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Fleece   Listen
noun
Fleece  n.  
1.
The entire coat of wool that covers a sheep or other similar animal; also, the quantity shorn from a sheep, or animal, at one time. "Who shore me Like a tame wether, all my precious fleece."
2.
Any soft woolly covering resembling a fleece.
3.
(Manuf.) The fine web of cotton or wool removed by the doffing knife from the cylinder of a carding machine.
Fleece wool, wool shorn from the sheep.
Golden fleece. See under Golden.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Fleece" Quotes from Famous Books



... Saloons, bowie knives and bags of gold-dust are all too familiar to us, but who, on this side of the Atlantic at any rate, ever remembers the quiet towns with Victorian manners to which the diggers belonged and returned? Both "Tubal Cain" and "The Dark Fleece" are excellent yarns and wonderful pieces of pictorial ...
— Punch or the London Charivari, Vol. 158, March 24, 1920. • Various

... Art drooping under thy load, bemoiled with butcher's bills at home and ingots (not thine!) in the countinghouse? Head up! For every newbegotten thou shalt gather thy homer of ripe wheat. See, thy fleece is drenched. Dost envy Darby Dullman there with his Joan? A canting jay and a rheumeyed curdog is all their progeny. Pshaw, I tell thee! He is a mule, a dead gasteropod, without vim or stamina, not worth a cracked kreutzer. Copulation without population! No, say I! ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce

... and more stood huddling in the pens. Within was the liveliest scene, for there a dozen herds sat on clipping-stools each with a struggling ewe between his knees, and the ground beneath him strewn with creamy folds of fleece. From a thing like a gallows in a corner huge bags were suspended which were slowly filling. A cauldron of pitch bubbled over a fire, and the smoke rose blue in the hot hill air. Every minute a bashful animal was led to be branded with a great E on the left ...
— The Half-Hearted • John Buchan

... mind to matrimony! In the mean time she must be left with her lambs all around her. May heaven temper the winds to them, for they have been shorn very close, every one of them, of their golden fleece of ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)

... judge the position of affairs in Spain by whether Moret wore or did not wear the Golden Fleece when he came to dinner. When Castelar was dictator and the Republic proceeding upon conservative lines, the sheep hung prominently at his side. When the Republic was federalist and democratic, as was the ...
— The Life of the Rt. Hon. Sir Charles W. Dilke V1 • Stephen Gwynn

... night, I cleared out a muzzy cove quite; [9] He'd been a strutting avay like a king, And on his digit he sported a ring, A di'mond sparkler, flash and knowing, Thinks I, I'll vatch the vay he's going, And fleece my gemman neat and clever, So, at least ...
— Musa Pedestris - Three Centuries of Canting Songs - and Slang Rhymes [1536 - 1896] • John S. Farmer

... orator, "bade them feed his lambs. If they have done so, it has been to rob their fleece and ...
— At Home And Abroad - Or, Things And Thoughts In America and Europe • Margaret Fuller Ossoli

... hills—miners constituting the majority. Of professional gamblers there were many, and there was also a plentiful sprinkling of that despicable species known as "boosters" whose business it is to sit in at the games in the interest of "the house;" to fleece the victims who ...
— The Coyote - A Western Story • James Roberts

... heroes, sailors in the Argo, who, under the command of Jason, sailed for Colchis in quest of the golden fleece, which was guarded by a dragon that never slept, a perilous venture, but it proved successful with the assistance of Medea, the daughter of the king, whom, with the fleece, Jason in the end brought away with him to be ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood

... their death thus, there came a young man, beautiful to behold, and as clever as he was beautiful, who had a great desire to attempt the enterprise. First he went to a herdsman, and begged him to hide him in a sheepskin, which had a golden fleece, and in this disguise to take him to the king. The shepherd let himself be persuaded so to do, took a skin having a golden fleece, sewed the young man in it, putting in also food and drink, and so ...
— The Violet Fairy Book • Various

... picture of a shepherd, with a very kind and compassionate face, who was bearing home in his bosom a lost lamb. The lamb's fleece was torn in several places, and there were marks of blood on its back, as if it had been roughly used by some cruel beast in a ...
— A Peep Behind the Scenes • Mrs. O. F. Walton

... prototype, the Argonaut Jason, must have had quite a different exterior when he sailed on toward Colchis to find the golden fleece. Time, which changes the methods of contest, changes the forms of its knights correspondingly. Jason trusted in the strength of his arm and his sword-blade. Darvid trusted in his brain and his nerves only. Hence, in him, brain and nerves were developed to the prejudice ...
— The Argonauts • Eliza Orzeszko (AKA Orzeszkowa)

... so pretty in her youth's clothing; her delicate ankles and white knees bare between the conventional thigh-length of green embossed leather breeches, rough green stockings, and fleece-lined hob-nailed shoes. And over the boy's shirt the mountaineer's frieze jacket!—with staghorn buttons. And the rough wool cuff fell on the hands of a duchess!—pistols at either hip, and a murderous Bavarian knife ...
— In Secret • Robert W. Chambers

... the fellow with steady tone; "A sheep it is, and a sheep alone; A sheep (see here, what a splendid fleece!) With flesh the sweetest, and fat as grease; And such a prize For sacrifice, As neither gods nor men can despise, Unless they both have dust in their eyes!" "Sir," said the Brahmin, surprised to find A person so utterly out of his mind, "'Tis certain ...
— Sanders' Union Fourth Reader • Charles W. Sanders

... their owne glories and aduantages thought good to declare. But to come to the matter of voyages by sea, it is euident to all the world, what voyage Iason with certaine yong Grecian Princes made to Colchos in the Oriental Countries to winne the golden Fleece, as also the trauels by Hercules performed into Libia in the West partes, to winne the Aurea Mala, or golden apples of Hesperides, which notwithstanding neither for length, daunger, nor profite, are any thing ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques, - and Discoveries of The English Nation, Volume 10 - Asia, Part III • Richard Hakluyt

... many hours must I tend my flock, So many hours must I take my rest, So many hours must I contemplate, So many hours must I sport myself; So many days my ewes have been with young, So many weeks ere the poor fools will yean, So many months ere I shall shear the fleece: So many minutes, hours, weeks, months, and years Past over to the end they were created, Would bring grey ...
— Table-Talk - Essays on Men and Manners • William Hazlitt

... but the fleece of night Invisible blinding my face and my eyes! What if in their flight My ...
— New Poems • D. H. Lawrence

... from the lower part of the hoof to the top of the head only three feet three inches, and to the shoulders two feet and a half. In form it resembles the sheep, but it has a longer neck and a more elegant head. The fleece of this animal is beautifully soft and very long; in some parts it is four or five inches in length. Its color is usually either white or black; but in some few instances it is speckled. The Indians ...
— Travels in Peru, on the Coast, in the Sierra, Across the Cordilleras and the Andes, into the Primeval Forests • J. J. von Tschudi

... both agree, that "Might alone is Right!" Despite of sneers like these, O faithful few, Who dare to hold God's word and witness true, Whose clear-eyed faith transcends our evil time, And o'er the present wilderness of crime Sees the calm future, with its robes of green, Its fleece-flecked mountains, and soft streams between,— Still keep the path which duty bids ye tread, Though worldly wisdom shake the cautious head; No truth from Heaven descends upon our sphere, Without the greeting of the skeptic's sneer; Denied and mocked at, till ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier

... creek creep cheer deer deed deep feed feel feet fleece green heel heed indeed keep keel keen kneel meek need needle peel peep queer screen seed seen sheet sheep sleep sleeve sneeze squeeze street speech steeple steet sweep sleet teeth ...
— The Art Of Writing & Speaking The English Language - Word-Study and Composition & Rhetoric • Sherwin Cody

... steaming to the Sun, Give the lost wavelets back in cloudy fleece To trickle down the hills, and glide again; ...
— The Light of Asia • Sir Edwin Arnold

... paupers for the Evil, Touch'd England half way to the devil Or Hook, picks up my favorite hits, For when was friendship between wits? Or Lyster, doubly dandyfied, Fidgets his donkey by my side; Or Bulwer rambles back from Greece, Woolgathering from the Golden fleece— Or forty volumes, piping hot, Come blazing from volcano Scott; When pens like their's play all my game. The tasteless world must bear ...
— Poems (1828) • Thomas Gent

... months ago. John Jones had sold half his interest in the "Bald Eagle and Mary Ann" for $65,000, gold coin, and gone to the States for his family. The widow Brewster had "struck it rich" in the "Golden Fleece" and sold ten feet for $18,000—hadn't money enough to buy a crape bonnet when Sing-Sing Tommy killed her husband at Baldy Johnson's wake last spring. The "Last Chance" had found a "clay casing" and knew ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain

... room and, looking about for something with which to execute Kells's last order, she stripped some soft, woolly bits from a fleece-lined piece of cloth. With these she essayed to deaden her hearing. Then she returned. Kells spoke to her, but, though she seemed dully to hear his voice, she could not distinguish what he said. She shook her head. With that Kells waved her out upon ...
— The Border Legion • Zane Grey

... There were five of them, and up to this time they had been the best team in the village. They had one virtue: under the whip they could whirl a sledge over the snow farther and faster than a horse could trot in a day. But they had innumerable vices. Their leader, Carcajou, had a fleece like a merino ram. But under this coat of innocence he carried a heart so black that he would bite while he was wagging his tail. This smooth devil, and his four followers like unto himself, had sworn relentless hatred to Pichou, and they ...
— The Ruling Passion • Henry van Dyke

... these waking dreams of his, the little man peering nearsightedly at the shimmering white beach saw instead of a beach the first heavy fall of snow upon the withers of the Green Mountains; saw not unchanging stretches of sand but a blanket of purest fleece, frilled and flounced and scrolled after the drift wind had billowed it up in low places but otherwise smooth and fair except where it had been rutted by sleigh runners and packed by the snow-boltered hoofs of bay Dobbins and sorrel Dollies, the ...
— From Place to Place • Irvin S. Cobb

... amount of wealth available for plunder is very much smaller than is usually supposed. It is easy to destroy capital values, but very difficult to distribute them. The time will soon arrive when the patient sheep will be found to have lost not only his fleece but his skin, and the privileged workman will then have to choose between taxing himself and abandoning socialism. There is little doubt which he will prefer. The result will be that the festering sore of our slum-population ...
— Outspoken Essays • William Ralph Inge

... Pencill were his owne; That himselfe judged himselfe, could singly do, And was at last Beaumont and Fletcher too; Else we had lost his Shepherdesse, a piece Even and smooth, spun from a finer fleece, Where softnesse raignes, where passions passions greet, Gentle and high, as floods of Balsam meet. Where dressed in white expressions, sit bright Loves, Drawne, like their fairest Queen, by milkie Doves; ...
— The Works of Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher in Ten Volumes - Volume I. • Beaumont and Fletcher

... diminutive size, his stature being about four feet nine inches! Professor Menzel, who is of the most humble origin, is to-day a Knight of the Order of the Black Eagle, which is the Prussian equivalent of the English Order of the Garter, or of the Austrian Order of the Golden Fleece, this decoration carrying with it a patent of hereditary nobility. He is now considerably over eighty, but from his twelfth year he has earned his living by means of his brush and palette. All his principal paintings are devoted to the illustration of historic episodes of Prussian ...
— The Secret Memoirs of the Courts of Europe: William II, Germany; Francis Joseph, Austria-Hungary, Volume I. (of 2) • Mme. La Marquise de Fontenoy

... must I tend my flock; So many hours must I take my rest; So many hours must I contemplate; So many hours must I sport myself; So many days my ewes have been with young; So many weeks ere the poor fools will ean; So many years ere I shall shear the fleece. So minutes, hours, days, months, and years, Pass'd over to the end they were created, Would bring white hairs unto a quiet grave. Ah, what a life were this! how sweet! how lovely! Gives not the hawthorn bush a sweeter shade To shepherds looking on their silly sheep Than ...
— King Henry VI, Third Part • William Shakespeare [Rolfe edition]

... my way to "The Golden Fleece," and there, in the bar parlour, I met an old man and a merry. His face was as round and almost as red as a Dutch cheese, and many a year had passed since he had last seen his feet. I felt drawn to this old man, whose baptismal name was Timothy Barraclough, but who always answered to the ...
— Tales of the Ridings • F. W. Moorman

... scant opportunity for observation of the scenes passing below. He had no eye for the tramps, laden with grain from Odessa, coming down from the Black Sea; for the vessels of ancient shape and build, such as the Argonauts might have sailed in when questing for the Golden Fleece; for the graceful caiques rowed by boatmen in zouaves of crimson and gold, in the sterns of which the flower of Circassian beauty in gossamer veils reclined on divans and carpets from the most famous looms of Persia and Bokhara. These visions ...
— Round the World in Seven Days • Herbert Strang

... guess, And always fall into a hideous mess. I'm sure my charming mistress is most lenient To have devised a method so convenient To rid herself, and China, of such geese; Much harder tasks,—to fetch the golden fleece— Or singing water—or the talking bird— Were formerly exacted, as I've heard. My lovely Highness is not so inhuman, She only tests her sweethearts' fine acumen; And if she must submit to husband's rule, At least she'll not be governed ...
— Turandot: The Chinese Sphinx • Johann Christoph Friedrich von Schiller

... to exert all the craft for which he is so famous, to accomplish this sole purpose of enjoyment. He marries a wife, and the handsomest he can procure; that, when the ardour of desire is satiated, she may fleece some gallant, who shall pay for his pleasures elsewhere. And, as variety is the object of all, gallant succeeds to gallant, while he himself flies from mistress to mistress, and thus an equal ...
— Anna St. Ives • Thomas Holcroft

... absence of forests precluded nightingales; but now the falcon, the swan, and the wild goose have fled. The sheep of Portland, nowadays, are fat and have fine wool; the few scattered ewes, which nibbled the salt grass there two centuries ago, were small and tough and coarse in the fleece, as became Celtic flocks brought there by garlic-eating shepherds, who lived to a hundred, and who, at the distance of half a mile, could pierce a cuirass with their yard-long arrows. Uncultivated land makes coarse wool. The Chesil of to-day resembles in no particular the Chesil of ...
— The Man Who Laughs • Victor Hugo

... is blocked up with snow. Inaccessible and impassable, those wild, unfrequented roads, which in August are overgrown with high grass, in December are drifted to the arm-pit with the white fleece from the sky. As if an ocean rolled between man and man, intercommunication is often suspended for ...
— Israel Potter • Herman Melville

... darkly flushed from dancing, swore that whenever Don John should be next sent with an army, they would go, too, and win his battles and share in his immortal glory; and grand, grey men who wore the Golden Fleece, men who had seen great battles in the Emperor's day, stood together and talked of him, and praised God that Spain had another hero of the Austrian house, to strike terror to the heart of France, to ...
— In The Palace Of The King - A Love Story Of Old Madrid • F. Marion Crawford

... I might have been, but I knew better. I kept out. Joe Granberry was It from the start. He had everybody else beat a couple of leagues and thence east to a stake and mound. But, anyhow, Myra was a nine-pound, full-merino, fall-clip fleece, sacked and loaded on a ...
— Options • O. Henry

... call it, "draw in," And some undefined form, "looming large" through the haze Presents itself, right in your path, to your gaze, Inducing a dread Of a knock on the head, Or a sever'd carotid, to find that, instead Of one of those ruffians who murder and fleece men, It's your uncle, or one of the "Rural Policemen;"— Then the blood flows again Through artery and vein; You're delighted with what just before gave you pain; You laugh at your fears—and your friend in the fog Meets a welcome as cordial as Anthony Blogg Now ...
— The Humourous Poetry of the English Language • James Parton

... has no faggot for burning, Allen-a-Dale has no furrow for turning, Allen-a-Dale has no fleece for the spinning, Yet Allen-a-Dale has red gold for the winning; Come, read me my riddle! come, hearken my tale! And tell me the craft ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volumes I-VI. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various

... there was visible on tufted cushions of white satin a large, firm, and ruddy face, a brow freshly powdered a l'oiseau royal, a proud, hard, crafty eye, the smile of an educated man, two great epaulets with bullion fringe floating over a bourgeois coat, the Golden Fleece, the cross of Saint Louis, the cross of the Legion of Honor, the silver plaque of the Saint-Esprit, a huge belly, and a wide blue ribbon: it was the king. Outside of Paris, he held his hat decked with white ostrich plumes on his knees enwrapped in high English ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo

... closet with the Fleece about his neck (Don John of Austria is armed upon the deck.) The walls are hung with velvet that is black and soft as sin, And little dwarfs creep out of it and little dwarfs creep in. He holds a crystal phial that has colours like the moon, He touches, ...
— Poems • G.K. Chesterton

... our own possessions in the southern hemisphere, will render us, in respect to this commodity, independent of every other part of the world. The great improvements in modern navigation are such, that the expense of sending the fleece to market from New South Wales is less than from any part of Europe. The charges for instance on Spanish and German wool, are from fourpence to fourpence three farthings per pound; whereas the entire charge, after shipment from New South Wales, and Van Diemen's Land, does not exceed ...
— Two Expeditions into the Interior of Southern Australia, Complete • Charles Sturt

... of country air. It is springtime, and the valley of Wanley is bursting into green and flowery life, peacefully glad as if the foot of Demos had never come that way. Incredible that the fume of furnaces ever desecrated that fleece-sown sky of tenderest blue, that hammers clanged and engines roared where now the thrush utters his song so joyously. Hubert Eldon has been as good as his word. In all the valley no trace is left ...
— Demos • George Gissing

... - Tripping along to me for love As in the flesh it used to move, Only its hat and plume above The evening fog-fleece seen. ...
— Moments of Vision • Thomas Hardy

... pounds. I paid it him, but I consider that taking advantage; it's the war against capital. Do you mean to say that because a man's name is known he should make me pay just what he likes? because he's an artist, he has no price, no fixed rate, he has a right to fleece me? Why, according to that he might ask me a million for it. It's like the doctors who make you pay according to your fortune. To begin with, how does any one know what I have? I call it an iniquity. Yes, four hundred pounds; what do you ...
— Rene Mauperin • Edmond de Goncourt and Jules de Goncourt

... fat, and ample fleece Rewarded every harvest of the shear; Her lambs all bleated in sequestered peace, Nor ...
— Mountain idylls, and Other Poems • Alfred Castner King

... of calico several yards long, and with some lampblack I painted in bold type on the calico the words, "Come and see the War Pig from South America, 2d. each." Then Spencer and I engaged the large garret at the Fleece Inn, Haworth. It was a large room, holding, I should think, a couple of hundreds of people, and was entered by a staircase in the back-yard, separate from the public house proper. Mrs Stangcliffe was the landlady, and she readily allowed us ...
— Adventures and Recollections • Bill o'th' Hoylus End

... sheep, but my wife, who doctored the village generally, was anxious to try her hand, having little faith in his skill; so we arranged that the next time he had what he considered a hopeless case it was to be given over to her exclusively. The opportunity soon occurred; a ewe was found caught by the fleece in some rough briars in an old hedge, where it had been some hours in great distress, and, with much struggling to free itself, it was quite exhausted. Pneumonia supervened, and when John thought it impossible to save its life he handed ...
— Grain and Chaff from an English Manor • Arthur H. Savory

... did try to go there, but the Wajiji were doing their best to fleece me, as they did both Burton and Speke, and I had not a great deal of cloth. If I had gone to the head of the Tanganika, I could not have gone, to Manyuema. The central line of drainage was the most important, and that is the Lualaba. ...
— How I Found Livingstone • Sir Henry M. Stanley

... who travel with vetturini and are spesati, he, whenever a vetturino arrives locks up all his decent chambers and says that they are engaged, in order to keep them for those travellers who may arrive in their own carriages and whom he can fleece ad libitum. A friend of mine and his lady, who were travelling in their own carriage, had, in order to avoid this extortion, engaged with a vetturino to conduct them from Naples to Rome with his horses, but ...
— After Waterloo: Reminiscences of European Travel 1815-1819 • Major W. E Frye

... Fleece Family and Commercial Hotel," Baker's "Temperance Hotel," "The Royal Fountain Hotel," "Falstaff ...
— What to See in England • Gordon Home

... unwelcome to the bailiff, surgeon, and solicitor, who, upon the supposition that the Count was a person of fortune, and would rather part with an immense sum than incur the ignominy of a jail, or involve himself in another disgraceful lawsuit, had resolved to fleece him to the utmost of their power. But, now the attorney finding him determined to set his fate at defiance, and to retort upon him a prosecution, which he had no design to undergo, began to repent heartily of the provocation he had given, and to think ...
— The Adventures of Ferdinand Count Fathom, Complete • Tobias Smollett

... rejoined: "he will not chide you;—besides, you shall be gone to-morrow. I come to-night, a Jason for the golden fleece, and may not return without it. Stillyside is Colchis, and my desires are dolphins that have brought me hither, and will not, returning, ferry me across the Ottawa, unless they shall be freighted with your form. Mine own one, do not stand transfixed like death in life, but live here no longer; ...
— The Advocate • Charles Heavysege

... rich, was a coward when it came to risking her money at the tables. Others in the house made themselves as irritating to Lord Dauntrey in their selfish obstinacy as Dodo; and all his hopes centred upon Mary. She was a lamb whom his wife had cleverly caught in the bushes, a lamb with golden fleece. He would have liked above all things to help her win this first night; but curiously enough she lost monotonously, no matter what game she tried, unless Prince Giovanni Della Robbia pushed money ...
— The Guests Of Hercules • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson

... and not to be, Is such a Task would pose a Deity. Let Baal do this, and be a God indeed: Yes, this Immortal Honour 'tis decreed, His Sanguine Robe though dipt in reeking Gore, With purity and Innocence all o're, Shall dry, and spotless from the purple hue, The Miracle of Gideons Fleece outdo. Yes, they're resolv'd, in all their foes despight, To wash their ...
— Anti-Achitophel (1682) - Three Verse Replies to Absalom and Achitophel by John Dryden • Elkanah Settle et al.

... he lay; And o'er his chilly limbs his woolen coat He passed, and tied his sandals on his feet, And threw a white cloak round him, and he took In his right hand a ruler's staff, no sword; And on his head he set his sheepskin cap, Black, glossy, curl'd, the fleece of Kara-Kul; And raised the curtain of his tent, and call'd His herald to his side and went abroad. The sun by this had risen, and cleared the fog From the broad Oxus and the glittering sands. And from their tents the Tartar horsemen filed Into the open plain; so ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 6 • Charles H. Sylvester

... of his emotional life, he knew precisely what it meant. He had adventured in blossoms before to the torment of his heart and head. In Spain. He had forgotten the girl's name but it began with an "I." Now in the dusk he faced gnarled and glimmering boughs of fleece. The wind, fitful and chill since the sunset, speckled the grayness beneath the trees with dim white fragrant rain and stirred the drift of petals on the ground. Stillness and blossoms and ...
— Kenny • Leona Dalrymple

... wings and said, "I will do even as this one did;" and he waxed proud in his own conceit and mimicked a greater than he. So he flew down forthright and lighted on the back of a fat ram with a thick fleece that was become matted by his lying in his dung and stale till it was like woollen felt. As soon as the sparrow pounced upon the sheep's back he flapped his wings to fly away, but his feet became tangled in the wool and, ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 3 • Richard F. Burton

... his hero, and the ends of his life; and in age the old man idealizes his youth. Who does not remember some awakening moment when he first saw virtue and knew her for what she is? Sweet was it then to learn of some Jason of the golden fleece, some Lancelot of the tourney, some dying Sydney of the stricken field. There was a poignancy in this early knowledge that shall never be felt again; but who knows not that such enthusiasm which earliest exercised the young heart in noble feelings is the source of most of good that abides ...
— Heart of Man • George Edward Woodberry

... it the comb which confined her beautiful hair, and it fell in disorder over her shoulders. Gerfaut passed his hand behind the charming head which rested upon his breast, in order to carry this silky, perfumed fleece to his lips. At the same time, he gently pressed the supple form which, as it bent toward him, seemed to ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet

... a sigh, and dropped a silent tear— And said, "You mustn't judge yourself too heavily, my dear— It's wrong to murder babies, little corals for to fleece; But sins like these ...
— The Best Nonsense Verses • Various

... Panurge; but waiving that, be so kind as to sell me one of your sheep. Come, how much? What do you mean, master of mine? answered the other. They are long-wool sheep; from these did Jason take his golden fleece. The gold of the house of Burgundy was drawn from them. Zwoons, man, they are oriental sheep, topping sheep, fatted sheep, sheep of quality. Be it so, said Panurge; but sell me one of them, I beseech ...
— Gargantua and Pantagruel, Complete. • Francois Rabelais

... off her garments one by one, first her cloak, then her girdle, then her outer tunic, then her inner one, then the wrappings round her neck; and the vapour of cinnamon envelops her naked limbs. At last she sinks to sleep on the tepid floor. Her hair, falling around her hips, looks like a black fleece—and, almost suffocating in the overheated atmosphere, she draws breath, with her body bent forward and her breasts projecting. Hold! here is my flesh breaking into revolt. In the midst of anguish, I am tortured by voluptuousness. Two punishments ...
— The Temptation of St. Antony - or A Revelation of the Soul • Gustave Flaubert

... (Mouthpoke, Pocket-mouth), she was the bride:—marriage done at Innspruck, 1342, under furtherance of father Ludwig the Kaiser:—such a mouth as we can fancy, and a character corresponding to it. This, which seemed to the two Ludwigs a very conquest of the golden-fleece under conditions, proved the beginning of their worst days ...
— History Of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol, II. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—Of Brandenburg And The Hohenzollerns—928-1417 • Thomas Carlyle

... read by Benoit de Sainte More in the light of Celtic romance. Then it was discovered that Jason and Medea were no more, and no less, than the adventurer and the wizard's daughter, who might play their parts in a story of Wales or Brittany. The quest of the Golden Fleece and the labours of Jason are all reduced from the rhetoric of Ovid, from their classical dignity, to something like what their original shape may have been when the story that now is told in Argyll and ...
— Epic and Romance - Essays on Medieval Literature • W. P. Ker

... these guardians of the fleece is usually monotonous and dreary in the extreme; and those located here were a fair sample of the general herd. There was a shepherd and a hut-keeper. The duty of the former was to lead out the flocks daily ...
— Fern Vale (Volume 1) - or the Queensland Squatter • Colin Munro

... late but gleaming Moon, in hoary light Shines out unveil'd, and on the cloud's dark fleece Rests;—but her strengthen'd beams appear to increase The wild disorder of this troubled Night. Redoubling Echos seem yet more to excite The roaring Winds and Waters!—Ah! why cease Resolves, that ...
— Original sonnets on various subjects; and odes paraphrased from Horace • Anna Seward

... understanding too feeble to be dreaded, and too forcible to be despised. The other parts of the character are more subject to variation; it was formerly essential to a wit, that half his back should be covered with a snowy fleece, and, at a time yet more remote, no man was a wit without his boots. In the days of the Spectator a snuff-box seems to have been indispensable; but in my time an embroidered coat was sufficient, without any precise regulation of the rest ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, LL.D, In Nine Volumes - Volume the Third: The Rambler, Vol. II • Samuel Johnson

... hundred ships and more than a hundred thousand men: it was the first time that all the Greeks joined together in one cause. There, besides those who had come for their oath's sake, were Nestor, the old King of Pylos—so old that he remembered Jason and the Golden Fleece, but, at ninety years old, as ready for battle as the youngest there; and Achilles, the son of Peleus and Thetis, scarcely more than a boy, but fated to outdo the deeds of the bravest of them all. The kings and princes elected Agamemnon, King ...
— Children's Literature - A Textbook of Sources for Teachers and Teacher-Training Classes • Charles Madison Curry

... Softn'd with pleasure and voluptuous life; At length to lay my head and hallow'd pledge Of all my strength in the lascivious lap Of a deceitful Concubine who shore me Like a tame Weather, all my precious fleece, Then turn'd me out ridiculous, despoil'd, Shav'n, and disarm'd among my ...
— The Poetical Works of John Milton • John Milton

... stately poplars waved in the breeze. In the clear, dry air all colours were startlingly vivid, and round the nearer foothills wonderful lights and shadows played and shifted, while sometimes a white fleece of mist would drift slowly across a distant hill, like a film of snowy lace on the face of a beautiful woman. Away behind the foothills were the grand old mountains, with their snow-clad tops ...
— An Outback Marriage • Andrew Barton Paterson

... the fleece of sheep or goats or camels or llamas or alpacas, has three great advantages, which make it the outside clothing of the human species. First, it is sufficiently tough and lasting to withstand rips and tugs and ordinary ...
— A Handbook of Health • Woods Hutchinson

... the kingship of cotton inducing early recognition, both believed that the ships of England and France—disregarding the impotent paper closure—would soon crowd southern wharves and exchange the royal fleece for the luxuries, no less than ...
— Four Years in Rebel Capitals - An Inside View of Life in the Southern Confederacy from Birth to Death • T. C. DeLeon

... protector. As the sun dropped below the far-off western rim of the forest, it seemed as if one wide wave of lucent rose-violet on a sudden flooded the world. Everything on Ringwaak—the ram's white fleece, the gray, bleached stumps, the brown hillocks, the green hollows and juniper clumps and poplar saplings—took on a palpitating aerial stain. Here and there in the distance the coils of the river gleamed clear gold; and overhead, in the hollow amber-and-lilac arch of sky, the high-wandering ...
— The Watchers of the Trails - A Book of Animal Life • Charles G. D. Roberts

... them which our Country is entirely free from. Instead of those beautiful Feathers with which we adorn our Heads, they often buy up a monstrous Bush of Hair, which covers their Heads, and falls down in a large Fleece below the Middle of their Backs; with which they walk up and down the Streets, and are as proud of it as if it was of their ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele

... by two figures of distinctly human form but rather more than human stature. Both were dressed in long, close-fitting garments of what seemed like a golden brown fleece. Their heads were covered with a close hood and their hands ...
— A Honeymoon in Space • George Griffith

... time a crying scandal, as it was infested all about with native grogshops in which they sold to the sailors most villainous, poisonous decoctions under various designations; also by a very low class of boarding houses run by a thieving set of low-caste American crimps who used to fleece and swindle poor Jack out of all his hard-earned money. They would give him board and lodging of a sort, with bad liquor, and when he had secured a ship they would often ply him with drink the day ...
— Recollections of Calcutta for over Half a Century • Montague Massey

... and iron are good To buy iron and gold; All earth's fleece and food For their like are sold. Boded Merlin wise, Proved Napoleon great,— Nor kind nor coinage buys Aught above its rate. Fear, Craft, and Avarice Cannot rear a State. Out of dust to build What is more than dust,— Walls Amphion ...
— Essays, Second Series • Ralph Waldo Emerson

... the Angora fleece, which sometimes reaches eight inches, is due solely to the peculiar climate of the locality. The same goats taken elsewhere have not thriven. Even the Angora dogs and cats are remarkable for the extraordinary length of their fleecy covering. On ...
— Across Asia on a Bicycle • Thomas Gaskell Allen and William Lewis Sachtleben

... escape her," he said gayly. "See! yonder lies the Silver Fleece spread across the brown back of the world; let's get a bit of it, and hide it here in the swamp, and comb it, and tend it, and make it the beautifullest bit of all. Then we can sell it, and send ...
— The Quest of the Silver Fleece - A Novel • W. E. B. Du Bois

... Stella, with a merry sparkle in her eyes,—"take care how you do business with me, Captain! Remember how I drew upon you for the babies' ward last winter! I can fleece without mercy, as ...
— Killykinick • Mary T. Waggaman

... summer fleece, drifted across her mind. Often, in such moments, she strove to realise that she was now mistress of herself; ...
— The Danger Mark • Robert W. Chambers

... was then adapted as altar-rail—evidently Flemish— with scrolls containing corn and grapes, presided over by angels, and with two groups of kneeling figures; on one side, apparently an Emperor with his crown laid down, and the collar of the Golden Fleece around his neck, followed by a group of male figures, one with a beautiful face. On the other side kneels a lady, not an empress, with a following of others bringing flowers. At the divisions stand Religious of the four Orders, one a man. The idea is ...
— John Keble's Parishes • Charlotte M Yonge

... that, and I was feared that I had angert her. But she gied a sma' lauch, and oot at the door she gaed, wi' her 'rosy fleece o' fire' lowin' and glimmerin' aboot her, jist like ane o' the seraphims that auld Crashaw sings aboot. Only she was gey sma' for a seraph, though they're nae ower big. Weel, ye see, that was the first ...
— Alec Forbes of Howglen • George MacDonald

... are very much alike," said Trust, who thought both very poor creatures. "Very much alike indeed. They go in flocks, and can't give a reason why. They leave their fleece on any bramble that is strong enough to insist on fleecing them. They bleat loud at imagined evils, while they tumble straight into real dangers. And for going off the line, there's nothing like them. ...
— Wisdom, Wit, and Pathos of Ouida - Selected from the Works of Ouida • Ouida

... and silvery flakes Melt along the ruffled lakes, When the gray moose sheds his horns, When the track, at evening, warns Weary hunters of the way To the wigwam's cheering ray, Then, aloft through freezing air, With the snow-bird soft and fair As the fleece that heaven flings O'er his little pearly wings, Light above the rocks I play, Where Niagara's starry spray, Frozen on the cliff, appears Like a giant's starting tears. There, amid the island-sedge, Just upon the cataract's edge, Where the foot of living man Never trod since time began, ...
— The Complete Poems of Sir Thomas Moore • Thomas Moore et al

... back-breaking stoop. Each man held between his knees a sheep, gripped relentlessly, that flinched and kicked at times when the shears clipped off patches of flesh; and there in the clamor of a thousand voices they shuttled their keen blades unceasingly, stripping off a fleece, throwing it aside, and seizing a fresh victim by the foot, toiling and sweating grimly. By another chute a man stood with a paint pot, stamping a fresh brand upon every new-shorn sheep, and in a last corral the naked ones, their white hides spotted with blood from their cuts, blatted frantically ...
— Hidden Water • Dane Coolidge

... pistol. Then he pulled a chair close to the fire, dropped into it, rolled a cigarette, and calmly smoked, watching the white fleece trail up ...
— The Trail Horde • Charles Alden Seltzer

... grasp; tear from, tear away from, wrench from, wrest from, wring from; extort; deprive of, bereave; disinherit, cut off with a shilling. oust &c. (eject) 297; divest; levy, distrain, confiscate; sequester, sequestrate; accroach[obs3]; usurp; despoil, strip, fleece, shear, displume[obs3], impoverish, eat out of house and home; drain, drain to the dregs; gut, dry, exhaust, swallow up; absorb &c. (suck in) 296; draw off; suck the blood of, suck like a leech. retake, resume; recover &c. 775. Adj. taking &c.v.; privative[obs3], ...
— Roget's Thesaurus

... all the revenues and patronage of the country to distribute among those who have access to the King exclusively—they are poets, fiddlers, eunuchs, and profligate women; and every one of them holds, directly or indirectly, some court or other, fiscal, criminal, or civil, through which to fleece the people. Anything so detestable as the Government I have nowhere witnessed, and a man less competent to govern them than the King I ...
— A Journey through the Kingdom of Oude, Volumes I & II • William Sleeman

... paid Unto a mortal who should be afraid To match the gods in beauty; take thy bow And dreadful arrows, and about her sow The seeds of folly, and with such an one I pray thee cause her mingle, fair my son, That not the poorest peasant girl in Greece Would look on for the gift of Jason's fleece. Do this, and see thy mother glad again, And free from insult, in her temples reign Over the hearts of ...
— The Earthly Paradise - A Poem • William Morris

... turret. It was part of a tower once, a tower that "sprang sublime," whence the king and his minions and his dames used to watch the "burning ring" of the chariot-races. . . . This is twilight: the "quiet-coloured eve" smiles as it leaves the "many-tinkling fleece"; all is tranquillity, the slopes and rills melt into one grey . . . and ...
— Browning's Heroines • Ethel Colburn Mayne

... said to favour the creation of a new Order for deserving Welshmen. The revival of the Order of the Golden Fleece is suggested. ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, March 12, 1919 • Various

... with this, that of the passages that were betwixt the Lord and his servant Gideon fell upon my spirit; how because that Gideon tempted God with his fleece, both wet and dry, when he should have believed and ventured upon his word, therefore the Lord did afterwards so try him, as to send him against an innumerable company of enemies; and that too, as to outward appearance, without any strength or help ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan

... him right on points of morality and law. When he was old, and ill, and ruined, there was yet no respite from the curse of correspondents. A year before his death he wrote dejectedly in his journal:—"A fleece of letters which must be answered, I suppose; all from persons—my zealous admirers, of course—who expect me to make up whatever losses have been their lot, raise them to a desirable rank, and stand their protector and patron. I must, they take it for granted, be astonished at having an ...
— Americans and Others • Agnes Repplier

... and steeper as it burrowed into the hills. Old game trails are as good as turnpikes in the eyes of the plainsman. It was when the ravine began to split into branches that the problem might have puzzled them, had not the white fleece lain two inches deep on the level when "Lo" made his dash to escape. Now the rough edges of the original impression were merely rounded over by the new fallen snow. The hollows and ruts and depressions led on from one deep cleft into another, and by midnight Blake ...
— A Daughter of the Sioux - A Tale of the Indian frontier • Charles King

... side of the hill. The wind blew on the candles borne in gilded wooden candlesticks. The girls of the societies, dressed in white and blue, carried painted banners. Then came a little St. John, blond, curly-haired, nude, under a lamb's fleece which showed his arms and shoulders; and a St. Mary Magdalene, seven years old, crowned only with her waving golden hair. The people of Fiesole followed. Countess Martin recognized Choulette among them. ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet

... night, with his broad forehead, which seemed to retain the light, his thick, silvery fleece of hair, and his ...
— My Double Life - The Memoirs of Sarah Bernhardt • Sarah Bernhardt

... in their respective shrines. All the holy vessels and priests' dresses and jewels were taken out for our inspection. The sacramental custoda cost thirty-two thousand dollars, and the richest of the dresses eight thousand. There is a lamb made of one pearl, the fleece and head of silver; the pearl of great ...
— Life in Mexico • Frances Calderon de la Barca



Words linked to "Fleece" :   textile, fabric, pluck, rip off, trim, material, cloth, sheepskin, pelage, China fleece vine, surcharge, gouge, hook, leather, Golden Fleece, overcharge, undercharge, wring, plume, bill, cheat, coat, shave, extort, rack, rob, shear, soak



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