"Chameleon" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... nobody understands, but which everybody uses, and most people will also fight for, live for, or even die for, fancying they mean this or that, or the other, of things dear to them: for such words wear chameleon cloaks—"groundlion" cloaks, of the color of the ground of any man's fancy: on that ground they lie in wait, and rend him with a spring from it. There never were creatures of prey so mischievous, never diplomatists so cunning, ...
— Harvard Classics Volume 28 - Essays English and American • Various
... relaxing, and sufficiently difficult of digestion. Lending itself, as it does, he says, in all the flowery imagery of the French tongue and manner, "to so many metamorphoses, it may be called, without exaggeration, the chameleon of the kitchen. Who has not eaten calf's head au naturel, simply boiled with the skin on, its flavour heightened by sauce just a little sharp? It is a dish as wholesome as it is agreeable, and one that the most inexperienced cook may serve with success. Calf's feet a la poulette, ...
— The Book of Household Management • Mrs. Isabella Beeton
... while she amused Bert, for whom Miss Nancy had no time. They seemed to Bert, whose youth had known responsibility and hardship, a marvellously happy and light- hearted crowd. They laughed continuously, and they extracted from the chameleon city pleasures that were wonderfully innocent and fresh. It was as if these young exiles had brought from their southern homes something of leisure, something of spaciousness and pure sweetness that the more sophisticated youth of ...
— Undertow • Kathleen Norris
... which at the first increasing of our familiarity was very zealous, is now at the last cast become most faithless." Besides the fish Scolopidus, the favorite animals of Lyly's menagerie are such as the chameleon, which, "though he have most guts draweth least breath;" the bird Piralis, "which sitting upon white cloth is white, upon green, green;" and the serpent Porphirius, which, "though he be full of poison, yet having no ...
— Brief History of English and American Literature • Henry A. Beers
... he passes on to describe the organs of animals. The animals are dealt with in groups—viviparous and oviparous quadrupeds, fish, serpents, birds, etc. The ape, elephant, chameleon, and some ...
— Fathers of Biology • Charles McRae
... damned chameleon,' said Archie, with his hands in his eyes. 'Want father to take me ...
— Tenterhooks • Ada Leverson
... which has something in common with almost every one of the seven celebrated by Shakespeare. Like most men in their twenties, he had the character of a chameleon, and adapted himself to his surroundings with almost uncanny facility. At college he had been an ardent member of a dozen cliques, even falling under the egotism of the men who dabbled in Spiritualism, but a clarity of thought and a strain of Dutch ancestry kept his ...
— The Parts Men Play • Arthur Beverley Baxter
... 1: Otherwise known as the "Hatherly Distillery," owned by a chameleon millionaire German-Jew, named Sammy Marks. Oh, that fine old Scotch whisky! The labels announcing this un-fact are, I understand, obtained from the Old Country and gummed on the ...
— A Yeoman's Letters - Third Edition • P. T. Ross
... Fern Owl; Mr. Rennie's interesting Notes on the Cleanliness of Animals; Mechanism of the Voice in Singing; the Vision of Birds of Prey; New species of British Snake; Animalculae in Snow; Habits of the Chameleon; Peculiarity of the Negro Stomach; Growth of Spanish Flies; British Pearl Fishery on the Conway; the cause of Goitre; seat of the sense of touch and taste; stones found in the stomach of Pikes; Learned Poodles at Paris; Faculties ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 17, No. - 488, May 7, 1831 • Various
... and nothing—it has no character—it enjoys light and shade—it lives in gusto, be it foul or fair, high or low, rich or poor, mean or elevated—it has as much delight in conceiving an Iago as an Imogen. What shocks the virtuous philosopher delights the chameleon poet. It does no harm from its relish of the dark side of things, any more than from its taste for the bright one, because they both end in speculation. A poet is the most unpoetical of anything in existence, because he has no identity; he is continually in for, and filling, some ...
— Selected English Letters (XV - XIX Centuries) • Various
... herself. She made her point without over-emphasis. On the other hand, Honora had read Mrs. Kame. No very careful perusal was needed to convince her that the lady was unmoral, and that in characteristics she resembled the chameleon. But she read deeper. She perceived that Mrs. Kame was convinced that she, Honora, would adjust herself to the new conditions after a struggle; and that while she had a certain sympathy in the struggle, Mrs. Kame was of opinion that the sooner it was over with the better. All women were born ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... they were bound? In the sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries the name stood for a huge stretch of littoral, running southward from lands of long winters and fur-bearing animals to lands of the canebrake, the fig, the magnolia, the chameleon, and the mockingbird. The world had been circumnavigated; Drake had passed up the western coast—and yet cartographers, the learned, and those who took the word from the learned, strangely visualized the North American mainland as narrow indeed. ...
— Pioneers of the Old South - A Chronicle of English Colonial Beginnings, Volume 5 In - The Chronicles Of America Series • Mary Johnston
... distinguished Moors; old, white bearded fellows, in turbans and burnouse. Each of them offered a present of some kind. One of them brought a beautiful pair of Barbary pheasants, another a young wild pig in a crate; others, quaint arms, and one had a chameleon of a rare species, which he carried on the twig of a tree. An address of welcome to Morocco was read by one of their number and then they asked Paul he would not kindly walk on the water in the daylight for them as the soldiers ...
— The Story of Paul Boyton - Voyages on All the Great Rivers of the World • Paul Boyton
... Jasher spoke positively, and pointed to a small tray of untouched food on the side table. "You have not even had luncheon. You must live on air, like a chameleon—or on love, perhaps," she ended in a ...
— The Green Mummy • Fergus Hume
... hired an automobile, and motored out to Potsdam. Then when we were outside the old Palace we heard that the Kaiser's "strong-for-peace" policy had been of no avail, that the Czar had insulted his messenger, and that now war was inevitable. We ourselves, chameleon-like, assumed the German colour. We believed what we were told, and felt sorry for the man who was called upon unwillingly to shed his nation's blood. On our way back to the hotel Kitty and I went to see Mr. Schermerhorn's cousin, Miss Barber, and then we realized the immediate gravity ...
— An Account of Our Arresting Experiences • Conway Evans
... garment of good writing. Good writing is only the perfect clothing of mood—the just right form. Shakespeare's form, you will say, was extraordinarily loose, wide, plastic; but then his spirit was ever changing its mood—a true chameleon. And as to the form of Mr. Shaw—who was once compared with Shakespeare—why! there is none. And yet, what form could so perfectly express Mr. Shaw's glorious crusade against stupidity, his wonderfully sincere and lifelong mood of ...
— Another Sheaf • John Galsworthy
... thing that excited any attention being the continual renewal of the blood-stain on the library floor. This certainly was very strange, as the door was always locked at night by Mr. Otis, and the windows kept closely barred. The chameleon-like colour, also, of the stain excited a good deal of comment. Some mornings it was a dull (almost Indian) red, then it would be vermilion, then a rich purple, and once when they came down for family prayers, according to the simple rites of the Free American ...
— Lord Arthur Savile's Crime and Other Stories • Oscar Wilde
... was Vivian Barkworth. To Clarice, at least, he was a perplexity. He was so chameleon-like that she could not make up her mind about him. He could be extremely attractive when he liked, and he ...
— A Forgotten Hero - Not for Him • Emily Sarah Holt
... disguised—you, who hold yourself guiltless—I do the same, and you hold me criminal—a robber, perhaps-a murderer it may be! I will tell you what I am: I am a son of Fortune, an adventurer; I live by my wits—so do poets and lawyers, and all the charlatans of the world; I am a charlatan—a chameleon. 'Each man in his time plays many parts:' I play any part in which Money, the Arch-Manager, promises me a ...
— Night and Morning, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... sir," said I. "But, surely, if you are the young gentleman with whom I spent the hours yesterday, you have the chameleon art of changing your appearance; I never could have ...
— The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner • James Hogg
... telephone, took the receiver off the hook and found himself in communication with the sheriff of Alexandria county. This was not the vacillating, veering sheriff who had spent nearly four days accepting the hints of a detective or sitting, chameleon-minded, at the feet of a designing woman. Here was an impressive and self-appreciative gentleman, one who delighted in his own deductive powers ...
— No Clue - A Mystery Story • James Hay
... other evening of her dinner-party—their first recognised meeting. Her whole person, which at first sight had impressed him with its emphatic individuality, now struck him as characterless and conventional. And yet—what was she like? She was like a chameleon. No, she wasn't; he recollected that the change of colour was a vital process in that animal. She was like an opal—all sparkle when you move it, and at rest dull, most undeniably dull. No, that wasn't it exactly. She was a looking-glass for other people's personalities ...
— Audrey Craven • May Sinclair
... new syntax, all being anomalous. With the Indians the argument does not conclude by induction, since no one is like to himself; for, in the short circuit of a day, he changes into more colors than a chameleon, takes more shapes than a Proteus, and has more movements than a Euripus. [332] He who has most to do with them, knows them least. In short, they are an aggregate of contrarieties, and the best logician cannot reconcile them. They are an obscure and confused chaos, in which no ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898 - Volume 40 of 55 • Francisco Colin
... back. His clothes were excellent, with a precise detail. Everything about him was conspicuously correct in the English fashion. But the man was not English. One could not say from what race he came. Among the races of Southern Europe he could hardly have been distinguished. There was a chameleon quality strongly dominant in ...
— The Sleuth of St. James's Square • Melville Davisson Post
... that as the elephants can hardly be haled from the sight of the waste, or the roe buck from gazing at red cloth, so there was no object that could so much allure the wavering eyes of this Thracian called Acestes, as the surpassing beauty of the Princess Lydia, yea, so deeply he doted, that as the Chameleon gorgeth herself with gazing into the air, so he fed his fancy with staring on the heavenly face of his Goddess, so long dallying in the flame, that he scorched his wings and in time consumed his whole body. Being thus passionate, having none so familiar as he durst make ...
— A History of English Literature - Elizabethan Literature • George Saintsbury
... from the upper atmosphere; the vast variety of tints with which the greens and the reds, the purples and the fiery crimsons of the western sky tincture the receptive surface of the neutral-hued granites; and the chameleon-shiftings of the dying day, as it sinks into the arms of night. Nor less admirable are the feats of the fairy Refraction. The mighty curtain seems to rise and fall as if by magic: it imitates, as it were, the framework of man. In early morning the dancing of the air adds many a ...
— The Land of Midian, Vol. 2 • Richard Burton
... tell; but the best men and women of my acquaintance agree that it is so.) Mr. Fossell preserved an impassive, inscrutable face; but every time the Commandant ventured a new argument Mr. Fossell's high, bald head twinkled and suddenly changed colour like a chameleon. It was green, it was violet, it was bathed in a soft roseate glow like an Alpine peak at sunset; and still while he argued the Commandant was forced to dodge his body about lest Mr. Fossell should catch sight of a mirror fixed in the ...
— Major Vigoureux • A. T. Quiller-Couch
... "A chameleon that needed the influence of a good woman. Then he gave me this box of Cuban chocolates, to keep me from crying, I suppose. Have one! They're not nearly as nasty ...
— South Wind • Norman Douglas
... time. A more unfortunate man for a crisis it would have been difficult to find. His whole life had been one of trimming; he had made his way by trimming; he had gained the governor's chair by yielding to the opinions of others. This training combined perfectly with the natural disposition of a chameleon. He was, or became, a sincere trimmer, taking his colour and his temporary beliefs from those with whom he happened to be. His judgment often stuck at trifles, and his opinions were quickly heated but as quickly cooled. ...
— The Gray Dawn • Stewart Edward White
... alligator lizard. It is called alligator lizard from its resemblance to a young alligator. This lizard is found in the southeastern United States from North Carolina to Florida. The common colors of the American Chameleon or the Anolis, which is its scientific name, are brown and green. These colors vary with conditions. When asleep, for instance, this little reptile is green above and white below, and when fighting or frightened it becomes green; at other times it is brown. Raymond ...
— Pathfinder - or, The Missing Tenderfoot • Alan Douglas
... chameleon-like girl whose vagaries and "sweet uncertainties" form the theme of many short stories, in most of which she is pictured as "the ...
— How to Analyze People on Sight - Through the Science of Human Analysis: The Five Human Types • Elsie Lincoln Benedict and Ralph Paine Benedict
... chameleon, another species of lizard, is still more curious. You must know that the chameleon is a lumbering lazy animal, who feeds on flies and other swift insects, and who would, therefore, be constantly liable to go without his dinner but that his ...
— The History of a Mouthful of Bread - And its effect on the organization of men and animals • Jean Mace
... they really were; and according to the interest which had been last exerted over his flexible mind, the King would change from an indulgent to a strict and even cruel father, from a confiding to a jealous brother, or from a benignant and bountiful to a grasping and encroaching sovereign. Like the chameleon, his feeble mind reflected the colour of that firmer character upon which at the time he reposed for counsel and assistance. And when he disused the advice of one of his family, and employed the counsel of another, it was ...
— The Fair Maid of Perth • Sir Walter Scott
... you," he said. "On the Pennsylvania line we cornered you; but you changed garb and shape and speech, almost under our eyes—as a chameleon changes color, matching the leaf it hides on.... I halted at that squatter's house—sure of you at last—and the pretty squatter's daughter cooked for us while we hunted you in the hills—and when I returned she gave me her ...
— Special Messenger • Robert W. Chambers
... was a hard one, it was sufficiently full of incident to banish monotony. Without such incident existence would have been intolerable. Nature herself seemed to be almost somnolent in these parts, for, besides a few chameleon-like lizards, a stray jackal or hawk, and a plentiful supply of small black beetles which stood on their heads when interfered with, all other forms of life were absent. Even vegetation was reduced to a few rushes and ...
— The 28th: A Record of War Service in the Australian Imperial Force, 1915-19, Vol. I • Herbert Brayley Collett
... relinquished house and furniture to go into eclipse on the Continent after blazing over London. She strongly recommended the Continent for a place of restoration, citing his likeness to that animal the chameleon, in the readiness with which he forgot himself among them that knew nothing of him. We quitted Bulsted previous to the return of the family to Riversley. My grandfather lay at the island hotel a month, and was brought ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... difficulties I am liable to encounter. The human heart, which will be the subject of my letters, presents so many contrasts, that whoever lays it bare must fall into a flood of contradictions. You think you have something stable in your grasp, but find you have seized a shadow. It is indeed a chameleon, which, viewed from different aspects, presents a variety of opposite colors, and even they are constantly shifting. You may expect to read many strange things in what I shall say upon this subject. I will, however, give you my ideas, though they may often ...
— Life, Letters, and Epicurean Philosophy of Ninon de L'Enclos, - the Celebrated Beauty of the Seventeenth Century • Robinson [and] Overton, ed. and translation.
... to make his fortune in this ancient capital of the world must be a chameleon susceptible of reflecting all the colours of the atmosphere that surrounds him—a Proteus apt to assume every form, every shape. He must be supple, flexible, insinuating; close, inscrutable, often base, sometimes sincere, some times perfidious, always concealing a part of his knowledge, ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... salmon-buff which is at the other end of the scale. I am particular in this description, because the eggs of this bird have been a subject of almost as many contradictions between Indian naturalists as the chameleon of pious memory. In shape the eggs are typically a rather long oval, somewhat pointed towards one end. Very much elongated varieties are common, recalling in this respect the eggs of Chibia hottentotta. Spherical varieties, if they occur, must be ...
— The Nests and Eggs of Indian Birds, Volume 1 • Allan O. Hume
... some glorious sight." That's excellent.—"His mouth was full, and less intellectual than his other features." True again. But when our artist pronounces that "his eyes were large and blue" and that "his hair was auburn," I am naturally reminded of the fable of the "Chameleon":—"They're brown, Ma'am,—brown, I assure you!" The fact is, the lady was enchanted—and I cannot wonder at it—with the whole character of that beaming face; and "blue" and "auburn" being the favorite tints of the human front divine, in the lords of the creation, the ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 7, No. 39, January, 1861 • Various
... the rapidity of an arrow, from one side of the pool to the other, at the same instant discoloring the water with a dark chestnut-brown ink. These animals also escape detection by a very extraordinary, chameleon-like power of changing their color. They appear to vary their tints according to the nature of the ground over which they pass: when in deep water, their general shade was brownish-purple, but when placed on the land, or in shallow water, this dark tint changed into one of a ...
— A Book of Natural History - Young Folks' Library Volume XIV. • Various
... years, But nothing of this kind in him appears; He, like a thorough true-bred spaniel, licks The hand which cuffs him, and the foot which kicks; He fetches and he carries, blacks my shoes, Nor thinks it a discredit to his Muse; 330 A creature of the right chameleon hue, He wears my colours, yellow or true blue, Just as I wear them: 'tis all one to him Whether I change through conscience, or through whim. Now this is something like; on such a plan A bard may find a friend in a great man; But this proud coxcomb—zounds, I ...
— Poetical Works • Charles Churchill
... officer, for he, too, had remotely reptilian forbears. Indeed he still sported a flexible tail and, save for his own orange and blue uniform, ablaze with precious stones, resembled nothing so much as a giant Terrestrial chameleon. The uniforms were no accident. Surveymen wore anything or nothing as the case called for it, and the Falsethsa admired bright colors, having few of their own and a good color sense. The gleaming jewels on Mazechazz's uniform stressed his superiority ...
— Join Our Gang? • Sterling E. Lanier
... the bungalow, some with such gaudy spread of wing as to tempt pursuit. Large bronze and yellow beetles walk through the short grass with the coolness and gait of domestic poultry. Occasionally a chameleon turns up its bright eye, as though to take our measure. The redundancy of insect and reptile life is ...
— Foot-prints of Travel - or, Journeyings in Many Lands • Maturin M. Ballou
... at the beginning of each quarter of the year, so traversing till doomsday, being impotent of staying in one place, and finding some ease by so purning [journeying] and changing habitations. Their chameleon-like bodies swim in the air near the earth with bag and baggage; and at such revolution of time, seers, or men of the second sight (females being seldom so qualified) have very terrifying encounters with them, even on highways; who, therefore, awfully shun to travel ...
— Folk-Lore and Legends - Scotland • Anonymous
... Tower. Sir George Harvey seems to have suspected, without wishing to be disagreeable, for Raleigh had to hint to Cobham that the Lieutenant might be blamed if it were discovered that letters were passing. Cobham shifted from hour to hour, and changed colour like a moral chameleon; Raleigh could not depend on him, nor even influence him. Meanwhile Cobham was transferred to the Tower, and now communication between the prisoners seemed almost impossible. However, the servant who was waiting upon Raleigh, a man ...
— Raleigh • Edmund Gosse
... Everything was locked up; the coal-cellar, the candle-box, the salt-box, the meat-safe, were all padlocked. There was nothing that a beetle could have lunched upon. The pinched and meagre aspect of the place would have killed a chameleon. He would have known, at the first mouthful, that the air was not eatable, and must have given ...
— The Old Curiosity Shop • Charles Dickens
... to follow the inclination of our appetite—this way, that way; upwards, downwards; even as the wind of the occasion drives us. We never think of what we would have, but at the moment we would have it; and we change like that animal (the chameleon) of which it is said that it takes the colour of the place where it ...
— Shakspere And Montaigne • Jacob Feis
... and understanding as you do a certain quality of the chameleon in Mr. Brumley's moral nature, you will understand that he worked through a considerable variety of moods. Sometimes he worked with disinterested passion and sometimes he was greatly sustained by this thought that here was something that would weave ...
— The Wife of Sir Isaac Harman • H. G. (Herbert George) Wells
... who had served with him are shown by a note in his diary, which was probably not intended for any other eye than his own: "Nov. 7. I had the comfort of making an old AGAMEMNON, George Jones, a gunner into the CHAMELEON brig." ...
— The Life of Horatio Lord Nelson • Robert Southey
... robe of chameleon-hued satin, so artfully woven, with a warp of golden thread and woof of crimson silk, that, as with every change of light and shade, it glowed in ruby coals or blazed in amber flames; and as with every motion of her graceful form it flashed ...
— Cruel As The Grave • Mrs. Emma D. E. N. Southworth
... The American Chameleon or "Green" Lizard, which ranges in this country in the coastal regions from North Carolina to the Rio Grande River, has a remarkable power of changing the color of its skin through shades of brown, gray, and green. In ...
— Scouting For Girls, Official Handbook of the Girl Scouts • Girl Scouts
... left her lip, When a light, boyish form, with trip Fantastic, up the green walk came, Prankt in gay vest to which the flame Of every lamp he past, or blue Or green or crimson, lent its hue; As tho' a live chameleon's skin He had despoiled, to robe him in. A zone he wore of clattering shells, And from his lofty cap, where shone A peacock's plume, there dangled bells That rung as he came dancing on. Close after him, a page—in dress ...
— The Complete Poems of Sir Thomas Moore • Thomas Moore et al
... nothing can go unless it has a gift from Heaven, and that is where the chameleon ...
— The Notebooks of Leonardo Da Vinci, Complete • Leonardo Da Vinci
... In character—chameleon is the only word that can in anyway describe her. As regarded her appearances in society, her acceptance of invitations, etc., she was usually regarded as capricious, to a fault. But this was as it appeared to those with whom she had to ...
— The Mark of the Beast • Sidney Watson
... light, and the dampness, too, was deadly—there were always puddles of water on the floor, and a sickening odor of moist flesh in the room. The people who worked here followed the ancient custom of nature, whereby the ptarmigan is the color of dead leaves in the fall and of snow in the winter, and the chameleon, who is black when he lies upon a stump and turns green when he moves to a leaf. The men and women who worked in this department were precisely the color of the "fresh country ...
— The Jungle • Upton Sinclair
... illustrate the modifications made necessary in tint by different exposure to light, by supposing that some one member of the family prefers yellow to all other colours, one who has enough of the chameleon in her nature to feel an instinct to bask in sunshine. I will also suppose that the room most conveniently devoted to the occupation of this member has a southern exposure. If yellow must be used in her room, the quality of it should be very different ...
— Principles of Home Decoration - With Practical Examples • Candace Wheeler
... levees in the great vaulted chamber into which I was first shown, but in a smaller and more sombre room, that of de Maintenon. The character and dress of those present reflected with a chameleon's fidelity the change in His Majesty's habits. Madame sat near the King, working upon a piece of tapestry which, when she was interested in what went on, lay idle in her lap. Behind her chair stood the sour-visaged Jesuit ...
— The Black Wolf's Breed - A Story of France in the Old World and the New, happening - in the Reign of Louis XIV • Harris Dickson
... mute performers, and demands their wider recognition. He ventures to hold that as much talent is necessary to constitute a tolerable figurant as to make a good actor. He describes the figurant as a multiform actor, a dramatic chameleon, compelled by the special nature of his occupation, or rather by its lack of special nature, to appear young or old, crooked or straight, noble or base-born, savage or civilised, according to the good pleasure of the ...
— A Book of the Play - Studies and Illustrations of Histrionic Story, Life, and Character • Dutton Cook
... biographer. Moore thinks that Byron's character was obliterated by his versatility, his mobility, that he was carried away by his imagination, and became the thing he wished to be, or conceived himself as becoming. But his nature was not chameleon-like. Self-will was the very pulse of the machine. Pride ruled his years. All through his life, as child and youth and man, his one aim and endeavour was the subjection of other people's wishes to, his own. He would subject even fate if he could. ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 4 - "Bulgaria" to "Calgary" • Various
... other people beginning with "M" in French history. Almost everybody in French history began with an "M," like the things that were drawn by the three little girls in the well), and even with the younger PITT. I have heard him spoken of as a charlatan, as a chameleon, as a chatterbox, and, by a man who had hoped that the KAISER would be hanged in Piccadilly Circus, as a chouser. Almost all of these estimates are thoroughly fallacious. Let us take, for instance, MACCHIAVELLI. It was the declared opinion of MACCHIAVELLI that for the ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 159, November 10, 1920 • Various
... watch it for some time without being sure that it is moving at all; though its eyes, which can move in different directions at the same moment, and its long thin tongue, so clever at catching the insects on which it feeds, are constantly in motion; but for its eyes and tongue, the Chameleon looks as if it were as dead as the withered ...
— Twilight And Dawn • Caroline Pridham
... answer every question put to her. Dogs will never attack a person that has a weasel's tail in his pocket or breast, provided the appendage has been severed from the little animal when it was alive. If one has a chameleon's tongue, cut out before the creature's death, he may defy all the sharpers in the world. If the blood of a civet-cat be sprinkled on the doors and windows of a house, witches and sorcerers will be prevented from entering it or molesting the inmates thereof. ...
— The Mysteries of All Nations • James Grant
... us from the hatred that the Prussian bears us are all the greater now that Germany is ruled by this man-chameleon. Let William do what he will, let him change colour as he likes, our hatred for Prussia remains unshaken and immutable. But acquiescence in his performances will draw us into his orbit and expose us to those same dangers which he incurs, dangers which, were we wise, ...
— The Schemes of the Kaiser • Juliette Adam
... each time he looked up he found a new subject sitting placidly for his portrait. Gilbert was fond of asking in the New Witness of people who expressed admiration for Lloyd George: "Which George do you mean?" for, chameleon-like, the politician has worn many colours and the portrait painted in 1906 would have had to be torn up in 1916. But gather the Chesterton portraits: read the files when he first grew into fame: talk to Mr. Titterton who worked with him on the Daily News in 1906 and on G.K.'s Weekly ...
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton • Maisie Ward
... is just what prophecy declared that she would be, the apostasy of the latter times.(1005) It is a part of her policy to assume the character which will best accomplish her purpose; but beneath the variable appearance of the chameleon, she conceals the invariable venom of the serpent. "Faith ought not to be kept with heretics, nor persons suspected of heresy,"(1006) she declares. Shall this power, whose record for a thousand years is written in the ...
— The Great Controversy Between Christ and Satan • Ellen G. White
... A chameleon-like wife might have her disadvantages, he thought, as he walked away after the talk with his god-mother; yet she would not be so apt as others to bore one with sameness. At nineteen she was charming; at twenty-five ...
— The Bondwoman • Marah Ellis Ryan
... when he took to preaching, he was dwelling in the midst of a Hard-shell community; and, perhaps, like the overwhelming majority of mankind, from enlightened to savage, from Christian to fetich, Burlman Reynolds was but chameleon to his surroundings. Yet, notwithstanding the somber complexion of his new vocation, and the more than somber complexion of his creed, outside of the pulpit his reverence was as genial, jolly, and joky as the cheeriest, smilingest, comfortingest, most latitudinarian Methodist preacher you ever had ...
— Burl • Morrison Heady
... wherein were some figures of the Apostles and other saints in tabernacles, executed in terretta; and there he caused to be made by Giovanni da Udine, his disciple, who has no equal in the painting of animals, all the animals that Pope Leo possessed, such as the chameleon, the civet-cats, the apes, the parrots, the lions, the elephants, and other beasts even more strange. And besides embellishing the Palace greatly with grotesques and varied pavements, he also gave the designs for the Papal staircases, as well as for the loggie begun by the architect ...
— Lives of the Most Eminent Painters Sculptors and Architects - Vol. 04 (of 10), Filippino Lippi to Domenico Puligo • Giorgio Vasari
... Lorraine's countenance, while Vivian was speaking, would have baffled the most cunning painter. Her complexion was capricious as the chameleon's, and her countenance was so convulsed that her features seemed of all shapes and sizes. One large vein protruded nearly a quarter of an inch from her forehead, and the dank light which gleamed in her tearful eye ...
— Vivian Grey • The Earl of Beaconsfield
... seasons, like the human race, had souls, Then two artistic spirits live within The Chameleon mind of Autumn—these, The Poet's mentor and the Painter's guide. The myriad-thoughted phases of the mind Are truly represented by the hues That thrill the forests with prophetic fire. And what could painter's skill compared to these? What palette ever held the flaming tints ...
— Hesperus - and Other Poems and Lyrics • Charles Sangster
... friend sauntered up to the group! Why should I not be as graceful, as easy? I would make a desperate effort to "assume a virtue if I had it not." I, too, sauntered elegantly, lifted my hat killingly, and approached my charmer just as if I didn't realize that I was turning all the colors of the chameleon. ...
— The Blunders of a Bashful Man • Metta Victoria Fuller Victor
... feeds upon.—Ver. 411. The idea that the chameleon subsists on wind and air, arose from the circumstance of its sitting with its mouth continually open, that it may catch flies and small insects, its prey. That it changes colour according to the hue of the surrounding objects, ...
— The Metamorphoses of Ovid - Literally Translated into English Prose, with Copious Notes - and Explanations • Publius Ovidius Naso
... amendment to the State Constitution, March 8, 1879, and coming up to the time of his death, in which I find fifty-five newspaper articles written by him, of from one to three columns in length, presenting, in his own terse, humorous, glowing, vigorous, convincing way, all sides of this chameleon-hued question; now analyzing the amendment and the laws to enforce it, turning aside here to answer the cavil of some carping critic, then to demolish and bury some blatant political defender of the whisky element; arraigning ...
— Personal Recollections of Pardee Butler • Pardee Butler
... emotion before this case of classed Chameleons; for the politician, the philosopher, and the man of science have inevitably figured in hostile reviews under the head of colour-changing sauroids. The popular notion respecting the colour-changing powers of these lizards is, that at will the chameleon can habit itself in any colour of the rainbow; that by turns it is a red chameleon, a blue chameleon, a green chameleon, and a yellow chameleon. The fact of the case is very far-from this notion. Chameleons are found chiefly in Africa and India, but also in some ...
— How to See the British Museum in Four Visits • W. Blanchard Jerrold
... The man who sets his heart upon a woman Is a chameleon, and doth feed on air; From air he takes his colors—holds his life,— Changes with every wind,—grows lean or fat, Rosy with hope, or green with jealousy, Or pallid with despair—just as the gale Varies from North to South—from heat to cold! Oh, woman! woman! thou shouldst have few sins ...
— The Lady of Lyons - or Love and Pride • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... sweetheart. For you've as many moods and personalities as a chameleon,—and each more dear and sweet than ...
— Patty and Azalea • Carolyn Wells
... feed his family. In course of time, however, he succeeded in accumulating a considerable sum of money, but as he had tasted the bitter poison of destitution, and had for a very long time earned the heavy load of poverty upon his back, and fearing to lose his property by the chameleon-like changes of fortune, he took up his money on a certain night, carried it out of the city, and buried it under a tree. After some time had passed be began sorely to miss the presence of his treasure, and betook himself to the tree to refresh his eyes with the sight of it. But when he dug up the ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 2 • Richard F. Burton
... him in Edinburgh drawing-rooms found him prodigal of tongue, somewhat puzzling with his wholesale enthusiasms, absurd flights of fancy, theories he had to propound, and ever ready to change like a chameleon to tone with his surroundings. The spritish, fantastic youth impressed those he encountered, even when he was one of the unfledged eaglets hatched in the ancient eyrie of his precipitous city, whom Browning tells us are not counted "till there is a rush of wings, ...
— Robert Louis Stevenson • E. Blantyre Simpson
... them, and for God's sake besought him that he might be permitted so to do. Whereunto Pantagruel would not give consent, but commanded him to depart thence speedily and begone as he had told him, and to that effect gave him a boxful of euphorbium, together with some grains of the black chameleon thistle, steeped into aqua vitae, and made up into the condiment of a wet sucket, commanding him to carry it to his king, and to say unto him, that if he were able to eat one ounce of that without drinking after it, he ...
— Gargantua and Pantagruel, Complete. • Francois Rabelais
... the age of the soul of man? As she hath the virtue of the chameleon to change her hue at every new approach, to be gay with the merry and mournful with the downcast, so too is her age changeable as her mood. No longer is Leopold, as he sits there, ruminating, chewing the cud of reminiscence, that staid agent of publicity and holder of ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce
... God, in opposition to Unjust and Sons of Belial,—which latter indeed are second-oldest, but yet a very unvenerable order. This, truly, seems the likeliest hypothesis of all. Names and appearances alter so strangely, in some half-score centuries; and all fluctuates chameleon-like, taking now this hue, now that. Thus much is very plain, and does not change hue: Landlord Edmund was seen and felt by all men to have done verily a man's part in this life-pilgrimage of his; and benedictions, and out-flowing love ...
— Past and Present - Thomas Carlyle's Collected Works, Vol. XIII. • Thomas Carlyle
... permits, into the aggregatory ideas that seem to satisfy men, we find a remarkable complex, a disorderly complex, in the minds of nearly all our civilised contemporaries. For example, all sorts of aggregatory ideas come and go across the chameleon surfaces of my botanist's mind. He has a strong feeling for systematic botanists as against plant physiologists, whom he regards as lewd and evil scoundrels in this relation, but he has a strong feeling for all botanists, and, indeed, all biologists, as against physicists, and those who ...
— A Modern Utopia • H. G. Wells
... the environment or to correspond with the differences between the environment of different individuals." The seasonal change of colour in northern animals is a well-known instance of the former, and the chameleon's alterations of hue ...
— The Naturalist in Nicaragua • Thomas Belt
... Ay, this same is she. [POINTING TO CELIA.] Out, thou chameleon harlot! now thine eyes Vie tears with the hyaena. Dar'st thou look Upon my wronged face?—I cry your pardons, I fear I have forgettingly transgrest Against ...
— Volpone; Or, The Fox • Ben Jonson
... books about the hotels of America seem to me as fallacious as most of the generalisations about this chameleon among nations. Some of the American hotels I stayed at were about the best of their kind in the world, others about the worst, others again about half-way between these extremes. On the whole, I liked the so-called "American system" of an inclusive price by the day, ...
— The Land of Contrasts - A Briton's View of His American Kin • James Fullarton Muirhead
... besetting sins that made up the inner life he had been leading beside her. Moor wrote with an eloquent sincerity, because he had put himself into his book, as if feeling the need of some confidante he had chosen the only one that pardons egotism. Here, too, Sylvia saw her chameleon self, etched with loving care, endowed with all gifts and graces, studied with unflagging zeal, and made the ...
— Moods • Louisa May Alcott
... information and interest touching all sorts of topics, so that one could sometimes fancy that his culture, like his colorless, fair mustache and pale, drooping features, had the neutral nature of a chameleon. Anyhow, he could always get on with viceroys and Cabinet Ministers and all the great men responsible for great departments, and talk to each of them on his own subject, on the branch of study with which he was ...
— The Man Who Knew Too Much • G.K. Chesterton
... has "our house" undergone since first dear Alice pictured it as a possibility to me! It has passed through every character, form, and style of architecture conceivable. From five rooms it has grown to fourteen. The reception parlor, chameleon-like, has changed color eight times. There have duly loomed up bewildering visions of a library, a drawing-room, a butler's pantry, a nursery, a laundry—oh, it quite takes my breath away to recall ...
— The House - An Episode in the Lives of Reuben Baker, Astronomer, and of His Wife, Alice • Eugene Field
... am delighted; you don't suppose that every one can live, chameleon-like, on air, or worse still, on false quantities. Ha, ha, ha! And those pictures too. That snow is more violet ...
— A Mere Accident • George Moore
... about as big as your hand. One of the army men takes it and puts it in the sleeve of his green tweed coat, and as he walks along carrying it the quaint little beast turns a greenish colour. It is a chameleon and has the faculty of changing to the colour of its background whatever that may be; this forms a protection against its enemies, who cannot ...
— Round the Wonderful World • G. E. Mitton
... baby diseases and had taught him the elementary things, because that was what she was paid for, corrected his table manners and tried to make him the kind of boy that she would have preferred to be herself had nature fortunately not decided the matter otherwise, and chameleon-like, Jerry reflected her tepor, her supineness and femininity. She recounted his virtues with pride, while I questioned her, hoping against hope to hear of some prank, the breaking of window-panes, the burning of a haystack ...
— Paradise Garden - The Satirical Narrative of a Great Experiment • George Gibbs
... to Gratton. Now, here in her father's log house in the mountains, she wondered that she could have done so. Did men change colour like chameleons, shifted from one environment to another? Or was it she who had been unstable, she who was the chameleon? A queer sensation which had been hers before, and which she was to know more than once in days to follow, mastered her. It seemed that within her, coexistent and for ever in conflict, there were two Glorias: a girl who was very young, spoiled, vain, and selfish; a girl who was older, ...
— The Everlasting Whisper • Jackson Gregory
... explanations have, however, been suggested: first, that the prevalent white of the arctic regions directly colours the animals, either by some photographic or chemical action on the skin, or by a reflex action through vision (as in the chameleon); secondly, that a white skin checks radiation and keeps the animals warm. But there are some exceptions to the rule of white colouring in arctic animals which refute these hypotheses, and confirm the author's. The sable ...
— Logic - Deductive and Inductive • Carveth Read
... changed, of course; a heavenly Chameleon, The airy child of vapour and the sun, Brought forth in purple, cradled in vermilion, Baptized in molten gold, and swathed in dun, Glittering like crescents o'er a Turk's pavilion, And blending every colour into one, Just like a black eye in a recent scuffle (For sometimes we must ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 6 • Lord Byron
... in different contexts. In seeking for the most characteristic context, I have shifted and shifted the notes and considered and re-considered them under different aspects, taking hints from the delicate chameleon changes of significance that came over them as they harmonised or discorded with their new surroundings. Presently I caught myself restoring notes to positions they had previously occupied instead of finding new places for them, and the increasing frequency ...
— The Note-Books of Samuel Butler • Samuel Butler
... the actions and events of our lives are chameleon-hued: their colors vary according to the light by which we view them. Thus Eve, who the night before had seen nothing but happiness in the final arrangement between Adam and herself, awoke on the following morning with a feeling of dissatisfaction and a desire to be critical as to the rosy ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 26, July 1880. • Various
... fact, that I would have been a hard nut for any man to crack. I've never been conspicuous for my efforts at self-obliteration. I've a temper that's as brittle as a squirrel bone. I'm too febrile and flightly, too chameleon-mooded and critical. The modern wife should be always a conservative. She should hold back her husband's impulses of nervous expenditure, conserving his tranquil-mindedness about the same as cotton-waste in a journal-box conserves oil. ...
— The Prairie Child • Arthur Stringer
... &c. (irresolution) 605; fluctuation, vicissitude; alternation &c. (oscillation) 314. restlessness &x. adj. fidgets, disquiet; disquietude, inquietude; unrest; agitation &c. 315. moon, Proteus, chameleon, quicksilver, shifting sands, weathercock, harlequin, Cynthia of the minute, April showers[obs3]; wheel of Fortune; transientness &c. 111[obs3]. V. fluctuate, vary, waver, flounder, flicker, flitter, flit, flutter, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... Moslem, Sikh, Hindu, Parsee, and Buddhist allies, until its millions hold India's domain. The perspective becomes confused, outlines jumble, figures are inverted, lights and shadows intermingle their chameleon hues, until under widened folds of British and Russian canvas "Lion" and "Bear" divide the "foray," still regarding each other with "rolling ...
— Oswald Langdon - or, Pierre and Paul Lanier. A Romance of 1894-1898 • Carson Jay Lee
... was hauled on board; and so we carried on, black snappers, red snappers, and rock fish, and a vast variety, for all of which, however, Wagtail had names pat, until at length I caught a most lovely dolphin—a beauty to look at—but dry, terribly dry to eat. I cast it on the deck, and the chameleon tints of the dying fish, about which so many lies have been said and sung, were just beginning to fade, and wax pale, and ashy, and deathlike, when I felt another strong jiggery jiggery at my line, which little ...
— Tom Cringle's Log • Michael Scott
... which has the greatest chance of electing their candidates; it matters not what party it may be, as Roman Catholicism has no politics, as her only desire is power, and it does not matter from what source she receives it, so long as it is granted her, as Romanism is like a chameleon, as she will change her political color to suit her surroundings if she is assured that she will be permitted to inject her deadly virus ...
— Thirty Years In Hell - Or, From Darkness to Light • Bernard Fresenborg
... therefore he tries to frighten us all? When we were going to be married, should we have wished to ride away at once to visit some stinking savage? Ach! I am glad I thought of that just as I was beginning to turn his gloomy colour, like a chameleon on a black hat, for it explains everything," and he struck his thigh with his big hand and burst into a ...
— Marie - An Episode in The Life of the late Allan Quatermain • H. Rider Haggard
... and put on his finger as she spoke a massive gold ring of a peculiar make, with a chameleon and a vessel under full sail ...
— John Deane of Nottingham - Historic Adventures by Land and Sea • W.H.G. Kingston
... argumentative dispatch, incomplete and below mark as it is, won applause, although it expresses only the hundredth of the patriotic ire bursting from the people's bosom. Otherwise the people would have at once found out all skillfully, cunningly, chameleon-like Seward dodges, which ignore before Europe the sublime character of the struggle forced by treason upon the loyal free States; and in which how he ...
— Diary from November 12, 1862, to October 18, 1863 • Adam Gurowski
... Ages. I also bought a dog-wolf, all white with a thick coat, fiery eyes, and spear-like teeth. He was terrifying to look at. Mr. Cross made me a present of six chameleons which belonged to a small breed and looked like lizards. He also gave me an admirable chameleon, a prehistoric, fabulous sort of animal. It was a veritable Chinese curiosity, and changed colour from pale green to dark bronze, at one minute slender and long like a lily leaf, and then all at ...
— My Double Life - The Memoirs of Sarah Bernhardt • Sarah Bernhardt
... cherries, he seems eating them, and gaily flinging the stones at Scapin; or with a rueful countenance he is trying to catch a fly, and with his hand, in comical despair, would chop off the wings before he swallows the chameleon game. These, with similar Lazzi, harmonise with the remonstrance of Scapin, and re-animate it; and thus these "Lazzi, although they seem to interrupt the progress of the action, yet in cutting it they slide back into it, and connect or tie the ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. II (of 3) - Edited, With Memoir And Notes, By His Son, The Earl Of Beaconsfield • Isaac D'Israeli
... as it's in a book, eh?" he asked. "What a perfect little chameleon you are, Judy Kendall. I don't know whether to take you into the grand surprise that I'm going to spring on these two young ladies, or leave you at the nearest library while I disclose my dark projects. What do you ...
— Miss Pat at School • Pemberton Ginther
... "Chameleon spirit—at once contributing to the misery of our existence and adding to its fancied bliss—at once detested and a charm, to be eschewed and to be practised—that, with thy mystic veil, dimmest the bright beauty of virtue, and concealest the dark deformity of vice— imperishable, ...
— The King's Own • Captain Frederick Marryat
... which I lifted it; its tail was armed with spines to the point, and was of proportional length to its body. The lizard was about eight inches in length. Naturalists have christened this harmless little chameleon the Moloch horridus. I put the little creature in a pouch, and intended to preserve it, but it managed to crawl out of its receptacle, and dropped again to its native sand. I had one of these lizards, as a pet, for months in Melbourne. It was finally trodden ...
— Australia Twice Traversed, The Romance of Exploration • Ernest Giles
... the sect of the AEolists possessed themselves with a dread and horror and hatred of two malignant natures, betwixt whom and the deities they adored perpetual enmity was established. The first of these was the chameleon, sworn foe to inspiration, who in scorn devoured large influences of their god, without refunding the smallest blast by eructation. The other was a huge terrible monster called Moulinavent, who with four strong arms waged eternal battle with all their divinities, dexterously turning to avoid ...
— A Tale of a Tub • Jonathan Swift
... Sewell's presence before she unpacked her heart. Then she left nothing in it. She ended by saying, "I have examined and cross-examined Sibyl, but it's like cross-questioning a chameleon; she changed colour with every new light she was put into." Here Miss Vane had got sorrowfully back to something more of her wonted humour, ...
— The Minister's Charge • William D. Howells
... lodgings there, and visited by all the town, except Fareham and his wife. De Malfort had lain for a fortnight at Lady Castlemaine's house, alternately petted and neglected by his fair hostess, as the fit took her, since she showed herself ever of the chameleon breed, and hovered betwixt angel and devil. His surgeon told him in confidence that when once his wound was healed enough to allow his removal, the sooner he quitted that feverish company the better it would be for his chance of a speedy convalescence. ...
— London Pride - Or When the World Was Younger • M. E. Braddon
... fades, and education spreads; that is, his brain had extraordinary receptive powers, and no great creativeness. Quickly acquiring any kind of knowledge he saw around him, and having a plastic adaptability more common in woman than in man, he changed colour like a chameleon as the society he found himself in assumed a higher and more artificial tone. He had not many original ideas, and yet there was scarcely an idea to which, under proper training, he could not have added ...
— A Pair of Blue Eyes • Thomas Hardy
... did; unless, perhaps, it was the poor blind poet, Philip Marston, who, being so deeply stricken, needed to love and to be loved more sorely than I, to whom Fate has been kind. And yet I should find it difficult to say wherein lay the charm of Rossetti’s chameleon-like personality. So with other men and women I could name. This is not so in regard to the great man now lying dead at Aldworth. Nothing is easier than to ...
— Old Familiar Faces • Theodore Watts-Dunton
... some women such as Marie Boyer and Gabrielle Fenayrou, who may be described as passively criminal, chameleon-like, taking colour from their surroundings. By the force of a man's influence they commit a dreadful crime, in the one instance it is matricide, in the other the murder of a former lover, but neither of the women is ...
— A Book of Remarkable Criminals • H. B. Irving
... of these people adequately would be well-nigh impossible. Their outlook possessed distortions which changed with chameleon-like rapidity. On the one hand was a band of lawless ruffians, steeped to their very souls in every sort of crime, in whose minds all law was anathema, in whose understanding all possession was a deliberate ...
— The Twins of Suffering Creek • Ridgwell Cullum
... the inward Life and Power which are always the mark of true religion. These "mimical Christians" reform their looks, instruct their tongues, take up the fitting set of duties and system of opinions, underprop their religion with sacred performances; "chameleon-like, they even turn their insides to whatever hue and colour" is demanded of religion; they "furnish this domestick Scene of theirs with any kind of matter which the history of religion affords them"—only, ...
— Spiritual Reformers in the 16th & 17th Centuries • Rufus M. Jones
... ancient "riti" of the Sanskrit, the Greek equivalent of which is "reo," and means the method or order of service to the gods, whereas, "ceremony" may mean anything and everything, from the terms of a brutal prize fight to the conduct of divine service within the church. But, no such chameleon-like definition or construction can properly be placed upon the word "rite," for it means distinctly, if it means anything at all, the serious usage and sacred method of conducting service in honor of the gods, or of superiors, and requires the attendance of ...
— The Light of Egypt, Volume II • Henry O. Wagner/Belle M. Wagner/Thomas H. Burgoyne
... She is a chameleon sort of girl but she is not rare. So often she is sweet and lovable. Almost without exception she is obliging, a jolly companion, fearless and frank. One often finds her a girl of talent and natural ability. She is the very opposite of the indifferent girl for she responds to everything. ...
— The Girl and Her Religion • Margaret Slattery
... through marriage.... The ballads from here to the end of the book are common to all, according to the properties and conditions of lovers who are diversely wrought upon by fickle love."[615] Here and there some fine similes are found in which figure the chameleon, for instance, who was supposed to live on air alone, or the hawk: "Chameleon a proud creature is, that lives upon air without more; thus may I say in similar fashion only through the love hopes which I entertain is my ...
— A Literary History of the English People - From the Origins to the Renaissance • Jean Jules Jusserand
... murder of Murray did not involve Buchanan's fall. He had avenged it, as far as pen could do it, by that 'Admonition Direct to the Trew Lordis,' in which he showed himself as great a master of Scottish, as he was of Latin, prose. His satire of the 'Chameleon,' though its publication was stopped by Maitland, must have been read in manuscript by many of those same "True Lords;" and though there were nobler instincts in Maitland than any Buchanan gave him credit for, the satire ...
— Health and Education • Charles Kingsley
... us was a sleepy, bald-headed man upon whose shining, nodding, snoring pate several flies were resting in quiet enjoyment of the sermon. All at once, this toothsome collection attracted the attention of a very large bright-eyed chameleon admirer who launched himself through the air upon said bald head in pursuit of his dinner. With a yell of fear, the sleeper struck the animal with his huge hand, sending the long tailed frolicsome creature heels over head directly upon the clergyman's manuscript, ...
— The Gentleman from Everywhere • James Henry Foss
... magic city—there were days of mists, silvery and gray, when life took on the indistinctness and indecision of a dream; as there were days less lucent, when sea and sky melted in an indistinguishable line and the chameleon tints of the marshes mellowed into a monotonous gray surface—when the wonted brilliancy of the sunset clouds, and the glittering domes and campaniles were only faint gray shadows on the gray whiteness of the waters. And gondoliers came suddenly ...
— A Golden Book of Venice • Mrs. Lawrence Turnbull
... the development of snakes and lizards. The latter are exceedingly numerous, and are most valuable destroyers of insects; there are several varieties, but the most common is the bright copper-coloured species with a smooth skin. The chameleon also exists. ...
— Cyprus, as I Saw it in 1879 • Sir Samuel W. Baker
... more. The Other, as she called it—giving the entity a thought-form that implied complete alienage—had a strangely chameleon-like method of feeding. It lived on life-force, as well as I could understand, draining the vital powers of a mammal vampirically. And it assumed the shape of its prey as it fed. It was not possession, in the strict sense of the word. It was a ...
— Where the World is Quiet • Henry Kuttner
... the shack, inside and out, and now you'd never know our poor little Joseph-coat home. I told Dinky-Dunk if we'd ever put a chameleon on that shack-wall he'd have died of brain-fag trying to make good on the color-schemes. So Dinky-Dunk made Olie take a day off and ply the brush. But the smell of paint made me think of Channel passages, so off ...
— The Prairie Wife • Arthur Stringer
... Scripture we have thus considered are those mainly depended on in support of the Calvinistic doctrine of election. The doctrine, like the chameleon, has different shades, according to the school. The high predestinarians, or, as they are called, "supra -lapsarians," maintain, as we have seen, that God created a certain number to be saved, and a certain number to be lost. The infra- or sublap-sarians, maintain that God contemplated ...
— The Doctrines of Predestination, Reprobation, and Election • Robert Wallace
... her skin and the long jet lashes curving in a great sweep from her full white lids, and I thought full sure that Venus herself was before me. My gaze halted for a moment at the long eyes which changed chameleon-like with the shifting light, and varied with her moods from deep fathomless green to violet, and from violet to soft voluptuous brown, but in all their tints beaming forth a lustre that would have stirred the soul of an anchorite. Then I noted the beauty of her clean-cut saucy nose ...
— Dorothy Vernon of Haddon Hall • Charles Major
... Sprudell closed his office door, he locked this adamantine, quibbling, frankly penurious, tyrannical man of business inside, and the chameleon does not change its color with greater ease than Sprudell took on another and distinct personality. On the instant he became the "good fellow," his pink face and beaming eyes radiating affability, conviviality, an all-embracing fondness for ...
— The Man from the Bitter Roots • Caroline Lockhart
... list, I am content For that chameleon-like she changeth, Yielding such mists as may prevent My sight to view ...
— Lyrics from the Song-Books of the Elizabethan Age • Various
... present too. The eyes were not only unwontedly conspicuous, they gleamed as if they were lighted by internal flames,—in some indescribable fashion they reminded me of my vanished visitor. The colouring was superb, and the creature appeared to have the chameleon-like faculty of lightening and darkening the shades at will. Its not least curious feature was its restlessness. It was in a state of continual agitation; and, as if it resented my inspection, the more I looked at it the more its agitation grew. As I have said, I expected ...
— The Beetle - A Mystery • Richard Marsh
... with an azure blue, which appeared deeper or paler as the circulation was accelerated or retarded. When the patient's face should have blushed, the face became blue instead of red. The changes exhibited were like the sudden transition of shades presented by the chameleon. The posterior part of the trunk, the axillae, the sclerotic coats of the eyes, the nails, and the skin of the head remained in their natural state and preserved their natural color. The linen of the patient was stained blue. Chemical analysis ...
— Anomalies and Curiosities of Medicine • George M. Gould
... of ability, and a verse-writer than whom many a worse has somehow or other obtained the name of poet. He began novel-writing very early (Falkland is of 1827), he continued it all his life, and he was the very Proteus-chameleon of the novel in changing his styles to suit the tastes of the day. He never exactly copied anybody: and in all his various attempts he went extremely near to the construction of masterpieces. In the novel of society with Pelham ...
— The English Novel • George Saintsbury
... crimson-velvet-coated, gold-beplastered, silken-calved beings who are ranged along the sides of the vestibule? For my part, I protest that, familiar though their aspect is to me, I cannot see a lord mayor's flunkeys in their state liveries—their hues varying chameleon-wise from year to year—without feelings of almost reverential wonderment. What a study for the great clothes-philosopher of Sartor Resartus! But it will never do to stand moralizing in the gangway here. ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 12, No. 32, November, 1873 • Various
... raised the lid than he staggered back with disgust. It was crammed with cakes, butterscotch, hardbake, pots of jam, and even a bottle of ginger wine—enough to compromise a chameleon! ...
— Vice Versa - or A Lesson to Fathers • F. Anstey
... they which are unclean unto you among the creeping things that creep upon the earth: the weasel, and the mouse, and the great lizard after its kind, and the gecko, and the land crocodile, and the sand-lizard, and the chameleon. These are they which are unclean to you among all that creep ...
— Mr. Gladstone and Genesis - Essay #5 from "Science and Hebrew Tradition" • Thomas Henry Huxley
... Ftatateeta: daughter of a long-tongued, swivel-eyed chameleon, the Romans are at hand. (A cry of terror from the women: they would fly but for the spears.) Not even the descendants of the gods can resist them; for they have each man seven arms, each carrying seven spears. The blood in their veins is boiling quicksilver; and their wives become ...
— Caesar and Cleopatra • George Bernard Shaw
... brief. The Yogis have discovered the reason of the wondrous capacity of the chameleon to assume the appearance of plumpness or of leanness. This animal looks enormous when his lungs are filled with air, but in his normal condition he is quite insignificant. Many other reptiles as well acquire the possibility of swimming ...
— From the Caves and Jungles of Hindostan • Helena Pretrovna Blavatsky |
