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Mole   Listen
verb
Mole  v. t.  (past & past part. moled; pres. part. moling)  
1.
To form holes in, as a mole; to burrow; to excavate; as, to mole the earth.
2.
To clear of molehills. (Prov. Eng.)






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Mole" Quotes from Famous Books



... with three Devils, to wait upon her (I suppose) for she confess'd they were to be employ'd in her Service; they attended in the Shapes of two little Dogs and a Mole: The first she bewitch'd was her own Husband, by which he lay a while in great Misery and died; then she sent to one Captain Beal and burnt a new Ship of his just built, which had never been at Sea; ...
— The History of the Devil - As Well Ancient as Modern: In Two Parts • Daniel Defoe

... and less accustomed to rapid maneuvering than war vessels. Luckily all went well with us, for after a fine trip of several hours we gladly greeted our German guard-ships lying off the port of Zeebrugge, and the lighthouse on the mole beckoned to us from afar through ...
— The Journal of Submarine Commander von Forstner • Georg-Guenther von Forstner

... Frenchman, Russian, Englishman, what opiate's drowsy charms dulled your eager eyes so long here? Thousands of miles of virgin lands, countless millions of treasures, royal forests and hills yet to grow under harvest of olive and vine—all this the mole-like eyes of the olden days have ...
— The Little Lady of Lagunitas • Richard Henry Savage

... anything unusual in her face, you must tell her that it signifies extraordinary luck. If she have red or yellow hair, tell her that is a true sign that she will have much gold. When her eyebrows meet, that shows she will be united to many rich gentlemen. Tell her always, when you see a mole on her cheek or her forehead or anything, that is a sign she will become a great lady. Never mind where it is, on her body,—tell her always that a mole or fleck is a sign of greatness. Praise her up. And if you see that she has small hands or feet, tell ...
— The Gypsies • Charles G. Leland

... honor, with mourning banners and muffled drums; and in the other were the commandant-general, the principal minister of marine, and the military staff. In passing the vessels of war in the harbor, they all paid the honors due to an admiral and captain-general of the navy. On arriving at the mole, the remains were met by the governor of the island, accompanied by the generals and the military staff. The coffin was then conveyed between files of soldiery which lined the streets to the obelisk, ...
— The Life and Voyages of Christopher Columbus (Vol. II) • Washington Irving

... treasure to Taara's protection, and declared that no one should obtain it but the son of a pure mother, who should come to the spot on St. John's Eve, and should sacrifice three black animals without a white hair upon them—a black cock with a curled comb, a black dog or cat, and a mole. Then he murmured secret spells over the treasure; but the man is not yet born who ...
— The Hero of Esthonia and Other Studies in the Romantic Literature of That Country • William Forsell Kirby

... excessively ill at the time. But this prospect was soon clouded, and my hopes brought very low indeed when I found that, instead of pushing on with vigor without regarding a little rough road, they were halting to level every mole-hill, and to erect bridges over every brook, by which means we were four days in getting twelve miles." It was not till the seventh of July that they neared the mouth of Turtle Creek, a stream entering the Monongahela about eight miles ...
— Montcalm and Wolfe • Francis Parkman

... neighbouring mound to survey the village. It was a curious residence for human beings. Joe's remark that it resembled "a colony of big moles" was not inappropriate, for the huts, of which there were about forty, were not unlike huge mole-hills. ...
— Digging for Gold - Adventures in California • R.M. Ballantyne

... indeed, of far earlier date than the days of Richard the First. We find them in use among the Tyrians in the time of Alexander the Great. It is related that at the siege of Tyre, when a mole was being constructed to join that city to the continent, the inhabitants, having loaded a large ship heavily by the stern with sand and stones, for the purpose of raising her head out of the water, and having filled her ...
— How Britannia Came to Rule the Waves - Updated to 1900 • W.H.G. Kingston

... gaudy," he approved. "That's good mole-skin—smooth, soft, and tough. Where'd you make the raise? I didn't know we had anything like that on board. What did you do for thread? You look like a million dollars—you sure did a ...
— Spacehounds of IPC • Edward Elmer Smith

... of cases, he says, where cancer has resulted from the irritation of moles by an electric needle, or by constant picking it. 'Have a surgeon cut the mole out,' is his advice, as it will hurt little and ...
— Nature Cure • Henry Lindlahr

... advance in the land animals is less marked, but yet considerable. The predominating forms are still pachydermatous, and the tapir type continues to be conspicuous. One animal of this kind, called the dinotherium, is supposed to have been not less than eighteen feet long; it had a mole-like form of the shoulder-blade, conferring the power of digging for food, and a couple of tusks turning down from the lower jaw, by which it could have attached itself, like the walrus, to a shore or bank, while its body floated in ...
— Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation • Robert Chambers

... the Eagle know what is in the pit? Or wilt thou go ask the Mole? Can Wisdom be put in a silver rod? Or Love in ...
— A History of Rome, Vol 1 - During the late Republic and early Principate • A H.J. Greenidge

... neck, at another my legs, as they shifted about, or you would suppose he was aiming {at them}; and he assaulted me on every side. My bulk defended me, and I was attacked in vain; no otherwise than a mole, which the waves beat against with loud noise: it remains {unshaken}, and by its ...
— The Metamorphoses of Ovid - Literally Translated into English Prose, with Copious Notes - and Explanations • Publius Ovidius Naso

... said playfully, "there is a difference—that little pink mole on my arm. Valmai, ...
— By Berwen Banks • Allen Raine

... walk, and played mother to the dear child a bit. Then I obtained my wages, for they were good times; but the pension-time came, and we had no cook or servant but me. 'The rats run away if the ship springs a leak,' but the old mole Trude stayed. Mankind is in the world to work, I said, and why should not I be the cook and waiting-maid too, that my little Marie should not want any thing? So I became maid-of-all-work and have stayed here ever since. Then, you told me you would double my wages, and give ...
— Old Fritz and the New Era • Louise Muhlbach

... yet the spider spins its own web, and seeks its own nook of refuge from the Reform Broom of Molly the housemaid. And then, the tiny insect, the ant—that living, silent monitor to unregarding men—doth it not make its own galleries, build with toilsome art its own abiding place? Does not the mole scratch its own chamber—the carrion kite build its own nest! Shall cuckoos and Members of Parliament alone be ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 1, Complete • Various

... The mole's tunnelled chambers are crushed by wheels, The lark's eggs scattered, their owners fled; And the hedgehog's household the ...
— The Dynasts - An Epic-Drama Of The War With Napoleon, In Three Parts, - Nineteen Acts, And One Hundred And Thirty Scenes • Thomas Hardy

... sport of the legitimate hunter. He will not seek the destruction of any quarry that is not worthy of his steel; he likes to go against that quarry where there are obstacles and dangers for him, and opportunities of escape for the creature he pursues. He is a sportsman, not a butcher; mole-catching never stirred the blood in ...
— The Story of Baden-Powell - 'The Wolf That Never Sleeps' • Harold Begbie

... crises in the Revolution. On the 6th of October, 1789 (Sainte-Beuve, "Causeries du Lundi," XII. 461), Senac de Meilhan at an evening reception hears the following conversations: "'Did you see the king pass?' asks one. 'No, I was at the theater.' 'Did Mole play?'—'As for myself; I was obliged to stay in the Tuileries; there was no way of getting out before 9 o'clock.' 'You saw the king pass then?' 'I could not see very well; it was dark.'—Another says: 'It must have ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 3 (of 6) - The French Revolution, Volume 2 (of 3) • Hippolyte A. Taine

... me as a brute and a savage. Well, and why not, if I choose to be one or the other, or both? You Churchmen believe in the power of choice, don't you? Prove to a man that there is something worth having in the bowels of the earth, he burrows like a mole and gets it. Let him once see utility in flying, give him time and opportunity, and he will fly. So if it is to his interests to be clean-lived, high-minded, exemplary, he will be all these things to admiration. Or, if ...
— The Dop Doctor • Clotilde Inez Mary Graves

... all came back again to Owl Island; and Twinkleberry and the others brought a fine fat mole, and laid it on the stone in front of ...
— The Tale of Squirrel Nutkin • Beatrix Potter

... April, most unobtrusively, the only sign of the underground works being the little mounds of fresh earth. There is no animation in the building-yards. The labourers show themselves very seldom, so busy are they at the bottom of their pits. At moments, here and there, the summit of a tiny mole-hill begins to totter and tumbles down the slopes of the cone: it is a worker coming up with her armful of rubbish and shooting it outside, without showing herself in the open. Nothing more for ...
— Bramble-bees and Others • J. Henri Fabre

... of May 1860, Garibaldi and the Neapolitan generals, Letizia and Chretien, stepped on board the flag-ship Hannibal which Admiral Mundy offered as neutral ground for their meeting. Curiously enough, both parties, reaching the mole simultaneously, were rowed out in the same ship's boat, which was waiting in readiness. The Neapolitans insisted that Garibaldi should go on board first, either from courtesy or, as the admiral suspected, out of desire to find out ...
— The Liberation of Italy • Countess Evelyn Martinengo-Cesaresco

... daughter was as sweet as that of the mother, and more fatal. The other was Madame K——, a Russian, fair, tall, blonde, lighthearted, involved in the hidden paths of diplomacy, possessing and displaying a casket full of love letters from Count Mole somewhat of a spy, absolutely charming ...
— The History of a Crime - The Testimony of an Eye-Witness • Victor Hugo

... blind the toil that burrows like the mole, In winding graveyard pathways underground, For Browning's lineage! What if men have found Poor footmen or rich merchants on the roll Of his forbears? Did they beget his soul? Nay, for he came of ancestry renowned Through all the world,—the ...
— The Poems of Henry Van Dyke • Henry Van Dyke

... In the Mole Cricket (fig. 1) the fore-legs are very strong, being short and broad, and ending in a broad comb-like plate, which is used for digging. They are very like the great digging ...
— Chatterbox, 1905. • Various

... But ye wouldna like him to see ye hereaways. Yon gentry don't leave muckle to chance. Be very certain that every man in Gresson's lot kens all about ye, and has your description down to the mole on ...
— Mr. Standfast • John Buchan

... his Lordship, who, being near-sighted, was poking about, after the manner of a mole, in the three-storied brass bird-cage which held the more substantial portion of the repast, "there doesn't ...
— His Lordship's Leopard - A Truthful Narration of Some Impossible Facts • David Dwight Wells

... said Pinchas to Reb Shemuel, "ignorant fanatics, how shall a movement prosper in their hands? They have not the poetic vision, their ideas are as the mole's; they wish to make Messiahs out of half-pence. What inspiration for the soul is there in the sight of snuffy collectors that have the air of Schnorrers? with Karlkammer's red hair for a flag and the sound of Gradkoski's nose blowing for a trumpet-peal. ...
— Children of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill

... without feet adapted for climbing live in trees; so also do monkeys with and without flexible tails, squirrels, sloths, pumas, &c. Mole-crickets dig with a well-pronounced spade upon their fore-feet, while the burying-beetle does the same thing though it has no special apparatus whatever. The mole conveys its winter provender in pockets, an inch wide, long and half an inch ...
— Unconscious Memory • Samuel Butler

... correct, But with some few and trifling faults is flecked, Just as a spot or mole might be to blame Upon some body else of comely frame, If none can call me miserly and mean Or tax my life with practices unclean, If I have lived unstained and unreproved (Forgive self-praise), if loving and beloved, ...
— The Satires, Epistles, and Art of Poetry • Horace

... an hour of sinful madness, Mr. Murray had taken a human life, and ultimately caused the loss of another; but the waves that were running high beyond the mole told her in thunder-tones that he had saved, had snatched two lives from their devouring rage. And the shining stars overhead grouped themselves into characters that said to her, "Judge not, that ye be not judged"; and ...
— St. Elmo • Augusta J. Evans

... and lace with hanging sleeves, and the old carved frame showed how the picture had been prized by its former owners. A proud eye she had, with all her sweetness.—I think it was that which hanged her, as his strong arm hanged Minister George Burroughs;—but it may have been a little mole on one cheek, which the artist had just hinted as a beauty rather than a deformity. You know, I suppose, that nursling imps addict themselves, after the fashion of young opossums, to these little excrescences. "Witch-marks" were good evidence that a young woman was one of ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 25, November, 1859 • Various

... hour moves forward. The mole moves out. The moon emerges furiously. The ocean heaves. The child becomes an old man. Animals pray and flee. It's getting too hot for the trees. The mind boggles. The street dies. The stinking sun stabs. The air becomes scarce. ...
— The Verse of Alfred Lichtenstein • Alfred Lichtenstein

... Mole has a star for a nose Just the shade of the pink in a dew-wet rose. He lives down in the ground where 'tis always like night, So perhaps his star nose is ...
— Animal Children - The Friends of the Forest and the Plain • Edith Brown Kirkwood

... mole it is not a bad place to witness tragedies. Pathos holds the upper hand, and the welcomes are sometimes as heart-rending as the leave-takings. A woman stood on the ferry with a blank, working face down which the tears fell heedlessly; a man, her husband, turned from ...
— Other Things Being Equal • Emma Wolf

... Crane Express How the Mole became Little Black Sambo Blind The Lantern and the Fan How Fire was brought to Why the Bear has a Short the Indians Tail Echo Why the Fox has a White Piccola Tip to his Tail The Story of the Morning- Why the Wren flies ...
— Stories to Tell to Children • Sara Cone Bryant

... "you am de biggist fool dat I ebber seed. How's anybody gwine tu git under de groun' to dig. Whar's dey gwine tu put de dirt, and whar is de water to cum fum to mash it down?" Yah, yah, yah. "Go 'way nigger, I 'spec you bin mole huntin'." "Dat am fac', Tony, I didn't tink 'bout dat," said Uncle Jim, with an apologetic and crestfallen air. Here Tony gave his pipe another rake in the embers, took a few puffs, and fell off his ...
— The Dismal Swamp and Lake Drummond, Early recollections - Vivid portrayal of Amusing Scenes • Robert Arnold

... depressing sense of captivity, are hourly awakened by some rude contrast wounding to his sensibilities, and even though no source of graver irritation should exist, a thousand petty annoyances, incident to the position, are magnified by chagrin from mole-hills into mountains. Such, however, would be the effect produced on one only, who, thrown by the accident of war into the situation of a captive, should have no grief more profound, no sorrow deeper seated than what arose from the being severed from old, and associated with ...
— The Canadian Brothers - or The Prophecy Fulfilled • John Richardson

... did before she left. She unloosed the collar of the unmoving form on the floor and looked for the small brown mole she did not really expect to find. The mole she knew to be on her husband's shoulder, high up on the ...
— The Calm Man • Frank Belknap Long

... supposed that Lord Temple secretly encouraged the most scurrilous assailants of the Government. In truth, those who knew his habits tracked him as men track a mole. It was his nature to grub underground. Whenever a heap of dirt was flung up it might well be suspected that he was at work in some foul crooked labyrinth below. Pitt turned away from the filthy work of opposition, with the same scorn ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 1 • Thomas Babington Macaulay

... authority of his mistress, Catherine de' Medicis! Shall we regard her passport? Down with the heathen abbe, his abominations have been endured too long; they smell rank in our nostrils. Think how he ensnared La Mole—think on his numberless victims. Who mixed the infernal potion of Charles the Ninth? Let him answer that. Down with the infidel—the Jew—the sorcerer! The stake were too good for him. ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 1 • Charles Dudley Warner

... new week I moved to Empire, the "Rules and Regulations" in a pocket and the most indispensable of my possessions under an arm. Once more we rumbled through Miraflores tunnel through a mole-hill, past her concrete light-house among the astonished palms, and her giant hose of water wiping away the rock hills, across the trestleless bridge with its photographic glimpse of the canal before and behind for ...
— Zone Policeman 88 - A Close Range Study of the Panama Canal and its Workers • Harry A. Franck

... shaken suddenly upward almost in Commines' face, a threat as well as a warning—"I hold you responsible, you, you, you only. Let him be with you, but not of you; let him enter Amboise apart from you, and let him work out of sight like a mole, obeying orders without knowing why he obeys. Then if he fails, or blunders, or is fool enough to be caught spying, you can disown him, can wash your hands of him, and let him hang! Um! You don't like it? I see in your face that you don't like it. Will you never ...
— The Justice of the King • Hamilton Drummond

... enough to say that every creek, inlet, or estuary that indents our shores, and every harbour, mole, or jetty is watchfully patrolled by British authority. Moreover, Irish vessels, with their cargoes, crews, and passengers, have suffered in this war proportionately ...
— Ulster's Stand For Union • Ronald McNeill

... grizzly-b'ah and den de mole, De grizzly-b'ah and den de mole, De grizzly-b'ah and den de mole, De terrapintime and de wrigglemarole. ...
— Gideon's Band - A Tale of the Mississippi • George W. Cable

... Fisher, we was on our way to Aspinwal. Layin' off one day at Navassa Island, the Mast Head reported a strange sail. 'Where away?' 'Just ahead'. 'She seems to be a three mast steamer!' 'Which way headed?' We decided it was the Alabama going to St. Nicholas Mole, West Indies. ...
— Slave Narratives: a Folk History of Slavery in the United States • Various

... way to have high-minded children is to be high-minded yourself. A man cannot burrow in his counting-room for ten or twenty of the best years of his life, and come out as much of a man and as little of a mole as he went in. But the twenty years should have ministered to his manhood, instead of trampling on it. Still less can a woman bury herself in her nursery, and come out without harm. But the years should have done her great good. This world is not made for a tomb, but a garden. You are to be a seed, ...
— Gala-days • Gail Hamilton

... insinuations and bad advice offered to the King by those who wished the ruin and downfall of our house. To such a height had these jealousies risen that the Marechaux de Montmorency and de Cosse were put under a close arrest, and La Mole and the Comte de Donas executed. Matters were now arrived at such a pitch that commissioners were appointed from the Court of Parliament to hear and determine upon the case of my brother and the King ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre

... is no earthly use of dodging the fact—the lever of the whole world, by which it and its multifarious cargo of men and matters, mountains and mole hills, wit, wisdom, weal, woe, warfare and women, are kept in motion, in season and out of season. It is the arbiter of our fates, our health, happiness, life and death. Where it makes one man a happy Christian, it ...
— The Humors of Falconbridge - A Collection of Humorous and Every Day Scenes • Jonathan F. Kelley

... loose areolar tissue and freely movable on one another. It is rarely the seat of pain or tenderness. It most often appears in the early years of life, sometimes in relation to a pigmented or hairy mole. It is of slow growth, may remain stationary for long periods, and has little or no tendency to become malignant. It is usually subcutaneous, and is frequently situated on the head or neck in the distribution of the trigeminal or superficial ...
— Manual of Surgery - Volume First: General Surgery. Sixth Edition. • Alexis Thomson and Alexander Miles

... divine Music as that mounts up into your head! But when the piece was done, back to my line I crept again, and there I should have staid, But that just then, to give me another turn, From those mole-mouths a hymn ...
— Modern Italian Poets • W. D. Howells

... of the Pocket Hunter led him often into that mysterious country beyond Hot Creek where a hidden force works mischief, mole-like, under the crust of the earth. Whatever agency is at work in that neighborhood, and it is popularly supposed to be the devil, it changes means and direction without time or season. It creeps up whole hillsides with insidious heat, ...
— The Land of Little Rain • Mary Austin

... purposes, or under the hope of arresting the progress of the murrain in other members of the flock. In both these instances the cow was sacrificed by being buried alive. The sacrifice of other living animals,[223] as of the cat, cock, mole, etc., for the cure of disease, and especially of fits, epilepsy, and insanity, continues to be occasionally practised in some parts of the Highlands up to the present day. And in the city of Edinburgh itself, every physician knows the fact that, in the chamber of death, ...
— Archaeological Essays, Vol. 1 • James Y. Simpson

... wish to remember Mr. Bowman's name, and you notice he has a mole on his face which is apt to attract your attention when you next see him, cement the ideas thus: "Mole, mark, target, ...
— One Thousand Secrets of Wise and Rich Men Revealed • C. A. Bogardus

... terribly for 11 years without respite. Every night I had attacks of asthma, and suffered also from insomnia and general weakness which prevented any occupation. Mentally, I was depressed, restless, worried, and was inclined to make mountains out of mole hills. I had followed many treatments without success, having even undergone in Switzerland the removal of the turbinate bone of the nose without obtaining any relief. In Nov., 1918, I became worse in consequence of a great sorrow. While my husband was at Corfu (he was an officer on a ...
— Self Mastery Through Conscious Autosuggestion • Emile Coue

... ground mole! But what's a ground mole got to do with a cigar, I want to know? And you said a moleHILL. What's a ground mole ...
— Galusha the Magnificent • Joseph C. Lincoln

... this desolate place that the girl conceived her first impression of her father as a stern and silent man who burrowed among old graves like a mole. Robert Turold had fought a stout battle for the secret contained in those forgotten graves on a bleak headland, but the sea had beaten him in the long run, carrying off the stones piecemeal until only one remained, ...
— The Moon Rock • Arthur J. Rees

... as they arrived alongside the landmark mentioned by Obed; and without waiting for the others to assent he dropped his pack, and threw himself down on an especially inviting bit of moss, heaving a great sigh of relief; for be it known, Bandy-legs was not especially "mountain out of a mole-hill," as Steve aptly put it, when referring ...
— At Whispering Pine Lodge • Lawrence J. Leslie

... road soon shut out this charming picture from our gaze; we then left the Serra and entered upon a woody, uneven tract, alternating with large level grass-plots, covered with low brushwood, and innumerable mole-hills, ...
— A Woman's Journey Round the World • Ida Pfeiffer

... with us, including Mr. Eastcliff, who had speedily followed us from Ellan, and a Mr. Vivian, who, though the brother of a Cabinet Minister, seemed to me a very vain and vapid person, with the eyes of a mole, a vacant smile, a stupid expression, an abrupt way of speaking through his teeth, and a shrill voice which gave the impression ...
— The Woman Thou Gavest Me - Being the Story of Mary O'Neill • Hall Caine

... thereon, he knows what, prodigious words; Has peeled a wand and called it by a name; Weareth at whiles for an enchanter's robe The eyed skin of a supple oncelot; And hath an ounce sleeker than youngling mole, A four-legged serpent he makes cower and couch, Now snarl, now hold its breath and mind his eye, And saith she is Miranda and my wife: 'Keeps for his Ariel a tall pouch-bill crane He bids go wade for fish and straight disgorge; Also a sea-beast, lumpish, which he snared, Blinded ...
— Robert Browning: How To Know Him • William Lyon Phelps

... doctrine, fit for parlors and lecture-rooms, but not for counting-rooms and congressional halls. It is solid, durable fact. History is full of it; and he is a mere mole, and blinder than midnight, who cannot perceive it. The spectacle of nations falling into sudden, chronic, careless imbecility is frequent and glaring enough for even wilfulness to see; and the central secret of this sad phenomenon, so I am sure, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XI., February, 1863, No. LXIV. • Various

... information if it is true, in the mental exercise it gives in combating it, if it is error, and in any event as a feather that indicates which way the wind is blowing—in what direction the blind mole of man's finite judgment is groping around its prison in search of an outlet to the infinite. And that is true, Madam, whether you ...
— Observations of a Retired Veteran • Henry C. Tinsley

... Pussy-cat Mole Jumped over a coal, And in her best petticoat Burnt a great hole. Poor pussy's weeping, She'll get no more milk, Until her best ...
— Rhymes Old and New • M.E.S. Wright

... to be sure, clipt walks, leaden statues, and water-works; but as for the farms, all is dirt, neglect, disorder. Spite of the lady's wealth, all are let out alla meta, and farmed on principles that would disgrace a savage. The spade used instead of the plough, the hedges neglected, mole-casts in the pastures, good land run to waste, the peasants starving and indebted—where, with a little thrift and humanity, all had been smiling plenty! Learned that on the owner's death this great ...
— The Valley of Decision • Edith Wharton

... insurrection. Everywhere they found the people in arms, while barricades were thrown up at every hundred paces. Through the shouting and howling mob they made their way to the queen's palace, the ushers in front, with their square caps, the members following in their robes, at their head M. Mole, their premier president. ...
— Historical Tales, Vol. 6 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality. French. • Charles Morris

... around Lloyd, she drew her aside. "It is all Elizabeth's imagination," she protested, in a low tone. "I never saw such a little silly for making mountains out of mole-hills. She is such a fraid-cat that she wouldn't look behind her if a fly buzzed. Now you know, Lloyd, that, as particular as I am, I wouldn't think of going anywhere that wasn't proper, any more than your mother ...
— The Little Colonel's House Party • Annie Fellows Johnston

... the harbor of Tripoli. Let us pause for a minute to consider the odds against him. First there was the Philadelphia with her forty guns double-shotted and ready to fire; half a gunshot away was the Bashaw's castle, the mole and crown batteries, while within range were ten other batteries, mounting, all told, a hundred and fifteen guns. Between the Philadelphia and the shore lay a number of Tripolitan cruisers, galleys and gunboats. Into this hornet's nest, Decatur steered his little vessel of ...
— American Men of Action • Burton E. Stevenson

... nux, hypnodoteira ton polyponon broton, erebothen ithi, mole, mole katapteros ton Agamemnonion ...
— Mary Olivier: A Life • May Sinclair

... not have told whether he watched her for six minutes or sixteen. When her gymnastics were over, she paused to catch up a lock of hair that had come down, and examined with solicitude a little reddish mole that grew under her left arm-pit. Then, with her hand on her hip, she walked unconcernedly across the room and disappeared through the door ...
— Youth and the Bright Medusa • Willa Cather

... it," said Dorothea; "he said, moreover, that he would be tall of stature and lank featured; and that on his right side under the left shoulder, or thereabouts, he would have a grey mole with hairs like bristles." ...
— Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra

... another group more allied to Tupaia than the rest. This last family is the most interesting. Anatomically belonging to this order, they externally resemble the squirrels so closely as to have been frequently mistaken for them. The grovelling Mole and creeping Shrew are as unlike the sprightly Tupaia, as it springs from branch to branch, whisking its long bushy tail, as it is possible to conceive. I intend further on to give an illustration of this little animal. The first we have on record ...
— Natural History of the Mammalia of India and Ceylon • Robert A. Sterndale

... had a hard time keeping awake, but was bound to do it if it killed him; and the biggest boy, named Abe after Abraham Lincoln, probably knew more about wild animals than any boy in the world; and the smallest boy never had killed any animals, except a stray mole or two, that happened to get out in the daytime, by mistake, but he was goin' to—and—well, there was so much to be told, and it had to be told so fast, that no shorthand writer that ever lived could have put it ...
— Injun and Whitey to the Rescue • William S. Hart

... not bound to look lovingly on each other? God seeks to know them. Are they not bound to know one another? Lofty disregard of human suffering is not God's way. Is it ours? He 'looks down from the height of His sanctuary to hear the crying of the prisoner.' Should not we stoop from our mole-hill to see it? God has not too many concerns on His hands to mark the obscurest sorrow and be ready to help it. And shall we plead that we are too busy with petty personal concerns to take interest in helping the sorrows and fighting against ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren

... sketch we made?" he resumed. "The plot's perfect. I detest conspiracies, but we must use what weapons we can, and be Old Mole, if they trample us in the earth. Once up, we have Turin to back us. This I know. We shall have nothing but the Tedeschi to manage: and if they beat us in cavalry, it's certain that they can't rely on their light horse. The ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith

... those races. Yet intellect was all he was. Vast areas of thought, feeling, and conduct, in which the people around him spent so much of their time, were entirely closed to him. He had no personal life at all. That part of him had atrophied from lack of use, like the eyes of the mole and of those sightless fishes men take from the waters ...
— Queed • Henry Sydnor Harrison

... The flash of conviction was as instantaneous in its action in my mind as that of the lightning when it strikes its object. I stood confounded, yet enlightened, all ablaze!—but the subject of this discovery did not seem in the least to apprehend it, or to believe it possible, in his mad, mole-like effrontery of self-sufficiency, that by his own track he could ...
— Sea and Shore - A Sequel to "Miriam's Memoirs" • Mrs. Catharine A. Warfield

... little stabs of malice. The writing was fastidious and competent. Panoukian thought the essay a masterpiece, and there crept a sort of reverence into his attitude towards its author.... Then, to complete his infatuation, he contrasted Old Mole with Harbottle." I am no Panoukian. Mr. CANNAN'S opinion of Old Mole's book may stand as mine of Mr. CANNAN'S book. But I can understand the Panoukian attitude; and when I read the Panoukian reviews—referring inevitably to the "damnable cleverness" of Mr. CANNAN—then I suspect ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 146, February 4, 1914 • Various

... Harkaway on the Isle of Palms By Bracebridge Hemyng 33—Young Jack Harkaway In Search of His Father By Bracebridge Hemyng 32—Young Jack Harkaway at Mole's Academy By Bracebridge Hemyng 31—Jack Harkaway in the Toils By Bracebridge Hemyng 30—Jack Harkaway in the Black Hills By Bracebridge Hemyng 29—Jack Harkaway's Cadet Days By Bracebridge Hemyng 28—Jack Harkaway Among the Indians By Bracebridge ...
— A Prisoner of Morro - In the Hands of the Enemy • Upton Sinclair

... who dies in the hospital, without home or kindred, with no other name than the number of his bed, should accept death as a deliverance or submit to it as a last trial, that the old peasant who falls asleep, bent double, worn out and stiff-jointed, in his dark, smoke-begrimed mole-hole, should go thence without regret, that he should relish in anticipation the taste of the cool earth he has turned and returned so many times, one can understand. And yet how many of them are attached to existence by their very misery, how many exclaim ...
— The Nabob, Vol. 2 (of 2) • Alphonse Daudet

... small a craft could possibly endure a minute in such elemental fury. But little by little she worked off the shore and out of the ground-swell into the deeper waters of the bay, where the main-sheet was slacked away a bit, and she ran for shelter behind the rock wall of the Alameda Mole a few miles away. Here they found the Reindeer calmly at anchor; and here, during the next several hours, straggled in the remainder of the fleet, with the exception of the Ghost, which had evidently gone ashore to keep the ...
— The Cruise of the Dazzler • Jack London

... part. "We shall make our fire tell before long," observed Jack to Higson, who stood by his side, just as the ship had delivered her broadside and was standing out of action. "See, flames are bursting out from the fort at the end of the mole,—that won't trouble us again,—look there on the other side, there must be numerous works and storehouses on fire. If we keep on in this fashion the Russians will have the whole place ...
— The Three Commanders • W.H.G. Kingston

... which constantly prevail there. For, when we had advanced beyond the equinoctial to the north, where these mountains left us, and had nothing to screen us to the eastward but the high lands on the Isthmus of Darien, which are mere mole-hills compared to the Andes, we then found that we had totally changed our climate in a short run; passing, in two or three days, from the temperate air of Peru, to the sultry and burning ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 11 • Robert Kerr

... channel. Along the banks of the Mississippi and other large rivers the most of this detritus falls near the stream; a little of it penetrates to the farther side of the plains, which often have a width of ten miles or more. The result is that a broad elevation is constructed, a sort of natural mole or levee, in a measure damming the flood waters, which can now only enter the "back swamps" through the channels of the tributary streams. Each of these back swamps normally discharges into the main stream through a little river of its own, ...
— Outlines of the Earth's History - A Popular Study in Physiography • Nathaniel Southgate Shaler

... squashes and Christmas melons, heaped in the storeroom for winter. As we rode away with the spade, Antonia suggested that we stop at the prairie-dog-town and dig into one of the holes. We could find out whether they ran straight down, or were horizontal, like mole-holes; whether they had underground connections; whether the owls had nests down there, lined with feathers. We might get some puppies, ...
— My Antonia • Willa Cather

... too matter-of-fact, by half, Walter. Your common sense ideas, as you call them, will keep you grubbing in a mole hill ...
— Home Lights and Shadows • T. S. Arthur

... limbs like a garment, and springing madly forward towards the door,—"Ha! touch me not! Off, I say, off!" He paused, gazed wildly round, flung his hand to his brow, and, while his eyes rolled till nothing but their whites were seen, while the purple veins swelled like mole-tracks in his forehead, and a bubbling froth began to gather about his lips, he tossed his arms in the air, gave shrieking utterance to the cry,—"O Christ! it is gone! it is gone!" and fell to ...
— Atlantic Monthly Vol. 6, No. 33, July, 1860 • Various

... foot, a divinely-shaped leg, and a perfect hand. No one is ignorant of the fact that my wife's shoulders are of dazzling whiteness, and that high on the left shoulder there is a most enticing little mole. I had the satisfaction of reading this particular last evening. It is charming, upon my word! and I am truly a ...
— Baron Trigault's Vengeance - Volume 2 (of 2) • Emile Gaboriau

... evidently knew the water thereabouts; for they steered in a wide circle up behind a line of shoals, that acted like a mole in breaking the force of the waves, and bore down then obliquely upon the wreck, to leeward of which the water ...
— The Pilot and his Wife • Jonas Lie

... of the sea face a mole projected into the water, guarding a small harbor. The country round the town was fertile and beautiful, carefully cultivated and watered by streams flowing from the neighboring mountains. At the distance of about a league from the shore the land rises into an amphitheater of hills thickly dotted ...
— The Bravest of the Brave - or, with Peterborough in Spain • G. A. Henty

... Tidor, the Dutchmen entreated our general not to allow the King of Ternate and them to fall into the hands of their enemies, from whom he had so lately delivered them; promising him mountains of cloves and other commodities at Ternate and Makeu, but performing mole-hills, verifying the proverb, "When the danger is over the saint is deceived." One thing I may not forget: When the King of Ternate came on board, he was trembling for fear; which the general supposing to be from cold, put on his back a ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. VIII. • Robert Kerr

... convenient divisions of himself. But all that would be lost for long times in the general miraculous variety of things! On the whole, going through Spain in the autumn weather, even with poverty making mouths alongside, was not a sorry business! Zest lived in pitting vigor and wit against mole hills threatening an aggregation into mountains! As for time, what was it, anyhow, to matter so much? He owned time and ...
— Foes • Mary Johnston

... of Shiraz would take my heart in hand, I would give for her dark mole Samarkand and ...
— Beethoven • George Alexander Fischer

... they have heard my screams. "Now let me speak no more—yet all declared That one so young, in pity, should be spared. And one so manly;—on his graceful neck, That chains of jewels may be proud to deck, To a small mole a mother's lips have press'd - And there the cord—my breath is sore oppress'd. "I now can speak again: —my elder boy Was that year drown'd,—a seaman in a hoy: He left a numerous race; of these would some In their young troubles to my cottage ...
— The Borough • George Crabbe

... species of ghost that could be shot with a silver sixpence, or if there was any other weapon that could possibly accomplish his annihilation. Clashnichd informed him that she had occasion to know that Ben Baynac was wholly invulnerable to all the weapons of man, with the exception of a large mole on his left breast, which was no doubt penetrable by silver or steel; but that, from the specimens she had of his personal prowess and strength, it were vain for mere man to attempt to combat him. Confiding, ...
— Folk-Lore and Legends - Scotland • Anonymous

... St. Paul down the river to Mendota, Kennicott more elastic-seeming in a cap and a soft crepe shirt, Carol youthful in a tam-o'-shanter of mole velvet, a blue serge suit with an absurdly and agreeably broad turn-down linen collar, and frivolous ankles above athletic shoes. The High Bridge crosses the Mississippi, mounting from low banks to a palisade of cliffs. Far ...
— Main Street • Sinclair Lewis

... A mole, in pursuing certain geological researches, came upon the buried carcase of a mule, and ...
— Cobwebs From an Empty Skull • Ambrose Bierce (AKA: Dod Grile)

... army stevedores, lusty and virile and strong, We are given the hardest work of the war, and the hours are long. We handle the heavy boxes, and shovel the dirty coal; While soldiers and sailors work in the light, we burrow below like a mole. But somebody has to do this work, or the soldiers could not fight! And whatever work is given a man, is good if he does ...
— Hello, Boys! • Ella Wheeler Wilcox

... Longinus himself is inclined to our faith—by my head, I doubt not that he is more than inclined—than 'tis that Zenobia is. If our Messiah should first of all gird on the sword of Palmyra, what Jew, whose sight is better than a mole's, would be surprised? My father—may his sleep be sweet!—whose beard came lower than his girdle, and whose wisdom was famous throughout the East, built much upon what he knew of the Queen, and her great minister, and used to say, 'That another Barchochab would arise ...
— Zenobia - or, The Fall of Palmyra • William Ware

... Old Fr. marage, marsh, and Wedlock is imitative for Wedlake; cf. Mortlock for Mortlake and perhaps Diplock for deep-lake. Creed is the Anglo-Saxon personal name Creda. Revel, a common French surname, is a personal name of obscure origin. Want is the Mid. Eng. wont, mole, whence Wontner, mole-catcher. It is difficult to see how such names as Warr, Battle, and Conquest came into existence. The former, found as de la warre, is no doubt sometimes local (Chapter XIII), and Battle is a dim. of Bat (Chapter VI). But de la batayle is also a common entry, ...
— The Romance of Names • Ernest Weekley

... gale. But the French genius seems to delight in such struggles for empire with the waves. Almost with the taking of the citadel the engineer began his work. Two jetties, as they are called, were pushed out from the land into deep water,—one from the mole on the north, half a mile long, and the other from Point Bab-Azoum on the south, a third of a mile long. In 1850 these were so far complete as to inclose a safe harbor of two hundred acres. But not content, the French ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 12, No. 73, November, 1863 • Various

... practical assistance. If only Pasquale, man of action, swift intelligence, were here! I can only trust to the trained methods of the unimaginative machine who has set out to trace Carlotta by means of the scar on her forehead and the mole behind her ear. And meanwhile I am very lonely. My sole friend, to whom I could have turned, Mrs. McMurray, is still at Bude. She is to have a child, I understand, in the near future, and will stay in Cornwall ...
— The Morals of Marcus Ordeyne • William J. Locke

... when there really is need of it. No one, unless it is Digger the Badger or Miner the Mole, can dig faster than Johnny Chuck. And when there is real need of working, Johnny works with a will. When he was a very tiny Chuck, old Mother Chuck ...
— The Adventures of Johnny Chuck • Thornton W. Burgess

... Byng, as given by the English naval historian, make yet more manifest the purpose of England at this time. While the city and citadel of Messina were being besieged by the Austrians, English, and Sardinians, a dispute arose as to the possession of the Spanish men-of-war within the mole. Byng, "reflecting within himself that possibly the garrison might capitulate for the safe return of those ships into Spain, which he was determined not to suffer; that on the other hand the right of possession might breed an inconvenient dispute ...
— The Influence of Sea Power Upon History, 1660-1783 • A. T. Mahan

... with rich clustering hair as black as a sloe; but at this moment he did not look prepossessing. He frowned and flashed a furious glance upon the speaker; but old Grange, who had an eye like a hawk, for the objects that a hawk desires, was as blind as a mole to any evidence of human emotion short of a punch on the ...
— Bred in the Bone • James Payn

... Aunt Anna's death, the family left Genoa and came to Manchester, where Fleeming was entered in Fairbairn's works as an apprentice. From the palaces and Alps, the Mole, the blue Mediterranean, the humming lanes and the bright theatres of Genoa, he fell—and he was sharply conscious of the fall—to the dim skies and the foul ways of Manchester. England he found on his return "a horrid place," and there is no doubt the family ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson, Volume 9 • Robert Louis Stevenson

... cannot believe in half successes and accomplish whole ones. A man's faith sets the boundaries of his work. He will do what he believes and accomplish what he believes can be accomplished. Mountains are not subdued by men who stand discouraged at a mole-hill. A man must conquer the fatigues of the way in his own heart or he will never ...
— Levels of Living - Essays on Everyday Ideals • Henry Frederick Cope



Words linked to "Mole" :   Damaraland mole rat, jetty, groyne, naked mole rat, Talpidae, mole plant, starnose mole, Mexico, family Talpidae, metric weight unit, mole rat, seawall, counterspy, queen mole rat, breakwater, shrew mole, marsupial mole, hydatid mole, sauce, Condylura cristata, barrier, mole cricket, hair-tailed mole, bulwark, molal, American shrew mole



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