"Thistle" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... skill and ingenuity, and a vast deal of perseverance. The castles are mounted upon the backs of elephants, which Johnny innocently mistook for enormous swine with two tails apiece. The knights are provided with shields, bearing Saint Andrew's cross and the thistle for a device, and would have been arrayed, without doubt, in kilt and tartan had it been possible. The bishops wear grotesque-looking cocked hats, intended for mitres, and their countenances are so singularly truculent and unprepossessing, that Max accuses ...
— The Island Home • Richard Archer
... absolute rule, and the husbandman and hunter acknowledge her for their mistress. Asters and golden-rods reign along the way, and the life-everlasting withers not. The fields are reaped and shorn of their pride, but an inward verdure still crowns them. The thistle scatters its down on the pool, and yellow leaves clothe the vine, and naught disturbs the serious life of men. But behind the sheaves, and under the sod, there lurks a ripe fruit, which the reapers have not gathered, the true harvest of the year, which it bears forever, ...
— A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers • Henry David Thoreau
... which the careful farmer must contend are the wild garlic, tribby weed, dog fennel, two varieties of the common daisy, oxeye daisy, St. John's wort, blue thistle, common thistle, pigeon-weed, burdock, broad and narrow-leaved dock, poke-weed, clot-bur, three-thorned bur, supposed to have been introduced from Spain by the Merino sheep, Jamestown or "jimson" weed, sorrel, ...
— History and Comprehensive Description of Loudoun County, Virginia • James W. Head
... a crucifix, the cross and the figure of our Lord being in full relief. In the panel to the left are the arms of the See of Connecticut, resting on branches of oak. In the one to the right are the arms of the Bishop of Aberdeen, encircled by branches of the thistle. In the panel opposite that containing the crucifix are the emblems of St. Peter and St. Paul. The remaining four panels are filled with the emblems of the four Evangelists. From this part of the base rises a richly moulded ...
— Report Of Commemorative Services With The Sermons And Addresses At The Seabury Centenary, 1883-1885. • Diocese Of Connecticut
... from the name there given it of Fico del inferno, or the Devil's Fig: it has long been introduced to this country; GERARD, who cultivated it with success, ludicrously attributes its nickname to a different source: "The golden Thistle of Peru, called in the West-Indies, Fique del inferno, a friend of mine brought it unto me from an iland there, called Saint Johns Iland, among other seedes, what reason the inhabitants there have to call it so it is unto me unknown, unless it be bicause of his fruite, which doth much resemble ...
— The Botanical Magazine Vol. 7 - or, Flower-Garden Displayed • William Curtis
... in the romantic, A hundred thousand have run frantic— There's not a hideous highland spot, (Long fallowed to the core by Scott)— No rill, through rack and thistle dribbling, But has its deadlier crop of scribbling. Each fen, and flat, and flood, and fell, Gives birth to verses by the ell— There Wordsworth, for his muse's sallies, Claims all the ponds, the lanes, and alleys— There Coleridge swears none else shall ...
— Poems (1828) • Thomas Gent
... almost everywhere bare and barren, and yet these great beasts roam about and thrive excellently. They live on mosses and lichens, which they lick up with the tongue, and for this purpose their tongues are provided with hard, sharp, horny barbs like a thistle. In the same way they crop the velvety grass, less than half an inch high, which grows on the edges of the high alpine brooks, and which is so short that a horse ...
— From Pole to Pole - A Book for Young People • Sven Anders Hedin
... above, and kept his eye fixed there)—"I believe that we shall; that His great love shall so delight in making complete our happiness, even by such little memorials of our earthly affections (which must seem like waifs of thistle-down beside the great harvest of His abounding grace); that all the dear faces of those written in the Golden Book shall beam a welcome, all the more bounteous because reflecting His joy who has ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 90, April, 1865 • Various
... anything to learn from the past. The Ignatian meditation on the "Kingdom of Christ" evoked heroic response in an age impregnated with the sentiments of chivalry, but to-day it needs to be adapted to a great extent, and some have vainly hoped to gather grapes from a thistle by substituting a parable drawn from some soul-stirring commercial ...
— The Faith of the Millions (2nd series) • George Tyrrell
... some coarse grass which was in full seed, and therefore very nourishing for the horses; also abundance of anise and sow- thistle, of which they are extravagantly fond, so we turned them loose and prepared to camp. Everything was soaking wet and we were half-perished with cold; indeed we were very uncomfortable. There was brushwood about, but we could get no fire till we had shaved off the wet ...
— Erewhon • Samuel Butler
... the weather, and of the celebrated Doctor McQ——, who was expected to give us an argumentative sermon that morning, until my argument came floating in at the door like a calm little bit of thistledown, to which our previous conversation had been as the thistle's self. ...
— On the Church Steps • Sarah C. Hallowell
... republican government in America the angel of freedom and the demon of slavery wrestled for the mastery. Tallyrand has beautifully and forcibly said: "The Lily and Thistle may grow together in harmonious proximity, but liberty and slavery delight in the separation." The pronounced policy of the best minds at the adoption of the Federal Constitution was to repress it as ...
— Shadow and Light - An Autobiography with Reminiscences of the Last and Present Century • Mifflin Wistar Gibbs
... for impure, bestial and selfish thoughts to blossom into loving and altruistic habits. Thistle seeds bring forth only the thistle. Contrariwise, it is entirely impossible for continual altruistic, sympathetic, and serviceful thoughts to bring forth a low and vicious character. Either thoughts or feelings precede and determine all our actions. Actions develop into habits, habits constitute ...
— The Art of Public Speaking • Dale Carnagey (AKA Dale Carnegie) and J. Berg Esenwein
... It is in spots impracticable, in a forest of brambles, on a wild moor where thorn and thistle intertwining forbid approach. The night she passes under an old cromlech. If anyone finds her there, she is isolated by the common dread; she is surrounded, as it were, ...
— La Sorciere: The Witch of the Middle Ages • Jules Michelet
... the foolish clown, "kill me the red humblebee on the top of that thistle yonder; and, good Mr. Cobweb, bring me the honey-bag. Do not fret yourself too much in the action, Mr. Cobweb, and take care the honey-bag break not; I should be sorry to have you overflown with ...
— Tales from Shakespeare • Charles and Mary Lamb
... away, pulled up an iron-weed growing on the road-side, and fell to whipping a large purple thistle. Her thirst grew; she left the thistle and fell to whipping the rank grass. Then was heard an angry buzz, as the assaulted bees swarmed out of their defenses and literally ...
— That Old-Time Child, Roberta • Sophie Fox Sea
... became as dark as night. Then the rain burst upon them like a waterspout, and, mingling with the flying dust overhead, came down in the form of mud, mixed with flying sticks and stones, and grass, and prickly thistle-heads. ...
— The Rover of the Andes - A Tale of Adventure on South America • R.M. Ballantyne
... grew into months, and still Princess Sudolisu's kingdom looked like one large bedchamber. The people snored in the streets, the brave army lying in the fields slept soundly, hidden in the long grass under the shadow of nettle, wormwood, and thistle, rust and dust marring the brightness of their armour. Inside the palace everything was the same. The twelve maids of honour lay motionless. The princess alone kept watch, silent amid this reign of sleep. She ...
— Fairy Tales of the Slav Peasants and Herdsmen • Alexander Chodsko
... and shadow. Directly below was the Broom Road. Umbrageous flamboyants—the royal poincianas, or flame-trees—sheltered the short stretch of sward to the water, and their blossoms made a red-gold litter upon the grass. A giant acacia whose flowers were reddish pink and looked like thistle blooms, protected two canoes, one my own and one Afa's. The Annexe was bounded by the Broom Road and the rue de Bougainville, and across that street was the restaurant of Mme. Fanny. It was built over a tiny stream, which emptied fifty feet away into the lagoon. A clump of banana-trees ...
— Mystic Isles of the South Seas. • Frederick O'Brien
... smiled above his harp, And turned his face to the naked sky, Where, blown before the wastrel wind, The thistle-down ...
— Verses 1889-1896 • Rudyard Kipling
... plant a garden with weeds and then pull them up again in secure trust that no lurking burdocks and Canada thistle shall remain? Dear model mothers and prudent papas, be not afraid of wholesome fiction, as such, duly labelled and left uncorked. It will be far better to administer plenty of "Robinson Crusoe" and ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume V, Number 29, March, 1860 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... you let us?" asked Betty eagerly, jumping up and dropping a kiss, light as thistle-down, upon the old face. "And we'll bring you flowers, whole bunches of them. Will you promise to be happy while ...
— The Outdoor Girls at the Hostess House • Laura Lee Hope
... know upland spirits too Who love the shadeless downs to climb; There, in the far-off fabled time, Men called them when the moon was new, And built them little huts of stone With briar and thistle over-grown. ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 158, May 5, 1920 • Various
... candles were lighted. Rite slipped in, and, after having flown about like a thistle-down for a while, mounted a chair and put her arms about her mother's shoulders. Then Mr. Raleigh, sitting silently on a sofa, attracted her, and shortly afterward she had curled herself beside him and fallen asleep with her head upon his ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 6, No. 37, November, 1860 • Various
... melting in the tenderness of her gaze that again he was impelled by a strange influence, and he bent and kissed the hand. As he did so, she laid her other one upon his bent head; it was a touch soft as thistle-down, as caressing as that of a mother; and as he felt it, something tugged at Derrick's heart-strings. He turned away and left the ...
— The Woman's Way • Charles Garvice
... season begins to dim, the foliage of the trees and woods to tarnish, the plumage of the birds to fade, and their songs to cease. The hints of approaching fall are on every hand. How suggestive this thistle-down, for instance, which, as I sit by the open window, comes in and brushes softly across my hand! The first snowflake tells of winter not more plainly than this driving down heralds the approach of fall. ...
— Winter Sunshine • John Burroughs
... the opportunity of writing a few lines to you, my dear uncle, as I have a chance of sending it ashore by the revenue cutter Thistle, which is lying alongside of us. Between us, we have just captured a rascally smuggling lugger, with a cargo of lace, silk, and spirits. You will, I am sure, be surprised and grieved to hear that among the crew of the lugger was James Walsham. I could hardly believe ...
— With Wolfe in Canada - The Winning of a Continent • G. A. Henty
... tale aboot ma Coronet Is comin' off, but not juist yet; Aw'm haudin' oot for somethin' smarter, For choice the Thistle or the Garter; Whichever ribbon is the broader A'll tak wi' ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, June 10, 1914 • Various
... may bloom for England, The lily for France unfold; Ireland may honor the shamrock, Scotland her thistle bold; But the shield of the great Republic, The glory of the West, Shall bear a stalk of the tasseled corn— Of all our wealth the best. The arbutus and the golden-rod The heart of the North may cheer; And the mountain laurel for Maryland Its ...
— Christopher Columbus and His Monument Columbia • Various
... fulsome thistle in the prime: Young trees bend lightly, but grow strong in time. Were I the worthiest to advise your honour, You should pursue him with your spredding bandes Swifter in march then is the lightning flame, And take him tardy whilst his plots ...
— A Collection Of Old English Plays, Vol. IV. • Editor: A.H. Bullen
... thistle-sifter, sifted a sieve of unsifted thistles. If Theophilus Thistle, the thistle-sifter, sifted a sieve of unsifted thistles, where is the sieve of unsifted thistles that ...
— Public Speaking • Clarence Stratton
... number of individuals of two species zigzagging over the summit, and occasionally settling upon the rocks right by the fields of snow. What kind of nectar they sipped I know not, for there were no flowers or verdure on the heights. They were the Painted Lady or Thistle Butterfly (Pyrameis cardui) and the Western White (Pieris occidentalis). He captured an individual of the latter species with his net, and to-day it graces his collection, a memento of a hard but glorious climb. ...
— Birds of the Rockies • Leander Sylvester Keyser
... pinks nodded, and its stone-covered roofs overgrown with white sedum. I was struck by the number of prickly plants on the sandy banks of the Tarn. Those which now made the best show of bloom were the star-thistle centaurea and ononis repens. The appearance of this last was very curious, for in addition to its pink pea-blossoms it seemed to be sprinkled over with little flowers the colour of forget-me-nots. These, however, were not flowers at all, but ...
— Wanderings by southern waters, eastern Aquitaine • Edward Harrison Barker
... recounted o'er Strange tales of days when other forms he wore: How, far above the highest airy plain Where soars and sings the weird, fantastic crane, Wafted like thistle-down he strayed at will, With power almost supreme for good or ill, Over all lands and nations near and far, Beyond the seas, or 'neath the northern star, And long had pondered where were best to dwell When he should deign a human shape to wear. "Whether to be of them that buy ...
— Indian Legends of Minnesota • Various
... general direction was north-north-east. We saw, for the first time, pure greenish-yellow chlorite outcropping from the granite. The animals were apparently hibernating, and plants were rare; we remarked chiefly the sorrel and the blue thistle, or rather wild artichoke, the Shauk el-Jemel, a thorn loved by camels (Blepharis edulis), which recalled to mind the highlands of Syria. The second short-cut, the Wady el-Ga'agah, alias Sawawin, was the worse of the two: the deep drops and narrow gutters ...
— The Land of Midian, Vol. 1 • Richard Burton
... dangerous classes? They live, they do not starve; they live on honest people. Judges, police, and jailers are fed by those who never trouble them. Crime is like a leech on the body, it will have blood. The wrongdoers are not the thorn hedge which we need for our protection, but the thistle, which has rare powers of reproduction, and uses the wind as its chariot to ride to other lands. Is it any wonder that wickedness is so difficult to eradicate? Those of us who have tried to keep our gardens free have sorrowed many a time when we have ...
— Broken Bread - from an Evangelist's Wallet • Thomas Champness
... and beeches still wore their liveries of rustling amber, the short grass on hill-side pastures was intensely green, flocks of thistle-birds disguised in demure russet passed in wavering flight from thicket to thicket, and over all a hot sun blazed in a sky of sapphire, linking summer and autumn together in the magnificence of a ...
— A Young Man in a Hurry - and Other Short Stories • Robert W. Chambers
... forgot to say this morning that she thinks it would be better that the Investiture of the Thistle should be put off for ...
— The Letters of Queen Victoria, Volume 1 (of 3), 1837-1843) • Queen Victoria
... multiplication of an animal or plant when taken into a new environment, removed from conditions which held it in check, as the introduction of the mongoose into Jamaica, the rabbit into Australia, the thistle into New South Wales and the water-plant ...
— Disease and Its Causes • William Thomas Councilman
... open to all comers, but as we heard that the duke was entertaining a distinguished company, including Lord Delamere of Vale Royal from our own county of Cheshire, we did not apply for permission to enter the grounds, and thus missed seeing the great Scotch thistle, the finest in all Scotland. This thistle was of the ordinary variety, but of colossal proportions, full seven feet high, or, as we afterwards saw it described, "a beautiful emblem of a war-like nation with his radious crown of ...
— From John O'Groats to Land's End • Robert Naylor and John Naylor
... Nummy Tangye, of the Touch-me-not, relinquished his command. Captain Tangye's baptismal name was Matthias, and Bideford, in Devon, his native town. But the Touch-me-not, which he had commanded for thirty-five years, happened to carry for figurehead a wooden Highlander holding a thistle close to his chest, and against his thigh a scroll with the motto, Noli Me Tangere, and this being, in popular belief, an effigy of the captain taken in the prime of life, Mr. Tangye cheerfully accepted the fiction with its implication ...
— The Laird's Luck • Arthur Quiller-Couch
... to look If plums grew on a thistle; He pricked his fingers very much, Which made poor ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 1 (of 4) • Various
... failed; the dews no longer freshened the grass, and the hot sun began to tell on shepherds and sheep. Both sought the shade. The flowers withered first—all the blue-bells and lavender patches of primrose, and pale-yellow lilies, and white thistle-blossoms. Only the deep magenta of cactus and vermilion of Indian paint-brush, flowers of the sun, survived the heat. Day by day the shepherds scanned the sky for storm-clouds that did not appear. ...
— The Heritage of the Desert • Zane Grey
... practically saying: "When there are so many honest and beautiful maidens of your own country, are you so hard put to for a lifetime partner that you propose conjugality with this foreign flirt? Is there such a dearth of lilies in our Israelitish gardens that you must wear on your heart a Philistine thistle? Do you take a crabapple because there are no pomegranates? Is there never a woman among the daughters of thy brethren, or among all my people, that thou goest to take a ...
— The Wedding Ring - A Series of Discourses for Husbands and Wives and Those - Contemplating Matrimony • T. De Witt Talmage
... one glory of thine own art thou. When the Fates took thee hence, then Pales' self, And even Apollo, left the country lone. Where the plump barley-grain so oft we sowed, There but wild oats and barren darnel spring; For tender violet and narcissus bright Thistle and prickly thorn uprear their heads. Now, O ye shepherds, strew the ground with leaves, And o'er the fountains draw a shady veil- So Daphnis to his memory bids be done- And rear a tomb, and write thereon this verse: ...
— The Bucolics and Eclogues • Virgil
... bur-thistle spreading wide Amang the bearded bear, I turn'd the weeder-clips aside, And spared the ...
— Minstrelsy of the Scottish border (3rd ed) (1 of 3) • Walter Scott
... increased suddenly, a cold steady wind, coasting down the Argentine pampas, bending the sparse trees and giant thistle, ruffling the river, shallowing it, until to-morrow many a poor sailorman would regret his optimistic anchorage ... Shane shivered.... To-morrow October would be making a din in the streets.... And the poor skippers fighting their way round the Horn, ...
— The Wind Bloweth • Brian Oswald Donn-Byrne
... bush (Leptospermum scoparium) the latter a low shrub with handsome white or pinkish flowers. In some of the ravines two species of tree-ferns of the genus Cyathea grow luxuriantly in the moist clayey soil. Everywhere one sees common English weeds scattered about, especially the sow-thistle and common dock, and a British landshell (Helix cellaria) has even found its way to New Zealand and is to be met with in some of ...
— Voyage Of H.M.S. Rattlesnake, Vol. 2 (of 2) • John MacGillivray
... privation—the loss of all things, of friends, of good name, of country—he is even without God in the world. He converses only with the spirits of the departed, with the motionless and silent clouds. The cold moonlight sheds its faint lustre on his head, the fox peeps out of the ruined tower, the thistle waves its beard to the wandering gale, and the strings of his harp seem as the hand of age, as the tale of other times passes over them, to sigh and rustle like the dry reeds in the winter's wind! If it were indeed possible to shew that ...
— The Celtic Magazine, Vol. 1, No. 1, November 1875 • Various
... Cabinet was summoned after his return, it became known that he also had resigned his office. There was nothing said about his resignation in the House. He had resigned on the score of ill-health, and that very worthy peer, Lord Mount Thistle, formerly Sir Marmaduke Morecombe, came back to the Duchy of Lancaster in his place. A Prime Minister sometimes finds great relief in the possession of a serviceable stick who can be made to go in and out as occasion may require; only it generally happens that the stick will expect some reward ...
— Phineas Finn - The Irish Member • Anthony Trollope
... all the friends and families of the prisoners together on the public square. Then they dug five graves. Then five Japanese officers came stalking across the public square, whisking at the thistle-tops with swords as they came; and then walked up to these innocent Russian boys, and ...
— Flash-lights from the Seven Seas • William L. Stidger
... held up the book, and displayed a head, sketched, it is true, with admirable spirit and cleverness, but—the head of an ass, with a thistle in its mouth! ...
— In the Days of My Youth • Amelia Ann Blandford Edwards
... one the canoes of the Alachuas glided away from the water gate noiselessly as so many thistle-downs, and were instantly lost to view in the night mist that hung like a soft gray curtain over the whole river. Rene watched the last one depart, and then going to his own room, he flung himself on a couch and was ...
— The Flamingo Feather • Kirk Munroe
... be modified into thorns for protection, as we see in many trees and shrubs, and parts of leaves may be similarly changed, as in the thistle. The underground stems often become much changed, forming bulbs, tubers, root stocks, etc. much as in the monocotyledons. These structures are especially found in plants which die down to the ground each year, and contain supplies ...
— Elements of Structural and Systematic Botany - For High Schools and Elementary College Courses • Douglas Houghton Campbell
... of law and order, the eye of a country gentleman and a justice of the peace, the spectacle was scandalously disreputable. It was moss-grown; it was worm-eaten; it was broken right in the middle; through its four socketless eyes, neighbored by the nettle, peered the thistle:—the thistle!—a forest of thistles!—and, to complete the degradation of the whole, those thistles had attracted the donkey of an itinerant tinker; and the irreverent animal was in the very act of taking his luncheon out of the eyes and ...
— International Miscellany of Literature, Art and Science, Vol. 1, - No. 3, Oct. 1, 1850 • Various
... hop-rows, talking at rare intervals about the value of the crops, the drainage of the estate, the village schools, the Primrose League, and the iniquities of Mr. Gladstone, while Oke of Okehurst carefully cut down every tall thistle that caught his eye—I sometimes felt, I say, an intense and impotent desire to enlighten this man about his wife's character. I seemed to understand it so well, and to understand it well seemed to ...
— Hauntings • Vernon Lee
... cried Kirkpatrick, once more looking boldly up, and shaking his broad claymore: "My thistle has a point to sting all to death who would pass between this arm and my ...
— The Scottish Chiefs • Miss Jane Porter
... later I went back to the Little Country to be counsellor at law to its people in time of need, and a father to Solon Denney and his two children. Solon could direct large affairs acceptably, but he and his babes were as thistle-down in a prairie wind. ...
— The Boss of Little Arcady • Harry Leon Wilson
... the eastern part of Leo. Unfortunately for those who expect only brilliant revelations when they look through a telescope, this throng of nebulae consists of small and inconspicuous wisps as ill defined as bits of thistle-down floating high in the air. There are more than three hundred of them all told, but even the brightest are faint objects when seen with the largest of our telescopes. Why do they congregate thus? That is the question which lends an interest to ...
— Pleasures of the telescope • Garrett Serviss
... by the early train, Whirl down with shriek and whistle, And feel the bluff North blow again, And mark the sprouting thistle Set up on waste patch of the lane Its ...
— Poems • Christina G. Rossetti
... line; but one is subdivided in the extreme, the other broad in the extreme, and both are beautiful. The Byzantine mind delighted in the delicacy of subdivision which nature shows in the fern-leaf or parsley-leaf; and so, also, often the Gothic mind, much enjoying the oak, thorn, and thistle. But the builder of the Ducal Palace used great breadth in his foliage, in order to harmonize with the broad surface of his mighty wall, and delighted in this breadth as nature delights in the sweeping freshness of the dock-leaf ...
— The Stones of Venice, Volume III (of 3) • John Ruskin
... fruit. The conspicuous racemes of the choke-cherries, or the shining scarlet globes of the cultivated fruit, fairly shout aloud to the birds—"Come and eat us, we're as good as we look!" But Mother Nature looks on and laughs to herself. Thistle seeds are blown to the land's end by the wind; the heavier ticks and burrs are carried far and wide upon the furry coats of passing creatures; but the cherry could not spread its progeny beyond ...
— The Log of the Sun - A Chronicle of Nature's Year • William Beebe
... a change in her, from the beginning of their talk. Why had she sent for him? The wildest notions had possessed him, ever since her letter reached him. Yet, now that he saw her, they seemed to float away from him, like thistle-down on ...
— Helena • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... in the settlement was plentiful, but, from being fed chiefly on sow thistle during the general deficiency of hard food, the animals looked ill, and were as badly tasted. The Pitt, however, took from the island a great quantity of stock; barrow pigs and fowls, pumpkins and other vegetables; for which Captain Manning and his officers ...
— An Account of the English Colony in New South Wales, Vol. 1 • David Collins
... anything quite so ridiculous,' said Miss Delacour; 'but as those silly children are going to dress, I suppose I had better put on the gown which I call my thistle gown. The thistle is the emblem of Scotland. I ...
— Hollyhock - A Spirit of Mischief • L. T. Meade
... used for Gooch filters, 1 mm. thick. The tube is then filled with the amalgamated zinc (Note 1) to within 50 mm. of the top, and on the zinc is placed a plug of glass wool. If the top of the tube is not already shaped like the mouth of a thistle-tube (B), a 60 mm. funnel is fitted into the tube with a rubber stopper and the reductor is connected with a suction bottle, F. The bottle D is a safety bottle to prevent contamination of the solution by water from the pump. ...
— An Introductory Course of Quantitative Chemical Analysis - With Explanatory Notes • Henry P. Talbot
... soon after. She is intent upon my acting Mlle. Mar's part in "Henri Trois." I can do nothing with any French part in Covent Garden. If they can find a theater of half that size to get it up in, well and good; but seen from a distance, which defies discrimination of objects, a thistle is as good as a rose, and in that enormous frame refinement is mere platitude, and finish of ...
— Records of a Girlhood • Frances Anne Kemble
... parables in the strictest sense the Old Testament contains only two" (2 Sam. 12:1-; and Isa. 5:1-). "Other stories, such as that of the trees assembled to elect a king (Judges 9:8), and of the thistle and cedar (2 Kings 14:9), are more strictly fables. Still others, such as Ezekiel's account of the two eagles and the vine (17:2-), and of the caldron (24:3-) are allegories. The small number of parabolic narratives to be found in the Old Testament must not, however, ...
— Jesus the Christ - A Study of the Messiah and His Mission According to Holy - Scriptures Both Ancient and Modern • James Edward Talmage
... sorry to think," I broke in, "that that sweet little floating thistle-down of a child I once knew was to be done ...
— Hilda Wade - A Woman With Tenacity Of Purpose • Grant Allen
... sends," he resolved to go in search of the boy himself. Storing himself with gold and precious jewels, he set off, attended only by his faithful De Fistycuff. From place to place he wandered, year after year, till his locks were turned to silvery grey, and his beard became like the down of a thistle. One evening his heart fainting, and his once firm knees trembling, he reached the gate of a monastery in Bohemia. Then he sunk down before even his Squire could ring the bell to summon the monks to his assistance. When the porter opened the door, the Lord High Steward of England had breathed his ...
— The Seven Champions of Christendom • W. H. G. Kingston
... by the quartermaster for his services as pilot. I afterward saw these ladies at St. Augustine, and years afterward the younger one came to Charleston, South Carolina, the wife of the somewhat famous Captain Thistle, agent for the United States for live-oak in Florida, who was noted as the first of the troublesome class of inventors of modern artillery. He was the inventor of a gun that "did not recoil at all," or "if anything it ...
— The Memoirs of General W. T. Sherman, Complete • William T. Sherman
... this propensity of inventing tales and allegories, which is so common to our Indians, is one of the most general traits of the human mind. The most ancient effort of this kind by far, in the way of the allegorical, is in the following words: "The Thistle that was in Lebanon sent to the Cedar, saying, give thy daughter to my son to wife: and there passed by a wild beast and trod down the ...
— Personal Memoirs Of A Residence Of Thirty Years With The Indian Tribes On The American Frontiers • Henry Rowe Schoolcraft
... us only a few miles on our general course or rout. there is but very little timber on this fork principally the under brush frequently mentioned. I observe a considerable quantity of the buffaloe clover in the bottoms. the sunflower, flax, green swoard, thistle and several species of the rye grass some of which rise to the hight of 3 or 4 feet. there is a grass also with a soft smooth leaf that bears it's seeds very much like the timothy but it dose not grow very luxouriant or appear as if it would ...
— The Journals of Lewis and Clark • Meriwether Lewis et al
... Thistle Grove Lane is one of those quaint survivals which enable us to reconstruct the past topographically, in the same way as the silent letters in a word, apparently meaningless, enable us to reconstruct the philological past. It is no longer a lane, but a narrow passage, and ...
— The Kensington District - The Fascination of London • Geraldine Edith Mitton
... stem throws out close above the surface of the ground, breaks the length of fibre and renders it unfit for those purposes for which, in the northern regions of Europe, its tall branchless stem is so well adapted. The sow thistle, a plant that occurs in almost every part of the world, was nothing different here from its usual habit in Europe. We observed also a species of Chenopodium and of Artemisia or wormwood; abundance of the Pe-tsai, and other ...
— Travels in China, Containing Descriptions, Observations, and Comparisons, Made and Collected in the Course of a Short Residence at the Imperial Palace of Yuen-Min-Yuen, and on a Subsequent Journey thr • John Barrow
... see the yellow-horned poppy and the golden thistle growing in abundance; many another flower, too, as brilliant brightens the way-a large, handsome broom, several kinds of mullein, with ...
— The Roof of France • Matilda Betham-Edwards
... who was sunning himself on the top of a thistle, Frank prepared to strike, when it suddenly mounted and flitted over a hedge. In a moment the boys had scrambled through the gap and were in full pursuit. The butterfly flitted here and there, sometimes allowing the boys to approach within a few ...
— By Sheer Pluck - A Tale of the Ashanti War • G. A. Henty
... eyes, long dimm'd with weeping, In the silent dust are sleeping; When above my lowly bed The breeze shall wave the thistle's head, Thou wilt think of ...
— Mark Hurdlestone - Or, The Two Brothers • Susanna Moodie
... little donkey on wheels. It had never wagged its tail, or tossed its head, or said, "Hee-haw!" or tasted a tender thistle. It always went about, anywhere that anyone pulled it, on four wooden wheels, carrying a foolish knight, who wore a large cocked hat and a long cloak, because he had no legs. Now, a man who has no legs, and rides a donkey ...
— Very Short Stories and Verses For Children • Mrs. W. K. Clifford
... watch him go; He seems a floating flake of snow: Now to a milkweed bloom he's clinging; There on a buttercup he's swinging; And now he makes a little stop Upon a scented thistle-top. ...
— The Nursery, No. 103, July, 1875. Vol. XVIII. - A Monthly Magazine for Youngest Readers • Various
... moisture of the night had ornamented with shimmering edges of crystal beads. She found the phantom of the night before browsing among flowers behind the cottage, and very kindly disposed to make her acquaintance. As he had a thistle blossom sticking out of his mouth, she forthwith named him Thistle. She soon returned to the house with her apron full of vines, and blossoms, and prettily tinted leaves. "See, Tulee," said she, "what ...
— A Romance of the Republic • Lydia Maria Francis Child
... from active duty on the field, Mr. M'Quarrie is even now in football harness as the treasurer of the Partick Thistle. He did not play in many of the first eleven matches of the club, but being a promising lad was always available as first reserve forward. He was rather a neat dribbler and good backer-up, but a little slow ...
— Scottish Football Reminiscences and Sketches • David Drummond Bone
... went straight to his work, And filled all the stockings; then turned with a jerk, And laying his finger aside of his nose, And giving a nod, up the chimney he rose; He sprang to his sleigh, to his team gave a whistle, And away they all flew like the down on a thistle. But I heard him exclaim, ere he drove out of sight, "Happy Christmas to all, and to ...
— Poems Every Child Should Know - The What-Every-Child-Should-Know-Library • Various
... set light to the dried sage, and thistle and thorn, and soon the whole place was blazing. It was a fearful sight. Many wounded tried to crawl away, dragging their broken arms and legs out of the burning bushes and were ...
— At Suvla Bay • John Hargrave
... vain colossal England mows, With ponderous strength, the yielding foes; In vain fair Scotia, by her side, With courage flushed and Highland pride, Whirls her keen blade with horrid whistle And lops off heads like tops of thistle; In vain brave Erin, famed afar, The flaming thunderbolt of war, Profuse of life, through blood does wade, To lend her sister kingdom aid: Our conquering thunders vainly roar Terrific round the Gallic shore; ...
— Cottage Poems • Patrick Bronte
... Geraint into the castle court, His charger trampling many a prickly star Of sprouted thistle on the broken stones. He look'd and saw that all was ruinous. Here stood a shatter'd archway plumed with fern; And here had fall'n a great part of a tower, Whole, like a crag that tumbles from the cliff, And like a crag was gay with wilding flowers: And high above a piece ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 5 • Charles Sylvester
... with the Duke of Cumberland whom he succeeded. A cheerful, singularly polite, modest, well-conditioned man withal. To be slightly better known to us, if we live. He at present is a Boy of ten, chasing the thistle's beard. ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. IX. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... wall a perfectly gorgeous fringe of Epilobium obcordatum with flowers an inch wide, crowded together in lavish profusion, and colored as royal a purple as ever was worn by any high-bred plant of the tropics; and best of all, and greatest of all, a noble thistle in full bloom, standing erect, head and shoulders above his companions, and thrusting out his lances in sturdy vigor as if growing on a Scottish brae. All this brave warm bloom among the raw stones, right in the face ...
— The Mountains of California • John Muir
... Emblem:— The lily of France may fade, The thistle and shamrock wither, The oak of England may decay, But the ...
— The Handy Cyclopedia of Things Worth Knowing - A Manual of Ready Reference • Joseph Triemens
... and the centrepiece is enclosed within a transverse oval band inscribed "CANADA POSTAGE" at the top, and "THREE PENCE" below. Above the beaver is an Imperial crown which breaks into the oval band and divides the words "CANADA" and "POSTAGE." This crown rests on a rose, shamrock, and thistle (emblematic of the United Kingdom) and on either side are the letters "V R" (Victoria Regina, i.e. Queen Victoria). In each of the angles is a large uncolored numeral "3". Mr. Howes tells us that this stamp was designed by Sir Stanford Fleming, ...
— The Stamps of Canada • Bertram Poole
... enviable being! No storms, no clouds, in thy blue sky foreseeing, Play on, play on, My elfin John! Toss the light ball, bestride the stick,— (I knew so many cakes would make him sick!) With fancies buoyant as the thistle-down, Prompting the face grotesque, and antic brisk, With many a lamb-like frisk! (He's got the scissors snipping at your gown!) Thou pretty opening rose! (Go to your mother, child, and wipe your nose!) Balmy and breathing music ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 6 • Charles H. Sylvester
... heard Robert Collyer speak in a sermon of James Oliver as "a transplanted thistle evolved into a beautiful flower," and "the ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 11 (of 14) - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Businessmen • Elbert Hubbard
... canoes to apprise the Indians, if there were any in the neighbourhood, of our being white men and their friends; but we were not so fortunate as to discover any of them. Along the shores we saw great quantities of the common thistle, and procured a further supply of wild onions and a species of garlic growing on the highlands, which is now green and in bloom: it has a flat leaf, and is strong, tough, and disagreeable. There was also ...
— History of the Expedition under the Command of Captains Lewis and Clark, Vol. I. • Meriwether Lewis and William Clark
... furrows—as if a drove of hogs had been "rooting" the ground. On the bottoms of the streams he also digs up the "kamas" root (camassia esculenta), the "yampah," (anethum graveolens), the "kooyah" (Valeriana edulis), and the root of a species of thistle (circium virginianum). Many species of fruits and berries furnish him with an occasional meal; and the sweet pods of the mesquites (species of acacia), and the cones of the pinon tree (pinus edulis) form portions ...
— Bruin - The Grand Bear Hunt • Mayne Reid
... head, splash into the water. Now, when she saw three big fellows close by, she stooped for a stone, and just at that minute a gale of wind nearly took the umbrella out of her hand. She clutched it fast; and away she went like a thistle-down, right up in the air, over river and hill, houses and trees, faster and faster, till her head spun round, her breath was all gone, and she had to let go. The dear red umbrella flew away like a leaf; and Lily fell down, down, till she went crash ...
— The Louisa Alcott Reader - A Supplementary Reader for the Fourth Year of School • Louisa M. Alcott
... poplar trees—for the sake of the evening coolness and the gradual approach to the great Alps, which await him at the close of the day. It is about Mulhausen that he begins to feel a change in the landscape. The fields broaden into rolling downs, watered by clear and running streams; the green Swiss thistle grows by riverside and cowshed; pines begin to tuft the slopes of gently rising hills; and now the sun has set, the stars come out, first Hesper, then the troop of lesser lights; and he feels—yes, indeed, there is now no mistake—the well-known, well-loved magical fresh air, that never fails ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Complete - Series I, II, and III • John Symonds
... to Robert Loveman, best known for his felicitous "Rain Song," a poem too well known to be quoted here. Any poet who has ever lived might have been proud to have written that poem. It goes as lightly as thistle-down, yet is freighted with thought. Its philosophy is so sublimated and so natural and easy that we are likely to forget that it has any philosophy at all. The fifty or more stanzas of his "Gates of Silence" are probably far less well known. Let me quote ...
— The Last Harvest • John Burroughs
... dip here; The blow-ball of the thistle slip, And no wind breathing—but my lip Next to your anxious cheek and ear, To tell you I am near, my love, To ...
— Poems • Madison Cawein
... structure of stone, inconvenient and gloomy, with narrow windows and an uninviting door. The pine forest touched it on one side, a brawling stream twisted itself like a live snake half round it on the other. A plot of green grass, ill kept and deformed, with noxious weeds, dock, fennel, thistle, and foul stramonium, was surrounded by a rough wall of loose stones, forming the lawn, such as it was, where, under a tree, seated in an armchair, was a solitary woman, whom Fanchon recognized as her aunt, Marie Josephte ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby
... picked up his "other legs" and gave him, then led Balaam away from the late thistle blooms he was browsing. Hallam mounted, crossed his crutches before him, and lifted his cap. Amy tossed him a kiss and turned millward, while he ascended the hill road. But no sooner was she out of sight than her assumed cheerfulness ...
— Reels and Spindles - A Story of Mill Life • Evelyn Raymond
... chiefly on the seeds of weeds and thistles, groundsel, and dandelion, and he is therefore a friend to the farmer, but in captivity be will thrive on canary and German rape with several hemp-seeds daily, and now and then lettuce, thistle-seed, and fruit. ...
— What Shall We Do Now?: Five Hundred Games and Pastimes • Dorothy Canfield Fisher
... from his degradation on that day: and in June 1562, the Magistrates directed the portraiture of the Saint, which had served as their emblem, to be cut out of the city standard, as an idol, and a Thistle to be inserted, "emblematical (as a recent writer remarks) of rude reform, but leaving the Hind which accompanied St. Giles, as one of the heraldic supporters of the city arms."—(Caledonia, vol. ii. ...
— The Works of John Knox, Vol. 1 (of 6) • John Knox
... said anything of the kind; and though she still held her nose rather high when Paul was near, she would have answered for his honesty as readily as for that of her own brothers. But hers had not been the charity that thinketh no evil, and her idle words had been like thistle-down, lightly sent forth, but when they had lighted, ...
— Friarswood Post-Office • Charlotte M. Yonge
... sharp-taloned Goblins when the thorns of the Ryls reached their savage hearts and let their life-blood sprinkle all the plain. And afterward from every drop a thistle grew. ...
— The Life and Adventures of Santa Claus • L. Frank Baum
... the light, and then escorted the ladies home. But Thumbelina could not sleep that night; so she got out of bed, and plaited a great big blanket of straw, and carried it off, and spread it over the dead bird, and piled upon it thistle-down as soft as cotton-wool, which she had found in the field-mouse's room, so that the poor little thing should lie ...
— The Yellow Fairy Book • Various
... dandelion, thistle, and other triumphant strugglers for survival, the milkweed sends its offspring adrift on the winds to found fresh colonies afar. Children delight in making pompons for their hats by removing the silky seed-tufts from pods before they burst, and ...
— Wild Flowers Worth Knowing • Neltje Blanchan et al
... or design were vain. There must be courage to reject no less than to gather. A man is at liberty to neglect things that are repugnant to his disposition. He may, if he please, have nothing to do with thistle or thorn, with bramble or brier.... Nevertheless sharp and severe things are yet dear to some souls. Nor should I understand the taste that would reject the wildness of the thorn and holly, or the child-loving labyrinths of the bramble, or wholesome ranges of the downs ...
— The Mind of the Artist - Thoughts and Sayings of Painters and Sculptors on Their Art • Various
... flew to one, that, by man and beast Was shunned for its stinging bristle; But it injured not the Bee in the least; And she filled her pocket, and had a feast, From the bloom of the purple Thistle. ...
— The Youth's Coronal • Hannah Flagg Gould
... remind the English settler of his old home. It has spread very rapidly, and on thousands upon thousands of acres it has rooted out the native grasses and taken full possession of the soil. Another plant has a history which would be ludicrous if it were not so serious, and that is the thistle." ...
— The Land of the Kangaroo - Adventures of Two Youths in a Journey through the Great Island Continent • Thomas Wallace Knox
... beautiful surroundings I differ entirely from Mr. Whistler. An artist is not an isolated fact; he is the resultant of a certain milieu and a certain entourage, and can no more be born of a nation that is devoid of any sense of beauty than a fig can grow from a thorn or a rose blossom from a thistle. That an artist will find beauty in ugliness, le beau dans l'horrible, is now a commonplace of the schools, the argot of the atelier, but I strongly deny that charming people should be condemned to live with magenta ottomans and Albert-blue curtains in their rooms ...
— Miscellanies • Oscar Wilde
... towers Survey Boeotia;—Caledonia's ours. 130 And well I know within that bastard land [10] Hath Wisdom's goddess never held command; A barren soil, where Nature's germs, confined To stern sterility, can stint the mind; Whose thistle well betrays the niggard earth, Emblem of all to whom the Land gives birth; Each genial influence nurtured to resist; A land of meanness, sophistry, and mist. [xv] Each breeze from foggy mount and marshy plain Dilutes with drivel ...
— Byron's Poetical Works, Vol. 1 • Byron
... happy, and alleviated the distress of many a poor soul whom I never expect to see. It is more than one can often say that, in doing right, one has made two happy in one day. Speed, die when I may, I want it said of me by those who know me best, that I always plucked a thistle and planted a flower when I thought a flower would grow."—(Vouched for by Joshua R. Speed, the first to be friend to Lincoln when he set out to become a lawyer, at Springfield, ...
— The Lincoln Story Book • Henry L. Williams
... the other horn of the dilemma. That, too, one will find as ill a resting place as an upright thistle. Let the wages,—as with Mr. Bellamy,—all be equal. The managers then cannot vote themselves large emoluments if they try. But what about the purple citizens? Will they work, or will they lie round in their ...
— The Unsolved Riddle of Social Justice • Stephen Leacock
... running about evidently blind in one eye. Numbers of small birds, as ducks, hawks, and partridges, were killed. I saw one of the latter with a black mark on its back, as if it had been struck with a paving-stone. A fence of thistle-stalks round the hovel was nearly broken down; and my informer, putting his head out to see what was the matter, received a severe cut, and now wears a bandage. The storm was said to have been of limited extent: we certainly ...
— The Rain Cloud - or, An Account of the Nature, Properties, Dangers and Uses of Rain • Anonymous
... immortal shield from Neptune she received, 780 When first her head above the waters heaved; Loose floated o'er her limbs an azure vest, A figured 'scutcheon glitter'd on her breast; There from one parent soil for ever young, The blooming rose and hardy thistle sprung: Around her head an oaken wreath was seen, Inwove with laurels of unfading green. Such was the sculptured prow; from van to rear The artillery frown'd, a black tremendous tier! Embalm'd with orient gum, ...
— The Poetical Works of Beattie, Blair, and Falconer - With Lives, Critical Dissertations, and Explanatory Notes • Rev. George Gilfillan [Ed.]
... said S.C. to the children, and he turned to the big book and began to run his fingers down the pages in a business-like manner. "Ah! here she is!" he exclaimed at last. "Blue eyes, if you please, Thistle, and golden hair. And let it be a big one. She ...
— Little Saint Elizabeth and Other Stories • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... words of the prophet Elisha on his death-bed would bring him victory. Yet so much greater was his force than that of Judah, that when Amaziah sent him a challenge, he replied by the insulting parable of the thistle and the cedar. Jeroboam II., his son, was likewise prosperous; but neither blessings nor warnings would induce these kings to forsake their golden calves. Amos, the herdsman-prophet of Tekoa, was warned to say nothing against the king's chapel at Bethel; and ...
— The Chosen People - A Compendium Of Sacred And Church History For School-Children • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... time,' returned John Thistle-wood, 'that's a thing as few can charge me with as a general rule. And in this particular case, you see, I can't help myself. The day I see you married I shall make up my mind to leave you alone until such time as you might happen to be a widow, and if that should ...
— Bulldog And Butterfly - From "Schwartz" by David Christie Murray • David Christie Murray
... taken full possession of California; how that cattle and horses, introduced by the Spaniard, have spread as widely and made themselves as much at home on the plains of La Plata as on those of Tartary; and that the cardoon-thistle-seeds, and others they brought with them, have multiplied there into numbers probably much exceeding those extant in their native lands; indeed, when we contemplate our own race, and our particular stock, taking such recent but dominating possession ...
— Darwiniana - Essays and Reviews Pertaining to Darwinism • Asa Gray
... mortal has a right to wag his tongue, much less to wag his pen, without saying something; he knows not what mischief he does, past computation, scattering words without meaning, to afflict the whole world yet before they cease. For thistle-down flies abroad on all winds and airs of wind.... Ship-loads of fashionable novels, sentimental rhymes, tragedies, farces ... tales by flood and field are swallowed monthly into the bottomless pool; still does the press toil,... and still in torrents rushes on the great army ...
— Thomas Carlyle - Biography • John Nichol
... Franciscan order and became an itinerant preaching friar, in which capacity he wandered over the length and breadth of the land, enjoying good cheer by the way; was some time in the service of James IV., and wrote a poem, his most famous piece, entitled "The Thistle and the Rose," on the occasion of the King's marriage with the Princess Margaret Tudor, daughter of Henry VII. His poems were of three classes—allegoric, moral, and comic, the most remarkable being "The Dance," in which he describes the procession of the seven deadly sins in ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... city—are yet sweet to the living. "They have only a pleasure like that of the brutes," we say with scorn. But what a racy and substantial pleasure is that! The flashing speed of the swallow in the air, the cool play of the minnow in the water, the dance of twin butterflies round a thistle-blossom, the thundering gallop of the buffalo across the prairie, nay, the clumsy walk of the grizzly bear; it were doubtless enough to reward existence, could we have joy like such as these, and ...
— Oldport Days • Thomas Wentworth Higginson
... had convinced that the English capital, with its "beryl streamis pleasant ... where many a swan doth swim with wingis fair", was "the flower of cities all", wrote the well-known poem on the Union of the Thistle and the Rose to welcome this second English Margaret to Scotland. But the time was not yet ripe for any real union of the Thistle and the Rose. Peace continued till the death of Henry VII; but during these years ...
— An Outline of the Relations between England and Scotland (500-1707) • Robert S. Rait
... would preserve his equilibrium miraculously, when his perpendicular had been lost long ago: he never fell upon me but once (sleeping on a sofa, I was exposed defenselessly to all such contingencies), and then lightly as thistle-down. On the rare occasions when the mal-de-mer proved too much for his valiant self-assertion, he yielded to an overruling fate without groan or complaint: folding the scanty coverlet around him, he would subside ...
— Border and Bastille • George A. Lawrence
... as I have seen many a morning rise at Enderley—misty and grey; but oh, so heavenly fair! with a pearly network of dewy gossamer under foot, and overhead countless thistle downs flying about, like fairy chariots hurrying out of sight of the sun, which had only mounted high enough above the Flat to touch the horizon of hills opposite, and the tops of my four poplars, leaving Rose Cottage and the valley ...
— John Halifax, Gentleman • Dinah Maria Mulock Craik
... plants, the power of increase is even greater and its effects more distinctly visible. Hundreds of square miles of the plains of La Plata are now covered with two or three species of European thistle, often to the exclusion of almost every other plant; but in the native countries of these thistles they occupy, except in cultivated or waste ground, a very subordinate part in the vegetation. Some American ...
— Darwinism (1889) • Alfred Russel Wallace
... were light as thistle-down compared with the need of finding Marigny. He and Dale began to hunt London for the Frenchman. But they had to deal with a wary bird, who would not break covert till it suited his own convenience. And then, the sublime cheek of the man! On the Friday morning, when Medenham rose with ...
— Cynthia's Chauffeur • Louis Tracy
... mathematical; the age ruled the prevailing taste and fashion, and everything in and out of Nature has had its turn and its day. Then, again, nationality goes for something: the Frenchman is fond of his lis and the Scot of his thistle. ...
— The Book-Collector • William Carew Hazlitt
... the Devil's maxims," exclaimed Flora, earnestly. "God calls it sowing to the flesh: and He says the harvest of it is corruption. Some flowers seed themselves: thistles do. Did you ever know roses grow from thistle seed? No: 'whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he reap.' Ah ...
— Out in the Forty-Five - Duncan Keith's Vow • Emily Sarah Holt
... of a Scotch theatre, at which F.G. Cooke was playing Macbeth, seeing him greatly exhausted towards the close of the performance, offered him some whiskey in a very small thistle-glass, saying at the same time, by way of encouragement, "Take that, Mr. Cooke; take that, sir; it is the real mountain dew; that will never hurt you, sir!"—"Not if it was vitriol!" was ...
— The Jest Book - The Choicest Anecdotes and Sayings • Mark Lemon
... corn-field ran near, and, stripped of blade and tassel, the stalks and hooded ears looked in the coming dusk a little like monks at prayer. In the sunlight across the river the corn stood thin and frail. Over there a drought was on it; and when drifting thistle-plumes marked the noontide of the year, each yellow stalk had withered blades and an empty sheath. Everywhere a look of vague trouble lay upon the face of the mountains, and when the wind blew, the silver of the leaves showed ...
— A Cumberland Vendetta • John Fox, Jr.
... your pardon, my friend," said Pierre gravely; "in the vegetable world I prefer a rose to a thistle; in the moral world, I prefer you to Trecoeur. You were born a gallant fellow; I rejoice at it, and I make ...
— Led Astray and The Sphinx - Two Novellas In One Volume • Octave Feuillet
... been in that car, so he could have seen Miss Flyaway trying to prop her mother's head against her own morsel of a shoulder—about as secure a resting-place as a piece of thistle-down. ...
— Dotty Dimple at Play • Sophie May
... emerges upon an open space so full of sunshine that the strawberries are already ripening; near them are stacked the tender young trees, ready for spacing, and the billets of wood piled up and half covered with thistle and burdock leaves; and a little farther away, half hidden by tall weeds, teeming with insects, rises the peaked top of the woodsman's hut. Here one walks beside deep, grassy trenches, which appear to continue without end, along the forest level; farther, ...
— A Woodland Queen, Complete • Andre Theuriet
... has grown up with me, as well as thousands of my Western and Southern friends. We have always been taught to look upon the people of New England as a selfish, cunning set of fellows, that was fed on fox-ears and thistle-tops; that cut their wisdom-teeth as soon as they were born; that made money by their wits, and held on to it by nature; that called cheatery mother-wit; that hung on to political power because they had numbers; that raised up manufactures ...
— David Crockett: His Life and Adventures • John S. C. Abbott
... describes an arc of three or four feet in the air, and there is one bright flash where it emerges, and another where it strikes the water; sometimes the whole silvery arc is revealed; or here and there, perhaps, is a thistle-down floating on its surface, which the fishes dart at and so dimple it again. It is like molten glass cooled but not congealed, and the few motes in it are pure and beautiful like the imperfections in glass. You may often detect ...
— Walden, and On The Duty Of Civil Disobedience • Henry David Thoreau
... fallen state, to possess all the earth and its advantages, without labour,—without fulfilling his destiny? No. Ferocious and noxious animals disappear only before cultivation. It is part of the labour to which he has been sentenced, that he should rend them out as the 'thistle and the thorn;' or drive them to those regions, which are not yet required by him, and of which they may continue to have ...
— The King's Own • Captain Frederick Marryat
... conquer his desires and make light of pain and discomfort. He needs no Aristotle to teach him the value of habits; he is soon forced to use them as defences against his pet weaknesses; above all he finds that self-denial has its reward in perfect health; that the thistle pain, too, has its flower. It is a truism that 'Varsity athletes generally succeed in life, Spartan discipline proving itself ...
— Oscar Wilde, Volume 1 (of 2) - His Life and Confessions • Frank Harris
... thistle-heads and puzzle-heads, and to all withered leaves and weeds:—praised be this wild, good, free spirit of the storm, which danceth upon fens ...
— Thus Spake Zarathustra - A Book for All and None • Friedrich Nietzsche
... there followed for M. de Cussy an extremely bad quarter of an hour. M. de Cussy, in fact, deserves your sympathy. His self-sufficiency was blown from him by the haughty M. de Rivarol, as down from a thistle by the winds of autumn. The General of the King's Armies abused him—this man who was Governor of Hispaniola—as if he were a lackey. M. de Cussy defended himself by urging the thing that Captain Blood had so admirably urged already on his behalf—that ...
— Captain Blood • Rafael Sabatini
... to get an armful of the hay, but sputtered out a chapter of malediction as his bare hands touched the masses of thistle and briers. His companions laughed at his mishap. He went to the fire and vowed he'd stick a brand in it and back he came with ...
— Rolf In The Woods • Ernest Thompson Seton
... Lily of France may fade, The Thistle and Shamrock wither, The Oak of England may decay, But the Stars ...
— Cupology - How to Be Entertaining • Clara
... Wading in the water, leaping over the stones, clambering on the trunks—aw, dear! aw, dear! Bareheaded and barefooted in those times, sir; but smart extraordinary, and a terble notion of being dressy, too. Twisting ferns about her lil neck for lace, sticking a mountain thistle, sparkling with dew, on her breast for a diamond, twining a trail of fuchsia round her head for a crown—aw, dear! aw, dear! And now—well, well, to think! ...
— The Manxman - A Novel - 1895 • Hall Caine
... that the land, about which I was consulted, had not been plowed for several years, and that although nature had done all she could to clothe the soil with vegetation, the most disheartening feature in the case was, the poverty of the weeds. A thistle may be a giant or a dwarf, according to circumstances; here they were all dwarfs. The plaintain, which I believe is sometimes sown in these districts for food, has a very deep root; here the plants were abundant, but the leaves were very small and lay so close to the ground, that, as the manager ...
— Talks on Manures • Joseph Harris
... thistle lifts a purple crown Six foot out of the turf, And the harebell shakes on the windy hill - O the breath ...
— Poems • Francis Thompson
... Pottsville,—and at the parish sociable in Northfield? Then you are sure of the benefits which will crown your lives if you obey these three precepts; and you will, with unfaltering step, move quickly over the kettle-de-benders of this broken essay, and from the thistle, danger, will pluck the three more flowers which I have promised. I ...
— How To Do It • Edward Everett Hale
... X-rays he photographs the bone incased in flesh, the coins contained in the purse. With his magnet the scientist throws a rope around the cathode rays and drags them whithersoever he will. In the field the inventor uses an electric hoe to kill the germs of the thistle and deadly nightshade. Strange that he cannot invent an instrument for killing the germs of hatred and envy in his own heart! The gardener easily masters the art of cultivating roses and violets, but breaks down in trying to produce in himself those beauteous ...
— A Man's Value to Society - Studies in Self Culture and Character • Newell Dwight Hillis
... watched children knows the extraordinary amount of pleasure that they can extract out of the simplest materials. To keep a shop in the corner of a garden, where the commodities are pebbles and thistle-heads stored in old tin pots, and which are paid for in daisies, will be an engrossing occupation to healthy children for a long summer afternoon. There is no reason why that kind of zest should not be imported into later life; and, as a matter of fact, people who practise self-restraint, ...
— At Large • Arthur Christopher Benson
... the Villa of the Grand Duchess Helena of Russia, he wore no jewel save the diamond- studded star presented to him by the Czar. At the reception given by the "English Colony" to Sir Walter Scott, the great sculptor wore a modest thistle-blossom in his lapel, which caused Lord Elgin to offer odds that if O'Connell should appear in Rome, Thorwaldsen would wear a sprig of shamrock in his hat and say nothing. The thistle caught Sir Walter, and the next day when he came ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 6 - Subtitle: Little Journeys to the Homes of Eminent Artists • Elbert Hubbard
... which they had brought on the honour of the Banda Oriental could only be washed away with their blood. Pointing to the advancing troops, he said that when those miserable hirelings were scattered like thistle-down before the wind, the entire country would be with him, and the Banda Oriental, after half a century of degradation, free at last and for ...
— The Purple Land • W. H. Hudson
... covered with vegetation. You can lie on the blossoming clover, where the bees hum and the crickets chirp around you, and can look through the arch which frames its own fair picture. In the foreground lies the steep slope overgrown with bayberry and gay with thistle blooms; then the little winding cove with its bordering cliffs; and the rough pastures with their grazing sheep beyond. Or, ascending the parapet, you can look across the bay to the men making hay ...
— Malbone - An Oldport Romance • Thomas Wentworth Higginson
... right there. I quite go with that line of reasoning. By their fruits shall ye know them. A man don't usually go to a thistle to find grapes. But let me ask you, Ned, do you usually find that murderers, drunkards, burglars, thieves, and blackguards in general are students of the Bible and given to prayer ...
— Dusty Diamonds Cut and Polished - A Tale of City Arab Life and Adventure • R.M. Ballantyne
... Gently as thistle-downs are borne away From the dry stem, went Ellen yesterday. I heard her dying utterance; it was: "I'm coming, Teddy! Bless you, dear Miss Linda!" No priest was by, so sudden was her going. When Blount came in, there was no tenderness In his sleek, gluttonous ...
— The Woman Who Dared • Epes Sargent
... spreading and seeding potentialities of a thistle-down or a catchy phrase? Within twenty-four hours after the appearance of Banneker's editorial, the apocryphal boast of Mayor Laird to his wife had become current political history. Current? Rampant, rather. Messenger boys greeted each other with ...
— Success - A Novel • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... nest in the open field, without so much as a bush or thistle or tuft of grass to protect it or mark its site; you may step upon it, or the cattle may tread it into the ground. But the danger from this source, I presume, the bird considers less than that from another. Skunks and foxes have a very impertinent curiosity, as Finchie well knows; and ...
— Wake-Robin • John Burroughs
... ornament, and all decorative needlework. It is, in fact, the fabric for the million which most especially needs the careful study of guiding rules. When a plant sends forth hundreds of winged, wind-blown seeds, like the thistle, it spreads itself over wide fields, and is more mischievous than a more noxious growth, such as the deadly nightshade, which only drops an occasional berry into the earth. So a common cheap chintz or carpet, with a poor, gaudy, motiveless design, ...
— Needlework As Art • Marian Alford
... goodwill of the wounded, she could accept with as much pleasure as any of her sex; but she had not yet recognized that type of man who looks at a pretty woman and is disposed to make love to her at once. "Why does Captain Maynard stare at me so?" she asked herself, "when I don't care a thistle for him and never will. Why should I care? Why should he care? Does he think I'm silly and shallow enough to be amused by this kind of thing when that brave old colonel is dying ...
— Miss Lou • E. P. Roe
... is a' my merry young men, Whom I gi' meat and fee, To pu' the thistle and the thorn, To burn ...
— Ballads of Romance and Chivalry - Popular Ballads of the Olden Times - First Series • Frank Sidgwick |
