"Ant" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... the eyes of the Lord,' she murmured. 'I can only see by my own poor bees, but He has every hive, every ant's nest, every leaf, every blade of grass. He lives, He feels, He loves, He suffers, He does good by means of all these. Oh, Monsieur Hennetius, you are right not to pain the Lord, who loves us ...
— The Man-Wolf and Other Tales • Emile Erckmann and Alexandre Chatrian
... kick like an army mule— Run like a kangaroo! Hard to get by as a lawyer-plant, Tackles his man like a bull-dog ant— Fetches him over too! Didn't the public cheer and shout Watchin' him chuckin' big ...
— Saltbush Bill, J.P., and Other Verses • A. B. Paterson
... cross. Thus pleasing himself awhile, he at last fell into a slumber, and thence into a fast sleep,[60] which detained him in that place until it was almost night; and in his sleep his roll fell out of his hand.[61] Now, as he was sleeping, there came one to him, and awaked him, saying, "Go to the ant, thou sluggard; consider her ways, and be wise" (Prov. 6:6). And with that Christian suddenly started up, and sped him on his way, and went apace, till be came to ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... heard something say tap! tap! tap!, down the stairs it came, a loud noise and then "Oh Lordy Master, I aint goin' do it no more; let me off this time." After a while they heard this same noise like a house falling in and the same words "Oh Lordy Master, I ant goin' do it no more. Let me off this time." By this time they had got good and scared, so my pa sed he and his friends looked at each other and got up and ran away from that house jest as fast as they could go. Nobody knowed why this old house wuz hanted; ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves - Georgia Narratives, Part 4 • Works Projects Administration
... jumper," admitted the grasshopper, and he hid under a stone, for just then he saw a big bird looking hungrily at him. Well, Buddy and Brighteyes went on and on, and up and up, and pretty soon they met an ant. ...
— Buddy And Brighteyes Pigg - Bed Time Stories • Howard R. Garis
... cecht "I swear to God what my people swears, I deemed it no bigger than a fly, or a gnat, or an ant." ...
— The Harvard Classics, Volume 49, Epic and Saga - With Introductions And Notes • Various
... not," broke in Willie, decidedly. "Animals eat and drink, and walk and run, and—and climb trees, and whistle, and bark. Who ever heard an ant bark?" ...
— Harper's Young People, June 15, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... of ant is very abundant in the whole region I have traveled over in Africa, and is the most voracious creature I ever met. It is the dread of all living animals, from the leopard ...
— New National Fourth Reader • Charles J. Barnes and J. Marshall Hawkes
... about the Sabbath. A Staff-College officer, who frequently visited him on Sundays, tells us of 'the genial, happy, unreserved intercourse of those Sunday afternoons spent at the Rectory, and how the villagers were free to play their cricket—"Paason he do'ant objec'—not 'e—as loik as not, 'e'll come and look on".' All his life he supported the movement for opening museums to the public on Sundays, and this at a time when few of the clergy were bold enough to speak on his side. The Church was not his only ...
— Victorian Worthies - Sixteen Biographies • George Henry Blore
... was sitting on his arms. He decided not to drive them away, for in the first place they were keeping him awake, and then he rather liked them. He smiled, as one reached his waist, and did not ask how they came to be there. It was not surprising that there should be ant-hills in the ravines, and he forgot ...
— Selected Polish Tales • Various
... bollworm can be dealt with, but the boll weevil is a serious menace to the cotton crop. It is a Central American insect that has become acclimated in Texas and has done great damage. A scientist of the Department of Agriculture has found the weevil at home in Guatemala being kept in check by an ant, which has been brought to our cotton fields for observation. It is hoped that it may serve a ...
— State of the Union Addresses of Theodore Roosevelt • Theodore Roosevelt
... lower organic life of the world is also so far complete. God, through Evolution or otherwise, may still have finishing touches to add here and there, but already it is "all very good." It is difficult to conceive anything better of its kind than a lily or a cedar, an ant or an ant-eater. These organisms, so far as we can judge, lack nothing. It might be said of them, "they are complete in Nature." Of man also, of man the animal, it may be affirmed that his Environment satisfies him. ...
— Natural Law in the Spiritual World • Henry Drummond
... the ant, "and where these mountains open into a large plain you will obtain more news. But do me a great favour,—get the secret from the old woman, what we ants can do to live a little longer; for it seems to me a folly in worldly affairs to be heaping up such a large ...
— Stories from Pentamerone • Giambattista Basile
... flecked here with the harbor lights of a merchant vessel, there with the distinguishing marks of a man-o'-war. Off in this direction was the European city—the brightest section, the restaurants and bazaars all lighted up, while the black ant-like forms of people, and the canvas-tops of swiftly moving vehicles, could be seen on the streets. And what a strange mixture of sounds! Music from the cafes, trumpet calls from the barracks, talking and shouting from the boulevards, cries from boatmen on the water—the blended murmurings of ...
— Mayflower (Flor de mayo) • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... to their group with a report of the doings in ant-land, brought them all back to ...
— Rainbow Valley • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... altogether for a time, a question presented itself to his real self. The question was the great and old one—What was it for? And to what was it tending? Then the people he saw in the streets appeared to him to be very small, like ants, running hither and thither upon the ant-hill and about it, moved by something which they could not understand, but which made them do certain things with an appearance of logical sequence, just as he forced his double to work for little Walter Crowdie from morning till night. So the people ran about anxiously, or strolled ...
— Casa Braccio, Volumes 1 and 2 (of 2) • F. Marion Crawford
... would sit upon my lap, And seek after small worms, And sometimes white bread-crumbs. . . . . Sometimes he would gasp When he saw a wasp, A fly or a gnat He would fly at that; And prettily he would pant When he saw an ant; Lord, how he would fly After the butterfly. And when I said Phip, Phip Then he would leap and skip, And take me by the lip. Alas it will me slo,* That Philip is ...
— English Literature For Boys And Girls • H.E. Marshall
... the mother-snail; "but our boy shall not go to live in an ant-hill. If you know of nothing better, we will give the commission to the white gnats; they fly about in rain and sunshine; they know the burdock wood from one end ...
— Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen • Hans Christian Andersen
... enough to heave great masses of rock, and when sprung to the utmost power to succeed only in giving an affected woman a bump in the forehead—to be a catapult dealing ruin on a pole-kitten! To accomplish the task of Sisyphus, to crush an ant; to sweat all over with hate, and for nothing at all. Would not this be humiliating, when he felt himself a mechanism of hostility capable of reducing the world to powder! To put into movement all the wheels within wheels, to work in ...
— The Man Who Laughs • Victor Hugo
... expression are of importance only in particular cases. For example, the feeling of ants all over the body when you think that you have been near an ant- hill, or the feeling of physical pain on hearing the description of wounds. It is exceedingly funny to see how, during the lectures of dermatologists, the whole audience scratches that part of the body which is troubling the patient ...
— Robin Hood • J. Walker McSpadden
... hive they went, and back toward the Garuly's house. But the old man turned aside to go to an ant-hill. ...
— Queer Stories for Boys and Girls • Edward Eggleston
... is impatient of mysteries. The occurrence of an event out of the line of common causation, the advent of a person not plastic to the common moulds of society, causes a great commotion in this little ant-hill of ours. There is perplexity, bewilderment, a running hither and thither, until the foreign substance is assigned a place in the ranks; and if there be no rank to which it can be ascertained to belong, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 13, No. 78, April, 1864 • Various
... breed for emu-hunting, and many even of the pure ones are caught young, tamed by the natives, and bred up to hunt emus and kangaroos. They have as many pups as the tame dog, littering either in some hollow log, deserted ant-hill, hole in the ground, or thick brush. They will hunt, kill, and devour a tame dog also, if a troop of them can catch him alone. A settler in the interior informed me, that, while out hunting one morning, he observed his dog running direct towards him ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction. - Volume 10, No. 271, Saturday, September 1, 1827. • Various
... hand.) Once I saw an ant-hill With no ants about; So I said, "Dear little ants, Won't you please come out?" Then as if the little ants Had heard my call— One! two! three! four! five came out! ...
— Finger plays for nursery and kindergarten • Emilie Poulsson
... of the Plains and Valleys are sandy, and in some places Clay, and in many Parts very Rocky and Stoney, as well as the Hills, but in general the Land is pretty well Cloathed with long grass, wood, Shrubs, etc. The whole Country abounds with an immense number of Ant Hills, some of which are 6 or 8 feet high, and more than twice that in Circuit. Here are but few sorts of Trees besides the Gum tree, which is the most numerous, and is the same that we found on the Southern Part of the Coast, only here they do not grow near so large. On each side of the ...
— Captain Cook's Journal During the First Voyage Round the World • James Cook
... forms of social union find, And hence let reason, late, instruct mankind: Here subterranean works and cities see; There towns aerial on the waving tree. Learn each small people's genius, policies, The ant's republic, and the realm of bees; How those in common all their wealth bestow, And anarchy without confusion know; And these for ever, though a monarch reign, Their separate cells and properties maintain. Mark what unvaried laws preserve each ...
— Essay on Man - Moral Essays and Satires • Alexander Pope
... creation of a masterpiece of infinite value. In this way thousands of men and women fulfill at small cost, voluntarily and gratis, and with great effect, the least attractive and more repulsive social needs, thus performing in human society the role which, inside the ant-hill, we see assigned to ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 2 (of 6) - The French Revolution, Volume 1 (of 3) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... scraped up a sand barricade, to protect the red ants, who, despite their valor, seemed to be getting the worst of it. Black ants scurried to the top of the barricade to be grappled by the tiny red ants, who fought valiantly. Pete saw a red ant meet one of the enemy who was twice his size, wrestle with him and finally best him. Evidently this particular black ant, though deceased, was of some importance, possibly an officer, for the little red ant seized him and bore him bodily to the rear ...
— The Ridin' Kid from Powder River • Henry Herbert Knibbs
... staked his reputation on the fact that a single wing of one of the insects was sufficient for a sail to his canoe, and the proboscis as big as his wife's shovel. But he was favored with a still more extraordinary sight, in a gigantic ant, which passed him, as he was watching a beaver's lodge, dragging the entire ...
— The Myth of Hiawatha, and Other Oral Legends, Mythologic and Allegoric, of the North American Indians • Henry R. Schoolcraft
... process of evolvement to greater things! Let any priest tell me that I am not a child of God, and I will retort that he, by such an utterance, has proved himself a child of the devil. Ignorant, sinful, full of miserable imperfections as I am, I am of God as the ant is, the worm, the fly!—and if I have no more of God in me than such insects, still I am thankful to have so much! What priest shall dare to say how much or how little of God there was in the composition of this man lying in the grave at our feet, who was my father? ...
— The Master-Christian • Marie Corelli
... flowing into it, so that at an early age I could command my little boat as easily as one manages a horse in driving. On Saturdays, when the wind and weather were at all favourable, I used frequently to hurry away from business as early as possible, and sail home along the Bure and Ant, a distance of about twenty miles, rather more than less, and became so accustomed to the route that I knew every tree and post, aye, and almost every reed and bulrush on the river's bank on ...
— Jethou - or Crusoe Life in the Channel Isles • E. R. Suffling
... your highness's pardon; I quite forgot myself. I am very apt to do that when I am much interested; it is a great fault, for I appreciate fine manners. But to explain. In the faraway cities where people live like ants in an ant-hill, all crowded together, there is often much cruelty and oppression, as well as vice and poverty. Now for this state of things they have laws and punishments, means of redress; but they relate principally to grown ...
— Prince Lazybones and Other Stories • Mrs. W. J. Hays
... asks, "the ant to build her nest? The bee her cells? the hermit thrush to sing? The dove to plume his iridescent breast? The butterfly to paint ...
— The Girl Wanted • Nixon Waterman
... of Deluge, which lives in the traditions of every race. Jean had never heard of waterspout or cloudburst or any modern name given to the Force whenever its leash is slipped for a few minutes. He felt himself as trivial a thing in chaos as the ant which clung on his hand and bit him because ...
— Old Kaskaskia • Mary Hartwell Catherwood
... into castes, with intermediate gradations (which I imagine are rare) interest me much. See "Origin" on the driver-ant, page 241 ...
— More Letters of Charles Darwin - Volume I (of II) • Charles Darwin
... Tyrant rather, not at all like a King. Here a Lizard fights with a Viper, and here lies the Dipsas Serpent upon the Catch, hid under the Shell of an Estridge Egg. Here you see the whole Policy of the Ant, which we are call'd upon to imitate by Solomon and Horace. Here are Indian Ants that carry Gold, and ...
— Colloquies of Erasmus, Volume I. • Erasmus
... head away and pretended to be interested in a black ant that was crawling rapidly up the wall below him; he was a truthful pussy and preferred to change the subject. The stranger was comfortable and sat lazily ...
— The Book of the Cat • Mabel Humphrey and Elizabeth Fearne Bonsall
... reaching the height of twelve feet. The mammoth was another elephant, and supposed to have survived till comparatively recent times. The megatherium is an incongruity of nature, of gigantic proportions, yet ranking in a much humbler order than the elephant, that of the edenta, to which the sloth, ant-eater, and armadilla belong. The megatherium had a skeleton of enormous solidity, with an armour-clad body, and five toes, terminating in huge claws to grasp the branches on which it fed. Finally, beside the dog, cat, squirrel, and bear, we have ...
— An Expository Outline of the "Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation" • Anonymous
... account of this that jiva is called Jivastikaya. The word astikaya means anything that occupies space or has some pervasiveness; but these souls expand and contract themselves according to the dimensions of the body which they occupy at any time (bigger in the elephant and smaller in the ant life). It is well to remember that according to the Jains the soul occupies the whole of the body in which it lives, so that from the tip of the hair to the nail of the foot, wherever there may be any cause of sensation, it can at once feel it. The manner ...
— A History of Indian Philosophy, Vol. 1 • Surendranath Dasgupta
... faint track, so that I had to diverge and look close to find it. These delays fretted me. 'See, a stone loosed from its bed—he must have passed by here.... That twig is newly snapped; no doubt he caught at it.... Ha, the moss there has been crushed; a foot has gone by. And the ants on that ant-hill, with their eggs in their mouths—a man's tread has frightened them.' So, by some instinctive sense, as if the spirit of my savage ancestors revived within me, I managed to recover the spoor again and again by a miracle, till at last, round a corner by ...
— Miss Cayley's Adventures • Grant Allen
... couldn't make out what it was. Hungrily he nosed close to Neewa's foraging snout. He licked with his tongue where Neewa licked, and he got only dirt. And all the time Neewa was giving his jolly little grunts of satisfaction. It was ten minutes before he hunted out the last ant and went on. ...
— Nomads of the North - A Story of Romance and Adventure under the Open Stars • James Oliver Curwood
... at eight hundred yards. Men are like insects. See! I think we should always contemplate them from this height, to judge correctly of their proportions. The Place de la Comedie is transformed into an immense ant-hill. Observe the crowd which is gathered on the quays; and the mountains also get smaller and smaller. We are over the Cathedral. The Main is only a line, cutting the city in two, and the bridge seems a thread thrown between the two ...
— A Winter Amid the Ice - and Other Thrilling Stories • Jules Verne
... said Christopher, in a voice which had grown spiritless. Then after an instant in which he stared blankly down at Tucker's ant-hill, he turned hurriedly away and followed the little straggling ...
— The Deliverance; A Romance of the Virginia Tobacco Fields • Ellen Glasgow
... that an Englishman named Jesse once put a small caterpillar near an ants' nest, and watched. Soon an ant seized it; but the caterpillar was too heavy to be moved by one ant alone, so away he ran until he met another ant. They stopped for a few moments, during which each tapped the other's head with his feelers in a very lively manner. ...
— St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, Vol. 5, Nov 1877-Nov 1878 - Scribner's Illustrated • Various
... now in extended open order, and advanced towards the foot of the hill by rushes, taking advantage of the ant-hills that studded the plain and afforded an excellent cover, being high enough to cover them while lying down, and thick and compact enough to resist the passage of a Mauser bullet. The Highlanders were suffering the most heavily, their dark kilts showing up ...
— With Buller in Natal - A Born Leader • G. A. Henty
... than any other group of the population, as we stated in the beginning, accentuated this situation and made it felt. That was the sore point. This old faubourg, peopled like an ant-hill, laborious, courageous, and angry as a hive of bees, was quivering with expectation and with the desire for a tumult. Everything was in a state of agitation there, without any interruption, however, of the regular work. It is impossible to convey an idea of this lively yet ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo
... [Aside. So, now the tempest tears him up by the roots, And on the ground extends the noble ruin. [ANT. having thrown himself down. Lie there, thou shadow of an emperor; The place, thou pressest on thy mother earth, Is all thy empire now: now it contains thee; Some few days hence, and then 'twill be too large. When thou'rt contracted in thy narrow urn, Shrunk to a few cold ashes; then ...
— The Works of John Dryden, Volume 5 (of 18) - Amboyna; The state of Innocence; Aureng-Zebe; All for Love • John Dryden
... the other front of my house, also a verandah, opens first of all upon a garden; then upon a marvelous panorama of woods and mountains, with all the venerable Japanese quarters of Nagasaki lying confusedly like a black ant-heap, six hundred feet below us. This evening, in a dull twilight, notwithstanding that it is a twilight of July, these things are melancholy. There are great clouds heavy with rain and showers, ready to fall, traveling across the sky. No, I ...
— Madame Chrysantheme • Pierre Loti
... to me; that, among other things, I mentioned a custom we had of castrating Houyhnhnms when they were young, in order to render them tame; that the operation was easy and safe; that it was no shame to learn wisdom from brutes, as industry is taught by the ant, and building by the swallow (for so I translate the word lyhannh, although it be a much larger fowl); that this invention might be practised upon the younger Yahoos here, which besides rendering them tractable and fitter for use, would in an age put an end to the whole species, without destroying ...
— Gulliver's Travels - into several remote nations of the world • Jonathan Swift
... Nailles's death, between the acts of Scylla and Charybdis, the principal parts in which were taken by young d'Etaples and Isabelle Ray, the company, as it ate ices, was glibly discussing the real drama which had produced in their own elegant circle much of the effect a blow has upon an ant-hill—fear, agitation, and a tumultuous rush to the scene ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... the middle of their brown battalions Muzzle to muzzle one ant meets another Perchance to spy ...
— Dante's Purgatory • Dante
... back. The faint popping of rifles was followed by another terrific crash. A second bomb had dropped clean upon one of the larger houses, and exploding on the flat roof had scattered the whole building as a man's foot might scatter an ant's nest. With a roar half the house toppled outwards into the street, blocking ...
— On Land And Sea At The Dardanelles • Thomas Charles Bridges
... of late, been assigned as Red Cross workers to a hospital in the environs of Paris, and ant times they could come into the city for a rest. They maintained a modest apartment not far from the hotel where Tom and Jack had put up, and soon the two lads found themselves at the place ...
— Air Service Boys in the Big Battle • Charles Amory Beach
... and diminutive, coarsely clad and of dusky hue: "a little black man," "a little gray man." They are sometimes of the height of a child of four years, sometimes as two spans high, a thumb high (hence, Tom Thumb). The old Danish ballad of Eline of Villenwood mentions a troll not bigger than an ant. Dvergml (the speech of the dwarfs) is the Old Norse expression for the echo in ...
— The Younger Edda - Also called Snorre's Edda, or The Prose Edda • Snorre
... pretending there's any Higher Truth or wonderful principle in this business. There isn't. We never started out in any high-browed manner to scandalize and Shelleyfy. When first you left your home you had no idea that I was the hidden impulse. I wasn't. You came out like an ant for your nuptial flight. It was just a chance that we in particular hit against each other—nothing predestined about it. We just hit against each other, and here we are flying off at a tangent, a little surprised at what we are doing, all our principles abandoned, and ...
— Ann Veronica • H. G. Wells
... concerned. Often the very man who seems most harmless is the crafty one ready to commit a terrible deed; while he who looks to be a veritable terror may turn out to be a mild fellow, who would not harm an ant. ...
— The Strange Cabin on Catamount Island • Lawrence J. Leslie
... that the publication of Charles Darwin's book was like plowing into an ant-hill. The theologians, rudely awakened from comfort and repose, swarmed out angry, wrathful and confused. The air was charged with challenges; and soggy sermons, books, pamphlets, brochures and reviews, all were flying at the head of poor Darwin. ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great - Volume 12 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Scientists • Elbert Hubbard
... ant-hill until the stick has been thrust into it. Mr. Gladstone's Bill for helping to the wiser government of Ireland has brought forth our busy citizens on the top-rubble in traversing counterswarms, and whatever may be said against a Bill that deals roughly with many ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... sun rise the morning of the momentous day as Saturday dawned behind a bank of dark, somber-looking clouds. Highways early became choked with lines of automobiles and railway schedules slowed under the running of football specials. The vicinity about Elliott University soon resembled a vast ant hill, swarming with sport-crazed humans. By noon the little college town was transformed into a huge outdoor garage with every available space, even front lawns, taken up by autos, many of which bore licenses from distant ...
— Interference and Other Football Stories • Harold M. Sherman
... to the 24th the Green Drake and Stone Fly, the Owl fly, the Barn fly, the purple Hackle, the purple Gold Hackle, the flesh Fly, the little flesh Fly, the Peacock fly, the Ant fly, the brown Gnat, the little black Gnat, the Green-Grasshopper, the Dun Grasshopper, the ...
— The School of Recreation (1696 edition) • Robert Howlett
... I am zayink,' cried Darco. 'Ve haf bought the Goncreve. It is in the handts of the decorators now. Ve shall oben in the first week of Sebtemper, ant ve are coing for the gloves. Ve are coing to oben with a gomedy. Do you hear? A gomedy. Ant you ant I are coing to write that gomedy. Do you understandt?' He slipped out of his overcoat, and threw it into the arm-chair in the corner. Then he banged ...
— Despair's Last Journey • David Christie Murray
... most Dutch towns, and well merited the name of New Amsterdam, given it by its founders. The ground it covers was at one time divided into hill and dale; but with eyes wide open to business, and close sealed against taste, the conscript fathers of our infant Rome shaved smooth every ant-hill that rose in their path, and to their inheritors have bequeathed a love of their trim lines of beauty, for they are proceeding on the levelling system with a worthy pains-taking that will in due time render the whole island as flat as ...
— Impressions of America - During the years 1833, 1834 and 1835. In Two Volumes, Volume I. • Tyrone Power
... ant-heap. But I know you are right. For Lassalle the Fighter the world holds no wife. If I could only be sure that the victory will ...
— Dreamers of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... The ant, which for many years served as a model of intelligence and industry in the school-readers, has been proven to be a doddering idiot and a waster of time and effort. The owl to-day is hooted at. Chautauqua conventions have ...
— Options • O. Henry
... doorstep one sunny morning talking to his friend, old Mr. Toad. "If I weren't afraid, I wouldn't be all the time watching out, and if I weren't all the time watching out, I wouldn't have any more chance than that foolish red ant running across in front ...
— The Adventures of Danny Meadow Mouse • Thornton W. Burgess
... the great foreign house so neatly defrauded, 'Ah! if I had not come down this morning, not one othair would haf know. I am the one only expairt. See! I am praisant wen the plaice is un-cloase. I stant near, wen soomsing make a beeg chock'—he meant shock or jar—'ant richt town falls out the klass. Wen I haf zeen it, I go queek ant look at doze shems. Ach! I know ...
— Against Odds - A Detective Story • Lawrence L. Lynch
... on that journey were now cold in death, but there were others only less loving, and she went slowly from room to room like one bidding good-bye, and in mine she said, 'The beautiful rows upon rows of books, ant he said every one of them was mine, all mine!' and in the east room, which was her greatest triumph, she said caressingly, 'My nain bonny room!' All this time there seemed to be something that she wanted, but the one was dead who always knew what she wanted, and they produced many things ...
— Margaret Ogilvy • James M. Barrie
... which, in the freedom of their inter course, was frankly avowed to Marmaduke, while the other continued profoundly hid in the bosom of his friend, The last was nothing more than pride. To the descend ant of a line of soldiers, commerce, even in that indirect manner, seemed a degrading pursuit; but an insuperable obstacle to the disclosure existed in the prejudices of ...
— The Pioneers • James Fenimore Cooper
... their ways with an understanding heart could, as the vision evolved still advanced towards him, contemplate the filial and loyal bee, the home-building, wedded, and divorceless swallow, and, above all, the manifoldly intelligent ant tribes, with their commonwealths and confederacies, their warriors and miners, the husband folk that fold in their tiny flocks on the honey leaf, and the virgin sister with the holy instincts of maternal love detached and in selfless purity, and not say in himself, Behold the shadow of approaching ...
— The Testimony of the Rocks - or, Geology in Its Bearings on the Two Theologies, Natural and Revealed • Hugh Miller
... again towards his mother. He was worn out, with bleeding feet, alone in the middle of this formidable forest, where it was only at long intervals that he saw tiny human habitations, which at the foot of these trees seemed like the ant-hills, or some buffalo asleep beside the road; he was exhausted, but he was not conscious of his exhaustion; he was alone, and he felt no fear. The grandeur of the forest rendered his soul grand; his nearness ...
— Cuore (Heart) - An Italian Schoolboy's Journal • Edmondo De Amicis
... avolation from, or access of moisture to, the surfaces of bodies being much the same, those bodies become most sensible of it, which have the least proportion of body to their surface. So is it also with Animal substances; the dead body of an Ant, or such little creature, does almost instantly shrivel and dry, and your object shall be quite another thing, before you can half delineate it, which proceeds not from the extraordinary exhalation, but from the small proportion of body and juices, to the usual drying of bodies in the ...
— Micrographia • Robert Hooke
... the earth are found the ant-eaters and armadillos, and more or less allied to them are the pangolins (Manis) of Africa and Asia. The horny scales which cover the bodies of the last-named animals caused them for some time to be associated with reptiles ...
— The Contemporary Review, Volume 36, September 1879 • Various
... little bed, in the round wattle and daub hut, and pressed her fingers against her eyes to still their throbbing. Then she looked round at her surroundings, and a little wry smile twisted her lips. A rough floor of ant-heap composition and cow-dung hardened to cement, with some native reed matting laid down; a small stretcher bed; a packing-case for a washhand-stand, and enamel ware. Another packing-case for a dressing-table, and a little cheap glass nailed to the wall. Walls of baked mud, which had fallen ...
— The Rhodesian • Gertrude Page
... eclipsed by twilight; a golden band surrounded the horizon, announcing the approach of day. Athos threw his cloak over the shoulders of Raoul, and led him back to the city, where burdens and porters were already in motion, like a vast ant-hill. At the extremity of the plateau, which Athos and Bragelonne were quitting, they saw a dark shadow moving uneasily backward and forward, as if in indecision or ashamed to be seen. It was Grimaud, who, in his anxiety, had tracked his master, ...
— The Vicomte de Bragelonne - Or Ten Years Later being the completion of "The Three - Musketeers" And "Twenty Years After" • Alexandre Dumas
... attack from the point of view of biography. He realises the hopelessness of writing a history of the Victorian Age; it can only be dealt with in detail; it must be nibbled into here and there; discredited piecemeal; subjected to the ravages of the white ant. He has seen that the lives of the great Victorians lend themselves to this insidious kind of examination, because what was worst in the pretentiousness of their age is to be found enshrined in the Standard Biographies (in two volumes, post octavo) under which most ...
— Some Diversions of a Man of Letters • Edmund William Gosse
... chocolate-tinted water over vegetable mire, rich, when stirred, in sulphuretted hydrogen. The only bridges are fallen trunks. Amongst the minor pests are the nkran, or 'driver,' the ahoho, a highly-savoured red ant, and the hahinni, a large black formica terribly graveolent; flies like the tzetze, centipedes, scorpions, and venomous spiders, which make men 'writhe like cut worms.' There was a weary uniformity in the closed view, ...
— To The Gold Coast for Gold, Vol. II - A Personal Narrative • Richard Francis Burton and Verney Lovett Cameron
... may say to anger, "You can root up, and destroy, and throw down, but to raise up and save and spare and tolerate is the work of mildness and moderation, the work of a Camillus, a Metellus, an Aristides, a Socrates; but to sting and bite is to resemble the ant and horse-fly. For, indeed, when I consider revenge, I find its angry method to be for the most part ineffectual, since it spends itself in biting the lips and gnashing the teeth, and in vain attacks, and in railings coupled with foolish ...
— Plutarch's Morals • Plutarch
... the place of the reigns of judges and kings, according to which reckoning was previously made (1Chronicles v. 29, seq.). One sees clearly from Sirach l., and from more than one statement of Josephus (e.g., Ant., xviii. 4, 3, xx. 1, 11), how in the decorations of Aaron (where, however, the Urim and Thummim were wanting; Nehemiah vii. 65) people reverenced a transcendent majesty which had been left to the people ...
— Prolegomena to the History of Israel • Julius Wellhausen
... you!" said Mother Snail. "Our son shall not go into an ant-hill; if you know nothing better than that, we shall give the commission to the white gnats. They fly far and wide, in rain and sunshine; they know the whole forest here, ...
— Andersen's Fairy Tales • Hans Christian Andersen
... not sleep, he dreamed. One day dinner was kept waiting for him. "I have just come," said he, as he entered, "from the funeral of an ant; I followed the procession to the cemetery, and I escorted the family home." It has been said that La Fontaine knew nothing of natural history; he knew and loved animals; up to his time, fable-writers had been, merely philosophers or satirists; ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume V. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... qualities naturally distasteful to him. It still seems strange to me that in easy-going Riverbend, where there were so many boys who could have lived contentedly enough with my little grasshopper, it was the pushing ant who must have her and all her ...
— A Collection of Stories, Reviews and Essays • Willa Cather
... of the Tigris, was the land of Chus: it was, likewise, called Cutha, and Cissia, by different writers. A river and region, styled Cutha, mentioned by Josephus, Ant. Jud. l. 9. c. 14. n. 3. the same which by others has been ...
— A New System; or, an Analysis of Antient Mythology. Volume I. • Jacob Bryant
... found 'no fault'—but that he wanted 'a change.' I quite understood that. The fact is I knew too much—that's all. I had saved a bit, and so, with a few good letters of introduction, went on from Glasgow to London. There, in that great black ant-hill full of crawling sooty human life, I knocked about for a time from one newspaper office to another, doing any sort of work that turned up, just to keep body and soul together,—and at last I got a ...
— The Treasure of Heaven - A Romance of Riches • Marie Corelli
... insects around the orchid, and think how the orchid has to select its own particular species of insect and cater for that, and the insect among all the flowers has to select the particular species of orchid; and how the insect, whether butterfly or bee or moth or gnat or ant, or any other of the numerous kinds of insect, and the orchid have to adapt themselves to each other—we see how marvellous the mutual adaptation of flower to insect and insect to flower must have been. We see how the particular species of orchid must have ...
— The Heart of Nature - or, The Quest for Natural Beauty • Francis Younghusband
... stringy-bark, box, and apple-gum, interspersed with occasional sandy flats, producing a broad-leafed Melaleuca, and a pretty species of Grevillea, with pinnatifid, silvery leaves. Neither the Melaleuca nor the Grevillea grew more than twenty feet high. On the flats we found a great number of ant-hills, remarkable for their height and size; they were of various forms, but chiefly conical, some of them rose ten feet high. From the appearance of the ant-hills I should take the sub-soil to be ...
— Voyage Of H.M.S. Rattlesnake, Vol. 2 (of 2) • John MacGillivray
... to the yard the day before the launching. The schooner seemed to be an ant-heap where all the ants were stirring, and all were on the outside, so many men were at work. The club boys were quite numerously represented through their friends. Sid's father was flourishing a paint-brush high up on a staging. Pip's father and also Juggie's cousin were swinging their ...
— The Knights of the White Shield - Up-the-Ladder Club Series, Round One Play • Edward A. Rand
... divinely childish sayings of kindness? Puerile they may be; but these sublime puerilities were peculiar to Saint Francis d'Assisi and of Marcus Aurelius. One day he sprained his ankle in his effort to avoid stepping on an ant. Thus lived this just man. Sometimes he fell asleep in his garden, and then there was nothing ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo
... there unbroken glass in the windows flung back the sun. A door opened and a midget in shirtsleeves came out, stretching arms, palpably yawning. Suddenly smoke jetted from a tumbled chimney, other puffs followed and steady vapors mounted. Ant-like men emerged from every house, gathered in little knots, busied themselves with the horses, hurried back to breakfasts. Faint sounds came up ...
— Rimrock Trail • J. Allan Dunn
... do yet taste Some subtilties o' the isle, that will not let you Believe things certain. Welcome, my friends all! 125 [Aside to Seb. and Ant.] But you, my brace of lords, were I so minded, I here could pluck his Highness' frown upon you, And justify you traitors: at this time I will tell ...
— The Tempest - The Works of William Shakespeare [Cambridge Edition] [9 vols.] • William Shakespeare
... alight on a tree whence they would not remove: And, on examining that tree, the negroes were sure to find wax and honey, but knew not whether it grew there naturally or not[31]. In the same country, they find much wax and honey in ant-holes, made by the ants, but somewhat bitter. In the seas of that coast, there are certain fish, known to the fishermen, which commonly swim upright in the water, having the faces ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. II • Robert Kerr
... as a black band a quarter of an inch high. Behind, the forest he had already left lay dwarfed in a ruled, serried line. But that was not all. Something was moving out upon the spotless plain of snow, something which appeared to be no more than crawling, ant-like, but was really traveling very fast. It looked like a smudged dot, nothing more; but it was a horse, really, galloping hard, with a light sleigh, and a man in it, behind. The horse had no bells, and it was not a reindeer ...
— The Way of the Wild • F. St. Mars
... bodies, and in their instincts, from the inhabitants of England and other countries in which they live, as the spaniel from the greyhound, or as the cart-horse from the Arabian. Our instincts, propensities, or fit and necessary habits, seem to lead us, like the ant, to lay up stores; theirs, like the grasshopper, to depend on the daily bounties of nature;—we, with the habits of the beaver, build fixed habitations; and they, like the deer, range from pasture ...
— A Morning's Walk from London to Kew • Richard Phillips
... and did his work well. He stood up for our rights and had a bill passed which made the ports of France and Eng-land free to our goods. At the end of the war he was sent to Eng-land to look out for our rights there; and, though now this is a pleas-ant task, it was not then, for it was hard for Ad-ams to be true to A-mer-i-ca and yet not an-ger the Eng-lish king, ...
— Lives of the Presidents Told in Words of One Syllable • Jean S. Remy
... Boston, but he came to us from Grand Rapids, Michigan. He was released to the Bostons in the spring of 1888 for the sum of $10,000, and played with that team for several years. He is now in the cigar business in Michigan and is, I ant glad to learn, successful. Pitchers of Clarkson's sort are few and far between, as club managers of these ...
— A Ball Player's Career - Being the Personal Experiences and Reminiscensces of Adrian C. Anson • Adrian C. Anson
... instead of wood for six months. 34. Enoch being informed by Adam the world was to be drowned and burnt, made two pillars, one of stone to withstand the water, and one of brick to withstand the fire, and inscribed upon them all known knowledge.—See Josephus, Ant. Jud. 35. A Franciscan friar, counsellor to the Inquisition, who visited the principal libraries in Spain to make a catalogue of the books op- posed to the Romish religion. His "index novus librorum pro- hibitorum" was published at Seville in 1631. 36. Printing, gunpowder, clocks. 37. The Targums ...
— Religio Medici, Hydriotaphia, and the Letter to a Friend • Sir Thomas Browne
... could run. Johnnie was foremost, while close behind him came Marty, who was nearly the same age and, though a girl, almost as swift-footed, but before going fifty yards she struck her foot against an ant-hill and was thrown violently, face down, on the turf. Johnnie turned at her cry and flew back to help her up, but the shock of the fall, and her extreme terror, had deprived her for the moment of all strength, and while he struggled to raise her, the smaller ...
— Dead Man's Plack and an Old Thorn • William Henry Hudson
... Origin of Species had come into the theological world like a plow into an ant-hill. Everywhere those thus rudely awakened from their old comfort and repose had swarmed forth angry and confused. Reviews, sermons, books, light and heavy, came flying at the new thinker from all sides." (White, A. D., The Warfare of Science and ...
— THE HISTORY OF EDUCATION • ELLWOOD P. CUBBERLEY
... be a good boy—and maybe we'll find them cubs yet," he conciliated. "You'd die a-laughing at the way they set up and scratch their ears when a big, black ant bites 'em, Buck. I'll show you in a little while. And there's a funny camp down here, too, where we can get ...
— The Flying U's Last Stand • B. M. Bower
... an' begun to get married, an' us all sittin' lookin' on an' no more guessin' what was comin' next than a ant looks for a mornin' paper. The minister was gettin' most through an' the deacon was gettin' out the ring, an' we was lookin' to get up an' out pretty quick, when—my heavens alive, Mrs. Lathrop, I never will forget that minute—when ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume IV. (of X.) • Various
... nineteen hundred years ago: "Men trust rather to their eyes than to their ears; the effect of precepts, is, therefore, slow and tedious, while that of example is summary and effectual." Says Franklin: "None teaches better than the ant, and she says nothing." "Not the cry" say the Chinese, "but the flight of the wild duck, leads the flock to ...
— The Golden Censer - The duties of to-day, the hopes of the future • John McGovern
... definite adoration of the insect. Like most things we call new, of course, it is not at all new as an idea; it is only new as an idolatry. Virgil takes bees seriously but I doubt if he would have kept bees as carefully as he wrote about them. The wise king told the sluggard to watch the ant, a charming occupation—for a sluggard. But in our own time has appeared a very different tone, and more than one great man, as well as numberless intelligent men, have in our time seriously suggested that we should study the insect because we are his inferiors. The old moralists ...
— What's Wrong With The World • G.K. Chesterton
... Rockliffe (3rd edition, 1866). The fable in question describes how, at a picnic of the animals, a discussion arose as to which of them carried off the palm for superiority of talent. The praises of the ant, the dog, the bee, and the parrot were sung in turn; but at last the ostrich stood up and declared for the dromedary. Whereupon the dromedary stood up and declared for the ostrich. No one could discover the reason for this mutual compliment. Was ...
— The Art of Literature • Arthur Schopenhauer
... firmness of the bristles, stops, hangs still, rolls his eyes, moon- large, and, in a fury of disappointment, goes out, leaving only the night, blacker and a little bewildered, and the unconscious throngs of ant-like human beings. Turning with terrified relief from this exhibition of diabolic impotence, the stranger finds a divine hand writing slowly across the opposite quarter of the heavens its igneous message of warning to the nations, "Wear—Underwear for Youths and ...
— Letters from America • Rupert Brooke
... destroyer. It is time that has made mountains with grains of sand and raised the obscure cell of geological eras to human dignity. The action of centuries is sufficient to transform any given phenomenon. It has been justly observed that an ant with enough time at its disposal could level Mount Blanc. A being possessed of the magical force of varying time at his will would have the power ...
— The Crowd • Gustave le Bon
... read of Robin Goodfellow and his power of transformation. Oh, how I envied him that power! How I longed to be able to compress my form into utter littleness; to ride the bold dragonfly; swing on the tall bearded grass; follow the ant into his subterraneous habitation, or dive into the cavernous depths of ...
— The Crayon Papers • Washington Irving
... because of that negligence they earned the name of 'foolish.' If we do not look forward, and prepare for possible drains on our powers, we shall deserve the same adjective. If we do not lay in stores for future use, we may be sent to school to the harvesting ant and the bee. That lesson applies to all departments of life; but it is eminently applicable to the spiritual life, which is sustained only by communications from the Spirit of God. For these communications will be imperceptibly lessened, and may be altogether intercepted, ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. Matthew Chaps. IX to XXVIII • Alexander Maclaren
... sleep, which detained him in that place until it was almost night; and in his sleep, his roll fell out of his hand. Now, as he was sleeping, there came one to him, and awaked him, saying, Go to the ant, thou sluggard; consider her ways and be wise. [Prov. 6:6] And with that Christian started up, and sped him on his way, and went apace, till he came to ...
— The Pilgrim's Progress - From this world to that which is to come. • John Bunyan
... assault on the part of Johnson, when he was already under the shadow of his seizure. I had directed his removal, and grudged him no professional attention that it was in my power to bestow. But afterwards, locked into my room, my whole nervous system broke up like a trodden ant-hill, leaving me conscious of nothing but an aimless scurrying terror and the black swarm of thoughts, so that I verily fancied my reason would ...
— At a Winter's Fire • Bernard Edward J. Capes
... stinginess of it. We grow our flowers as if they were the choicest rarities, to be coddled in a hotbed or under a bell-jar, and then to be exhibited as single specimens in some little pinched and ridiculous hole cut in the turf, or perched upon an ant-hill that some gardener has laboriously heaped oh a lawn. Nature, on the other hand, grows many of her flowers in the most luxurious abandon, and one can pick an armful without offense. She grows her flowers in earnest, as a man grows a crop of corn. One can revel in the color and the fragrance ...
— Manual of Gardening (Second Edition) • L. H. Bailey
... ants that literally "kick up" a row; good ants, bad ants, ants that are merely so so—we have them all and would not part with any—not even the stinging green ants, which are among the most singular of the tribe, nor even the "white ant" (which is not an ant), that would literally eat us out of house and home if not rigorously excluded and warred against with poison, for they are the great scavengers of ...
— The Confessions of a Beachcomber • E J Banfield
... their ignorance, when they deduce, with Varro, 'pavo' from 'pavor,' because of the fear which the harsh shriek of the peacock awakens; or with Pliny, 'panthera' from [Greek: pan thaerion], because properties of all beasts meet in the panther; or persuade themselves that 'formica,' the ant, is 'ferens micas,' the grain-bearer. Medieval suggestions abound, as vain, and if possible, vainer still. Thus Sirens, as Chaucer assures us, are 'serenes' being fair-weather creatures only to be seen in a calm. [Footnote: Romaunt of the Rose, ...
— On the Study of Words • Richard C Trench
... ant-house plants, of which North Queensland has two genera. One is purely an epiphyte, growing attached to a tree like many of the orchids. In both genera the gouty stems are hollow, a feature of which ants take advantage; they ...
— Tropic Days • E. J. Banfield
... solitudes of the Indian Ocean—17 days of heaven. In 11 more it will end. There will be one passenger who will be sorry. One reads all day long in this delicious air. Today I have been storing up knowledge from Sir John Lubbock about the ant. The thing which has struck me most and most astonished me is the ant's extraordinary powers of identification—memory of his friend's person. I will quote something which he says about Formica fusca. Formica ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... only possible because of the union of myriads of tiny lives to form a larger being, which manifests will, intelligence, affection, and the spiritual powers. The life of the amoeba or any other unicellular organism is low compared with the life in more complex organisms, like the ant or bee. Man is the most highly developed living organism on the globe; yet his body is built up of innumerable cells, each of which might be described as a tiny life in itself. But they are built up in man into such ...
— National Being - Some Thoughts on an Irish Polity • (A.E.)George William Russell |
