"Owlish" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... looked to see if the baby was awake too. He was, and she took him out of the cradle. Then she saw a large gold basin full of water. She washed the baby in it, and he stared at her all the time, with big, owlish eyes. Then she took the box of ointment out of her pocket. She touched it with her finger and then touched each of the baby's eyes with it. Instantly his eyes looked brighter and deeper, and instead of staring at her stupidly, ...
— Fairies and Folk of Ireland • William Henry Frost
... numerous gannets, frigate birds, and terns—the first gazing with a stupid yet angry air; the last—one beautiful little snow-white species in particular—hovering only a few feet above the sketchers' heads, while their large black eyes scanned the drawings with the owlish look of wisdom peculiar to connoisseurs. Noddies also were there, and, on the ground, lizards and spiders and innumerable ants engaged in all the varied activities connected with ...
— Blown to Bits - or, The Lonely Man of Rakata • Robert Michael Ballantyne
... hearty laugh. But he is writing for Catholics and Established Church people, and high-toned, antiquated, conservative gentility, whom it is a delight to him to help you shock, while he pretends to shake his head with owlish density. He is ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... There can be no more excuse for the method used by Pitt than for the method used by Pigott. But it differs further from ordinary misrule in the vital matter of its object. The coercion was not imposed that the people might live quietly, but that the people might die quietly. And then we sit in an owlish innocence of our sin, and debate whether the Irish might conceivably succeed in saving Ireland. We, as a matter of fact, have not even failed to save Ireland. We have simply failed ...
— The Crimes of England • G.K. Chesterton
... look upon each passing dame. The fire of youth that wanders through his veins May scandal breed, and it were well to look With watchful eye upon his every act Affairs of state with mighty import soar Above the intrigues of a callow youth, Hence we must owlish vigil constant keep And in good sooth, it might indeed be well To speak him fair, and warning subtle give Lest his distemper lead to grievous ill. Quezox: Alas I know the temptress doth beguile; Hence sympathy doth plead for helping hand. If 'tis ...
— 'A Comedy of Errors' in Seven Acts • Spokeshave (AKA Old Fogy)
... is! The stars are out As if a bucketful of them had spilled Across the sky. And here we sit like owls, Blinking and staring at a little fire When heaven is burning! I'm afraid it's time For me to leave this owlish parliament; And I shall probably knock holes in half The windows of the town as I walk home Star-gazingly. And here it's after twelve! I might have guessed it from the fatal fact That we'd begun to talk philosophy: No sane man ever does, except in hours When by all rights he ...
— Mr. Faust • Arthur Davison Ficke
... one such might prove discoverable among our Parliamentary populations? That one, in such an enterprise as this of Downing Street, might be invaluable! One noble man, at once of natural wisdom and practical experience; one Intellect still really human, and not red-tapish, owlish and pedantical, appearing there in that dim chaos, with word of command; to brandish Hercules-like the divine broom and shovel, and turn running water in upon the place, and say as with a fiat, "Here shall be truth, and real work, and ...
— Latter-Day Pamphlets • Thomas Carlyle
... bank a cowboy rode up on a flea-bitten roan that was lathered with sweat, sadly roweled and leg-weary. Astride of it was Wyatt, riding automatically his eyes wide-opened, red-rimmed, owlish with lack of sleep and overmuch bad liquor. Afoot he could hardly have navigated, in the saddle he seemed comparatively sober. He spurred over to the big machine as Sandy and Keith got in to return to the ranch, sweeping his sombrero ...
— Rimrock Trail • J. Allan Dunn
... "Their owlish eyes mean Gretna Green," whispered Elsin, leaning close to me; "but what do we care, Carus? And they think us married in New York. Now, sir, if you ever wished to see how a hungry maid can eat Tapaan soupaan, you shall ...
— The Reckoning • Robert W. Chambers
... to believe him anything else than a little French professor, wise above his generation and skin-full of occult wisdom in some particular branch of science; but then the big round spectacles, the red dressing-cap, and the cerulean leather slippers of themselves impart an air of owlish and preternatural wisdom. ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle Volume II. - From Teheran To Yokohama • Thomas Stevens
... Lord Robert drawled out a long owlish laugh; Polly Love said spitefully, "You might give us your friend, the new curate, next, dearest," and then Glory ...
— The Christian - A Story • Hall Caine
... sheet, he mounted the chair and with a face owlish in its affectation of heavy wisdom, he thrust his hand in his blouse in classic barnstorming attitude and read ...
— Terry - A Tale of the Hill People • Charles Goff Thomson
... Venerable Justice herself began by Wild-Justice; all Law is as a tamed furrowfield, slowly worked out, and rendered arable, from the waste jungle of Club-Law. Valiant Wisdom tilling and draining; escorted by owl-eyed Pedantry, by owlish and vulturish and many other forms of Folly;—the valiant husbandman assiduously tilling; the blind greedy enemy too assiduously sowing tares! It is because there is yet in venerable wigged Justice some wisdom, amid such mountains of wiggeries and folly, that men have not cast her into ...
— Past and Present - Thomas Carlyle's Collected Works, Vol. XIII. • Thomas Carlyle
... Martians were real enough. A flitting vampire bat is real, or a stinging ray in the depths of a blue lagoon. But who could point to a Martian and say, "I have seen you plain, in broad daylight. I have looked into your owlish eyes and watched you go flitting over the sand on your thin, stalklike legs? I know there is nothing mysterious about you. You are like a water insect skimming the surface of a pond in a familiar meadow on Earth. You are quick and alert, but no match for a man. You ...
— The Man the Martians Made • Frank Belknap Long
... General Gordon,[91] Who girded his sword on, To serve with a Muscovite Master, And help him to polish A nation so owlish, They thought ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Vol. 7. - Poetry • George Gordon Byron
... such things must with children; but some impression remained and helped them to realize the serious responsibility they were under to their own after-selves. At the same time, the father, who loved a joke almost as much as he loved a truth, and who despised austerity as something owlish, set them the example of getting all the harmless fun they could out of experience. They had their laugh about nearly everything that was not essentially sacred; they were made to feel the ludicrous as an alleviation of existence; ...
— A Boy's Town • W. D. Howells
... not easy for the woman with a snub nose and lips molded with a hard pencil to bleed the milk of human kindness over the frailties of the fruity chalice that contained Miss Drew. She could not know, for instance, if her own gaze was merely owlish and thin-lashed, the challenge of eyes that are slightly too long. Miss Drew did. Simply drooping hers must have stirred her with a none-too-nice sense of herself, like the swell of his biceps can bare the teeth of ...
— The Vertical City • Fannie Hurst
... by Reynolds!), once represented Unamuno as an owl. A marvellous thrust at the heart of Unamuno's character. For all this vitality and ever-moving activity of mind is shot through by the absolute immobility of two owlish eyes piercing the darkness of spiritual night. And this intense gaze into the mystery is the steel axis round which his spirit revolves and revolves in desperation; the unity under his multiplicity; the one fire ...
— Tragic Sense Of Life • Miguel de Unamuno
... as in the sketch. This, then, I felt sure was the work of an owl. But which owl? There were two, maybe three kinds in that valley. I wished to know exactly and, looking for further evidence, I found on a sapling near by a big soft, downy, owlish feather (m) with three brown bars across it; which told me plainly that a Barred Owl or Hoot Owl had been there recently, and that he was almost certainly the killer of ...
— Woodland Tales • Ernest Seton-Thompson
... rough class. A little later, and another dense throng will emerge from the Old Bowery Theatre, just over the way. It will be a very mixed crowd of men, women, and children,—the street-boys, with their wondrous variety of sharp faces, owlish faces, wicked faces, and ragged clothes, being constant patrons of this popular east-side theatre. Not far from this are the most dangerous corners and lurking-places to be found anywhere in the Bowery. ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 121, November, 1867 • Various
... this paraphernalia of marvel, it would be dispelled from the average mind when it came in contact with the chief conjuror, who is seated in the dim seclusion of a retired room, fortified by bell-pulls, speaking-tubes, and an owlish expression intended to be considered as the mirror of taciturn wisdom. From his retreat he moves the outside puppets of secretary, shadows, and call-boys, as the requirements of his patrons, who are admitted singly ...
— Lights and Shadows of New York Life - or, the Sights and Sensations of the Great City • James D. McCabe
... very bald, however, and the big round spectacles which he always wore gave an owlish aspect to his face, the glasses being set in a heavy black frame which made his eyes look even ...
— The Hilltop Boys - A Story of School Life • Cyril Burleigh
... dress, feeling a queer sensation of skin in his clothes, the sign of a feverish night; and yawning he went into the air. Leftward the narrow village street led to the footway along which he could make for the mountain-wall. He cast one look at the head of the campanile, silly as an owlish roysterer's glazed stare at the young Aurora, and hurried his feet to check the yawns coming alarmingly fast, in the ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... me very much, by night and day, and I seldom tired of watching her owlish countenance as she sat by the fire, never allowing it to sink low for want of fuel; always studying the pot when it was on to simmer, and at the same time attending to the movements of the others about her, ready at a moment's ...
— Green Mansions - A Romance of the Tropical Forest • W. H. Hudson
... Company, after toasting all the beauties of Quebec, desire to drink the health of the fair mistress of Beaumanoir, and in her presence too!" said Cadet with owlish gravity. ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby
... did not see them until he was almost beside them; then he paused with a start, and his eyes grew owlish behind the magnifying lenses as he strove to make them out. That he did not recognize them seemed to worry him; his thin, gray face seemed to grow grayer and thinner; with a diffident little bow he passed on and out ...
— Ashton-Kirk, Investigator • John T. McIntyre
... town or place God made the stars especially; Babies look up with owlish face And see them tangled in a tree: You saw a moon from Sussex Downs, A Sussex moon, untravelled still, I saw a moon that was the town's, The ...
— The Napoleon of Notting Hill • Gilbert K. Chesterton
... pauses in dictation she had a way of peering near-sightedly over her glasses at the dapper, well-dressed traveling salesman who was rolling off the items on his sale bill. That is a trick which would make the prettiest kind of a girl look owlish. ...
— Stories from Everybody's Magazine • 1910 issues of Everybody's Magazine |
