"Thistledown" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... all beholders as to what manner of things they might be; she sang; and all listeners hearkened thereunto, as to the voice of an angel; she danced stately minuets with the gay knights as graceful as a queen and as light as the thistledown borne above the clover blossoms by the wind; she could paint upon china, rare and unknown flowers the like unto which man never saw in colors, crimson and blue and yellow, glorious to behold; she conversed in unknown tongues ...
— Rolling Stones • O. Henry
... to the left the highway stretched out, empty and white. A second shot was heard, and still nothing visible, not even a shadow. But as he was returning the captain perceived in the direction of Gagny, between two trees, a light puff of smoke whirling away like thistledown. The wood ...
— Nana, The Miller's Daughter, Captain Burle, Death of Olivier Becaille • Emile Zola
... on a very soft couch that was perhaps rose-leaves and perhaps thistledown and perhaps cornsilk, and when he had lain there a day and a night, the Earth-Woman stretched his mouth a little more, and a little more. And one night she said to him: "Now, Gillibloom, your cure will take quite ...
— Tell Me Another Story - The Book of Story Programs • Carolyn Sherwin Bailey
... silver-birches, and whose rough sides, leathery with black flaps of lichen, were all tangled and interlaced with thick netted bushes. The men plunged down laughing, shouting, and swearing at their occasional missteps, and silently as moonbeam or thistledown the light-footed ...
— The Pearl of Orr's Island - A Story of the Coast of Maine • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... destroy two acres and a half of vineyard. As formidable as this terrible fertility is the speed of the insect's wings or rather sails according extraordinary ease of movement. A gust of wind, a mere breath of air, and like a grain of dust or a tuft of thistledown, this germ of destruction is borne whither chance directs, to the certain ruin of any vineyard on which it lights. The havoc spread with terrible rapidity. From every vine- growing region of France ...
— East of Paris - Sketches in the Gatinais, Bourbonnais, and Champagne • Matilda Betham-Edwards
... an orphan, absolutely independent in every sense of the word, who looked considerably younger than her real age, and appeared so small and so fragile that, like thistledown, she might almost be blown away. Nevertheless, she was anything but light, in either head or purse. Fuchsia was not pretty; indeed, to be honest, was barely good-looking. Her complexion was colourless, her thick hair a dull, ashen ...
— The Road to Mandalay - A Tale of Burma • B. M. Croker
... her. She wore a dress of black gauze over white; a little scarf of old lace lay on her shoulders; her still abundant hair was rolled back from her high brow and sad eyes. She looked very small and childish—as frail as thistledown. ...
— The Case of Richard Meynell • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... times she defied gravitation, a secret accomplishment all her own, which she manifested in this wise. She would begin to jump, higher and higher, and the higher she jumped the lighter she became, until finally she weighed no more than a thistledown, and the effort of leaping became a pure joy and an exhilaration. Having attained this perfect state of buoyancy, she would set out upon wonderful journeys, springing lightly as far as it pleased her to spring, soaring gracefully over obstacles, and deriving a delirious pleasure from the sensation. ...
— Flowing Gold • Rex Beach
... in a pet because I cannot change myself into a thistledown and float about with you, like ...
— Pauline's Passion and Punishment • Louisa May Alcott
... wish you had my power?" asked the East Wind of the Zephyr. "Why, when I start they hail me by storm signals all along the coast. I can twist off a ship's mast as easily as you can waft thistledown. With one sweep of my wing I strew the coast from Labrador to Cape Horn with shattered ship timber. I can lift and have often lifted the Atlantic. I am the terror of all invalids, and to keep me from piercing to the very marrow of their bones, men cut down forests for their ...
— Pushing to the Front • Orison Swett Marden
... and summer is gone," quoted Anne Shirley, gazing across the shorn fields dreamily. She and Diana Barry had been picking apples in the Green Gables orchard, but were now resting from their labors in a sunny corner, where airy fleets of thistledown drifted by on the wings of a wind that was still summer-sweet with the incense of ferns in ...
— Anne Of The Island • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... fancy and the popular memory, because they did not crop up in the contemporary printed literature, and were overlooked by the dry-as-dust chroniclers of the time. Nor is it a paradox to say that a ballad may be older, by ages, than the hero and the deeds that it seems to celebrate. Like thistledown it has the property of floating from place to place, and even from kingdom to kingdom and from epoch to epoch, changing names and circumstances to suit the locality, and attaching itself to outstanding figures and fresh events without changing its essential spirit and ...
— The Balladists - Famous Scots Series • John Geddie
... by Dr. Ken's house, he slipped through their fingers up the ivy, and grinned at them over the wall like the imp he was. Noll said it was always the way, he was no more to be caught than a bit of thistledown, but Sedley meant to call out all the college boys and hunt and bait him down ...
— A Reputed Changeling • Charlotte M. Yonge
... as if you weighed about an ounce and a half! You look like a bit of thistledown! You're a ...
— The Little Warrior - (U.K. Title: Jill the Reckless) • P. G. Wodehouse
... the Cart," how an even more considerable poet than Marie could deal with a Celtic legend. The fact is that Marie's romances derive farther back than any Breton or Celtic dream. They were so old that they had blown like thistledown about the four quarters of the world. Her princesses came really neither from Wales nor Brittany. They were of that stuff from which romance is shaped. "Her face was bright as the day of union; her hair dark as the night ...
— French Mediaeval Romances from the Lays of Marie de France • Marie de France
... are more trouble than the rest of the Regiment put together," said the Colonel, angrily. "One might as well admonish thistledown, and I can't well put you in cells or under stoppages. ...
— Indian Tales • Rudyard Kipling
... a thin voice piping airs Along the grey and crooked walks,— A garden of thistledown and tares, Bright leaves, ...
— Songs of Childhood • Walter de la Mare
... can't be unhappy," you said, "The smiles are like stars in her eyes, And her laugh is thistledown Around her low replies." "Is she unhappy?" you said— But who has ever known Another's heartbreak— All he can know is his own; And she seems hushed to me, As hushed as though Her heart were a hunter's fire ...
— Flame and Shadow • Sara Teasdale
... was one of her charms. She was weak, but she was not altogether foolish; and she had no idea of succumbing to this new influence—of yielding herself up to this conqueror, who seemed to take her life into his hand as if it were a bit of thistledown. Her agitation of those first few minutes was due to the suddenness of his appearance—the reaction from dulness to delight. She had been told that he was not to be at Cowes till Monday, and lo! he was ...
— Phantom Fortune, A Novel • M. E. Braddon
... fancy; but when in strolling along this road ahead of her party she saw rising between her and the glorious landscape which had hitherto filled her eye the fine masculine head and perfect figure of Carleton Roberts, this fancy floated from her mind like the veriest thistledown, leaving it free to expand in fuller hopes and deeper joys than visit many women even when they think ...
— The Mystery of the Hasty Arrow • Anna Katharine Green
... shining and smiling, I thought that I perceived Mrs. Faith, once more. My boy threw kisses to her and laughed merrily; he was electric with the universal joy; he seemed to dance upon the air like a tuft of thistledown; to be "light-hearted" was to be light-bodied; the little fellow's frame seemed to exist only as the expression of ...
— The Gates Between • Elizabeth Stuart Phelps |
