"Tendril" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... woman lighted her candle and began to examine the house. The parlor was almost empty, and a gust of wind took her candle as she opened the door, flaring back the flame into her face. The wind came from a broken pane of glass in the oriel window, through which a branch of ivy, and the long tendril of a Virginia creeper had penetrated, and woven themselves in a garland along the wall. A wren had followed the creeping greenness and built her nest in the cornice, from which she flew frightened, when a light ...
— The Old Countess; or, The Two Proposals • Ann S. Stephens
... period also is some ancient stained glass in Chetwood Church, Bucks, the ground of which is covered with a kind of mosaic pattern, a usual feature in the more ancient stained glass, and the borders partake of a tendril foliage; whilst in pointed oval-shaped compartments, forming the well-known symbol vesica piscis, are single figures of saints and crowned heads, each clad in a vest and mantle of two different colours. In the fourteenth ...
— The Principles of Gothic Ecclesiastical Architecture, Elucidated by Question and Answer, 4th ed. • Matthew Holbeche Bloxam
... and neither of them would fail to understand that it might be a last good-bye. There was no room for equivocation in this crisis, and as he gazed up into the full and peaceful shade over his head, a flood of little memories, bound tendril-like by sounds, sights, and fragrances to his heart, swept him with ...
— The Roof Tree • Charles Neville Buck
... see her parents' home standing unprotected except for one sapling maple, the sun already pressing against the drawn shades. There was a slight breeze through this morning that turned the sapling leaves and even lifted the little twist of tendril at the ...
— Star-Dust • Fannie Hurst
... now to suffer terribly from hunger. His stomach, less resigned than he was, rebelled, and he was obliged to fasten a tendril of wild-vine tightly about his waist. Fortunately, he could quench his thirst at any moment, and, in recalling the sufferings he had undergone in the desert, he experienced comparative relief in his exemption from that ...
— Five Weeks in a Balloon • Jules Verne
... always brought, When legends mentioned knights of old, The courteous, eloquent, and bold. The same dark locks his forehead grac'd, A crown by partial Nature plac'd, With the large hollows, and the swells, And short, close, tendril twine of shells. Though grave in aspect, when he smil'd, 'Twas gay and artless as a child, With him expression seem'd a law,— You only Nature's dictates saw; But they in full perfection wrought Of generous feeling, varied thought,— All that can elevate or ...
— The Lay of Marie • Matilda Betham
... when he was stretched out on the undulant moss. He felt at the patch of moss sprouting under the warmth of his palm, and watched while an exploratory tendril curled around his little finger. "Now—do you know what it is I want ...
— Step IV • Rosel George Brown
... and small twigs for a bed, a stump for a seat, and lying on top of it a sort of stone axe, made by inserting a sharp stone into the cleft of a sapling and tying it into place with a wild-grape tendril. Pegged out on the ground to cure was a rabbit skin, indifferently scraped. It made our aluminum kettle and canvas tepee look like a marble-vestibuled apartment ...
— Tish, The Chronicle of Her Escapades and Excursions • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... Celastrus, popularly known as Bittersweet, is a very desirable vine if it can be given something to twine itself about. It has neither tendril nor disc, and supports itself by twisting its new growth about trees over which it clambers, branches—anything that it can wind about. If no other support is to be found it will twist about itself in such a manner ...
— Amateur Gardencraft - A Book for the Home-Maker and Garden Lover • Eben E. Rexford
... — N. vinculum, link; connective, connection; junction &c. 43; bond of union, copula, hyphen, intermedium[obs3]; bracket; bridge, stepping-stone, isthmus. bond, tendon, tendril; fiber; cord, cordage; riband, ribbon, rope, guy, cable, line, halser|, hawser, painter, moorings, wire, chain; string &c. (filament) 205. fastener, fastening, tie; ligament, ligature; strap; tackle, rigging; standing rigging, running rigging; traces, harness; ...
— Roget's Thesaurus • Peter Mark Roget
... we are not aware of it, perhaps, we are not quite the people that we were before out of the mystery an awful hand was laid upon us all, and what we had thought the colossal power of wealth was in a twinkling shown to be no more than the strength of an infant's little finger, or the twining tendril of a plant. ...
— Sinking of the Titanic - and Great Sea Disasters • Various
... simple way in which the faith of these five men ran its tiny but tough tenacious tendril-roots down into their very vitals. A simple neighbourhood wedding occasion up near the old Nazareth home drew Jesus thither with His kinsfolk and His new-made friends. And then He meets the need of the homely occasion ...
— Quiet Talks on John's Gospel • S. D. Gordon
... perennial old world tendril-bearing vines (family Cucurbitaceae) having large leaves, small flowers, and red or black fruit; Dried root of a bryony (Bryonia alba or B. ...
— Mother's Remedies - Over One Thousand Tried and Tested Remedies from Mothers - of the United States and Canada • T. J. Ritter
... single mighty impulse the vines took deep hold of the treasure in the storehouse beneath, spending it prodigally for sap to be poured into these waiting goblets of emerald and pearl. All the hoarded strength of leaf and tendril was caught up by the current, and swept blindly onward to ...
— Master of the Vineyard • Myrtle Reed
... gesture half-afraid he put up one finger and touched a tendril of hair that had strayed loose on her neck. She felt shyer than before, and turned her attention to ...
— Juggernaut • Alice Campbell
... radii And bitter-berried pausians, no, nor yet Apples and the forests of Alcinous; Nor from like cuttings are Crustumian pears And Syrian, and the heavy hand-fillers. Not the same vintage from our trees hangs down, Which Lesbos from Methymna's tendril plucks. Vines Thasian are there, Mareotids white, These apt for richer soils, for lighter those: Psithian for raisin-wine more useful, thin Lageos, that one day will try the feet And tie the tongue: purples ...
— The Georgics • Virgil
... lad was admitted to the big Infirmary in Piccadilly. There he had lain for some six or eight weeks now, toiling no more, fretting no more, living on his mother's and Dora's visits, and quietly loosening one life-tendril after another. During all this time Dora had thought of him, prayed for him, taught him—the wasted, ...
— The History of David Grieve • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... fingers, he gently loosened the twisted shining threads that were so delicately knotted together, and smoothing them out to their full length, displayed what was indeed a lovely tress of hair bright as woven sunlight with a rippling wave in it that, like the tendril of a vine caught and wound about his hand as though it were ...
— Ardath - The Story of a Dead Self • Marie Corelli
... began, leaning so close that a tendril of her hair brushed his cheek, and speaking in a voice that was almost a whisper, "I told you that I had need of a friend. It is a desperate need. I may rely upon ...
— The Destroyer - A Tale of International Intrigue • Burton Egbert Stevenson
... movement when excited. It should, however, be borne in mind that leaves and their homologues, as well as flower-peduncles, have gained this power, in innumerable instances, independently of inheritance from any common parent form; for instance, in tendril-bearers and leaf-climbers (i.e. plants with their leaves, petioles and flower-peduncles, &c., modified for prehension) belonging to a large [page 364] number of the most widely distinct orders,—in the leaves ...
— Insectivorous Plants • Charles Darwin
... sixteen-year-old heart was deeply impressed by Cousin Carlos's appearance, and she would often steal into the room during Rita's absence, to peep and sigh at the delicate, high-bred face, with its flashing dark eyes, and the hair that grew low on the forehead, with just the same tendril curls that made Rita's hair so lovely. Oh! Peggy would think, if her own hair were only dark, or even brown,—anything but this disgusting, wishy-washy flaxen. She had longed for dark eyes and hair ever since she could remember. Poor Peggy! But she kept her little romance ...
— Three Margarets • Laura E. Richards
... does not listen with delight, as she once did, when she hears her relations to her equal brother represented by the poetical figure of the trellis and creeping tendril, or of the oak and the gracefully clinging vine. No, she feels that she is, like him, an accountable being—that the Infinite Father has laid responsibilities upon her which may not be innocently transferred to another, but which, in her present ignorance, she is not prepared to meet. She ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume I • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... dismal in the extreme; but when the morning advanced towards noon all that was changed, as if magically, by the action of the sun. Black, repulsive waters reflected patches of the bright blue sky, and every leaf, and spray, and parasite, and tendril, that grew in the world above was faithfully mirrored in the world below. Vistas of gnarled roots and graceful stems and drooping boughs were seen on right and left, before and behind, extending as if into infinite space, while innumerable insects, engaged in the business of ...
— The Madman and the Pirate • R.M. Ballantyne
... perfectly smooth, except on the edges, where they are beset with strong glandular hairs, divided into three large and two small lobes, the middle lobe running out to a considerable length, the footstalks of the leaves are beset with a few hairs thinly scattered, at the base of each leaf is a tendril, and two finely-divided stipulae, edged also with glandular hairs. The Involucrum is composed of three leaves, dividing into capillary segments, each of which terminates in a viscid globule, fetid when bruised; betwixt the involucrum and the blossom is a short peduncle; the pillar which supports ...
— The Botanical Magazine Vol. 8 - Or, Flower-Garden Displayed • William Curtis
... of old to sing Narcissus pining o'er the untainted spring? In some delicious ramble, he had found A little space, with boughs all woven round; And in the midst of all, a clearer pool Than e'er reflected in its pleasant cool, The blue sky here, and there, serenely peeping Through tendril wreaths fantastically creeping. And on the bank a lonely flower he spied, A meek and forlorn flower, with naught of pride, Drooping its beauty o'er the watery clearness, To woo its own sad image into nearness: ...
— Poems 1817 • John Keats
... very few, if any, mortal minds have ever ascended as high as ours did that afternoon," replied Gideon. "Miss Darrell, I see a delicate little tendril on the other side of the brook. Shall we go over ...
— The Old Stone House • Anne March
... perfect stillness, but he was graciously permitted to take in the particulars of the girl's appearance. She was dainty. Every posture of her slight figure was of an airy grace, as light and delicate as that of a rose tendril swaying in the wind. Even when she tripped over a loose rock, she caught her balance again with a pretty little uplift of the hand. As she approached, slowly, and evidently not unwilling to allow her charms full time ...
— The Claim Jumpers • Stewart Edward White
... if any thing small; and heaped with thick clusters of tendril curls, half overhanging the brows and delicate ears, it somehow reminded you of a classic vase, piled up with ...
— Redburn. His First Voyage • Herman Melville
... a fluttering white flame in the dimness of the tree-room. A tendril flicked out from among her petals, wrapped itself about my arm. It felt cool, gentle as a woman's hand. I ...
— Where the World is Quiet • Henry Kuttner
... reason to tell, Lord King," she said, "it is because I love him." As he sat regarding her, she put out her hand and played with a tendril of wild grapevine that hung from the tree beside her, her eyes following her fingers. "I do not know why I should be ashamed of the state of my feelings. I should not be able to stand alive before you if he had not been a better lord to me than you are to English captives; ...
— The Ward of King Canute • Ottilie A. Liljencrantz
... figure on the divan. Lower, lower still, till a tendril of dark hair that had strayed across her forehead quivered beneath his breath. Then suddenly he drew back, jerking himself upright. Striding across the room he pealed the bell and, when a neat maidservant appeared in ...
— The Lamp of Fate • Margaret Pedler
... feathery tufts of pliant shrubs had survived the force of some of these south-eastern gales. We paddled steadily along in mid-stream, and from the bridge (where little G—— and I had begged "Capting Florence" to let us stand) one could see the double of each leaf and tendril and passing cloud mirrored sharp and clear in the crystalline water. The lengthening shadows from rock and fallen crag were in some places flung quite across our little boat, and so through the soft, lovely air, flooded with ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. XVII, No. 99, March, 1876 • Various
... under that sky, with Madeline leaning on her elbow near at hand, they two separated from the rest of the world by wide waters, was like a brief experience of Paradise. Ellery watched the light tendril of hair that touched her cheek, lifted itself and touched again, near that lovely curve above her ear. The cheek was warm and creamy but untouched by deeper color. He fell into that mood of blessed silence that, as a rule, comes only ...
— Jewel Weed • Alice Ames Winter
... then together over all the little island; for I did search for some bush that should have a long tendril in plenty, and supple, and so to suit for binding. But, truly, there did be no such bush in all the island; and this to put me in trouble, as you shall suppose; yet was there a sufficient plenty of small and upright trees, that did seem very good for any purpose ...
— The Night Land • William Hope Hodgson
... the cover, and saw, curled up on a bit of red blanketing, a miniature Chihuahua dog. It had a body as slight and shivering as a tendril of grapevine; a tiny pointed face, with a high forehead and ...
— The Second Latchkey • Charles Norris Williamson and Alice Muriel Williamson
... thou?" Then she said, "The palace of thy fathers standeth nigh." "I know it," quoth he; and she said again, "The Elder, learning thou wouldst pass, hath sent To fetch thee"; then he rose and followed her. So first they walked beneath a lofty roof Of living bough and tendril, woven on high To let no drop of sunshine through, and hung With gold and purple fruitage, and the white Thick cups of scented blossom. Underneath, Soft grew the sward and delicate, and flocks Of egrets, ay, and many cranes, stood up. Fanning ...
— Poems by Jean Ingelow, In Two Volumes, Volume II. • Jean Ingelow
... pitcher-plants (Nepentheae) is found in the warmer parts of the old world, and some of them are occasionally cultivated in greenhouses. In these the pitchers are borne at the tips of the leaves attached to a long tendril. ...
— Elements of Structural and Systematic Botany - For High Schools and Elementary College Courses • Douglas Houghton Campbell
... have been dull and showery. Quietude reigns; a tendril or twig is occasionally threaded or poked into the nests. The male muses on the top of the nest, or closely adjacent thereto. The female pops in and out of apparently cosy quarters. Circumstances point to the conclusion that most of the nests ...
— My Tropic Isle • E J Banfield
... To bush and fell resorting, While the shades conceal'd our courting, Would not be lack of sporting Or gleeful phrenesie; Like the roebuck and his mate, In their woodland haunts elate The race we would debate Around the tendril tree. ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volume II. - The Songs of Scotland of the past half century • Various
... figures crouched, grotesque and awkward; their long arms and hands with grasping, tendril-like fingers were ready. McGuire waited for the sharp hissing order that would throw these things upon him, and he met the attack when it came with his own shoulders dropped to the fighter's pose, head drawn in close and both fists ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, November, 1930 • Various
... and Rome, where the lake Thrasymene glittered in the evening sunlight like a sheet of molten gold between the dark blue mountains. There, where Hannibal defeated Flaminius, the grape vines clung to each other with the friendly grasp of their green tendril fingers; while, by the wayside, lovely half-naked children were watching a herd of coal-black swine under the blossoms of fragrant laurel. Could we rightly describe this picturesque scene, our readers would ...
— Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen • Hans Christian Andersen
... imprisoned a park of incomparable beauty grew into view, where brooks whispered and fountains played, and shady pergolas appeared, formed of gold and silver trellises, over which a thousand luxuriant creepers clambered, holding by their little tendril hands. ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... the side steps and laughed until a busy old bumble-bee came down from a late honeysuckle blossom and buzzed around to see what it was all about. Henrietta's statement of the case was a graphic and just one. Sallie has got a tendril around Henrietta which grows by the day. Poor tot, she does have a hard and hardening time—and how can I lecture her ...
— The Tinder-Box • Maria Thompson Daviess
... and fit to bear Her faded figure. I observed her well: Her brow was fair, but very pale, and look'd Like stainless marble; a touch methought would soil Its whiteness. O'er her temple one blue vein Ran like a tendril; one through her shadowy hand Branch'd like the fibre of a leaf—away. Her mouth was tremulous, and her cheek wore then A flush of beautiful vermilion, But more like art than nature; and her eye Spoke as became the youthful Magdalen, Dying ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 57, November 30, 1850 • Various
... the vasty deep. Daniel Sands, having buried his second wife, was making eyes at a third and spinning his financial web over the town. Dr. and Mrs. Nesbit were marvelling at the mystery of a child's soul, a maiden's soul, reaching out tendril after tendril as the days made years. The Dick Bowman's were holding biennial receptions to the little angels who came to the house in the Doctor's valise—and welcomed, hilariously welcomed babies they were—welcomed with cigars and free drinks at Riley's saloon by Dick, and in awed silence ...
— In the Heart of a Fool • William Allen White
... into manhood and womanhood, with firm feet and uplifted heads. All the day that was theirs they worked, picking the Silver Fleece—picking it tenderly and lovingly from off the brown and spent bodies which had so utterly yielded life and beauty to the full fruition of this long and silken tendril, this white beauty of the cotton. November came and flew, and still the unexhausted field yielded its ...
— The Quest of the Silver Fleece - A Novel • W. E. B. Du Bois
... artist leads the spectator's eye through the subject of his picture by a skilful repetition of colour. This is why it is impossible to quote from his book with any justice to it. The whole growth of the narrative is so matted and interwoven together with tendril-like links and bindings, that there is no detaching a flower with sufficient length of stalk to exhibit it to advantage. There is that mutual dependence in his characters which is the first requisite in painting every-day life: no one is stuck on a separate pedestal—no one is sitting for ...
— Famous Reviews • Editor: R. Brimley Johnson
... meet her thoughtful gaze. He was apparently watching the retreating form of the horse through the tangle of flower and leaf and tendril. ...
— With Edged Tools • Henry Seton Merriman
... sails from realms unfurrow'd bring For her the unnam'd progeny of spring; 565 Attendant Nymphs her dulcet mandates hear, And nurse in fostering arms the tender year, Plant the young bulb, inhume the living seed, Prop the weak stem, the erring tendril lead; Or fan in glass-built fanes the stranger flowers 570 With milder gales, and steep with warmer showers. Delighted Thames through tropic umbrage glides, And flowers antarctic, bending o'er his tides; Drinks the new tints, the sweets unknown inhales, ...
— The Botanic Garden - A Poem in Two Parts. Part 1: The Economy of Vegetation • Erasmus Darwin
... dimple dented the velvet of her right cheek, and above her small mouth and perfectly formed nose a pair of hazel eyes looked frankly out upon the world. Her oval face was surmounted by a dainty toque, from under which a vagrant tendril of hair had escaped. This blew about her ears, glistening like gold in ...
— Doubloons—and the Girl • John Maxwell Forbes
... cave, as any old armorial hall hung round with banners and arras. Streaming from the cleft, vines swung in the air; or crawled along the rocks, wherever a tendril could be fixed. High up, their leaves were green; but lower down, they were shriveled; and dyed of many colors; and tattered and torn with much rustling; as old banners again; sore raveled ...
— Mardi: and A Voyage Thither, Vol. I (of 2) • Herman Melville
... the summit of a tall tree, and grasping with the other an object at some distance near the earth, between which it is strained as tight and straight as if hauled over a block. In all probability the young tendril had been originally fixed in this position by the wind, and retained in it till it had gained its maturity, where it has the appearance of having been artificially arranged as if to support ...
— Ceylon; an Account of the Island Physical, Historical, and • James Emerson Tennent
... tendency to climb, Yet weak at the same time, Faith is a kind of parasitic plant, That grasps the nearest stem with tendril-rings; And as the climate and the soil may grant, So is the sort of tree to which it clings. Consider then, before, like Hurlothrumbo You aim your club at any creed on earth, That, by the simple accident of birth, ...
— The Poetical Works of Thomas Hood • Thomas Hood
... "Mimosa" alone, but all plants are sensitive was demonstrated by some striking experiments. A spiral tendril, under electric shock was shown to writhe imitating the contortions of a tortured worm. In ordinary plants, all sides being equally sensitive contraction takes place on all directions with resulting neutral effect. Another striking ...
— Sir Jagadis Chunder Bose - His Life and Speeches • Sir Jagadis Chunder Bose
... the same, only there is no tendril, but a curved hook at each corner. These hooks, of course, serve as anchors to hold the egg: no doubt they catch in weeds and stones. One fish, you see, ties her eggs with strings, the other uses anchors. These large "purse eggs" are like cradles, and the baby Skates ...
— Within the Deep - Cassell's "Eyes And No Eyes" Series, Book VIII. • R. Cadwallader Smith
... or three weeks, the mycelium, which has ramified among the tissues, produces an AEcidium, with its constant companion, spermogonia—distinct cysts, that is, from which a quantity of minute bodies ooze out, often in the form of a tendril, the function of which is imperfectly known at present, but which from analogy we regard as a form of fruit, though it is just possible that they may be rather of the nature of spermatozoids. The AEcidia contain, within a cellular membranous sac, a ...
— Fungi: Their Nature and Uses • Mordecai Cubitt Cooke
... massive chairs, and Mrs. Hale took the tiny rattan beside the big Mission rocker, her slender hand curled like a tendril in Edmund's. And while Saxon listened to the talk, her eyes took in the grave rooms lined with books. She began to realize how a mere structure of wood and stone may express the spirit of him who conceives and makes it. Those gentle hands had made all this—the very furniture, she guessed as her ...
— The Valley of the Moon • Jack London
... great to comprehend all at once. So with Bill's mind. He saw the yellow and black fur grow toward the rock. It seemed to ooze around it and then up and over the top of it. Bill saw, when it reached the top of the rock, that it dropped a spiny tendril to the ground. Like a root, the tendril buried itself into the earth below the jutting rock, and slowly the rock was covered with the ...
— The Day of the Dog • Anderson Horne
... Each tendril throbbed and quickened As I nightly climbed apace, And could scarce restrain the blossoms When, anear the destined place, Her gentle whisper thrilled me Ere ...
— The Golden Treasury of American Songs and Lyrics • Various
... do not become detached from the stem for a considerable distance, as in the so-called decurrent leaves, at other times the leaves are prolonged at their base into lobes, which are directed along the stem, and are united with it. Turpin records a tendril of a vine which was fused with the stem for some distance, and bore leaves and other tendrils. Union of the leaf or bract with the flower-stalk is not uncommon. It occurs normally in the ...
— Vegetable Teratology - An Account of the Principal Deviations from the Usual Construction of Plants • Maxwell T. Masters
... touched the bright hair above her brow, where the wind had flung a gleaming tendril over ...
— The Maids of Paradise • Robert W. (Robert William) Chambers
... of the Nepenthes. The leaf is divided into three parts, a blade, a tendril and the pitcher. Or in other words, the limb produces a tendril at its summit, by means of which the plant is enabled to fasten itself to surrounding shrubs and to climb between their branches. But the end of this tendril bears ...
— Species and Varieties, Their Origin by Mutation • Hugo DeVries
... mount withdrew, Where he might watch the smoke-cloud lower O'er blasted homes and ruined halls, And rest beneath the shady bower Upspringing in swift luxury Of twining tendril, leaf and flower. ...
— The Hymns of Prudentius • Aurelius Clemens Prudentius
... listening only to the pebbly brook That murmurs with a dead, yet tinkling sound; Or to the bees, that in the neighbouring trunk Make honey-hoards. The breeze, that visits me, Was never Love's accomplice, never raised The tendril ringlets from the maiden's brow, And the blue, delicate veins above her cheek; Ne'er played the wanton—never half disclosed The maiden's snowy bosom, scattering thence Eye-poisons for some love-distempered youth, ...
— Poems of Coleridge • Coleridge, ed Arthur Symons
... extricating himself, as they lay hold of everything they touch. On entering the swamp to examine plants, I was caught by them, and became so much entangled before I was aware of it, that it took me nearly an hour to get clear, although I had entered but a few yards. No sooner did I cut one tendril, than two or three others clung around me at the first attempt to move, and where they once clasp they are very difficult to unloose. Abundance of the shoots, from fifteen to twenty feet long, free from leaves or tendrils, could be obtained, and would ...
— Voyage Of H.M.S. Rattlesnake, Vol. 2 (of 2) • John MacGillivray
... a little, while she tucked back a stray tendril of hair. The act was performed with the left hand; and Weir's eyes, which seldom missed anything, observed a diamond flash ...
— In the Shadow of the Hills • George C. Shedd
... portico of Aphrodite, O grape-cluster filled full of Dionysus' juice, nor ever more shall thy mother twine round thee her lovely tendril or above thine head put forth ...
— Select Epigrams from the Greek Anthology • J. W. Mackail |
