night and deepening it by day, for officers and men alike. From heaven a host of blue ants could be seen toiling in zigzags forward, ever forward, along the rude water-cuts and through the hills. A waiting carrion from her vantage point on high marked one spot then another where the blue ants disappeared, and again one by one came out of the burrow to hurry down the trench,—each with his ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... to his usual note, but not one of them of any kind that I knew. As for the creature I killed, I took it to be a kind of hawk, its colour and beak resembling it, but it had no talons or claws more than common. Its flesh was carrion, and fit for nothing. ...
— Robinson Crusoe • Daniel Defoe
... no doubt right in considering the lucubrations of the poet Baudelaire, and his necrophile imagination of his own carrion hung on a gibbet and devoured by vultures, as a mixture of sadism and masochism. He sought out the most repulsive women of all races, Chinese, negresses, dwarfs, giants, or modern women as artificial as possible, to satisfy ...
— The Sexual Question - A Scientific, psychological, hygienic and sociological study • August Forel
... and you are dead carrion," he said coldly. His weapon was raised. Hilary was caught between two fires, exposed to the searing blasts that would ...
— Slaves of Mercury • Nat Schachner
... the dog who stirred ye up to mutiny!" she cried. "Yellow Rufe, if it be he, is not among ye, nor is he one of these carrion scattered on the ground. If it be some other villain, him I will know before the sun has stretched my shadow to the cliff. Deliver him up to me, and he alone shall repay. Disobey, and every biting dog among ye shall swiftly learn the price ...
— The Pirate Woman • Aylward Edward Dingle
... eggs." And the grenadier of the Garde urged on the horses over the prostrate bodies, and upset the bivouacs; the blood-stained wheels ploughing that field of faces left a double furrow of dead. But in justice it should be said that he never ceased to thunder out his warning cry, "Carrion! ...
— Farewell • Honore de Balzac
... sigh Were as a carrion's cry To lullaby Such as I'd sing to thee - Were I thy bride! A feather's press Were leaden heaviness To my caress. But then, unhappily, ...
— Songs of a Savoyard • W. S. Gilbert
... no better than the croaking of your carrion crow," said the elder lady: "these are not like the songs we used to hear in hall and bower at Dunham Massey. Then "—the old lady forgetting that her own ears had played her false, and her relish for these dainties had departed—"Then," ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 1 (of 2) • John Roby
... broke, a grey old crow Was pecking some carrion down below; A poor little lamb, half alive, half-dead, And the crow at each peck turned up its head With a cunning glance at the linnet above— What a demon is ...
— Interludes - being Two Essays, a Story, and Some Verses • Horace Smith
... time, two Swans had to leave home on account of a famine; and they settled by a lake in a distant land. By the side of this lake lived a Carrion Crow. The Swans built a nest, and Mrs. Swan laid two beautiful round eggs in the nest, and sat upon them. She had to sit on the eggs for weeks, in order to keep them warm, so that the little ones might grow up inside ...
— The Talking Thrush - and Other Tales from India • William Crooke
... where these priests walk with hats curled like the water-lily's leaf without the flower? How far will you push indolent unreason to gain the delusion of happiness? There is no such thing: but there's trance. That talk of happiness is a carrion clamour of the creatures of prey. Take it—and you're helping tear some poor wretch to pieces, whom you might be constructing, saving perchance: some one? some thousands! You, Beauchamp, when I met you first, you were for England, England! for a breadth of the palm ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... would be the prize of Pope nor King nor Kaiser! I shook the minions' grasp from my shoulder, I flashed my sword in their eyes; and not till the crescent of weapons encircled me in one blinding gleam, vain grew defence, vain honor, vain bravery. Of what use was my soul to me thenceforth? I became but carrion prey. I fell, and the world fell ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 11, Issue 67, May, 1863 • Various
... some valuable disclosures with respect to the smashers' system. I confess that I would have been hanged before I would have done so, after having reaped the profit of it; that is, I think so now, seated comfortably in my inn, with my bottle of champagne before me. He, however, did not show himself carrion; he would not betray his companions, who had behaved very handsomely to him, having given the son of a lord, a great barrister, not a hundred-pound forged bill, but a hundred hard guineas, to plead his cause, and another ten, to induce him, after pleading, to put his hand to his breast, ...
— The Romany Rye • George Borrow
... had dreams of a finished financial business, arising out of Unfinished Business, were there also, like ancient bards, to record with paean or threnody the completion of Unfinished Business. Various unclean birds, scenting carrion in Unfinished Business, hovered in the halls or roosted ...
— The Story of a Mine • Bret Harte
... appearance—has been adopted by the United States as the emblem of their Republic. If his disposition be considered, he would be a more fit emblem for a band of robbers—for a more absolute robber and tyrant does not exist among the feathered races. He robs the osprey of his fish, and the vulture of his carrion; in short, lords it over every creature weaker than himself. Now this is not the character of the nation he represents—far from it. It is true they have shown a desire to extend their territory, and have made conquests to ...
— The Boy Hunters • Captain Mayne Reid
... was a Hagged Carrion of a Wolf, and a Jolly Sort of a Gentile Dog, with Good Flesh upon's Back, that fell into Company together upon the King's High-Way. The Wolf was wonderfully pleas'd with his Companion, and as Inquisitive ...
— Wanted, a Young Woman to Do Housework • C. Helene Barker
... fulfilment—this man, so august, shall he have expiated by a bloody death one fleeting moment of forgetfulness? and yet, on the other hand, under our Indian government, the lowest of our servants, a mass of carrion from a brotherhood of Thugs, shall have had free license to insult the leaders of the army which finds bread for him and his kindred? That the reader may understand what it is that we are talking of—not very long ago, in one ...
— The Uncollected Writings of Thomas de Quincey—Vol. 1 - With a Preface and Annotations by James Hogg • Thomas de Quincey
... Unfit to mix in these thick solitudes Call'd social, haunts of Hate, and Vice, and Care: How lonely every freeborn creature broods! The sweetest song-birds nestle in a pair; The eagle soars alone; the gull and crow Flock o'er their carrion, ...
— Don Juan • Lord Byron
... the vultures," cried Jack, just then, as quite a cloud of the great birds rose from a clump of trees on their left; and upon riding up there lay a great rhinoceros, or rather its remains, for, in spite of its tough hide, the carrion birds had been busy at it; but not so busy but that the marks of a couple of bullets were seen in its neck and fore-shoulder, from the effects of which ...
— Off to the Wilds - Being the Adventures of Two Brothers • George Manville Fenn
... restless, eager eyes. She had never seen anything of her own baby but its limp newborn and dead body being carried away out of sight. She had not even dared to ask what was done with such poor little carrion. The tyranny of the law of life made her want to paw and touch this lately born thing, as her agony had given her no fruit of her own body to touch and paw and nuzzle and caress as mother creatures will whether they be women or tigresses ...
— The Dawn of a To-morrow • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... alligator. Kar Nicobar is overrun with them, as are all the other Nicobar islands, which have fresh-water lakes and streams. They are of two kinds, the black kayman, and the proper crocodile. The latter is said never to attack live creatures, but to devour only carrion, and is therefore not considered dangerous. Of the correctness of this opinion I had once ocular proof. I was walking at Queda along the coast, and looking at a number of children swimming and sporting in the water. On a sudden, I observed ...
— Letters on the Nicobar islands, their natural productions, and the manners, customs, and superstitions of the natives • John Gottfried Haensel
... Sabbath have I sworn, To have the due and forfeit of my bond: If you deny it, let the danger light Upon your charter, and your city's freedom. You'll ask me, why I rather choose to have A weight of carrion flesh, than to receive Three thousand ducats: I'll not answer that: But, say, it is my humour:[100] Is it answer'd? What if my house be troubled with a rat, And I be pleas'd to give ten thousand ducats To have it ban'd? What, are you ...
— The Merchant of Venice [liberally edited by Charles Kean] • William Shakespeare
... his cares not washed off. And what follows from that? Why, that to him, to such a canine or cynical specimen of the genus homo, dinner existed only as a physical event, a mere animal relief, a mere carnal enjoyment. For what, we demand, did this fleshly creature differ from the carrion crow, or the kite, or the vulture, or the cormorant? A French judge, in an action upon a wager, laid it down in law, that man only had a bouche, all other animals had a gueule: only with regard to the horse, in consideration of his beauty, nobility, ...
— Miscellaneous Essays • Thomas de Quincey
... yet? Wait a moment and try again. There! That is right, and there is another and another; you can't help seeing them now. Their flight is the slow heavy flight of clumsy birds. What do you suppose they are? Vultures. They live, as you know, on carrion, which is dead flesh, and the vultures of Bombay are peculiarly favoured, for they banquet on ...
— Round the Wonderful World • G. E. Mitton
... your Whitechapel carrion!' said Attwater. 'And now you might very well ask me why I do not put a period to you at once, as you deserve. I will tell you why, Davis. It is because I have nothing to do with the Sea Ranger and the people you drowned, or the Farallone and the champagne that you stole. That is your account ...
— The Ebb-Tide - A Trio And Quartette • Robert Louis Stevenson and Lloyd Osbourne
... however, without disturbance, or sight of an enemy, until we came nearly to the edge of the town and saw the glistening roof of the church appear above the foliage,—where sat sundry carrion-loving buzzards, elbowing each other, shuffling to and fro with outspread wings, and chuckling, doubtless, over the promise of glorious times. As we go on, suddenly heads appear over the bushes less than a hundred yards in front, and we hear the vindictive whistle of Minie-balls above us. ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 27, January, 1860 • Various
... reader, time what happened by your watch. Peter struck true and deep. John clapped his hands on the ill-fated pirate's mouth to stifle the dying groan. He fell forward. Four boys caught him to prevent the thud. Peter gave the signal, and the carrion was cast overboard. There was a splash, and then silence. ...
— Peter and Wendy • James Matthew Barrie
... scrupulous; but no doubt there are numbers whose consciences do not prevent the disposal of their gambling profits nearer home. All excess of gaming, however, is absolutely prohibited in Persia; and any place wherein it is much exercised is called 'a habitation of corrupted carcases or carrion house.'(20) ...
— The Gaming Table: Its Votaries and Victims - Volume I (of II) • Andrew Steinmetz
... been made that these giant carnivores were carrion-eaters rather than truly predaceous. The hypothesis can hardly be effectively supported nor attacked. It is presented as ...
— Dinosaurs - With Special Reference to the American Museum Collections • William Diller Matthew
... her, day by day Still rearing higher that all-devouring head. With bleat of flocks and lowings thick resound Rivers and parched banks and sloping heights. At last in crowds she slaughters them, she chokes The very stalls with carrion-heaps that rot In hideous corruption, till men learn With earth to cover them, in pits to hide. For e'en the fells are useless; nor the flesh With water may they purge, or tame with fire, Nor shear the fleeces even, gnawed through and through With foul disease, nor touch ...
— The Georgics • Virgil
... delighted with his own evil, so after death he is delighted with the stench to which his evil corresponds. In this respect the evil may be likened to rapacious birds and beasts, like ravens, wolves, and swine, which fly or run to carrion or dunghills when they scent their stench. I heard a certain spirit crying out loudly as if from inward torture when struck by a breath flowing forth from heaven; but he became tranquil and glad as soon as a breath flowing forth from ...
— Heaven and its Wonders and Hell • Emanuel Swedenborg
... grace, from the ground he then Skillfully piles up the scattered parts Of the graceful body, gathers the bones, 270 Which the funeral fire aforetime devoured; Then brings altogether the bones and the ashes, The remnant of the flames he arranges anew, And carefully covers that carrion spoil With fairest flowers. Then he fares away, 275 Seeking the sacred soil of his birthplace. With his feet he fastens to the fire's grim leavings, Clasps them in his claws and his country again, The sun-bright seat, he seeks in joy, His own native-land. All is renewed— ...
— Old English Poems - Translated into the Original Meter Together with Short Selections from Old English Prose • Various
... which is questionable,—for I have met them fleeing from the town,—my life would pay the forfeit. Alive, I may be of some use to you, and you are welcome to my life in that way,—I am giving it freely. Dead, I should be a mere lump of carrion. Who remembers even the names of those who have been done to death in the Southern States for the past ...
— The Marrow of Tradition • Charles W. Chesnutt
... you wish, little one, would do nothing. Others of their kind would fill their places. The seekers of gold are like ants. Slay thousands, tens of thousands come on; if once the scent of gain be on the wind it brings men in crowds from all parts, as the smell of carrion brings meat-flies. If they think of seizing the Edera it is because men of business will turn it into gold. The Edera gives us our grain, our fruits, our health, our life; but if it will give money to the foreigner, the ...
— The Waters of Edera • Louise de la Rame, a.k.a. Ouida
... understand that a change might come over your heart. But that is one thing; telling a lie and living a lie is quite another. It is impossible for me to live side by side with another human being except in absolute truth. A lie, the lie, crushes what there is in me of the divine. A lie to me is carrion and corruption. Tell me, then, whether you have been and are true to me! Don't be afraid, Dorothea, and don't be ashamed. Everything may be right yet and work out as it should. But tell me: Have you been ...
— The Goose Man • Jacob Wassermann
... mangama pisheriorsun—yuckle buradam—aiyer yiklemassun ben seni kibab ederem, tahamun yerine seni yerim," signifying pretty nearly, "Infidel, what are you doing here? You appear to be cooking; fly hence, or I will eat my supper of thy carrion." And at the instant a head covered by an enormous white turban protruded itself from under the tombstone with open mouth. Michael, either alarmed at the words and the apparition, or angry at the suspicion of a premeditated ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 55, No. 344, June, 1844 • Various
... that means, hey? Well, I will tell you. It is a comical sort of animal; springs from another strange set of creatures they call ancestors; and, in common with toads and other vermin, has a thing that he calls feelings. The lion is a gentleman; he will not touch carrion. I am a gentleman, and I cannot bear to soil my fingers with such a lump of dirt. Sit still, Philippe Goguelat! sit still and, do not say a word, or I shall know you are a coward; the eyes of our guards are upon us. Here is your health!" said I, and pledged him ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 20 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... neck of the menacing one, the scorner utterly crush'd beneath you, The menacing arrogant one that strode and advanced with his senseless scorn, bearing the murderous knife, The wide-swelling one, the braggart that would yesterday do so much, To-day a carrion dead and damn'd, the despised of all the earth, An offal rank, ...
— Leaves of Grass • Walt Whitman
... the sun breed maggots in a dead dog, being a god, kissing carrion,——Have you a daughter?] i.e., Hamlet having just remarked that honesty is very rare in the world, adds, that since there is so little virtue, since corruption abounds everywhere, and maggots are bred by ...
— Hamlet • William Shakespeare
... poetry. Its shadowy domains hold lessons no less magnificent, and the most putrid carrion is to Fabre a "tabernacle" in which a ...
— Fabre, Poet of Science • Dr. G.V. (C.V.) Legros
... "Carrion crows were about in the dawn that followed. Not many of them, but they came flopping about the dead bodies, and the living, with hungry beaks. One of my own comrades lay very badly wounded, and when he wakened out of ...
— The Soul of the War • Philip Gibbs
... inoffensive product. They were draining the dangerous corpse to the point of rendering it as dry and sonorous as the remains of an old slipper hardened on the refuse-heap by the frosts of winter and the heats of summer. They were working their hardest to render the carrion innocuous. ...
— The Wonders of Instinct • J. H. Fabre
... temporary absence from the ranch one day a confrere, "Stiff" Warwick, had, in a spirit of bravado, roped the "devil" and instituted a contest of wills. The pony was stubborn, the man likewise, and a battle royal followed. As a buzzard scents carrion, other cowboys anticipated sport, and a group soon gathered. Ere minutes had passed the blood of the belligerents was up, and they were battling as for life, with a dogged determination which would have lasted upon the part of either, ...
— A Breath of Prairie and other stories • Will Lillibridge
... so addicted to gluttony that it will go a thousand miles to eat a carrion [carcase]; therefore is it that it ...
— The Notebooks of Leonardo Da Vinci, Complete • Leonardo Da Vinci
... Friday after the Amalgamated flotation. The same feeling prevailed generally on Saturday, though I was obliged to buy a few blocks of the stock at 110 from Wall Street men whose sharp noses had sniffed a carrion scent in the air. Sunday was uncomfortable, for I realized that I might have to face bad conditions on the morrow. On Monday an ominous feeling began to rise and pervade "the Street" like a miasma mist in a tropical ...
— Frenzied Finance - Vol. 1: The Crime of Amalgamated • Thomas W. Lawson
... was chained to a rock on Mount Caucasus by the vindictive deity. There, on a dizzy height, his body thrust against the sun-baked rock, Prometheus had to endure the torment of having a foul-beaked vulture tear out his liver, as though he were a piece of carrion lying on the mountain side. All day, while the sun mercilessly smote him and the blue sky turned from red to black before his pain-racked eyes, the torture went on. Each night, when the filthy bird of prey that worked the will of the gods spread its dark wings and flew back to its eyrie, ...
— A Book of Myths • Jean Lang
... defences, it presently took fire, was consumed, and had to be made anew. Fresh water failed, and the troops died by scores from thirst; fevers set in, killed many, and disabled nearly half the army. The sea was strewn with floating corpses, and carrion-birds in clouds hovered over the populous graveyards and infected camps. Yet the siege went on: a formidable sally was repulsed; Moro Castle was carried by storm; till at length, two months and eight days after the troops landed, Havana fell into their hands.[873] ...
— Montcalm and Wolfe • Francis Parkman
... weak stomach and strong brain. Is it not, then, true that the stomach is nobler than the brain, and if so, then the pig and the lion and the goat, which have strong stomachs, nobler than man, whose stomach could in nowise digest carrion, or alfalfa, or tin cans, and therefore may it not be that the earth was made for the lower animals, who can use more of its ...
— The Inhumanity of Socialism • Edward F. Adams
... all its interest and meaning from himself. His own shadow falls upon it all. If he is selfish, that is, if he interprets the self that is in him as vulturous, then the whole outer world and his fellow-men fall for him into the category of carrion, or not-carrion. If he knows himself as spirit, as the energy of love or reason, if the prime necessity he recognizes within himself is the necessity to be good, then the universe becomes for him an instrument wherewith moral character is evolved. In all cases alike, his life-work is an ...
— Browning as a Philosophical and Religious Teacher • Henry Jones
... fell down, head foregoing heels, and was lost to the world; whereupon the Persian, seeing him in such calamitous case, rejoiced exceedingly and cried, "Thou hast fallen into my snares, O gallows-carrion, O dog of the Arabs! This many a year have I sought thee and now I have found thee, O Hasan!"—And Shahrazad perceived the dawn of day and ceased saying ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 8 • Richard F. Burton
... erected of dry wood, on which the body of the dead is laid, and in course of time after igniting the faggots the corpse is consumed. While this cineration is going on vultures and carrion fowl not infrequently pounce down upon the body, and tear away pieces of flesh from the ghastly, smoking corpse. These charred parts of the body they carry away to their nests to feast upon at leisure. But oftentimes dire results follow; ...
— A History of Nursery Rhymes • Percy B. Green
... brutal outrages upon the persons of women and children, deserve naught but death. Let them fight like men; we will slay them in fair fight, but we will give no quarter. We will, if God fights for us, sweep the carrion brood from off the ...
— In the Days of Chivalry • Evelyn Everett-Green
... Cowarne Red, Dymock Red, Eggleton Styre, Kingston Black or Black Taunton, Skyrme's Kernel, Spreading Redstreak, Carrion apple, Cherry Norman, Cummy Norman, Royal Wilding, Handsome Norman, Strawberry Norman, White Bache or Norman, Broad-leaved Norman, Argile Grise, Bramtot, De Boutville, Frequin Audievre, Medaille d'Or, the last five being French sorts introduced from Normandy ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 3 - "Chitral" to "Cincinnati" • Various
... leas and pasture that is in his way oft by the refraining of the bernacle, and dieth at last after vain travails, and hath no reward after his death for the service and travail that he had living, not so much that his own skin is left with him, but it is taken away, and the carrion is thrown out without sepulture or burials; but it be so much of the carrion that by eating and devouring is sometimes buried in the wombs of hounds ...
— Mediaeval Lore from Bartholomew Anglicus • Robert Steele
... is difficult to determine at just what period human beings began to bury their dead. Primarily the bodies were disposed of the same as any other carrion that might occur—namely, they were left to decay wherever they dropped, or were subject to the disposal by wild {77} animals. After the development of the idea of the perpetuation of life in another world, even though it were ...
— History of Human Society • Frank W. Blackmar
... at Mary. "L," she read, "L. Lust. Lust is the sound meat of natural instinct gone to carrion. Men eat meat, wolves eat carrion. Some men are wolf-men—Hand me the dictionary, Miss Humfray. Two r's in carrion. I thought ...
— Once Aboard The Lugger • Arthur Stuart-Menteth Hutchinson
... Oh, give him back to me, give him back, I say, Or I will tear your body limb from limb, And to the common gibbet nail your head Until the carrion crows have stripped it bare. Better you had crossed a hungry lioness Before you came between me and my love. [With more pathos.] Nay, give him back, you know not how I love him. Here by this chair he knelt a half hour since; 'Twas there he stood, and there he looked at me; This is the hand he kissed, ...
— The Duchess of Padua • Oscar Wilde
... broadly the method of God's dealing, as the hearer of prayer, with the practice of a judge who is manifestly vile and venal. Nor is a word of explanation or apology interposed. He who thus simply brings sweet food from noisome carrion, has all power in heaven and in earth; His ways are not as our ways, nor his thoughts ...
— The Parables of Our Lord • William Arnot
... O thou soft natural death, that art joint twin To sweetest slumber! no rough-bearded comet Stares on thy mild departure; the dull owl Beats not against thy casement; the hoarse wolf Scents not thy carrion; pity winds thy corpse, Whilst horror ...
— The Age of Shakespeare • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... come, like crows that smell carrion. How odious is the selfishness of this world! But here is Mr Gumarabic. How do you do, sir? (Curtsies with a ...
— Olla Podrida • Frederick Marryat
... a startled face towards him. He was smiling with extreme complacence, but there was to her something sinister, something even threatening, about the bushy brows that shadowed his gleaming eyes. He put her in mind of a carrion-crow searching for treasures on a ...
— The Rocks of Valpre • Ethel May Dell
... out His father's city and his father's gods, And glut his vengeance with his kinsmen's blood, Or drag them captive at his chariot wheels— For Polyneices 'tis ordained that none Shall give him burial or make mourn for him, But leave his corpse unburied, to be meat For dogs and carrion crows, a ghastly sight. So am I purposed; never by my will Shall miscreants take precedence of true men, But all good patriots, alive or dead, Shall be by me preferred ...
— The Oedipus Trilogy • Sophocles
... characteristics than the Common Crow, being, in many of his actions, very like the Raven, especially in his love for carrion. Like the Raven, he has been known to attack game, although his inferior size forces him to call to his assistance the aid of his fellows to cope with larger creatures. Rabbits and hares are frequently the prey of this bird which pounces on them as they steal ...
— Birds Illustrated by Color Photograph [March 1897] - A Monthly Serial designed to Promote Knowledge of Bird-Life • Various
... values, and innumerable persons have parted with good money in exchange for mere phantoms of imaginary values. At such times the short sales of discernment, directing the X rays of clear-sighted criticism into the swollen and opaque mass of financial carrion that is exposed for sale in the market, are of the utmost benefit to the public. The bear is then a benefactor to the community, and when he pulls down and tears to pieces the rotten carcass of some gigantic humbug, strewing the highway with ...
— The Arena - Volume 18, No. 92, July, 1897 • Various
... the most unearthly squeaks, and a dreadful noise as of an infuriated animal madly rushing round and round the sty. Ye gods! what had I done? I had not surely, like the tailor in the old song of the 'Carrion Crow,' ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 6 • Various
... laugh; and the poor wretch, eternally resenting this ill-usage, lives in a state of war with all the family."—"He is obliged, perhaps, to sleep in the same bed with the French teacher, who disturbs him for an hour every night in papering and filleting his hair, and stinks worse than a carrion with his rancid pomatums, when he lays his head beside him ...
— Oliver Goldsmith • Washington Irving
... universal and particular, all unjust accumulations of property and power, are avenged in the same manner. Fear is an instructor of great sagacity and the herald of all revolutions. One thing he teaches, that there is rottenness where he appears. He is a carrion crow, and though you see not well what he hovers for, there is death somewhere. Our property is timid, our laws are timid, our cultivated classes are timid. Fear for ages has boded and mowed and gibbered over government and property. That obscene bird is not there for nothing. He indicates great ...
— Essays, First Series • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... no more be roused by the blowing of his horn, Our backs no longer he will score; He no more will feed us on cotton-seeds and corn; For his reign of oppression now is o'er. He no more will hang our children on the tree, To be ate by the carrion crow; He no more will send our wives to Tennessee; For he's gone ...
— Clotel; or, The President's Daughter • William Wells Brown
... one time separated the Indian Carrion-Crow from Corvus corone under the name C. pseudo-corone. In his 'Catalogue' he re-unites them. I quite agree with him that the two ...
— The Nests and Eggs of Indian Birds, Volume 1 • Allan O. Hume
... elements was making a broadening sweep onward directly towards where we were. The air turned black and murky, and was vibrant with electric tension. Flocks of buzzards flew low to the earth about us, as if to be ready for the carrion of the impending catastrophe. The fear instinct of the brute seized the cattle, and they hovered together, bellowing, distraught with ...
— Crossing the Plains, Days of '57 - A Narrative of Early Emigrant Tavel to California by the Ox-team Method • William Audley Maxwell
... You know I cannot abide those foul carrion rascals you make use of," said Elizabeth, with an ...
— Unknown to History - A Story of the Captivity of Mary of Scotland • Charlotte M. Yonge
... conqueror is meant. At best, it will appear to such wavering persons, (if such there are,) whom we mean to fix with us, a choice whether they are to continue a prey to domestic banditti, or to be fought for as a carrion carcass and picked to the bone by all the crows and vultures of the sky. They may take protection, (and they would, I doubt not,) but they can have neither alacrity nor zeal in such a cause. When they see nothing but bands of English, ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. IV. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... do won't be as beautiful! We must wait a while, until there are no men left to fight on either side, until no sound of shot rings through the air save from the mob as carrion-like it falls upon the booty; we must wait until the psychology of our race, condensed into two words, shines clear and luminous as a drop of water: Robbery! Murder! What a colossal failure we would make of it, friend, if we, who offer our enthusiasm and ...
— The Underdogs • Mariano Azuela
... history which begins with the forebodings of the French Revolution. Thousands of us learnt to be interested in him as the 'good Arthur,' 'the excellent Arthur,' of Thomas Carlyle, a writer who had the art of making not only his own narrative, but the sources of it, attractive. Even 'Carrion-Heath,' in the famous introductory chapter to the Cromwell, is invested with a kind of charm, whilst in the stormy firmament of the French Revolution the star of Arthur Young twinkles with a mild effulgency. The autobiography of such a man could hardly fail to be interesting.[A] ...
— In the Name of the Bodleian and Other Essays • Augustine Birrell
... Justice Blackburn vindicated the outraged law by transporting them for seven years. Other children committed larcenies that they might be sent to jail where there was still daily bread to be had. In Mayo the people were eating carrion wherever it could be procured, and the coroner could not keep pace with the inquests; for the law sometimes spent more to ascertain the cause of a pauper's death than would suffice to preserve ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 17 • Charles Francis Horne
... adventure which, by a happy coincidence, required a bank, land development companies and railway schemes, as well as an army. About this military centre as a nucleus gathered the vultures who fed on the carrion. This flock took the name of the Anfu Club. It did not control the entire cabinet, but to it belonged the Minister of Justice, who manipulated the police and the courts, persecuted the students, suppressed liberal journals and imprisoned inconvenient ...
— China, Japan and the U.S.A. - Present-Day Conditions in the Far East and Their Bearing - on the Washington Conference • John Dewey
... the head of a steep gorge. Several low wickiups had been fashioned by binding the tops of bushes together and throwing skins or tattered blankets over the arched stems. Offal and carrion were strewn all about the place; it swarmed with flies. Nesting vultures would have built more carefully and been fully as fastidious. When the warrior reached the spot the rocks became alive with naked forms; they appeared ...
— When the West Was Young • Frederick R. Bechdolt
... of a simple thought, Whether for England or her enemies, Went in the night, and in the morning died; Each bleeding piece of human earth that lies Stark to the carrion wind, and groaning cries For burial—each Jesu crucified— Hath surely won the thing he dearly bought, For wrong is right, when ...
— Miscellany of Poetry - 1919 • Various
... much pleasanter things to contemplate, than the half-naked bodies of ten natives, who were lying upon the ground, circling the cold ashes, where the night before a fire blazed. They lay like black snakes gorged with carrion—lifeless and torpid, and nothing but repeated doses of water upon their naked ...
— The Gold Hunter's Adventures - Or, Life in Australia • William H. Thomes
... outlaw, hero of a thousand lawless raids, in a few minutes you will be but a great load of carrion. It cannot be otherwise." Then I swung my lasso and sent it whistling over his head. But not so fast; he was yet far from being subdued, and, before the supple coils had fallen on his neck he seized the noose and, with one fierce chop, cut through its hard thick strands, and dropped it in two ...
— Lobo, Rag and Vixen - Being The Personal Histories Of Lobo, Redruff, Raggylug & Vixen • Ernest Seton-Thompson
... a new set of tormentors came upon us. A swarm of imps, in human shape the slave-traders, deputy slave-traders, and agents of slave-traders—that gather in every country town of the state, watching for chances to buy human flesh (as buzzards to eat carrion) flocked in upon us, to ascertain if our masters had placed us in jail to be sold. Such a set of debased and villainous creatures, I never saw before, and hope never to see again. I felt myself surrounded as by a pack of fiends, fresh from perdition. They laughed, leered, ...
— My Bondage and My Freedom • Frederick Douglass
... that it is alive. And—bah! To-morrow I shall pay for it as the drunkard pays. And I shall know that I must die, at sea most likely, cease crawling of myself to be all a-crawl with the corruption of the sea; to be fed upon, to be carrion, to yield up all the strength and movement of my muscles that it may become strength and movement in fin and scale and the guts of fishes. Bah! And bah! again. The champagne is already flat. The sparkle and bubble has gone out and it is a ...
— The Sea-Wolf • Jack London
... carrion," said Bob, picking out a good-sized fragment of the fruit upon his knife; "it's what the ...
— Middy and Ensign • G. Manville Fenn
... blacks; in Gonaive the foreign holders of concessions may protect him; in Port-au-Prince, the capital, he is safeguarded by the potent arm of the American marines; but, in the country districts back of Cap Haitien, the carrion buzzards may be the only witnesses of his fate. And, to that back country, the Cuban must go. All this, Manuel knew, and he was a shrewd enough man to dare to ...
— Plotting in Pirate Seas • Francis Rolt-Wheeler
... alterations and regrets. There was this to be done and that to be completed; one thing to be begun, another to be cleared away; always in search of the peace which one never found; and if one did achieve it, then it was surrounded, like some cast carrion, by a cloud of poisonous thoughts, like buzzing blue-flies. Now at last one lived indeed; but there grew up in the soul, very gradually and sweetly, the sense that one was resting, growing accustomed to something, learning the ways of the new place. I became more ...
— The Child of the Dawn • Arthur Christopher Benson
... of her victims left to come back for; and even if there had been, one short day's time in the hot, steaming jungle atmosphere sufficed to cause the flesh to decay. Suma had ideas of her own about spending the days away from her proper rendezvous; and as for carrion, she never failed to ...
— The Black Phantom • Leo Edward Miller
... far as personal acquaintance with her is concerned—in the background of my history. For one thing, I am not fond of post-mortem examinations; in other words, I do not like searching the decompositions of moral carrion. Analysis of such is, like the use of reagents on dirt, at least unpleasant. Nor was any true end to be furthered by a more vivid presentation of her. Nosology is a science doomed, thank God, to perish! Health alone will at last fill the earth. Or, if there should be always the ailing to help, a ...
— Mary Marston • George MacDonald
... Newcome to a young eaglet. Is it not a rare provision of nature (or fiction of poets, who have their own natural history) that the strong-winged bird can soar to the sun and gaze at it, and then come down from heaven and pounce on a piece of carrion? ...
— The Newcomes • William Makepeace Thackeray
... counting-rooms, from libraries and laboratories, our young men have gone forth to service as arduous as that which tried their fore-fathers. How many of them have borne every hardship and privation of war, every cruelty of filthy prisons and carrion-food, yet have breasted the slave-masters' treason till its bullet struck the pulse of life! Let us remember that the most divergent tendencies of character, even such as we cannot associate with an ideal poise of mind, may work to worthiest ends in this ill-balanced ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 77, March, 1864 • Various
... bone; and in its skin were growing the rasupa-tree and the shiuri-tree of which the spear-handle used by Okikurumi was made, and the hai-grass by which the tip of the harpoon was tied to the body of it, and the nipesh-tree of which the rope tying the harpoon itself was made; and even the carrion-crows and the dogs and foxes would not eat the bad shark, but only voided their foeces upon him; and at last he rotted away ...
— Aino Folk-Tales • Basil Hall Chamberlain
... for you, you carrion. Get along, what do you mean by it? I'll give it to you!" shouted the policeman. He was evidently tired, and he had had too much of her. She advanced a few paces, ...
— What To Do? - thoughts evoked by the census of Moscow • Count Lyof N. Tolstoi
... hear these words uttered with a sort of sombre and savage majesty. A vagabond presented his banner to Clopin, who planted it solemnly between two paving-stones. It was a pitchfork from whose points hung a bleeding quarter of carrion meat. ...
— Notre-Dame de Paris - The Hunchback of Notre Dame • Victor Hugo
... The author of the Neustria Pia, who attests many of her miracles of this description, relates, that her sanctity extended even to the horse which she rode, insomuch, that, when the body of the beast was thrown, after its death, as carrion to the dogs, they all refused to touch it; and the monks, in commemoration of the miracle, employed the skin for a covering to the church door, where it remained till the middle ...
— Architectural Antiquities of Normandy • John Sell Cotman
... of vulture, most obscene, May have designs upon the Dove; Its carrion taste was never keen On the Millennial reign of Love; And I, for one, am stiff with fear About our little friend's career, Lest that disgusting fowl should maul And eat it, ...
— Punch, Volume 156, 26 March 1919 • Various
... was presently beaten into a hawthorn bush on Bosworth Field, and his defaced, mangled, and ill-shaped body thrown, like carrion, across a pack-horse and driven off to Leicester, and Henry VII., the astute, the wily, the thrifty, reigned in his stead. After Henry's victory over Simnel he came two successive days to St. Paul's to offer his thanksgiving, and Simnel (afterwards a scullion in the royal kitchen) ...
— Old and New London - Volume I • Walter Thornbury
... hostages. Hailing the fort on the morning of the 6th and securing no answer, Lisiansky again played his cannon on the barricade. That night a curious sound, that was neither chant nor war-cry, came from the thick woods. At daylight carrion crows were seen circling above the barricade. Three hundred Russians landed. Approaching cautiously for fear of ambuscade, they clambered over the {314} palisades and looked. The fort was deserted. Naught of the Sitkans remained but thirty dead warriors and all their children, ...
— Vikings of the Pacific - The Adventures of the Explorers who Came from the West, Eastward • Agnes C. Laut
... heads of handsome buffalo clover, the first I had ever seen, and some sprays of penstemon, till I came again to the six-barred gate and the Quincy road. At that point, as I now remember, the air was full of vultures (carrion crows), a hundred or more, soaring over the fields in some fit of gregariousness. Along the road were white-crowned and white-throated sparrows (it was the 12th of April), orchard orioles, thrashers, summer tanagers, myrtle and ...
— A Florida Sketch-Book • Bradford Torrey
... drama, whose characteristic is that virtue is always rewarded and vice punished. His plays are very popular because they touch an audience even to tears, and he has several followers or imitators. The comedies of manners and satirical plays are generally the work of Eusebio Blasco, Ramos Carrion, Echegaray the younger, Estremada, Alverez, though there are others whose names are legion. Echegaray is really a man of genius. A clever engineer and professor of mathematics, he was Minister of Finance during the early ...
— Spanish Life in Town and Country • L. Higgin and Eugene E. Street
... "But do not despair; the days of that misery shall be shortened. I will pray for it. Where there is carrion there are eagles, and from the nation of sinners shall arise martyrs of the truth of God. As the trees blossom and sprout after the hard winter, so shall the Kingdom of Heaven blossom forth from the purified people. For the glad tidings will penetrate through the ...
— I.N.R.I. - A prisoner's Story of the Cross • Peter Rosegger
... did I seat myself, and even beside the carrion and vultures—and I laughed at all their bygone and its ...
— Thus Spake Zarathustra - A Book for All and None • Friedrich Nietzsche
... that is of such a temper sell his jewels (had there been any that would have bought them) to fill his mind with empty things? Will a man give a penny to fill his belly with hay; or can you persuade the turtle-dove to live upon carrion like the crow? Though faithless ones can, for carnal lusts, pawn, or mortgage, or sell what they have, and themselves outright to boot; yet they that have faith, saving faith, though but a little of it, cannot do so. Here, therefore, ...
— The Pilgrim's Progress - From this world to that which is to come. • John Bunyan
... grabbing its part with bill and claws, spread its wings and mounted to some quiet place to eat. The sexton seemed to think that he too was 'making merit' by cutting off parts of the body and throwing them to the hungry dogs, as the dying man had done in bequeathing his body to those carrion-feeders. The birds, not satisfied with what they got from the altar, came down and quarrelled with the curs ...
— The English Governess At The Siamese Court • Anna Harriette Leonowens
... push engulphed his hot carrion Within the canal there - That still street of waters dividing The city ...
— Time's Laughingstocks and Other Verses • Thomas Hardy
... what ye be, and the less said the better. And as for he—well, there—(lowering her voice) 'tis said 'a was a poor parish 'prentice—I wouldn't say it for all the world—but 'a was a poor parish 'prentice, that began life wi' no more belonging to 'en than a carrion crow." ...
— The Mayor of Casterbridge • Thomas Hardy
... the Arabic dialects not by the Persian, whose "Rubah" can never be mistaken for "Shaghal." "Sa'lab" among the Semites is locally applied to either beast and we can distinguish the two only by the fox being solitary and rapacious, and the jackal gregarious and a carrion-eater. In all Hindu tales the jackal seems to be an awkward substitute for the Grecian and classical fox, the Giddar or Kola (Cants aureus) being by no means sly and wily as the Lomri (Vulpes vulgaris). This is ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 10 • Richard F. Burton
... love of unity at any cost, it will, no doubt, remain forever inacceptable. A friend with such a mind once told me that the thought of my universe made him sick, like the sight of the horrible motion of a mass of maggots in their carrion bed. ...
— The Will to Believe - and Other Essays in Popular Philosophy • William James
... opportunity of peering out from the nearest point of dense covert for the sake of having a glimpse of the helpless kangaroo-hound. To the wild folk, an animal that cannot rise and fend for itself is regarded as an animal practically dead, and but one remove from carrion; which, of course, Jess would have been, lacking the friendly attentions of her man, and, it may be, lacking the protection ...
— Finn The Wolfhound • A. J. Dawson
... that they increased and multiplied, overspread the whole of India, and reduced the aborigines to serfdom. We also know that these tribes from the north, who were, comparatively speaking, fair, very naturally regarded the black, ugly, carrion-eating aborigines with disgust. Hence, naturally, must have arisen the opinions as regards Pariahs which all the superior castes hold to this day. Even to have food touched by people of such abominable habits must have been repulsive, ...
— Gold, Sport, And Coffee Planting In Mysore • Robert H. Elliot
... thinking. They call me the Dove from the shield I bear, and a dove I seek to be in the winning of England. The hawk's task is over when the battle is won, and he who has but the sword for weapon is no hawk, but carrion-crow. We have to set our Duke on the throne, but that is but the first step. There are more battles before us, and when they are ended begins the slow task of the conquest of English hearts. How say you, Jehan? Will you ride north with me on this errand, and out of the ...
— The Path of the King • John Buchan
... break into houses until I have a pot full of silver, and a pail full of gold. The gypsy girl will want it as her dowry. I shall not leave her for you, you white-faced porcelain tribe! I shall take her away to some place where they will not say 'Away gypsy! off gypsy! Kiss my hand, eat carrion, gypsy, gypsy!'—Give me ...
— Debts of Honor • Maurus Jokai
... parish of Southwell, A carrier who carried his can to his mouth well; He carried so much, and he carried so fast, He could carry no more—so was carried at last; For the liquor he drank, being too much for one, He could not carry off—so he's now carriON. ...
— The Humourous Poetry of the English Language • James Parton
... as the Queen said these words, her eyes fastened indignantly upon him, had slunk sulkily to his seat—'dogs,' said he, aiming suddenly to brave the matter, 'off with yonder carrion!—it offends the Queen.' ...
— Zenobia - or, The Fall of Palmyra • William Ware
... my hair was not coal-black before it turned gray?" he asks, with a smile. "It may have been the hue of the carrion-crow for all ...
— Nancy - A Novel • Rhoda Broughton
... is only in the descriptions by Pausanias and others of certain old wall-paintings that we hear of the torments of the wicked, of the demons that torture them and, above all, of the great chief fiend, coloured like a carrion fly. To judge from Lucretius, although so little remains to us of this creed, yet it had a very strong hold of the minds of people, in the century before Christ. Perhaps the belief was reinforced by the teaching of Socrates, who, in the vision of Er, in the "Republic," brings ...
— Letters on Literature • Andrew Lang
... food, Are yet on fire to fight for her. Your ships Tossing in the great sunset of an Empire, Dawn of a sovereign people, are all manned By heroes, ragged, hungry, who will die Like flies ere long, because they have no food But turns to fever-breeding carrion Not fit for dogs. They are half-naked, hopeless Living, of any reward; and if they die They die a dog's death. We shall reap the fame While they—great God! and all this cannot quench The glory in their eyes. They will ...
— Collected Poems - Volume One (of 2) • Alfred Noyes
... is their nourishment and mud their food, Whose chiefs are like feathered birds, Where light is never seen, in darkness they dwell. In the house which I will enter There is treasured up for me a crown, With the crowned ones who of old ruled the earth, To whom Anu and Bel have given terrible names, Carrion is their food, their drink stagnant water. There dwell the chiefs and unconquered ones, There dwell the bards and the mighty men, Monsters of the deep of the great gods. It is the dwelling of Etana, the dwelling of Ner, ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 1 • Charles Dudley Warner
... cycle, awaited in new thirst like a hunter in the gap, where he could escape from the cycle, where the end of the causes, where an eternity without suffering began. He killed his senses, he killed his memory, he slipped out of his self into thousands of other forms, was an animal, was carrion, was stone, was wood, was water, and awoke every time to find his old self again, sun shone or moon, was his self again, turned round in the cycle, felt thirst, overcame the thirst, ...
— Siddhartha • Herman Hesse
... did, the cowardly thief. If it were not for mixing the Princess's name with such carrion ...
— Jennie Baxter, Journalist • Robert Barr |
