"Peacock" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... there was nothing mystic—no Platonism; and, if I remember rightly, the star-spangled banner was altogether omitted. To the national eagle he did allude. "Your American eagle," he said, "is very well. Protect it here and abroad. But beware of the American peacock." He gave an account of the war from the beginning, showing how it had arisen, and how it had been conducted; and he did so with admirable simplicity and truth. He thought the North were right about the war; and as I thought so also, I was not called upon ...
— Volume 1 • Anthony Trollope
... to bear the brunt of the late ambassador's malice, and to engage at a little later period in hottest controversy with him, personal and political. "Why should van der Myle strut about, with his arms akimbo like a peacock?" complained Aerssens one day in confused metaphor. A question not easy ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... migrated to Nantgwilt in Wales. Here the Shelleys contemplated receiving Godwin and his family, Miss Hitchener with her American pupils; and why not Miss Hitchener's father, reported to have been an old smuggler? Here Shelley first met Thomas Love Peacock. They were unable to remain at Nantgwilt owing to various mishaps, and migrated to that terrestrial paradise in North Devon, Lynmouth. This lovely place, with its beautiful and romantic surroundings loved and exquisitely described by more than one poet, cannot fail to ...
— Mrs. Shelley • Lucy M. Rossetti
... indulgent sky; Adopted by the sun, in blaze of day, They ripen under his prolific ray. Unmindful she, that some unhappy tread May crush her young in their neglected bed. (31)What time she skims along the field with speed, (32)She scorns the rider, and pursuing steed. How rich the peacock!(33) what bright glories run From plume to plume, and vary in the sun! He proudly spreads them, to the golden ray Gives all his colours, and adorns the day; With conscious state the specious round displays, And ...
— The Poetical Works of Edward Young, Volume 2 • Edward Young
... swell-fish comes a young sea-robin, a very interesting fish. He can make a musical grunting noise when he feels good, and will spread his beautiful wings, and sail through the water as proud as a peacock. When he is tired, he likes to bury himself up to his eyes in sand, for which he uses his two curious hooked fingers. He also uses these to dig out the sand-shrimps. Some years ago great numbers of very large sea-robins visited our coast, and were sold ...
— Harper's Young People, August 17, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... said the Peacock, "therein is not your folly—although there is neither wit nor wisdom in your prattle—but in the thought that your fine words would make an easy ...
— The Talking Beasts • Various
... to be quite interesting," he confided to the paper-knife, with which he was spearing tiny holes in the blotter of the pad. "Peacock Alley at five—but there are a few matters ...
— The Cab of the Sleeping Horse • John Reed Scott
... other, with her lips all puckered up and her eyes on the floor, thinking of things that would be polite enough to say to a Maharajah. They were so troublesome to think of, that she could not attend to what Sonny Sahib said at all, even when he asked her for the sixth time how you made a peacock with blue glass eyes, like the one on each arm of His Highness's chair. Sonny Sahib grew quite tired of watching the mud-turtle that was paddling about in a pool of the shallow river among the yellow sands down below, and of counting the camels that were wading across it, carrying ...
— The Story of Sonny Sahib • Sara Jeannette Duncan
... challengeth the moon in beauty. With an excellent diadem and beautiful braid with robes made of the bodies of snakes, and with also the brilliant girdle round thy hips, thou shinest like the Mandara mountain encircled with snakes. Thou shinest also with peacock-plumes standing erect on thy head, and thou hast sanctified the celestial regions by adopting the vow of perpetual maiden-hood. It is for this, O thou that hast slain the Mahishasura, [9] that thou art praised and worshipped by the gods for ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 2 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... in company for England. Seeing the Hosiander could not so quickly be made ready, it was thought proper to send the Concord for Amboina, in which George Bale went, and George Chancey was to stay in Macasser. The Dutch ship Zelandia arrived from Japan, bringing letters from Mr Cox, advising that Mr Peacock and the Hollanders were slain in Cochin-china, and that Mr Adams, with four other Englishmen, were gone thence ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. VIII. • Robert Kerr
... comes pride; it is, therefore, because they are led by their hearts, which naturally tend to lift them up in pride. This pride of heart tempts them, and by its deceits overcometh them; yea, it doth put a bewitching virtue into their peacock's feathers, and then they are swallowed up with the vanity of them ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... now entering the little hamlet, exchanging the grassy path for a sidewalk of planks laid lengthwise, and the peace of nature for such signs of civilization as a troop of geese, noisily promenading across the thoroughfare, and a peacock—in its pride of pomp as a favored bird of old King Solomon—crying from the top of the shed and proudly displaying its gorgeous train. Barnes wiped the perspiration from his brow, as ...
— The Strollers • Frederic S. Isham
... been no love. And he had always held his uncle in slight esteem—foreboded something from his smiling insincerity. He never mentions him without an expression of contempt, hardly acknowledges him as king; he is a thing—of nothing—a farcical monarch—"a peacock"—and, in this particular act, no dread usurper, but a "cut-purse of the realm." Whether he designed to wait or was prepared to strike, his future was still intact, his energy unimpaired. His mother remained to him, ...
— The Contemporary Review, January 1883 - Vol 43, No. 1 • Various
... Whitney goes about rubbing his hands when he thinks no one is looking. He's as proud as a peacock with ten tails because he operated on Russell's head and lifted up something, and now the poor fellow's going on jolly. ...
— The Black Bar • George Manville Fenn
... decorated did not seem happy. In fact, he appeared miserably nervous and apprehensive; or, as Christie remarked, as though he had been condemned to exchange his gaudiness for something more modest, like the plumage of a peacock, for instance. "Isn't he lovely, though?" continued the young officer. "Now I know, what I should never otherwise have suspected, that the savage mind is capable of an artistic expression more sublime than anything yet ...
— At War with Pontiac - The Totem of the Bear • Kirk Munroe and J. Finnemore
... promote more than one of them to the first. The lines of development, as well as the chief individual practitioners, may be best indicated by short discussions of Hook, Bulwer, Disraeli, Ainsworth, James, Marryat, and Peacock. ...
— The English Novel • George Saintsbury
... and ducks had crept through the hedge and were pecking at the fallen apples. The drakes were handsome fellows, with pinkish grey bodies, their heads and necks covered with iridescent green feathers which grew close and full, changing to blue like a peacock's neck. Antonia said they always reminded her of soldiers—some uniform she had seen in the old country, when she ...
— My Antonia • Willa Cather
... Sure, I thought he was repenting of his misdeeds, and I said I was glad to hear such good words from him. 'A' then, Father,' says he, 'I hear you have got a great curiosity from Dublin—a shower-bath, I hear?' So I said I had: and indeed, to be candid, I was as proud as a peacock of the same bath, which tickled my fancy when I was once in town, and so I bought it. 'Would you show it to me?' says he. 'To be sure,' says I, and off I went, like a fool, and put the wather on the top, ...
— Handy Andy, Vol. 2 - A Tale of Irish Life • Samuel Lover
... suppose Frank is locked up there!" cried the old lady, "with a basin of gruel and a book of Watts's hymns." A servant entered at this moment, answering Lady Walham's summons. "Peacock, the Countess of Kew says that she proposes to stay here this evening. Please to ask the landlord to show her ladyship rooms," said Lady Walham; and by this time she had thought of a reply to Lady Kew's ...
— The Newcomes • William Makepeace Thackeray
... great dunes were left behind, and the bassourahs no longer swayed like towers in a rotary earthquake with the movements of the camels. Far away across a flat expanse of golden sand, silvered by saltpetre, a long, low cloud—blue-green as a peacock's tail—trailed on the horizon. It was the oasis of Djazerta, with its thousands of ...
— A Soldier of the Legion • C. N. Williamson
... rather a dull affair save for a nice little conversation with Watts Dunton. His walrusy appearance which makes the bottom of his face look fierce, is counteracted by the kindness of his little eyes. He told us the inner story of Whistler's "Peacock Room" which scarcely redounds to Whistler's credit. The Duchess of Sutherland was there and many notabilities. Between ourselves Mr. —— is a good-hearted snob. His wife nice, intelligent, but affected (I suppose unconsciously). ...
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton • Maisie Ward
... end of the dining-room table, Simmons standing at one side, his yellow eyes gleaming with interested affection and his fly-brush of long peacock feathers waving steadily, even when he ...
— The Awakening of Helena Richie • Margaret Deland
... out, was really a good-natured young man; but he soon went off to Cambridge; and with the rest, or some of them, I continued to wage war for nearly a year. And yet, for a word spoken with kindness, I would have resigned the peacock's feather in my cap as the merest of baubles. Undoubtedly, praise sounded sweet in my ears also. But that was nothing by comparison with what stood on the other side. I detested distinctions that were ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Vol 58, No. 357, July 1845 • Various
... it, but he's a shy man with women. I do believe he's frightened to propose. He's bought a house in London, in my favourite square. And now he's taken a shooting-lodge in Forfarshire—such an amusing place: a huge round house with as many eyes as in a peacock's tail, all staring cheerfully, and high chimneys grouped together like bundles of asparagus. I've just been staying there with his sister, Mrs. Payne, whom I believe he imported from America on purpose ...
— The Heather-Moon • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... prevented my keeping my journal so exactly as heretofore, by which means a pleasant visit to the peacock, my Papa's & mamma's journey to Marshfield &c. have been omitted. The 6 instant Mr Sam^l Jarvis was married to Miss Suky Peirce, & on the 13th I made her a visit in company with mamma & many others. The bride was dress'd in a ...
— Diary of Anna Green Winslow - A Boston School Girl of 1771 • Anna Green Winslow
... left there; he could see a discarded railway engine that lay gaping there half-way across, ready to catch and trip him if he were not careful. His eyes were like saucers, the hissing noise came from between his teeth, his forehead frowned. He passed the peacock, he flung contemptuously aside the proffered corner of the table; he passed, as an Atlantic liner passes the Eddystone, the table's other end; he ...
— The Golden Scarecrow • Hugh Walpole
... sacrament; Shaftesbury, early in the eighteenth century, spoke of human nature being "sublimated by a sort of spiritual chemists" and Welton, a little later, of "a love sublimate and refined," while, finally, and altogether in our modern sense, Peacock in 1816 in his Headlong Hall referred to "that enthusiastic sublimation which is the source ...
— Little Essays of Love and Virtue • Havelock Ellis
... as late as five in the afternoon that, wearing the peach-colored suit trimmed with scarlet ribbon, and a new French beaver, the exquisite came upon Lady Drogheda walking in the gardens with only an appropriate peacock for company. She was so beautiful and brilliant and so little—so like a famous gem too suddenly disclosed, and therefore oddly disparate in all these qualities, that his decorous pleasant voice might quite permissibly ...
— The Certain Hour • James Branch Cabell
... black robes, with eyes closed, each bearing in his right hand a book bound in gold and velvet, which he pressed prayerfully to his breast; a golden pen was worn in their girdles in place of a weapon, and on the fez an artistically arranged and jewelled peacock's feather. Now followed two other riders; but these were not alike, as the others had been, but bore the most remarkable and striking contrast to one another. One of them was dressed in the latest ...
— Frederick The Great and His Family • L. Muhlbach
... they had a fire at old Peacock's farm; I hear the Squire and Barter did wonders. He's as game as ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... to begin the construction of new vessels. At the same time American privateers ranged the seas and brought in British merchantmen. In 1813 there was a minor naval warfare on Lakes Erie, Ontario, and Champlain, Two small armed vessels, the "Peacock" and the "Boxer," were captured at sea by the Americans; and the ship "Essex," under Captain Porter, ranged the Pacific and captured ...
— Formation of the Union • Albert Bushnell Hart
... emperors of Delhi; succeeded his father in 1627; a man of great administrative ability and a skilled warrior; conquered the Deccan and the kingdom of Golconda, and generally raised the Mogul Empire to its zenith; his court was truly Eastern in its sumptuous magnificence; the "Peacock Throne" alone cost L7,000,000; died in prison, a victim to the perfidy of his usurping son ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... adorned their heads with ostrich feathers, they laughed heartily, adding, "How ridiculous!" We laugh at their sable beauties adorning their necks and bosoms with trumpery glass-beads, and they laugh at our red and white beauties adorning their heads with ostrich feathers. The Chinese have their peacock's feather as a set-off against our button-hole ribbon; "Ainsi va le monde." One of the Aheer Touaricks, who, unlike my Ghat friends, return presents, brought me to-day a damaged ostrich skin and feathers. Being quite out of pens, and not able to persuade the Tripolines to send me up a few ...
— Travels in the Great Desert of Sahara, in the Years of 1845 and 1846 • James Richardson
... in the kitchen, the neighbor women carried the cups and saucers, Maggie waited on the table, passing the bread around first, and Elvira stood with a bunch of peacock's feathers in her hand and kept off the flies. A boiled ham was at the head of the table, a pair of roast fowls at the foot; between stood a long row of vegetables,—potatoes, string-beans, squash, beets, and others,—and near the large tureens were smaller dishes,—cold-slaw, tomatoes, ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, September, 1885 • Various
... tenderly have returned a wife's love than he had done. One would say that all had run smoothly at Castle Richmond since the house had been made happy, after some years of waiting, by the birth of an eldest child and heir. But, nevertheless, those who knew most of Sir Thomas saw that there was a peacock on the wall. ...
— Castle Richmond • Anthony Trollope
... kettles, hurrying about, rattling, tinkling, in a state of shrill activity. I made calls upon elegant ladies, and after I had enjoyed the gloss of silk and the delicacy of lace, and the flash of jewels, I slipped on my spectacles, and saw a peacock's feather, flounced and furbelowed and fluttering; or an iron rod, thin, sharp, and hard; nor could I possibly mistake the movement of the drapery for any flexibility of the thing draped,—or, mysteriously chilled, I saw a statue ...
— The Best American Humorous Short Stories • Various
... which the arm belonged ascended step by step to the level of the chapel floor. The form and face of the being who thus presented himself were those of a frightful dwarf, with a large head, a cap fantastically adorned with three peacock feathers, a dress of red samite, the richness of which rendered his ugliness more conspicuous, distinguished by gold bracelets and armlets, and a white silk sash, in which he wore a gold-hilted dagger. This singular figure had in his left hand a kind of broom. So soon as he had ...
— The Talisman • Sir Walter Scott
... those still more artistically inclined, who ventured into conventionalised representations of the peacock with widely-expanded tail—the most favourite and frequent of Persian outbursts of Chappar khana art, and probably the most emblematic representation of Persian character. The conventionalised peacock is ...
— Across Coveted Lands - or a Journey from Flushing (Holland) to Calcutta Overland • Arnold Henry Savage Landor
... four distinct families—the Pigeons, the Curassows, the Pheasants, and the Grouse and Partridge tribe. Of these families the museum contains a fine and complete collection. The beauty of the pheasant family—its varieties ranging from the gaudy splendour of the peacock to the more modest beauty of the common hen—are here ...
— How to See the British Museum in Four Visits • W. Blanchard Jerrold
... Hard for your worship; thrown by many a coal, When 'twas not beech; weigh'd those I put in, just, To keep your heat still even; these blear'd eyes Have wak'd to read your several colours, sir, Of the pale citron, the green lion, the crow, The peacock's ...
— The Alchemist • Ben Jonson
... on a Sunday morning, about eight o'clock, when they started from Staines in this warlike attitude; their helmets glittering in the sun, like the peacock vain of his plumes. They, however, little dreamt of the disaster that was in store for them. Having passed Virginia Water, and as the postboy was taking them leisurely along up the steep hill leading to Bagshot, who should ride up to the side of the chaise but a single highwayman, who, having ...
— Memoirs of Henry Hunt, Esq. Volume 1 • Henry Hunt
... politicians. But no; we are put off with a fast day. There, an end! I begin to think that nothing will do for England but a good revolution, and a 'besom of destruction' used dauntlessly. We are getting up our vainglories again, smoothing our peacock's plumes. We shall be as exemplary as ever by next ...
— The Letters of Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Volume II • Elizabeth Barrett Browning
... Don Quixote and Sancho withdrew to the knight's room, and there Don Quixote gave his squire advice about governing. He admonished him to be a champion of virtue always, to strive to know himself and not to puff himself up like a peacock, whose feathers, he bade him remember, were fine, but who had ugly feet. And the advice and instructions that master gave servant were such that no one would have thought it was a ...
— The Story of Don Quixote • Arvid Paulson, Clayton Edwards, and Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... colour as the others, but of a somewhat lighter tint; while at the base of each feather, as we afterwards observed, was a round spot of bronzed green, looking like a gem in a dark setting. The crest, which was constantly spread out, appeared very like that of a peacock's tail, though, as Ellen observed, it would be a very little peacock to have such a tail. On searching in our book, we found that the first of these humming-birds we had remarked was a tufted coquette (Lophornis ornatus), while the other, which ...
— On the Banks of the Amazon • W.H.G. Kingston
... down over the white pebbles and olive weeds, in one broad rippling sheet of molten silver, towards the distant sea. Downwards it fleeted ever, and bore his thoughts floating on its oily stream; and the great trout, with their yellow sides and peacock backs, lounged among the eddies, and the silver grayling dimpled and wandered upon the shallows, and the may-flies flickered and rustled round him like water fairies, with their green gauzy wings; the coot clanked musically among the reeds; the ...
— Yeast: A Problem • Charles Kingsley
... of gold upon his head, and clad in a garment of yellow satin; and they had gold clasps upon their insteps. In the hand of each of them was an ivory bow, strung with the sinews of the stag, and their arrows and their shafts were of the bone of the whale, and were winged with peacock's feathers. The shafts also had golden heads. They had daggers with blades of gold, with hilts of the bone of the whale, and they ...
— The Junior Classics, V4 • Willam Patten (Editor)
... a whole jeweller's window!" he cried, dazzled by the gorgeous sight. The professor lighted another lamp, and Keith turned slowly around, to be admired on every side like a pleased peacock. ...
— Two Little Knights of Kentucky • Annie Fellows Johnston
... the name of Kupalo's Night. The fire must be kindled by the friction of two sticks. The young people dance round or leap over it; and a band of sturdy fellows run a race with lighted torches, the winner being rewarded with a peacock's feather, which he keeps throughout the year as a distinction. Cattle also are driven round the fire in the belief that this is a charm against pestilence and disease of ...
— Balder The Beautiful, Vol. I. • Sir James George Frazer
... Footmarks are stamped over it in all senses, heel to heel, heel to hollow, toe to toe, feet locked, a morris of shuffling feet without body phantoms, all in a scrimmage higgledypiggledy. The walls are tapestried with a paper of yewfronds and clear glades. In the grate is spread a screen of peacock feathers. Lynch squats crosslegged on the hearthrug of matted hair, his cap back to the front. With a wand he beats time slowly. Kitty Ricketts, a bony pallid whore in navy costume, doeskin gloves rolled back from a coral wristlet, a chain purse in her ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce
... light over the sleeping, snow-clad valley, and the silvery rays filtered through the clustering branches of the towering trees. As the great boat swung along past a farm-house, Jenkins heard the shrill, alarming cry of a peacock. Strains of music came floating upward from the cabin. The grim, black smoke-stacks were breathing heavily, and the timbers of the Texas trembled as the boat came up under the high ...
— Shawn of Skarrow • James Tandy Ellis
... into the Kaiser's palace To eat the peacock fine, And they are gone into the Kaiser's palace To drink ...
— Andromeda and Other Poems • Charles Kingsley
... for most people's taste: and one may admit that, for anything like frequent enjoyment, it wants a certain admixture of the fantastic in its various senses—after the method of Voltaire in one way, of Beckford in another, of Peacock in a third, of Disraeli in a fourth—to make it acceptable to more than a very few. But it shows, even from our present limited point of view, of what immense and exalted application the novel-method was capable: and it shows also the astonishing ...
— The English Novel • George Saintsbury
... sat down, Absal and he together side by side Rejoicing like the Lily and the Rose, Together like the Body and the Soul. Under its Trees in one another's Arms They slept—they drank its Fountains hand in hand— Sought Sugar with the Parrot—or in Sport Paraded with the Peacock—raced the Partridge— Or fell a-talking with the Nightingale. There was the Rose without a Thorn, and there The Treasure and no Serpent to beware— What sweeter than your Mistress at your side In such a ...
— Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam and Salaman and Absal • Omar Khayyam and Ralph Waldo Emerson
... parched in the burning sun And the grass is scorched and white. But the sand is passed, and the march is done, We are camping here to-night. I sit in the shade of the Temple walls, While the cadenced water evenly falls, And a peacock out of the Jungle calls To another, on yonder tomb. Above, half seen, in the lofty gloom, Strange works of a long dead people loom, Obscene and savage and half effaced— An elephant hunt, a musicians' feast— And curious matings of man and beast; What did they mean to the men who are long ...
— India's Love Lyrics • Adela Florence Cory Nicolson (AKA Laurence Hope), et al.
... XXIV The jolly peacock spreads not half so fair The eyed feathers of his pompous train; Nor golden Iris so bends in the air Her twenty-colored bow, through clouds of rain; Yet all her ornaments, strange, rich and rare, Her girdle did in price and beauty stain, Nor that, with scorn, which Tuscan ...
— Jerusalem Delivered • Torquato Tasso
... protruding. His dress was green, clumsily trimmed here and there with gaudy lace. A pair of tawdry ruffles dangled at his wrists, while his throat was nearly bare. His hat was ornamented with a cluster of peacock's feathers, limp, broken, and trailing down his back. Girded to his side was the steel hilt of an old sword, without blade or scabbard; and a few knee-ribbons completed his attire. He had a large raven named Grip, which he carried at his back in a basket, ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook, Vol. 3 • E. Cobham Brewer
... suggestions in earnest, and seriously maintained them as bases for a rational account of man and the world—how they explain the very existence of those dexterous cheats, those superior charlatans, the legislators and philosophers, who have known how to play so well upon the peacock-like vanity and ...
— Specimens of the Table Talk of S.T.Coleridge • Coleridge
... we are so many cocks and hens, my dear (sans arriere pensee), with our crops pretty full, our plumes pretty sleek, decent picking here and there in the straw-yard, and tolerable snug roosting in the barn: yonder on the terrace, in the sun, walks Peacock, stretching his proud neck, squealing every now and then in the most pert fashionable voice and flaunting his great supercilious dandified tail. Don't let us be too angry, my dear, with the useless, haughty, insolent creature, because he despises ...
— The Second Funeral of Napoleon • William Makepeace Thackeray (AKA "Michael Angelo Titmarch")
... capable of trying to 'do' the human peacock. But excuse the audacity and the crudity of my speculations—it only proves my interest. What is it that you ...
— The Tragic Muse • Henry James
... and sabre should do the business; and at once plunged into the mass of infantry, cavalry, and artillery. In five minutes the whole were put to the rout—guns, baggage, and ammunition taken; and the French general-in-chief as much stripped of his rearguard, as ever a peacock was plucked of ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 55, No. 340, February, 1844 • Various
... on earth is distressful to look at, it is an old woman ashamed of being old. What with paint and false hair, she is too much for my gravity. I laugh, even in church, when I see her coming. One of the worst looking birds I know of is a peacock after it has lost its feathers. I would not give one lock of my mother's gray hair for fifty thousand such caricatures of old age. The first time you find these faithful disciples of the ball-room diligently engaged and happy in the duties of the home circle, send me word, for I would go a great ...
— The Abominations of Modern Society • Rev. T. De Witt Talmage
... done for this year and the resolution came up for second passage in January, introduced by Senator Blanchard H. White and Assemblyman Robert Peacock, both of Burlington county. A hearing was held January 25, Mrs. Philip McKim Garrison chairman and speakers Dr. Shaw, E. G. C. Bleakley, city counsel of Camden; Mrs. Reynolds and Mrs. Feickert. The Senate passed the ...
— The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume VI • Various
... depth of glory far away, Down in the green park, a lofty palace lay, There, drank the deer from many a crystal pond, And the starred peacock gemmed the shade beyond. Around that child all nature shone more bright; Her innocence was as an added light. Rubies and diamonds strewed the grass she trode, And jets of sapphire from the ...
— Poems • Victor Hugo
... to many minds a Plutocracy presents many attractions. In the works of Thomas Love Peacock, and still more clearly in the works of Mr. W. H. Mallock, you will find an agreeable rendering of that conception. The bulk of the people will be organized out of sight in a state of industrious and productive congestion, and a wealthy, leisurely, and refined minority will live in ...
— New Worlds For Old - A Plain Account of Modern Socialism • Herbert George Wells
... her rosy cheeks fade and her hair grows gray! Now, that sweet old lady over there is just a picture of goodness; and her dear old eyes have a look of love in them that is more beautiful than any shimmer or shine you could show me in those of your friend Miss Peacock." ...
— Dreamland • Julie M. Lippmann
... brilliant blue plumage make the river banks gay; shrieking paroquets with coral-colored beaks and tender green feathers, abound in the forests; great, heavy-billed hornbills hop cumbrously from branch to branch, rivaling in their awkward gait the rhinoceros hornbills; the Javanese peacock, with its gorgeous tail and neck covered with iridescent green feathers instead of blue ones, moves majestically along the jungle tracks, together with the ocellated pheasant, the handsome and high-couraged ...
— The Golden Chersonese and the Way Thither • Isabella L. Bird (Mrs. Bishop)
... Healy knew Mr Dillon inside out and he had little respect for his qualities. He knew him to be vain, intractable, small-minded and abnormally ambitious of power. Parnell once said of him: "Dillon is as vain as a peacock and as jealous as a schoolgirl." And when he was not included as a member of the Land Conference I am sure it does him no wrong to say that he made up his mind that somebody should suffer for the ...
— Ireland Since Parnell • Daniel Desmond Sheehan
... sands? There are forty dead kings there, Maisie, each in a gorgeous tomb finer than all the others. You look at the palaces and streets and shops and tanks, and think that men must live there, till you find a wee gray squirrel rubbing its nose all alone in the market-place, and a jewelled peacock struts out of a carved doorway and spreads its tail against a marble screen as fine pierced as point-lace. Then a monkey—a little black monkey—walks through the main square to get a drink from a tank forty feet deep. He slides down the creepers to the water's edge, ...
— The Light That Failed • Rudyard Kipling
... the Wood The Town Mouse and the Country Mouse The Dog and the Wolf The Fox and the Crow The Belly and the Members The Sick Lion The Hart in the Ox-Stall The Ass and the Lapdog The Fox and the Grapes The Lion and the Mouse The Horse, Hunter, and Stag The Swallow and the Other Birds The Peacock and Juno The Frogs Desiring a King The Fox and the Lion The Mountains in Labour The Lion and the Statue The Hares and the Frogs The Ant and the Grasshopper The Wolf and the Kid The Tree and the Reed The Woodman ...
— Aesop's Fables • Aesop
... his dark-blue suit, high collar, and stiff white waistcoat. A wave of revulsion passed over Mostyn. He was thinking of the crude dining-room in the mountains; Drake, without his coat, his hair unkempt; Mrs. Drake in her soiled print dress and fire-flushed face, nervously waving the peacock fly- brush over the coarse dishes; Ann and George, as presentable as Dolly could make them, prodding and kicking each other beneath the table when they thought themselves unobserved; John Webb, with his splotched face in his plate; and Dolly—the sweetest, prettiest, bravest, most patient ...
— The Desired Woman • Will N. Harben
... would cautiously, but with infinite pleasure, add now and then a tiny dish of fruit or other dangerous luxury to the simple order of its daily fare. Thus, in the foregrounds of his most severe drawings, we not unfrequently find him indulging in the luxury of a peacock; and it is impossible to express the joyfulness with which he seems to design its graceful form, and deepen with soft pencilling the bloom of its blue, after he has worked through the stern detail of his almost colorless drawing. ...
— The Crown of Wild Olive • John Ruskin
... approach heralded by a burst of barbaric music, came the brides themselves, each reclining in an enormous scarlet litter borne by fifty coolies. Beside them sat attendants who sprinkled them with perfumes and cooled them with fans of peacock-feathers. In accordance with an ancient Javanese custom, the faces, necks, arms, and breasts of the brides were stained with saffron to a brilliant yellow; their cheeks were as stiff with enamel as their garments were with jewels. Immediately behind the palanquins bearing the brides—one ...
— Where the Strange Trails Go Down • E. Alexander Powell
... the road, rose the high oak paling that enclosed the lawn on this side, and the immense limes that towered, untrimmed and undipped, in delicate soaring filigree against the peacock sky of night. Behind them showed the chimneys, above the dusky front of red-brick and the parapet. The moon was not yet full upon the house, and the windows glimmered only here and there, in lines and sudden patches where they caught ...
— The Necromancers • Robert Hugh Benson
... the world a fair challenge, and tell it, 'There—you know the worst of me: come on and try a fall, for either you or I must down.' Slander? Ask Leigh here, who has but known me a fortnight, whether I am not as vain as a peacock, as selfish as a fox, as imperious as a bona roba, and ready to make a cat's paw of him or any man, if there be a chestnut in the fire: and yet the poor fool cannot help loving me, and running of my errands, ...
— Westward Ho! • Charles Kingsley
... stretched up to heaven, and there were angels going about in numbers, coming and going, with locks like honeycomb, and dresses pink, and green, and sky-blue, and white, thickly embroidered with purest pearls, and wings as of butterflies and peacock's tails, with glories of solid gold about their head. And they went to and fro, carrying garlands and strewing flowers, so that, although mid-winter, it was like a garden in June, so sweet of roses, and lilies, and gillyflowers. And the angels sang; and when they had finished their work, ...
— In the Yule-Log Glow, Book II - Christmas Tales from 'Round the World • Various
... peacock, from sparrow to ostrich, observe his mien! To strut and languish; to exhibit every beauteous lure; to sacrifice ease, comfort, speed, everything—to beauty—for her sake—this is the nature of the he-bird of any species; the characteristic, not of the turkey, but of the cock! With drumming ...
— The Forerunner, Volume 1 (1909-1910) • Charlotte Perkins Gilman
... room was empty, save for some pieces of poor furniture. But the visitor, blinking at the sudden transition from light to darkness, walked over to a rough couch, where lay the misshapen jockey Peacock, either asleep or deep in thought. Jasper shook him angrily by the shoulder, and a sullen scowl darkened the little monkey-like face as he ...
— Adrien Leroy • Charles Garvice
... rooted in that Old England that made the New but can count in some generation their skipper cousin; in these the whitecaps, the tall masts, the spices and hot nights, the scarlet tropics and the dusky, startled natives tip with flame the quiet chronicles of the sisters left at home; and gorgeous peacock fans, rosy, enamelled shells, strings of sandalwood beads, riotous, bloomy embroideries and supple folds of exotic muslin weave their scents and suggestions through the sober-coloured stuff of everyday. ...
— Margarita's Soul - The Romantic Recollections of a Man of Fifty • Ingraham Lovell
... though often irreverent, earnestness. Ennius had early in life shown a tendency towards the mystic speculations of Pythagoreanism: traces of it are seen in his assertion that the soul of Homer had migrated into him through a peacock, [5] and that he had three souls because he knew three languages; [6] while the satirical notice of Horace seems to imply that he, like Scipio, regarded himself ...
— A History of Roman Literature - From the Earliest Period to the Death of Marcus Aurelius • Charles Thomas Cruttwell
... last, reminded me, as did the lines on "Constancy," of something I had read before. In a moment I had placed the first as the opening lines of Longfellow's "Children," and a search through my books showed that the concluding verse was taken bodily from Peacock's exquisite little poem "Castles ...
— The Water Ghost and Others • John Kendrick Bangs
... and the goat in thirty-six. Birds develop still more quickly. The chick only needs, in normal circumstances, three weeks for its full development. The duck needs twenty-five days, the turkey twenty-seven, the peacock thirty-one, the swan forty-two, and the cassowary sixty-five. The smallest bird, the humming-bird, leaves the egg after twelve days. Hence the duration of individual development within the foetal membranes is, in the mammals and birds, clearly related to the absolute size of the body of the animal ...
— The Evolution of Man, V.2 • Ernst Haeckel
... broken dam; there beside the breach, with the river sucking darkly through, Josiah Peacock stood, contemplating the scene with his practical eye against to-morrow's labor. Suddenly I found myself mentioning the telegram. He said, "Then you'll have to drive back to-night." I felt alarmed; surely this was none of my doing. Presently ...
— Shapes that Haunt the Dusk • Various
... this was January. Her friends called on her at stated intervals, and, to judge from Miss Persis, never failed to come away in a state of reverential enthusiasm. I could not help picturing to myself the great lady as about six feet tall, clad in purple velvet, and waving a peacock-feather fan; but I never confided my imaginings even ...
— The Green Satin Gown • Laura E. Richards
... would (so far as we know) be impossible, if the changes (however caused) that adapt some individuals better than others to the conditions of life were not inherited by, and accumulated in, their posterity. The eyes in the peacock's tail are supposed to have reached their present perfection gradually, through various stages that may be illustrated by the ocelli in the wings of the Argus pheasant and other genera of Phasianidae. Similarly ...
— Logic - Deductive and Inductive • Carveth Read
... through the western passes to prey on the defenceless wealth of Hindostan. A Persian conqueror crossed the Indus, marched through the gates of Delhi, and bore away in triumph those treasures of which the magnificence had astounded Roe and Bernier;—the peacock throne, on which the richest jewels of Golconda had been disposed by the most skilful hands of Europe, and the inestimable Mountain of Light, which, after many strange vicissitudes, lately shone in ...
— The Principles of Success in Literature • George Henry Lewes
... with silver; their shoes, spurs, bridles, etc., buckled with like metal; their apparel (for the most part) of silk, and richly furred; their caps laced and buttoned with gold; so that to meet a priest, in those days, was to behold a peacock that spreadeth his tail when he danceth ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... handsome does,' say I. Rebecca never'll come to grief along of her beauty, that's certain, and there's no use in humoring her to think about her looks. I believe she's vain as a peacock now, without ...
— Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... thrade f'r me back room. I begun to feel sorry f'r th' poor old miscreent. Instead iv lollin' on a sofy an' listenin' to th' song iv th' mockin' bur-rd in th' pommygranite threes while ladies fr'm th' chorus iv 'Th' Black Crook' fanned him with fans iv peacock feathers, th' mis'rable old haythen was locked up in a garret with a revolver in his hand ready to shoot anny wan that come next or near him. He suffered fr'm dyspepsia an' he cuddent sleep nights. He cud ...
— Mr. Dooley Says • Finley Dunne
... to knock at the gates of a besieged city and the governor would instantly send the keys. Secondly, I was disappointed the other day at the stolid behaviour of a sheep, who went on grazing with a sublime indifference when a peacock, having marched some distance for the purpose, wheeled round within a yard of his nose, displaying his brilliant charms in vain; and all the eyes of Argus seemed to pale their ineffectual fire, as when Mercury, with his delightful ...
— The Bed-Book of Happiness • Harold Begbie
... having first ravished her, has changed into a cow. She is entrusted by Juno to the care of Argus; Mercury having first related to him the transformation of the Nymph Syrinx into reeds, slays him, on which his eyes are placed by Juno in the tail of the peacock. Io, having recovered human shape, becomes the mother ...
— The Metamorphoses of Ovid - Vol. I, Books I-VII • Publius Ovidius Naso
... dainty nest inside of them, was pointed out to us, and specimens of the weaver bird's nest, with entrance tubes over two feet in length. There were also pendent nests built by a species of wasp in the trees, which indicated a nefarious design to infringe upon bird architecture. The peacock is found wild here in all its wealth of mottled, feathery splendor. Storks, ibises, and herons flew up from the lagoons, and the cooing of the gentle wood-pigeon reached the ear during the quieter moments. The woods, and indeed all out-doors at Ceylon, seemed like a conservatory ...
— Due West - or Round the World in Ten Months • Maturin Murray Ballou
... cabinet. Baron Binder was reading aloud the secret dispatches which had just come in from the Austrian ambassador at Berlin, the young Baron van Swieten. Meanwhile, Kaunitz was busy with a brush of peacock's feathers, dusting the expensive trifles that covered his escritoire, or polishing its ebony surface with a fine silk handkerchief which he kept for the purpose. This furbishing of trinkets and furniture was a private pastime with the all-powerful ...
— Joseph II. and His Court • L. Muhlbach
... and very old, a broad deal table, and several wooden stools for all its furniture; but at the top of the chamber, sending out warmth and color together as the lamp shed its rays upon it, was a tower of porcelain, burnished with all the hues of a king's peacock and a queen's jewels, and surmounted with armed figures, and shields, and flowers of heraldry, and a great golden crown upon the highest ...
— The Nuernberg Stove • Louisa de la Rame (AKA Ouida)
... could find it with my gun sight, striking the decoys with a great splash and clatter. Before he discovered his mistake or could get started again, I had him. The next moment Don came ashore, proud as a peacock, bringing a great snowy owl with him—a rare prize, worth ten times the trouble we ...
— Ways of Wood Folk • William J. Long
... my word, but all must bow As the courtly throng are bending now, And give the King his meed, And slaves waved forests of peacock fans And a cry went up like a single man's, ...
— A Legend of Old Persia and Other Poems • A. B. S. Tennyson
... shook his head, saying, "Ah, my dear, flattery is not good for me. If you continue to dose me with it, who knows but I shall become as conceited and vain as a peacock?" ...
— Christmas with Grandma Elsie • Martha Finley
... Singalese are great connoisseurs of beauty, and a Kandyan deeply learned in the matter gave Dr. Davy the following enumeration of a woman's points of beauty: "Her hair should be voluminous, like the tail of the peacock, long, reaching to her knees, and terminating in graceful curls; her eyebrows should resemble the rainbow, her eyes, the blue sapphire and the petals of the blue manilla-flower. Her nose should be like the bill of the hawk; her lips should be ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 4 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... of hospitality to Burns, and he received with equal warmth the author of "The Forest Minstrel." In the exercise of disinterested beneficence, he was aided and encouraged by his second wife, formerly Miss Peacock, who sympathised in the lettered tastes of her husband, and took delight in the society of men of letters. They together made annual pedestrian excursions into the Highlands, and the narrative of their adventures proved a source of delightful instruction to their friends. Mr Gray, after ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volumes I-VI. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... said, "there wouldn't have been anything the matter with her if your Grandmamma Olivier hadn't spoiled her. Charlotte was as vain as a little peacock, and your Grandmamma was always petting and praising her and letting ...
— Mary Olivier: A Life • May Sinclair
... will, O singers all Who sing because you want to sing! Sing! peacock on the orchard wall, Or tree-toad by the trickling spring! Sing! every bird on every bough— Sing! every living, loving thing— Sing any song, and anyhow, But Sing! ...
— The Book of Joyous Children • James Whitcomb Riley
... red feathers. In return he sent on board the ships enough food to have lasted both crews for a week, if it had only been possible to keep it good for that length of time. The royal family dined on board the Resolution; and after dinner Cook and Omai called on Oparee, taking with them a peacock and peahen sent to the island by Lord Bessborough, a turkey cock and hen, a gander and three geese, a drake and four ducks to make a start in stocking the island. A gander was seen, which the natives said had been left by Wallis ten years previously; several goats and a bull ...
— The Life of Captain James Cook • Arthur Kitson
... the inlaid feather work, invented by M. Le Normant of Rouen, in the last century, and afterwards continued in Paris by his English pupil, Mr. Levet, who sold two of his works to the then Duke of Leeds, in 1735. The first is a vase of flowers, the second a peacock, designed by M. Oudry (peintre du Roi). Both of these, framed as screens, ...
— Needlework As Art • Marian Alford
... was not one of the family, as you might think, nor even a splendid dog, nor a pony, but it was a large, beautiful porcelain stove, so tall that it quite touched the ceiling. It stood at the end of the room, shining with all the hues of a peacock's tail, bright and warm and beautiful; its great golden feet were shaped like the claws of a lion, and there was a golden crown on the very top of all. You never have seen a stove like it, for it was white where our stoves are black, and it had flowers and birds and ...
— The Story Hour • Nora A. Smith and Kate Douglas Wiggin
... fair! Some vision of the world Cashmere I confidently see! Or else a peacock's purple train, Feather by feather, on the plain ...
— Poems: Three Series, Complete • Emily Dickinson
... help him. We's all gwine ter de big meetin'. Yore grandma hab set her heart on goin', an' it'll be de same as a spell ob sickness ef she don't hab a chance to show her bes' bib an' tucker. That ole gal's as proud as a peacock." ...
— Iola Leroy - Shadows Uplifted • Frances E.W. Harper
... in colour, for they had their PEACOCK'S tales; Their heroines, I must admit, ran seldom off the rails; They had their apes and angels, but they never once employed The psycho-analytic rules devised by JUNG ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 158, March 10th, 1920 • Various
... you have never heard much about the Hindoos, you will be astonished to learn how numerous are the objects of their worship. They worship many living creatures, such as the ape, the tiger, the elephant the horse, the ox, the stag, the sheep, the hog, the dog, the cat, the rat, the peacock, the eagle, the cock, the hawk, the serpent, the chameleon, the lizard, the tortoise, fishes, and even insects. Of these, some receive much more worship than others, such as the cow, the ox, and the serpent Cobra Capella. I will speak at present only ...
— Dr. Scudder's Tales for Little Readers, About the Heathen. • Dr. John Scudder
... their left rose the mountains, forming, it seemed to them at the height at which they travelled, an enormous jagged and gigantic pile, hard-lined as steel, yet irradiated with long rays, patches, and pools of golden sunset-light alternated by amazing depths of the shadow whose tones ran from peacock to indigo. Then from the feet of the tumbled pile there ran out what appeared a loosely flung carpet vivid and yet a soft green, patched here and there with white towns, embroideries of woodland, lines of silver water. Yet this too was changing as they watched the shadows grow longer ...
— Dawn of All • Robert Hugh Benson
... imagination was obliged to construct for her out of its own fabric; she knew what the girls would look like if they went to a Drawing Room and she often wondered if they would feel shy when the page spread out their lovely peacock tails for them and left them to their own devices. It was mere Nature that she should have pondered and pondered and sometimes unconsciously longed to feel herself part of the flood of being sweeping past her as she stood apart on the brink of ...
— The Head of the House of Coombe • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... passed on the voyage is not for us to speak of—was like a peacock, with great state and pomp. The declaration of His Honor, that he wished to stay here only three years, with other haughty expressions, caused some to think that he would not be a father. The appellation of Lord General, and similar titles, were never before known here. ...
— Narrative of New Netherland • J. F. Jameson, Editor
... was a burnin' peacock, with two hundred bloodshot eyes in my shinin' tail, I'd need 'em all on this job!" ...
— Traffics and Discoveries • Rudyard Kipling
... action—apart from those allowed on taxation, that is to say—"But he has only to paint, or, as we believe he expresses it 'knock off' three or four 'symphonies' or 'harmonies'—or perhaps he might try his hand at a Set of Quadrilles in Peacock Blue?—and a week's labour will set all square." Then there is this priceless revelation of his art when questioning his class in Paris. "Do you know what I mean when I say tone, value, light, ...
— Six Centuries of Painting • Randall Davies
... he was not a beast, but a broken god. The Greek had spoken of men creeping on the earth, as if clinging to it. Now Man was to tread on the earth as if to subdue it. Christianity thus held a thought of the dignity of man that could only be expressed in crowns rayed like the sun and fans of peacock plumage. Yet at the same time it could hold a thought about the abject smallness of man that could only be expressed in fasting and fantastic submission, in the gray ashes of St. Dominic and the white snows of St. Bernard. When ...
— Orthodoxy • G. K. Chesterton
... all nature merely as a mosaic of different colours, to be imitated one by one in simplicity. But good artists vary their methods according to their subject and material. In general, Duerer takes little account of local colour; but in woodcuts of armorial bearings (one with peacock's feathers I shall get for you some day) takes great delight in it; while one of the chief merits of Bewick is the ease and vigour with which he uses his black and white for the colours of plumes. Also, every great artist looks for, ...
— Lectures on Art - Delivered before the University of Oxford in Hilary term, 1870 • John Ruskin
... when the thought of the eye made me cold all over, but I have got over this stage of the complaint, and now small trifling particulars of structure often make me very uncomfortable. The sight of a feather in a peacock's tail, whenever I gaze at it, makes ...
— The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin, Volume II • Francis Darwin
... the fair original. After many disappointments he met with an old hermit, who at once recognised it as the portrait of the princess of Rum,[46] who, he informed the vazir, had an unconquerable aversion against men ever since she beheld, in her garden, a peacock basely desert his mate and their young ones, when the tree on which their nest was built had been struck by lightning. She believed that all men were quite as selfish as that peacock, and was resolved never ...
— Flowers from a Persian Garden and Other Papers • W. A. Clouston
... Riverside Churches." Poets there have been, too, who have done their part in limning its charms, from Wordsworth's "Westminster Bridge," on the west, written at the beginning of the nineteenth century, to "A White-Bait Dinner at Greenwich," of Peacock, or "The Boy at the Nore," of Tom Hood, on ...
— Dickens' London • Francis Miltoun
... and servants no mo' At that time, for *him list ride so* *it pleased him so to ride* And he was clad in coat and hood of green. A sheaf of peacock arrows bright and keen Under his belt he bare full thriftily. Well could he dress his tackle yeomanly: His arrows drooped not with feathers low; And in his hand he bare a mighty bow. A nut-head had he, with a brown visiage: Of wood-craft coud* ...
— The Canterbury Tales and Other Poems • Geoffrey Chaucer
... been disinherited. But I know these hypocritical legacy-hunters, who have robbed me of that most beautiful portion of my inheritance. I know these poor, beggarly cousins, these D'Argens, these Algarottis, these La Mettries, this vainglorious peacock Maupertius. I—" ...
— Berlin and Sans-Souci • Louise Muhlbach
... perched upon trees overhanging the water, and feeding upon berries. At night they roost in pairs, but in the daytime are always in larger companies. In their appearance they have something of the character of both the pheasant and peacock, and yet do not closely resemble either. It is a curious fact, that, with the exception of some small partridge-like gallinaceous birds, all the representatives of this family in Brazil, and especially in the Valley of the Amazons, belong to types which ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 105, July 1866 • Various
... you'll pay him then! That's a perilous shot out of an elder gun, that a poor and private displeasure can do against a monarch. You may as well go about to turn the sun to ice, with fanning in his face with a peacock's feather. ...
— The Philosophy of the Plays of Shakspere Unfolded • Delia Bacon
... withdrawing room of the departed, but not forgotten great lady, or the kitchen that cooked for the men-at-arms, who waited on the lord's behest. Peeped into a turret and was insolently asked what we meant by a splendid but ill-tongued peacock; admired the ivy green that happed the bare walls and noticed that the chickens roosted ...
— The Letters of "Norah" on her Tour Through Ireland • Margaret Dixon McDougall
... England there were nine surviving:—Carey, Marshman, Ward, Chamberlain, Mardon, Moore, Chater, Rowe, and Robinson. Raised up in India itself there were seven—the two sons of Carey, Felix and William; Fernandez, his first convert at Dinapoor; Peacock and Cornish, and two Armenians, Aratoon and Peters; two were on probation for the ministry, Leonard and Forder. Besides seven Hindoo evangelists also on probation, there were five survivors of the band ...
— The Life of William Carey • George Smith
... a forbidding face shine with so winning and amicable an expression as did hers on that merciful occasion. The sun dancing a hornpipe on Easter Sunday morning, or the full moon sailing as proud as a peacock in a new halo head-dress, was a very disrespectable sight, compared to Norah's red beaming face, shrouded in her dowd cap with long ears, that descended to her masculine and substantial neck. Owing to her influence, the whole economy of the school was good; for we were permitted to cuff one ...
— The Station; The Party Fight And Funeral; The Lough Derg Pilgrim • William Carleton
... really think I look pretty?" and after a few more assurances he got down and strutted as proudly as any peacock; much to the discomfiture of the kitten, who wanted to play with him. And now he will cross the yard any time to have one of those ...
— Concerning Cats - My Own and Some Others • Helen M. Winslow
... peculiar species; other kinds lodge under birds' feathers, and some birds have two or three sorts of parasites. There is one belonging to the turkey, to the peacock, to the sparrow, to the vulture, to the magpie, etc. I don't think there is a bird or animal which does not, like Gringalet, possess ...
— Adventures of a Young Naturalist • Lucien Biart
... relating to man's seeking inspiration from the air. "Ideals in Art" brought forward more or less familiar types: the Madonna and the Child, Joan of Arc, Youth and Beauty, in the figure of a girl, Vanity in the Peacock, with more shadowy intimations in two mystical figures in the background, the tender of the sacred flame and the bearer of the palm for the dead, and the laurel-bearer ready to crown victory. "The Inspiration in All Art" revealed the figures of Music, Architecture, Painting, Poetry ...
— The City of Domes • John D. Barry
... in charge, "why, 'tis De Lalande himself, only the peacock has put on daw's feathers. Well, my friend, you have sent your goods to sea in a leaky ...
— My Sword's My Fortune - A Story of Old France • Herbert Hayens
... Edwards of the Edward Arms Company direct," he said, and then, leaning over the desk, "Edwards is a vain little peacock and a second rate business man," he declared emphatically. "Get him afraid and then flatter his vanity. He has a new wife with blonde hair and big soft blue eyes. He wants prominence. He is afraid to venture upon big things himself but is hungry ...
— Windy McPherson's Son • Sherwood Anderson
... pig, and others frolicsome and lively as the monkey." This quaint story may be found more fully detailed in the Midrash Tanchuma (see Noah) and the Yalkut on Genesis. The Mohammedan legend is somewhat similar. It relates how Satan on the like occasion used the blood of a peacock, of an ape, of a lion, and of a pig, and it deduces from the abuse of the vine the curse that fell on the children of Ham, and ascribes the color of the purple grape to the dark hue which thenceforth tinctured all the fruit of their land as well as ...
— Hebraic Literature; Translations from the Talmud, Midrashim and - Kabbala • Various
... the recollection rises fresh upon me. Once more the little room, with its open corner cupboard, and its square-backed chairs, and its angular little staircase leading to the room above, and its three peacock's feathers displayed over the mantelpiece—I remember wondering when I first went in, what that peacock would have thought if he had known what his finery was doomed to come to—fades from before me, and I nod, and sleep. The flute becomes inaudible, ...
— David Copperfield • Charles Dickens |
