"Vermin" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... for a city of perhaps one-tenth our present size; it is old and musty, and the walls are so badly cracked that it has been condemned by the building department. It is so crowded that half a dozen men sometimes sleep on the floor of a single cell. They are devoured by vermin, and lie in semi-darkness, some of them shivering with cold and others half suffocated. They stay there, sometimes for many months unheeded, because the courts are crowded, and if Comrade Abell's word may be taken in the matter, every poor man is assumed to be guilty until he is proven innocent. ...
— They Call Me Carpenter • Upton Sinclair
... in the latter, the hammock is suspended by the chair in the reading-room and coffee-house, or the bench on the promenade. The sultry nights in Chorillos are rendered doubly unpleasant by the swarms of vermin which infest the houses. Fleas, bugs, mosquitoes and sancudos, combine to banish rest from the couch ...
— Travels in Peru, on the Coast, in the Sierra, Across the Cordilleras and the Andes, into the Primeval Forests • J. J. von Tschudi
... Grand Chatelet, called the Chausse d'Hypocras, in which the prisoners had their feet continually in water, and where they could neither stand up nor lie down; and a cell, called Fin d'aise, which was a horrible receptacle of filth, vermin, and reptiles; as to the Fosse, no staircase being attached to it, the prisoners were lowered down into it by means of ...
— Manners, Custom and Dress During the Middle Ages and During the Renaissance Period • Paul Lacroix
... taken up my stand for freedom, I'll jackal to no autocrat; But rogues with hands as red as Edom, Nihilist snake, Anarchist rat, I'd crush, and crime's curst league determine. I have no sympathy with vermin. ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 102, May 7, 1892 • Various
... was four days dying—four days dying—of starvation and thirst," Foster went on, as if deciphering some terrible hieroglyphs written on the air. "His thigh swelled to the size of his body. Clouds of flies settled on him—flies and vermin—and he chewed his own arm and drank his own blood. He died mad. And my God! he crawled three miles in those four days! Man! Man! that's ...
— The Unpopular Review, Volume II Number 3 • Various
... not know, woman's bully and poltroon, that you plot to sell yourself, because your day has come, and no woman will bid for such an outcast, saving one that you may threaten. Rise, vermin—rise, lest ...
— A Lady of Quality • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... there. The water through which we waded was alive with a multitude of swimming frogs. Red slugs crawled up the sides of the trenches, and queer beetles with dangerous-looking horns wriggled along dry ledges and invaded the dugouts in search of the vermin ...
— Now It Can Be Told • Philip Gibbs
... landings, and stairs out of Holland; the whole producing a gorgeous effect—to match the glory of the embroidered pillow-cases in the bedrooms. On the roofs were drying-grounds, upon which each tenant had her rightful "day," so that altercations might not arise. I saw an empty flat. The professional vermin exterminator had just gone—for the landlord-company took no chances in this ...
— Your United States - Impressions of a first visit • Arnold Bennett
... battle. The broad woods of the Brazos shall do us good service. Though you are brave, and willing to risk your lives, it would be small benefit to the country if you lost them. No, my boys, we'll give it to the vermin, never fear, they shall have it, as sure as Sam Houston stands ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 363, January, 1846 • Various
... see, amid the mimic rout A crawling shape intrude! A blood-red thing that writhes from out The scenic solitude! It writhes!—it writhes!—with mortal pangs The mimes become its food, And the angels sob at vermin ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 5 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... whole world besides this little gang of Europeans. Except, dear God, that they've exterminated all the peoples worth knowing. I can't do with folk who teem by the billion, like the Chinese and Japs and orientals altogether. Only vermin teem by the billion. Higher types breed slower. I would have loved the Aztecs and the Red Indians. I KNOW they hold the element in life which I am looking for—they had living pride. Not like the flea-bitten Asiatics—even niggers ...
— Aaron's Rod • D. H. Lawrence
... past too, captain; but if we meet any, the vermin will be glad to sheer off. I'll ...
— The Pirate of Panama - A Tale of the Fight for Buried Treasure • William MacLeod Raine
... shadows; across a gorse-grown common, sacred home of an old dog-fox that had defied the South Meadshire hounds for five seasons; and so, out of her father's property on to that of Jim Graham, in which blood relations of the Kencote game and vermin were protected with equal care, in order that the Grahams might fulfil the destiny appointed for them and the Clintons and the ...
— The Squire's Daughter - Being the First Book in the Chronicles of the Clintons • Archibald Marshall
... suffering and labors that are inseparable from any operation in the nature of a siege were added insupportable torments, the least of which were vermin. As the summer days drew out and the heat grew more intense, the brooks dried up; the creek lost itself in the pestilential swamp; the wells and springs gave out; the river fell, exposing to the almost tropical sun a wide margin of festering ooze. ...
— History of the Nineteenth Army Corps • Richard Biddle Irwin
... the gallinoe order, as cocks and hens, partridges, and pheasants, etc., are pulveratrices, such as dust themselves, using that method of cleansing their feathers, and ridding themselves of their vermin. As far as I can observe, many birds that dust themselves never wash; and I once thought that those birds that wash themselves would never dust; but here I find myself mistaken: for common house-sparrows are great pulveratrices, ...
— The Natural History of Selborne, Vol. 1 • Gilbert White
... mentioned before, the Spaniards do not put either beds or benches in their prisons. Their captives must either stand, or lie down on the filthy floors, among dirt and vermin. ...
— The Great Round World And What Is Going On In It, April 1, 1897 Vol. 1. No. 21 - A Weekly Magazine for Boys and Girls • Various
... enough to plug the hole I have made, but even so, I'll build a couple of space flyers equipped with disintegrating rays as soon as we get down and station them alongside the hole to wipe out any of that space vermin which tries to come through. Let's go home. We've put ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science July 1930 • Various
... found quarreling with other dogs. From the bull terrier side he inherits a lively mood, the quality of taking care of himself if attacked by another dog, and of his owner, too, if necessary, the propensity to be a great destroyer of all kinds of vermin if properly trained, and an ideal watch dog at night. No wonder he is popular, he deserves to be. The standard describes him ...
— The Boston Terrier and All About It - A Practical, Scientific, and Up to Date Guide to the Breeding of the American Dog • Edward Axtell
... idea in gaming is at war with all the industries of society. Any trade or occupation that is of use is ennobling. The street sweeper advances the interests of society by the cleanliness effected. The cat pays for the fragments it eats by clearing the house of vermin. The fly that takes the sweetness from the dregs of the cup compensates by purifying the air and keeping back the pestilence. But the gambler gives not anything for that which ...
— The Abominations of Modern Society • Rev. T. De Witt Talmage
... principles. Hold, come back, sir; back here, back, sir, back! I tell you no more boys for me. Nay, I'm a Mede and Persian. In my old home in the woods I'm pestered enough with squirrels, weasels, chipmunks, skunks. I want no more wild vermin to spoil my temper and waste my substance. Don't talk of boys; enough of your boys; a plague of your boys; chilblains on your boys! As for Intelligence Offices, I've lived in the East, and know 'em. Swindling concerns kept by low-born cynics, under a fawning exterior wreaking ...
— The Confidence-Man • Herman Melville
... of Heriz Magna kept silence for an instant; his eyes were twitching about the hall, in that stealthy way of his. Finally, "It is no use," said he. "A poor knave cannot afford the luxury of honesty. My life is not a valuable one, perhaps, but even vermin have an aversion to death. I resume my lackeyship, Lord Rokesle. Perhaps 'twas only the gin. Perhaps—In any event, I am once more at your service. And as guaranty of this I warn you that you are exhibiting ...
— Gallantry - Dizain des Fetes Galantes • James Branch Cabell
... and presenting altogether a parallel to a substantial yeoman with his riding-whip, come to town to do a little justice business with the Mayor. A stable-keeper came and said, that two snakes had made their appearance in the stable; on which the Arab, being no more in the habit of fearing such vermin than a European farmer of fearing rats, proceeded towards the stable, and I followed him. Sure enough there were two snakes in dalliance in the horse's stall; and my construction was, that it was the poor animals' St. Valentine. The Arab, however, ruthlessly smote them with his gib stick, ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 19, No. 543, Saturday, April 21, 1832. • Various
... did only figure use. Well dost thou know it rests upon their deeds; But demonstrate their worth and all were well, And then we'll speed us to our native land. Quezox: But, noble Francos, we now wend our way To meet the vermin which do suck our blood, And they with tongues which serpent-like can charm May fool thee with their tales of dire intent. Francos: (striking his breast): Fear not, they soon shall feel how vain it were To seek to ...
— 'A Comedy of Errors' in Seven Acts • Spokeshave (AKA Old Fogy)
... that can be," said Allan Redmain scornfully, "for the kingdom of which you boast is but a barren rock in the mid sea, and methinks your beasts of the chase are but vermin rats ...
— The Thirsty Sword • Robert Leighton
... is asserted that these wretches are once more at our gates; well then let each one of us take a gun and shoot them down like dogs. I for my part shall be seen in the front rank, happy to rid the earth of such vermin." ...
— The Fortune of the Rougons • Emile Zola
... tells how Sylla's body was so corrupted with these vermin, that they streamed from him into every place: pasan estheta kai loutron kai aponimma kai sition anapimplasthai tou reumatos ekeinon kai tes phthoras. tosouton exenthei. "Vita Syllae," xxxvi.—W. ...
— Poems (Volume II.) • Jonathan Swift
... in Brunswick, By famous Hanover city; The river Weser, deep and wide, Washes its wall on the southern side; A pleasanter spot you never spied; But, when begins my ditty, Almost five hundred years ago, To see the townsfolk suffer so From vermin was a pity. ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 1 (of 4) • Various
... impoverished the rural life and resulted in many abandoned farms. In the city housing conditions of the poor were worse if anything than they had been thirty years before. Crowded tenements, filthy streets, flies, and vermin abounded. Under the English common law accidents in the mills were matters of concern only to the employees, and the human toll of the railways was enormous. Years of toil, a worn-out frame, a dependent old ...
— Expansion and Conflict • William E. Dodd
... it may be taken off and applied again to another construction. It replaces common Asphalting on Terraces, Lobbies, Counting-houses, Office Floors, etc.; is a great preservative against dampness and vermin, and equalizes the temperature. It is 32 inches wide, and made in rolls of 25 yards each. Send for ...
— Scientific American, Volume XXIV., No. 12, March 18, 1871 • Various
... mean them, and the three or four millions of poor whites—the ignorant, half-starved, lazy vermin you have just seen. They are the real basis of our Southern oligarchy, as you call it,' continued the Colonel, ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I, No. VI, June, 1862 - Devoted To Literature and National Policy • Various
... sheds have given way to neatly whitewashed villages, and the fields are fenced with rows of aloe. But, drawing nearer, we find the habitations are in reality miserable mud hovels, without windows, and tenanted by vermin and ragged poverty. There are herds of cattle and fields of grain; yet we shall not find a quart of milk or a loaf of bread for sale. The descent into the valley is very precipitous, and, after a rain, alarmingly slippery. Mules, drawing their legs together, slide down with startling velocity, ...
— The Andes and the Amazon - Across the Continent of South America • James Orton
... Verdict jugxo. Verdigris verdigro. Verdure verdajxo. Verger pedelo. Verify verigi, ekzameni. Verily vere. Veritable vera. Verity vereco. Vermicelli vermicxelo. Vermifuge kontrauxvermajxo. Vermilion cinabro. Vermin insektoj. Vermouth vermuto. Verse verso. Verses, to make versi. Versed (learned) klera. Versifier versisto. Version traduko. Verst versto. Vertebra vertebro. Vertebral vertebra. Vertex supro, pinto. Vertical vertikala. Vertigo kapturno. Very ...
— English-Esperanto Dictionary • John Charles O'Connor and Charles Frederic Hayes
... of course, all right to trap bears when they are followed merely as vermin or for the sake of the fur. Occasionally, however, hunters who are out merely for sport adopt this method; but this should never be done. To shoot a trapped bear for sport is a thoroughly unsportsmanlike proceeding. A ...
— Hunting the Grisly and Other Sketches • Theodore Roosevelt
... the best time for Long-winged Hawks is about the middle of April, and March for the Short-Winged Hawks. There are two kinds of Mewings. 1. At the stock or stone; so called from its being low upon the ground, free from Noise, Vermin or ill Air. 2. At large; so called from being in a high Room, with open Windows towards the North or North-East. The former is accounted the best Mewing. I shall not insist on the erecting or ordering of this Mew, leaving that to ...
— The School of Recreation (1684 edition) • Robert Howlett
... converted into gold—these Shylocks now shivered in anticipation of the coming greenbacks, for abject dread of the bluebacks that were to bring them. There is one gleam of satisfaction through the gloom of the great fire—it partly purified the city of these vermin and the foul nests they ...
— Four Years in Rebel Capitals - An Inside View of Life in the Southern Confederacy from Birth to Death • T. C. DeLeon
... the least idea of this peculiar effect. We feel our hearts tremble at the thought that whither that light has gone we must follow. For the first time I realize that we are about to go into the earth,—that we shall presently crawl like insects, burrow like underground vermin, beneath the surface, man's proper place. But such thoughts ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 7, No. 39, January, 1861 • Various
... my experience, it is bitterly cold at night, and very hot in the daytime. Within its walls, instead of fragrant orange-trees, were four to five thousand human beings, now herded together in a condition too miserable to imagine, a prey to vermin, disease, and starvation. ...
— France in the Nineteenth Century • Elizabeth Latimer
... vehemently. "You ain't seen Bill, have you? He's that mad you can't git a word out o' him. I tell you right here somethin's goin' to happen. Somethin's got to happen," he added, with a fresh burst of rage. "That gang needs cleanin' out. They need shootin' up like vermin, an'—" ...
— The Twins of Suffering Creek • Ridgwell Cullum
... alkaloids can be absorbed from the unbroken skin; but there is no doubt that alkaloids can be absorbed when rubbed into scratches or into the quick of the nails, and it must be remembered that an unbroken skin is only possessed by those who are free from vermin and who wash regularly, and neither of these conditions would be likely to apply to a mediaeval witch. Cases of poisoning associated with delirium have actually been recorded following the application of ...
— The Witch-cult in Western Europe - A Study in Anthropology • Margaret Alice Murray
... the travaux forces, the long marches, the agonies of farewell at the Siberian boundary-post—not for him, for his were said, but for his companions in misery—the miseries of the sick and dying, the partial starvation, and the horrors of dirt and vermin. There were sure to be some women too among the "politicals," and he would be ...
— The Hippodrome • Rachel Hayward
... illogical canon. Trees, rivers, flowers, birds, stars—are, and have been for many centuries Nature—so are ploughed fields—really the most artificial of all things—and all the apparatus of the agriculturist, cattle, vermin, weeds, weed-fires, and all the rest of it. A grassy old embankment to protect low-lying fields is Nature, and so is all the mass of apparatus about a water-mill; a new embankment to store an urban water supply, though it may be one mass of splendid ...
— Mankind in the Making • H. G. Wells
... vermin 'tis! now, for an hundred pound, could I have gratified him with a waiter's place at the custom-house, that had been worth to him an hundred ...
— The Works of John Dryden, Vol. II • Edited by Walter Scott
... so infested with this vermin, in the form of secret memoirs, back-stairs diarists, and boudoir eavesdroppers, that it is almost impossible to feel sure of the actual fact of any history whatsoever. The fame of great personages may be literally compared ...
— Vanishing Roads and Other Essays • Richard Le Gallienne
... world. When He sees that the world deserves destruction, He stands up from the throne of judgment, and sits on the throne of mercy. The third three hours He sits and feeds all the world, from the horns of the unicorns to the eggs of the vermin. In the fourth three hours He sits and plays with leviathan, for it is said, 'The leviathan, whom thou hast formed to play therein' " (Ps. civ. 26). Rabbi Eliezer says, "The night has three watches, and at every watch the Holy One, blessed ...
— Hebrew Literature
... was called, professed to rid the dwellings and fields of the district of polecats, weasels, rats and other vermin. Nor did he confine his good offices to Berry; every year he went the round of La Marche, Nivernais, Limousin, and Saintonge, visiting, alone and on foot, all the places that had the good sense to appreciate his talents. He ...
— Mauprat • George Sand
... oracle; and, in fact, to their gross appreciations, Christian truth was like the scavenger bird in Eastern climates, or the stork in Holland, which signalizes its presence by devouring all the native brood of vermin, or nuisances, as fast as they reproduce themselves under local ...
— Memorials and Other Papers • Thomas de Quincey
... We can fight. It will be strange if we can't outwit these vermin. And now silence; I'm going to begin. Listen hard—hard! The brutes are noiseless, but if they are near we can hear ...
— Under the Andes • Rex Stout
... it then got the name of Wolf's-bane, as the direct translation of the Greek lycoctonum, a name which it had from the idea that arrows tipped with the juice, or baits anointed with it, would kill wolves and other vermin; and, lastly, it got the expressive names of Monk's-hood[10:2] and the Helmet-flower, from the curious shape of the upper sepal overtopping ...
— The plant-lore & garden-craft of Shakespeare • Henry Nicholson Ellacombe
... Syracuse through the centre of the island revealed more wretchedness than Irving supposed existed in the world. The half-starved peasants lived in wretched cabins and often in caverns, amid filth and vermin. "God knows my mind never suffered so much as on this journey," he writes, "when I saw such scenes of want and misery continually before me, without the power of effectually relieving them." His stay in the ports was made ...
— Washington Irving • Charles Dudley Warner
... are generally thieves,—and of the bakers, who are little better. Is this small saving or frugality? Besides the mischief and damage of the field-mice, the decay of barns, and the destruction usually made by weasels and other vermin. ...
— Gargantua and Pantagruel, Complete. • Francois Rabelais
... of a brain? You think you are omnipotent, you infernal scribblers, don't you? That your praise can make a man and your blame can break him? We must all bow to you, and try to get a favorable word, must we? This man shall have a leg up, and this man shall have a dressing down! Creeping vermin, I know you! You've got out of your station. Time was when your ears were clipped. You've lost your sense of proportion. Swollen gas-bags! I'll keep you in your proper place. Yes, sir, you haven't got over G. E. C. There's ...
— The Lost World • Arthur Conan Doyle
... hoping (what proves quite futile) they may even burn a Prussian magazine here or there. Contemptible to the Prussian soldier, though very troublesome to him. Friedrich regards the Pandour sort, with their jingling savagery, as a kind of military vermin; not conceivable a Prussian formed corps should yield to any odds of Pandour Tolpatch tagraggery. Nor does the Prussian soldier yield; though sometimes, like the mastiff galled by inroad of distracted weasels in too great quantity, ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XIII. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... exchange for a dog's life on packet-boats, in squalid boarding-houses like this one, and in dismal billiard-halls? Wire-tapper, racing-tout, stool-pigeon, a cheater at cards, blackmailer and trafficker in baser things; in the next room, and he had let him go unharmed. Vermin. Pah! He was glad. The very touch of the man's collar had left a sense of defilement upon his hands. Ten years ago and thirteen thousand miles away. In the next room. He laughed unpleasantly. Chivalric fool, silly Don Quixote, ...
— Parrot & Co. • Harold MacGrath
... I make me bed, and there I lay me down, And think myself as happy as the king that wears a crown. But as you’d be dozing off to sleep a flea will wake you up, Which makes you curse the vermin in the ...
— The Old Bush Songs • A. B. Paterson
... the author, suspended from (to use the phrase of a late celebrated auctioneer) a hanging wood; and a very elaborate treatise on the Art of Rat-catching. In the advertisement of the latter work, the author engages it will enable the reader to "clear any house of these noxious vermin, however much infested, excepting only a certain great House in the neighbourhood of ...
— Real Life In London, Volumes I. and II. • Pierce Egan
... whites and negroes, living together. The houses are decayed from cellar to garret, and filthy beyond description,—the filthiest, in fact, we have ever seen. The beams, the floors, the plaster on the walls, where there is any plaster, are rotten, and alive with vermin. They are a menace to the public health, and cannot be repaired. Their annual death-rate ...
— The Battle with the Slum • Jacob A. Riis
... the past, mere fragments she had told him, here flashed back into his mind: humorous little incidents of daily battles she had waged in rotten old tenement buildings with rags and filth and garbage, with vermin, darkness and disease. Mingled with these had been accounts of dances, weddings and christenings and of curious funeral rites. And struggling with such dim memories of Deborah in her twenties, called forth in his mind by the picture ...
— His Family • Ernest Poole
... than we should be subjected to the least inconvenience. We returned our cordial thanks, but felt we had already troubled him sufficiently. We dine with Captain and Mrs. Dawson, sleep in our new quarters, and, notwithstanding mosquito curtains and iron bedsteads, are sorely annoyed by vermin, the only real hardship we have to complain of since the tossing on the Bay of Biscay, and which ...
— The Journal of Sir Walter Scott - From the Original Manuscript at Abbotsford • Walter Scott
... well done! May hell get you! To suspect me of cutting trees!—me, the most honest woman in the village. To hunt me like vermin! I'd like to see you lose your cursed eyes, for then we'd have peace. You are birds of ill-omen, the whole of you; you invent shameful stories to stir up strife between ...
— Sons of the Soil • Honore de Balzac
... the breeze, tiding a question over the session, opinions above or below the gangway, and the like, so rife of late in St. Stephen's; even when a member "rats" on seeing that the pumps cannot keep his party from falling to leeward, he is but imitating the vermin that quit a sinking-ship. ...
— The Sailor's Word-Book • William Henry Smyth
... alternate brood of young contained an albino, pure white and with pink eyes; being three in all. Every time a new set of eggs was to be laid, a new nest was built on the top of the old one. I once tore down the whole pile, as it was infested with vermin, and found that seven nests had been made, one upon another, showing that the Mynas must have occupied the hole long before I noticed them. Each nest was complete in itself and well lined, and as Mynas are not sparing of their materials, the accumulated heap was nearly two feet deep. ...
— The Nests and Eggs of Indian Birds, Volume 1 • Allan O. Hume
... and I have heard with mine own ears. At the time I was young, but the event so affected me that I have ever since held female kind to be a walking pest, a two-legged plague, whose mission on earth, like flies and other vermin, is only to prevent our being too happy. O, why do not children and young parrots sprout in crops from the ...
— Vikram and the Vampire • Sir Richard F. Burton
... You fight the persistent vermin off and flee for refuge to that shrine of every American who knows his Mark Twain—the joint grave [Footnote: Being French, and therefore economical, those two are, as it were, splitting one tomb between them.] of Hell Loisy and Abie Lard [Footnote: ...
— Europe Revised • Irvin S. Cobb
... slow in discovering and telling to their brethren that our religion and the great Indian one were identical, no more difference between them than between Ram and Rome. Priests, convents, beads, prayers, processions, fastings, penances, all the same, not forgetting anchorites and vermin, he! he! The pope they found under the title of the grand lama, a sucking child surrounded by an immense number of priests. Our good brethren, some two hundred years ago, had a hearty laugh, which their successors have often re-echoed; ...
— The Romany Rye - A Sequel to 'Lavengro' • George Borrow
... and discomfort is justifiable enough, but there is something especially peevish in the tone of many Georgian travellers. Sam Sharp's Letters from Italy breathe only sorrow, disillusion and indignation. Italian beds and vermin, Italian post-boys and their sorry nags are too frequently the theme of his discourse. He even assures us that the young gentlemen whom he had always pictured as highly delighted by the Grand Tour are in reality very homesick for England. ...
— English Travellers of the Renaissance • Clare Howard
... term. We sold groceries, drapery, hardware, butcher's meat, bread, and strong drink. The building was a large one of galvanized iron. It stood on one side of the road, Mr. Shepperd's dwelling-house was on the other. The store was overrun with rats. I had to sleep on the counter, and the beastly vermin ran squeaking over the premises all night long. Often they awoke me by running across my face. I dreaded those rats more than ever I did the lions hi ...
— Reminiscences of a South African Pioneer • W. C. Scully
... meagre little doctor without encumbrance. Mr Harding with Eleanor and Miss Bold. The dean leaning on a gaunt spinster, his only child now living with him, a lady very learned in stones, ferns, plants, and vermin, and who had written a book about petals. A wonderful woman in her way was Miss Trefoil. Mr Finnie, the attorney, with his wife, was to be seen, much to the dismay of many who had never met him in a drawing-room before. The ...
— Barchester Towers • Anthony Trollope
... uncovering her body merely, even though not menstruating at the time. At any other time, also, if a woman strips herself naked while she is menstruating, and walks round a field of wheat, the caterpillars, worms, beetles, and other vermin will fall from off the ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 1 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... louns o' Auchtermuchty, wha are gaun crooning their way to Heaven; an', gin it warna for the shame o' being beat, we might let our great enemy tak them. For sic a prize as he will hae! Heaven, forsooth! What shall we think o' Heaven, if it is to be filled wi' vermin like thae, amang whom there is mair poverty and pollution than I can name." "No matter for that," said the first, "we cannot have our power set at defiance; though we should put them on the thief's hole, ...
— The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner • James Hogg
... women so haggard and bedraggled that shrill laughter and lavish endearments remained their only allure. And Bell and Jamison plodded to the reeking place in which a half-drunk sheepman pointed, and there Bell sat grimly in the vermin infested room while ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, August 1930 • Various
... of four days' journey on every side. They dwell in beautiful houses provided with handsome towers, which they have built themselves. There is nothing unclean among them, neither in the case of birds, venison nor domesticated animals; there are no wild animals, no flies, no foxes, no vermin, no serpents, no dogs, and in general, nothing which does harm; they have only sheep and cattle, which bear twice a year. They sow and reap; there are all sorts of gardens, with all kinds of fruits and cereals, viz.: beans, melons, gourds, onions, garlic, ...
— Children of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... often objected against fault-finders, writers or others, that they destroy but do not build up, that while industriously blaming errors they take good care not to praise the counteracting virtues, that in their zeal against the vermin of which they are seeking to sweep the house clean they forget the nobler creatures which do the good work of keeping things sweet and wholesome. But it is impossible to be continually introducing the saving clause, "all are not so bad as these." The seven ...
— Modern Women and What is Said of Them - A Reprint of A Series of Articles in the Saturday Review (1868) • Anonymous
... dew, or the expected invasion of snakes and mosquitoes. But for these there was a counteracting remedy. The thick foliage of a stately tree afforded ample protection from dew, while a blazing fire, struck from the musket flint, defied the approach of any infesting vermin or crawling reptiles, and also answered the needed purpose of setting to rights their hosiery department which had suffered so much during the day. Here they are snug and cozy, under the arching canopy, which nature had provided, and prepared to do fair justice to the scanty viands ...
— An Historical Account of the Settlements of Scotch Highlanders in America • J. P. MacLean
... thigh, we fight, and we are the finest fellows in the land!' So they said when they saw the poor devil dragging himself on foot after their horses' heels, shivering in winter and sweating in summer, rusting and decaying in old age. Well, what has happened? That flea, that vermin, has kept them in the memory of men longer than their castles stood, long after their arms and their armour had rusted in the ground. I love those old parchments. I respect and revere them. Like ivy, they clothe the ruins and ...
— The Man-Wolf and Other Tales • Emile Erckmann and Alexandre Chatrian
... the wild pigs for a while, finding there was great danger of their being melted down into their boots, they threw off their clothes, and regardless of moccasins, regardless of spiders and the whole race of poisonous vermin, they plunged to their necks into the ditch by the roadside. For long weary hours we wallowed till the welcome form of our host appeared, and we recommenced the pitching and stumbling of the dangerous return voyage of ...
— The Gentleman from Everywhere • James Henry Foss
... alone have made him great; who has not heart enough even to love the gay puppets who have always surrounded him, or courage enough to fight for the unholy wealth he has amassed: this man I say is contemptible. Such creatures are as noxious vermin, whom one loathes, and loathing them destroys. You no less destroy the tiger, who ravages the green fields which your labour has adorned; who laps the blood of your flocks, and threatens the life of your children and servants, but you do not despise the tiger; you keep his hide, as a monument ...
— La Vendee • Anthony Trollope
... Saints smiled gravely and they said: "He's come." (Are you washed in the blood of the Lamb?) Walking lepers followed, rank on rank, Lurching bravoes from the ditches dank, Drabs from the alleyways and drug fiends pale— Minds still passion-ridden, soul-powers frail:— Vermin-eaten saints with mouldy breath, Unwashed legions with the ways of Death— (Are you washed in the blood of ...
— General William Booth enters into Heaven and other Poems • Vachel Lindsay
... once were his best friends have become his bitterest enemies; they wag their venomous tongues at banquets, in conversation, in the confessional, in sermons, in lectures, at court, in vehicles and ships. The minor enemies, like troublesome vermin, drive him to weariness of life, or to death by insomnia. He compares his tortures to the martyrdom of Saint Sebastian, pierced by arrows. But his is worse, for there is no end to it. For years ...
— Erasmus and the Age of Reformation • Johan Huizinga
... to all this what Philip II said in reprimanding Bishos Salazar about "natives sold by some encomendoros to others, those flogged to death, the women who are crushed to death by their heavy burdens, those who sleep in the fields and there bear and nurse their children and die bitten by poisonous vermin, the many who are executed and left to die of hunger and those who eat poisonous herbs ............ and the mothers who kill their children in bearing them," and you will understand how in less than thirty years the population of the Philippines ...
— The Indolence of the Filipino • Jose Rizal
... silver flowers. The king and queen were seated at the upper end of the room, and a number of dishes were brought in for dinner. When they had sat but a short time, a vast number of rats and mice rushed in, helping themselves from almost every dish. The captain wondered at this and asked if these vermin were ...
— Children's Literature - A Textbook of Sources for Teachers and Teacher-Training Classes • Charles Madison Curry
... they are still removed from the Mother of Nations, who needs her sons of the soil, even though she may feel proud of the gallant new States which they are rearing. And, while rats and mice and obscure vermin are gradually taking possession of the land on which Britons were bred, the signs of bursting wealth are thick among us. Is a nation rich that cannot afford even to keep the kind of men who once defended her? To me the gradual return of the land to its primitive wildness is more than ...
— Side Lights • James Runciman
... much like people they mix one up in one's judgments of life. If disease does not kill them they wait until your expectations are thoroughly aroused and then walk under the wheels of a wagon—to go squashed and dead back to their maker. Vermin infest their youth, and fortunes must be spent for curative powders. In later life I have seen how a literature has been built up on the subject of fortunes to be made out of the raising of chickens. It is intended to be read by the gods who have just eaten of the tree of the knowledge ...
— Triumph of the Egg and Other Stories • Sherwood Anderson
... be told was in itself so vile. There are deeds which will not bear a gloss,—sins as to which the perpetrator cannot speak otherwise than as a reptile; circumstances which change a man and put upon him the worthlessness of vermin. Crosbie had struggled hard to write it, going home to do it after his last interview on that night with Pratt. But he had sat moodily in his chair at his lodgings, unable to take the pen in his hand. Pratt was to come ...
— The Small House at Allington • Anthony Trollope
... assuage my grief. Greatly affected by the little animal's antics, I mounted the plank bed and rang the b-b-bell for the b-b-boots. In due course they appeared full of the feet of a gigantic warder. I told him that I had not ordered vermin and should prefer a fire, and asked if they'd mind if I didn't dress for dinner. I added that I thought flowers always improved a cell, and would he buy me some white carnations and a b-b-begonia. His reply ...
— Berry And Co. • Dornford Yates
... become odious to look upon. A layer of parasites envelops them; insinuating itself into the joints, it forms an almost continuous crust. The insect presents a misshapen appearance under this overcoat of vermin, which my hair-pencil can hardly brush aside. Driven off the belly, the horde runs round the sufferer, perches on his back ...
— The Glow-Worm and Other Beetles • Jean Henri Fabre
... forests, and exterminated savage beasts; but Nature is no more subdued than before: she only changes her tactics, —uses smaller guns, so to speak. She reenforces herself with a variety of bugs, worms, and vermin, and weeds, unknown to the savage state, in order to make war upon the things of our planting; and calls in the fowls of the air, just as we think the battle is won, to snatch away the booty. When one gets almost weary of the struggle, she is as fresh as at the beginning,—just, in fact, ready ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... resinosum—change its name, The "drawing salve" of many an ancient dame; Argenti Nitras, also Spanish flies, Whose virtue makes the water-bladders rise— (Some say that spread upon a toper's skin They draw no water, only rum or gin); Leeches, sweet vermin! don't they charm the sick? And Sticking-plaster—how it hates to stick Emplastrum Ferri—ditto Picis, Pitch; Washes and Powders, Brimstone for the—which, Scabies or Psora, is thy chosen name Since Hahnemann's goose-quill scratched thee into fame, Proved thee ...
— The Poetical Works of Oliver Wendell Holmes, Complete • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... up our abode," he writes, {200b} "in a wretched hovel full of pigs' vermin and misery, and from this place I write, for this morning I felt myself unable to proceed on my journey, being exhausted with illness, fatigue and want of food, for scarcely anything is to be obtained; but I return God thanks and glory for being permitted to undergo ...
— The Life of George Borrow • Herbert Jenkins
... felt I, If worms, snakes, loathsome grubs, may to sweet spiritual songs be turn'd, If vermin so transposed, so used and bless'd may be, Then may I trust in you, your fortunes, days, my country; Who knows but these may be the lessons fit for you? From these your future song may rise with joyous trills, Destin'd to fill ...
— Leaves of Grass • Walt Whitman
... alley a ring of orange light Glows. God, what leprous tatters of distress, Droppings of misery, rags of Thy loneliness Quiver and heave like vermin, out of the night! ...
— Collected Poems - Volume Two (of 2) • Alfred Noyes
... chronicler's touch on the method of concocting the poison: 'Then stole this Monk into the Garden and under a certain herb found out a Toad, which, squeezing into a cup,' &c. something to that effect. I suspect, par parenthese, you have found out by this time my odd liking for 'vermin'—you once wrote 'your snails'—and certainly snails are old clients of mine—but efts! Horne traced a line to me—in the rhymes of a ''prentice-hand' I used to look over and correct occasionally—taxed me (last week) with ...
— The Letters of Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett, Vol. 1 (of 2) 1845-1846 • Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett
... can hear nothing. Yea, my deafness But grows apace with all your talking. Go! Go home, I say: think how you may retrench. I know your house, 'tis overrun with vermin, I mean the servants. Curtail the expenses Your wife has caused: they are most unbecoming For your position. What? I am not here To give you counsel. Home with you, I ...
— The German Classics, v. 20 - Masterpieces of German Literature • Various
... chaste here than in France, but at any rate, if she is sold, she is sold more cheaply. In Canada we do not pass through the clutches of advocates, the talons of attorneys, and the claws of clerks. These vermin do not as yet infest the land. Every one here pleads his own cause. Our Themis is prompt, and she does not bristle with fees, ...
— Crusaders of New France - A Chronicle of the Fleur-de-Lis in the Wilderness - Chronicles of America, Volume 4 • William Bennett Munro
... pressure from without was slackening. He called to McGuffog to ask about the garden-room window, and the reply was reassuring. The gamekeeper was gloomily contemplating Dougal's tubs of water and wire-netting, as he might have contemplated a vermin trap. ...
— Huntingtower • John Buchan
... Words: helminthology, helminthologist, vermeology, vermeologist, vermifugal, verminivorous, vermin, vermiculate, vermiculated, vermiculation, taenifuge, helminthic, helminthiasis, vermicious, ...
— Putnam's Word Book • Louis A. Flemming
... up vermin which left him, and put them piously in his sleeve. I prefer mortifications ...
— En Route • J.-K. (Joris-Karl) Huysmans
... mariner set forth, With all the fires of heaven lit in his breast And godlike courage on his brow, to find New worlds beyond the unknown wastes of sea. He sailed; he found; he died in rusty chains: So that, to-day, the vermin of all climes May thither flock, and there renew the old Familiar toil toward ...
— Mr. Faust • Arthur Davison Ficke
... what caused that remarkable edict?" demanded one of the circle more interested in politics than in individuals. "It is a good thing indeed to rid a land of such vermin; but in Spain they had so much to do with the successful commerce of the country, that it appears ...
— The Vale of Cedars • Grace Aguilar
... of Wisdom—nay, forbear, Lest Wisdom turn on you in wrath, Trampling, with heel that will not spare, The vermin that beset ...
— Phantasmagoria and Other Poems • Lewis Carroll
... the days that are gone, select by instinctive preference for remembrance, the vanities and frivolities and trifles which were the main things in them whilst they lasted. Such a use of the great faculty of memory is like the folly of the Egyptians who embalmed cats and vermin. Do not let us be of those, who have in their memories nothing but rubbish, or something worse, who let down the drag-net into the depths of the past and bring it up full only of mud and foulnesses, and of ugly monsters that never ought to have ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... dust, and be playground withal for manifold destroyers. Often the tiny mouse builds his house and makes his granaries underground, or the eyeless mole scoops his cell; and in chinks is found the toad, and all the swarming vermin that are bred in earth; and the weevil, and the ant that fears a destitute old age, plunder ...
— October Vagabonds • Richard Le Gallienne
... gave pause to this race of conquering vermin; a place in the expanse of this vast sea that brought panic to their hearts. And there came to him, as he stowed the remembrance away in his mind, the first glow of hope. These things could fear a mountain; it might be that they could be ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, December 1930 • Various
... went on, with a sudden flash of wrathful contempt, "if there's anybody under God's sun I like to slip something over on it's those damned vermin of private detectives! And the swells that employ them! I hope that Mrs. Allistair gets ...
— No. 13 Washington Square • Leroy Scott
... nor carry out the scheme you've planned; She is a lady—you a foremast hand! Remember, she's your gallant captain's daughter, And you the meanest slave that crawls the water! ALL. Back, vermin, back, Nor mock us! Back, vermin, back, You ...
— The Complete Plays of Gilbert and Sullivan - The 14 Gilbert And Sullivan Plays • William Schwenk Gilbert and Arthur Sullivan
... to sweep the floor of the desert; then a rain to wash it quite clean; then dew descended upon it, which was congealed into a solid substance by the wind, that it might serve as a table for the heaven-descending gold. [100] But, that no insects or vermin might settle on the manna, the frozen dew formed not only a tablecloth, but also a cover for the manna, so that it lay enclosed there as in a casket, protected from soiling or pollution above ...
— THE LEGENDS OF THE JEWS VOLUME III BIBLE TIMES AND CHARACTERS - FROM THE EXODUS TO THE DEATH OF MOSES • BY LOUIS GINZBERG
... And now this morning thou shalt watch that flame again, for I will give thee one inch more of candle, and when the pin drops, will put this thine own pistol to thy head, and kill thee with as little thought as I would kill a stoat or other vermin.' ...
— Moonfleet • J. Meade Falkner
... blind, stick a pin, or thorn, or nail in the eyes of the image; if deaf, in its ears; if maimed, cut a limb off the image; if to have a certain disease, will very earnestly that he or she shall have that disease. You may thus, too, torment the object of your aversion with plagues of insects and vermin. ...
— The Sorcery Club • Elliott O'Donnell
... Bedawin of Midian have till late years been a turbulent "mixed multitude," and are ready to become troublesome again. It is only by building forts and by holding the land militarily, that the civilized can hope to tame this vermin. I repeat, however, my conviction that the charming Makn Valley is fated to see happy years; and that the Wild Man who, when ruled by an iron hand, is ever ready to do a fair day's work for a fair wage (especially victuals), ...
— The Land of Midian, Vol. 1 • Richard Burton
... of their husbands, that they were induced to dispose of any of it. Some of the women's hair was tolerably fine, but would not, in this respect, bear a comparison with, that of an Englishwoman. In both sexes it is full of vermin, which they are in the constant habit of picking out and eating; a man and his wife will sit for an hour together performing for each other that friendly office. The women have a comb, which, however, seems more intended for ornament than use, as we seldom or never observed ...
— Three Voyages for the Discovery of a Northwest Passage from the • Sir William Edward Parry
... divided into two classes...at least no...truer to say: there are women and there are...I've never seen exquisite fallen beings, and I never shall see them, but such creatures as that painted Frenchwoman at the counter with the ringlets are vermin to my mind, and all fallen ...
— Anna Karenina • Leo Tolstoy
... deep sea, was excellent. Any amount of shooting could be got within easy driving distance from the township—red-legged partridges, rabbits, and any number of pheasants; as a matter of fact, these were looked upon by the farmers as vermin, they were so plentiful, and they did much damage to their grain crops. Some eighteen miles away one reached the border of the King Country, the large tract of land then in the hands of the Maoris. At this border the natural ...
— The Chronicles of a Gay Gordon • Jose Maria Gordon
... confident, if I could make my escape at the foot of the gallows, I should be following the same course this very evening. So that upon the whole, we ought to be looked upon as the common enemies of mankind; whose interest it is to root us out likes wolves, and other mischievous vermin, against which no fair ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, D.D., Vol. VII - Historical and Political Tracts—Irish • Jonathan Swift
... penances, later generations have not failed to hold them up as examples. They have been used to impress the imagination of their successors, as they were used to impress the minds of their contemporaries. The fact of Thomas a Beckett wearing a hair shirt running with vermin has not prevented his being held up as an example of the power of religion. People fear ghosts long after they cease to believe in them; they pay unreasoning homage to a crown long after intellectual development has ...
— Religion & Sex - Studies in the Pathology of Religious Development • Chapman Cohen |
