"Worm" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... silence of the night, Guided by the Gloe-worms light, Hither am I come at last, Many a Thicket have I past Not a twig that durst deny me, Not a bush that durst descry me, To the little Bird that sleeps On the tender spray: nor creeps That hardy worm with pointed tail, But if I be under sail, Flying faster than the wind, Leaving all the clouds behind, But doth hide her tender head In some hollow tree or bed Of seeded Nettles: not a Hare Can be started from ...
— The Faithful Shepherdess - The Works of Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher (Vol. 2 of 10). • Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher
... nettled at the glibness of the lads, stuck a hook vengefully into an inoffensive worm, and threw his line. ...
— The Sketches of Seymour (Illustrated), Complete • Robert Seymour
... admit cousin Harriet is quite another story," he went on softly, saucily. "Any conceit our dear Felicia rubs in to you, Harriet most effectually rubs out. Isn't it so? I am as a worm, a positive worm before her—can only 'tremble and obey' like the historic lady in the glee. She flattens me. I haven't an ounce of kick left in me. And then why, oh why, tell me, Damaris, does she invariably and persistently ...
— Deadham Hard • Lucas Malet
... want to threaten you," said Father Brown, in a voice like a rolling drum, "I want to threaten you with the worm that dieth not, and the fire that is ...
— The Innocence of Father Brown • G. K. Chesterton
... that word than the woman made a great water-worm of herself, and made an attack on Finn, and she would have killed him then and there but for Bran being with him. Bran took a grip of the worm and shook it, and then it wound itself round Bran's body, and would ...
— Gods and Fighting Men • Lady I. A. Gregory
... "The glow-worm o'er grave and stone Shall light thee steady; The owl from the steeple sing, 'Welcome, ...
— The Heart of Mid-Lothian, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... many indigenous insects, birds, and quadrupeds, welcomed the apple-tree to these shores. The tent-caterpillar saddled her eggs on the very first twig that was formed, and it has since shared her affections with the wild cherry; and the canker-worm also in a measure abandoned the elm to feed on it. As it grew apace, the bluebird, robin, cherry-bird, king-bird, and many more, came with haste and built their nests and warbled in its boughs, and so became ...
— Wild Apples • Henry David Thoreau
... room without furniture; a few empty boxes and hampers in a corner; a small window; the shutters closed; not even a fireplace; no other door but that by which we had entered; no carpet on the floor, and the floor seemed very old, uneven, worm-eaten, mended here and there, as was shown by the whiter patches on the wood; but no living being, and no visible place in which a living being could have hidden. As we stood gazing round, the door by which we had entered closed as quietly ...
— Haunted and the Haunters • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... had thrown open the large worm-eaten door of the stables, and inside could be seen the heads and backs of two cart-horses, huge, majestic creatures, who were peering over the doors of their stalls, as though they had been listening ...
— Helbeck of Bannisdale, Vol. I. • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... noble knight!" exclaimed Isaac; "I am old, and poor, and helpless. It were unworthy to triumph over me—It is a poor deed to crush a worm." ...
— Ivanhoe - A Romance • Walter Scott
... does build those islands. It possesses the power of secreting the lime held in solution by sea water, and depositing the same on the rocks below the waves. The coral rock is the edifice of the coralline. The insect itself is a soft and very minute worm, which, when washed by the waves, thrusts its head out of its tiny little door, and spreading abroad its numerous feelers, so that it resembles a beautiful little star, moves these about as if enjoying itself—though, doubtless, it is actually engaged ...
— The Ocean and its Wonders • R.M. Ballantyne
... cried Dick, pointing out in front of them, where, through the water, there about eighteen inches deep, he could see what seemed to be a long white worm or serpent dashing here and there in a curious way. "There's ...
— Menhardoc • George Manville Fenn
... Eugene calling on John Adams, American Ambassador to England. Most long lives resemble those threads of gossamer, the nearest approach to nothing unmeaningly prolonged, scarce visible pathway of some worm from his cradle to his grave; but Quincy's was strung with seventy active years, each one a rounded ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 121, November, 1867 • Various
... well-known legend connected with the lily of the valley formerly current in St. Leonard's Forest, Sussex. It is reported to have sprung from the blood of St. Leonard, who once encountered a mighty worm, or "fire-drake," in the forest, engaging with it for three successive days. Eventually the saint came off victorious, but not without being seriously wounded; and wherever his blood was shed there sprang ...
— The Folk-lore of Plants • T. F. Thiselton-Dyer
... poor, feeble worms, and the best meanin' of us fails too often," sighed Mrs. Wilkins, as she tenderly adjusted the sleepy head of the young worm in her lap. "After that scrape I done my best; Lisha was as meek as a whole flock of sheep, and we give Mis Bascum a wide berth. Things went lovely for ever so long, and though, after a spell, we had our ups and downs, as is but natural to human ...
— Work: A Story of Experience • Louisa May Alcott
... as to produce from his mouth, for the wholesome consternation of the family, eighteen feet of worm. When he had brought it up, he seemed to think it might be turned to account in the housekeeping and was proud. Pony has kicked a shaft off the cart, and is to be sold. Why don't you buy her? she'd never ...
— The Letters of Charles Dickens - Vol. 2 (of 3), 1857-1870 • Charles Dickens
... a worm of the earth; God forbid that I should contradict my sovereign. Your majesty does not hire me to give him the lie. But this year strange dreams are an epidemic. No one knows what he may do or suffer in his sleep. Only just now I was overtaken with sleep in spite ...
— Laboulaye's Fairy Book • Various
... West Sussex are wide and free, firm and smooth for walking with bare feet, lovely with little shells and sea-worm curves and ripple marks and the pits of razor-shells. Above them are the slopes of shingle, gleaming with all colours in the September sun. Farther up again, the low, brown crumbling cliffs crowned with green wreaths of tamarisk. ...
— The Healthy Life, Vol. V, Nos. 24-28 - The Independent Health Magazine • Various
... his life to aid us, is kicked, cuffed, and driven back to his master, there to be scourged for his kindness to us. Billy, my servant, tells me that a colored man was whipped to death by a planter who lives near here, for giving information to our men. I do not doubt it. We worm out of these poor creatures a knowledge of the places where stores are secreted, or compel them to serve as guides, and then turn them out to be scourged or murdered. There must be a change in this regard before we shall ...
— The Citizen-Soldier - or, Memoirs of a Volunteer • John Beatty
... to picking fruit before it is ripe! Allow me to remind you that very much fruit is never picked; some is nipped in the bud; some is worm-eaten and falls to the ground; some rots on the trees before it ripens; some, too slow in ripening, is bitten by the early frosts of autumn; while some rare, ripe apples hang until frozen and worthless ...
— The Life and Work of Susan B. Anthony (Volume 2 of 2) • Ida Husted Harper
... then encourage the saints to hope, and to rejoice in hope of the glory of God, notwithstanding present tribulations. This is our seed-time, our winter; afflictions are to try us of what mettle we are made; yea, and to shake off worm-eaten fruit, and such as are rotten at core. Troubles for Christ's sake are but like the prick of an awl in the tip of the ear, in order to ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... noticed that his appeals had never been so earnest before, as after the departure of his son; but he seldom, if ever, mentioned his name, not even to his grief-stricken wife. Our pastor was not what could properly be styled an old man, but it was thought that his grief, like a canker-worm, sapped at the fountains of life; his bodily health became impaired, his vigor of mind departed, and, ere he had seen sixty years, death removed him from earth, to a home of happiness in Heaven. The widow was ...
— The Path of Duty, and Other Stories • H. S. Caswell
... have never seen a moment of happiness since. Remorse has preyed on me like a worm, and once before this I have been brought face to face with death. Now I am going where I ...
— The Fatal Glove • Clara Augusta Jones Trask
... our reach there are in England no fire-flies like those of the United States. But there are glow-worms there, and, sometimes, the male glow-worm (which has wings), has been called a "fire-fly." It belongs to a branch (genus) of the family Lampyridae, which is also the family of its fire-fly cousins, but it is not shaped quite like them, and ...
— St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, Vol. 5, September 1878, No. 11 • Various
... brother, and led his five little sisters all about the field, feeding, guarding, and amusing them; for mamma was lame now, and could not stir far from the yard. It was a pretty sight to see Cocky run home with a worm in his bill or a nice berry, and give it to his mother, who was very proud of her handsome son. Even old Granny Cockletop, who scolded about everything, liked him; and often said, as the hens sat scuffling ...
— The Louisa Alcott Reader - A Supplementary Reader for the Fourth Year of School • Louisa M. Alcott
... that his wife, knowing, as all the world knew, that Lady Hamilton was his mistress and a bold, unscrupulous rival, would receive her with rapturous friendliness. The amazing puzzle to most people, then and now, is why she received her at all, unless she wished to worm out of her the precise nature of the intimacy. That may have been her definite purpose in allowing the visits for two or three months; then one day she flew into a rage, which conjures up a vision of hooks and eyes bursting ...
— Drake, Nelson and Napoleon • Walter Runciman
... it's my last night! Let's drink to our good understanding. They'll bring the wine at once.... I brought this with me." (Something made him pull out his bundle of notes.) "Allow me, panie! I want to have music, singing, a revel, as we had before. But the worm, the unnecessary worm, will crawl away, and there'll be no more of him. I will commemorate my day of ...
— The Brothers Karamazov • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... that I frequented the society of foreign ministers, and that living as I did with three noblemen, it was certain that I revealed, for the large sums which I was seen to lose, as many state secrets as I could worm out of them. ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... rolls of cloth, the produce of French and Segovian looms. Above the shop was his dwelling-house, a strange, old-fashioned, many-roomed building, with immensely thick walls, long, winding corridors, ending and beginning with short flights of steps, apartments panneled with dark worm-eaten wood, lofty ceilings, and queer quaintly-carved balconies. It was a section of a line of building forming half the side of a street, and which, in days of yore, had been a convent of monks. Its former inmates, as the story ...
— Blackwoods Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 366, April, 1846 • Various
... world is built up of infinitesimal atoms, and that each must co-operate in the general result. Theology crushes us into nothingness by placing us in the presence of the infinite God; and then compensates by making us divine ourselves. Man is a mere worm, but he can by priestly magic bring God to earth; he is hopelessly ignorant, but set on a throne and properly manipulated he becomes an infallible vice-God; he is a helpless creature, and yet this creature can define with more than scientific accuracy the precise nature of his inconceivable Creator; ...
— Prose Masterpieces from Modern Essayists • James Anthony Froude, Edward A. Freeman, William Ewart Gladstone, John Henry Newman and Leslie Steph
... War spinning and weaving were revived arts in the Confederate cities; and, as ever in earlier days, proved a most valuable economic resource under restricted conditions. In the home of a friend in Charleston, South Carolina, an old, worm-eaten loom was found in a garret where it had lain since the embargo in 1812. It was set up in 1863, and plantation carpenters made many like it for neighbors and fellow-citizens. All women in the mountain districts knew how to use the loom, and ...
— Home Life in Colonial Days • Alice Morse Earle
... invaluable Attwood has told me about it. This Mr. Chester has made an investment in Richmond lots on information which he had no right to use. Never mind the details. If he follows that general direction, it will be a flashy success, a pretty worm-eaten crown ...
— The Readjustment • Will Irwin
... landmarks have been swept away by the fateful hand of time and fire, the town impresses you as a very old town, especially as you saunter along the streets down by the river. The worm-eaten wharves, some of them covered by a sparse, unhealthy beard of grass, and the weather-stained, unoccupied warehouses are sufficient to satisfy a moderate appetite for antiquity. These deserted piers and these long rows of empty barracks, with ...
— An Old Town By The Sea • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... the woe would be least of all, I think," Mrs. Temperley observed. "What ogre is going to ill-treat them? And since few of us know how to bring up so much as an earth-worm reasonably, I can't see that it matters so very much which particular woman looks after the children. Any average fool ...
— The Daughters of Danaus • Mona Caird
... "Worm" is put for any creeping thing or "serpent". Shakespeare supposes falsely, but according to the vulgar notion, that a serpent wounds with his tongue, and that his tongue is "forked". He confounds reality and fiction, a serpent's tongue is "soft" but not "forked" nor ...
— Preface to Shakespeare • Samuel Johnson
... couples, as such would probably not be so much startled as lonely maids and bachelors might be, at the whispered conversations across the bed! Moreover, evil wings (possibly owls or bats, looking after glow-worm candles) occasionally flapped at the casements. But Curzon was a humorist as well as inventive. Perhaps one secret as to ghosts at Parham lay in the fact that in the old thick walls were concealed staircases and "priests' chambers," which possibly ...
— My Life as an Author • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... maddened meekness of the sheep. I should shun the cat as I should shun the tiger; and even the good cow, solemn and somnolent, would inspire me with but a wary confidence. As for the hen, with her round, quick eye, as when discovering a slug or a worm, I am sure that she would devour me ...
— Our Friend the Dog • Maurice Maeterlinck
... bristled with vain repetitions. She was always "a worm" when asked after her health, and everything that pleased her was "pucka." She knew no language but her own, and that she spoke indifferently, her command of it being limited for the most part to slang expressions, which are the scum of ...
— The Heavenly Twins • Madame Sarah Grand
... something weighing upon his mind; and I daresay some of the good gossips of Golden Friars, had there been any materials for such a case, would have believed that Sir Bale had murdered Philip Feltram, and was now the victim of the worm and fire ...
— J. S. Le Fanu's Ghostly Tales, Volume 3 • Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu
... sad in his joy, sober in his incipientent drunkenness. The same handsome treatment which the judge commended, had been as freely tendered him, yet he saw the end of all such hospitality. This was the worm in the bud. The judge, however, was an eager idealist; he still dreamed of Utopia, he still believed in millenniums. Mahaffy didn't and couldn't. Memory was the scarecrow in the garden of his hopes—you ...
— The Prodigal Judge • Vaughan Kester
... like a flower in whose perfect heart a worm had coiled. Her entire feeling about life had undergone a change. For many weeks after her self-imposed exile, she had been unable to think of her mother without a mingled sense of shame and resentment; the adoring love she had borne this being seemed to die with her respect. After ...
— An Ambitious Man • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... party through several small rooms, scantily garnished with ancient furniture, in some of which were portraits of the family, until they at length entered a noble saloon, once the refectory of the abbey, and not deficient in splendour, though sadly soiled and worm-eaten. It was hung with tapestry representing the Cartoons of Raffael, and their still vivid colours contrasted with the faded hangings and the dingy damask of the chairs and sofas. A mass of Cromwellian armour was huddled together in a corner of a long monkish gallery, ...
— Venetia • Benjamin Disraeli
... Micmac Chepichealm. [Footnote: Vide "Supernatural Beings." The Chepichealm (M.) is an immense horned serpent or wingless dragon. It is probably identical with the Wiwillmekq' (P. and Pen.), which is a singular horned worm found on trees or by water. It is believed to be capable of assuming a vast size and to be gifted with supernatural powers.] So this was agreed upon, and the two strangers went to the ...
— The Algonquin Legends of New England • Charles Godfrey Leland
... with haste now To behold the hoard 'neath the hoar-grayish stone, Well-loved Wiglaf, now the worm is a-lying, Sore-wounded sleepeth, disseized of his treasure Go thou in haste that treasures of old I Gold-wealth may gaze on, together see lying The ether-bright jewels, be easier able, Having the heap of hoard-gems, to yield ...
— The Book of the Epic • Helene A. Guerber
... to the peoples. . . . Hearken unto me, ye that know righteousness, the people in whose heart is my law; fear ye not the reproach of men, neither be ye dismayed at their revilings. For the moth shall eat them up like a garment, and the worm shall eat them like wool: but my righteousness shall be forever and my salvation unto all generations." Righteousness was the aspect of Deity that appealed to the second Isaiah, and it was he that ...
— The Menorah Journal, Volume 1, 1915 • Various
... publication, a man in this city has invented a method of moving a vessel on the water, by a machine worked within the vessel. I went to see it. He did not know himself the principle of his own invention. It is a screw with a very broad, thin worm, or rather it is a thin plate with its edge applied spirally round an axis. This being turned, operates on the air, as a screw does, and may be literally said to screw the vessel along: the thinness ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson
... furred, went by on the water or on the banks; the deep woods of the shores were black and gray and brown. Poor August could see nothing of a scene that would have delighted him; as the stove was now set, he could only see the old worm-eaten ...
— Bimbi • Louise de la Ramee
... are of bended steel, and their bolts as big as javelins. They spied me afar off, and the shower of their arrows shut out the sun and made a rattling roof above me. You know, I think it wrong to kill a bird, or worm, or even a Tartar. But such is the precision and rapidity of perfect science that, with my own arrows, I split every arrow as it came against me. I struck every flying shaft as if it were a flying bird. Therefore, ...
— Alarms and Discursions • G. K. Chesterton
... and the coachman pulled up to let me work my way past. The vehicle was a queer old affair, that looked as if it had been dug out of some antediluvian stable yard. The curtains were brown with age and dust, and riddled with holes; the body was bare and worm-eaten, and the springs perfectly green with mould. The horses were thin and lank, and the harness in as sorry a condition as the coach. The driver's clothes, which were very old fashioned, hung about him in loose folds, and he gazed upon me with ...
— The Three Brides, Love in a Cottage, and Other Tales • Francis A. Durivage
... building, not only commanded a very pretty garden of some extent, belonging to the inn, but overlooked, beyond its boundary, a pleasant grove of those very mulberry trees which Maitre Pierre was said to have planted for the support of the silk worm. Besides, turning the eye from these more remote objects, and looking straight along the wall, the turret of Quentin was opposite to another turret, and the little window at which he stood commanded a similar little window in a corresponding projection of the building. Now, it would be ...
— Quentin Durward • Sir Walter Scott
... a fly which burrows in the skin and deposits an egg, both in human beings and animals. This produces a maggot, similar in shape to that of the common blow-fly, but much larger, probably analogous to the Guinea-worm. ...
— Harper's Young People, January 6, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... didn't get their space-suits out, did they? Why, they hadn't a chance to escape—none of 'em. They were killed, every one, quick! And four's plenty to work this ship. Carse is dead, see, dead! This was one trick he didn't know—one time he couldn't worm out. He was clever, all right, but he couldn't quite stack up against me. I swore I'd get him ...
— Hawk Carse • Anthony Gilmore
... ye!" he cried, raising his arms wildly. "Yes, by the Lord, I damn ye up and down. May you burn as I burn, where the worm dieth not, and the ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1921 and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... on his deathbed cried out in vain for that salvation which he had so impiously refused, and amidst shrieks of—despair, which chilled with terror those who stood by him, was carried off by the Enemy of Souls to the lake that burneth with brimstone, where their worm dieth not and the fire is not quenched.—(Sensation.) (This was a famous paragraph in one of Mr. Broad's sermons preached on great occasions, and particularly when he supplied a metropolitan pulpit. The story had been contradicted twice in the county ...
— The Revolution in Tanner's Lane • Mark Rutherford
... difference of viewpoint, the eternity of difference between the middle and the end of the earth. As the days passed, and the crust grew deeper upon the "Beeg Snows," the tragedy progressed rapidly toward finality. At first Jan did not understand. The others did not understand. When the worm of the Englishman's sin revealed itself it struck them with a ...
— Back to God's Country and Other Stories • James Oliver Curwood
... weak and strengthened the strong. I still warned the besotted in corruption that the fruits of vice, blossom as she will, are but like those of the shores of the Dead Sea, seeming gay, but only emptiness and bitter ashes. But alas! the bearer of the blessed message spoke as if the worm that bore, could add grace to the tidings he conveyed to his fellow-worm. I was got upon a precipice, but knew it not—that of self-worship and conceit—the worst creature-idolatry. It was bitterly revealed to ...
— Tales from Blackwood, Volume 7 • Various
... like others, have cast a wistful eye on the ongoings of men: and, if I had not strength to pour out my inward lamentations, I could not help thinking, with fear and trembling, at the rebellion of such a worm as man, against a Power whose smallest word could extinguish his existence, and blot him out in a twinkling from ...
— The Life of Mansie Wauch - tailor in Dalkeith • D. M. Moir
... been indulged under difficulties—with improvised apparatus of cut poles, and flabby pieces of string, and bent pins, which always failed to hold the biggest fish; or perhaps with borrowed tackle, dangling a fat worm in vain before the noses of the staring, supercilious sunfish that poised themselves in the clear water around the Lake house dock at Lake George; or, at best, on picnic parties across the lake, marred by the humiliating presence of nurses, and disturbed by the obstinate refusal ...
— Little Rivers - A Book Of Essays In Profitable Idleness • Henry van Dyke
... certainly, most on worms and insects. I am not sure how far the following account of its mode of dressing its dinners may be depended on: I take it from an old book on Natural History, but find it, more or less, confirmed by others: "It takes a worm by one extremity in its beak, and beats it on the ground till the inner part comes away. Then seizing it in a similar manner by the other end, it entirely cleanses the outer ...
— Love's Meinie - Three Lectures on Greek and English Birds • John Ruskin
... narrow tables, stretched from end to end of the workshop, sit rows of girls manipulating in bowls of hot water the cocoons—in Gibbon's phrase, 'the golden tombs whence a worm emerges in the form of a butterfly'—carefully disengaging the almost imperceptible film of silk therein concealed, transferring it to the spinning-wheel, where it is spun into what looks like a thread of solid gold. Throughout the vast atelier hundreds of shuttles are swiftly plied, ...
— The Roof of France • Matilda Betham-Edwards
... the invalid, and the old pained expression came back to his face. "Going to-morrow!—everybody is going!—and I lie here like a crushed worm, unable to move from my couch, useless to myself or to any one else, when the country is calling upon all her children to aid her! Pest on it! I would trade life, hopes, brains if I have any, every thing, for a ...
— Shoulder-Straps - A Novel of New York and the Army, 1862 • Henry Morford
... Poor worm! after all, he could not help it, I suppose! he was built like that! and I was built to kill him for it, ...
— Peter Ibbetson • George du Marier et al
... answered, tapping the worm-eaten arms of the old chair with both her white hands, for she herself was still annoyed and irritated. "Do not make me ...
— Casa Braccio, Volumes 1 and 2 (of 2) • F. Marion Crawford
... to be hardier than white; whilst red-flowered hyacinths were more injured during one particular winter in Holland than other coloured varieties. With animals, white terriers suffer most from the distemper, white chickens from a parasitic worm in their tracheae, white pigs from scorching by the sun, and white cattle from flies; but the caterpillars of the silk-moth which yield white cocoons suffered in France less from the deadly parasitic fungus ...
— The Variation of Animals and Plants Under Domestication, Volume II (of 2) • Charles Darwin
... is not to be quarrelsome, he is not to be crushed. Though he is but a worm before God, he is not such a worm as every selfish and unprincipled wretch may tread on at ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol IX. • Edited by Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton
... be," broke in Mark, in decisive tones. "There's a future in Japan second to none. The chance for enterprise is great there, and, besides, if a man has anything in him he can worm himself into Government circles, ...
— Under the Rebel's Reign • Charles Neufeld
... was a gleam in his malignant eye, almost murderous. His foot was lifted to crush the worm in his path, and, could he have trodden it out of existence in secret, the deed would have been accomplished with exultation. His hatred for Madeleine had strengthened into a fierce passion as his fears that Maurice ...
— Fairy Fingers - A Novel • Anna Cora Mowatt Ritchie
... perfect nearness, of complete devotion—even that loses all its magic; all its dignity is destroyed by its own pettiness, its brevity. Yes; a man loved, glowed with passion, murmured of eternal bliss, of undying raptures, and lo, no trace is left of the very worm that devoured the last relic of his withered tongue. So, on a frosty day in late autumn, when all is lifeless and dumb in the bleached grey grass, on the bare forest edge, if the sun but come out for an instant from the fog and turn one ...
— The Jew And Other Stories • Ivan Turgenev
... a stretch. All outdoor work or exercise was impossible. The outpost was nearly always shrouded in dense mist. Insect pests abounded. Scorpions and snakes invaded the buildings. Outside, from every blade of grass, every leaf and twig, a thin and hungry leech waved its worm-like, yellow-striped body in the air, seeming to scent any approaching man or beast on which it could fasten and gorge itself fat with blood. Certainly a small station on the face of the Himalayas is not ...
— The Elephant God • Gordon Casserly
... Englishman or Englishwoman need go through a very long or very laborious apprenticeship in order to become able to read, understand, and enjoy what Chaucer himself wrote. But if this apprenticeship be too hard, then some sort of makeshift must be accepted, or antiquity must remain the "canker-worm" even of a great national poet, as Spenser said it had already in his day proved ...
— Chaucer • Adolphus William Ward
... and worm, I suppose? Don't try to bolt me, Duane; I'm full of tough and undigested—er—problems, myself. Besides, I'm fermenting. Did you ever silently ferment while listening politely to a man ...
— The Danger Mark • Robert W. Chambers
... of beauty and luxuriance, and die with a whole college of physicians expending its skill in trying further prolongation of life, and have a funeral with casket under mountain of calla-lilies, the finest equipages of the city jingling and flashing into line, the poor, angle-worm of the dust carried out to its hole in the ground with the pomp that might make a spirit from some other world suppose that ...
— New Tabernacle Sermons • Thomas De Witt Talmage
... sits still, with no worm in his bill, Nor no guggledom in his nest; He is hungry and bare, and gobliddered with care, And his grabbles give him no rest; He is weary and sore and his tugmut is soar, And nothing to nob has he, As he chirps, "I am blammed and corruptibly ...
— A Nonsense Anthology • Collected by Carolyn Wells
... quarrel with London and Londoners. Some of their papers, medical newspapers, of course, declare that my fees are exorbitant; and there is a tendency among the patients—I mean the patients who are rolling in riches—to follow the lead of the newspapers. I am no worm to be trodden on, in that way. The London people shall wait for me, until they miss me—and, when I do go back, they will find the fees increased. My fingers and thumbs, Mr. Governor, are not to ...
— The Legacy of Cain • Wilkie Collins
... bitter parting," replied Miss Titania. "I don't want you to know my address, Edwards. Some of my mad friends might worm it out of you, and I don't want them coming down and bothering me. I am going to be very busy with literature. I'll walk the rest of ...
— The Haunted Bookshop • Christopher Morley
... girl and Winthrop followed the chauffeur. They had passed out of the light of the lamps, and in the autumn mist the electric torch of the owner was as ineffective as a glow-worm. The mystery of the forest fell heavily upon them. From their feet the dead leaves sent up a clean, damp odor, and on either side and overhead the giant pine trees whispered and rustled ...
— The Scarlet Car • Richard Harding Davis
... no; what you desire cannot be, for although I am but a worm of the earth compared with you, I hold my honour dear, and would rather die than lessen it for any pleasure that the world can give. And the dread I have lest those who have seen you come in should suspect the truth, makes me tremble and ...
— The Tales Of The Heptameron, Vol. IV. (of V.) • Margaret, Queen Of Navarre
... nearer than we imagine. Women are quick learners, when they begin. But, oh, it is hard sometimes to make them begin. They are so annoyingly abject; so painfully diffident. It is their pride to be humble. The virtuous worm won't even turn!" ...
— The Daughters of Danaus • Mona Caird
... science which enables shallow youth to make a merit of disbelief in all things beyond the limit of mathematical demonstration. He had skimmed Darwin, and spoke lightly of mankind as the latest development of time and matter, and no higher a being, from a spiritual point of view, than the first worm that wriggled in its primeval slime. He had dipped into Herbert Spencer, and talked largely of God as the Unknowable; and how could the Unknowable be supposed to take pleasure in the automatic prayers of a handful of bumpkins ...
— The Golden Calf • M. E. Braddon
... nine weeks he made so little progress that his crews began to clamour for the abandonment of the expedition. The ships were worm-eaten and leaky. Provisions were running short. The seamen had seen their commander thrust away from what might be called his own door; and the sight of his powerlessness had strengthened their independence ...
— The Life of Columbus • Arthur Helps
... superstition is probably attached to the possession of these, for although I frequently tried to purchase one at a fancy price the owners would never sell this primitive timekeeper which was generally warped and worm-eaten with age. I never saw ...
— From Paris to New York by Land • Harry de Windt
... concluded, she conducted me up a rickety, worm-eaten staircase, to a small room above that which we had just left; and indicating one of the two beds therein as the one belonging to her Jean, and the one, therefore, which I was to occupy, bade me good-night ...
— Under the Meteor Flag - Log of a Midshipman during the French Revolutionary War • Harry Collingwood
... times, and the place had become a kind of sewer. Gehenna was, therefore, in the mind of Jesus, a gloomy, filthy valley, full of fire. Those excluded from the kingdom will there be burnt and eaten by the never-dying worm, in company with Satan and his rebel angels.[6] There, there will be wailing and gnashing of teeth.[7] The kingdom of heaven will be as a closed room, lighted from within, in the midst of a world ...
— The Life of Jesus • Ernest Renan
... glow-worm is composed of eleven articulations, or rings; upon these rings, and near the belly of the insect, are placed fins, which appear to be the chief instruments of its motion. It has two small horns issuing from the fore part of the head, and its tail is cleft in two. To the naked eye of man, ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 12, - Issue 332, September 20, 1828 • Various
... late.' Then he made up his mind that he would do what he could. From early morning until night he hunted worms and dug them out of the trees. He would start at the bottom of a tree and work up, going all over it until he was sure that there wasn't another worm left. Then he would fly to the next tree. He pounded with his bill until his neck ached. He didn't even take time to drum. His neighbors laughed at him at first, but he kept right on working, working, working every hour of ...
— Mother West Wind "How" Stories • Thornton W. Burgess
... mile east of our camp, its ravine turns to the south. Wild ducks, quails, chakor, and trout occur whose haunts are in holes, and taking the worm are easily caught. ...
— Journals of Travels in Assam, Burma, Bhootan, Afghanistan and The - Neighbouring Countries • William Griffith
... happened that the Great Saint, who had turned himself into a peach-worm, had just been taking his noon-day nap on this bough. When he was so rudely awakened, he appeared in his true form, seized his rod and was about ...
— The Chinese Fairy Book • Various
... Oliver remained insensible to all the goodness of his new friends. The sun rose and sank, and rose and sank again, and many times after that; and still the boy lay stretched on his uneasy bed, dwindling away beneath the dry and wasting heat of fever. The worm does not work more surely on the dead body, than does this slow creeping fire upon ...
— Oliver Twist • Charles Dickens
... iron hooks (made for the display of precious brocades and carpets on pageant days) which still remain in the stained whitewash, the seams of battered bricks of the solid old escutcheoned palaces; see them sometimes displayed like the worm-eaten squares of discoloured embroidery which the curiosity dealers take out of their musty oak presses; and sometimes dragging about mere useless and befouled odds and ends, like the torn shreds which lie among the decaying ...
— Euphorion - Being Studies of the Antique and the Mediaeval in the - Renaissance - Vol. I • Vernon Lee
... and Robert loved me. I was just full of him, and wanted nothing else in heaven and earth; and when the trouble came, and father and mother died, and I lay here like a log,—only a log has not got a living heart in it,—I seemed to go mad with the anger and unhappiness, and I felt "the worm that dieth not, and the ...
— Uncle Max • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... William, at York Minster, may have been in distinction from jet, to which, as well as to amber, certain virtuous or talismanic properties were attributed. There were, however, several kinds of amber,—succinum rubrum, fulvum, &c. The learned professor of Copenhagen, Olaus Worm, alludes to the popular notions ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 67, February 8, 1851 • Various
... caused Gabriel a strange impression; no one could guess the existence of such a place in the upper regions of the building. He would walk through the forest of worm-eaten posts which supported the roof, through narrow passages between the cupolas of the vaulting that arose from the flooring like white and dusty tumours; sometimes there would be a shaft through which he could see down into ...
— The Shadow of the Cathedral • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... her master. He had no power over her. She was the lady of Portray, and he could not interfere with her. If he intended to be sullen with her to the end, and to show his contempt for her, she would turn against him. "The worm will turn," she said to herself. And yet she did ...
— The Eustace Diamonds • Anthony Trollope
... puff of dust, Confess—"It is enough." The world left empty What that poor mouthful crams. His heart is builded For pride, for potency, infinity, All heights, all deeps, and all immensities, Arras'd with purple like the house of kings,— To stall the grey rat, and the carrion-worm Statelily lodge. Mother of mysteries! Sayer of dark sayings in a thousand tongues, Who bringest forth no saying yet so dark As we ourselves, ...
— God and Mr. Wells - A Critical Examination of 'God the Invisible King' • William Archer
... ourselves was the favourite exercise of the great St. Augustine, who so often exclaimed: "Lord, let me know Thee, and know myself!" and of the great St. Francis, who cried out: "Who art Thou, my God and my Lord? and who am I, poor dust and a worm of the earth?" This frequent looking up to God and then down upon ourselves keeps us wonderfully to our duties, and either prevents us from falling, or helps us to raise ourselves quickly from our falls, as the Psalmist says: I set ...
— The Spirit of St. Francis de Sales • Jean Pierre Camus
... If that's what he's really after, I think I can stop his little game. I'll try, at any rate. It's a long worm that has no turning, and I've had about enough of it. The first chance I get. I'll ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 101. October 10, 1891 • Various
... main road, they crossed Wild Water on a narrow bridge and continued along an ancient, rutted road that ran beside an equally ancient worm-fence of split redwood rails. They came to a gate, open and off its hinges, through which the road ...
— The Valley of the Moon • Jack London
... sense with an impatience of all that makes for secrecy and an abhorrence of the substitutes which are sometimes basely, sometimes madly, accepted in default of true objects. He could not desire the star and find solace in the glow-worm—pursue Isolde and lag by the way with Moll Flanders. It was true that he had resolved to put stars and Isolde alike from his life. It was true that he had bound himself to certain fair ambitions beyond ...
— Robert Orange - Being a Continuation of the History of Robert Orange • John Oliver Hobbes
... her mind? How could he? Why! I've talked for hours with Irene about Jules! She'd much sooner talk with me even than with mother. She's cried in front of me. But I never cried. I always told her she was making a mistake about Jules. I detested the little worm. But she couldn't see it. No, she couldn't. She'd have quarrelled with me if I'd let her quarrel. However, I wouldn't let her. Fancy quarrelling—over a man! She couldn't help being mad over Jules. I told her she couldn't—that was why I bore with her. I always told her he was only ...
— The Roll-Call • Arnold Bennett
... the subject of fish, I will mention another species, smaller than the piranha, yet, although not as ferocious, the cause of much dread and annoyance to the natives living near the banks of the rivers. In fact, throughout the Amazon this little worm-like creature, called the kandiroo, is so omnipresent that a bath-house of a particular construction is necessary. The kandiroo is usually three to four inches long and one sixteenth in thickness. ...
— In The Amazon Jungle - Adventures In Remote Parts Of The Upper Amazon River, Including A - Sojourn Among Cannibal Indians • Algot Lange
... ought he flatly to acquiesce in a spiritual life of 'reflex type,' whose form is no higher than that of the life that animates his spinal cord,—nay, indeed, that animates the writhing segments of any mutilated worm? ...
— The Will to Believe - and Other Essays in Popular Philosophy • William James
... its parent plant as though it had never been severed from it; it goes on profiting by the experience which it had before it was cut off, as much as though it had never been cut off at all. This will be more readily seen in the case of worms which have been cut in half. Let a worm be cut in half, and the two halves will become fresh worms; which of them is the original worm? Surely both. Perhaps no simpler cage than this could readily be found of the manner in which personality eludes us, the moment ...
— Selections from Previous Works - and Remarks on Romanes' Mental Evolution in Animals • Samuel Butler
... told him what they all said, down to the ant who crawled in the moss, and the worm who worked ...
— The Book of Stories for the Storyteller • Fanny E. Coe |
