"Acorn" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... guide lies in mastering, one by one, the specific distinctions, and increasing the number of one's own esculents gradually, by dint of knowledge and experience, even as a child learns to distinguish a filbert from an acorn, or with wider experience will thrust in his mouth a leaf of Oxalis and reject that ...
— Fungi: Their Nature and Uses • Mordecai Cubitt Cooke
... folk. Oberon and Titania, who might have been as happy as the days were long, had thrown away all their joy in a foolish quarrel. They never met without saying disagreeable things to each other, and scolded each other so dreadfully that all their little fairy followers, for fear, would creep into acorn cups and hide ...
— The Junior Classics, V5 • Edited by William Patten
... the biggest things of life grow out of the tiniest ones. There is the old simile of the acorn and the oak, for instance. But oaks take a long time to grow, and everybody concerned in oak culture is calmly expecting them to do it. Imagine an acorn exploding to let out an oak huge enough to shadow ...
— Secret History Revealed By Lady Peggy O'Malley • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... it was for this cause that the French Huguenots, driven out of France by the French king, came to South Carolina. The most notable cause that induced the planting of the thirteen original colonies here in North America was religious persecution in the Old World. And as the oak grows out of the acorn, so out of these colonies has grown this nation of which ...
— Personal Recollections of Pardee Butler • Pardee Butler
... and the country was a prey to every misfortune. 'Evil was the state of Ireland during his reign; fruitless her corn, for there used to be but one grain on the stalk; and fruitless her rivers; her cattle without milk; her fruit without plenty, for there used to be but one acorn ...
— The Land-War In Ireland (1870) - A History For The Times • James Godkin
... balking Genius. Only death Can silence it, or hinder. While there's breath Or sense of feeling, it will spurn the sod, And lift itself to glory, and to God. The acorn sprouted—weeds nor flowers can choke The certain ...
— Maurine and Other Poems • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... animals of an intermediate type were found. The sea-squirt has in its early youth the line of cartilage through the body which, in embryonic development, represents the first stage of the backbone; the lancelet and the Appendicularia have a rod of cartilage throughout life; the "acorn-headed worm" shows traces of it. These are regarded as surviving specimens of various groups of animals which, in early times, fell between the Invertebrate and Vertebrate worlds, ...
— The Story of Evolution • Joseph McCabe
... This acorn of the holy oak was forwarded to me with a manuscript note, signed by the editor, on the part of the {400} "London Society of Theological Utilitarians," who say, "they trust you may be induced to give this ...
— A Budget of Paradoxes, Volume I (of II) • Augustus De Morgan
... tapered, ringed body, an S-shaped handle with a plain boss at the end, a scroll thumb-piece, a flat molded drop ornament on the handle, and a domed cover with an acorn finial. On the body beneath the Derby coat of arms, is monogrammed "E H D" for Elias Hasket Derby (fig. 3). Elias Hasket Derby achieved wealth and fame as a Salem merchant prince ...
— Presentation Pieces in the Museum of History and Technology • Margaret Brown Klapthor
... me, and me's the first person singular, nominative case, agreeing with the verb "it's", and governed by Squeers understood, as a acorn, a hour; but when the h is sounded, the a only is to be used, as a and, a art, a ighway,' replied Mr Squeers, quoting at random from the grammar. 'At least, if it isn't, you don't know any better, and if it ...
— The Life And Adventures Of Nicholas Nickleby • Charles Dickens
... trail followed the bank of the stream. Passing through a dense jungle of vegetation, where the air was hot and wet, the flora was characteristic. Trees with large, coarse, broad pods enclosing two or three great seeds, trees with acorn-shaped red fruits, quantities of sensitive plants covered with pink flowers, occasional orchids bearing flowers of brilliant flame color, and vines with lovely blue pea-flowers made up the bulk of the tangled growth through which we passed. At two places ...
— In Indian Mexico (1908) • Frederick Starr
... the forest was you could have heard an acorn drop or a bird call from one end of it to the other. The exquisite silence was evidently waiting for the exquisite voice, that presently not so much broke as mingled with it, like a ...
— The Quest of the Golden Girl • Richard le Gallienne
... himself to be packed off to England, without any motive except that it would for the time take him farther from a present duty: the more disagreeable to a nature like his because it was present, and not a mere matter for speculative consideration. When Goethe made his famous comparison of the acorn planted in a vase which it bursts with its growth, and says that in like manner Hamlet is a nature which breaks down under the weight of a duty too great for it to bear, he seems to have considered the character too ...
— Among My Books - First Series • James Russell Lowell
... years pass by, since I was an acorn planted here. In a few moments I shall die and fall down. Cut my body into staves. Of these make a wooden petticoat, like a barrel, for your daughter. When her temper is bad, let her put it on and wear it until she ...
— Dutch Fairy Tales for Young Folks • William Elliot Griffis
... product. From the centre of its large broad leaves, which gather at the top, when it has reached the height of twelve or fifteen feet there springs forth a large purple bud ten inches long, shaped like a huge acorn, though more pointed. This cone hangs suspended from a strong stem, upon which a leaf unfolds, displaying a cluster of young fruit. As soon as these are large enough to support the heat of the sun and the chill of the rain, this sheltering leaf ...
— Due South or Cuba Past and Present • Maturin M. Ballou
... things, but how ignorant we still are in the commonest doings of Nature! By giving up our whole lifetime, and spending millions of pounds, we could never make a grain of wheat or an acorn, and wherever we turn we find ourselves confronted with mysteries beyond our power to explain from a finite material standpoint; even in material vibrations we meet a mystery almost beyond our power to comprehend. Take for instance those small insects, of the family of Grasshoppers, ...
— Science and the Infinite - or Through a Window in the Blank Wall • Sydney T. Klein
... results do flow from seemingly insignificant causes!" said Sir Christopher. "A spark shall light a conflagration of a mighty city; an acorn shall bear an oak to waft armies over oceans to conquest; and the conversion of a child to the true faith may change the destinies of nations. It may be thy blessed lot, Celestina, to plant a seed which shall grow into a tree, whose branches shall cover earth with grateful shade, and ...
— The Knight of the Golden Melice - A Historical Romance • John Turvill Adams
... of "Yardley Oak" there are some beautiful mythological allusions. The former of the two following is to the fable of Castor and Pollux; the latter is more appropriate to our present subject. Addressing the acorn ...
— Bulfinch's Mythology • Thomas Bulfinch
... personality is independent of his age and the backing he finds in it, or the response which he may enlist for his revolt from it. Both of these are true statements of the case; as to which is ultimate, that is the old and rather academic question of whether the oak or the acorn comes first. We repeat that it is impossible, in this double play of cause and effect, to say which is the ultimate cause and which the effect. The controversy which was waged in the nineteenth century between the schools of Buckle and ...
— Among Famous Books • John Kelman
... is revealed by its insatiable hungers, its surpassing dignity is declared by its endless wants, its inability to live by bread alone. "As by the seed we conjecture what plant will arise, and know by the acorn what tree will grow forth, or by the eagle's egg what kind of bird; so do we by the powers of the soul upon earth, know what kind of Being, Person, and Glory will be in the Heavens, where its latent powers shall be turned into Act, its inclinations shall be ...
— Spiritual Reformers in the 16th & 17th Centuries • Rufus M. Jones
... the nest there were a dozen of the daintiest, downiest, little creatures he had ever seen. They were scarcely bigger than an acorn. "They surely are a fine brood," said he. "Aren't you afraid ...
— The Magic Speech Flower - or Little Luke and His Animal Friends • Melvin Hix
... and put together as well as I could in a public place. The persons of the drama are, Pip, the last gentleman that has been made so at cards; Trimmer, a person half undone at them, and is now between a cheat and a gentleman; Acorn, an honest Englishman, of good plain sense and meaning; and Mr. Friendly, a ...
— The Tatler, Volume 1, 1899 • George A. Aitken
... the bed. The "Courtney bedstead," dated 1593, showing many of the characteristics of the ornament of the time, is 103-1/2 inches high, 94 inches long, 68 inches wide. The majority of the beds were smaller and lower, however, and the pillars usually rose out of drum-like members, huge acorn-like bulbs that were often so large as to be ugly. They appeared also on other articles of furniture. When in good proportion, with pillars tapering from them, they were very effective, and gradually they grew ...
— Furnishing the Home of Good Taste • Lucy Abbot Throop
... of his wit and his reason, Sat him under an oak in a hot summer season. On the oak grew an acorn or two, it is said: On the ground grew a pumpkin as ...
— Aesop, in Rhyme - Old Friends in a New Dress • Marmaduke Park
... little pig how cocoanuts and bananas grew in the jungle, and the little pig told about how he liked sour milk and things like that. And, after a while, they managed to find some berries for Mappo to eat, as he did not like the acorn nuts. ...
— Mappo, the Merry Monkey • Richard Barnum
... doubt the truth of the story; but told us there was mosaic work very ancient in one of the floors." At Montpelier, "I walked, and found them gathering of olives—a black fruit, the bigness of an acorn, with which the trees were thickly hung. All the highways are filled with gamesters at mall, so that walkers are in some danger of knocks.... Parasols, a pretty sort of cover for women riding in the sun, made of straw, something like the fashion of tin covers ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 14, Issue 405, December 19, 1829 • Various
... Bluebottle, and Capsule—start in a race. The odds are 4 to 1, Acorn; 3 to 1, Bluebottle; 2 to 1, Capsule. Now, how much must I invest on each horse in order to win L13, no matter which horse comes in first? Supposing, as an example, that I betted L5 on each horse. Then, if Acorn won, I should receive ...
— Amusements in Mathematics • Henry Ernest Dudeney
... the magnitude of the most important events with the minuteness of their primeval causes, and the records of mankind are full of examples for such contemplations. It is, however, a more profitable employment to trace the constituent principles of future greatness in their kernel; to detect in the acorn at our feet the germ of that majestic oak, whose roots shoot down to the centre, and whose branches aspire to the skies. Let it be, then, our present occupation to inquire and endeavor to ascertain the causes first put in operation at the period of our commemoration, and already ...
— Orations • John Quincy Adams
... more secure retreat he could not,—dared not venture to ascertain that day. It occurred to him, however, that he would be much safer up a tree than hid in the bushes and undergrowth. He therefore climbed up a large acorn tree and there passed an entire day in deep meditation. No gleam of hope appeared, yet he would not suffer himself to think of returning to bondage. In this dilemma he remembered a poor washer-woman named Isabella, a slave who had charge of a wash-house. With her he resolved to seek succor. ...
— The Underground Railroad • William Still
... which is "tub-sized," "loft-dried" writings. The region in the vicinity of Holyoke is dotted with paper-mills, and within a few miles of the city is made about one-half of all the "loft-dried" writings produced in the United States. The tiny acorn planted two centuries ago has waxed with the years, gaining strength and vigor with the increasing strength of the nation, till now it has become a giant oak, whose branches extend to the ...
— A Book of Exposition • Homer Heath Nugent
... as she reached it she dipped down a hill by a transverse lane into the small town or village of Evershead, being now about halfway over the distance. She made a halt here, and breakfasted a second time, heartily enough—not at the Sow-and-Acorn, for she avoided inns, but at a cottage ...
— Tess of the d'Urbervilles - A Pure Woman • Thomas Hardy
... them clean, Polly found a long-handled warming-pan; a set of fire-irons—the tongs, shovel, and andirons of the famous "acorn-top" design; and a funny old foot-warmer. A pair of ancient bellows was the last article found in the box, but the leather was so dry and old that pieces fell out when Polly tried to make the ...
— Polly's Business Venture • Lillian Elizabeth Roy
... o'clock in the morning I drink tea in bed—for some reason it must be in bed; at half-past seven a German by way of a masseur comes and rubs me all over with water, and this seems not at all bad. Then I have to lie still a little, get up at eight o'clock, drink acorn cocoa and eat an immense quantity of butter. At ten o'clock, oatmeal porridge, extremely nice to taste and to smell, not like our Russian. Fresh air and sunshine. Reading the newspaper. At one o'clock, dinner, at which I must not taste everything but only the things Olga chooses for me, according ...
— Letters of Anton Chekhov • Anton Chekhov
... whirred like a tiny orchestra. Now and then a bird flung out a strain of melody, squirrels ran about, and the doe came and put its nose in her hand. She had tied a strip of skin, colored red, about its neck, that no one might shoot it. The rich, deep moss cushioned the ground. Occasionally an acorn fell. She would sit here in dreamy content by the hours, often just enjoying, sometimes puzzling her brains over all the mysteries that in the years to come education would solve. So few could read, indeed books ...
— A Little Girl in Old Quebec • Amanda Millie Douglas
... that. It must help itself; do as I do. It is not worth the while to snivel about it. I am not responsible for the successful working of the machinery of society. I am not the son of the engineer. I perceive that, when an acorn and a chestnut fall side by side, the one does not remain inert to make way for the other, but both obey their own laws, and spring and grow and flourish as best they can, till one, perchance, overshadows and ...
— Walden, and On The Duty Of Civil Disobedience • Henry David Thoreau
... Guernsey however—I found, in the first, thirty seven beech-masts in the crop, and eight others in the gizzard, sufficiently whole to be counted; and in the crop of the other the astonishing number of seventy-seven beech-masts and one large acorn; the gizzard of this one I did not examine. I only mention this to show the damage a few Wood Pigeons would do supposing they were restricted almost entirely to agricultural produce for their food, as they would be in Guernsey if they lived ...
— Birds of Guernsey (1879) • Cecil Smith
... the chiwal-glass! And that good fellow, the carpenter, Crickledon, who has lived with the sea fronting him all his life, and has never been in a boat, and he confesses he has only once gone inland, and has never seen an acorn!" ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... change, or evolution, has characterized the history of life upon the planet. The evolution of the organic kingdom from its primitive germinal forms to the complex and highly organized fauna-flora of to-day may be compared to the growth of some noble oak as it rises from the acorn, spreading loftier and more widely ...
— The Elements of Geology • William Harmon Norton
... squirrel dropped a nut or a fir-cone. Why, it's just the same noise as you hear in the country at home when they drop an acorn." ...
— To The West • George Manville Fenn
... sprites. Then would he pause, and wash his story down With long-drawn draughts of amber ale; while all The rest came crowding under the wide oak tree, Piling the corn sheaves closer round the ring, Whispering and shaking, laughing too, with fear; And ever, if an acorn bobb'd from the boughs, Or grasshopper from out the stubble chirrupp'd, ...
— Poems • Frances Anne Butler
... man's face, and behind his back, when you know there is a reasonable chance of his hearing it again. Never lose a chance of saying a kind word. As Collingwood never saw a vacant place in his estate but he took an acorn out of his pocket and popped it in; so deal with your compliments through life. An acorn costs nothing; but it may sprout into a prodigious ...
— Vanity Fair • William Makepeace Thackeray
... at a very reasonable Rate, a Compleat Riding Suit for a Lady, of Blue Camlet, well laced with Silver, being a Coat, Wastecoat, Petticoat, Hatt and Feather, never worn but twice; to be seen at Mr. Harford's at the Acorn ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... bring down the deer or wild fowl which furnished them food—he stalked behind them, or sat bolt upright against the tree or rock beneath which they had made their resting place, tireless, watchful, the breathing image of caution. If he slept, it was a sleep from which the sound of a falling acorn, the sleepy stir of a partridge in the fern was sufficient to awaken him. Sometimes they rested by fires, for they heard the wolves through the darkness; upon the nights when this was necessary the Susquehannock sat with his gun across his knees, piercing the darkness in every direction ...
— Prisoners of Hope - A Tale of Colonial Virginia • Mary Johnston
... archer, who, it is said, was a brother of Veliant, Siegfried's fellow-apprentice in the days of his boyhood. And men told them this story of Eigill. That once on a time old Nidung, the king of that land, in order to test his skill with the bow, bade him shoot an apple, or, as some say, an acorn, from the head of his own little son. And Eigill did this; but two other arrows, which he had hidden beneath his coat, dropped to the ground. And when the king asked him what these were for he answered, "To kill thee, wretch, ...
— The Story of Siegfried • James Baldwin
... good leave to gather the green plant which grows between your roots. If an acorn falls into this my right hand" (which I held out) "I will count it that you answer yes—and give you thanks." The acorn fell straight into the palm of my hand. I said, "I thank you, Oak: good growth to you. I ...
— The Five Jars • Montague Rhodes James
... sweet. The bitter taste is from the Khur, a bitter leguminous plant, which grows among the wheat, and whose grains the people are too lazy to pick out. There is not a single oak between Bender 'Abbas and Kerman; none of the inhabitants seemed to know what an acorn was. A person at Baft, who had once gone to Kerbela via Kermanshah and Baghdad, recognised my sketch of tree and fruit immediately, having seen oak and acorn between Kermanshah and Qasr-i-Shirin on the Baghdad road." Major Sykes writes (ch. xxiii.): "The above description undoubtedly refers ...
— The Travels of Marco Polo Volume 1 • Marco Polo and Rustichello of Pisa
... [102] instead of saffron and other condiments. The ordinary dainty throughout these islands, and in many kingdoms of the mainland of those regions, is buyo [betel]. This is made from a tree, [103] whose leaf is shaped like that of the mulberry. The fruit resembles an oak acorn, and is white inside. [104] This fruit, which is called bonga, is cut lengthwise in strips, and each strip is put into an envelope or covering made from the leaf. With the bonga is thrown in a powder of quick lime. [105] This compound is placed in the mouth and ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898: Volume XVI, 1609 • H.E. Blair
... and gathered nearer. The spell was broken. That strange and mysterious look vanished from Lady Sue's face; she turned away from the speakers and idly plucked a few bunches of acorn from ...
— The Nest of the Sparrowhawk • Baroness Orczy
... garland of oaken branches; it being the Roman custom thus to adorn those who had saved the life of a citizen; whether that the law intended some special honor to the oak, in memory of the Arcadians, a people the oracle had made famous by the name of acorn-eaters; or whether the reason of it was because they might easily, and in all places where they fought, have plenty of oak for that purpose; or, finally, whether the oaken wreath, being sacred to Jupiter, the guardian of the city, might, therefore, be thought a propel ornament for one who ...
— Plutarch's Lives • A.H. Clough
... plow-line over the plow-handle, and mounted the panel of the fence next to the one on which Bushie was sitting, and squared himself for the confab, which the little master opened thus; "Burl, just look at them crows up there on the dead limb of that big acorn-tree; what are ...
— Burl • Morrison Heady
... Nature. Look at this leaf. What is its record? How many generations, think you, are numbered in its ancestry? A perpetual intermarriage has not weakened its fibres. The anatomy of this leaf is perfect, and the sap of this oak flows from oak to acorn, from acorn to oak, in an interminable and uninterrupted succession since the first day. What are your titles and estates beside this representative? What is your heraldry, with its two centuries of mold; your absurd and confused genealogies, ...
— In the Footprints of the Padres • Charles Warren Stoddard
... hitherto. He could perceive, too, that by living out the suggestions she had made to him in the cabin—the Argentine—Stephens and Jarrott—"the very good firm to work for"—he had never got beyond her influence, no more than the oak-tree gets beyond the acorn that has been its seed. The perception of these things would have been enough to puzzle a mind not easily at home in the complex, even if the reintroduction of Judge Wayne had not ...
— The Wild Olive • Basil King
... apples.[673] The mythic trees of Elysium had the same varied fruitage, and the reason in both cases is perhaps the fact that when the cultivated apple took the place of acorns and nuts as a food staple, words signifying "nut" or "acorn" were transferred to the apple. A myth of trees on which all these fruits grew might then easily arise. Another Irish bile was a yew described in a poem as "a firm strong god," while such phrases in this poem as "word-pure man," "judgment of origin," "spell of knowledge," may have ...
— The Religion of the Ancient Celts • J. A. MacCulloch
... stood before us as a man of the people. He was thoroughly American, had never crossed the sea, had never been spoiled by English insularity or French dissipation; a quiet native, aboriginal man, as an acorn from the oak; no aping of foreigners, no frivolous accomplishments, Kentuckian born, working on a farm, a flatboat-man, a captain in the Black Hawk war, a country lawyer, a representative in the rural legislature of Illinois;—on such modest foundations the broad structure of his ...
— Our American Holidays: Lincoln's Birthday • Various
... in others the leaf-buds seem to bear its mark by breaking through the stem blood-red. Back in the plant's first stages, the crimson touch is to be found in seed-leaves and fresh shoots, and even in the hidden sprouts. Look at the acorn, for instance, as it breaks its shell, and see how the baby tree bears its birthmark: it is the blood-red in which the prism ray dawns out of the darkness, and the sunrise out of the night. The very stars, science now tells us, glow with this same colour as they are born ...
— Parables of the Cross • I. Lilias Trotter
... trivial. An American, too, by merely growlin' towards this Mexican, would make him quit out like a jack rabbit. "As I observes prior, courage is frequent the froots of what a gent don't know. Take grizzly b'ars. Back fifty years, when them squirrel rifles is preevalent; when a acorn shell holds a charge of powder, an' bullets runs as light an' little as sixty-four to the pound, why son! you-all could shoot up a grizzly till sundown an' hardly gain his disdain. It's a fluke if you downs one. That sport who can show a set of grizzly b'ar claws, them times, has fame. They're ...
— Wolfville Days • Alfred Henry Lewis
... the world are the rooks at the acorns. It is not only the eating of them, but the finding: the fluttering up there and hopping from branch to branch, the sidling out to the extreme end of the bough, and the inward chuckling when a friend lets his acorn drop tip-tap from bough to bough. Amid such plenty they cannot quarrel or fight, having no cause of battle, but they can boast of success, and do so to the loudest of their voices. He who has selected a choice one flies with it as if it were a nugget in his beak, ...
— The Life of the Fields • Richard Jefferies
... which stands about every kampong, supplies the natives with their great luxury—an acorn, known as the betel-nut, which, when crushed and mixed with lime leaves, takes the place of our chewing tobacco. In fact, the bright-red juice seen oozing from the corners of a Malay's mouth is as much a part of himself as is his ...
— Tales of the Malayan Coast - From Penang to the Philippines • Rounsevelle Wildman
... during the night. One was to be made at once; he borrowed from a college friend a brass syringe, the body of which served as a cylinder. The first condenser vessel was an improvised syringe and a tin can. From such an acorn the mighty oak was to grow. The experiment was successful and the invention complete, but Watt saw clearly that years of unceasing labor might yet pass before the details could all be worked out and the steam engine appear ready to revolutionise the labor of the world. During these years, ...
— James Watt • Andrew Carnegie
... for the folk that ask it in God's name, not for one's kindred, or for another more vile. The flesh of mortals is so soft that a good beginning suffices not below from the springing of the oak to the forming of the acorn. Peter began without gold and without silver, and I with prayers and with fasting, and Francis in humility his convent; and if thou lookest at the source of each, and then lookest again whither it has run, thou wilt see dark made of the white. Truly, ...
— The Divine Comedy, Volume 3, Paradise [Paradiso] • Dante Alighieri
... young man, and Lizzy still a little girl,—when long talks banished turkeys and apples and sliding,—when new books or sleigh-rides crowded out the old games,—when the two days of John's yearly visit were half-spent in the leafless, sunny woods, gathering mosses and acorn-cups, delicate fern leaves, and clusters of fire-moss, and red winter-green berries, for the pretty frames and baskets Lizzy's skilful fingers fabricated,—when he shook hands at coming and going, instead of kissing her;—but it seemed just the same, somehow. ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, Issue 17, March, 1859 • Various
... between two words; as suppose Divinity and Philosophy, or Revelation and Reason. Setting forth with Revelation first. "Revelation is a Lady; Reason, an Handmaid! Revelation is the Esquire; Reason, the Page! Revelation is the Sun; Reason, but the Moon! Revelation is Manna; Reason is but an acorn! Revelation, a wedge of gold; Reason, ...
— An English Garner - Critical Essays & Literary Fragments • Edited by Professor Arber and Thomas Seccombe
... contained in these eggs break the shell, and crawl forth in the shape of a grub or maggot, which feeds upon the roots of vegetables, and continues in this state of secret annoyance for more than three years, gradually growing to the size of an acorn. It is the thick white maggot with a red head, so frequently found in turning up the soil. At the end of the fourth year, they emerge from the earth, and may be seen in great numbers in the mild evenings of May. The willow seems to be their favourite food; on this they hang in clusters, and seldom ...
— The Cook and Housekeeper's Complete and Universal Dictionary; Including a System of Modern Cookery, in all Its Various Branches, • Mary Eaton
... first evolve itself out of this matter. If we wind something into these atoms, then we can also wind something out of them; in doing this, however, we give up at the outset the experiment of letting mind evolve itself out of matter. Give an atom the germ-power of an acorn, and it will develop into an oak. Give an atom the capacity of sense-perception, and it will become an animal, possibly a man. But what was promised us was the development of feeling and perception out of the dead atoms of hydrogen, oxygen, nitrogen, carbon, etc. Even ...
— The Silesian Horseherd - Questions of the Hour • Friedrich Max Mueller
... momentous truth: that wrong and injustice once done cannot be undone; but are eternal in their consequences; once committed, are numbered with the irrevocable Past; that the wrong that is done contains its own retributive penalty as surely and as naturally as the acorn contains the oak. Its consequences are its punishment; it needs no other, and can have no heavier; they are involved in its commission, and cannot be separated from it. A wrong done to another is an injury ...
— Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry • Albert Pike
... soul gymnastics. Devouring souls, I should have lived forever. But their undigested remains bred in me a deadly nephritis, With fear, restlessness, sinking spirits, Hatred, suspicion, vision disturbed. I collapsed at last with a shriek. Remember the acorn; It ...
— Spoon River Anthology • Edgar Lee Masters
... under which he was lying. Conceive the chagrin and shame of Thor at this question! A second time Thor let fly at the giant with his mallet. This time it sank into his skull up to the handle, but with no more satisfactory result. The giant merely inquired whether an acorn had not dropped on his head, and wanted to know how Thor found himself, whether he slept well or not; to which queries Thor muttered an answer, and went away, determined to make a third and final effort with his mallet, which had never failed ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, Issue 15, January, 1859 • Various
... grew dim. "I know," she said, brokenly, "for I had it all once, long ago. People used to say that marriage changes love, but, with us, it only grew and strengthened. The beginning was no more the fulness of love than an acorn is the oak tree which springs from it. We had our trials, our differences, and our various difficulties, ...
— Master of the Vineyard • Myrtle Reed
... sense of shame caused him to remain silent. Feeling irritated with his father, and grieved for Lialia, while despising himself, he went down the steps into the garden. A little frog, croaking beneath his feet, burst like an acorn. He slipped, and with a cry of disgust sprang aside. Mechanically he wiped his foot for a long while on the wet grass, feeling a cold shiver down ...
— Sanine • Michael Artzibashef
... wire-gauze cover suffices, with a bed of sand and diet to their taste. They are very small, scarcely larger than a cherry-stone. Their shape is extremely curious. The body is dumpy, tapering to an acorn-shaped posterior; the legs are very long, resembling those of the spider when outspread; the hinder legs are disproportionately long and curved, being thus excellently adapted to enlace and press the ...
— Social Life in the Insect World • J. H. Fabre
... woods, and I went over there and laid down and watched it run by. I laid awful still, thinking I wisht I was away from that town. Purty soon a squirrel comes down and sets on a log and watches me. I throwed an acorn at him, and he scooted up a tree quicker'n scatt. And then I wisht I hadn't scared him away, fur it looked like he knowed I was in trouble. Purty soon I takes a swim, and comes out and lays there some more, spitting into the water and thinking what shall I do now, and watching ...
— Danny's Own Story • Don Marquis
... in rooting out the weeds such few hardy flowers as still remained in the beds were mostly brought up with them. The groove wherein the portcullis had run was as fresh as if only cut yesterday, the very tooling of the stone being visible. Close to this hung a bell-pull formed of a large wooden acorn attached to a vertical rod. Somerset's application brought a woman from the porter's door, who informed him that the day before having been the weekly show-day for visitors, it was doubtful if he ...
— A Laodicean • Thomas Hardy
... there the wooden-chuck doth tread, And from the oak-tree's top The red, red squirrels on thy head The frequent acorn drop. ...
— A Nonsense Anthology • Collected by Carolyn Wells
... draw-strings of gold and red braid, each ending in an ornamental oval acorn of silver thread and coloured silks, probably worked on canvas over a wooden core, ending in a tassel similar to ...
— English Embroidered Bookbindings • Cyril James Humphries Davenport
... Twain's books were first told by Jim Gillis, standing with his hands crossed behind him, back to the fire, in the cabin on jackass Hill. The story of Dick Baker's cat was one of these; the jaybird and Acorn story of 'A Tramp Abroad' was another; also the story of the "Burning Shame," and there are others. Mark Twain had little to add to these stories; in fact, he never could get them to sound as well, he said, as when Jim Gillis had ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... destined soon to emerge. But it would surely be bad logic to infer, because the embryo could not, from want of materials within its experience, ascertain the how, the when, the where, and the what, of the life awaiting it, that there was no other life reserved for it. An acorn buried and sprouting in the dark mould, if endowed with intelligent consciousness, could not know any definite particulars of its maturer life yet to be in the upper light and air, with ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger
... Because the education of boys has met with tolerable success, hitherto,—but only tolerable it must be confessed,—in developing them into men, there are those who would make girls grow into women by the same process. Because a gardener has nursed an acorn till it grew into an oak, they would have him cradle a grape in the same soil and way, and make it a vine. Identical education, or identical co-education, of the sexes defrauds one sex or the other, or perhaps both. It defies ...
— Sex in Education - or, A Fair Chance for Girls • Edward H. Clarke
... a piece with this setting. He fitted into it as an acorn fits its cup. All his life he had lived on Reelfoot, always in the one place, at the mouth of a certain slough. He had been born there, of a negro father and a half-breed Indian mother, both of them now dead, and the story was that ...
— The Escape of Mr. Trimm - His Plight and other Plights • Irvin S. Cobb
... to serve grass and acorn kernels from broken bits of china than it was to have a real tea-party in an orderly nursery with real cups and saucers, and the strange doll added to the zest of the play because she was an unknown. The children speculated upon who might be her possible owner, and ...
— Little Maid Marian • Amy E. Blanchard
... forests wild: But she perforce withholds the loved boy, Crowns him with flowers, and makes him all her joy: And now they never meet in grove or green, By fountain clear, or spangled starlight sheen, But they do square; that all their elves for fear Creep into acorn cups, and ...
— A Midsummer Night's Dream • William Shakespeare [Collins edition]
... the Yokuts, [Footnote: Contributions to North American Ethnology, Vol. III, p. 377.] a Californian tribe which lived in the San Joaquin valley near Tulare Lake, had a similar game. Each die was half a large acorn or walnut shell filled with pitch and powdered charcoal and inlaid with bits of bright colored abaloni shell. Four squaws played and a fifth kept tally with fifteen sticks. There were eight dice and they scooped them up with their hands and dashed them into the basket, counting one when two ...
— Indian Games • Andrew McFarland Davis
... and the pepperidge tall, Where the birds and the squirrels tirelessly call, Where in autumn the flowers of the gentian blue Look up with their eyes so dark and true, Up into the hazy sky, Dreaming away as the red leaves drop, And the acorn falls from its deep brown cup, And the yellow ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 5, May, 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... but not until the sun had already run nearly half his course, for he never dared to leave his timber observatory before, le pauvre diable dropped down from his perch like an acorn—and, marching off with weary steps, and scarcely a hope that ere another night fell he should gain the shelter of some cottage, he dragged himself along. On he rolled from side to side, torn with the thorns and bitten by the gnats that swarmed around him, sometimes ...
— Le Morvan, [A District of France,] Its Wild Sports, Vineyards and Forests; with Legends, Antiquities, Rural and Local Sketches • Henri de Crignelle
... gets them mostly about acorn-time; they comes out of the plantations then. I keeps clear of the plantations, because, besides the men a-watching, they have got dogs chained up, and alarm-guns as goes off if you steps on the spring; and some have got a string stretched along as you ...
— The Amateur Poacher • Richard Jefferies
... to roost or storehouse many are dropped. Of these no small number fall on waste ground; a few take root, only to be overgrown or destroyed before they reach the beginnings of strength. But here and there an acorn drops on favourable soil; the rich earth nourishes it; the germ, when it has lived on all the store within the shell, can gather its future needs from the ground. Little roots and fibres pierce the soil; a green twig rises to seek the sun; there are long years of silent precarious growth, and ...
— William Shakespeare - His Homes and Haunts • Samuel Levy Bensusan
... little king and queen of sprites there happened, at this time, a sad disagreement; they never met by moonlight in the shady walks of this pleasant wood, but they were quarrelling, till all their fairy elves would creep into acorn-cups and hide ...
— Tales from Shakespeare • Charles and Mary Lamb
... the acorn, cocoanut and chestnut, are very rich in starch, and these should be classified as starchy foods. Very few foods contain as high per cent of starch as the dry chestnut. In southern Europe chestnuts are made into flour, and this is made into bread or cakes. An inferior ...
— Maintaining Health • R. L. Alsaker
... pray'd me oft forbearance: did it with A pudencie so Rosie, the sweet view on't Might well haue warm'd olde Saturne; That I thought her As Chaste, as vn-Sunn'd Snow. Oh, all the Diuels! This yellow Iachimo in an houre, was't not? Or lesse; at first? Perchance he spoke not, but Like a full Acorn'd Boare, a Iarmen on, Cry'de oh, and mounted; found no opposition But what he look'd for, should oppose, and she Should from encounter guard. Could I finde out The Womans part in me, for there's no motion That tends to vice in man, but I affirme ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare
... short, I am afraid to say how immeasurably large it was. To speak within bounds, it was ten times larger than a great mill wheel; and, all of metal as it was, it floated over the heaving surges more lightly than an acorn cup adown the brook. The waves tumbled it onward, until it grazed against the shore, within a short distance of the ...
— Myths That Every Child Should Know - A Selection Of The Classic Myths Of All Times For Young People • Various
... Jonathan, and noticed an immense rock split and shattered by the roots of a tree, or perhaps by the might of an insignificant looking fungus? I have, many times, and I never see such a rock without thinking of its aptness as an illustration of this Socialist philosophy. A tiny acorn tossed by the wind finds lodgment in some small crevice of a rock which has stood for thousands of years, a rock so big and strong that men choose it as an emblem of the Everlasting. Soon the warm caresses of the sun and the rain wake the latent life in the ...
— The Common Sense of Socialism - A Series of Letters Addressed to Jonathan Edwards, of Pittsburg • John Spargo
... muskeet grass, clovers, sweet prairie hay, and the other grasses common to the east of the continent of America. Here and there are scattered patches of plums of the green-gage kind, berries, and a peculiar kind of shrub oaks, never more than five feet high, yet bearing a very large and sweet acorn; ranges of hazel nuts will often extend thirty or forty miles, and are the abode of millions of birds of the ...
— Travels and Adventures of Monsieur Violet • Captain Marryat
... highest finish. The structure of Herrick's verse, like that of Blake, is simple to the verge of innocence. Such rhythmic intricacies as those of Shelley, Tennyson, and Swinburne he never dreamed of. But his manner has this perfection: it fits his matter as the cup of the acorn fits ...
— Ponkapog Papers • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... down to that old oak, and kissed the place where I had carved our names with many vows. Tell me, you little witch, who were you thinking of all that time?' 'All the while of you,' she sighed. 'And do you, oh, do you remember that you fell asleep under the oak, and that a little acorn fell into your bosom and you tossed it out in a pet? Ah, Olive dear, I found that acorn, and kissed it twice, and kissed it thrice for thee! And do you know that it has grown into a fine young oak?' 'I know it,' she answered softly and sadly, 'I often go to it!' ...
— Preliminary Report of the Commission Appointed by the University • The Seybert Commission
... up on Sun, and Sun started up the trail in the sky. The trail was marked off into steps like a ladder. As Sun went up he counted "one, two, three," and so on. By and by Coyote became very thirsty, and he asked Sun for a drink of water. Sun gave him an acorn-cup full. Coyote asked him why he had no more. About noontime, Coyote became very impatient. It was very hot. Sun told him to shut his eyes. Coyote shut them, but opened them again. He kept opening and shutting them all the afternoon. At night, when Sun came down, Coyote took hold of a tree. ...
— Myths and Legends of California and the Old Southwest • Katharine Berry Judson
... of monks so wanton: for whate'er Is in the church's keeping, all pertains. To such, as sue for heav'n's sweet sake, and not To those who in respect of kindred claim, Or on more vile allowance. Mortal flesh Is grown so dainty, good beginnings last not From the oak's birth, unto the acorn's setting. His convent Peter founded without gold Or silver; I with pray'rs and fasting mine; And Francis his in meek humility. And if thou note the point, whence each proceeds, Then look what it hath err'd to, thou shalt find The white grown murky. Jordan was turn'd ...
— The Divine Comedy • Dante
... mighty operations in nature have their origin in small beginnings; that the narrow rivulet goes on gathering strength till it becomes the Great Cataract; that the minute plague-spot generated the virulent disease; that the acorn produces the oak; that the impaired seed failed to produce goodly fruit; that a small drop of leaven affected a huge mass. Lessons on the fecundity of little things had indeed grown ...
— Another World - Fragments from the Star City of Montalluyah • Benjamin Lumley (AKA Hermes)
... with growing love, a higher power Than Fancy gave assurance of some work Of glory there forthwith to be begun, Perhaps too there performed. Thus long I mused, 80 Nor e'er lost sight of what I mused upon, Save when, amid the stately groves of oaks, Now here, now there, an acorn, from its cup Dislodged, through sere leaves rustled, or at once To the bare earth dropped with a startling sound. 85 From that soft couch I rose not, till the sun Had almost touched the horizon; ...
— The Poetical Works of William Wordsworth, Vol. III • William Wordsworth
... the Oak in the Acorn, or a Temple like St. Paul's in the first stone which is laid, nor can I quite prefigure what destination the genius of William Minor hath to take. Some few hints I have set down, to guide my future observations. He hath the power of calculation in no ordinary degree for a chit. He combineth figures, ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Vol. 5 • Edited by E. V. Lucas
... is twenty-seven inches wide. This space is also designed for the paths. The rows and the proper distances for the plants are designated by a "marker," an implement consisting of several wheels fastened to a frame and drawn by hand. On the rim of these wheels are two knobs shaped like an acorn. Each wheel marks a continuous line on the soft earth, and with each revolution the knobs make two slight but distinct depressions twelve inches apart; or, if the variety to be planted is a vigorous grower, he uses another ...
— Success With Small Fruits • E. P. Roe
... display was centered around a tapered brass tube—perhaps one of the barrels of an antique pair of fieldglasses. Wrapping it was a spiny brown tendril from which grew two sucker-like organs, shaped like acorn tops. One was firmly attached to the metal. The other had been pulled free, its original position on the barrel marked by a circular area of corrosion. The face of the detached sucker was also shown—a honeycomb structure of waxy vegetable tissue, detailed with thousands of ...
— The Planet Strappers • Raymond Zinke Gallun
... of the woodpecker is the length of flight required and accomplished. At Mount Pizarro, where such storehouses are found, the nearest oak trees are in the Cordilleras, thirty miles distant; thus the birds are obliged to make a journey of sixty miles to accomplish the storing of one acorn. At first it seemed strange that a bird should spend so much labor to place those bits of food, and so far away. De Saussure, a Swiss naturalist, published in the Bibliotheque Universelle, of Geneva, entertaining accounts of ...
— Scientific American Supplement, Vol. XXI., No. 531, March 6, 1886 • Various
... a squirrel high up somewhere in the branches of an oak, recalled him to his wits. Down came spiralling a few bits of bark and acorn-shell, quite in the old ...
— Darkness and Dawn • George Allan England
... the animals! Fairy Fluffikins was a sad tease; she would creep into the nests where the fat baby dormice were asleep in bed while Mamma dormouse nodded over her knitting and Papa smoked his little acorn pipe; and she would tickle the babies till they screamed with laughter and nearly rolled out of bed, and Mamma scolded, and Papa said in a gruff voice—"What a plague you are, you little dors; go to sleep this minute or I will ...
— The Grey Brethren and Other Fragments in Prose and Verse • Michael Fairless
... my congratulations come in. All at home send you their best greetings, kisses, and embraces. The old gentleman is as sound as an acorn, or as a ripe apple freshly plucked from the tree. Don't be in the least concerned on his account; your uncle feels remarkably well. But your aunt is sick, very sick, and to all appearance she will be ...
— A Hungarian Nabob • Maurus Jokai |
