"Butterfly" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... and had long golden hair of which she was very proud. She was different from her sister, and never helped with the work, but spent the day combing her hair and catching butterflies. She would catch a pretty butterfly, cruelly stick a pin through it, and fasten it in her hair. Then she would go down to the lake to see her reflection in the clear water, and would laugh to see the poor butterfly struggling in pain. The people disliked her for her cruelty, ...
— Philippine Folklore Stories • John Maurice Miller
... much prejudiced against spiders and every insect in the known world with scarcely an exception. There is a horrid sensation created by their ugly forms that makes me wish them all to Jericho. The butterfly's wings are pretty, but he is dreadful ugly. The is no affectation in this, for my pride will not permit me to show this prejudice to any great degree when I can help it. I do not fear the little wretches, but ...
— The Teacher • Jacob Abbott
... which, when divested of its white paper wrapping, disclosed a blue plush box. A second later Mary was exclaiming over the dainty beauty of the bit of jewelry lying securely on its white satin bed. The pin was fashioned in the form of a golden butterfly, the body of which ...
— Marjorie Dean High School Freshman • Pauline Lester
... had been an August evening instead of a September one, both train and platform would have been crowded. But the butterfly summer maiden had flitted and, as is his wont, the summer man had flitted after her, so the passengers who alighted from the two coaches that, with the freight car, made up the Orham Branch train, were few in number and homely in flavor. There was a very stout lady with ...
— Cap'n Eri • Joseph Crosby Lincoln
... 'iron rations,' pair of socks and waterproof sheet. We carried four sandbags just below. Then we had the usual equipment, pouches containing 120 rounds, bayonet, water bottle and entrenching tool. Another 100 rounds in bandoliers, and I had extra an apron containing 12 Mill's bombs and butterfly wirecutters. The whole formed fairly heavy equipment. In the late afternoon when we were all lined up prepared to march off, orders came to cancel all orders. We stood by for two days. On 'X' night the 16th H.L.I. sent ...
— The Seventeenth Highland Light Infantry (Glasgow Chamber of Commerce Battalion) - Record of War Service, 1914-1918 • Various
... have been ignorant that ours is, in general, greater than the Periclean for the very reason that the Divinity is neither the devil nor a bungler; that three thousand years of human consciousness is not nothing; that a whole is greater than its part, and a butterfly than a chrysalis? But it was the assumption that it was therefore in any way great in the abstract that occasioned my profound astonishment, and indeed contempt. Civilisation, if it means anything, can only mean the art by which men live musically together—to the lutings, as it ...
— Prince Zaleski • M.P. Shiel
... Kathlyn to curb the wild desire to crush Winnie in her arms, arms that truly ached for the feel of her. Even as she fought this desire she could not but admire Winnie's superb acting. She and her father had misjudged this butterfly. To have come all this way alone in search of them, unfamiliar with the customs and the language of the people! How she had succeeded in getting here without ...
— The Adventures of Kathlyn • Harold MacGrath
... coming from the bordering mountains at one end, gone flashing into the mountain-guarded pass at the other. From a distance Kendric heard a bird singing away like mad and saw the sweep and flutter of a butterfly's wing. ...
— Daughter of the Sun - A Tale of Adventure • Jackson Gregory
... affliction of the chief official and his dozen or so of underlings. To have the first peaches and the last grapes in the county of York, to decorate her table with the latest marvel in pitcher plants and rare butterfly-shaped orchids, was Lady Laura's ambition; to astonish morning visitors with new effects in the garden her unceasing desire. Nor within doors was her influence less actively exercised. Drawing-rooms and boudoirs, morning-rooms and bedchambers, were always undergoing some improving touch, some ...
— The Lovels of Arden • M. E. Braddon
... the ages pagan elements have mingled in the festivities of Christmas, so in the Catacombs they are not absent. There is Orpheus playing on his harp to the beasts; Bacchus as the god of the vintage; Psyche, the butterfly of the soul; the Jordan as the god of the rivers. The classical and the Christian, the Hebrew and the Hellenic elements had not yet parted; and the unearthing of these pictures after the lapse of centuries affords another interesting clue to the origin of some of the customs of Christmastide. ...
— Christmas: Its Origin and Associations - Together with Its Historical Events and Festive Celebrations During Nineteen Centuries • William Francis Dawson
... a fountain at Nimes, in which the figures are fine and the drapery noble and distinct in treatment. The serious and comic Muses of the Fountain Moliere are excellent works. He made several separate statues which are well known; his Psyche has a butterfly poised on the upper part of the arm; Atalanta is fastening her sandals; Sappho is in despair. His Niobe group showed his power to represent bold action, and his Prometheus chained, erected in the garden of the ...
— A History of Art for Beginners and Students - Painting, Sculpture, Architecture • Clara Erskine Clement
... one earthly sight, The sun, the day; the stars, the night; Or tree, or butterfly, or flower, Or fish in stream, or bird in bower, ...
— Recollections of a Tour Made in Scotland A.D. 1803 • Dorothy Wordsworth
... Player, The Barrier, The Before the Feast of Shushan Big Bell in Zion, The Black Mammies Brothers Butterfly in Church, A ...
— The Book of American Negro Poetry • Edited by James Weldon Johnson
... of love and mystery, full of color, charm, and vivacity, dealing with a South American mine, rich beyond dreams, and of a New York maiden, beyond dreams beautiful—both known as the Silver Butterfly. Well named is The Silver Butterfly! There could not be a better symbol of the darting swiftness, the eager love plot, the elusive ...
— Fair Margaret - A Portrait • Francis Marion Crawford
... white butterfly came along the meadow, and instantly he ran out, flung open the gate, rushed down the steps, and taking no heed of the squeak the gate made as it shut behind ...
— Wood Magic - A Fable • Richard Jefferies
... young girl sings of successive forms she will assume, to avoid the attentions of her suitor, and he, ingeniously, finds the transformation necessary to overcome her. For instance, when she becomes a rose, he changes into a butterfly to kiss her. At last the maiden becomes convinced of the love of her ...
— Frederic Mistral - Poet and Leader in Provence • Charles Alfred Downer
... thou thinkest for; eighty odd years may be lengthened into ninety: the patriarchs lived till a hundred and more years, and we believe that the soul outlives the body. Out of the chrysalis we escape from our corruptible bodies, and the beautiful butterfly flutters Godward. Grieve for me a little when I am gone, but grieve not before I go, for I would see thy face always happy, as I remember it in those years long ago in Nazareth. Jesus, Jesus, thou shouldst not weep like this! None should weep but for ...
— The Brook Kerith - A Syrian story • George Moore
... Chevalier du Halga was still there, and the last deal of a lively mouche was going on. Charlotte de Kergarouet, in despair at Calyste's indifference, was paying attention to his father as a means of promoting her marriage. Calyste wandered hither and thither like a butterfly which had flown into the room by mistake. At last, when mouche was over, he drew the Chevalier du Halga into the great salon, from which he sent away Mademoiselle de Pen-Hoel's page ...
— Beatrix • Honore de Balzac
... answered her, "since being dressed as a butterfly does not prevent one from being an insect, and the best sustained preservation lasts at most till the day ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... calamity. Dying will be an experience to the believer which will be fraught with inestimably good things; that is, the act of dying, and not merely the being dead. It is no doubt as necessary to the nature of the soul, to its psychology, its soul-life, as the changes of the worm, chrysalis, and butterfly, are to the insect. And thus, as in all other things, where sin abounded, grace much more abounds, and even death, like a cross, is turned into a ministration ...
— Catharine • Nehemiah Adams
... wry face; but she only shook her head in a determined way, and announced that she would see to it in person. As for herself, she was as dry as a butterfly which had just emerged from a chrysalis, and I congratulated myself upon the care I had taken of her. But before we reached home she was in a plight almost equal to my own, for the wind had blown the wheat across the path, and it was impossible for ...
— The Love Story of Abner Stone • Edwin Carlile Litsey
... the professor producing his revolver, a weapon that might have proved fatal to a butterfly, but certainly would not be of any effect against the shaggy ...
— The Boy Aviators' Polar Dash - Or - Facing Death in the Antarctic • Captain Wilbur Lawton
... one touch to sweep away the wintry snow, and with another to clothe the landscape with profuse and luxuriant vegetation. How strange to see the humming-bird dart like a streak of golden light among the fragrant shrubs; stranger still to see the butterfly, attracted by the lines of some stray wild flower, flutter away again, repelled by the chilling neighbourhood of the last remnant of a snow-drift lying in a sheltered corner, where no sunbeam ever ...
— The King's Warrant - A Story of Old and New France • Alfred H. Engelbach
... remember the Butterfly's Ball and the Grasshopper's Feast in the halcyon days of their childhood? These toyful trifles, "light as air," doubtless suggested the Emperor's Rout. Do not start, expectant reader; this is no downfall of a royal dynasty, ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 17, No. 471, Saturday, January 15, 1831 • Various
... in the glass, which a woman ne'er misses. Nor ever wants time for a sly glance or two, A butterfly,[1] fresh from the night-flower's kisses. Flew over the mirror, and shaded her view. Enraged with the insect for hiding her graces, She brushed him—he fell, alas; never to rise: "Ah! such," said the girl, "is the pride of our faces, "For which the ...
— The Complete Poems of Sir Thomas Moore • Thomas Moore et al
... this a plea for the transcendental diet that drove Sydney Smith to that pathetic sigh, "Ah, I wish they would allow me even the wing of a roasted butterfly!" But perhaps it would not be amiss to conjure up a terror-demon from these bodies of ours, so that we should fear to violate laws with such merciless penalties,—should have none but well-cooked food, at sensible and systematic hours. Is it strange that little Miss ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 16, No. 97, November, 1865 • Various
... out through the open door into the fresh, soft morning air. The warm scent of the garden blew up to them. A large, yellow butterfly fluttered peacefully by. The dew still lay on leaf and flower, ...
— Ainslee's, Vol. 15, No. 5, June 1905 • Various
... Indians of Arizona say that the father of all men and animals was the butterfly, Cherwit Make (earth-maker), who fluttered down from the clouds to the Blue Cliffs at the junction of the Verde and Salt Rivers, and from his own sweat made men. As the people multiplied they grew selfish and quarrelsome, so that Cherwit Make was disgusted ...
— Myths And Legends Of Our Own Land, Complete • Charles M. Skinner
... Tegucigalpa, Prale had talked to her and had danced with her twice. He judged her to be about twenty-eight, some ten years younger than himself. She was small and charming, not one of the helpless butterfly sort, but a woman who gave indication that she could care for herself ...
— The Brand of Silence - A Detective Story • Harrington Strong
... my death," said the lady, who was crying; her trickling tears and her sopping handkerchief removed what remnants of her "cheeks" the sudden bath in the river had left. As the paint disappeared, one saw how very pretty the poor draggled butterfly was—big, honey-dark eyes, and quite exquisite features. "Oh, my soul and body!—I'll die!" she said, sobbing with cold ...
— The Vehement Flame • Margaret Wade Campbell Deland
... essence of Greece felt in our new way. For we've got our new way of feeling things. Rosamund tells us she repeated the words to Jennie Stileman, and Jennie had them set by a young Athenian who's over here studying English. He catches the butterfly, lets it flutter for a moment in his hand and go. He doesn't jab a pin into it as our composers would. Oh, there's Cynthia! I hope she heard the ...
— In the Wilderness • Robert Hichens
... a little old lady—the good fairy of her circle—whose interest in the heart-affairs of her friends wins her this pleasant if slightly sentimental title. But, ungrateful as is the task of breaking so innocent a butterfly upon the wheel of criticism, I'm afraid I must add that I think Miss CLARA TURNBULL has hardly carried out her purpose with sufficient discrimination. In plain fact she has allowed her sympathies to run away with ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, May 21, 1919. • Various
... was served. In the center was a pyramid of spongecake in the form of a temple with melonlike sides, and on the top was an artificial rose with a butterfly of silver paper hovering over it, held by a gilt wire. Two drops of gum in the heart of the rose stood for dew. On the left was a deep plate with a bit of cheese, and on the other side of the pyramid was a dish of strawberries, which ...
— L'Assommoir • Emile Zola
... the dream of precipitation into that wonderful tornado of worlds has the merit of more colourful idealism than that which was formerly displayed. Taken but as an hypothesis, it holds suggestions ampler than any other conveys. It intimates that just as the butterfly rises from the chrysalis, so does the spiritual rise from the flesh. It indicates that just as the sun cannot set, so is it impossible ...
— The Lords of the Ghostland - A History of the Ideal • Edgar Saltus
... shoes, picked up the skirt of his habit, and began to dance. The exhilarating drink, the ruddiness of the fire, the discomfort outside, the smoothness of the oak boards,—these were conditions of happiness for Father Baby. This was perhaps the crowning instant of his experience. He was a butterfly man. He saw his lodger, Dr. Dunlap, appear at the door as haggard as the dead. The ...
— Old Kaskaskia • Mary Hartwell Catherwood
... ground. He picked together half a handful of brownish things which had to be dried leaves. He stuffed them into the pipe, struck a match, and lighted it. He puffed away gloomily, surrounded by wholly monstrous vegetation. A butterfly fluttered over the top of the steel globe. Its wings were fully a yard across. It flittered lightly to a plant and seemed to wait, and abruptly a vivid carmine blossom opened wide; wide enough ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science January 1931 • Various
... through which we passed,—where the pine-trees rise so grandly in their awful height, that they seem to look into heaven itself. Hardly a living thing disturbed this solemnly beautiful wilderness. Now and then a tiny lizard glanced in and out among the mossy roots of the old trees, or a golden butterfly flitted languidly from blossom to blossom. Sometimes a saucy little squirrel would gleam along the somber trunk of some ancient oak, or a bevy of quail, with their pretty tufted heads and short, quick tread, would trip athwart our path. Two or three times, in the radiant distance, we descried ...
— The Shirley Letters from California Mines in 1851-52 • Louise Amelia Knapp Smith Clappe
... she prayed and watched in faithfulness to mother and son—she observed him come out and wander round the garden in great joy. He lifted up the soiled rose and put it in his coat; he released a butterfly caught in some mesh; he buried his face in fragrant honeysuckle. Then she understood that his heart was full of love, and was sure that it would ...
— Beside the Bonnie Brier Bush • Ian Maclaren
... after one pattern. Every day as his mood has changed since his last toilet, he will vary the colour, texture, form of his costume. Fashion does not rob him of free will. It leaves him liberty of all expression. Every day there is not one accessory, from the butterfly that alights above his shirt front to the jewels planted in his linen, that will not symbolise the mood that is in him or the ...
— The Works of Max Beerbohm • Max Beerbohm
... raise her finger suddenly, saying, "Fly away [something]." If that something is not capable of flight the other fingers must not move, but if it can fly they must rise also. Thus, "Fly away, thrush!" "Fly away, pigeon!" "Fly away, butterfly!" should cause all the fingers to spring up. But of "Fly away, omnibus!" "Fly away, cat!" "Fly away, pig!" no notice should be taken. The game is, of course, to ...
— What Shall We Do Now?: Five Hundred Games and Pastimes • Dorothy Canfield Fisher
... Naepor, "have watched him catch a butterfly and, holding it uncrushed, walk into a wood, and have seen a woodthrush flutter down to him, take the butterfly from his fingers, speed away with it to feed its young and presently return to his empty hand, as if expecting another insect, perch on his hand, peck at it and remain ...
— Andivius Hedulio • Edward Lucas White
... what?" growled Ercole. "This is a bad world. A man falls in love with a pretty little caterpillar; he wakes up and finds himself married to a butterfly. Oh, this is a very ...
— Whosoever Shall Offend • F. Marion Crawford
... require weeks and months of patient, happy effort to carry out. Beware that no one of them is repeated or continued so long at a time as to become a thing dreaded and disliked. Remember that the attention of a little child is like a constantly flitting butterfly that rests for only a moment or two on anything before dancing ...
— What the Mother of a Deaf Child Ought to Know • John Dutton Wright
... The first butterfly you see, Cut off his head across your knee, Bury the head under a stone And a lot of money ...
— Highways & Byways in Sussex • E.V. Lucas
... bread for the current day,—of all of these the learned gentleman knows nothing. With all these wretched beings, hard, raw reality wipes off the poetic coloring more easily than does the hand the colored dust of the wings of a butterfly. One look, cast by the professor at those unnumbered female sufferers, would have seriously disturbed his poetically colored picture, and spoiled his concept. The women, whom he sees, make up but a trifling minority, and that these stand upon the plane ...
— Woman under socialism • August Bebel
... here! How lovely it is in the country! There are moments when I should like to be a fly or a butterfly and hide in the flowers," said Jeanne ...
— Une Vie, A Piece of String and Other Stories • Guy de Maupassant
... little girl slept soundly. She had merry dreams, and finally woke up laughing. She hurried over her breakfast, and then stood ready to go for a butterfly hunt. She looked thoroughly happy, and evidently had found, and was holding tightly, the key to ...
— Stories By English Authors: Germany • Various
... even evinced by insects who never see their offspring. The butterfly uses the utmost care in selecting a suitable leaf on which to deposit her eggs. She selects one that will be nourishing food for the larvae when hatched out, and, after carefully observing whether it is ...
— The Dawn of Reason - or, Mental Traits in the Lower Animals • James Weir
... irrepressibly, light-heartedly, and skipped on to the first weed-covered rock that obstructed her path. It was an exceedingly slippery perch. She poised herself with arms outspread, with a butterfly grace as airy ...
— The Rocks of Valpre • Ethel May Dell
... trill of a bird, voicing an overflow of joy and the humming of bees among the vines of the church yard, where slanting headstones bore quaintly archaic names and life dates of sailors home from the sea. A wandering butterfly had drifted in and was winging its bright way about the place where the sermon had been interrupted. But the bated breath of awed amazement broke at the end of a long-held pause into ...
— The Tyranny of Weakness • Charles Neville Buck
... peculiar to the Radiates, but occurs in all divisions of the Animal Kingdom. There are many Insects that pass through their metamorphoses within the egg, appearing as complete Insects at the moment of their birth; but the series of changes is nevertheless analogous to that of the Butterfly, whose existence as Worm, Chrysalis, and Winged Insect is so well known to all. Take the Grasshopper, for instance: with the exception of the wings, it is born in its mature form; but it has had its Worm-like stage within the egg as much as the Butterfly that ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 10, Number 59, September, 1862 • Various
... in terrifying colours a picture of solitude, and at length his despair closed with idiotism. The amiable Gresset could not sport with the brilliant wings of his butterfly muse, without dropping some querulous expression on the solitude of genius. In his "Epistle to his Muse," he exquisitely paints the situation of ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. II (of 3) - Edited, With Memoir And Notes, By His Son, The Earl Of Beaconsfield • Isaac D'Israeli
... place. I wish we could leave it for a change," said Ayrault. "I don't mean forever, of course, but just as people have grown tired of remaining like plants in the places in which they grew. Alan has been a caterpillar for untold ages; can he not become the butterfly?" "Since we have found out how to straighten the axis," said Deepwaters, "might we not go one better, and improve the orbit as well?—increase the difference between aphelion and perihelion, and ...
— A Journey in Other Worlds • J. J. Astor
... kinds of animals, used to like sitting in a kitchen that was infested with these repulsive creatures, and told me that when she was alone they would run over her dress and were not in the least startled when she took them up. I have heard of a butterfly which used to come and sip sugar from the hand of a lady; and those who have kept spiders and ants declare that these intelligent creatures learn to distinguish their friends. So also fish, like the great ...
— Introduction to the Science of Sociology • Robert E. Park
... Bible-meetings, funerals and festivities, churches and concerts—in short, every thing that lives and moves and has its being awaits the military smile. And the smile is smiled. And so, I tell you what it is, my dear fellow, it amounts to this, that the life of an officer isn't by any means the butterfly existence that you imagine it to be. What with patronizing Tom, Dick, and Harry, inspecting militia, spouting at volunteers, subscribing to charities, buying at bazaars, assisting at concerts, presiding at public dinners, ...
— The Lady of the Ice - A Novel • James De Mille
... Seigneur, "it is true, I think, what the tailor suggested to my brother—on my soul, I wonder the Abbe gave in, for a more obstinate fellow I never knew!—that a man is born with the disbelieving maggot in his brain, or the butterfly of belief, or whatever it may be called. It's constitutional—may be criminal, but constitutional. It seems to me you would stand more chance with the Jew, Greek, or heretic, than our infidel. He thinks too much—for a tailor, or for nine tailors, ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... the masses of concert-goers. Gottschalk himself, with his epicurean, easy-going nature, laughed at the lectures read him by the critics and connoisseurs, who would have him follow out ideals for which he had no taste. It was like asking the butterfly to live the life of the bee. Great as were the gifts of the artist, it was not to be expected that these would be pursued in lines not consistent with the limitations of his temperament. Gottschalk appears to have had no desire except to amuse ...
— Great Violinists And Pianists • George T. Ferris
... in chase of a swallow-tail butterfly—one of the beautiful insects whose home was in the fens; but after letting him come very close two or three times, the brightly-marked creature fluttered off over the treacherous bog, a place of danger for followers, of safety for ...
— Dick o' the Fens - A Tale of the Great East Swamp • George Manville Fenn
... yelping, and looking wistfully over the swollen flood, which the poor thing had not the courage to brave. This day, for the first time, I heard the song of the Canada sparrow, a soft, sweet note, almost running into a warble. Saw a small, black velvety butterfly with a yellow border to its wings. Under a warm bank found two flowers of the houstonia in bloom. Saw frogs' spawn near Piny ...
— Wake-Robin • John Burroughs
... thin, soft, girlish arm, hanging listlessly, was lost in the folds of her pink tunic; in the other she held her fan, and with rapid, short strokes fanned her burning face. But while she looked like a butterfly, clinging to a blade of grass, and just about to open its rainbow wings for fresh flight, her heart ached ...
— Anna Karenina • Leo Tolstoy
... Scatchett at the piano in the salon beyond the partition, wearing a sweater and fingerless gloves and holding a hot-water bottle on her knees. Three rooms beyond, down the stone hall, the Big Soprano, doing Madama Butterfly in bad German, helped to make an encircling wall of sound in the center of which one might ...
— The Street of Seven Stars • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... the pipe and wires, Fluttering like some vain, painted butterfly From glade to glade along the forest path, Nor dreamed her light words echoed on the ear Of him, that holy man, who sate so rapt Under the fig-tree by the path. But Buddh Lifted his great brow as the wantons passed, And spake: 'The foolish ofttimes teach the wise; I strain too much this string ...
— The Light of Asia • Sir Edwin Arnold
... the spotted flycatchers, seem to have absolutely nothing to say, and accordingly have the wit to hold their tongues; and devote the whole of their small intellect to sitting on the iron rails, flitting off them a yard or two to catch a butterfly in air, and flitting back with ...
— Prose Idylls • Charles Kingsley
... rose-bud's breath; The bird's forsaken nest and her new song (And this is all the time there is for Death); The worm and butterfly—it is ...
— The World's Best Poetry, Volume 3 - Sorrow and Consolation • Various
... them were all the fantastic and enormous shapes with which Nature bedecks her robes beneath the fierce suns and fattening rains of the tropic forest. Common were forms and colors of bird, and fish, and butterfly, more strange and bright than ever opium-eater dreamed. The long processions of monkeys, who kept pace with them along the tree-tops, and proclaimed their wonder in every imaginable whistle, and grunt, and howl, had ceased to move their laughter, as much as the roar of ...
— Westward Ho! • Charles Kingsley
... place!" I exclaimed, a little surprised, surveying her dress of palest and softest Indian muslin; for she looked to me far too much of a butterfly for such serious work. "Do you really mean it; or are you one of the ten thousand modern young ladies who are in quest of a Mission, without understanding that Missions are unpleasant? Nursing, I can tell you, is not all ...
— Hilda Wade - A Woman With Tenacity Of Purpose • Grant Allen
... musicsellers's boy was sent to the publisher's for a number of copies of the song "I'd be a Butterfly, arranged for two trebles;" when, on being desired to repeat his order, he replied, "I'd be a Butterfly, arranged ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 12, - Issue 323, July 19, 1828 • Various
... grove, in the interior of the island, was Wallulah's lodge. The path that Multnomah took led through a pleasant sylvan lawn. The grass was green, and the air full of the scent of buds and flowers. Here and there a butterfly floated like a sunbeam through the woodland shadows, and a humming-bird darted in winged beauty from bloom to bloom. The lark's song came vibrating through the air, and in the more open spaces innumerable birds flew twittering in the sun. The ...
— The Bridge of the Gods - A Romance of Indian Oregon. 19th Edition. • Frederic Homer Balch
... trailed its smoke and smouldering fires. A glen beneath, a lonely spot of rest, Hung, scarce discovered, like an eagle's nest. Summer was in its prime;—the parrot-flocks Darkened the passing sunshine on the rocks; 10 The chrysomel[194] and purple butterfly,[195] Amid the clear blue light, are wandering by; The humming-bird, along the myrtle bowers, With twinkling wing, is spinning o'er the flowers, The woodpecker is heard with busy bill, The mock-bird sings—and all beside is still, And look! the cataract that bursts so high, As not to mar the ...
— The Poetical Works of William Lisle Bowles, Vol. 1 • William Lisle Bowles
... Metrodor, lead the dancers! The first beaker to the fairest, the best, the wisest, the most cherished, the most fervently beloved of women!" As he spoke he waved his goblet aloft, the flute-player, Xuthus, beckoned to the chorus, and the dancer Metrodor, in the guise of a butterfly, led forth a bevy of beautiful girls, who, in the cloud of ample robes of transparent coloured bombyx which floated around them, executed the most graceful figures and now hovered like mists, now flitted to and fro as if borne on wings, ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... AND NOSTRILS—The bridge of the nose should be very wide, with a slight ridge where the cartilage joins the bone. (This is quite a characteristic of the breed.) The nostrils should be large, wide, and open, giving a blunt look to the nose. A butterfly or flesh-coloured nose is not objected to in harlequins. EARS—The ears should be small, set high on the skull, and carried slightly erect, with the tips falling forward. NECK—Next to the head, the ...
— Dogs and All About Them • Robert Leighton
... If the butterfly courted the bee, And the owl the porcupine; If churches were built on the sea, And three times one were nine; If the pony rode his master, And the buttercups ate the cows; And the cat had the dire disaster To be ...
— Memories and Anecdotes • Kate Sanborn
... still that he was able to see things that a noisier youngster would have missed altogether. He saw a big bull-frog creep warily from the water and wipe his mouth and eyes with one of his fore legs, and he saw the same frog edge himself softly toward a white butterfly that was flitting about near the edge of the stream. He saw the frog lean forward, and then the butterfly vanished. It seemed like a piece of magic. The child knew that the frog had caught the butterfly, but how? The fluttering insect was more ...
— Types of Children's Literature • Edited by Walter Barnes
... wonderful, Roger? Wants to get drunk on poppies and kiss the writin' and thinks after that he'll be made into a butterfly. Your pa couldn't have been far from bein' a butterfly when he bought this book. There ain't no sense in it. And this—why, it's your pa's writin', Roger! I ain't ...
— Flower of the Dusk • Myrtle Reed
... I follow their little butterfly antics until they vanish beyond a thicket of flowering rhododendra, and then my eyes go back to the great facade ...
— A Modern Utopia • H. G. Wells
... "It would be truly difficult to hold the butterfly and force it to be still without brushing the down from its beautiful wings. But, paint now, Pesne, I will seat myself behind ...
— Berlin and Sans-Souci • Louise Muhlbach
... he went on. Again she made no reply, but the question set her thinking: why had she mixed herself up in this mysterious business? It was quite at variance with the usual methods of her gay and butterfly existence to meddle at all with serious things. Had she acted merely from a desire to see justice done and wickedness punished? Or was it the desire of adventure? Or was it, perhaps, the desire to be of service to His Serene ...
— The Grand Babylon Hotel • Arnold Bennett
... smiled, for not a cloud was seen o'er the blue heaven's expanse, As summer's myriad insect tribe led on the winged dance; The gaudy butterfly was there ranging from flower to flower, And by its side the wild bee humm'd amid ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 10, Issue 266, July 28, 1827 • Various
... the time to be a certain small collier lying in the downs, awaiting a fair wind to carry her into the port of London. This collier (a schooner) was named the "Butterfly," perhaps because the owner had a hazy idea that there was some resemblance between an insect flitting about from flower to flower and a vessel sailing from port to port! Black as a chimney from keelson ...
— The Lifeboat • R.M. Ballantyne
... with a mass of red-gold hair, as stupid as she was sly, and as rich as she was spendthrift, the lovely Olimpia had been sent adventuring to the bees of Ferrara, not as lacking honey for Venice, but as being too great a treasure for her mother's house. Her mother was La Farfalla—a swollen butterfly in these days—and frankly said that she could not afford such a daughter. Olimpia had no instructions; in fact, needed none. She went cheerfully out to what Monna Nanna and the Blessed Virgin should prepare for her, without kisses (which she ...
— Little Novels of Italy • Maurice Henry Hewlett
... misunderstand the mechanical view of things. When we use the word "machine," we call before our minds certain gross and relatively simple mechanisms constructed by man. Between such and a flower, a butterfly, and a human body, the difference is enormous. He who elects to bring the latter under the title of mechanism cannot mean that he discerns no difference between them and a steam engine or a printing press. He can only ...
— An Introduction to Philosophy • George Stuart Fullerton
... the sound and plunged into the jungle after it. Sagawa had protested. He could see him yet, his queer little monkeyish face eloquent with fear, his back burdened with specimen cases, in his hands Bassett's butterfly net and naturalist's shot-gun, as he quavered, in Beche-de-mer English: "Me fella too much fright along bush. Bad fella boy, ...
— The Red One • Jack London
... realized it, and felt the pull, for days; but it didn't become insistent until yesterday, when I received a letter from a chap whom I have known for years. He's always had a good deal more money than was good for him, and been a sort of social butterfly. I liked him, although I didn't believe that he had a serious thought in his head, didn't think that he was capable of one, but ... here, read what he has written me," he concluded abruptly, as a temporary ...
— 'Smiles' - A Rose of the Cumberlands • Eliot H. Robinson
... the poisonous thing didn't sting you," he said. "You're a naughty little boy to play with snakes, because they're dangerous bad things, and you die if they bite you. And now you must go straight to bed; that's the only punishment that has any effect on such a harebrained little butterfly." ...
— A Little Boy Lost • Hudson, W. H.
... tone—tetigisse periisse. At other times the text would be the passage from Jeremiah, "Mors ascendit per fenestras" This puzzled me still more, for what could be this death which came up through the windows, these butterfly wings which the lightest touch polluted? The preacher pronounced the words with knitted brow and uplifted eyes. But what perplexed me most of all was a passage in the life of some saintly person of the seventeenth century who compared women to firearms which wound from ...
— Recollections of My Youth • Ernest Renan
... searched for a way round, or returned whence they had come, or climbed the adjacent herbage, with the evident intention of reaching my hand and going up the sleeve of my jacket. From this interesting spectacle my attention was distracted by the yellow wings of a butterfly which was fluttering alluringly before me. Yet I had scarcely noticed it before it flew away to a little distance and, circling over some half-faded blossoms of white clover, settled on one of them. ...
— Childhood • Leo Tolstoy
... and sunny Sunday morning. The church windows were wide open, and a butterfly came in and set the choir boys to giggling. At the end of my pew a stained-glass window to Carlo Benton—the name came like an echo from the forgotten past—sent a shower of colored light over Willie, turned my blue silk to most unspinsterly hues, and threw a sort ...
— The Confession • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... in the provinces was an English version of "Frou-Frou," made for me by my dear friend Mrs. Comyns Carr, who for many years designed the dresses that I wore in different Lyceum plays. "Butterfly," as "Frou-Frou" was called when it was produced in English, went well; indeed, the Scots of Edinburgh received it with overwhelming favor, and it served my purpose at the time, but when I saw Sarah Bernhardt play ...
— The Story of My Life - Recollections and Reflections • Ellen Terry
... with the girl, watching through her eyes a butterfly as it fluttered to rest on a flower and perched there, gently ...
— The Inhabited • Richard Wilson
... happy, a beautiful butterfly came flying past, and the three boys, crying out that it was a flower with wings, set off to try ...
— Young Folks Treasury, Volume 2 (of 12) • Various
... A butterfly floated into the room And back again, pausing awhile to bask And wink its painted fans on the warm sill; A bird piped in the roses and there came Into the childless mother's ears a sound Of happy laughing children, ...
— The New Morning - Poems • Alfred Noyes
... often, but his letters did not do her much good they were so full of regret for the poverty which was keeping her from him and would keep her indefinitely for aught he knew. From her mother she seldom heard. That frivolous butterfly was too busy and gay to give much time or thought to her dying husband and overburdened child. She was still at Nice and still devoted to her American friends, the Rossiter-Brownes, as they called themselves, ...
— Bessie's Fortune - A Novel • Mary J. Holmes
... caught at an end of rope, drew it in a second, let go and clutched at a handful of the sail, and then I saw how it had twisted round and swept poor little Faith over, and she had swung there in it like a dead butterfly in a chrysalis. The lightnings were slipping down into the water like blades of fire everywhere around us, with short, sharp volleys of thunder, and the waves were more than I ever rode this side of the bar before or ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 55, May, 1862 • Various
... is like a butterfly, thinking only of the pleasures of the moment. Nellie Ribsam came down close to the edge of the creek and threw some crumbs out upon the surface. In the clear water she could see the shadowy figures of the minnows, as they glided upward and ...
— Through Forest and Fire - Wild-Woods Series No. 1 • Edward Ellis
... myself alone," The little opening flower transported cries. "Not to myself alone I bud and bloom; With fragrant breath the breezes I perfume, And gladden all things with my rainbow dyes. The bee comes sipping, every eventide, His dainty fill; The butterfly within my cup doth ...
— Sanders' Union Fourth Reader • Charles W. Sanders
... seemed as if her young spirit had been tempted away from the household paths of thought, far into tangled wilds where it had lost itself—tempted, like other children, by the mere pleasure of the ramble—led on to catch a butterfly, or chase the rainbow. Feeling—passion, had not mingled with the dream at all, and consequently there had been no suffering. I am not sure that on other occasions, when such absent fits fell upon her, Emily Hastings was not more joyous, more full of pure delight, than when, in a gay and sparkling ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 1, April, 1851 • Various
... aunt wrote to ask her not to come. Lee Hannaford's aloofness from his wife's relatives had turned to hostility; he spoke of them with increasing bitterness, threw contempt on Dr. Derwent's scientific work, and condemned Irene as a butterfly of fashion. Olga ceased to visit the house in Bryanston Square, and the cousins only corresponded. It was Dr. Derwent's opinion that Hannaford could not be quite sane; he was much troubled on his sister's account, and had often pondered ...
— The Crown of Life • George Gissing
... emptiness... It is not the wind that howls without, not the rain streaming in floods; without, Chaos wails and moans, his sightless eyes are weeping. But with us all is peaceful and light and warm and welcoming; something droll, something of childish innocence, like a butterfly—isn't it so?—flutters about us. We nestle close to one another, we lean our heads together and both read a favourite book. I feel the delicate vein beating in thy soft forehead; I hear that thou livest, thou hearest that I am living, thy smile is born on my face ...
— The Jew And Other Stories • Ivan Turgenev
... fixed on a tortoise-shell butterfly fluttering round the ceiling. The insect seemed to fascinate him, as things which move quickly always fascinate the helpless. Christian ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... luxuries of art, the beauties of genius, lend their splendors with a gorgeous profusion? Still it is only a magnificent prison. We see but little of the blue heaven; scarcely more of the varied tints of earth. The air we breathe is close; and the heart flutters to be free, as the imprisoned butterfly on the first day of spring. Who would not rather go forth into the fresh, free air, than be a prisoner even in a gilded cage? And Nature, is she not more beautiful than Art? Doth not that beauty make the step more buoyant, ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXIII No. 5 November 1848 • Various
... cry, And pale stars blossom in the sky, And twilight's gloom has dimmed the bloom And blurred the butterfly: ...
— Green Fields and Running Brooks, and Other Poems • James Whitcomb Riley
... That butterfly did not, however, appear to be hovering from flower to flower in the parterres of rank and fashion. In the daily lists of guests at dinners, receptions, dances, balls, the name of Maltby figured never. Maltby had not ...
— Seven Men • Max Beerbohm
... everything. The dead grass, the dead rock. . . . But now, what is this on the turf? A gay blue cricket! A cricket—only that? Nay, a war-horse, a magic little steed, a "real fairy, with wings all right." And there too on the rock, like a drop of fire, that gorgeous-coloured butterfly. ...
— Browning's Heroines • Ethel Colburn Mayne
... You pushed poor Nan and Phillis away, and would not let any one come near you but that cross old Dorothy, and you never bade us good-night; but if you promise to be good, I will forgive you and make it up," finished Dulce, with those light butterfly kisses to which she ...
— Not Like Other Girls • Rosa N. Carey
... went out, in came the Butterfly and the Moth, who made their calls together. The Moth was clad in grey, and the Butterfly liked that, because it set off his own brilliant ...
— Seven Little People and their Friends • Horace Elisha Scudder
... your hats, and away let us haste To the Butterfly's ball and the Grasshopper's feast; For the trumpeter Gadfly has summoned his crew, And the revels are now only waiting ...
— The Butterfly's Ball - The Grasshopper's Feast • R.M. Ballantyne
... gold clasps undone, and he opened the first page, and there was a beautiful Butterfly all red, and brown, and yellow, and blue, so beautifully painted that it looked as if it ...
— The Book of Dragons • Edith Nesbit
... blades of grass at the sweep of the scythe, before the charge to which his spirit imparted its triumphant energy;—but, be that as it might, there was never in his heart so much cruelty as would have brushed the down off a butterfly's wing. I have not known the man to whose innate kindliness I would ...
— The Scarlet Letter • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... one of those strangely constituted beings who cannot bear to see any innocent thing suffer. It matters not whether it be a worm in the dust, a butterfly in the air, a bird, a flower, or a human creature. The first time I saw you I knew that your state of health precluded you from the enjoyment of life natural to your sex and age. I also perceived that the physicians had been ...
— A Romance of Two Worlds • Marie Corelli
... of all countries many refer to insects, birds, animals, persons, actions, trades, food or children. In Chinese rhymes we have the cricket, cicada, spider, snail, firefly, ladybug and butterfly and others. Among fowls we have the bat, crow, magpie, cock, hen, duck and goose. Of animals, the dog, cow, horse, mule, donkey, camel, and mouse, are the favorites. There are also rhymes on the snake ...
— The Chinese Boy and Girl • Isaac Taylor Headland
... the Signora Psyche Zenobia. This I know to be a fact. Nobody but my enemies ever calls me Suky Snobbs. I have been assured that Suky is but a vulgar corruption of Psyche, which is good Greek, and means "the soul" (that's me, I'm all soul) and sometimes "a butterfly," which latter meaning undoubtedly alludes to my appearance in my new crimson satin dress, with the sky-blue Arabian mantelet, and the trimmings of green agraffas, and the seven flounces of orange-colored auriculas. As for Snobbs—any person who should look at me would be instantly aware ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 4 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... Silk-worm in fifty-six days is equal to eighty-six thousand times its primitive weight! On the other hand, after the insect has finished its transformations, it either takes no food at all, as in the May fly, or merely sips the honey of flowers, as in the butterfly, while the June beetle and many others like it eat the leaves of trees, and the tiger and ground beetles feed voraciously on ...
— Our Common Insects - A Popular Account of the Insects of Our Fields, Forests, - Gardens and Houses • Alpheus Spring Packard
... and father of Clarion, the most beautiful of the race.—Spenser, Muiopotmos, or The Butterfly's Fate (1590). ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook, Vol. 3 • E. Cobham Brewer
... and storm, in which the writers of that periodical were summoned to be leaders. Emerson remained in his home. He now and then visited Brook Farm, but was shrewd enough to foresee its catastrophe from the first. The child who sought her lost butterfly with tears, not knowing that it was softly perched upon her head, had a counterpart in the many enthusiasts, who continued to seek in communities or new sects the beauty which had floated before their eyes; but some there were who made the happier discovery that a quiet New England ...
— Great Men and Famous Women, Vol. 7 of 8 • Charles F. (Charles Francis) Horne
... Wun-lee, combing her hair, Saw a blue butterfly float through the air— Saw a blue butterfly flicker and settle On an azalea's ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 146, April 1, 1914 • Various
... unexpected drop would land her a few feet from their group. She was the only one of the flying-girls who touched the earth. And she always led up to this feat as to the climax of what Honey called her "act." She would drop to the very ground, pose there, wavering like an enormous butterfly, her great wings opening and shutting. Sometimes, tempted by her actual nearness and fooled by her apparent weakness, the five men would make a rush in her direction. She would stand waiting and drooping until they were almost on her. Then in a flash came the ...
— Angel Island • Inez Haynes Gillmore
... killing and skinning the unlucky mice, and (I do not regret to say) getting well stung by the bumble-bees. Others went after butterflies and birds' eggs in their seasons; and Tom found on Hazeldown, for the first time, the beautiful little blue butterfly with golden spots on his wings, which he had never seen on his own downs, and dug out his first sand-martin's nest. This latter achievement resulted in a flogging, for the sand-martins built in a high bank close to the village, consequently out of ...
— Tom Brown's Schooldays • Thomas Hughes
... have a dream for you, Mother, Like a soft thick fringe to hide your eyes. I have a surprise for you, Mother, Shaped like a strange butterfly. I have found a way of thinking To make you happy; I have made a song and a poem All twisted into one. If I sing, you listen; If I think, you know. I have a secret from everybody in the world full of people But I cannot always remember how it goes; It ...
— Poems By a Little Girl • Hilda Conkling
... Christians, wretched weary ones, who, diseased in vision of the mind, have confidence in backward steps, are ye not aware that we are worms born to form the angelic butterfly which flies unto judgment without defence? Why doth your mind float up aloft, since ye are as it were defective insects, even as a worm ...
— The Divine Comedy, Volume 2, Purgatory [Purgatorio] • Dante Alighieri
... all at once, 'O! it is much more respectable to be grave and look wise.' 'He has reversed the Pythagorean discipline, by being first talkative, and then silent. He reverses the course of Nature too: he was first the gay butterfly, and then the creeping worm.' Johnson laughed loud and long at this expansion and illustration of what he himself ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 3 • Boswell, Edited by Birkbeck Hill
... expressive, action, the interpreter of the mind. Feeling was pre-eminent in his Miming; and he used to render the scene of a separation with Columbine as graphic as it was affecting. Excellent were his "statue scenes" and his "catching the butterfly;" so also were his other ...
— A History of Pantomime • R. J. Broadbent
... with all her blessings? She was gay; and with the polite world gayety ranks as happiness, and commands the envy of the crowd. Nobody envies the quiet matron whose domestic life flows onward with the placidity of a sluggish stream. It is the butterfly queen of the hour whom people admire and envy. Lady Judith, blazing in diamonds at a court ball, beautiful, daring, insolent, had half the town for her slaves and courtiers. Even women flattered and fawned upon her, delighted to be acknowledged ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol. 5 • Various
... the human heart. There are other striking resemblances between human organs and certain vegetable forms, The forms of many mechanical contrivances in common use may be traced back to the patterns furnished by nature. Thus, the hog suggested the plow; the butterfly, the ordinary hinge; the toadstool, the umbrella; the duck, the ship; the fungous growth on trees, the bracket. Anyone desirous of proving the oneness of the earthly system will find the resemblances in nature a most ...
— The Handy Cyclopedia of Things Worth Knowing - A Manual of Ready Reference • Joseph Triemens
... the tail and flukes of a shark. To conceal these monstrous appendages he wore over his shoulders a kihei of kapa and allowed himself to be seen only while in the sitting posture. He sometimes took the form of a worm, a moth, a caterpillar, or a butterfly to escape the hands of his enemies. On land he generally appeared as a man squatting, after the manner of a Hawaiian gardener while weeding ...
— Unwritten Literature of Hawaii - The Sacred Songs of the Hula • Nathaniel Bright Emerson
... into the dressing room. A bronze dragon nailed by the tail to a bracket writhed away from the wall in calm convolutions, and held, between the conventional fury of its jaws, a crude gas flame that resembled a butterfly. The room was empty, of course; but, as he stepped in, it became filled all at once with a stir of many people; because the strips of glass on the doors of wardrobes and his wife's large pier-glass reflected him from head to foot, and multiplied ...
— Tales of Unrest • Joseph Conrad
... night butterfly awakened in broad daylight, like a rare and surprising moth, the dancing-girl from the other compartment, the child who wore the horrible mask. No doubt she wishes to have a look at me. She rolls her eyes like a timid kitten, and then all at once tamed, nestles against me, with a coaxing air of ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... form to No. 227, but without handle; with a double scalloped band around the constricted portion, and a single one around the mouth; figure of an insect on the upper half; apparently intended to represent a butterfly or large moth. ...
— Illustrated Catalogue Of The Collections Obtained From The Indians Of New Mexico And Arizona In 1879 • James Stevenson |
