"Butterfly" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... new coach too: therefore, resolving to ruin Tom, she complained to the king that he had behaved very insolently to her. The king sent for him in a rage. Tom, to escape his fury, crept into an empty snail-shell, and there lay till he was almost starved; when, peeping out of the hole, he saw a fine butterfly settle on the ground: he now ventured out, and getting astride, the butterfly took wing, and mounted into the air with little Tom on his back. Away he flew from field to field, from tree to tree, till ...
— The Fairy Book - The Best Popular Stories Selected and Rendered Anew • Dinah Maria Mulock (AKA Miss Mulock)
... silk fabric that wuz ever made—raw silk, jest as the worm left it when she sot up as a butterfly, and jest what man has done to it after that—spinnin', weavin', dyein'—up to the time when it appears in the finest ribbon, and glossiest silk, and crapes, and gauzes, and velvets, and knit goods of every kind, and ...
— Samantha at the World's Fair • Marietta Holley
... suggested by the words reconstruct the picture which was in the mind of the author as he wrote "The Village Blacksmith" or "Snowbound," the significance will have dropped out, and the throbbing scenes of life and action become only so many dead words, like the shell of the chrysalis after the butterfly has left its shroud. Without the power of imagination, the history of Washington's winter at Valley Forge becomes a mere formal recital, and you can never get a view of the snow-covered tents, the wind-swept landscape, the tracks in the snow marked by the telltale drops of blood, ...
— The Mind and Its Education • George Herbert Betts
... influence—carrying him back to the days of his childish sports, and conjuring up before him the old green field with its gently-waving trees, where the birds sang as he has never heard them since—where the butterfly fluttered far more gaily than he ever sees him now, in all his ramblings—where the sky seemed bluer, and the sun shone more brightly—where the air blew more freshly over greener grass, and sweeter-smelling flowers—where everything wore a richer and more brilliant hue than it is ever ...
— Sketches by Boz - illustrative of everyday life and every-day people • Charles Dickens
... smiled, these two, who had never felt more than the merest butterfly wings of love brushing them, light as lashes. No word between them, only an unfinished sweetness, waiting to ...
— O Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1919 • Various
... should one speak of Paris, as to say, "Would that our lord might see thee go so gay About his house!" Gently she'd bend her head Down to her breast and pluck a vagrant thread Forth from her tunic's hem, and looking wise, Gaze at her hand which on her bosom's rise Lit like a butterfly and quivered there. Now in the dusk, with Paris otherwhere At council with the chieftains, into the hall To Helen there, was come, adventuring all, Odysseus in the garb of countryman, A herdsman from the hills, with stain of tan Upon his neck and arms, with staff and ...
— Helen Redeemed and Other Poems • Maurice Hewlett
... tell but that very night, the Spirit of God will touch that man's heart and transform him into one of the holiest and most useful of men. It has often occurred in the past and will doubtless often occur in the future. There sits before you a woman, who is a mere butterfly of fashion. She seems to have no thought above society and pleasure and adulation. Why preach to her? Without the regenerating power of the Holy Spirit, it would be foolishness and a waste of time; but you can never tell, perhaps this very night the ...
— The Person and Work of The Holy Spirit • R. A. Torrey
... his eyes on one huge bud. He saw it swell, burst, spread out its passionate purple velvet, lift the broad flower face to the light for a joyous minute. A few seconds later a butterfly lighted airily to sample its nectar and to brush the pollen from its yellow dusted wings. Scarcely had the winged visitor flown away than the purple petals began to wither and fall away, leaving the seed pod on the stem. The visible change went on in this seed ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science February 1930 • Various
... followed from a third party about the 'Butterfly's' having run herself off her legs the first time she ever ran at all; and ...
— Queechy • Susan Warner
... in a tight riding-dress of green velour cloth, and her white face seemed to come from the close collar like a white lily from its sheath. She was e'er flower-like, asleep or waking, as I have said, and her pretty head was sleek and yellow, like a butterfly's wing. She was so sound that it appeared to me and Marian as though one longer breath might transform the mimicry into the actual thing—death. But by-and-by awe fell from us, as it doth ever fall, even in the presence of that which hath awed us, and my wife and I did return to our discourse ...
— A Brother To Dragons and Other Old-time Tales • Amelie Rives
... As yet the leaves had not begun to fall; they held tenaciously to the living branches, fluttering light heads in the first autumn chill. In the underbrush, where the deerberry showed hectic blotches, a squirrel worked busily, completing its winter store, while in the slanting sun rays a tawny butterfly, like a wind-blown, loosened tiger lily, danced its last mad ...
— The Voice of the People • Ellen Glasgow
... thence to Australia, are feigned to be able to send their souls away, while their bodies lie passive in the magical tent. The soul wanders over the earthly world, and even to the home of the dead, and returns, in the shape of a butterfly or of a serpent, to the body which has been lying motionless, but uncorruptible, in apparent death. The Indian Yogis can attain that third state of being, all three being unknown to Brahma, which is neither sleeping nor ...
— Lost Leaders • Andrew Lang
... I suppose) when the most aesthetic of souls will forget the snow of lilies, and the down of a butterfly's wing, to revel in the grosser joys of, say, a beefsteak. One cannot rhapsodize upon the beauties of a sunset, or contemplate the pale witchery of the moon with any real degree of poetic fervor, or any degree of comfort, while hunger gnaws at one's vitals, for comfort is ...
— The Broad Highway • Jeffery Farnol
... to see the various objects around him, though he took very little notice of them. It was a strange thing for him to be shut up in such a place, with no green trees, or grass, or flowers around; but having never turned into a butterfly before, he did not know that there was any thing ...
— Rollo's Museum • Jacob Abbott
... it, careless of consequences. Fortunate for them is it that their summer, is a short one, and the parwong not abundant, or cholera might be added to the other dangers of Arctic residence. But the days of the buttercup and the daisy, and of the butterfly and the mosquito are few. With the winter comes the all-pervading snow, and the keen, bracing north-west wind, the rosy cheek and the frozen nose; but with it also comes rugged health and a steady diet of ...
— Schwatka's Search • William H. Gilder
... shall improve. Julia, my dear, you must not allow yourself to be too much excited, you must not. Indeed you must not. Mrs Wititterly is of a most excitable nature, Sir Mulberry. The snuff of a candle, the wick of a lamp, the bloom on a peach, the down on a butterfly. You might blow her away, my lord; you might ...
— The Life And Adventures Of Nicholas Nickleby • Charles Dickens
... feeling; without the slightest hesitation or fear of its escaping him, he seizes upon the most delicate, rarest, and mildest emotion, and holds it fast, as though it had hardened at his touch, despite the fact that it may seem like the frailest butterfly to every one else. His music is never vague or dreamy; everything that is allowed to speak through it, whether it be of man or of nature, has a strictly individual passion; storm and fire acquire the ruling power of a personal ...
— Thoughts out of Season (Part One) • Friedrich Nietzsche
... though it was low in the sky, and its rays glittered on the fine webs on the grass. The leaves shivered in the soft breeze; the wood-pigeon cooed; the lark sang loud enough to make himself hoarse; the sparrows chirped; the bee buzzed, and a yellow butterfly perched on great ...
— The National Nursery Book - With 120 illustrations • Unknown
... does the sleigh, and the house is surpassed next month by a larger and finer one, and as you can't carry it about to show folks, you soon find it is too expensive to invite them to come and admire it. But the wife; oh, Lord! In a general way, there ain't more difference between a grub and a butterfly, than between a sweetheart and wife. Yet the grub and the butterfly is the same thing, only, differently rigged out, and so is the sweetheart and wife. Both critters crawl about the house, and ain't very attractive to look at, and both turn out ...
— Nature and Human Nature • Thomas Chandler Haliburton
... barrels; also with an extremely handsome young woman, dressed in an astonishing variety of colours. She was high-coloured and frank-eyed, with a great quantity of very black hair twisted into many amazing shapes on the top of her head. In manner she was as brisk as a bee and as restless as a butterfly; and being adorned with a vast quantity of bracelets, and lockets, and brooches, all of gaudy patterns, jingled at every movement. This young lady was Miss Bell Mosk, whom the frequenters of The Derby Winner called 'a dashing beauty,' and Mrs Pansey 'a painted jade.' With her glittering ornaments, ...
— The Bishop's Secret • Fergus Hume
... one day, I gathered a nosegay of wild flowers, including a species of yellow poppy, anent which Kingigamoot cherishes a pretty superstition. This flower blossoms in profusion about mid June around Cape Prince of Wales, and by the end of July has withered away. Simultaneously a tiny golden butterfly makes its appearance for about a fortnight, and also disappears. I was gravely informed by perhaps the greatest inebriate in the village that the poppy and the insect bear a similar name, for when the former has bloomed for a while it develops a pair of wings and flies away to return ...
— From Paris to New York by Land • Harry de Windt
... principally in order that others, when they looked on the display, might be awed into deference, if not into admiration, by exact knowledge of the number of dollars which dangled from the shoulders of the fashionable butterfly. This boastful parade of information as to how much one expends in this or that article implies an undertone of vulgarity peculiar to those who have nothing but money to be proud of. The cultivated and truly genteel mind is never guilty of it. Yet it somehow ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 88, February, 1865 • Various
... a greater array of brooches than had ever been seen together at one time since Cranford was a town, did Mrs Forrester, and Miss Matty, and Miss Pole appear on that memorable Tuesday evening. I counted seven brooches myself on Miss Pole's dress. Two were fixed negligently in her cap (one was a butterfly made of Scotch pebbles, which a vivid imagination might believe to be the real insect); one fastened her net neckerchief; one her collar; one ornamented the front of her gown, midway between her throat ...
— Cranford • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... had looked upon as a charming butterfly, but who, no doubt, had long shown her native shrewdness and determination in the home, stepped into her husband's shoes when he collapsed from strain, abetted by drink, and now competes in the insurance business with the best of the men. But she had borne the last of her children ...
— The Living Present • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton
... over these? "Truly," the Saturday Review wrote, "when little Jenny had climbed to the top of the mast, resting on the powerful shoulders of Orso, and from this eminence, suspended above the earth, in danger of death, she outstretched her arms and poised like a butterfly, the circus became silent and all eyes and hearts followed with trembling the movements of this wonderful child. That he who saw her on the mast or on a horse," concluded the Saturday Review, "will never ...
— Sielanka: An Idyll • Henryk Sienkiewicz
... physical body is merely a temporary vehicle for the soul which the latter discards at the proper time. It has nothing to do with the real being of the soul. It is merely the shell which is discarded by the soul, as the chrysalis shell is discarded by the butterfly when it spreads its wings for its aerial flight ...
— Mystic Christianity • Yogi Ramacharaka
... Off hunting for gophers, I suppose. But here are the travelers at last," and he hurried down the road toward the approaching train, the cat bounding along at his side, or running off every few feet, now this way, now that, to chase a butterfly or mosquito hawk. Once, in her haste to overtake her master, she encountered a horned toad. With a spring to one side, and a loud "spst!" she passed it, for this pet of Father Uria was acquainted with these hated objects, but could never overcome her intense horror of them. We are ...
— Old Mission Stories of California • Charles Franklin Carter
... herself; and Mrs. Clinton was not one to perform a mother's duty faithfully in instilling right views of life into her daughter's mind. Thus, with a depth of feeling, and rich gifts of mind, Alice fluttered on her way like a light-winged butterfly, her soul's pure wells of tender thought unknown to her. How many millions pass through a whole long life, with the deepest and holiest secrets of their being still unlocked by their heedless hands! How few see aught to live for, but the outward sunshine of prosperity, which is an ...
— Words of Cheer for the Tempted, the Toiling, and the Sorrowing • T. S. Arthur
... with little incoherent murmurs, gazed at him, wept over him, kissed him again. All the troubles of the intervening days of sadness and privation faded away from her like a disused chrysalis, and she sparkled with life and love like a butterfly new born. ...
— For Love of Country - A Story of Land and Sea in the Days of the Revolution • Cyrus Townsend Brady
... that man his ability to write and say what he thought. I studied his profile and admired its worldly distinction. It was a fine modern profile, the straightness of it broken by the silken point of his well-kept moustache, by the perfect curve of his shoulder, and by the butterfly's wing of ...
— The Inferno • Henri Barbusse
... the long, long summer hours, The golden light should lie, And thick young herbs and groups of flowers Stand in their beauty by. The oriole should build and tell His love-tale close beside my cell; The idle butterfly Should rest him here, and there be heard The ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 13, No. 76, February, 1864 • Various
... hurried departure. Could he have been ignorant that ours is, in general, greater than the Periclean for the very reason that the Divinity is neither the devil nor a bungler; that three thousand years of human consciousness is not nothing; that a whole is greater than its part, and a butterfly than a chrysalis? But it was the assumption that it was therefore in any way great in the abstract that occasioned my profound astonishment, and indeed contempt. Civilisation, if it means anything, can ...
— Prince Zaleski • M.P. Shiel
... the old Louise," said the major merrily; "still the gay, coquettish, unsteady butterfly, who, with its bright, variegated wings, knows how to escape, even when fairly caught in the toils. I love you just as you are, Louise; I rejoice to find you just what I left you. You will make me young again, child; by your side I will learn again to laugh and ...
— Frederick The Great and His Family • L. Muhlbach
... the same manner by each individual, performed with eager delight by each breed, and without the end being known,—for the young pointer can no more know that he points to aid his master, than the white butterfly knows why she lays her eggs on the leaf of the cabbage,—I cannot see that these actions differ essentially from true instincts. If we were to see one kind of wolf, when young and without any training, as soon as it scented its prey, stand motionless like a statue, and then slowly crawl ...
— On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection • Charles Darwin
... mysterious coves, or strike across the slanting sunlight poured from clefts in the impendent hills. Inshore the substance of the ice sparkled here and there with iridescence like the plumelets of a butterfly's wing under the microscope, wherever light happened to catch the jagged or oblique flaws ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece • John Addington Symonds
... go on excursions for sport, guides would be placed at their disposal, and that all who wished to do so could at any time travel through the country without the slightest fear of molestation. For some time affairs remained in the same condition. The doctor went daily on shore with butterfly and beetle nets, tin boxes, and other paraphernalia. He was generally accompanied by a couple of bluejackets, and always took a native guide to prevent the risk of being lost in the jungle, and also because the man was able ...
— Among Malay Pirates - And Other Tales Of Adventure And Peril • G. A. Henty
... know the answer! Bless you, my treasure! I must go to my housekeeping. Dear Donito Miguelito is staying with us now; you can fancy the joy of tending this saintly old man in his feebleness. I prepare myself the little dishes that please him; it is a sacred task; it is like feeding a holy butterfly. ...
— Fernley House • Laura E. Richards
... hear him. It seemed that the butterfly in her was crushed, as Dr. Forden and Miss ...
— The Dream Doctor • Arthur B. Reeve
... draperies and tragic pearls of the labyrinth he had made for her. Grimshaw offered no apologies. He was the uncrowned laureate and kings can do no wrong. He was painted by the young Sargent, of course, and by the aging Whistler—you remember the butterfly's portrait of him in a yellow kimono leaning against a black mantel? I, for one, think he was vastly amused by all this fury of admiration; he despised it and fed upon it. If he had been less great, he would have been utterly destroyed ...
— O. Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1921 • Various
... obliged to suppress, as well as he could, from the fear of being supposed to laugh at the passers-by: Sabine's shawl hung on his arm. Specht had, by a bold coup de main, possessed himself of her parasol, and walked on, hoping that some falling blossom, some passing butterfly, might afford him a pretext for beginning a conversation with her. But this was no easy matter, for Fink was on the other side. He was in one of his most malevolent moods, and Sabine could not help laughing against her will at his unmerciful ...
— Debit and Credit - Translated from the German of Gustav Freytag • Gustav Freytag
... is making a meditation on any subject, the memory of it is lost at once, just as if it had never been thought of. If it reads, what is read is not remembered nor dwelt upon; neither is it otherwise with vocal prayer. Accordingly, the restless little butterfly of the memory has its wings burnt now, and it cannot fly. The will must be fully occupied in loving, but it understands not how it loves; the understanding, if it understands, does not understand how it understands—at ...
— The Life of St. Teresa of Jesus • Teresa of Avila
... that silk [61] is originally spun from the bowels of a caterpillar, and that it composes the golden tomb, from whence a worm emerges in the form of a butterfly. Till the reign of Justinian, the silk-worm who feed on the leaves of the white mulberry-tree were confined to China; those of the pine, the oak, and the ash, were common in the forests both of Asia and Europe; but as their education is more difficult, and their produce ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 4 • Edward Gibbon
... stimulate his fancy. Some beautiful spring day, perhaps, after he has enjoyed an excursion to a field or meadow or wood, he will want to follow Andersen's Thumbelina in her travels. He will follow her as she floats on a lily pad, escapes a frog of a husband, rides on a butterfly, lives in the house of a field-mouse, escapes a mole of a husband, and then rides on the back of a friendly swallow to reach the south land and to become queen of the flowers. Here there is much play of fancy. But even when the episodes are homely and ...
— A Study of Fairy Tales • Laura F. Kready
... arresting its flight, hovered waiting. So soon as I came under its radiance, it flew slowly on, lingering now and then above spots where the ground was rocky. Every time I looked up, it seemed to have grown larger, and at length gave me an attendant shadow. Plainly a bird-butterfly, it flew with a certain swallowy double. Its wings were very large, nearly square, and flashed all the colours of the rainbow. Wondering at their splendour, I became so absorbed in their beauty that I stumbled over a low rock, and ...
— Lilith • George MacDonald
... I know him better, and he says some very bright things occasionally. This is the poem. I am sending it so that you'll see how mistaken I was at first in assuming that Mrs. Blythe was just a kind-hearted little social butterfly, who had taken up housing betterment as a fad. Some of the divine fire that inspired the great reformers of all the ages must burn in her soul, or she couldn't have written this poem that she calls ...
— Mary Ware's Promised Land • Annie Fellows Johnston
... absent from home the greater part of the time and could not attend to the education of his little girl as he would like to do. His wife was not of our faith and was also too busily occupied to look after the child. He did not mention that her occupation was that of society butterfly, who sacrificed homelife, husband and child in the pursuit of pleasure. Would Reverend Mother kindly undertake the charge of his little Nita's education, spiritual as well as intellectual? Would she be to the child what father and mother ought to be ...
— The Alchemist's Secret • Isabel Cecilia Williams
... figure, in act of stealing the rigid form, and to the awful yet strangely beautiful face of the messenger of gloom, she had given the streaming hair, the sunken, cavernous but wonderfully radiant eyes of Moritz Retzsch's weird image of Death. A white butterfly fluttered upward, and in mid-air—neither descending nor drifting, but waiting—poised on outspread pinions, hovered the Angel of the Resurrection holding out his hands. Behind and beneath the Destroyer, rolled dense shadows, and all the light in this picture rayed out from the plumes above, ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson
... autumnal colchicum begin to appear; a month after Gouts and Rheumatisms, for which they grow, have left Vichy and are returned to Paris for the winter. We arrived long before this, in the midst of the butterfly month of July. It was warm enough then for a more southern summer, and both insect and vegetable life seemed at their acme. The flowers, even while the scythes were gleaming that were shortly to unfound ...
— Blackwoods Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 365, March, 1846 • Various
... absent:—your house affairs must call you hence—or you have directions to give to your children—or the room is too hot, or too cold—the window must be opened—or door shut—or the candle wants snuffing. Nay, without these interruptions, the simple motion of your eye may provoke a speaker; a butterfly, or the figure in a carpet may engage your attention in preference to him; or if these objects be absent, the simply averting your eye, looking through the window in quest of outward objects, will show that your mind has not been abstracted, and will display to him at least your wish ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. IV • Maria Edgeworth
... forward a little, holding on with his left hand. Next instant in the light of the rising sun I saw a knife flash, saw also that the point of it had been driven through the lower lip of Jana's trunk, pinning it to the bough like a butterfly ...
— The Ivory Child • H. Rider Haggard
... rather haystack roofed over, and with hay protruding and hanging out. An ox feeding, and putting up his muzzle to pull down a mouthful of hay; but seeing me, a stranger, in the upper part of the field, he remains long gazing, and finally betakes himself to feeding again. A solitary butterfly flitting to and fro, blown slightly on its course by a cool September wind,—the coolness of which begins to be tempered by a bright, glittering sun. There is dew on the grass. In front, beyond ...
— Passages From The American Notebooks, Volume 1 • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... and Harris, early in the nineteenth century, we encounter examples more nearly typical of the child's book as we regard it to-day. Among them Harris's "Cabinet" is noticeable. The first four volumes, "The Butterfly's Ball," "The Peacock at Home," "The Lion's Masquerade," and "The Elephant's Ball," were reprinted a few years ago, with the original illustrations by Mulready carefully reproduced. A coloured ...
— Children's Books and Their Illustrators • Gleeson White
... been people silly enough to be led away by sights, sounds, colours, and unrealities, to follow a course of life for which they are not suited, either by education, position, or tastes. No one acts the part of a butterfly among school-boys better than the black-eyed Gipsy girl has done among "fast-goers," swells, and fops. In ninety-nine cases out of a hundred she has trotted them out to perfection and then left them in the lurch, and those, when they have come to their ...
— Gipsy Life - being an account of our Gipsies and their children • George Smith
... want with Victorine?' demanded the bonne. 'Is not the old mother enough for one while, to feast her eyes on her an' Lanty Callaghan, now he has shed the marmiton's slough, and come out in old Ireland's colours, like a butterfly from a palmer? La Jeunesse, instead of Laurent ...
— A Modern Telemachus • Charlotte M. Yonge
... the Monarch Butterfly may be collected upon the milkweed and brought in, so that the whole life history or metamorphosis of this beautiful insect, from the egg through the larva or caterpillar stage and the pupa or chrysalis stage to the adult butterfly, ...
— Scouting For Girls, Official Handbook of the Girl Scouts • Girl Scouts
... beginning to steal into the room. How strange it seemed. Except for the glazed rotunda part its long walls, divided into narrow panels separated by an order of flat pilasters, presented, depicted on a black background and in vivid colours, slender women with butterfly wings and lean youths with narrow birds' wings. The effect was supposed to be Pompeiian and Rita and I had often laughed at the delirious fancy of some enriched shopkeeper. But still it was a display of fancy, a ...
— The Arrow of Gold - a story between two notes • Joseph Conrad
... indifference to mice pleases me better than it pleases my household. From an economic point of view, Lux is not worth her salt. Huxley's cat, be it remembered, was never known to attack anything larger and fiercer than a butterfly. "I doubt whether he has the heart to kill a mouse," wrote the proud possessor of this prodigy; "but I saw him catch and eat the first butterfly of the season, and I trust that the germ of courage thus manifested may develop with ...
— Americans and Others • Agnes Repplier
... Yes, this was going to be one of his good days—he willed it so. The mood was not there certainly, but then, now the finishing of the book had become a pressing necessity, the mood never was there; it was like a tantalizing butterfly that flitted a second in his face and then led him a desperate chase through a tangle of undergrowth that ...
— In the Mist of the Mountains • Ethel Turner
... spoke through her lips. All the poetry of this most ancient of religions centres in the figure of its little Vestal,—child-bride of ghosts,—as she flutters, [144] like some wonderful white-and-crimson butterfly, before the shrine of the Invisible. Even in these years of change, when she must go to the public school, she continues to represent all that is delightful in Japanese girlhood; for her special home-training keeps her reverent, innocent, dainty in all ...
— Japan: An Attempt at Interpretation • Lafcadio Hearn
... his transports the lure was still there. She was like a butterfly, he thought, yellow and white or blue and gold, fluttering over a hedge of ...
— The Titan • Theodore Dreiser
... said he, 'this is a sublime moment! To see you, the gay companion, the good fellow, the butterfly, I may say, of other days, a member of this great body is certainly soul-stirring! So you have realized your ambition? What next? The Senate? And then—then?' he pointed upward, 'higher yet? and still higher? Ha! The White House? Who knows?' he ...
— The Statesmen Snowbound • Robert Fitzgerald
... prayed and watched in faithfulness to mother and son—she observed him come out and wander round the garden in great joy. He lifted up the soiled rose and put it in his coat; he released a butterfly caught in some mesh; he buried his face in fragrant honeysuckle. Then she understood that his heart was full of love, and was sure that it would be ...
— Beside the Bonnie Brier Bush • Ian Maclaren
... of the French language and manners, general ignorance, Jacobinism, falsehood, licentiousness, and impiety! The first four or five charges might have been proved with little difficulty, if it were worth while to break a butterfly on a wheel, but it was necessary to distort the meaning and even the text of the original in order to give any ...
— Little Memoirs of the Nineteenth Century • George Paston
... out of the cocoon of the three bodies it escapes forever from the law of relativity and becomes the ineffable Ever-Existent. {FN43-10} Behold the butterfly of Omnipresence, its wings etched with stars and moons and suns! The soul expanded into Spirit remains alone in the region of lightless light, darkless dark, thoughtless thought, intoxicated with its ecstasy of joy in God's dream of ...
— Autobiography of a YOGI • Paramhansa Yogananda
... signal the friends above were informed of the success of his ruse and were now rapidly drawing them up. At first she was too much absorbed in the sport to notice this. When at length her attention was aroused by seeing the great distance of those beneath her, like a butterfly she was about to flit away, when the crafty Hiku, who was ever on the alert, clapped the cocoanut-shells together, imprisoning her within them, and was then quickly drawn up ...
— Hawaiian Folk Tales - A Collection of Native Legends • Various
... of replevin? This whimsical view of the case only exasperated him the more as it presented the utter hopelessness of approaching her—of ever seeing her again—and, when the dogs came chasing an utterly inconsequential and useless butterfly in his direction, he pelted them with stones until they yelped. Hang the dogs, anyhow. It was all ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume V. (of X.) • Various
... comes and goes irregularly from flower to flower; as the butterfly flutters in a zig-zag course from one sunny place on the garden wall to another—or, as an old woman runs from wrong omnibus to wrong omnibus, at the Elephant and Castle, before she can discover the right one; as a countryman blunders up one street, and down another, before ...
— Hide and Seek • Wilkie Collins
... the thing produced being of the same kind as that which produced it. Very few creatures reproduce after their own kind; they reproduce something which has the potentiality of becoming that which their parents were. Thus the butterfly lays an egg, which egg can become a caterpillar, which caterpillar can become a chrysalis, which chrysalis can become a butterfly; and though I freely grant that the machines cannot be said to have more than the germ of a true reproductive system at present, have we not just seen that they have ...
— Erewhon • Samuel Butler
... say that the father of all men and animals was the butterfly, Cherwit Make (earth-maker), who fluttered down from the clouds to the Blue Cliffs at the junction of the Verde and Salt Rivers, and from his own sweat made men. As the people multiplied they grew selfish ...
— Myths And Legends Of Our Own Land, Complete • Charles M. Skinner
... - I am sitting on the top of the cars with a mill party from Missouri going west for his health. Desolate flat prairie upon all hands. Here and there a herd of cattle, a yellow butterfly or two; a patch of wild sunflowers; a wooden house or two; then a wooden church alone in miles of waste; then a windmill to pump water. When we stop, which we do often, for emigrants and freight travel together, the kine first, the men after, the whole plain is heard singing with cicadae. ...
— The Letters of Robert Louis Stevenson - Volume 1 • Robert Louis Stevenson
... word usually means a milksop, but here it is equivalent to 'a butterfly', 'a weathercock'—a man of changeable disposition. A ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn - Volume IV. • Aphra Behn
... with Plato, Shakespeare and a throng Of bards beneath some plane-tree's cool eclipse To gaze on glowing meads where, lingering long, Psyche's large Butterfly her honey sips; Or, mingling free in choirs of German song, To learn of Goethe's ...
— The Poems of Sidney Lanier • Sidney Lanier
... fortnight she had succeeded in recovering that frank confidence, that childish prattle, which seemed to have been benumbed between the narrow walls of the nunnery. It might be said that on leaving the cocoon the butterfly recognized all the flowers, for it seemed to be enough for her to spread her wings for a moment and warm herself in the sun's rays to lose all the stiffness of the chrysalis. This new life manifested itself in her whole nature. Everything ...
— The Social Cancer - A Complete English Version of Noli Me Tangere • Jose Rizal
... in a smoky town, was my wear, relieved by a few touches of blue. And I should not go as a butterfly, but as a quiet worker in my dark things. I need only buy a new walking costume, and a fresh dinner dress. The costume difficulty was disposed of. Then again, I had been without a day's change for five years; and here was the prospect of one I should enjoy. ...
— Fifty-Two Stories For Girls • Various
... Administration Concluded 1905-1908 Visits from Humperdinck and Puccini The California Earthquake Madame Sembrich's Generosity to the Suffering Musicians "Madama Butterfly" "Manon Lescaut" "Fedora" Production and Prohibition of "Salome" A Criticism of the Work "Adriana Lecouvreur" ...
— Chapters of Opera • Henry Edward Krehbiel
... longer I live the more I condemn and deplore a rackety life for any girl, and therefore if I do what I myself think right by her and not what others may think right, she shall never be a London butterfly. Would that we could give our girls the ideal society which I suppose we all dream for them—that of the wise and the good of all ages, of the young and merry of their own. No barbarous crowds, no despotic fashions, no senseless omnipotence of custom (see "Childe Harold," somewhere).[77] I ...
— Lady John Russell • Desmond MacCarthy and Agatha Russell
... you can tell us another bookful about water and fish, and crabs and sky," said Dodo. "So we shall have a bird book, and a butterfly book, and ...
— Citizen Bird • Mabel Osgood Wright and Elliott Coues
... was gay; and with the polite world gayety ranks as happiness, and commands the envy of the crowd. Nobody envies the quiet matron whose domestic life flows onward with the placidity of a sluggish stream. It is the butterfly queen of the hour whom people admire and envy. Lady Judith, blazing in diamonds at a court ball, beautiful, daring, insolent, had half the town for her slaves and courtiers. Even women flattered and fawned upon her, delighted to be acknowledged ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol. 5 • Various
... and insects vie even with flowers. "One fine red admiral butterfly," says Jefferies,[13] "whose broad wings, stretched out like fans, looked simply splendid floating round and round the willows which marked the margin of a dry pool. His blue markings were really blue—blue velvet—his red and the white stroke shone as if sunbeams were in his wings. I wish there ...
— The Beauties of Nature - and the Wonders of the World We Live In • Sir John Lubbock
... howls, a scuffle, a flutter; Ike and Urb fled up the stairs, and the Phoenix swept out through the doorway. The children followed and the Phoenix settled on Robert, 'like a butterfly on a rose,' as Anthea said afterwards, and wriggled into the breast of his Norfolk jacket, 'like an eel into mud,' ...
— The Phoenix and the Carpet • E. Nesbit
... serious historical criticism of these stories would be to break a butterfly. So much as this even has been said only because these wretched fables have gone throughout the world, and it is time that they were swept away into the dust-heaps of history. They represent Mr. and Mrs. Washington as affected and priggish people, given ...
— George Washington, Vol. I • Henry Cabot Lodge
... experience to the believer which will be fraught with inestimably good things; that is, the act of dying, and not merely the being dead. It is no doubt as necessary to the nature of the soul, to its psychology, its soul-life, as the changes of the worm, chrysalis, and butterfly, are to the insect. And thus, as in all other things, where sin abounded, grace much more abounds, and even death, like a cross, is turned into a ministration of ...
— Catharine • Nehemiah Adams
... has a soothing effect on me," he explained. "Yellow excites me too much—makes me restless—makes me want to sail 'beyond the bourne of sunset'. I looked at that surge of golden glow down there today till I got all worked up and thought my life had been an awful failure. I found a dead butterfly and had a little funeral—buried it in the fern corner. And I thought I hadn't been any more use in the world than that poor little butterfly. Oh, I was woeful, master. Then I got me this hollyhock and sat down here to look at it alone. When a man's alone, master, he's ...
— Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1909 to 1922 • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... all at once, 'O! it is much more respectable to be grave and look wise.' 'He has reversed the Pythagorean discipline, by being first talkative, and then silent. He reverses the course of Nature too: he was first the gay butterfly, and then the creeping worm.' Johnson laughed loud and long at this expansion and illustration of what he himself ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 3 • Boswell, Edited by Birkbeck Hill
... the spider's web back in its place, that once has been swept away? Can you put the apple again on the bough, which fell at our feet to-day? Can you put the lily-cup back on the stem, and cause it to live and grow? Can you mend the butterfly's broken wing, that you crushed with a hasty blow? Can you put the bloom again on the grape, or the grape again on the vine? Can you put the dewdrops back on the flowers, and make them sparkle and shine? Can you put the ...
— Our Boys - Entertaining Stories by Popular Authors • Various
... of its dazzling glitter still in her eyes, and had attempted to resume an ordinary existence, to manage her little income and her modest household, she had been the object of a thousand impudent exploitations, of frauds that were easy in view of the ignorance of this poor butterfly that was frightened by reality and came into collision with all its unknown difficulties. Living in Felicia's house, the responsibility became still more serious by reason of the wastefulness introduced long ago by the father and continued by the daughter, ...
— The Nabob • Alphonse Daudet
... Magi, and recited a little poem which declared that, as each one had himself drawn out of the urn of Fate, no one could be angry, let him have procured for himself honor or derision—Fate, and not Merit, being here the ruler. Two little boys, with huge butterfly wings and in flowing garments, bore the presents to the guests. A number, which had been purposely given to one of the elder ladies, was now called out, and the boys brought forward a large, heavy, brown earthen jug. To the same hung ...
— O. T. - A Danish Romance • Hans Christian Andersen
... Morse Code, you know." He looked about half-interestedly and began kicking leaves into a pile, Peter doing the same. If Nick had any particular purpose in this business, at least you would not have supposed so. He seemed as aimless as a butterfly. "Are you going to ...
— Pee-wee Harris on the Trail • Percy Keese Fitzhugh
... Now the butterfly dance followed the others. This was danced by the boys and girls together, and the pairs were equal in size, age and the color of their garments. When all the dances had ended, the dancers marched out with the goose-step. The willow-spray dancers followed the swallow dancers, and Aduan hastened ...
— The Chinese Fairy Book • Various
... constant danger to the foot of the mountain in safety. "But," continued the professor, speaking of this incident to some of his friends, "I was richly repaid for all my trouble and peril, for when I reached the foot of the mountain I captured a new and very rare species of butterfly." Multitudes of practical men cannot appreciate such devotion to pure science, but it is this absorbing passion and pure grit that enable the devotees of science to enlarge its ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 586, March 26, 1887 • Various
... oak-tree tall; And silver caskets at his left support Toy-gardens, Syrian scents enshrined in gold And alabaster, cakes of every sort That in their ovens the pastrywomen mould, When with white meal they mix all flowers that bloom, Oil-cakes and honey-cakes. There stand portrayed Each bird, each butterfly; and in the gloom Of foliage climbing high, and downward weighed By graceful blossoms, do the young Loves play Like nightingales, and perch on every tree, And flit, to try their wings, from spray to spray. Then see the gold, the ...
— Theocritus • Theocritus
... Attraction, capillary Barley, to transplant, by Messrs. Hardy Beetle, instinct of Books noticed Butterfly, instinct of Calendar, horticultural ——, agricultural Columnea Schiedeana Dahlia, the, by Mr. Edwards Digging machine, Samuelson's Eggs, to keep Farm leases, by Mr. Morton Frost, plants injured by Grapes, colouring Green, German, by Mr. Prideaux ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 185, May 14, 1853 • Various
... several minutes and the canoe drifted slowly on while the two boys gazed with delight at the novel beauty that surrounded them. The dark, stagnant water through which they drifted was nearly hidden from view by great white and gold water-lilies and the butterfly flowers of water hyacinths, the trees on either side stood like beautiful gray ghosts under their festoons of Spanish moss through which flashed the blazing hues of flowering orchids. Brilliant-hued paroquets ...
— The Boy Chums in the Forest - or Hunting for Plume Birds in the Florida Everglades • Wilmer M. Ely
... new to us; and indeed, my two companions had fresh ways of putting things that seemed to make them their own in a manner. Yvon maintained that gaiety was the best that life had to give; that the butterfly being the type of the human soul, the nearer man could come to his prototype, the better for him and for all. Sorrow and suffering, he cried, were a blot on the scheme, a mistake, a concession to the devil; if all would but spread their wings ...
— Rosin the Beau • Laura Elizabeth Howe Richards
... who no longer "smacks at wretched wine or praises detestable custard." A lurking thorn, too, is worrying him throughout this tour; he has "outrun the constable"; that is to say, his expenses have outrun his means, and he will have to make up for this butterfly flight by toiling like a ...
— Oliver Goldsmith • Washington Irving
... by means of torches, for it is sufficient to place a light in a low and open place to attract a multitude of phalenes and other nocturnal insects. But to have handsome lepidopters, it is best to obtain caterpillars, feed them with the leaves of the plant on which they are found, and pierce the butterfly as soon as he has undergone his change, for the specimens caught in their flight ...
— Movement of the International Literary Exchanges, between France and North America from January 1845 to May, 1846 • Various
... them close in the warm palm of your hand for a time and the dried bits will quiver, the sides partly separate, and behold! you have brought back to life a beautiful Euvanessa, or mourning-cloak butterfly. Lay it upon the snow and soon the awakened life will ebb away and it will again be stiff, as in death. If you wish, take it home, and you may warm it into activity, feed it upon a drop of syrup and freeze it again at will. Sometimes six or eight of ...
— The Log of the Sun - A Chronicle of Nature's Year • William Beebe
... anger, like most things he did, was a matter of acting. The Signor understood, and again he smiled faintly. Before he answered he carefully snuffed and trimmed the three wicks of the tall brass lamp on the table. It had a big metal shade in the shape of a butterfly, which he turned so that it screened the light from his eyes and reflected it into his ...
— Stradella • F(rancis) Marion Crawford
... variegation; colors, dichroism, trichroism; iridescence, play of colors, polychrome, maculation, spottiness, striae. spectrum, rainbow, iris, tulip, peacock, chameleon, butterfly, tortoise shell; mackerel, mackerel sky; zebra, leopard, cheetah, nacre, ocelot, ophite[obs3], mother-of-pearl, opal, marble. check, plaid, tartan, patchwork; marquetry-, parquetry; mosaic, tesserae[obs3], strigae[obs3]; chessboard, checkers, chequers; ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... Sis' Butterfly aimed to work all right, But 'er wings dey was heavy, an' 'er head too light; So she riz in de air, 'ca'ze she see she was made Jes' to fly in de sun in de beauty parade. An' she ain't by 'erself in dat, in dat— An' she ...
— Daddy Do-Funny's Wisdom Jingles • Ruth McEnery Stuart
... across those grave courts and passages turned to glance curiously at the pretty little widow. She had the air of a person not used to be on foot and unattended—a kind of aerial butterfly air, as of one who belonged to the useless and ornamental class of society; utterly different from the appearance of such humble female pedestrians as were wont to make the courts and alleys of the Temple a short-cut ...
— Fenton's Quest • M. E. Braddon
... hiss of raindrop spilling down, The purr of cat, the trill of bird, And ev'ry whispering I've heard From willy wind in leaves and grass, And all the distant drones that pass. A song as tender and as light As flower, or butterfly in flight; And when I saw it opening, I'd ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... starry train, Sweetly scintillant again, Never sleep while I repose On the petals of the rose. Sweeter couch hath who than I? Quoth the brilliant Butterfly. ...
— Choice Specimens of American Literature, And Literary Reader - Being Selections from the Chief American Writers • Benj. N. Martin
... orchards, where there is some grass all the year round under the shelter of the apple trees; or when a springlike morning appears, about the time of St. Valentine's Day, and the thrushes are singing love-songs to their mates, and the first brimstone butterfly has dared to leave his winter seclusion for the fickle sunshine, to realize that Spring is coming, and the active work of the farm is about to recommence. There is a superstition that when the master sees the firstling of the flock, ...
— Grain and Chaff from an English Manor • Arthur H. Savory
... Brown Anger Charles and Mary Lamb "There Was a Little Girl" H. W. Longfellow The Reformation of Godfrey Gore William Brighty Rands The Best Firm Walter G. Doty A Little Page's Song William Alexander Percy How the Little Kite Learned to Fly Unknown The Butterfly and the Bee William Lisle Bowles The Butterfly Adelaide O'Keefe Morning Jane Taylor Buttercups and Daisies Mary Howitt The Ant and the Cricket Unknown After Wings Sarah M. B. Piatt Deeds of Kindness ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 3 (of 4) • Various
... with a tender flush of scarlet, like a rose bursting into blossom; a garland of lilies-of-the-valley confined the scattered curls of her small, round head,—and two peacock feathers quivered amusingly, like the feelers of a butterfly, above the ...
— A Reckless Character - And Other Stories • Ivan Turgenev
... Paris—the great pageant operas like "Le Prophete," "Lohengrin," and Goldmark's "Queen of Sheba." With the last it shares one element which brings it into relationship also with a number of much younger and less significant works—operas like Mascagni's "Iris," Puccini's "Madama Butterfly," and Giordano's "Siberia." In the score of "Aida" there is a slight infusion of that local color which is lavishly employed in decorating its externals. The pomp and pageantry of the drama are Egyptian and ancient; ...
— A Book of Operas - Their Histories, Their Plots, and Their Music • Henry Edward Krehbiel
... many words? It is absurd to believe anything else; absurd to believe that man was meant to live like the butterfly, flitting without care from flower to flower, and, like the butterfly, die helpless at the first shower or the first winter's frost. Whatever the text means, it cannot ...
— Sermons for the Times • Charles Kingsley
... I am a Butterfly, and you will see that very soon I shall become most lovely, such gloriously tinted feathers will deck my wings, all the world will be lost in admiration, ...
— Parables from Flowers • Gertrude P. Dyer
... figure was that of a young woman with gay garments and jewelry (Duran, Historia, cap. 94). In the Codex Telleriano-Remensis she is assigned as synonyms Ichpochtli, the Virgin, and Itzpapalotl, literally "the obsidian butterfly," but which was probably applied to a peculiar ...
— Rig Veda Americanus - Sacred Songs Of The Ancient Mexicans, With A Gloss In Nahuatl • Various
... establishment, with a widow's pension of sixteen pounds sterling, were the means of subsistence for herself and her family. When she first returned to Cartside a few religious friends called to welcome her home. The gay and wealthy part of her former acquaintances, who, like the butterfly, spread their silken wings only to bask in the warmth of a summer sun, found not their way to the lonely cottage of an afflicted widow. Her worth, though in after-life rendered splendid by its own fruits, was at this time ...
— The Power of Faith - Exemplified In The Life And Writings Of The Late Mrs. Isabella Graham. • Isabella Graham
... acquainted with the manners of these wandering enthusiasts, "dance, or we will scourge thee with our bow-strings till thou spin as never top did under schoolboy's lash." Thus shouted the reckless warders, as much delighted at having a subject to tease as a child when he catches a butterfly, or a schoolboy upon ...
— The Talisman • Sir Walter Scott
... here seen withdrawing in order that a higher manifestation of the spirit may take place. The same principle can be seen at work in the insect kingdom, when the caterpillar's tremendous vitality passes over into the short-lived beauty of the butterfly. In the human being it is responsible for that metamorphosis of organic processes which occurs on the path from the metabolic to the nervous system, and which we came to recognize as the precondition for the appearance ...
— Man or Matter • Ernst Lehrs
... fairy caught a butterfly— Swing, cling, columbine! The last that dared to float and fly When pale the sun did shine; For spring is slow to come, my dear, Is slow to come again, And far away doth summer play, Beyond the ...
— Harper's Young People, March 9, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... to him most. One golden "Venice" of the painter, which hung in a picture-store, always delighted him—a stretch of the Lagoon with a cluster of butterfly sails and a far- away line of palaces, towers, and domes lying like a string of pearls on the horizon. There was another of Kensett's, a point of rocks thrust out like a mailed hand into a blue sea; and a McEntee of October woods, all brown and gold; but the Gifford ...
— The Fortunes of Oliver Horn • F. Hopkinson Smith
... feel about saying—that word that I don't say. Besides, what you call them are made-up things the People of the Hills have never heard of—little buzzflies with butterfly wings and gauze petticoats, and shiny stars in their hair, and a wand like a schoolteacher's cane for punishing bad boys and rewarding good ...
— Puck of Pook's Hill • Rudyard Kipling
... a measurer of tape Turns butterfly and dandy, Assumes their grace, their air, their shape, I wish a pump were handy! I never to such balls will go, Those poor pretexts for prancing; Where Jenkins dislocates his toe, And Tomkins ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 13, No. 355., Saturday, February 7, 1829 • Various
... eclat to her Excellency, he pictured to himself an entrancing dream—that of awaking a joyful sympathy between himself and Cyrene through this highly congratulatory matter. She would smile upon him so divinely, so highly applaud his zeal, and begin to compare him favourably with that new butterfly, Repentigny, whose day must ...
— The False Chevalier - or, The Lifeguard of Marie Antoinette • William Douw Lighthall
... sex, it's a butterfly; but it's all the same, as my metaphysical Uncle Ogilvy would undertake to prove to you, thus, a butterfly is white and a gull is white,—therefore, a gull ...
— The Lighthouse • Robert Ballantyne
... ray of sunlight—a second ray of sunlight—the little flowers seem to wake up joyously. They all have their drop of dew which trembles—the chilly leaves are stirred with the breath of morning—in the foliage the birds sing unseen—all the flowers seem to be saying their prayers. Loves on butterfly wings frolic over the meadows and make the tall plants wave—one sees nothing—yet everything is there—the landscape is entirely behind the veil of mist, which mounts, mounts, sucked up by the sun; and as it rises, reveals the river, plated with silver, ...
— Pictures Every Child Should Know • Dolores Bacon
... little tree that we plant today What will you be when we're old and gray? "The savings bank of the squirrel and mouse, For robin and wren an apartment house, The dressing-room of the butterfly's ball, The locust's and katydid's concert hall, The school-boy's ladder in pleasant June, The school-girl's tent in the July noon. And my leaves shall whisper them merrily, A tale of ...
— Ohio Arbor Day 1913: Arbor and Bird Day Manual - Issued for the Benefit of the Schools of our State • Various
... fact that like antecedents are invariably followed by like consequents should be sufficient for our purpose? Why should the fact that a given kind of chrysalis in a given condition will always become a butterfly within a certain time be connected with memory when it is not pretended that memory has anything to do with the invariableness with which oxygen and hydrogen when mixed in certain ...
— Selections from Previous Works - and Remarks on Romanes' Mental Evolution in Animals • Samuel Butler
... observations which G. Sandberg has made upon species of lepidoptera in South Varanger, at 69 deg. 40' north latitude. Sandberg succeeded in following the development from the egg onward of some species of the extreme north. Oeneis bore, Schn., a purely Arctic butterfly, may be taken as an example. This species has never been found outside of Arctic regions, and even there occurs only in places of purely Arctic stamp. It flies from the middle of June onward, and lays its eggs on different species of grass. The eggs ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 520, December 19, 1885 • Various
... her profile, became aware that her chin, while of an engaging firmness, had that impalpably soft texture that suggests the powdered wing of a creamy butterfly. He was surprised that he had never noticed it before. The tam slanted obligingly to the other side and left exposed the lobe of a small ear that was as rosy in tint as the delicate tiny clam shells he occasionally ...
— Where the Sun Swings North • Barrett Willoughby
... where the bonnet stays on; it has a baby bang edge a trifle curled and a substantial cushion atop to hold the hat pins; while No. 4, the one she wore on our arrival, is an elaborate evening toupie with a pompadour rolling over on itself and drooping slightly over one eye while it melts into a butterfly bow and handful of puffs on the crown that in turn end in a single ...
— People of the Whirlpool • Mabel Osgood Wright
... observed Hsi Jen, clapping her hands, after listening to her throughout. "It isn't strange then if she let me have the ten butterfly knots I asked her to tie for me only after ever so many days, and if she said that they were coarsely done, but that I should make the best of them and use them elsewhere, and that if I wanted any nice ones, I should wait until by and bye when she came ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book II • Cao Xueqin
... in those strong ripe Jewish features and those glittering eyes; and yet every line in his face was softened, sweetened; the mask of sneering faineance was gone—imploring tenderness and earnestness beamed from his whole countenance. The chrysalis case had fallen off, and disclosed the butterfly within. She sat looking at him, and passed her hand across her eyes, as if to try whether the apparition would not vanish. He, the subtle!—he, the mocker!—he, the Lucian of Alexandria!—he whose depth and power ...
— Hypatia - or, New Foes with an Old Face • Charles Kingsley
... table afresh, and to it came fearlessly the busy ant and bee, gay butterfly and bird; even the poor blind mole and humble worm were not forgotten; and with gentle words she gave to all, while each learned something of their kind little teacher; and the love that made her own heart bright shone alike ...
— Flower Fables • Louisa May Alcott
... on a hot noontide, Psyche passed down a road, where, on each side The yellow cornfields lay, although as yet Unto the stalks no sickle had been set; The lark sung over them, the butterfly Flickered from ear to ear distractedly, The kestrel hung above, the weasel peered From out the wheat-stalks on her unafeard, Along the road the trembling poppies shed On the burnt grass their crumpled leaves and red; Most lonely was it, nothing Psyche knew Unto ...
— The Earthly Paradise - A Poem • William Morris
... strengthened by bamboo fencing, and radiant with flowers of the loseille-bois,—the creole name for a sort of begonia, whose closed bud exactly resembles a pink and white dainty bivalve shell, and whose open blossom imitates the form of a butterfly. Here and there, on the grass, were nets drying, and nasses— curious fish-traps made of split bamboos interwoven and held in place with mibi stalks (the mibi is a liana heavy and tough as copper wire); and immediately behind the garden hedge ...
— Two Years in the French West Indies • Lafcadio Hearn
... a great cross, not to say an embarrassment, when she was gleefully rolling in pursuit of a charming red and gold butterfly, to find herself suddenly stopped short by an armed knight with his ...
— The Pot of Gold - And Other Stories • Mary E. Wilkins
... a prematurely aged, oily little man; a poet in bad circumstances; a decrepit butterfly chained to a disappointed inkstand, will not put out strenuous energies to retain his ancient paramour when a robust young man comes imperatively to demand his mother of him in her person. The colloquy was short between ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... Oviparous Insects I have found to be perfectly round every way, like so many Globules, of this sort I have observ'd some sorts of Spiders Eggs; and chancing the last Summer to inclose a very large and curiously painted Butterfly in a Box, intending to examine its gaudery with my Microscope, I found within a day or two after I inclos'd her, almost all the inner surface of the Box cover'd over with an infinite of exactly round Eggs, which were stuck very fast to the sides of it, and in so exactly regular and close ...
— Micrographia • Robert Hooke
... lad, his heir, was with the prince; also, the lad's sister, a wee brown sprite, very pretty, very serious, very winning, delicately moulded, costumed like the daintiest butterfly, a dear little fairyland princess, gravely willing to be friendly with the strangers, but in the beginning preferring to hold her father's hand until she could take stock of them and determine how far they were to be trusted. She must ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... long summer hours, The golden light should lie, And thick young herbs and groups of flowers Stand in their beauty by. The oriole should build and tell His love-tale, close beside my cell; The idle butterfly Should rest him there, and there be heard The ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 5 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... left the porch, though both boys looked down the lane before going in, to make sure that the queer little butterfly collector was not coming in time to interfere with their ...
— The Aeroplane Boys Flight - A Hydroplane Roundup • John Luther Langworthy
... Betsy Butterfly is the owner of a pair of such beautifully colored wings and her sweet disposition matches them so perfectly that it is a very common occurrence to hear one of the tiny dwellers in Farmer Green's meadow remark: "Why, the sun just has to smile on her!" Of course, any lady so gifted is bound to have ...
— The Tale of Cuffy Bear • Arthur Scott Bailey
... Alice lying on a lounge quite effaced Mrs. Yorke from the Doctor's mind. The next second he had taken the girl's hand, and holding it with a touch that would not have crumpled a butterfly's wings, he was taking a flitting gauge of her pulse. Mrs. Yorke continued to talk volubly, but the Doctor ...
— Gordon Keith • Thomas Nelson Page
... the same effect from every bird and bee and butterfly that crossed his path between Marchfield and the village. No yellowing spray of goldenrod, no blue-eyed ragged-robin, but symbolized the blessings of which he had been cheated. In proportion as the sun ...
— The Side Of The Angels - A Novel • Basil King
... then, to the presumption of Glaucus; he mentioned his name, but not more often than that of Clodius or of Lepidus. He affected to class them together as things of a low and ephemeral species; as things wanting nothing of the butterfly, save its innocence and its grace. Sometimes he slightly alluded to some invented debauch, in which he declared them companions; sometimes he adverted to them as the antipodes of those lofty and spiritual natures, to whose order that of Ione belonged. Blinded alike by the pride ...
— The Last Days of Pompeii • Edward George Bulwer-Lytton
... seemed so very "jolly" that he decided to stay there; so that was why Uncle Jack did not see him when he looked round. Brighteyes, after seeing her brother safely up in the tree, flew off like a bird, here and there and everywhere. First she filled both hands with dandelions. Then she saw a butterfly; down went the dandelions; off went her best hat to serve as a butterfly-net; and away she went. A pretty chase Master Butterfly led her, through last year's brambles and this year's mud, until at last he ...
— Five Mice in a Mouse-trap - by the Man in the Moon. • Laura E. Richards
... father of Clarion, the most beautiful of the race.—Spenser, Muiopotmos, or The Butterfly's Fate (1590). ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook, Vol. 3 • E. Cobham Brewer
... lay crooked, strange, unsightly, shapeless heaps of something turned outside in, or something turned inside out—wild fragments which seemed to be feebly trying to get away from themselves. And, accidentally, under one of the wild projections, they noticed a wonderfully sculptured butterfly, with transparent wings, trembling as though with a weak ...
— Best Russian Short Stories • Various
... pursuing me. He was a small, slim, clean-shaven, prim-faced man, flaxen-haired and leanjawed, between thirty and forty years of age, dressed in a gray suit and wearing a straw hat. A tin box for botanical specimens hung over his shoulder and he carried a green butterfly-net ...
— The Hound of the Baskervilles • A. Conan Doyle
... suggested the Puritan rather than the classic conception of simplicity. The immense rooms were as chill as dungeons, and the forlorn little figure in black, lost in the loneliness of their bleakness, wandered to and fro among her retinue of servants like a butterfly beating its wings against a pane ...
— Ridgway of Montana - (Story of To-Day, in Which the Hero Is Also the Villain) • William MacLeod Raine
... like a flowery expanse moved by the air. This ecstatic effect was not exclusive of facts which kept one's feet well on the earth, or on the roof of one's college barge. Out of that "giddy pleasure of the eyes" business lifted a practical front from time to time, and extended a kind of butterfly net at the end of a pole so long that it would reach anywhere, and collected pennies for the people in boats who had been singing or playing banjos or guitars or even upright pianos. For, it must be explained, there were many in that aquatic crowd who were ...
— London Films • W.D. Howells
... day old! I wonder if every butterfly comes into the world to find such queer things about him? I was born in prison. I can see right through my walls; but I can't find any door. Right below me (for I have climbed up the wall) lies a queer-looking, ...
— St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, Vol. 5, September 1878, No. 11 • Various
... she had met somewhere long ago, were presumed not to know it, but could not help remembering it, and agreeing to recognise it as a fact. A strange pleasure filled her heart. While Mrs Barnardiston sat she flitted about the room like a butterfly, looking at one thing after another, and asking now the most ignorant, now the most penetrative question, disturbing not a little the work, but sweetening the temper of the painter, as he went on with his study ...
— The Marquis of Lossie • George MacDonald
... enlivened many a day in many parts of the world as we have journeyed through life. Moreover, though purchased pictures have other values, the old cases set on the walls of one's den bring back memories that are the joy and solace of many idle moments later in life—each rarer egg, each extra butterfly picturing some day or place of keen triumph, otherwise long since forgotten. Here, for instance, is a convolvulus hawk father found killed on a mountain in Switzerland; there an Apollo I caught in the Pyrenees; here a "red burnet" with "five ...
— A Labrador Doctor - The Autobiography of Wilfred Thomason Grenfell • Wilfred Thomason Grenfell |
