"Invertebrate" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... her wearing corsets. The imagination of a poet or, better still, that of an inventor, could not have found on Bebelle's back the slightest trace of that seductive sinuosity which the vertebrae of all women who are women usually produce. Bebelle, round as a tortoise, belonged to the genus of invertebrate females. This alarming development of cellular tissue no doubt reassured Lupin on the subject of the platonic passion of his fat wife, whom he boldly called Bebelle without raising ...
— Sons of the Soil • Honore de Balzac
... and the skeletons, side by side. You remember that slinking black satin snakelike sheath that Gita Morini wore in "Little Eyolf"? There it dangles, limp, invertebrate, yet how eloquent! No other woman in the world could have worn that gown, with its unbroken line from throat to hem, its smooth, high, black satin collar, its writhing tail that went slip-slip-slipping after her. In it she had looked like a sleek and wicked python that had fasted for ...
— Cheerful—By Request • Edna Ferber
... historical, or as it were recapitulates it, only the continuity of the idea is far closer and more intimate than that of the reality. Thus, for instance, in the development of the human embryo, the transition from the invertebrate to the vertebrate may be represented in the reality by the isolated amphioxus, which remains stationary where vertebrate man begins, and can make no step forward, while the human embryo advances farther and farther till ...
— The Silesian Horseherd - Questions of the Hour • Friedrich Max Mueller
... straight nose, a very fine mouth, and beautiful teeth, a mass of wavy, almost curly hair, and a complexion not so brown as to conceal the mantling of the bright southern blood in his cheeks. His figure is lithe, athletic, and as pliable as if he were an invertebrate animal, capable of unlimited doublings up and contortions, to which his thin white shirt and blue cotton trousers are no impediment. He is almost a complete savage; his movements are impulsive and uncontrolled, and ...
— The Hawaiian Archipelago • Isabella L. Bird
... feeling that Justine felt her own to be most akin. If his stoic acceptance of the inevitable proceeded from the resolve to spare himself pain, that at least was a form of strength, an indication of character. She had never cared for the fluencies of invertebrate sentiment. ...
— The Fruit of the Tree • Edith Wharton
... affairs and the world of education see to it that our intellect and will are duly and properly brushed up, they exact their penalties in default from the stupid and the invertebrate, but the feeling and emotional side of the nature is too often ignored. It is left to develop by chance instead of being nurtured by design. As a consequence a vast amount of distorted feeling exists in the world, and a very great ...
— Spirit and Music • H. Ernest Hunt
... this "Progonotaxis hominis," which has no support from fossil evidence, comprises three groups: (i) Protista (unicellular organisms, 1-5): (ii) Invertebrate Metazoa (Coelenteria 6-8, Vermalia 9-11): (iii) Monorrhine Vertebrates (Acrania 12-13, Cyclostoma 14-15). The second half, which is based on fossil records, also comprises three groups: (iv) Palaeozoic cold-blooded Craniota ...
— Evolution in Modern Thought • Ernst Haeckel
... relation to climatology, geography, and geology, are, as largely, rooted in the results of the labours of Buffon; comparative anatomy and palaeontology owe a vast debt to Cuvier's results; while invertebrate zoology and the revival of the idea of evolution are intimately dependent on the results of the work of Lamarck. In other words, the main results of biology up to the early years of this century are to be found in, or spring out of, the ...
— Lectures and Essays • Thomas Henry Huxley
... laboratory of invertebrate paleontology of Quaternary age, with a corps of paleontologists, Mr. Wm. ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 484, April 11, 1885 • Various
... had vanished. Somehow we felt that the daughter of the New England parson was speaking, not the child of the invertebrate Southerner. ...
— Bunch Grass - A Chronicle of Life on a Cattle Ranch • Horace Annesley Vachell
... invasion of England by the Norwegians and Danes was fully equal to the assassination, arson, and rapine of the Indians of North America. A king who would permit such cruel cuttings-up as these wicked animals were guilty of on the fair face of old England, should live in history only as an invertebrate, a royal failure, a decayed mollusk, and the dropsical ...
— Comic History of England • Bill Nye
... characterizing early tillers of the soil. All these qualities the nomad possesses. Hence the union of these two elements, imperious pastor superimposed upon peaceful tiller, has made the only stable governments among savage and semi-civilized races.[1097] The politically invertebrate peoples of dark Africa have secured the back-bone to erect states only from nomad conquerors. The history of the Sudan cannot be understood apart from a knowledge of the Sahara and its peoples. All the Sudanese states were formed by invaders from the northern desert, Hamitic or Semitic. [See ...
— Influences of Geographic Environment - On the Basis of Ratzel's System of Anthropo-Geography • Ellen Churchill Semple
... itself throughout all time, across this immense diversity, and presents to us as a definite result, a continual progress in the development of which man is the term, of which the four classes of vertebrates are intermediate forms, and the totality of invertebrate animals the constant ...
— Louis Agassiz: His Life and Correspondence • Louis Agassiz
... reflection brought him back continually to the thought that he himself, and not Bianca, had better go away. He was extremely bitter and contemptuous towards himself that he had not done so long ago. He made use of the names Martin had given him. "Hamlet," "Amateur," "Invertebrate." They gave ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... godship enough to rebel. For, having rebelled, he will assuredly venture beyond mortal domains into that garden where stands the tree of Truth—this garden being that one to the west just beyond the second fence (or whichever fence); that point where the mortal of invertebrate soul is beset with the feeling that he has already dared too far—that he had better make for home mighty quick if he doesn't want Something to get him. The essence of this decision is quite the same whether the mortal be eight years old or eighty. ...
— The Seeker • Harry Leon Wilson
... Huguenots.' The coronation scene has nothing of the large simplicity necessary for the proper manipulation of a mass of sound. The canvas is crowded with insignificant and confusing detail, and the general effect is finicking and invertebrate rather than solid ...
— The Opera - A Sketch of the Development of Opera. With full Descriptions - of all Works in the Modern Repertory • R.A. Streatfeild
... other words, the note-issuing business would once more have to be regulated on banking principles and controlled by the price asked, for advances, instead of expressing the helplessness and improvidence of an impecunious and invertebrate Government. In this manner the new departure might be a convenient halfway-house on the way from chaos back to sanity. But probably it is too revolutionary and goes too straight in the teeth of the Bank of England's privilege to receive much practical ...
— War-Time Financial Problems • Hartley Withers
... Eldred," she answered unappeased. "But individuality and temperament are stubborn things, even in a woman; and I can't sacrifice mine because I happen to be your wife. Marriage doesn't change one into an invertebrate creature of wax and pack-thread to be moulded or pushed into any shape a man pleases; especially if one happens to be an artist as well as a woman. We have our own devils inside us; our own minds and bodies as well as you. It wouldn't be the least use my promising to walk discreetly ...
— The Great Amulet • Maud Diver
... at hand, I quote an extract from the Report on the Invertebrate Animals of Mass., given by Thoreau, Excursions, p. 69: "The distribution of the marine shells is well worthy of notice as a geological fact. Cape Cod, the right arm of the Commonwealth, reaches out into the ocean some fifty or sixty miles. ...
— The Earth as Modified by Human Action • George P. Marsh
... resembles; and that thus the class of similar forms is finally narrowed to the species of which it is a member. For example, the human germ, primarily similar to all others, first differentiates from vegetal germs, then from invertebrate germs, and subsequently assumes the mammalian, placental unguiculate, and lastly ...
— The World's Greatest Books—Volume 14—Philosophy and Economics • Various
... development of Amphioxus and of the Tunicata prove, beyond a doubt, that the differences which were supposed to constitute a barrier between the two are non-existent. There is no longer any difficulty in understanding how the vertebrate type may have arisen from the invertebrate, though the full proof of the manner in which the transition was actually ...
— Darwiniana • Thomas Henry Huxley
... opposes unmistakable impediments to the reader's path. Some of it is of the more insidious kind, which may co-exist with a delightful persuasion that the way is absolutely clear, and Browning's "obscurity" an invention of the invertebrate. The problems presented by his writing are merely tough, and will always yield to intelligent and patient scrutiny. But the problems presented by his mind are elusive, and it would be hard to resist the cogency of his interpreters, if it were not for their number. The rapid succession ...
— Robert Browning • C. H. Herford
... line of least resistance, the husband dead and the babe in her womb, and entering the shelter offered by the amorous Turk. And I can picture her during the fourteen years of her imprisoned life, the disillusion, the heart-break, the despair. No wonder the invertebrate soul could do no more for her daughter than teach her monosyllabic English and the rudiments of reading and writing. Doubtless she babbled of western life with its freedom and joyousness for women; but four years have elapsed ...
— The Morals of Marcus Ordeyne • William J. Locke
... large class, such as 'Animal,' and subdivide it deductively into Vertebrate and Invertebrate, yet the principle of division (namely, central structure) has first been reached by a comparison of examples and by generalisation; if, on the other hand, beginning with individuals, we group them inductively into classes, and these ...
— Logic - Deductive and Inductive • Carveth Read
... one of the invertebrate branches we find representatives which interest us chiefly because they appear to have reached their present condition by retrograde evolution. Barnacles are really crustacea, but they have lost their eyes as well as some other structures that are most useful in animals ...
— The Doctrine of Evolution - Its Basis and Its Scope • Henry Edward Crampton
... you will be interested to hear that in the Stone Book, some of the most ancient "letters" are formed from creatures belonging to the Invertebrate Group. We were speaking just now of the white clay brought up from the depths of the Atlantic Ocean by the sounding line. The microscope shows that it consists of the imperishable part of creatures, tinier than any you can imagine, which had the ...
— Twilight And Dawn • Caroline Pridham
... this nameless, speechless, and almost invertebrate thing that he once was—this little kicking Maeterlinck (if I may so call it) between the known and the unknown worlds—the mature self-dresser will hardly concern himself. Rather, it may be, will he contemplate the amazing revolution which, in ...
— The Perfect Gentleman • Ralph Bergengren
... other shut, and the tongue lolls out. His arms are outstretched in the form of a cross: the hands open, the fingers separated. The right leg is straight. The left, whence flowed the hemorrhage that made him die, has been broken by a shell; it is twisted into a circle, dislocated, slack, invertebrate. A mournful irony has invested the last writhe of his agony with the appearance of ...
— Under Fire - The Story of a Squad • Henri Barbusse
... and above the minor discouragements, failures, and set-backs, looms the tremendous fact of a universal and gathering movement. It is still, in any general sense, inchoate, and, except in certain specific relations, invertebrate. But one cannot follow the work of the public health guardians without feeling the cumulative force of progress. As I have said, the newspapers have been a vital element in awaking the public. Associations are being formed ...
— McClure's Magazine, Vol. XXXI, No. 3, July 1908. • Various
... spiritually invertebrate, destitute of object in existence, bereft of all hope. What mattered it whether he won or lost in this stupid contest whose prize was possession of a few trinkets set with bits of glittering stone? If he won, of what avail? What could it profit his soul to make good a vain ...
— Alias The Lone Wolf • Louis Joseph Vance
... attempt which he makes to look seemly and pleasing tends subtly to raise his own character. Once or twice I have said that you cannot really love any one wholly unless you can sometimes laugh at him. Now I cannot laugh at the invertebrate haunter of flashy bars and theatre-stalls, because he has not the lovable element in him which invites kindly laughter; but I do smile—not unadmiringly—at our dandy, and forgive him his little eccentricities because I know ...
— The Ethics of Drink and Other Social Questions - Joints In Our Social Armour • James Runciman
... not a scrap of evidence that these gulfs have ever been crossed. In the scheme, the material must become living by spontaneous generation; some plants must become invertebrate animals; some invertebrates must become vertebrates; some marine animals must become amphibians; some amphibians must become reptiles; some reptiles must become mammals; some mammals must become humans; some senseless, soulless simians must acquire a soul and become spiritual ...
— The Evolution Of Man Scientifically Disproved • William A. Williams
... his belt; I saw the pistols stuck there for mutineers. I looked at Santos. He answered me with his neutral shrug, and, by my soul, he struck a match and lit a cigarette in that hour of life and death! Then last I looked at Ready; and he leant invertebrate over the rail, gasping pitiably from his exertions in regaining the poop, a dying man once more. I ...
— Dead Men Tell No Tales • E. W. Hornung
... though alive, was evidently in a molluscous, invertebrate condition. He could not sustain himself. She still held him up, a little more at arm's-length, and all at once the reaction from extreme anxiety brought a gush of tears to ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 52, February, 1862 • Various
... The Duchess of Southlands was making her little moan to me the other day, and I told her she ought to be so proud of dear Juno having temperament and personality. "Temperament and personality are all very well, Blanche," said the dear little invertebrate woman, "but worried mothers wish they didn't develop till after marriage! If Juno's grandmamma knew how modern she is she'd leave everything she has to charity." Indeed it's a constant effort for her parents to hide their girl's modernity ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, June 10, 1914 • Various
... these:—That if you go through the enormous thickness of the earth's crust and get down to the older rocks, the higher vertebrate animals—the quadrupeds, birds, and fishes—cease to be found; beneath them you find only the invertebrate animals; and in the deepest and lowest rocks those remains become scantier and scantier, not in any very gradual progression, however, until, at length, in what are supposed to be the oldest rocks, the animal remains which ...
— Lectures and Essays • T.H. Huxley
... ... umah ... no, of course not. Let me see. Are you at all familiar with the laws pertaining to refraction of ... umah, no." He cleared his throat again, unhappily. "Have you ever seen a medusa, Mr. Crowley? The gelatinous umbrella-shaped free swimming form of marine invertebrate related to the coral polyp ...
— The Common Man • Guy McCord (AKA Dallas McCord Reynolds)
... many genera and families at present unknown make their appearance, until we come to strata in which the fossil relics of existing species are nowhere to be detected, except a few of the lowest forms of invertebrate, while some orders of animals and plants wholly unrepresented in the living world begin to ...
— The Student's Elements of Geology • Sir Charles Lyell
... by the Lambeth Conference is an invertebrate, joyless thing—not worth the having. Fortunately it is in contrast to the real thing as practised ...
— Birth Control • Halliday G. Sutherland
... composition. We call them all sapphires, however, regardless of their little impurities which are present to enhance their charm and beauty. Likewise, all animal life begins with one cell, and though the one cell in one case develops into a vertebrate, and in another case into an invertebrate the cells persist and so all animal life has cellular structure in common. Yet, each animal branch has predominant traits that distinguish it from all other branches. This same thing is ...
— Negro Folk Rhymes - Wise and Otherwise: With a Study • Thomas W. Talley
... tolerably perfect system of zoology until 1816, when the "Animal Kingdom" of Cuvier appeared. Later naturalists,—such as Agassiz, in his own special department, the history of fishes, and Professor Owen in the invertebrate divisions,—have improved on the classification of even the great Frenchman; but for purposes of comparison between the scheme developed in geologic history and that at length elaborated by the human mind, the ...
— The Testimony of the Rocks - or, Geology in Its Bearings on the Two Theologies, Natural and Revealed • Hugh Miller
... don't suppose it's because London is in Britain and these other towns out of it that I make these remarks: for Bath is a fine town, Edinburgh is a fine town, even Glasgow and Newcastle are towns, while London is still a straggling, sprawling, invertebrate, inchoate, overgrown village. I am as free, I hope, from anti-patriotic as from patriotic prejudice. The High Street in Oxford, Milsom Street in Bath, Princes Street in Edinburgh, those are all fine streets that would attract attention even ...
— Post-Prandial Philosophy • Grant Allen
... Light that Failed' is an organic whole—a book with a backbone—and stands out boldly among the nerveless, flaccid, invertebrate things that enjoy an expensive but ephemeral existence in the circulating ...
— Soldier Stories • Rudyard Kipling
... we had seen it added lustre to our adventures. That we had not been on board and did not know him, was satisfactory too, and neither of us had the heart to speak of Cary. We listened wearily, feeling colorless and invertebrate beside this brilliant creature, while Anne planned to send her card to him to-morrow, and conjectured gayeties for all of us, beyond. Sir Richard Leigh and his yacht did not fill a very large arc on our horizon to-night. Sally came ...
— The Militants - Stories of Some Parsons, Soldiers, and Other Fighters in the World • Mary Raymond Shipman Andrews
... sallies forth and takes up its abode in a larger one. This the creature does of its own accord, without a savant to measure it or a teacher to choose a new shell for it. But to us and to scientists, a child is inferior to this lowly invertebrate! ...
— Spontaneous Activity in Education • Maria Montessori
... and sap and hopes upward. During the succeeding weeks I watched trunk and branches swell and bud out new trunks, new branches, guided, controlled, by gravity, light, and warmth; and just beyond the reach of the tides, leaves sprouted, flowers opened and fruit ripened. Weeks after the last slow invertebrate plodder had made his escape shorewards, the taut liana strand was again crowded with a mass of passing life—a maze of vines and creepers, whose tendrils and suckers reached and curled and pressed onward, fighting for gangway to shore, through days and weeks, as the animal ...
— Edge of the Jungle • William Beebe
... was the first Darwin of antiquity, for he is said to have begun his creation from below, and after passing from the invertebrate to the sub-vertebrate, from thence to the backbone, from the backbone to the mammalia, and from the mammalia to the manco- cerebral, he compounded man of ...
— Samuel Butler's Canterbury Pieces • Samuel Butler
... stepped forward, and we lifted the mysterious invertebrate back into his original position. Bill was dismissed with the lantern to reconnoitre outside, for it was evident that, from the helplessness of this solitary man? there must be attendants near at hand, and we all drew around the fire. The Judge, who had regained his authority, and had never ...
— The Luck of Roaring Camp and Other Tales • Bret Harte
... that he should so have misunderstood a woman with whom he had been so long in the closest intercourse. That placid, yielding way of hers, that habit of mind which he had regarded in his mannish fashion as being altogether gelatinous and invertebrate—how ill he had construed it all. What a depth of feeling lay concealed beneath it! 'Je voudrais encontrer ma mere au ciel, comme fille honnete.' Ah! the poor creature, who had yielded too easily to his embraces and his flatteries, whom he had led astray ...
— Despair's Last Journey • David Christie Murray
... 1812. She has no vital parts, such as France has in Paris or Germany has in Silesia or Westphalia, upon which the life of the whole State organism depends; she is like some vast multi-cellular invertebrate animal which it is possible to wound but not to destroy. Russia has much to gain from a great European war and hardly anything ...
— The War and Democracy • R.W. Seton-Watson, J. Dover Wilson, Alfred E. Zimmern,
... so I do not forget what that was which some men said was missing in it. His, they tell us—who hold some dry and formalized statement of the truth so close to the eye that it obscures all larger vision of it,—his, they tell us, was an "invertebrate theology." Of what he was and spoke, such a criticism is as if one said of the wind, that divinely appointed symbol of the Holy Ghost, "it has no ...
— The world's great sermons, Volume 8 - Talmage to Knox Little • Grenville Kleiser
... with the maximum beauty of the inorganic world. But in dealing with the shell, we are not dealing with the maximum achievement of the organic world. In itself it is one of the humblest forms of the invertebrate sub-kingdom of the organic world; and there are other forms within this kingdom so different from the shell in a hundred respects that to mistake them ...
— Natural Law in the Spiritual World • Henry Drummond |
