"Vulture" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... happened that my retention of written characters has been weakened. On the plain of the Eurotas, or among the gigantic stones of Mycenae and Tyrins—especially when the fear of the Turk hovers over one like a vulture—the mind wanders, even though the hand writes faithfully what the eye dictates. But something doubtless I have retained," added Tito, with a modesty which was not false, though he was conscious that it was politic, "something that might be ...
— Romola • George Eliot
... and straight his weapons took His bow and arrows pointed keen, Kind,—nay, indulgent,—was his look, No trace of anger there was seen, Only a sorrow dark, that seemed To deepen his resolve to dare All dangers. Hoarse the vulture screamed, As out he strode ...
— Ancient Ballads and Legends of Hindustan • Toru Dutt
... This brand of vulture, most obscene, May have designs upon the Dove; Its carrion taste was never keen On the Millennial reign of Love; And I, for one, am stiff with fear About our little friend's career, Lest that disgusting fowl should maul And eat it, ...
— Punch, Volume 156, 26 March 1919 • Various
... food; that one man, and all but four of our cavalry horses lay dead out in the valley; that two men in our midst were slowly dying, and a dozen others suffering from wounds of battle, among these our captain and Scout Pliley; that we were in a wild, strange land, with Indians perching, vulture-like, on every hill-top, waiting for dawn to come to seize their ...
— Vanguards of the Plains • Margaret McCarter
... rush in where angels fear to tread Far out amid the melancholy main; As when a vulture on Imaus bred, Dies of ...
— The Book of Humorous Verse • Various
... the name of the same god, soon followed his example. The proscription of Amon extended to inscriptions, so that while his name or figure, wherever either could be got at, was chiselled out, the vulture, the emblem of Mut, which expressed the idea ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 5 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... monster an unsatiated desire is, tearing your heart with its sharp claws and piercing beak for want of other prey! The punishment of Prometheus pales beside it, for the arrows of Hercules cannot reach this unseen vulture! This is my first unsuccessful love; the first falcon that has returned to me without bringing the dove in his talons; I am devoured by an inexpressible rage; I pace my room like a wild beast, uttering inarticulate cries; I do not know whether I love or hate Louise the most, but I should take infinite ...
— The Cross of Berny • Emile de Girardin
... no! he would divine the truth in the flash of an eye. And then! She could not think what might happen, but it must mean blood-death. If he escaped Kells, how could he ever escape this Gulden—this huge vulture of prey? ...
— The Border Legion • Zane Grey
... Tressilian, "what make you here? Are you come to triumph over the innocence you have destroyed, as the vulture or carrion-crow comes to batten on the lamb whose eyes it has first plucked out? Or are you come to encounter the merited vengeance of an honest man? Draw, dog, and ...
— Kenilworth • Sir Walter Scott
... and herds of riderless horses; Fires that blast and blight, and winds that are weary with travel; Over them wander the scattered tribes of Ishmael's children, Staining the desert with blood; and above their terrible wartrails Circles and sails aloft, on pinions majestic, the vulture, Like the implacable soul of a chieftain slaughtered in battle, By invisible stairs ascending and scaling the heavens. Here and there rise smokes from the camps of these savage marauders; Here and there rise groves from the margins of swift-running rivers; And the grim, taciturn ...
— Elson Grammer School Literature, Book Four. • William H. Elson and Christine Keck
... dance round the butchery of the fold, chanting her venomous Gaelic exultation in uncouth rhymes that she strung together as easily as most old people of her kind can do such things in times of passion or trance. She must have lived like a vulture, for no share would she have in our pots, though sometimes she added a relish to them by fetching dainties from houses by the way, whose larders in our ...
— John Splendid - The Tale of a Poor Gentleman, and the Little Wars of Lorn • Neil Munro
... guests by repeated proclamations that there was plenty of time, and that he would give them due warning before the train started. Those who had flocked out of the cars, to prey with beak and claw, as the vulture-like fashion is, upon everything in reach, remained to eat like Christians; and even a poor, scantily-Englished Frenchman, who wasted half his time in trying to ask how long the cars stopped and in looking at his watch, made a good ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... making religion a round of outward observances. The Pharisee is always blind as an owl to the light of God and true goodness; keen-sighted as a hawk for trivial breaches of his cobweb regulations, and cruel as a vulture to tear with beak and claw. The race is not extinct. We all carry one inside us, and need God's help to ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. Matthew Chaps. IX to XXVIII • Alexander Maclaren
... narrow gullies, with pine and other trees, some perfect, others broken by the wind was one great wreck of a forest monster—a tree rudely snapped asunder by wind or lightning, about 40 feet from the ground, and stripped of every branch, so that it looked like a broken column; on its top sat a great vulture in the well-known attitude of its kind, as motionless as rock, and apparently meditating on the incongruity of a noisy, vulgar bit of machinery, with its train of cars, invading such a ...
— A start in life • C. F. Dowsett
... a person in the drama is compared, openly or implicitly, with one of them. Goneril is a kite: her ingratitude has a serpent's tooth: she has struck her father most serpent-like upon the very heart: her visage is wolvish: she has tied sharp-toothed unkindness like a vulture on her father's breast: for her husband she is a gilded serpent: to Gloster her cruelty seems to have the fangs of a boar. She and Regan are dog-hearted: they are tigers, not daughters: each is an adder to the other: the flesh of each is covered with the fell of a beast. Oswald ...
— Shakespearean Tragedy - Lectures on Hamlet, Othello, King Lear, Macbeth • A. C. Bradley
... frequently seen; but the most common of all the beasts is an odious species of large lizard, nearly three feet long, which resembles a flabby-skinned crocodile and feeds on carrion. Domestic fowls, goats, sheep and oxen, with the inevitable vulture, and an occasional eagle, complete ...
— The Story of the Malakand Field Force • Sir Winston S. Churchill
... a deadly shaft, And smote Phylodamas, Polites' friend, Beneath the jaw; the arrow pierced his throat. Down fell he like a vulture, from a rock By fowler's barbed arrow shot and slain; So from the high tower swiftly down he fell: His life fled; clanged his armour o'er the corpse. With laughter of triumph stalwart Molus' son A second arrow sped, with strong desire To smite Polites, ill-starred Priam's son: ...
— The Fall of Troy • Smyrnaeus Quintus
... sea and the sky they saw white snow peaks hanging glittering sharp and bright above the clouds. And they knew that they were come to Caucasus, at the end of all the earth; Caucasus the highest of all mountains, the father of the rivers of the East. On his peak lies chained the Titan, while a vulture tears his heart; and at his feet are piled dark forests ...
— Myths That Every Child Should Know - A Selection Of The Classic Myths Of All Times For Young People • Various
... supported and corroborated by the fact that in a vast number of early cults the gods are represented by human figures with animal heads. The Egyptian religion was full of such divinities—the jackal-headed Anubis, the ram-headed Ammon, the bull-fronted Osiris, or Muth, queen of darkness, clad in a vulture's skin; Minos and the Minotaur in Crete; in Greece, Athena with an owl's head, or Herakles masked in the hide and jaws of a monstrous lion. What could be more obvious than that, following on the tribal worship of any totem-animal, the priest or medicine-man ...
— Pagan & Christian Creeds - Their Origin and Meaning • Edward Carpenter
... it is the time; from Hell's abyss Come thirsting Tantalus, come Sisyphus Heaving the cruel stone, come Tityus With vulture, and with wheel Ixion come, And come the sisters of the ceaseless toil; And all into this breast transfer their pains, And (if such tribute to despair be due) Chant in their deepest tones a doleful dirge Over a corse unworthy of a shroud. Let the three-headed guardian ...
— Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... on the field of battle, Where the dying and wounded lie; And it brings the last groan they uttered, And the ravenous vulture's cry. It has been where the icebergs were meeting, And closed with a fearful crash; On shores where no foot has wandered, It has heard the waters dash. Hark to the ...
— Legends and Lyrics: First Series • Adelaide Anne Procter
... is only a child, a little German bourgeois, with feverish hands and sentimental soul, who uses too many words, too many gestures, and chatters and weeps and laughs over nothing. And neither the Gothic Bach nor the Prometheus of Bonn, struggling with the vulture, nor his offspring of Titans piling Pelion on Ossa, and hurling imprecations at the Heavens, hare ever seen the smile ...
— Jean-Christophe Journey's End • Romain Rolland
... small Malay bears, wild swine, horned cattle, and puny deer. The elephant and rhinoceros are found, few in number, in the north. The birds are the eagle, vulture, argus-pheasant,—a singular and beautiful bird,—peacocks, flamingoes, ...
— Four Young Explorers - Sight-Seeing in the Tropics • Oliver Optic
... Vulture eats between his meals, And that's the reason why He very, very rarely feels As well as ...
— More Beasts (For Worse Children) • Hilaire Belloc
... true daughter of Old Time thou art! Who alterest all things with thy peering eyes, Why preyest thou thus upon the poet's heart, Vulture, whose wings are dull realities? How should he love thee? Or how deem thee wise, Who wouldst not leave him in his wandering To seek for treasure in the jewelled skies, Albeit he soared with an undaunted wing? ...
— The Poet's Poet • Elizabeth Atkins
... and at last settled permanently upon her cheek. Her eyes, those glorious orbs, filled with unquenchable love, grew supernaturally large and brilliant with the flames that fed upon her vital forces. Amelie sickened and sank rapidly. The vulture of quick consumption had fastened upon ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby
... genre of "voyages to the moon" which from Lucian to H.G. Wells (even to modern "pulp magazines") have enthralled human imagination. Yet while its fantasy looks back to Lucian's Icaro-Menippus, who flew to the moon by using the wing of a vulture and the wing of an eagle, its suggestion of the growing scientific temper of modern times makes it much more than mere fantasy. In the semilegendary history of Iran is to be found a tale, retold by Firdausi in the Shaknameh, of Kavi ...
— A Voyage to Cacklogallinia - With a Description of the Religion, Policy, Customs and Manners of That Country • Captain Samuel Brunt
... sockets cleaned out to the very bottom. Now, I reasoned that no quadruped could do this. The holes were too small even for a jackal to get his slender snout into. The work must have been done by the beak of a bird; and what sort of bird. Why, a vulture, ...
— Ran Away to Sea • Mayne Reid
... turkey-buzzards, those big black scavengers that hang in the air. In circles high above woods and fields some of these birds of prey sweep on broad wings, searching with keen sight for their food in some dead animal far below. The California condor, a great black vulture-like bird, is almost extinct, and is only found in the highest mountains. It is very large of wing, and strong enough, it is said, to carry off a sheep. Both golden and bald eagles nest in tall trees in the wildest parts of the state. The chicken-hawk, whose swift sailing over the poultry-yard ...
— Stories of California • Ella M. Sexton
... Spahis began to visit on horseback the villages, more than two hundred in number, which had taken part in the insurrection. The devastation that ensued was worthy of the most barbarous time. Neither age nor sex was spared. All the young were carried off to the vulture-nests of the Spahis of the Balkan. In vain did Redschid Pacha enjoin milder measures; neither he nor the Sultan could check these bloodthirsty tigers. There needed to that end the unexpected arrival of Omer ...
— Herzegovina - Or, Omer Pacha and the Christian Rebels • George Arbuthnot
... his hands upon the edge of the coffin, he fastened his vulture-like eyes upon the closed eyelids ...
— The Knights of the Cross • Henryk Sienkiewicz
... little more weary, a little quieter, otherwise there was hardly any change perceptible in her; but those who observed more attentively could hear a rustle in the air, as though a vulture were hovering over the Howdahs and drawing its circles ever closer and closer, and preparing to pounce down one day on ...
— Dame Care • Hermann Sudermann
... is a real burgrave's castle, a vulture's nest on the top of a mountain. It is reached by an almost perpendicular slope along which great blocks of stone are strewn in place Of steps. At the top is a wall built of huge stones laid one above another, and in the wall are large windows, ...
— Over Strand and Field • Gustave Flaubert
... to stopping the circulation of his blood; to disturb the repose of a Turk on his, is to re-awaken him to a painful sense of the miseries of life. The one nation at rest is as much tormented as Prometheus, chained to his rock, with the vulture feeding on him; the other in motion is as uncomfortable as Ixion tied ...
— Historical Sketches, Volume I (of 3) • John Henry Newman
... he does, when he is hidden from the eyes of all: everybody can pretty well guess (but only guess not positively know) how it fared with him; an evil conscience like a hidden torture wracks the criminal as the vulture fed on the liver of the rock-tied Titan;—the Furies come, causing the guilty to pass sleepless nights, for the Furies are the Demons sent to torture the impious: accordingly Bracciolini thus continues the description:—"during the remainder of the ...
— Tacitus and Bracciolini - The Annals Forged in the XVth Century • John Wilson Ross
... Tiger loud may roar, High may the hovering Vulture soar, Alas! regardless of them all, Soon shall the empurpled glutton sprawl— Soon, in the desert's hushed repose, Shall trumpet tidings through his nose! Alack, unwise! that nasal song ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. XXII (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... Their deaths brought some relief to the starving inhabitants. For as each animal was left behind, the officers, looking back, might see first one, then another furtive figure emerge from the bush and pounce on the body like a vulture; and in many cases before life was extinct the famished natives ...
— The River War • Winston S. Churchill
... they fed upon his hide, And Juan, who had still refused, because The creature was his father's dog that died, Now feeling all the vulture in his jaws, With some remorse received (though first denied) As a great favour one of the fore-paws,[124] Which he divided with Pedrillo, who Devoured it, longing for the ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 6 • Lord Byron
... movements, wings too short for flight, little or no tail, and down rather than feathers. The body, according to Bontius, is as big as that of the African ostrich, but the legs are very short. It has a large head, great black eyes, long bluish-white bill, ending in a beak like that of a vulture, yellow legs, thick and short, four toes on each foot solid, long, and armed with sharp black claws. The flesh particularly on the breast, is fat and esculent. Now, all this corresponds with More's ...
— A Strange Manuscript Found in a Copper Cylinder • James De Mille
... himself! She was calling to him across the great gulf; it was as if her words were trembling on the air, telling him the hour had struck. The Vilyashev's power had been great; it had been achieved by force; by force it had been overthrown, the vulture- nest was torn to pieces. Men had ...
— Tales of the Wilderness • Boris Pilniak
... which they had come. They evidently anticipated being trailed or circled or headed off, but did not manifest much concern. Somers lit a cigarette; Springer wiped his face with a grimy hand and counted the shells in his belt, which appeared to be half empty. Colter stretched his long neck like a vulture and peered down the slope and through the aisles of the forest ...
— To the Last Man • Zane Grey
... they had become rudimentary. How can you account for John Calvin unless we came up from the lower animals? How could you account for a man that would use the extremes of torture unless you admit that there is in man the elements of a snake, of a vulture, a hyena, and a jackal? How can you account for the religious creeds of today? How can you account for that infamous doctrine of Hell, except with an animal origin? How can you account for your conception of a God that would sell women ...
— Lectures of Col. R. G. Ingersoll, Volume I • Robert Green Ingersoll
... that's the Prince's freend?' for she too, though with other feelings, had adopted the general opinion respecting Waverley. 'I daur ye to touch him,' spreading abroad her long and muscular fingers, garnished with claws which a vulture might have envied. 'I'll set my ten commandments in the face o' the first loon that lays a finger ...
— Waverley • Sir Walter Scott
... or sublime, which kept her going,—that they would have stamped out on the instant, with the whole Garnet pack behind them to make extinction sure. All, except, perhaps, Miletus Poppas. He was a vulture of the vulture race, and he had the beak of one. But I always felt that if ever he had her thus at his mercy,—if ever he came upon the softness that was hidden under so much hardness, the warm credulity under a life so ...
— Youth and the Bright Medusa • Willa Cather
... he doth but dally, While in his hold-fast foot the weak mouse panteth: Her sad behaviour feeds his vulture folly, A swallowing gulf that even in plenty wanteth: His ear her prayers admits, but his heart granteth No penetrable entrance to her plaining: Tears harden lust, though ...
— The Rape of Lucrece • William Shakespeare [Clark edition]
... the bird there, the tree, and myself?' Arjuna replied, 'I see the bird only, but nor the tree, or thyself.' Then the irrepressible Drona, well-pleased with Arjuna, the instant after, again said unto that mighty car-warrior amongst the Pandavas, 'If thou seest the vulture, then describe it to me.' Arjuna said, I see only the head of the vulture, not its body.' At these words of Arjuna, the hair (on Drona's body) stood on end from delight. He then said to Partha, 'Shoot.' And the latter instantly let fly (his arrow) and with his ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 1 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... a keeper in the zoological gardens. He dreams that there was presented to the Zoo first a marmot, then an emu, then a vulture, then a she-goat, then another emu; the presentations are made without end and the Zoo is crowded out—the keeper wakes up in horror ...
— Note-Book of Anton Chekhov • Anton Pavlovich Chekhov
... of Hapsburg, growing to be the rival of the stately house of Austria! No, no! Never shall the day dawn when Austria descends to an equality with Prussia! We are natural enemies; we can no more call the Brandenburgs brothers than the eagle can claim kindred with the vulture! You are right, count; the strife of the battle-field is over, let us gird ourselves for that of diplomacy. Let us be wary and watchful; not only the state but the holy church is in danger. I can no longer allow this prince of infidels to propagate his unbelief or his Protestantism ...
— Joseph II. and His Court • L. Muhlbach
... him where the Rio flows; I shot him when the moon arose; And where he lies the vulture knows Along the ...
— Songs of the Cattle Trail and Cow Camp • Various
... "As when a vulture on Imaus bred, Whose snowy ridge the roving Tartar bounds, Dislodging from a region scarce of prey, To gorge the flesh of lambs and yeanling kids On hills where flocks are fed, flies towards the springs Of Ganges or Hydaspes, Indian ...
— Hazlitt on English Literature - An Introduction to the Appreciation of Literature • Jacob Zeitlin
... a philanthropist," said Sypher, "but by the side of you I'm a vulture. Has it not struck you that, if the big gun is what I think, any government on earth would give you what you like ...
— Septimus • William J. Locke
... him originally, thought of him at times. He used to sit at home and feel glad that for his part he'd kept out of it. Then he would stir up the fire in his grate and comfortably get into bed, and forget about Prometheus, facing the winds and the vulture. ...
— The Crow's Nest • Clarence Day, Jr.
... gloom, cruelty, savagery, or oppressive power. It never denotes merely a physical quality; in such expressions as 'leur fauve volee', speaking of the ravens in La Fin de Satan, 'le desert fauve' (Androcles), 'son bec fauve', of the vulture (Sultan Mourad), the suggestion of wildness or ruthlessness predominates. Usually the word is used in a wholly figurative sense. Thus in La Fin de Satan the fallen archangel, flying from Jehovah, is 'fauve et hagard', Barabbas ...
— La Legende des Siecles • Victor Hugo
... horrible things," said Traill. "Look at that waiter, hovering like a vulture, while the fat old gentleman from Aberdeen goes through the items of the bill. He might just as well shut one eye and stand on one leg to make the picture complete. That's rather a pretty girl, too, at ...
— Sally Bishop - A Romance • E. Temple Thurston
... Remus, they say, saw six vultures, and Romulus double the number; others say Remus did truly see his number, and that Romulus feigned his, but, when Remus came to him, that then he did, indeed, see twelve. Hence it is that the Romans, in their divinations from birds, chiefly regard the vulture, though Herodorus Ponticus relates that Hercules was always very joyful when a vulture appeared to him upon any occasion. For it is a creature the least hurtful of any, pernicious neither to corn, fruit-tree, nor cattle; it ...
— The Boys' and Girls' Plutarch - Being Parts of The "Lives" of Plutarch • Plutarch
... might find more recent analogies without confining the researches to France. But even if his weaknesses gave a handle, which his merits could not save from the grasp of the vulgariser, Numa Roumestan bore the style of a vulture who stoops upon recent corpses, not that of a dispassionate investigator of an interesting character made accessible by length of time. L'Evangeliste had at least the excuse that the Salvation Army was fair game; and that, if there ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 2 - To the Close of the 19th Century • George Saintsbury
... Days of Valpy the Vulture, eating the schoolboy's heart out, Eton Latin grammar, accidence—do not pause, traveller, if you see ...
— Amaryllis at the Fair • Richard Jefferies
... missel-thrush, blue martin, the buzzard, stone-curlew, curlew, dottrel, the sandpiper, common gull, black-coated gull, kittiwake, razorbill, puffin, storm-petrel, the great blue heron and the black vulture. Among these birds it is usual for the family duties to be performed quite irrespective of sex, and the parent who is free takes the task of feeding the one who is occupied. As soon as one family is reared many birds at once burden themselves with another. Audubon ...
— The Truth About Woman • C. Gasquoine Hartley
... save the breath of love and peace abroad on the air to-night? Dared a vile vulture of sin to brush with polluting wing over the vines and flowers of these odor-breathing, ...
— Eventide - A Series of Tales and Poems • Effie Afton
... they sought their rest in their newly-built nests. It was not the bright chatter of gay song-birds such as belong to warmer climes, but the hoarse cries of water-fowl, and the harsh screams of the preying lords of wing and air. The grey eagle in his lofty eyrie; the gold-crested vulture-hawk; creatures that live the strenuous life of the silent lands, fowl that live by war. The air was very still; the prospect perfect with a ...
— In the Brooding Wild • Ridgwell Cullum
... Brand-sands, the Vulture, Captain Nabob; the Tortoisesnow, from Lapland; the Pet-en-l'air, from Versailles; the Dreadnought, from Mount Etna, Sir W. Hamilton, commander; the Tympany, Montgolfier; and the Mine-A-in-a-bandbox, from the Cape of Good Hope. Foundered in a hurricane, the ...
— The Bed-Book of Happiness • Harold Begbie
... Oomah shouted, jumping to his feet. He pointed to a black bird, a vulture, that was circling ...
— The Black Phantom • Leo Edward Miller
... the only windows, except in the topmost story, where the chieftain, like a vulture in his rocky nest, watched all the surrounding country. The day of splendid oriels had not yet come in castle architecture. Thus a baron in his keep could defy, and often did defy, the king upon his throne. Under his roof, eating daily at his board, lived a throng of armed retainers; ...
— The Ontario Readers: Fourth Book • Various
... a vulture snatches from a maid's hand the treasured gem of reunion, which he takes to be a bit of bloody meat, and flies off with it, escaping before he can be killed. While the king and his companions lament the gem's loss, the chamberlain enters, bringing the gem and an arrow with which the bird had ...
— Translations of Shakuntala and Other Works • Kaalidaasa
... Vulture), Catbird, Cedar-bird, Cedar, red, Chat, yellow-breasted, Cherokee Rose, Cherry, wild, Chewink (Towhee):— red-eyed, white—eyed, Chickadee, Carolina, Chimney Swift, Chuck-will's-widow, Clematis Baldwinii, Clover, buffalo, Cloudberry, Coot (Fulica americana), Coquina Clam, Coreopsis, Cormorant, ...
— A Florida Sketch-Book • Bradford Torrey
... presented a miserable spectacle. All was stillness, where so lately had arisen the shout of the impetuous, but intrepid whites, and the whoop and yell of the savages, as they closed in deadly conflict; not a sound was to be heard but the hoarse cry of the vulture, flapping her wings and mounting into the air, alarmed at the intrusion of man. Those countenances, which had so lately beamed with daring and defiance, were unmeaning and inexpressive; and what with the effect produced on the dead bodies, by the excessive heat and the mangling ...
— Chronicles of Border Warfare • Alexander Scott Withers
... his dinner by sitting on it and died naked in a sack, and yet had gold and bank-notes hidden in the crevices of the walls and in cracked jugs and tea-pots; of an old apple woman in whose house a fortune was found wrapped up in little scraps of paper; of "Vulture Hopkins" and "Blewbury Jones" and many others whose riches after their death were found hidden in strange places. While Wegg read, Mr. Boffin would pretend to get tremendously excited about his dust mounds, so that Wegg grew surer and surer there must be riches hidden ...
— Tales from Dickens • Charles Dickens and Hallie Erminie Rives
... tranquillity vanished, and the voracity with which he devoured the unaccustomed dainty showed that though he might have no demon thoughts to rack his brain, the vulture in his stomach ...
— The Macdermots of Ballycloran • Anthony Trollope
... he was right. Once located and fixed in sight, the white patch of choya, the bench, and the sheep eyrie stood out from the other features of that rugged wall. But all the men were agreed that Yaqui had hidden Mercedes where only the eyes of a vulture ...
— Desert Gold • Zane Grey
... of loathsome and beastly debauchery, in which he wallowed habitually with his court and the ladies of his court, and his queen at their head, and could no more have soared heavenward than the garbage-battened vulture could have soared to the noble falcon's pitch ...
— Godey's Lady's Book, Vol. 42, January, 1851 • Various
... the right), which is carried over a stone arch with an 80-foot span, the train crosses the mouth of the Croton River and intersects Croton Point. It was at the extremity of this peninsula that the British sloop-of-war "Vulture" anchored when she brought Andr['e] to visit Benedict Arnold at West Point. Six miles up the Croton River is the Croton Reservoir, which supplies a large share of N.Y. City's water. Across the river is ...
— The Greatest Highway in the World • Anonymous
... dramatic satires of the war of the theatres to the purer comedy represented in the plays named above. Its subject is a struggle of wit applied to chicanery; for among its dramatis personae, from the villainous Fox himself, his rascally servant Mosca, Voltore (the vulture), Corbaccio and Corvino (the big and the little raven), to Sir Politic Would-be and the rest, there is scarcely a virtuous character in the play. Question has been raised as to whether a story so forbidding can be considered a comedy, for, although the plot ends in the discomfiture ...
— The Alchemist • Ben Jonson
... attire, and haughty of demeanor, fill the thousand offices of speculation. They disdain the meaner element, as they tool their drags over the Cliff Road to bathe in champagne, and listen to the tawdry Phrynes and bedraggled Aspasias who share their vulture feast ...
— The Little Lady of Lagunitas • Richard Henry Savage
... displayed before him the heavy immobility, the deadly emaciation, and the hideous contractions of their limbs; lame men showed him their club feet; women with cancer, holding their bosoms with both hands, uncovered before him their breasts devoured by the invisible vulture. Dropsical women, swollen like wine skins were placed on the ground before him. He blessed them. Nubians, afflicted with elephantiasis, advanced with heavy steps and looked at him with streaming eyes and expressionless countenances. He made the sign of the ...
— Thais • Anatole France
... the goat, where the vulture sits lonely, and none may descry The pinnacle veiled in the cloud, the highest and sheerest of all, Ere to wedlock that rendeth my heart, and love that is loveless, I fall! Yea, a prey to the dogs and the birds of the mount will I give me to be,— From wailing and curse and ...
— Suppliant Maidens and Other Plays • AEschylus
... younger sister. As Queen of the Amenti, of the West, she also is represented in hieroglyphs by the same characters as her husband—a leopard, with an eye above, and the sign of the feminine gender an oval or egg. But as a goddess she is always portrayed with wings; the vulture being dedicated to her; and, ...
— Vestiges of the Mayas • Augustus Le Plongeon
... disrespect to Jefferson Davis. He would always meet the statement that Mr. Davis was a traitor with a vigorous denial. When I made a motion excepting Jefferson Davis from the benefit of the bill to pension the soldiers of the Mexican War, Mr. Lamar compared him to Prometheus, and me to the vulture preying upon his liver. He was the last person from whom I should have expected an expression of compliment, or even of kindness in those days. Yet when the question of my reelection was pending ...
— Autobiography of Seventy Years, Vol. 1-2 • George Hoar
... is equally astonishing," added the eager reformer, "is the manner in which they are produced. The hand is moved to write or draw them spontaneously. The symbol comes first, the interpretation afterwards. Here is a vulture soaring away with a lamb. It has ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I, No. 1, Nov. 1857 • Various
... this year (1776) the Bay of Fundy was so infested with pirates and picaroons that the war vessels Vulture, Hope and Albany were ordered around from Halifax. They were not entirely successful in their endeavor to furnish protection, for the privateers frequently managed to steal past the large ships in the night and in fogs and continued to pillage ...
— Glimpses of the Past - History of the River St. John, A.D. 1604-1784 • W. O. Raymond
... living and its decaying trees, the thunder-cloud, and the rain which lasts three weeks and produces freshets. We need to witness our own limits transgressed, and some life pasturing freely where we never wander. We are cheered when we observe the vulture feeding on the carrion which disgusts and disheartens us, and deriving health and strength from the repast. There was a dead horse in the hollow by the path to my house, which compelled me sometimes to go out of my way, especially in the night when the air was heavy, but the assurance ...
— Walden, and On The Duty Of Civil Disobedience • Henry David Thoreau
... Lion Swan Carbuncle Gabriel Gabriel Moon Left foot Cat Owl Crystal Camael Zamael Mars Right hand Wolf Vulture Diamond Michael Raphael Mercury Left hand Ape Stork Agate Zadikel Sachiel Jupiter Head Hart Eagle Sapphire (Lapis lazuli) Haniel Anael Venus Generative Goat Dove Emerald organs Zaphhiel Cassiel Saturn ...
— Bygone Beliefs • H. Stanley Redgrove
... lion looked up at these invaders, uttered a reproachful growl, and went at them, patting them right and left, and knocking them over. He never touched a vulture, nor indeed did he kill an animal. He was a lion, and only killed to eat; yet he soon cleared the place, because he knocked over a few hyenas and jackals, and the rest, being active, tumbled over the vultures before they could ...
— A Simpleton • Charles Reade
... pain Of my burning eyeballs went to my brain. Seven blackened corpses before me lie, In the blaze of the sun and the winds of the sky. I have watched them through the burning day, And driven the vulture and raven away; And the cormorant wheeled in circles round, Yet feared to alight on the guarded ground. And when the shadows of twilight came, I have seen the hyena's eyes of flame, And heard at my side his stealthy tread, But aye at my shout the savage fled: And I threw the lighted brand ...
— Poems • William Cullen Bryant
... classed it with the Inepti or Dodos; Duvernay of Valenciennes with aquatic birds! There was clearly therefore room for difference of opinion, and Professor Bianconi of Bologna, who has written much on the subject, concludes that it was most probably a bird of the vulture family. This would go far, he urges, to justify Polo's account of the Ruc as a bird of prey, though the story of it's lifting any large animal could have had no foundation, as the feet of the vulture kind ...
— The Travels of Marco Polo, Volume 2 • Marco Polo and Rustichello of Pisa
... ride in a body. But, in the meanwhile, the Bedouins, who, by Idris' order, for the past few days drove considerably in advance, could not be seen at all; while Chamis, riding as a rear guard, appeared at a distance not greater than the vulture ...
— In Desert and Wilderness • Henryk Sienkiewicz
... and close his eyes, and praying for God's help, he summoned together all the faculties of his soul, and buffeted this ghastly intruder away so thoroughly that it did not again return. As a man might shoot a vulture, and look at it lying dead at his feet, so with the arrow of a heartfelt supplication Walter slew the hideous imagination that had been flapping its wings over him; nor did he stir again till he was sure that it had lost its power. ...
— St. Winifred's - The World of School • Frederic W. Farrar
... home the meat I had bought, a famished vulture flew upon me, and would have taken it away, if I had not held it very fast; but, alas! I had better have parted with it than lost my money; the faster I held my meat, the more the bird struggled to get it, drawing me sometimes on one side, and sometimes on another, but would not quit the ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments Complete • Anonymous
... with a rival at his Julia's ear all the time. Suppose she should have been faithful all these months, but in this last week should he worn out and give herself to another: such things had been known. He went to Lincoln's Inn with this irritating fear tearing him like a vulture. Mr. Compton received him cheerfully, and told him he had begun operations in Hardie versus Hardie: had written to Thomas Hardie two days ago, and inquired his London solicitor, and whether that gentleman would accept service of the writ ...
— Hard Cash • Charles Reade
... to the vulture's nest or nestlings than hearsay. They keep to the southerly Sierras, and are bold enough, it seems, to do killing on their own account when no carrion is at hand. They dog the shepherd from camp to camp, the hunter home from the hill, and will even carry away ...
— The Land of Little Rain • Mary Austin
... paupers and beggars, a beautiful coach passed now and again. Within it sat either a Fox, a Hawk, or a Vulture. ...
— The Adventures of Pinocchio • C. Collodi—Pseudonym of Carlo Lorenzini
... immortal eyes The sufferings of mortality, Seen in their sad reality, Were not as things that gods despise: What was thy pity's recompense? A silent suffering, and intense: The rock, the vulture, and the chain, All that the proud can feel of pain, The agony they do not show, The suffocating sense of woe, Which speaks but in its loneliness, And then is jealous lest the sky Should have a listener, nor will sigh Until its voice ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 7 • Various
... night. Object there was none. Passion there was none. I loved the old man. He had never wronged me. He had never given me insult. For his gold I had no desire. I think it was his eye! yes, it was this! He had the eye of a vulture—a pale blue eye, with a film over it. Whenever it fell upon me, my blood ran cold; and so by degrees—very gradually—I made up my mind to take the life of the old man, and thus rid myself ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 2 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... here?" was the growl from a sulky ruffian, some five feet high, with the head of a bull-dog, the eyes of a vulture, sunken in a mass of bones, neglected beard, sun-burnt, grog-worn, as dirty as a brute,—the known cast, as called here in this colony, of a 'Vandemonian,' made up of low, vulgar manners and hard talk, spiked at each ...
— The Eureka Stockade • Carboni Raffaello
... there hurried grey-bearded, vulture-eyed priests oddly garbed in corrupt Occhive and Tyrian regalia. Nelson found it odd to see the Tablet of the Laws, which Jarmuth so openly ignored, swaying on their yellow robed breasts; and none cried out more menacingly nor more loudly against the limping, ...
— Astounding Stories, March, 1931 • Various
... same foolish woman you ever were," answered the older queen. Just then, a strange sound echoed far off among the hills above, strange and far as the scream of a distant vulture sailing its mate to the carrion feast—an unearthly cry that rang high in the air from side to side of the valley, and struck the dark crags and doubled in the echo, and died away in short, faint pulsations of ...
— Marzio's Crucifix and Zoroaster • F. Marion Crawford
... the tomb which should have been his lot, and there was substituted for the ordinary sparrow-hawk one of those groups which symbolize sovereignty over the two countries of the Nile—the coiled urasus of the North, and the vulture of the South, [—]; there was then finally added a second sparrow-hawk, the golden sparrow-hawk, [—], the triumphant sparrow-hawk which had delivered Egypt from Typhon. The soul of Snofrai, which is called, as a surviving double, [—], "Horus master of Truth," is, as a living double, entitled ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 2 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... heard of Major Andre's captivity, and that he would, if possible, escape to the enemy; and I accordingly took such measures as appeared the most probable, to apprehend him. But he had embarked in a barge, and proceeded down the river under a flag to the Vulture sloop-of-war, which lay some miles below Stony and Verplanck's Points. After he got on board, he wrote to me a letter, of which the ...
— The Medallic History of the United States of America 1776-1876 • J. F. Loubat
... Mrs. Opie, and the "Passionate Little Girl," by Mrs. Hofland—all sparkling trifles in prose. Among the poetry is "the African Mier-Vark," or Ant-eater, by Mr. Pringle, and "the Deadly Nightshade," a sweetly touching ballad, dated from Florence; "the Vulture of the Alps" is of similar character; and we are much pleased with some lines on Birds, by Barry Cornwall, one set of which we copy, the best prose papers being ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 14, No. 397, Saturday, November 7, 1829. • Various
... :vulture capitalist: n. Pejorative hackerism for 'venture capitalist', deriving from the common practice of pushing contracts that deprive inventors of control over their own innovations and most of the money they ought ...
— THE JARGON FILE, VERSION 2.9.10
... the most rapacious. All the hirundines of a village are up in arms at the sight of a hawk, whom they will persecute till he leaves that district. A very exact observer has often remarked that a pair of ravens nesting in the rock of Gibraltar, would suffer no vulture or eagle to rest near their station, but would drive them from the hill with an amazing fury; even the blue thrush at the season of breeding would dart out from the clefts of the rocks to chase away the kestril, or the sparrow-hawk. If you ...
— The Natural History of Selborne, Vol. 1 • Gilbert White
... It is an eagle sketched in outline with the tip of one wing resting on the Rhine, and the other on the Russian frontier. There are gaps here and there in the outline, but when they are filled up the whole of North Germany will hang like a vulture over Austria's two-headed imperial eagle. France must control her hatred against the House of Hapsburg, and not compromise with the Hohenzollerns, for you know not what you do. One hears much talk of ...
— Historical Miniatures • August Strindberg
... pay for what we call the freedom of the press. I fought for that in my own day, fought and suffered, and paid in coin and heart's blood, and I have asked myself since if I am glad or sorry that I won. Are we the better for having bred this vulture crowd?' ...
— Despair's Last Journey • David Christie Murray
... the visitor will notice the strongbearded vulture of the Alpine and Himalayan mountains. The next six cases (2-7) are filled with the varieties of the Vulture, including the American, carrion, black, and king vultures; the South African sociable ...
— How to See the British Museum in Four Visits • W. Blanchard Jerrold
... extended, while he held his crutches by pressing his arms close to his body. As the piece dropped into its ragged receptacle, he shook it up from the greasy folds, and tipped his left eye down to look upon it, not unlike a vulture glancing down at its prey. After eyeing it a moment, he held the cap toward Arthur, as if expecting ...
— The Brother Clerks - A Tale of New-Orleans • Xariffa
... the Vulture of sedition, Feedes in the bosome of such great Commanders, Sleeping neglection doth betray to losse: The Conquest of our scarse-cold Conqueror, That euer-liuing man of Memorie, Henrie the fift: Whiles they each other crosse, Liues, Honours, ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare
... stood three feet above the water, but their slender needles were scarcely noticeable. Far and near, over prairie as over lake, lay the unbroken yellow flood. There was no flutter of wings, no whistle of feathered mate to mate, no call of nestlings from the ruined nests. Except the hawk and vulture, the birds were gone. Untold thousands of dumb creatures had clung to life for a time, but now were devoured by birds of prey and by alligators, or were drowned. Thousands still lived on. Behind him in the swamp the wood-birds remained, the gray squirrel still barked and leaped from tree to tree, ...
— Bonaventure - A Prose Pastoral of Acadian Louisiana • George Washington Cable
... beings were thus murdered, but the disease was not stayed. The effort to check it was therefore given up, and the slaves were left to recover or die where they sat. See account of capture of dhow by Captain Robert B. Cay, of H.M.S. "Vulture," in the Times of ...
— Black Ivory • R.M. Ballantyne
... knew that when this man seemed most idle he was often most busy. Martin had come to a near-by point by chance. He went on to Jusseret's town, and then to his hotel, with the same surety and motive that directs the vulture to its carrion. The Jackal was ushered into the Frenchman's room in the tattered and somewhat disheveled condition to which his recent weeks of vagabondage ...
— The Lighted Match • Charles Neville Buck
... territory. If they refused, we would force them to grant it, as we did the Masai. 'Look here'—I took a repeating-rifle in my hand—'this thing hits at any distance;' and I gave it to one of our best marksmen and pointed to a vulture which sat upon a tree a little more than three hundred yards off. The shot was heard, and the vulture fell down mortally wounded. The Wa-Kikuyu showed signs of being about to run away, although they had occasionally heard the reports of guns in their conflicts ...
— Freeland - A Social Anticipation • Theodor Hertzka
... denote Hephaestos (Ptah,) they delineate a scarabaeus and a vulture, and to denote Athena (Neith,) ...
— Scarabs • Isaac Myer
... sea, but hears the roar of cannon; no river, but runs red with blood; no plain, but shakes, trampled by the hoofs of charging squadrons; no field, but is fertilized by the blood of the dead; and everywhere man slays, the vulture gorges, and the wolf howls in the ear of the dying soldier. No city is not tortured by shot and shell; and no people fail to enact the horrid blasphemy of thanking a God of Love for victories and ...
— Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry • Albert Pike
... horse lay by the road-side, or in the fields, unburied, not grateful to gods or men, I saw no bird of prey, no ill-omened fowl, on my way to the carnival of death, or at the place where it was held. The vulture of story, the crow of Talavera, the "twa corbies" of the ghastly ballad, are all from Nature, doubtless; but no black wing was spread over these animal ruins, and no call to the banquet pierced through the ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 62, December, 1862 • Various
... storm, and fall into perils, a scene of which we have already given at page 313, of the MIRROR. They are at length rescued, by a party of Swiss from the neighbourhood of the old castle of Geierstein, or Rock of the Vulture. This party turns out to consist of Arnold Biederman, the Landamman, or Chief Magistrate of the Canton of Unterwalden, and his sons, who reside upon a farm among the mountains. Along with them comes ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 13, - Issue 373, Supplementary Number • Various
... war is about to take place in the country in which they are located they will begin to make themselves scarce; and, on the other hand, they will not visit a country where war is going on till after it is over, and then, vulture-like, they swoop down upon the prey. This feature is one of their leading characteristics; with some honourable exceptions, they are always looked upon as long-sighted, dark, deep, designing specimens of fallen humanity. For a number of years prior to the capture of Constantinople by Mohammed II. ...
— Gipsy Life - being an account of our Gipsies and their children • George Smith
... dismayed, Ravished with his unwonted guest, The Furies, which in tortures keep The guilty souls with pains opprest, Moved with his song began to weep. Ixion's wheel now standing still Turns not his head with motions steep. Though Tantalus might drink at will, To quench his thirst he would forbear. The vulture full with music shrill Doth not poor Tityus' liver tear. 'We by his verses conquered are,' Saith the great King whom spirits fear. 'Let us not then from him debar His wife whom he with songs doth gain. Yet lest our gift should stretch too far, We will it with this law restrain, That when from hell ...
— The Theological Tractates and The Consolation of Philosophy • Anicius Manlius Severinus Boethius
... soaring vulture On his quarry in the desert, On the sick or wounded bison, But another vulture, watching From his high aerial look-out, Sees the downward plunge and follows, And a third pursues the second, Coming from the invisible ether, ...
— The Human Side of Animals • Royal Dixon
... her thoughts skipped to a woman who had sat near them at the roulette table. "Wasn't she the image of a disappointed vulture? I mean the woman in green. Swooping down from a distance to gorge herself with a tasty feast, and then finding a man with a rake to chase her off. I chuckled to myself as I watched her. Do men and women look to you like animals? They ...
— Swirling Waters • Max Rittenberg
... a diviner creed Is living in the life they lead. The passing of their beautiful feet Blesses the pavement of the street, And all their looks and words repeat Old Fuller's saying wise and sweet, Not as a vulture, but a dove, The Holy Ghost ...
— We Two • Edna Lyall
... the surveyors have entered the Dismal Swamp they have seen no living creature; neither bird, beast, insect nor reptile, came to view. Not even a turkey-buzzard will venture to fly over it, no more than the Italian vulture will venture to fly over the filthy lake of Avernus; or the birds of the Holy Land over the Salt Sea where Sodom and Gomorrah once stood." And yet, in the present day, insect and reptile life swarms there in every form through all the hours of ...
— Sword and Pen - Ventures and Adventures of Willard Glazier • John Algernon Owens
... the falcon and the vulture out," continued the first speaker; "why, our poor friend and servant, man. And do you desire ...
— Tales of the Caliph • H. N. Crellin
... vulture, When wilt thou get release? When will the strife of races, The strife of religions cease? And the hearts of thy loving children Mingle and be ...
— Verses and Rhymes by the way • Nora Pembroke
... very abundant in Switzerland. Although not so powerful as the great vulture, which also inhabits the lofty mountains, they are bolder and more enduring. For hours the golden eagle will soar in the air high above the mountain-tops, and move in wide-sweeping circles with a scarcely perceptible motion of its ...
— Harper's Young People, February 10, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... table-flat stretches of rich plateau, now half inundated, seemed some enormous outdoor aviary. Every species of winged creature one had hoped ever to see even in Zoo cages or the cases of museums seemed here to live and fly and have its songful being. Great sluggish zopilotes of the horrid vulture family strolled or circled lazily about, seeking the scent of carrion. Long-legged, snow-white herons stood in the marshes. Great flocks of small black birds that could not possibly have numbered less than a hundred ...
— Tramping Through Mexico, Guatemala and Honduras - Being the Random Notes of an Incurable Vagabond • Harry A. Franck
... here am I, John Carrickfergus—Don Juan all the country over, my surname no native can pronounce—respected, feared, loved; a man his neighbour can rely on to do him a good turn; one who never hesitates about putting a bullet in any vulture, wild cat, or assassin that crosses his path. Now you ...
— The Purple Land • W. H. Hudson
... [71]—The vulture of insatiate minds Still wants, and wanting seeks, and seeking finds New fuel to increase her rav'nous fire. The grave is sooner cloy'd ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... he sternly refused to retreat beyond the Moravian towns. There, at the head of his warriors, he took his stand, resolved, as he solemnly declared, to be victorious, or leave his body upon the field of battle, a prey to the wolf and the vulture. The result has been told. The Thames is consecrated forever, by the bones of the illustrious Shawanoe statesman, warrior and patriot, which repose upon ...
— Life of Tecumseh, and of His Brother the Prophet - With a Historical Sketch of the Shawanoe Indians • Benjamin Drake
... interposed in their behalf when Jove was incensed against them, and who taught them civilization and the arts. But as, in so doing, he transgressed the will of Jupiter, he drew down on himself the anger of the ruler of gods and men. Jupiter had him chained to a rock on Mount Caucasus, where a vulture preyed on his liver, which was renewed as fast as devoured. This state of torment might have been brought to an end at any time by Prometheus, if he had been willing to submit to his oppressor; for he possessed a secret which involved the stability ...
— Bulfinch's Mythology • Thomas Bulfinch
... of marksmen best, O Zeus, outshot the rest, And won the prize supreme of wealth and power. By him the vulture maid Was quelled, her witchery laid; He rose our savior and the land's strong tower. We hailed thee king and from that day adored Of mighty Thebes ...
— The Oedipus Trilogy • Sophocles
... death! out of how many he nowhere reckons: he shrinks from estimates of carnage, and we thank him for it. But an accomplished naturalist tells me that the vulture, a bird unknown in the Crimea before hostilities began, swarmed there after the Alma fight, and remained till the war was over, disappearing meanwhile from the ...
— Biographical Study of A. W. Kinglake • Rev. W. Tuckwell
... on classical scenes and subjects, yet wonderfully impressing his own perception of the subject on the reader. Whenever he has to deal with a statue, a ruin, a battle-field, he pounces upon the topic like a vulture, and tears out its heart in a twinkling, so that there is nothing more ...
— Passages From the French and Italian Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... convoy across the ocean. Spain was at peace with all the world at that time, and the two frigates would have been ample to ward off the attack of any of the small piratical craft which had succeeded the buccaneer ships of the Caribbean. The Spaniards had no idea that such a vulture as Morgan was afloat; therefore, although they had sighted the Mary Rose long before she had seen them because they kept better watch, they came on fearlessly and without hesitation. It was evident to the experienced ...
— Sir Henry Morgan, Buccaneer - A Romance of the Spanish Main • Cyrus Townsend Brady
... great extremes against the vultures. In hard times, when food happens to be scarce, should he accidentally meet with one of these who has its craw crammed with carrion, he attacks it fiercely in the air; the cowardly vulture instantly disgorges, and the delicious contents are snatched up by the eagle ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 494. • Various
... this time is like trying to paint heaven with a tar-brush. You've got to be on the inside of an intrigue before you can appreciate the thrill of it. Nobody who has not had the chance to mystify a leader of cheerful murderers in a city packed with conspirators, with the shadow of a vulture on the road in front, and fanged death waiting to be let loose, need talk to me ...
— Jimgrim and Allah's Peace • Talbot Mundy
... her lip and began to withdraw. Her beauty underwent a visible alteration that made him shudder, he knew not why, for still she was beautiful. The landscape was darkened by a giant shadow sweeping across the valley with the speed of a vulture. In the obscurity the maiden's figure grew dim and indistinct and her voice seemed to come from a distance, as she said, in a tone of sorrowful reproach: "Presumptuous and ungrateful youth! must I then so soon leave thee? ...
— Can Such Things Be? • Ambrose Bierce
... profound genius which through them looked into the secrets of the universe. Wonderful humility blended with his intellectual greatness. To other men he seemed a spirit of higher rank, having almost superhuman faculties of mental vision, wont to soar into regions which the vulture's eye hath never seen; to himself he was but a boy playing with the shells on the seashore, while the ocean lay undiscovered before him. Others were taken up with what Newton accomplished, Newton was taken ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 4 of 8 • Various
... persons. The British returned a random shot; but ignorant of the number of their opponents, and seeing that it was useless to waste ammunition on a hidden foe, they returned whence they came with all possible speed. This boat had been sent to convey Major Andre to the British sloop-of-war Vulture, then lying at anchor off Teller's Point. Shortly after Andre arrived, and finding the boat gone, he, in attempting to pass through the interior, was captured. Had not those men stopped to drink sweet cider, it ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 218, December 31, 1853 • Various
... motive power has to be discovered which can develop at least as much power in proportion to its weight as a bird is able to develop. He asserts that a heavy bird, with relatively small wings—such as a goose—carries about 150 lb. to the horse power, while the albatross or the vulture, possessed of proportionately greater winged surface, can carry about 250 lbs. per ...
— The Dominion of the Air • J. M. Bacon
... ever.(3) In Greece the dolphins were, according to the Homeric hymn to Dionysus, metamorphosed pirates who had insulted the god. But because the dolphin found the hidden sea-goddess whom Poseidon loved, the dolphin, too, was raised by the grateful sea-god to the stars.(4) The vulture and the heron, according to Boeo (said to have been a priestess in Delphi and the author of a Greek treatise on the traditions about birds), were once a man named Aigupios (vulture) and his mother, Boulis. They sinned inadvertently, ...
— Myth, Ritual, and Religion, Vol. 1 • Andrew Lang
... the months between the dry and wet seasons, when the disease prevails. When a dose is required, a small quantity of the paste is dried and pulverised on a flat shell, and the powder, then drawn up into both nostrils at once through two vulture quills secured together by cotton thread. The use of Parica was found by the early travellers amongst the Omaguas, a section of the Tupis who formerly lived on the Upper Amazons, a thousand miles distant from the homes of the Mauhes and Muras. This community of habits ...
— The Naturalist on the River Amazons • Henry Walter Bates
... their tongues or blunt their scornful glances? Briareus, armed to the teeth, would not affright our modern dowagers, or deter them from their prey. Wherever the carcass of a fair fame lies, thither they flock, screaming shrilly in triumph, vulture-eyed, sharp-taloned—the choosers ...
— Guy Livingstone; - or, 'Thorough' • George A. Lawrence
... the blows of barbaric invaders, the terrible omen was more and more talked and thought of; and in Attila's time, men watched for the momentary extinction of the Roman State with the last beat of the last vulture's wing. Moreover, among the numerous legends connected with the foundation of the city, and the fratricidal death of Remus, there was one most terrible one, which told that Romulus did not put his brother to death in accident or ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 4 • Various
... solitary shepherd, with his dog, stalking along the valley, and hearing only the dashing of torrents, which the woods concealed from the eye, the long sullen murmur of the breeze, as it swept over the pines, or the notes of the eagle and the vulture, which were seen towering round ...
— The Mysteries of Udolpho • Ann Radcliffe
... Ah! the vulture has eaten the pigeon, the wolf has eaten the lamb; the lion has devoured the buffalo with sharp horns; man has killed the lion with an arrow, with a sword, with gunpowder; but the Horla will make of man what we have ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Vol. 1 (of 8) - Boule de Suif and Other Stories • Guy de Maupassant
... fail in this my vow, may all the vengeance of the spirits fall upon me and upon my children; may they perish by the vulture, by the wolf, or other beasts of the forest; may their flesh be torn from their limbs, and their bones blanch in the wilderness: all this ...
— The Phantom Ship • Frederick Marryat
... began. Sometimes the horizon was opal, sometimes it throbbed with azure fire, or blazed ruby red, as the torch of sunset swept west and east before the emerald darkness fell. When our Enchantress landed, great flocks of kites, like in form and wing to the sacred vulture of Egypt, flew to welcome us with swoopings of wide purple wings. Their shadows on the water were like passing spirits; and at night when the Nubian boatmen danced, their feet thudding on the lower ...
— It Happened in Egypt • C. N. Williamson & A. M. Williamson
... the full blaze of the sun get one of the three, then wisp after wisp got up and we began to bag them and to fear our cartridges would run out. But imagine the difficulty of hitting even those slow waterfowl with an eagle or vulture or a group of them, huge fellows, looking at you from fifteen to twenty yards off from the top of a low palm, or a kingfisher of vivid cerulean quivering in front of your nose, so fixed in its poise and so dazzling in colour that you saw a pink spot for minutes after, and so ...
— From Edinburgh to India & Burmah • William G. Burn Murdoch
... irresistible impulse of conscience to be true to itself. It labors under its guilty possession, and knows not what to do with it. The human heart was not made for the residence of such an inhabitant. It finds itself preyed on by a torment, which it dares not acknowledge to God nor man. A vulture is devouring it, and it can ask no sympathy or assistance either from heaven or earth. The secret which the murderer possesses soon comes to possess him; and, like the evil spirits of which we read, it overcomes ...
— McGuffey's Sixth Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey
... Oswald again; that he would go away without bidding her adieu. She expected every instant to receive the news of his departure, and this fear so increased the agony of her feelings that she felt herself all of a sudden seized by passion, that vulture beneath whose talons happiness and independence sink. Unable to endure the house that Lord Nelville no longer visited, she frequently wandered in the gardens of Rome, hoping to meet with him. The hours so spent were the least insupportable, since ...
— Corinne, Volume 1 (of 2) - Or Italy • Mme de Stael
... gasped. In a flashing vision, Richard was half boy, half vulture, flapping to the ground with a ...
— Tree, Spare that Woodman • Dave Dryfoos
... insect almost before the tone died away. Swallowing it with considerable difficulty, the harmony was taken up again, a bit throaty for a few notes. Then the pair talked together in the usual trogon fashion, and the sudden shadow of a passing vulture, drew forth discordant cat calls, as both birds swooped from sight to ...
— Edge of the Jungle • William Beebe |
