"Biped" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... fitted for this mode of traveling than we had been on betaking ourselves to the prairies for the first time a few months before. The daily routine had ceased to be a novelty. All the details of the journey and the camp had become familiar to us. We had seen life under a new aspect; the human biped had been reduced to his primitive condition. We had lived without law to protect, a roof to shelter, or garment of cloth to cover us. One of us at least had been without bread, and without salt to season his food. Our idea of what is indispensable ...
— The Oregon Trail • Francis Parkman, Jr.
... ridiculous simplicity of my emancipation. Yesterday at this hour I was a highly respectable if slightly pampered person with a shrewd sense of my own importance in the economic and social scheme; to-day I'm a mere biped—an instinct on legs, with nothing to recommend me but an amiable ...
— Madcap • George Gibbs
... remains of our PEACOCK to say, But that, homeward, triumphant, he wing'd back his way, Proclaim'd his success to the whole Biped Nation, ...
— The Peacock and Parrot, on their Tour to Discover the Author of "The Peacock At Home" • Unknown
... billycocks, hobnobbed with men in the gaudiest uniforms ever evolved by the theatrical costumier. Green velvet and gold lace, topped by cocked hats that had despoiled the ostrich to make a human biped vainly ridiculous, adorned Ginirals and Cornels that had no rigiments belongun' to 'um at all at all! and had come over from the Distressful Country to make a bould bid for glory, with the experience of warfare acquired while lurking behind ...
— The Dop Doctor • Clotilde Inez Mary Graves
... surgeon, I am told, did a very brilliant stunt; something like taking my eyes out, playing marbles with them, and getting them sewed back again all in three minutes and a half. The result to the patient is of course purely a minor consideration, but it may interest you to know that I can tell a biped from a quadruped, and may in time, by the aid of powerful glasses, ...
— Mr. Opp • Alice Hegan Rice
... a two-wheeler, with a buggy top and poles for the biped horse to trot between, from Nagasaki to a fishing village over the mountains, five miles away, passing at the start through the Japanese quarter, long streets of shops, populous and busy, many diligent in light manufacturing work, and all scant in ...
— The Story of the Philippines and Our New Possessions, • Murat Halstead
... understand an animal of erect stature, while those who have been in the habit of fixing their thoughts on something else, will form another common image of men, describing man, for instance, as an animal capable of laughter, a biped without feathers, a rational animal, and so on; each person forming universal images of things according to the temperament of his own body. It is not therefore to be wondered at that so many controversies have arisen amongst those philosophers who have ...
— The Philosophy of Spinoza • Baruch de Spinoza
... time Lancelot saw Mary Ann he did not remember having seen her before. This time she was a biped, and wore a white cap. Besides, he hardly glanced at her. He was in a bad temper, and Beethoven was barking terribly at the intruder who stood quaking in the doorway, so that the crockery clattered on the tea-tray she bore. ...
— The Grey Wig: Stories and Novelettes • Israel Zangwill
... another. "It seems too good to be true; but she has the most stupid of husbands! Ah!—Buffon has admirably described the animals, but the biped called husband—" ...
— Analytical Studies • Honore de Balzac
... to Rotterdam, to take the bull by the horns. The bull was a biped, with a crown for horns. It was Philip the Good, duke of this, earl of that, lord of the other. Arrived at Rotterdam, Martin found the court was at Ghent. To Ghent he went, and sought an audience, but was put off and baffled by lackeys and pages. ...
— The Cloister and the Hearth • Charles Reade
... relative merits of their horses. Such then was the place and company in which our young friends found themselves, and were hardly noticed as they rang the bell to attract the attention of some one in the house. Their summons was, after a time, answered by a bare-armed, bearded, and greasy-looking biped of the genus homo, honoured by the confidence of the landlord, deigning to fill the post of waiter, and, from a deformity of his person, rejoicing in the ...
— Fern Vale (Volume 1) - or the Queensland Squatter • Colin Munro
... sea below, nobody can imagine. But the valiant little animal kept steadily on, assisted by his owner, who followed and assiduously whacked him with a stout stick, and he reached the top much sooner than any of his biped following. One cannot have too many legs in Clovelly,—a centipede would find himself at an ...
— In the High Valley - Being the fifth and last volume of the Katy Did series • Susan Coolidge
... the human one, though it came only from a bird. No lark this time, however, but a great black and white creature that flew into the cloak, and began walking round and round on the edge of it with a dignified stride, one foot before the other, like any unfeathered biped ...
— The Little Lame Prince - And: The Invisible Prince; Prince Cherry; The Prince With The Nose - The Frog-Prince; Clever Alice • Miss Mulock—Pseudonym of Maria Dinah Craik
... pair of creatures of the sort they had occasionally eaten, a trifling thing of wood and sinew string and flint point, which was destined henceforth to make a decided change in the relative condition of the biped and quadruped hunters of the time. How could they know that something small and sharp would fly down and sting them more deeply than they had ever been stung before, that it would sting so deeply that their ...
— The Story of Ab - A Tale of the Time of the Cave Man • Stanley Waterloo
... was covered by a canvas "'paulin." A huge stack of barley bags was piled at the far end of the corral, guarded from depredation (quadrupedal) by a barrier of wooden slats, mostly down, and by a tattered biped, very sound asleep. ...
— Foes in Ambush • Charles King
... simple question, but not so easy to answer. All men are sinners. But what is a man? A featherless biped? So was the plucked fowl of Diogenes. A man is—well a man; and a sinner is—well a sinner. And this is near enough for most people. But it does not satisfy a rational investigator, to say nothing of your born critic, who will go on splitting hairs ...
— Flowers of Freethought - (First Series) • George W. Foote
... comprehend us as dogs and horses. They see through us at a glance. And after all, what is a horse but a species of four-footed dumb man, in a leathern overall, who happens to live upon oats, and toils for his masters, half-requited or abused, like the biped hewers of wood and drawers of water? But there is a touch of divinity even in brutes, and a special halo about a horse, that should forever exempt him from indignities. As for those majestic, magisterial truck-horses of the docks, I would as soon think of striking a judge ...
— Redburn. His First Voyage • Herman Melville
... between a shilling-buttoned-waistcoatteer of a porter and myself, which ended in my extending mercy to the suppliant coach-owners, and agreeing to accept a place for Monday. All well thus far. The biped knock of the post alighted on the door at twelve, and two letters were placed upon my German dictionary,—your own, which I at first intended to reply to viva voce, had not the second informed me of my brother's arrival in England, his short leave of absence, and his intention to visit me ...
— A Letter Book - Selected with an Introduction on the History and Art of Letter-Writing • George Saintsbury
... set out with our guns and game-bags, accompanied by the doctor's dog, Jumbo, who was almost as curious-looking as was his master—a perfect nondescript; but the doctor boasted that he had not his equal, was afraid of neither quadruped nor biped, and would face a jaguar, a bear, or a tamanoir (the large ant-eater), while he would stand to his point till he died of starvation, provided the bird chose to stay and be pointed at. We were now ...
— The Young Llanero - A Story of War and Wild Life in Venezuela • W.H.G. Kingston
... I had often played Daniel in the lion's den there, assisted by a caste of small colored children. They were the lions, I, with the choice of parts, electing invariably to play the persecuted and finally triumphant biped. The fury of forty wild beasts was in my heart, as I pushed aside the prickly branches and crept into my lair. The den was paved with bricks, loosely laid. With a pointed stick I pried one up, and scooped out with my hands ...
— When Grandmamma Was New - The Story of a Virginia Childhood • Marion Harland
... feet between a biped, a quadruped, and a centipede, and say whether the foot of Mr. Joseph Hume, being just as broad as it is long, may not be ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 1, Complete • Various
... puzzled him for the moment, but as it was repeated here and there, he knew it was the pheasants which haunted that part of the forest, flying up to their roosts for the night, to be safe from prowling animals—four-legged, or biped who walked the woods by night ...
— The Weathercock - Being the Adventures of a Boy with a Bias • George Manville Fenn
... out the stationary tub with soap, and brush, and scalding water. Then he scalded the brush. Then the tub again. Then, deliberately, and with the utter unconcern of the male biped he divested himself, piece by piece, of every stitch of covering wherewith his body was clothed. And he scrubbed them all. He took off his white leggings and his white cap and scrubbed those, first. He had seen the other boys follow that order of procedure. ...
— Cheerful—By Request • Edna Ferber
... other cowards, being extremely wary and suspicious. A small hole is formed at one end of this pit, through which projects the muzzle of a gun, while at the other is left an opening large enough to admit a featherless biped, who on getting in pulls after him a bundle of heath of sufficient size to close it. A carcass of a sheep or dog, or a fish or fowl, being previously without at the distance of from twelve to twenty yards, the lyer-in-wait watches patiently for the descent of the eagle, and, the moment it has fairly ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 14, - Issue 403, December 5, 1829 • Various
... gravity. Thomas knew nothing of women, young or old. With the habits and tastes of the male biped he was tolerably familiar. ...
— The Voice in the Fog • Harold MacGrath
... see that the hollow-sounding wooden bridges which formed the sole communication by which the hay wagons could pass to and from the distant meadows, were in proper order to sustain their ponderous annual load. Daniel Thorpe was the only accredited unfeathered biped who figured in the parish books as occupant of The Moors; nevertheless that swampy district could boast of one other irregular and forbidden but most pertinacious inhabitant—and that inhabitant was our hero, ...
— Jesse Cliffe • Mary Russell Mitford
... and Guinevere had been a fish, then a helpless biped, and now suddenly, somewhere between my salad and coffee, she became an aquatic quadruped. Strangest of all, her hands were mobile, her feet useless; and when the dance was at an end, and she sank ...
— Edge of the Jungle • William Beebe
... companion and constant friend of grave philosophers and thoughtful students. By the ancient Egyptians cats were held in the highest esteem; and we learn from Diodorus Siculus, their 'lives and safeties' were tendered more dearly than those of any other animal, whether biped or quadruped. 'He who has voluntarily killed a consecrated animal,' says this writer, 'is punished with death; but if any one has even involuntarily killed a cat or an ibis, it is impossible for him to escape death: ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 419, New Series, January 10, 1852 • Various
... loneliness has become—that he is really under tutelage unawares, and even surreptitiously helped to supplies of forage in seasons of dearth! Will his race linger on and outlive the race of Man when that biped has shelled and torpedoed and dynamited himself out of existence? And will they then fill the newest New Forest that will have covered the smokeless land, with the descendants of the herds that Caesar's troops found in the Hercynian wilds? They are a fascinating ...
— When Ghost Meets Ghost • William Frend De Morgan
... reference to the species Mathematician. Animal is a genus, divided into two species, man and brute; but animal is also a species, which, with another species, vegetable, makes up the genus, organized being. Biped is a genus with reference to man and bird, but a species with respect to the superior genus, animal. Taste is a genus divided into species, but also a species of the genus sensation. Virtue, a genus with reference to justice, temperance, etc., is one of the species of the genus, ...
— A System Of Logic, Ratiocinative And Inductive • John Stuart Mill
... biped animal already alluded to, actuated by an overweening desire of notoriety, and in order to catch the applause of some one, grovelling in the morasses of insignificance and vice, like himself, leaves his ...
— The Hedge School; The Midnight Mass; The Donagh • William Carleton
... Moggs were obtained on that score, it would probably be somewhat different; for be it known that the husband of Mrs. Moggs is of the kind that is neither useful nor ornamental. He belongs to that division which addicts itself mainly to laziness—a species of the biped called husband, which unfortunately is not so rare that we seek for the specimen only in museums. We know not whether Montezuma Moggs was or was not born lazy; nor shall we undertake to decide that laziness is an inherent quality; but as ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol. XXXII No. 2. February 1848 • Various
... (1) pedal, pedestrian, pedestal, expedite, expediency, expedition, quadruped, impediment, biped, tripod, chiropodist, octopus, pew; (2) centiped, pedicle, pedometer, velocipede, sesquipedalian, antipodes, podium, ...
— The Century Vocabulary Builder • Creever & Bachelor
... as distinct from those biped beasts we've found so far? I doubt it," Loudons replied, finishing his caffchoc and wiping his mustache on the back of his hand. "I think the whole eastern half of the country is nothing but forest like this, and the highest type of life is just ...
— The Return • H. Beam Piper and John J. McGuire
... idol for a weak and kindly and easily satisfied worshipper, was to be enthroned as the queen of his affections, to be adopted as the companion of his labors! The boy, led by the commonest instinct, the mere attraction of biped to its female, which accident had favored, had thrown away the dearest possession of manhood,—liberty,—and this bauble was to be his lifelong reward! And yet not a bauble either, for a pleasing person and a gentle and ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... Chronicles without my name (nom de guerre, I mean) the event would be a corollary to the fable of the peasant who made the real pig squeak against the imitator, while the sapient audience hissed the poor grunter as if inferior to the biped in his own language. The peasant could, indeed, confute the long-eared multitude by showing piggy; but were I to fail as a knight with a white and maiden shield, and then vindicate my claim to attention by putting "By the Author of Waverley" in ...
— The Journal of Sir Walter Scott - From the Original Manuscript at Abbotsford • Walter Scott
... season of the year when the bricks and planks and things were liable to be torn out of her hand, her skirts blown over her head, and she left clinging for dear life to a scaffolding pole. I know the feminine biped and, you take it from me, that is not her notion of a honeymoon. In April or May, the sun shining, the air balmy—when, after carrying up to her a load or two of bricks, and a hod or two of mortar, we could knock off work ...
— Idle Ideas in 1905 • Jerome K. Jerome
... this way, so that I wouldn't be compelled to tell you myself of the big and noble act I have done. It was my hope and desire that you, through some one else, would learn of it, and come to understand more fully what a generous and splendid biped I am. I even plotted to give this child of Stevens' a silver dollar if he would get the news to you in some one of his innocent ways. He's done it. And he couldn't have done it better—even for a dollar. Ah, here we are at ...
— The Hunted Woman • James Oliver Curwood
... the hustings, prophesy whether he would turn into a rat at last, or not. She, moreover, understood the language of rats of every degree, and knew even when they said "No," that they meant "Yes,"—two monosyllables, the test of rats, which betray them all sooner or later, and transform the biped into the quadruped, who then turns tail, and runs always to the other side, from whatever side he may ...
— Helen • Maria Edgeworth
... authorities, it would seem, attach value—that he was "a rogue and a vagabond;" confessions which the Captain possibly deemed as absurd an act of "surplusage" as though he were to give a written declaration that he was a vertebrated animal and a biped. ...
— Cornelius O'Dowd Upon Men And Women And Other Things In General - Originally Published In Blackwood's Magazine - 1864 • Charles Lever
... a strange spectacle met his view. The pony was sitting on the ground, erect, after the manner of a biped. Its head was in the air, its hind-legs were extended horizontally, its fore-legs were waving impotently up and down'. The ant-bear had carved its way deep into the bowels of the earth, gradually but relentlessly dragging the hapless ...
— Reminiscences of a South African Pioneer • W. C. Scully
... along the equator. "The planet is inhabited by numerous small unintelligent animal species which seem well-adapted to the semi-arid conditions. Of higher animals and mammals only two species were discovered, and of these the most highly developed was an erect biped with an integrated central nervous system and the intelligence ...
— Star Surgeon • Alan Nourse
... fourth-generation Martian, of Andes Indian ancestry. He came forward and stood behind Gomes' chair, looking down at the instruments. His assistant stopped at the door. This assistant was not human. He was a biped, vaguely humanoid, but he had four arms and a face like a lizard's, and, except for some equipment on a belt, he was ...
— Uller Uprising • Henry Beam Piper, John D. Clark and John F. Carr |
