"Vermin" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... is so infested with this vermin, in the form of secret memoirs, back-stairs diarists, and boudoir eavesdroppers, that it is almost impossible to feel sure of the actual fact of any history whatsoever. The fame of great personages may be literally compared to the heroic figures in the well-known group of the Laocooen, battling ...
— Vanishing Roads and Other Essays • Richard Le Gallienne
... that lies between; a large stone house, square and gray, lonely and bare, without a tree or a shrub around it. Mr. Motherwell did not like vines or trees around a house. They were apt to attract lightning and bring vermin. ...
— Sowing Seeds in Danny • Nellie L. McClung
... Anthony's fire, also, in my left leg, and became quite a cripple. No one cared much to come near me, and I was ill a long long time; for several months I could not lift the limb. I had to lie in a little old out-house, that was swarming with bugs and other vermin, which tormented me greatly; but I had no other place to lie in. I got the rheumatism by catching cold at the pond side, from washing in the fresh water; in the salt water I never got cold. The person ...
— The History of Mary Prince - A West Indian Slave • Mary Prince
... is much direct evidence to show that this odour, though not very offensive to us, is so to most insect-eating creatures. Mr. Bates observed that, when set out to dry, specimens of Heliconidae were less subject to the attacks of vermin; while both he and I noticed that they were not attacked by insect-eating birds or dragonflies, and that their wings were not found in the forest paths among the numerous wings of other butterflies whose bodies had been devoured. Mr. Belt once ...
— Darwinism (1889) • Alfred Russel Wallace
... front of the host's door, an old beggar passed us. He was as red as a lobster, dirty and unkempt and covered with rags and vermin. The sun shone on his dilapidated garments and on his purple skin; it was almost black and seemed to transude blood. He kept bellowing in a terrible voice, while beating a tattoo on the ...
— Over Strand and Field • Gustave Flaubert
... been informed the manifestations took place. As the jungle was universally held to be haunted I met no one; and in spite of my dread of the snakes, big cats, wild boars, scorpions, and other poisonous vermin with which the place was swarming, arrived without mishap at the place that had been so carefully described to me—a circular clearing of about twenty feet in diameter, surrounded on all sides by rank grass of a prodigious height, ...
— Werwolves • Elliott O'Donnell
... state: They live in miserable small huts; their sole dress consists of a slight wrapper round their waists, sometimes made of bark, at others from skins of animals, or perhaps of blue or white cloth; they eat rice or roots, and indeed any description of food, whether beast, reptile, or vermin: they are extremely filthy; this and bad food give them a cutaneous disorder, with which they are very generally afflicted. Several tribes of them smear themselves with oil and pigments, which gives them the appearance of being ...
— The Expedition to Borneo of H.M.S. Dido - For the Suppression of Piracy • Henry Keppel
... being exhaustively searched, Mr. Pickwick came and sat by Richard, and with yelp and howl, and at intervals a little epileptic bark, proceeded to disparage all manners and septs of rats, and spake slightingly of all such vermin deer. Having freed his mind on the important subject of rats, Mr. Pickwick returned to silence and ...
— The President - A novel • Alfred Henry Lewis
... had enough to eat, he generally selects a long bough, and pulling off all the lateral branches, leaves a bush at the end forming a sort of whisk to keep off the flies and mosquitoes; for although the hide of the elephant is very thick, still it is broken into crannies and cracks, into which the vermin insert themselves. Sometimes they have the following ingenious method of defending themselves against these tormentors—they put the end of their trunk down in the dust, draw up as large a quantity as they can, and turning their trunks over their heads, ...
— Olla Podrida • Frederick Marryat (AKA Captain Marryat)
... Why not? He's the most honest dip I ever see. He wouldn't touch a thing belonging to one of us—not a thing. He works only on these 'ere rich blokes wot thinks we're scum and vermin. But, I say, Jacky," he interrupted himself to say sagely, "I wouldn't be seen with 'im too often if I was you. He does have to make some very sudden escapes sometimes, unexpected like, and I doubt if you can dodge as well ...
— The Rose in the Ring • George Barr McCutcheon
... touch vegetable matter. Thus they are in reality very useful, as well as dangerous, to the natives, who have their huts cleaned of all the abounding vermin, such as immense cockroaches and centipedes, at least several times ...
— New National Fourth Reader • Charles J. Barnes and J. Marshall Hawkes
... property of a peasant; a third because he forged bank notes. The well-to-do-people, the merchants, might do whatever they chose and come to no harm; but a poor peasant, for a trumpery reason or for none at all, was sent to prison to become food for vermin. ...
— The Forged Coupon and Other Stories • Leo Tolstoy
... the winter. A bold front, and Mr. Henslowe must give way. The law was on their side, and every labourer in Surrey would be the better off for their refusal to be housed like pigs and poisoned like vermin. ...
— Robert Elsmere • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... with at the restaurans was derived from this pile, and he swore as terribly as any of "our army in Flanders," that not another mouthful would he touch, while he remained in Paris, if the dish put his knowledge of natural history at fault. He had all along suspected he had been eating cats and vermin, but his imagination had never pictured to him such a store of abominations for the casserole as were to be seen in this pile. In vain I asked him if he did not find the dishes good. Cats might be good for anything he knew, but ...
— Recollections of Europe • J. Fenimore Cooper
... dare to protect; whose grand robes and courtly language alone have made him great; who has not heart enough even to love the gay puppets who have always surrounded him, or courage enough to fight for the unholy wealth he has amassed: this man I say is contemptible. Such creatures are as noxious vermin, whom one loathes, and loathing them destroys. You no less destroy the tiger, who ravages the green fields which your labour has adorned; who laps the blood of your flocks, and threatens the life of your children and servants, but you do not ...
— La Vendee • Anthony Trollope
... troops, after five months' hard marching and hard fighting, were no delectable objects. With torn and brimless hats, strands of rope for belts, and raw-hide moccasins of their own manufacture in lieu of boots; covered with vermin, and carrying their whole kit in Federal haversacks, the ragged scarecrows who swarmed through the streets of Frederick presented a pitiful contrast to the trim battalions which had hitherto held the Potomac. Their conduct indeed was exemplary. They had been warned that pillage and ...
— Stonewall Jackson And The American Civil War • G. F. R. Henderson
... wood. There was a brightness and life in the Forest which cheered her. It was pleasant to see Argus's enjoyment of the fair weather; his wild rushes in among the underwood; his pursuit of invisible vermin under the thick holly-bushes, the brambles, and bracken; his rapturous rolling in the dewy grass, where he flung himself at full length, and rolled over and over, and leaped as if he had been revelling in a bath of freshest water; pleasant to see him race up to a serious-minded hog, ...
— Vixen, Volume II. • M. E. Braddon
... it. It seizes the fly not with its jaws, but with its fore and middle feet, and carries it off tightly held to its breast. Wherever the traveller lands on the Upper Amazons in the neighbourhood of a sand-bank he is sure to be attended by one or more of these useful vermin-killers. ...
— The Naturalist on the River Amazons • Henry Walter Bates
... same night two human beings came out of a cheap restaurant in Sixth Avenue. They were ugly, ill-nourished, devoid of all except the very lowest form of intelligence, and without even that animal exuberance that in itself brings color into life; they were lately vermin-ridden, cold, and hungry in a dirty town of a strange land; they were poor, friendless; tossed as driftwood from their births, they would be tossed as driftwood to their deaths. They were dressed in the uniform of the United States Army, and ...
— Tales of the Jazz Age • F. Scott Fitzgerald
... whether we are or not! Those rag-tag and bobtail vermin are calling us names!—and, if I can't fight, by ...
— Where the Souls of Men are Calling • Credo Harris
... leads," said the oak. "He's awfully old and awfully hollow. Yes, he's like you in a way, but ever so much worse. There's nothing left of him but a very thin shell and just a wretched twig or two in his top. Almost all his roots are dead, too. And he's always full of owls and bats and other vermin. It's a terrible ...
— The Old Willow Tree and Other Stories • Carl Ewald
... uncovering her body merely, even though not menstruating at the time. At any other time, also, if a woman strips herself naked while she is menstruating, and walks round a field of wheat, the caterpillars, worms, beetles, and other vermin will fall from ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 1 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... be esteemed a mass Of filth which grows corrupter every day; And in this heap, as always comes to pass, Reptiles and vermin breed, exist, decay. 'Tis now so huge, that he must be an ass Who thinks it ever can be clear'd away: And the time's quickly coming, to be candid, When funded men will swallow up the landed. 'Then will these debt-bred reptiles, ...
— The English Spy • Bernard Blackmantle
... evil reputation of the master, and his strange and doubtful end, or at least sudden disappearance, prevented any, excepting the most desperate of men, to seek any advice or opinion from the servant; wherefore, the poor vermin was likely at first to swarf for very hunger. But the devil that serves him, since the death of Demetrius or Doboobie, put him on a fresh device. This knave, whether from the inspiration of the devil, or from early education, shoes horses ...
— Kenilworth • Sir Walter Scott
... of them actively interested, and part of these being mere boys, they are anything but a formidable crowd of belligerents if one could only get in among them with a stuffed club; they seem but little more than human vermin in their rags and nakedness, and like vermin, the greatest difficulty is to get hold of them. Seeing me dismount, they immediately take to their heels, only to turn and commence throwing stones again at finding themselves unpursued; while I am retreating and actively dodging the showers of missiles, ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle V1 • Thomas Stevens
... beautiful houses provided with handsome towers, which they have built themselves. There is nothing unclean among them, neither in the case of birds, venison nor domesticated animals; there are no wild animals, no flies, no foxes, no vermin, no serpents, no dogs, and in general, nothing which does harm; they have only sheep and cattle, which bear twice a year. They sow and reap; there are all sorts of gardens, with all kinds of fruits and cereals, viz.: beans, melons, gourds, onions, garlic, wheat and barley, and the seed ...
— Children of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... damp and dismal from the first. Soon they began to be mouldy; fungi and toadstools and the like began to grow up in the corners and out of the logs. Little shiny reptiles, in the long hot rainy days that followed, and worms and all sorts of hideous vermin, began to creep and crawl through these dreadful dens of death, over the sick and dying Indians. Long slimy, unnamed, and unknown worms crawled up out of the earth, as if they could not wait for the victims ...
— Shadows of Shasta • Joaquin Miller
... twenty or thirty poor fellows besides me that will bless your four bones night and day, if you will but put out your hand and save us from being abused like dogs and nailed to the wall like kites and weasels. We are not vermin, sir, we are men. Many a worse man is abroad than we that are caged here like wild beasts. Our bodies are men's bodies, sir, and our hearts are men's hearts. You can't soften their hearts, for they haven't such a thing about them; but only just you open ...
— It Is Never Too Late to Mend • Charles Reade
... You fight the persistent vermin off and flee for refuge to that shrine of every American who knows his Mark Twain—the joint grave [Footnote: Being French, and therefore economical, those two are, as it were, splitting one tomb between them.] of Hell Loisy ...
— Europe Revised • Irvin S. Cobb
... republic in a single foolhardy battle. The broad woods of the Brazos shall do us good service. Though you are brave, and willing to risk your lives, it would be small benefit to the country if you lost them. No, my boys, we'll give it to the vermin, never fear, they shall have it, as sure as Sam Houston stands in his ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 363, January, 1846 • Various
... for Roger when the bacon was cooked. They ate in silence, then Charley lay down on the pack blanket while Roger stretched out in a drift of sand beyond the spring. In utter weariness they both slept, unmindful of danger from snakes or vermin. ...
— The Forbidden Trail • Honore Willsie
... buried in Egypt for several reasons. He knew that the soil of Egypt would once swarm with vermin, and it revolted him to think of his corpse exposed to such uncleanness. He feared, moreover, that his descendants might say, "Were Egypt not a holy land, our father Jacob had never permitted himself to be buried there," and they might ...
— The Legends of the Jews Volume 1 • Louis Ginzberg
... is anyone subject upon which the ingenuity of the farmers has been taxed, it is on the invention of a mole trap which would effectually clear their premises of these blind burrowing vermin. Many patented devices of this character are on the market, and many odd pictured ideas on the subject have gone the rounds of the illustrated press, but they all sink into insignificance when tested beside the trap we here present. It has no equal among mole traps, ...
— Camp Life in the Woods and the Tricks of Trapping and Trap Making • William Hamilton Gibson
... wishes to know what makes canaries desert their eggs, and how they can be prevented.—[They cannot be "prevented." The most common cause is insect vermin. If these are found, burn all the old nests, use Persian powder freely on the birds, and paint the cracks in the cages with corrosive sublimate, and then ...
— Little Folks (Septemeber 1884) - A Magazine for the Young • Various
... armed with dilapidated whips, who beset him on the bridge and offered to convey him anywhere for something less than the mere pleasure of his company. Tom Leslie had been somewhat too familiar in other lands as well as his own, with such human vermin as those with the whips, and such fungi temptations to extravagance as those that hung from the tawny hands and beckoned from shelves and glass cases,—to pay them much attention or receive much annoyance from them; ...
— Shoulder-Straps - A Novel of New York and the Army, 1862 • Henry Morford
... advanced for their piety or learning; soldiers for their conduct or valor; judges for their integrity; senators for the love of their country; or counsellors for their wisdom. * * * I cannot but conclude the bulk of your natives to be the most pernicious race of little odious vermin that nature ever suffered to crawl upon the ...
— A History of English Prose Fiction • Bayard Tuckerman
... convoys, mostly to little purpose; hoping (what proves quite futile) they may even burn a Prussian magazine here or there. Contemptible to the Prussian soldier, though very troublesome to him. Friedrich regards the Pandour sort, with their jingling savagery, as a kind of military vermin; not conceivable a Prussian formed corps should yield to any odds of Pandour Tolpatch tagraggery. Nor does the Prussian soldier yield; though sometimes, like the mastiff galled by inroad of distracted weasels ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XIII. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... two forces in life—the destructive and constructive. On the one side greed, selfishness, materialism: on the other generosity, sacrifice, and idealism. Which of them builded for the future? She saw men as wolves, sharks, snakes, vermin, and opposed to them men as lions and eagles. She saw women who did not inspire men to fare forth to seek, to imagine, to dream, to hope, to work, to fight. She began to have a glimmering of what a woman ...
— The Call of the Canyon • Zane Grey
... torrid zone, like things of larger size, as serpents, basilisks, crocodiles, scorpions, rats, and so forth. Every one knows that swamps, stagnant ponds, dung, fetid bogs, are full of such things; also that noxious insects fill the atmosphere in clouds, and noxious vermin walk the earth in armies, and consume its herbs to the very roots. I once observed in my garden, that in the space of a half yard, nearly all the dust was turned into minute insects, for when it was stirred with a stick, they rose in clouds. That cadaverous and putrid matters are in accord with these ...
— Angelic Wisdom Concerning the Divine Love and the Divine Wisdom • Emanuel Swedenborg
... mule or donkey, From the midnight howling monkey, From the stroke of knife or dagger, From the puma and the jaguar, From the horrid boa-constrictor That has scared us in the pictur', From the Indians of the Pampas, Who would dine upon their grampas, From every beast and vermin That to think of sets us squirming, From every snake that tries on The traveller his p'ison, From every pest of Natur', Likewise the alligator, And from two things left behind him, (Be sure ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 16, No. 97, November, 1865 • Various
... I descended this inlet somewhat after the manner of a sweep going down a chimney, but not quite so comfortable, I believe. In this narrow inclined plane, I not only had to encounter sand-flies, and every variety of vermin in Egypt, but I was afraid of serpents. The confined pass was filled, too, with warm dust, and the heat and smoke of the lights we carried increased the stifling sensation. In these circumstances, I felt anxious only to go as far as would ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 459 - Volume 18, New Series, October 16, 1852 • Various
... azimuth, And right ascension, Heaven knows what; and now A word, but one, one little kindly word, Not one to spare her: out upon you, flint! You love nor her, nor me, nor any; nay, You shame your mother's judgment too. Not one? You will not? well—no heart have you, or such As fancies like the vermin in a nut Have fretted all to dust and bitterness.' So said the small king moved ...
— The Princess • Alfred Lord Tennyson
... to keep my mind on comfortable thoughts of Seaman's Homes (not overdone with strictness), and improved dock regulations giving Jack greater benefit of fire and candle aboard ship, through my mind's wandering among the vermin I had seen. Afterwards the same vermin ran all over my sleep. Evermore, when on a breezy day I see Poor Mercantile Jack running into port with a fair wind under all sail, I shall think of the unsleeping host of devourers ...
— The Uncommercial Traveller • Charles Dickens
... most of the prominent points of it with care, and generally with candor. Its view, however, is from the stand-point of uncompromising hostility to Mr. Collier, and its spirit not unlike that with which a man might set out to exterminate vermin.[B] ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, No. 47, September, 1861 • Various
... of that wild cat out of the bushes, where he had tried to jamb and crawl and burrow himself, out into the open—well into the open—so that the eagles could look all round, which they like to do, being birds of high degree—also vermin, or counted as such by gamekeepers of ...
— The Way of the Wild • F. St. Mars
... other hand, a vast number look quite the reverse of this, pictures of starvation, neglect, bad blood, and cruelty. An Englishman is born for a nobler purpose than to lead a vagabond's life and end his days in scratching among filth and vermin in a Gipsy's wigwam, consequently, upon those of our own countrymen who have forsaken the right path, the sin attending such a course is dogging them at every footstep they take. I don't lay at the door of their wigwam the sin of child-stealing, but this I have seen, i.e., many strange-looking ...
— Gipsy Life - being an account of our Gipsies and their children • George Smith
... endanger his neck and his bones in pursuit of a vermin, which, when killed, is neither fit food for ...
— Clarissa, Volume 4 (of 9) - History Of A Young Lady • Samuel Richardson
... Dogras—they're all alike, these black vermin,' and the Captain talked to Khem Singh in a manner which hurt that old gentleman's feelings. Fifteen years before, when he had been caught for the second time, every one looked upon him as a sort of tiger. He liked being regarded in this light. But he forgot ...
— Soldiers Three • Rudyard Kipling
... fed by the huge banks of flammable spinifex, the growth of many years, spread into a mighty conflagration, the black smoke covering half the heavens. The hawks and the crows fled before it, swooping down on the vermin that were forced to leave the shelter of log and bush. The great silence that had reigned for so long was broken by the roar, and crash, and crackle of a sea of flames; and beneath this fiery blast every vestige of the lost explorers vanished ...
— The History of Australian Exploration from 1788 to 1888 • Ernest Favenc
... range of the glasses, thick undergrowth beneath. Dasinger picked his way through the thickets with some caution. The indications so far had been that local animals had as much good reason to avoid the vicinity of Hovig's machine as human beings, but if there was any poisonous vermin in the area this would be a good place for it to be lurking. Which seemed a fairly reasonable apprehension. Other, equally definite, apprehensions looked less reasonable when considered objectively. If ...
— The Star Hyacinths • James H. Schmitz
... says these words of wisdom: 'If Zeus sends bad weather, mice and vermin, it is to stimulate the husbandman's energy, and call forth his inventive capacity.' Misfortune comes ...
— Historical Miniatures • August Strindberg
... hospital contained horses, mules, oxen, sheep, goats, monkeys, poultry, pigeons, and a variety of birds, with an aged tortoise, who was known to have been there for seventy-five years. The most extraordinary ward was that appropriated to rats, mice, bugs, and other noxious vermin. The overseers of the hospital frequently hire beggars from the streets, for a stipulated sum, to pass a night among the fleas, lice, and bugs, on the express condition of suffering them to enjoy ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction. - Volume 10, No. 271, Saturday, September 1, 1827. • Various
... in their places (Serendib language calls a farmer Riot) Look'd ruefully in one another's faces, From this oration auguring much disquiet, Double assessment, forage, and free quarters; And fearing these as China-men the Tartars, Or as the whisker'd vermin fear the mousers, Each fumbled in the pockets ...
— The Humourous Poetry of the English Language • James Parton
... states, are overrun with vermin, which lodge not only in their heads, but in their mats. "Their way of destroying them in their mats," he adds, "is by making a fire, on which, having thrown a quantity of green bushes, they spread the mat over the whole, when the steam from the leaves compels the vermin to retreat ...
— John Rutherford, the White Chief • George Lillie Craik
... no one knows how; but they proved to be the vanguard of an aggressive and victorious host that quickly overran our open, hospitable country, as if to give vent to revenge for long years of persecution at the hands of Europeans. "It is a fact that all our more pernicious weeds, like our vermin, are of Old-World origin," says.John Burroughs. "...Perhaps the most notable thing about them, when compared with our native species, is their persistence, not to say pugnacity. They fight for the soil; they plant colonies here and there, ...
— Wild Flowers, An Aid to Knowledge of Our Wild Flowers and - Their Insect Visitors - - Title: Nature's Garden • Neltje Blanchan
... a fool indeed not to hearken when a mother warns him against her own son. Mind, I do not blame my Richard, woman!" continued Mrs. Yorke, with sudden passion; "he has had provocation enough; it is but right to kill such vermin, and I could stand by and smile to see him do it. But they must be kept apart, I say—this man and Richard—lest a worse thing befall him than ...
— Bred in the Bone • James Payn
... although the second place in the kingdom, is a poor wretched village, the houses, always excepting the palace, are poorer than ordinary, abounding in rats, fleas, and other detestable vermin. Our reception would seem to be uncordial: we are miserably housed in the heart of the village, which is a beggarly one. On descending the hill some people in the Pillo's house behaved very insolently, roaring out, and making most insolent ...
— Journals of Travels in Assam, Burma, Bhootan, Afghanistan and The - Neighbouring Countries • William Griffith
... GOD and man, the duke of York, and his popish party, were equally industrious on the other hand, to promote their grand design of utterly extinguishing the light of the gospel, and bringing in Antichrist, with all his poisonous and hellish vermin, and abominable idolatries; and that, with all the murdering violence, diabolical subtilty and malignant rage that hell and Rome could invent and exert. He had formerly published a proclamation (as is noticed above), granting a lawless ...
— Act, Declaration, & Testimony for the Whole of our Covenanted Reformation, as Attained to, and Established in Britain and Ireland; Particularly Betwixt the Years 1638 and 1649, Inclusive • The Reformed Presbytery
... Things are like that. We have to take it as it comes. But you could see that the little Sergeant had never been up against it before; the rain and the mud, and the meanness; the dirt worst of all, everything that you touch, your food, your skin, full of vermin.... He came close to crying, I could see, once or twice, when he was new to it. I wouldn't let on that I noticed, for the boy was proud, didn't want any help, but I would jolly him, try to cheer him up, lend him a hand sometimes; he was glad to get it. You see you have to get together. But ...
— Clerambault - The Story Of An Independent Spirit During The War • Rolland, Romain
... taken and thrown into a stinking, vermin-infested prison. Such was our introduction to the officialdom of Cho-Sen. But I was to be revenged for all of us on Kwan Yung-jin, as you shall see, in the days when the Lady Om was kind and power ...
— The Jacket (The Star-Rover) • Jack London
... one of the most beautiful spots in the world, inhabited by thieves and robbers and liars, also by several honest and truthful men and women. Wherefore, because of the blight cast upon Tahiti's wonderful beauty by the spidery human vermin that infest it, I am minded to write, not of Tahiti, but of the Nature Man. He, at least, is refreshing and wholesome. The spirit that emanates from him is so gentle and sweet that it would harm nothing, hurt nobody's feelings save the feelings of a ...
— The Cruise of the Snark • Jack London
... by the tail—the little creature bit and fought and tried to get at his hand—and in a moment he tossed it carelessly behind a counter. No doubt the thing was only an image of twisted indiarubber, but for the moment—! And his gesture was exactly that of a man who handles some petty biting bit of vermin. I glanced at Gip, but Gip was looking at a magic rocking-horse. I was glad he hadn't seen the thing. "I say," I said, in an undertone, and indicating Gip and the red demon with my eyes, "you haven't many things like THAT about, ...
— Twelve Stories and a Dream • H. G. Wells
... He civilly assur'd them all:— 15 'A bird am I of Phoebus' breed, And on the sunflower cling and feed; My name, good Sirs, is Thomas Tit!' The bats would hail him Brother Cit, Or, at the furthest, cousin-german. 20 At length the matter to determine, He publicly denounced the vermin; He spared the mouse, he praised the owl; But bats were neither flesh nor fowl. Blood-sucker, vampire, harpy, goul, 25 Came in full clatter from his throat, Till his old nest-mates chang'd their note To hireling, traitor, and turncoat,— A base apostate who had sold His very teeth and claws for ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Vol I and II • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... few steps forward, and in all directions I could see swarms of the little creatures running. Then the memory of my coming departure from this world with Lylda, and my promise to the king to rid his land once for all from these people, made me feel again that they, like vermin, were to ...
— The Girl in the Golden Atom • Raymond King Cummings
... forward "as if on parade," as some of these newspaper fellows tell you. It's a putrid, rotten business. After Loos dead men and horses rotted for days in the sun. War's not a thing of glory; it's rats and vermin and filth and murder. Three weeks ago I killed a German. He hadn't a chance to get his gun up before I stuck him with my bayonet like a pig. As he fell his helmet rolled off; he was about eighteen, with sort of golden hair, and light, light ...
— The Parts Men Play • Arthur Beverley Baxter
... chance. I don't allow a single weasel or hawk to be killed, though I have a great deal of trouble about it. But what is the result? I don't know whether there is such a thing as the balance of nature, or whether it is merely that the hawks and weasels and other vermin kill off the sickly birds: but I do know that we have less disease among our birds than I hear of anywhere else. I have sometimes shot a weasel, it is true, when I have run across him as he was hunting a rabbit—you cannot help doing that if you hear the rabbit squealing with fright long ...
— Macleod of Dare • William Black
... the soldiery, and then destroyed. And yet no sign. Oh, no. My faith is gone. Now I want to murder and torture and massacre the foul brutes.... I'm going out, Dartrey. In any way. Just a private. I'll dig, carry my load, eat their rations. Vermin: mud: ache in the cold and scorch in the heat. I will welcome it. Anything to stop the gnawing here, ...
— Defenders of Democracy • Militia of Mercy
... | externally as a poultice, and if you are not very careful, it will | | kill your patient even in this form. Many a colt and calf has been | | killed by rubbing them with tobacco juice to kill the lice. Tobacco is | | death to all kinds of parasitical vermin; it will kill the most | | venomous reptiles very quick. Many children have been killed by the | | application of tobacco for lice titter sores &c. Dr. Mussey tells of | | a woman that rubbed a little tobacco juice on a ring worm, not ...
— Vanity, All Is Vanity - A Lecture on Tobacco and its effects • Anonymous
... not despair. The little man might rest a day, or oversleep, or strain a sinew, then— Locasto pictured with gloating joy the terror of the Worm as he awoke to find himself overtaken. Oh, the snake! the vermin! On! On! ...
— The Trail of '98 - A Northland Romance • Robert W. Service
... him a qualm. The man was so contemptible; so unutterably low and vile and cowardly. To kill him would be like crushing vermin. He would not fight; he would cower and cringe and shriek. There might be a battle when they took De Launay for the "murder," of course, but even his passing, desperate as he might make it, would not entirely ...
— Louisiana Lou • William West Winter
... thief av a porcupine an' a civet-cat av a jackal roosted in ut, as well we knew in the mornin'. I put ut to you, Sorr, is an elegint palanquin, fit for the princess, the natural abidin' place av all the vermin in cantonmints? We brought ut to you, afther dhark, and put ut in your shtable. Do not let your conscience prick. Think av the rejoicin' men in the pay-shed yonder—lookin' at Dearsley wid his head tied up in a towel—an' well knowin' that they can dhraw their ...
— Soldier Stories • Rudyard Kipling
... their way to prison camps, where in the very nature of things they must forego all hope of having for months, and perhaps years, those small creature comforts which make life endurable to a civilized human being. I saw them, crusted with dirt, worn with incredible exertions, alive with crawling vermin, their uniforms already in tatters, and their broken shoes ...
— The New York Times Current History of the European War, Vol 1, Issue 4, January 23, 1915 • Various
... a bad lot, the rats—a bad, destructive lot," said the old man solemnly. "I wonder why such vermin was made. You'd never believe the number of fish and young wild-ducks, and game of different sorts, which are eaten up every season by ...
— A Vanished Hand • Sarah Doudney
... La Hontan, "that the Goddess of Justice is more chaste here than in France, but at any rate, if she is sold, she is sold more cheaply. In Canada we do not pass through the clutches of advocates, the talons of attorneys, and the claws of clerks. These vermin do not as yet infest the land. Every one here pleads his own cause. Our Themis is prompt, and she does not bristle with fees, ...
— Crusaders of New France - A Chronicle of the Fleur-de-Lis in the Wilderness - Chronicles of America, Volume 4 • William Bennett Munro
... the name come from Arabia, and what is the connection between Pliny's theory and the legend, of St. Patrick's victory over the vermin? These remain among the unsolved ...
— Storyology - Essays in Folk-Lore, Sea-Lore, and Plant-Lore • Benjamin Taylor
... "Oh, vermin! Oh, bloodsuckers!" he said. "Horde of unnatural plunderers and robbers! Begone! Leave him and do not stay in a spot hallowed by the gray ...
— Tales from Dickens • Charles Dickens and Hallie Erminie Rives
... terrier tribe, nor will he be found quarreling with other dogs. From the bull terrier side he inherits a lively mood, the quality of taking care of himself if attacked by another dog, and of his owner, too, if necessary, the propensity to be a great destroyer of all kinds of vermin if properly trained, and an ideal watch dog at night. No wonder he is popular, he deserves to be. The ...
— The Boston Terrier and All About It - A Practical, Scientific, and Up to Date Guide to the Breeding of the American Dog • Edward Axtell
... immaterial, compared with that of character; or rather, its own materialness depends on the prior determination of character. Make your nation consist of knaves, and, as Emerson said long ago, it is but the case of any other vermin—"the more, the worse." Or, to put the matter in narrower limits, it is a matter of no final concern to any parent whether he shall have two children, or four; but matter of quite final concern whether those he has shall, or shall not, deserve to be hanged. The ...
— Time and Tide by Weare and Tyne - Twenty-five Letters to a Working Man of Sunderland on the Laws of Work • John Ruskin
... they could be induced to come, and firmly lashed behind them; and in this constrained and exceedingly painful posture they were unceremoniously flung into opposite corners of the hut, where, upon the bare floor, and suffering torments from the vermin with which the place was infested, and from which, in their constrained position, they were helpless to defend themselves, they were left to pass the night as best ...
— Two Gallant Sons of Devon - A Tale of the Days of Queen Bess • Harry Collingwood
... a blood-clot? 'Beautiful.' Evil-smelling recesses walled up with painted wood. Birthplaces of mice. Impregnable hot-beds of vermin. And who ...
— Jonah and Co. • Dornford Yates
... canon. Trees, rivers, flowers, birds, stars—are, and have been for many centuries Nature—so are ploughed fields—really the most artificial of all things—and all the apparatus of the agriculturist, cattle, vermin, weeds, weed-fires, and all the rest of it. A grassy old embankment to protect low-lying fields is Nature, and so is all the mass of apparatus about a water-mill; a new embankment to store an urban water ...
— Mankind in the Making • H. G. Wells
... to, though actually evil in their own nature, yet become gradually less offensive, and at last pleasant. We have very remarkable proofs of this in all parts of the world. In China they eat cats and dogs, while the poorer classes think rats, mice, and other vermin, no bad food. The Romans thought peacocks a dainty, which we quite nauseate. The Greenlander and the Esquimaux relish train-oil, whilst these and all savages, on first tasting our wines are disgusted and spit them out. Horse-flesh is commonly ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 20, Issue 558, July 21, 1832 • Various
... again, unless it be To hold your hands up for your roguery; And when you do so may they be no less Sear'd by the hangman than your consciences. May your gowns swarm until you can determine The strife no more between yourselves and vermin Than you have done between your clients' purses; Now kneel and take the last and worst of curses— May you be honest when it is too late; That is, undone the ...
— Character Writings of the 17th Century • Various
... days, when the elevation of the host was supposed to atone for the sins of the people, lest one reformation should lead to another, and the spirit kill the letter. These Romish customs have the most baneful effect on the morals of our clergy; for the idle vermin who two or three times a day perform, in the most slovenly manner a service which they think useless, but call their duty, soon lose a sense of duty. At college, forced to attend or evade public worship, they acquire ...
— A Vindication of the Rights of Woman - Title: Vindication of the Rights of Women • Mary Wollstonecraft [Godwin]
... should snatch the scanty morsel from them, which now consisted of only one meal a day. "One can hardly conceive," say they in their journal, "what we endured: we had no rest neither night nor day; when we lay down to sleep and gat warm, we were almost devoured with vermin; when we sat up during the day, we were almost suffocated ...
— The Moravians in Labrador • Anonymous
... enabling us to say that, at a time so distant from us that we feel inclined to measure it by Indian rather than by our own chronology, the mouse was known, that is, was named, was conceived and recognized as a species of its own, not to be confounded with any other vermin. ...
— India: What can it teach us? - A Course of Lectures Delivered before the University Of Cambridge • F. Max Mueller
... is different, Pepe. Some of these would have robbed me of my peltries—others would have taken my scalp, and came very near doing so, as you see—besides, it is blessed bread to clear the prairies of these red vermin; but I have never sought to revenge myself against one of my own race and colour. I never hated one of my own kind ...
— Wood Rangers - The Trappers of Sonora • Mayne Reid
... us to the other matter," said the man already spoken of as Flanagan, the secretary, in whom I recognised one of my old persecutors, "and it's about that same vermin. I've a letter from the Ulster Committee bidding us deal with Gorman in a way that's best for the good ...
— Kilgorman - A Story of Ireland in 1798 • Talbot Baines Reed
... was about to work would not have seemed less desirable had it been detrimental to him. Insects exist which are so savagely disinterested that they sting, knowing that to sting is to die. Barkilphedro was like such vermin. ...
— The Man Who Laughs • Victor Hugo
... farthing's worth of drink. At her own request she had been permitted to receive her whole allowance in bread; and water, not over clean nor fresh, was supplied for drinking. No living creature came near her save her keeper, who was the bell-ringer at the cathedral—if we except the vermin which held high carnival in the vault, and were there in extensive numbers. It was a dreadful place for any human being to live in; how dreadful for an educated and delicate gentlewoman, accustomed to the comforts of civilisation, it is ...
— All's Well - Alice's Victory • Emily Sarah Holt
... tells how Sylla's body was so corrupted with these vermin, that they streamed from him into every place: pasan estheta kai loutron kai aponimma kai sition anapimplasthai tou reumatos ekeinon kai tes phthoras. tosouton exenthei. "Vita Syllae," xxxvi.—W. ...
— Poems (Volume II.) • Jonathan Swift
... it ever so low; and the desperate tenacity with which the poor will cling to the last wretched semblance of one is very touching. There are vile dens, fever-haunted and stenchful crowded courts, where the return of summer is dreaded because it means the unloosing of myriads of vermin which render night unbearable, which, nevertheless, are regarded at this moment as havens of rest by their hard-working occupants. They can scarcely be said to be furnished. A chair, a mattress, and a few miserable sticks constitute ...
— "In Darkest England and The Way Out" • General William Booth
... they come we make them welcome. Our enemies may overturn our institutions, and try to put the bottom rail on top, but they cannot destroy our Southern hospitality. There are so many carpet-baggers and other social vermin creeping into the South, with the Yankees trying to force the niggers on us, that it's a genuine pleasure to get acquainted with another real Southern gentleman, whom one can invite into one's house without fear of contamination, and before whom one can express his feelings freely ...
— The House Behind the Cedars • Charles W. Chesnutt
... "and I'll throttle you as you stand! Traitor! Assassin! Your driver obeyed orders, did he? You knew? Vermin, you ran us down! How did ...
— The Black Cross • Olive M. Briggs
... 800 miles, travelling day and night. The courier's coat is sealed upon him, so that he dares not take off his clothes till the seal is officially broken on his arrival at the terminus. These messengers had faces cracked, eyes bloodshot and sunken, and bodies raw with vermin. (J. R. G. S. XXXVIII. p. 149.) The modern Turkish post from Constantinople to Baghdad, a distance of 1100 miles, is done in twenty days by four Tartars riding night and day. The changes are at Sivas, Diarbekir, and Mosul. M. ...
— The Travels of Marco Polo Volume 1 • Marco Polo and Rustichello of Pisa
... press his foes,—his double foes, human and canine,—till at last a huge hand grasps him, and he is dragged forth among his enemies. Almost as soon as his eyes have seen the light the eager noses of a dozen hounds have moistened themselves in his entrails. Ah me! I know that he is vermin, the vermin after whom I have been risking my neck, with a bold ambition that I might ultimately witness his death-struggles; but, nevertheless, I would fain have saved him that last half hour of gradually ...
— Aaron Trow • Anthony Trollope
... Brunswick, deg.1 By famous Hanover city; The river Weser, deep and wide, Washes its walls on either side; A pleasanter spot you never spied; But, when begins my ditty, Almost five hundred years ago, To see the townsfolk suffer so From vermin, was a pity. ...
— Browning's Shorter Poems • Robert Browning
... They were the prison barbers. Also, there were bath-tubs, hot water, soap, and scrubbing-brushes. We were ordered to strip and bathe, each man to scrub his neighbor's back—a needless precaution, this compulsory bath, for the prison swarmed with vermin. After the bath, we were each given a ...
— The Road • Jack London
... Europe, excepting that, in the latter, the hammock is suspended by the chair in the reading-room and coffee-house, or the bench on the promenade. The sultry nights in Chorillos are rendered doubly unpleasant by the swarms of vermin which infest the houses. Fleas, bugs, mosquitoes and sancudos, combine to banish rest from the couch of even ...
— Travels in Peru, on the Coast, in the Sierra, Across the Cordilleras and the Andes, into the Primeval Forests • J. J. von Tschudi
... the woman said. "Is there anything else you will want? What are you going to do with him if you get him free? They will hunt you down like vermin." ...
— With Lee in Virginia - A Story of the American Civil War • G. A. Henty
... man turned round mechanically towards him, as Maelzel's Turk used to turn, carrying his head slowly and horizontally, as if it went by cogwheels.—Cracking up all sorts of things,—native and foreign vermin ...
— The Professor at the Breakfast Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes (Sr.)
... can be conceived. Most of the misery has been endured by the weak, the loving and the innocent. Women have been treated like poisonous beasts, and little children trampled upon as though they had been vermin. Numberless altars have been reddened, even with the blood of babies; beautiful girls have been given to slimy serpents; whole races of men doomed to centuries of slavery, everywhere there has been outrage beyond the ...
— Lectures of Col. R. G. Ingersoll, Volume I • Robert Green Ingersoll
... "Lard, madam! such vermin are used to being stared at. In London, Newgate and Bridewell are theatres as well as the Cockpit or the King's House, and the world of mode flock to the one spectacle as often as to the other. But see! the sloop has passed the marsh and has ...
— Prisoners of Hope - A Tale of Colonial Virginia • Mary Johnston
... be overcome by fear, nor do I ever entertain grief, knowing for certain that I shall be in the world what the great disposer of all hath ordained. Insects and worms, all oviparous creatures, vegetable existences, all crawling animals, vermin, the fish in the water, stones, grass, wood—in fact, all created things, when they are freed from the effects of their acts, are united with the Supreme Soul. Happiness and misery are both transient. Therefore, O Ashtaka, why should I grieve? ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 1 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... regiments, all alike, all in filthy blue—here individuals vanish, men vanish. The schoolgirl dream of man dies here forever. Only unwashed, naked duty remains; and its inspiration, man—bloody, dirty, vermin-covered, terrible—sometimes; and sometimes whimpering, terrified, flinching, base, bereft of all his sex's glamour, all his mystery, shorn of authority, devoid of pride, pitiable, screaming under the knife.—It is different now," said the pretty ...
— Special Messenger • Robert W. Chambers
... death the mature individuals as in destroying the matter in which the larvae are nourished. Or if, from other considerations, we cannot destroy all organic refuse, we may and should render it unfit for the multiplication of these vermin. We have, indeed, in most of our large towns and in their suburbs, abolished cesspools, which are admirable breeding-places for many kinds of Diptera, and which sometimes presented one wriggling mass of larvae. We have drained many marshes, ditches, and unclean pools, rich in decomposing ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 303 - October 22, 1881 • Various
... heads, ten in payment of the tax of one-tenth hitherto refused to Alva and the eleventh as interest on the sum which had not been paid quite promptly! It was in July 1573, when the citizens had been reduced by famine to the consumption of {94} weeds, shoe-leather, and vermin, that the Spanish ...
— Heroes of Modern Europe • Alice Birkhead
... much that they do approve of!" he retorted. "I begin to weary of your Christians. I begin to think Nero was right, and my father, too! There was a wisdom in treating Christians as vermin! It might not be a bad thing, Marcia, to warn your Christians to procure themselves a charm or two against my weariness of their perpetual efforts to govern me! The Christians, I suppose, have been telling you to keep me out of the arena? Hence this living statuary in the corridor, and all this ...
— Caesar Dies • Talbot Mundy
... Talisman is a device to destroy any sort of vermin, by casting their images in metal, in a precise minute, when the stars are perfectly inclined to do them all the mischief they can. This has been experienced by some modern Virtuosi upon rats, mice, and fleas, and found (as they affirm) to produce ...
— Hudibras • Samuel Butler
... animals of elongated form, with short legs, commonly expressed as vermiform; where the head of a weasel will go his body will follow—at least that was my experience in my boyish days, when I was particularly interested in vermin, and the gamekeeper was my first instructor in natural history. The face is rounded like a cat, but the skull behind the eye is very long and pear-shaped when viewed from above; in proportion to a cat's skull the brain case is a fourth longer. They are most sanguinary in their habits, ...
— Natural History of the Mammalia of India and Ceylon • Robert A. Sterndale
... term for one who changes his party for interest: from rats deserting vessels about to sink. These mischievous vermin are said to have increased after the economical expulsion of cats from our dockyards. Thus, in the petition from the ships-in-ordinary, to be allowed to go to sea, even to ...
— The Sailor's Word-Book • William Henry Smyth
... was keen on his line of thought. "Exactly!" said he. "Vermin destroyer. I should be the vermin. But once destroyed, what contrition should I have to endure? Remorse is a game that takes two selves to play at it—a criminal and a conscientious person! Suppose the rat-paste had ...
— When Ghost Meets Ghost • William Frend De Morgan
... called down from the tree—'I say! below there! Mr. Mouse-eater! you can have a whole loft-full of such long-tailed vermin as that, if you will come with us. But you must first solemnly swear that you will never eat eggs instead ...
— Brothers of Pity and Other Tales of Beasts and Men • Juliana Horatia Gatty Ewing
... "Vermin o' the land, an' mischeevious reptiles they are, an' the mair deid rats we see the morn's mornin' the better pleased Peter'll be," said the old man as they ...
— Hunter's Marjory - A Story for Girls • Margaret Bruce Clarke
... house for the winter, opening out into a large wire enclosure for use in the summer months. The doors between the two portions may be of wood or glazed. The part intended as the winter home of the birds is best built in brick or stone, as these materials are practically vermin-proof and the temperature in such a building is less variable than that in a thin wooden structure. The floor should be of concrete or brick, and the house should be fitted with an efficient heating apparatus from which the heat is distributed by means of hot-water ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 1 - "Austria, Lower" to "Bacon" • Various
... and said, And has this gentleman given poor Sandy such a fright, and other poor things, for this night's work, God shall give him such a blow within a few days, that all the physicians on earth shall not be able to cure. Which likewise came to pass; for he soon died in great misery, vermin issuing from all the pores of his body, with such a nauseous smell that none could enter ...
— Biographia Scoticana (Scots Worthies) • John Howie
... branches, and by turns makes its visits to the dwellings of the natives, frequenting the ceilings in preference to the lower parts of houses. Here it is incessantly followed by the rat-snake[2], whose domestication is encouraged by the servants, in consideration of its services in destroying vermin. I had one day an opportunity of surprising a snake that had just seized on a rat of this description, and of covering it suddenly with a glass shade, before it had time to swallow its prey. The serpent, appeared stunned by its own capture, and allowed the rat to escape from its jaws, ...
— Sketches of the Natural History of Ceylon • J. Emerson Tennent
... recollect; unless it be a large vein of wrangling and satire, much of a nature and substance with the spiders' poison; which, however they pretend to spit wholly out of themselves, is improved by the same arts, by feeding upon the insects and vermin of the age. As for us, the Ancients, we are content with the bee, to pretend to nothing of our own beyond our wings and our voice: that is to say, our flights and our language. For the rest, whatever ...
— The Battle of the Books - and Other Short Pieces • Jonathan Swift
... demagogue, to be cited whenever occasion offers. Would it be possible to attach a more evil significance to a man's name than that which Mutimer bears, and will continue to bear, among certain sections of writing and speechifying vermin? It is a miserable destiny. If every man who achieves notoriety paid for his faults in this way, what sort of reputations would history consist of? I won't say that it isn't a good thing, speaking generally, but in the individual case ...
— Demos • George Gissing
... appointment. The cleansing process was carried into effect most thoroughly, and no vermin were left to tell the tale of suffering they had caused. Straightway the passengers were made comfortable in every way, and the spirit of freedom seemed to be burning like "fire shut up in the bones." The appearance alone of these men indicated their manhood, and wonderful natural ability. The examining ...
— The Underground Railroad • William Still
... do traps and engines set In loop-holes, where the vermin creep, Who from their folds and houses, get Their ducks and geese, and lambs and sheep; I spy the gin, And enter in, And seem a vermin taken so; But when they there Approach me near, I leap out ...
— The Sources and Analogues of 'A Midsummer-night's Dream' • Compiled by Frank Sidgwick |
