"Butterfly" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... now been supplied: an artist has been found who unites in himself all desirable qualities. The beauty can now feel assured that she will be depicted with all the grace of her charms, airy, fascinating, butterfly-like, flitting among the flowers of spring. The stately father of a family can see himself surrounded by his family. Merchant, warrior, citizen, statesman—hasten one and all, wherever you may be. The artist's magnificent establishment ...
— Taras Bulba and Other Tales • Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol
... revel to his heart's content among gaudily coloured Heliconiae, Hesperiae, and Erycinae, or watch the larger butterflies of the restricted genus Papilio, slowly winging their lazy flight among the trees just beyond the reach of his insect net. A common butterfly here (Peridromia amphinome) has the singular habit of frequenting the trunks and limbs of the trees where it rests with expanded wings, and generally manages adroitly to shift its position, and escape when swept at with the ...
— Narrative Of The Voyage Of H.M.S. Rattlesnake, Commanded By The Late Captain Owen Stanley, R.N., F.R.S. Etc. During The Years 1846-1850. Including Discoveries And Surveys In New Guinea, The Louisiade • John MacGillivray
... new boarders on which to expend time and thought, and Alexina was living a life of rigid usefulness, studying shorthand in secret and helping with the house work, for the Russell mansion was large and servants not numerous. She also made dainty things for that radiant butterfly Madelaine. Alex was a born milliner, but she rather despised her gift, even ...
— The Pleasant Street Partnership - A Neighborhood Story • Mary F. Leonard
... is easy to fancy how Pinocchio felt! He longed to be a cricket, or a mouse, so that he might hide in some hole. How he wished that he were a butterfly or a bird and could fly ...
— Pinocchio in Africa • Cherubini
... pressing her cold little face against the colder window-pane, "I hate winter, and I hate lessons. I would give up being a person in a minute if I might be a—a—what would I best like to be? Oh yes, I know—a butterfly. Butterflies never see winter, and they certainly never have any lessons or any kind of work to do. I ...
— The Cuckoo Clock • Mrs. Molesworth
... machine and Kitty's learnin' to run the thing is about all the returns that Jim can show for the money he's spent in educatin' her. I don't mean," he added, with a quick look at Patches, as though he feared to be misunderstood, "that Kitty's one of them good-for-nothin' butterfly girls. She ain't that by a good deal. Why, she was raised right here in this neighborhood, an' we love her the same as if she was our own. She can cook a meal or make a dress 'bout as well as her mother, an' does it, too; an' she can ride a horse or throw a ...
— When A Man's A Man • Harold Bell Wright
... is sometimes called the borer. This insect does not sting. No thanks to him, though, for not stinging. He has no instrument to sting with. For aught I know, he may have ever so good a will to sting; but he has no power to do so, any more than a grasshopper or a butterfly. ...
— Mike Marble - His Crotchets and Oddities. • Uncle Frank
... half smiling, "it is a pity to think even of a crushed butterfly; but indeed, Colin, if you can bear to listen to me, I think I can show you that it all has been a blessing even by sight, as well as, of course, by faith. Only remember the unsatisfactoriness of our condition—the never seeing or hearing from one another after that day when Mr. Beauchamp ...
— The Clever Woman of the Family • Charlotte M. Yonge
... Leghorn hat, spectacles, and a green gauze net, came sauntering by the garden where the ex-engine-driver was pulling a basketful of scarlet runners: that the prisoner had suddenly dropped his beans, dashed out into the road, and catching the mild gentleman by the throat had wrenched the butterfly net from his hand and belaboured him with ...
— Noughts and Crosses • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... organ and function; between organs, mode of life, and environment, leads up to a general law which applies to all plants and animals. The law of growth and development from the simple germ to the mature life form can be seen in the butterfly, the frog, and the sunflower. These laws and others in biology, if developed on concrete specimens, give much insight into the whole realm of nature, more stimulating by far than that based on scientific classifications, as orders, ...
— The Elements of General Method - Based on the Principles of Herbart • Charles A. McMurry
... in his shirt-sleeves, carrying a butterfly-net and a botany-can. He goes straight up to the bookshelf and takes down a book, which he begins to read on ...
— Plays by August Strindberg, Second series • August Strindberg
... woe-begone Christians!" exclaims the poet; "ye who, in the shortness of your sight, see no reason for advancing in the right path! Know ye not that we are worms, born to compose the angelic butterfly, provided we throw off the husks that impede ...
— Stories from the Italian Poets: With Lives of the Writers, Volume 1 • Leigh Hunt
... least afraid of him, but thinking, it part of the game not to be caught. With one push of her foot, she would be floating in the air above his head; or she would go dancing backwards and forwards and sideways, like a great butterfly. It happened several times, when her father and mother were holding a consultation about her in private, that they were interrupted by vainly repressed outbursts of laughter over their heads; and looking ...
— Adela Cathcart, Vol. 1 • George MacDonald
... to pay my bill," thought Persis, with a grim smile, as she watched Diantha turning the gaily colored plates like a butterfly fluttering from blossom to blossom. "I guess she won't go as far as that though, as long as there ain't another dressmaker in Clematis she'd trust to make her a kimono. If she says anything, that'll pave the way for me to give her a good plain talking to, and even if I never get a cent ...
— Other People's Business - The Romantic Career of the Practical Miss Dale • Harriet L. Smith
... emblem of self- sacrifice. Her path across the desert was marked by the flowers which sprang up beneath her steps; the wild gazelle stept forward trustingly to lick her hand; a single wandering butterfly fluttered round her head. As the group, one by one, caught sight of her, a human tenderness and intelligence seemed to light up every face. The scholar dropt his book, the miser his gold, the savage his weapons; even in the ...
— Yeast: A Problem • Charles Kingsley
... less often, began to grow rusty in the great halls, and the nobles, coming forth from their coats-of-mail like the butterfly from the chrysalis, showed themselves all glistening in silk, pearls in their ears, their heads full of Italian madrigals and mythological similes, a new society was formed, salons of a kind were ...
— The English Novel in the Time of Shakespeare • J. J. Jusserand
... Ellen ran for the pieces of Bristol board which were to form the backs of the needlebook, and brought them to the library; and explained how room was to be left in the middle of each for a painting, a rose on one, a butterfly on the other; the writing to be as elegant as possible, above, beneath, and roundabout, as the fancy of the ...
— The Wide, Wide World • Elizabeth Wetherell
... creation—was a sight! Then there were the butterflies, so light that they seemed to tumble up into the air, and get down again with difficulty. They bewildered me with their inscrutable variations of purpose. "If I could but see once, for an hour, into the mind of a butterfly," I thought, "it would be to me worth all the natural history I ever read. If I could but see why he changes his mind so often and so suddenly—what he saw about that flower to make him seek it—then why, on a nearer approach, he should decline further acquaintance ...
— The Seaboard Parish Volume 1 • George MacDonald
... well enough for people without a conscience in their music; now in the corner of a conservatory, now in a cozy little third room behind a back drawing-room, talking nonsense with some lady foolish enough to be amused with his folly. Tom meant no harm and did not do much—was only a human butterfly, amusing himself with other creatures of a day, who have no notion that death can not kill them, or they might perhaps be more miserable than they are. They think, if they think at all, that it is life, strong in them, that makes them forget death; whereas, in truth, it is death, strong ...
— Mary Marston • George MacDonald
... far," said Freddie. "I know my way back. Oh, Flossie! look at that butterfly!" he suddenly called, making a grab for the fluttering creature. The butterfly flew on a little way and Freddie raced after ...
— The Bobbsey Twins on Blueberry Island • Laura Lee Hope
... world as oddly coloured as Harlequin's clothes, with puffs of sentiment dear to the soul of Columbine, and Clownish fun with Pantaloonish wisdom and chuckles. When you were young, you used, I think, to enjoy a butterfly's kiss; and that, you remember, was when your mother brushed your cheek with her eye-lashes. And also when you were young you held a buttercup under other children's chins to see if they liked butter, and they ...
— The Harlequinade - An Excursion • Dion Clayton Calthrop and Granville Barker
... forgot Tony, just as Eagle had forgotten me. Behind Eagle's slight figure towered massively Major Vandyke's splendid bulk; and as I waved my handkerchief to Eagle, while the train slid slowly out, I was vaguely aware of Diana's outstretched arm and a butterfly flutter of something white and small. Eagle's eyes went past me to her, though his smile was for me also; and Di was able deftly to kill her two birds with one stone, at the last. Her farewell look and gesture did equally ...
— Secret History Revealed By Lady Peggy O'Malley • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... said the lady, who was crying; her trickling tears and her sopping handkerchief removed what remnants of her "cheeks" the sudden bath in the river had left. As the paint disappeared, one saw how very pretty the poor draggled butterfly was—big, honey-dark eyes, and quite exquisite features. "Oh, my soul and body!—I'll die!" she said, sobbing with cold ...
— The Vehement Flame • Margaret Wade Campbell Deland
... like Cleopatra, was not prone to argue. He left maintenance and headed toward the wardroom for a game of Uma ni to. But when he met Leda Crannon going up the stairway, all thoughts of card games flitted from his mind with the careless nonchalance of a summer butterfly. ...
— Unwise Child • Gordon Randall Garrett
... throws up a wave of blossom that breaks all creamy white against their feet, and a clump of willows trail their palest green shoots in front of all. The sun sends for an ambassador through the azalea bushes a lordly swallow-tailed butterfly, and his squire very like the flitting 'chalk-blue' of the English downs. The warmth of the East, that goes through, not over, the lazy body, is added to the light of the East—the splendid lavish light that clears but does not bewilder the eye. Then the new leaves of ...
— Letters of Travel (1892-1913) • Rudyard Kipling
... The Butterfly the ancient Grecians made The soul's fair emblem, and its only name— But of the soul, escaped the slavish trade Of earthly life!—For in this mortal frame Our's is the reptile's lot, much toil, much blame, Manifold motions making little speed, And ...
— Poems of Coleridge • Coleridge, ed Arthur Symons
... personal service Prince Iyeyasu made changes from the system common to the great military Houses of the time. The castle ward and attendance always were divided up among the immediate vassals of the lord. The basis was strictly military, not domestic. Even the beautiful kami-shimo (X), or butterfly hempen cloth garb of ceremonial attendance was an obvious reminder of the armour ...
— Bakemono Yashiki (The Haunted House) - Tales of the Tokugawa, Volume 2 (of 2) • James S. De Benneville
... like quicksilver from mind to mind, leaping—a shy and shining spark—from brain to brain! I know of nothing since Lord Bacon quite like these ineffably dainty little paragraphs of gilded whim, these rainbow nuggets of wistful inquiry, these butterfly wings of fancy, these pointed sparklers of wit. A purge, by Zeus, a purge for the wicked! Irony so demure, so quaint, so far away; pathos so void of regret, merriment so delicate that one dare not laugh for fear of dispelling the charm—all this ...
— Shandygaff • Christopher Morley
... du vent, indeed," he said,—"just the white fluttering butterfly,—and now that the wings are clasped above this crimson blossom, I have a chance of capture." And smiling, he gently ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 7, No. 39, January, 1861 • Various
... in toward shore, looked like a giant butterfly; and her name, emblazoned in gold on her prow, was, appropriately, the Farfalla. Earlier in the season, with a green hull and a dingy brown sail, she had been, prosaically enough, the Maria. But since the advent of the girl all this had been changed. The Farfalla dropped her ...
— Jerry • Jean Webster
... the shining expanse of Silverwater, now lying unruffled by any breath of wind, went flickering a little blue butterfly, as blue as if a gentian blossom had taken to itself wings or a speck of sky had fluttered down to meet its bright reflection in the lake. It was a foolish expedition for the little explorer, so far from shore, and over that lonely, treacherous element which has such ...
— Children of the Wild • Charles G. D. Roberts
... insect that's flown into a room of its own accord. I dash against the walls, dash against the windows, flop against the ceiling, do everything on God's earth, in fact, except fly out again. And all the while I'm thinking, like that moth, or that butterfly, or whatever it is, 'The shortness of life! The shortness of life!' I've only one night or one day, and there's this vast dangerous garden, waiting ...
— The Garden Party • Katherine Mansfield
... self-preservation. The most of them are eyeless, so that sunlight exposes them to birds and other enemies. Professor Mast demonstrated that they are very favorably influenced by exposure to sunlight. Dr. Dolly has shown, by a series of very brilliant experiments, that the butterfly will live three times longer in sunlight than in the shadow; and Professor Yerkes has also proven that the jellyfish, while inactive in the dark, becomes ...
— The Wonder Island Boys: The Mysteries of the Caverns • Roger Thompson Finlay
... months I enjoyed what to me was an entirely new phase of existence—a butterfly idleness; nothing to do, nobody to be responsible to, and untroubled with financial uneasiness. I fell in love with the most cordial and sociable city in the Union. After the sage-brush and alkali deserts of Washoe, ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... preferred to spend a quiet hour or two with Mrs. Merton. She is a woman who does things of some importance instead of spending her time upon a giddy butterfly-life. She is a regular tonic, and always inspires me to be ...
— Jess of the Rebel Trail • H. A. Cody
... Like a butterfly whose feet are caught in the incandescent wax of a taper, Rouget rapidly dissipated his remaining strength. In presence of that decay, the nephew remained as cold and impassible as the diplomatists of 1814 during ...
— The Celibates - Includes: Pierrette, The Vicar of Tours, and The Two Brothers • Honore de Balzac
... "It would be truly difficult to hold the butterfly and force it to be still without brushing the down from its beautiful wings. But, paint now, Pesne, I will seat myself behind your ...
— Berlin and Sans-Souci • Louise Muhlbach
... a little orange stain at the root of the green bill, and the bright red iris of the eye have wonderful effect in warming the color of the whole bird: and with beautiful fancy Mr. Gould has put the Stellaris among yellow water-lilies to set off its gray; and a yellow butterfly with blue and red spots, and black-speckled wings (Papilio Machaon), to harmonize both. It is just as if the flower were gradually turning into the bird. Examples of the Starry Allegret have been 'obtained'—in the ...
— Love's Meinie - Three Lectures on Greek and English Birds • John Ruskin
... reduced to the narrow space of a few toises, and for whom the winds and waves contended in their fury as they floated above the abyss; an event happened which diverted our minds from the horrors of our situation. All on a sudden a white butterfly, of a species common in France, came fluttering above our heads, and settled on our sails. The first thought this little creature suggested was, that it was the harbinger of approaching land, and we clung to the hope with a delirium of joy. ...
— Thrilling Narratives of Mutiny, Murder and Piracy • Anonymous
... a painted butterfly to dazzle him, my friend," said Mrs. Denison. "His eyes are too keen, and go below the surface at a glance. The woman he loves may regard the fact as a ...
— The Hand But Not the Heart - or, The Life-Trials of Jessie Loring • T. S. Arthur
... is the analogy between the insect and his brother butterfly of fashionable life! While yet an embryo, a worm, he grubs his way through a good estate, and not a little ready money. Then, after a long sojourn in the pupa or puppy state—longer far than that of any other maggot—he emerges a perfect butterfly, vain, empty, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. 327 - Vol. 53, January, 1843 • Various
... since, a musicsellers's boy was sent to the publisher's for a number of copies of the song "I'd be a Butterfly, arranged for two trebles;" when, on being desired to repeat his order, he replied, "I'd be a Butterfly, ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 12, - Issue 323, July 19, 1828 • Various
... 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 ...
— In the Mist of the Mountains • Ethel Turner
... The first butterfly you see, Cut off his head across your knee, Bury the head under a stone And a lot of money will be ...
— Highways & Byways in Sussex • E.V. Lucas
... out against the brilliant sky. The ebbing tide plashed on the rocks far below us, and the warm grass through which we walked was alive with grasshoppers, whose scarlet wings, suddenly unfolded when they flew, made me take them for some strange species of butterfly. It was all indescribably bright and joyous-looking, and the air of a transparent clearness that was one of the most striking characteristics of the whole scene, and one of the most delightful.... [In discussing the relative merits of England and America, Dr. Channing once ...
— Records of a Girlhood • Frances Anne Kemble
... instinctive modes of behavior of lower forms of life. If mind is viewed as an adjustment to external conditions for the purpose of securing control, the human mind is no more wonderful in its way than the homing and migratory instincts of birds; the tropic quality of the male butterfly which leads it to the female though she is imprisoned in a cigar-box in a dark room; or the peculiar sensitivity of the bat which enables it, though blinded, to thread its way through a maze of obstructions hung ...
— Sex and Society • William I. Thomas
... Sister Magdalen's late favorite; when dignity was required she became the escaped nun; and in her rage she would burst into the melodramatic frenzy dear to the McMeeter audiences; but Colette, the heedless, irresponsible, half-mad butterfly, dominated these various parts, and to this charming personality she returned. Through his own sad experience this spectacle interested him. He subdued her finally by ...
— The Art of Disappearing • John Talbot Smith
... 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 ...
— Pee-wee Harris on the Trail • Percy Keese Fitzhugh
... that a reproductive system may be in full force without 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 ...
— Erewhon • Samuel Butler
... for them, that Julie might know the "right people." To her mother all people were alike, if they were kind and not vulgar; Margaret felt very differently. It was a matter of the greatest satisfaction to her when Julie blossomed into a fluffy-haired butterfly, tremendously in demand, in spite of much-cleaned slippers and often-pressed frocks. Margaret arranged Christmas theatricals, May picnics, Fourth of July gatherings. She never failed Bruce when this dearest brother wanted her ...
— Mother • Kathleen Norris
... winter he raised fuchsias in a little conservatory the size of a steamer trunk. In the spring he walked in the Easter parade. In the summer he lived at a farmhouse in the New Jersey hills, and sat in a wicker armchair, speaking of a butterfly, the ornithoptera amphrisius, that he hoped to find some day. In the autumn he fed Stuffy a dinner. These were the Old ...
— The Trimmed Lamp • O. Henry
... large degree he came to regard culture as the aim of life. And when a man begins to pride himself upon his culture, he hasn't any to speak of. Culture must be merely incidental, and to clutch it is like capturing a butterfly: you do not secure the butterfly at all—you get ...
— Little Journeys To The Homes Of Great Teachers • Elbert Hubbard
... shrinking from the future when he would be gone forever. From Neil she heard often, but his letters did not do her much good they were so full of regret for the poverty which was keeping her from him and would keep her indefinitely for aught he knew. From her mother she seldom heard. That frivolous butterfly was too busy and gay to give much time or thought to her dying husband and overburdened child. She was still at Nice and still devoted to her American friends, the Rossiter-Brownes, as they called themselves, to the ...
— Bessie's Fortune - A Novel • Mary J. Holmes
... novel-reader. It is not in the nature of a woman. The crown of woman's character is her devotion, which incarnate delicacy and tenderness exalt into perfect beauty of sacrifice. Those qualities could no more live amid the clashings of indiscriminate human passions than a butterfly wing could go between the mill rollers untorn. Women utterly refuse to go on with a book if the subject goes against their settled opinions. They despise a novel—howsoever fine and stirring it may be—if there is any taint of unhappiness to the favorite at the ...
— The Delicious Vice • Young E. Allison
... 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
... not six months old yet?" demanded the mother. "Here, take her, Aunt Sanna, and see if you ever got hold of anything nicer than that! Come, baby, give Aunt Sanna a little butterfly kiss!" And Julia swept the soft little face and unresponsive mouth across the older woman's face before she deposited the baby in ...
— The Story Of Julia Page - Works of Kathleen Norris, Volume V. • Kathleen Norris
... careless creature, full of animation and inquisitiveness, buoyant and thoughtless, content to look neither forwards nor backwards, wholly without responsibility or intelligence, just borne along by the pleasure of the moment, perfectly harmless and friendly as a rule, a sort of cheerful butterfly. That is not in the least my waking temperament; but it fills me sometimes with an uneasy suspicion that it is more like myself than ...
— Escape and Other Essays • Arthur Christopher Benson
... returned the Countess; 'but we both serve the same person, as you know - or if you do not, then I have the pleasure of informing you. Your conduct is so light - so light,' she repeated, the fan wavering higher like a butterfly, 'that perhaps you do not truly understand.' The Countess rolled her fan together, laid it in her lap, and rose to a less languorous position. 'Indeed,' she continued, 'I should be sorry to see any young woman in your situation. You began with every advantage - birth, a suitable marriage ...
— Prince Otto • Robert Louis Stevenson
... by euphemistic vulgarity, into Ruby City, Magnolia Vale, Largentville, Idlewild, and the like. Or, if not these, our Anglo-Saxon practically gives us, not Our Lady of the Solitude, nor the City of the Holy Cross, not Fresno, the ash, nor Mariposa, the butterfly, but the momentous repetition of Smithvilles, Jonesboroughs, and Brownstowns, which makes the map of the Mississippi Valley a waste of ...
— The Story of the Innumerable Company, and Other Sketches • David Starr Jordan
... lord," replied Guarine, "but instinctive suspicion and aversion. The child that, for the first time, sees a snake, knows nothing of its evil properties, yet he will not chase it and take it up as he would a butterfly. Such is my dislike of Vidal—I cannot help it. I could pardon the man his malicious and gloomy sidelong looks, when he thinks no one observes him; but his sneering laugh I cannot forgive—it is like the beast we heard of in Judea, who laughs, ...
— The Betrothed • Sir Walter Scott
... only a paraphrase of the old story of the grub and the butterfly. The little, starveling drudge who had found him in the store, that first day, had completely vanished; it was as if she had never been. In her place he discovered a girl all grace and loveliness, her slender ...
— The Fortune Hunter • Louis Joseph Vance
... was very hot, the sky was blue, and the air was full of the humming and buzzing of bees and flies. A white butterfly flitted by, but soon went away over ...
— Chambers's Elementary Science Readers - Book I • Various
... grudge this pretty fool her short day! Since, with her summer's sun, when her butterfly flutters are over, and the winter of age and furrows arrives, she will feel the just effects of having neglected to cultivate her better faculties: for then, lie another Helen, she will be unable to bear the reflection even of her own glass, and being sunk into the insignificance ...
— Clarissa, Volume 1 (of 9) • Samuel Richardson
... 's a chess-board—there are kings, Queens, bishops, knights, rooks, pawns; the world 's a game; Save that the puppets pull at their own strings, Methinks gay Punch hath something of the same. My Muse, the butterfly hath but her wings, Not stings, and flits through ether without aim, Alighting rarely:—were she but a hornet, Perhaps there might be vices ...
— Don Juan • Lord Byron
... held her left extended arm to arm, palm to palm. Her right hand was on his shoulder, and she was close to him, looking into his eyes. As they began the gay undulations of the waltz she looked away and then down without answering. Her movements were as light and airy as those of a butterfly. He felt a sudden lightness himself, communicated as by an invisible current. He wanted to match the suppleness of her body with his own, and did. Her arms, the flash and glint of the crimson sequins against the smooth, black silk of her closely fitting dress, her neck, ...
— The Financier • Theodore Dreiser
... probably soon decide what characters are necessary, but more time may be required to assign the parts. To play the part of a spider, bear, wolf, fairy, sheep, or butterfly does not seem difficult to a child who has entered into the ...
— Children's Literature - A Textbook of Sources for Teachers and Teacher-Training Classes • Charles Madison Curry
... creation in bottles, which is at this moment classifying one hundred and fifty thousand species of insects, giving them all the termination us, so that a Silbermanus is the same individual in all countries for the learned men who dissect a butterfly's legs with pincers—that we still want a nomenclature for the chemistry of the kitchen, to enable all the cooks in the world to produce precisely similar dishes. It would be diplomatically agreed that French should be the language of the ...
— Analytical Studies • Honore de Balzac
... affections were already engaged, and, being fully aware that the king flitted from beauty to beauty, like the butterfly from flower to flower, she very frankly intimated to the king that she could not receive his attentions. Louis was heart-broken; for such fragile hearts are easily broken and as easily repaired. He hastened to his mother, and told her that he must leave Paris to conquer his passion. The love-sick ...
— Louis XIV., Makers of History Series • John S. C. Abbott
... tying doors, tying bundles of mud in paper, and then drop it on the pavement. I shall buy a bundle of wood and tie a piece of cord to it, and when some one goes to pick it up, lo! it has vanished—not lost, but gone before. I shall go butterfly-catching, and catch some fish at Snob's Brighton (Lea Bridge). I shall finish up by having a whacking, tearing my breeches, giving a boy two black eyes, and then wake up on Monday morning refreshed and quite happy to make ...
— Children's Rhymes, Children's Games, Children's Songs, Children's Stories - A Book for Bairns and Big Folk • Robert Ford
... hill, a butterfly, snow white, rested a moment on the young girl's hair. She was again looking at the cliff, and did ...
— The Dragon Painter • Mary McNeil Fenollosa
... nom de guerre, by which she is known until her engagement is at an end. Some of these names are so pretty and quaint that I will take a few specimens from the Yoshiwara Saiken, the guidebook upon which this notice is based. "Little Pine," "Little Butterfly," "Brightness of the Flowers," "The Jewel River," "Gold Mountain," "Pearl Harp," "The Stork that lives a Thousand Years," "Village of Flowers," "Sea Beach," "The Little Dragon," "Little Purple," "Silver," "Chrysanthemum," "Waterfall," "White Brightness," ...
— Tales of Old Japan • Algernon Bertram Freeman-Mitford
... His world. He has conducted it as a father leads his child, when the path homeward lies over many a dreary league. He suffers him to beguile the thought of time, by turning aside to pluck now and then a flower, to chase now a butterfly; the butterfly is crushed, the flower fades, but the child is so much nearer home, invigorated and full of health, and scarcely ...
— Sermons Preached at Brighton - Third Series • Frederick W. Robertson
... the sand-pit, they could not understand how it was that little parties of the Third were found to be travelling in the same direction. Still more curious were the various articles borne by these little bands of stragglers. One group bore a football; another shouldered a butterfly net, without regard to the fact that butterflies had not been seen for many weeks; a third group fishing-rods, ...
— The Hero of Garside School • J. Harwood Panting
... may still do so! Let the world's prudish owl unheeded flutter by; Freedom converts the grub into a butterfly! ...
— Love's Comedy • Henrik Ibsen
... 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 Mind and Its Education • George Herbert Betts
... to thee plainly the eternal laws of life; but these sacred hieroglyphics of the goddess which thou decipherest upon their perfumed foreheads, thou wilt find everywhere hidden under other emblems. Let the caterpillar drag itself creeping along, and soon the light butterfly darts rapidly through the air; and let man also, with his power of self- development, follow the circle of his soul's metamorphoses. Oh! then wilt thou remember that the bond which united our spirits was first a germ from ...
— Stories of Modern French Novels • Julian Hawthorne
... where he leaves Chaucer, the spirit of Chaucer leaves the verse. You see plainly that his rule is to change the least that can possibly be changed. Yet the gentle grace, the lingering musical sweetness, the taking simplicity, of the wise old poet, vanishes—brushed away like the down from the butterfly's wing, by the lightest ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Vol 58, No. 357, July 1845 • Various
... divested of its white paper wrapping, disclosed a blue plush box. A second later Mary was exclaiming over the dainty beauty of the bit of jewelry lying securely on its white satin bed. The pin was fashioned in the form of a golden butterfly, the body of which was ...
— Marjorie Dean High School Freshman • Pauline Lester
... diffused around her a perfume as if rose-leaves were stirred up. She held a dainty handkerchief, edged with real lace, in her little left hand, which glittered with rings. In her right, was a spangled fan like a black butterfly. Mrs. Edes was past her first youth, but she was undeniably charming. She was like a little, perfect, ivory toy, which time has played with but has not injured. Mrs. Slade looked at her, then at Karl von Rosen. ...
— The Butterfly House • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... The common small white butterfly of Europe (Pontia or Pieris rapae) is now established in North America; and the march of the jigger, or foot-infesting flea (Sarcopsylla penetrans) of tropical America, across Africa, has taken place in quite ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... 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
... pale petals of the 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 their ...
— Blackwoods Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 365, March, 1846 • Various
... Autumn just unfurled themselves in order to be struck at the first broadside of a November frost—the sun was shining so warmly, that the leaves had every reason to be ashamed of their yellow complexions; and a young lady—like a butterfly awakened by the brightness of the day—fluttered forward from the porch of Surbridge Hall, dressed in all the hues of the rainbow. A green bonnet, a pink pelisse, a red shawl, and lilac parasol, were scarcely in keeping with the sylvan scene on which she hurriedly entered. She was very tall ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 57, No. 351, January 1845 • Various
... the thirteenth century,—it is altogether another art. Between the two there is a great gulf, a distinction forever ineffaceable. The change from one to the other was not that of the child into the man, as we usually consider it; it was that of the chrysalis into the butterfly. There was an entire change in the habits, food, method of existence, and heart of the whole creature. That we know more than thirteenth century people is perfectly true; but that is not the essential difference between us and them. We are different kind of creatures ...
— Lectures on Architecture and Painting - Delivered at Edinburgh in November 1853 • John Ruskin
... rising from the bed went to the window and leaned out. A large white clematis pushed its moonlike blossom up to her face, as though asking to be kissed, and a bright red butterfly danced dreamily up and down in the late sunbeams, now poising on the ivy and anon darting off again into ...
— God's Good Man • Marie Corelli
... if the wind sits in that quarter we must see what else there is to be done. What is there, now?... No, I won't send for Elsie; we don't need a wheel to break the butterfly on; we won't go ...
— Widdershins • Oliver Onions
... butterfly on the rhubarb-leaves perhaps caught his eye, or at last he cried himself to sleep. These fits were not often, but they caused a shadow in Mrs. Morel's heart, and her treatment of Paul was different from ...
— Sons and Lovers • David Herbert Lawrence
... belongs to Kennington's neighbours. Stockwell, which perhaps sees a hansom as often as a motor-car, once named as a native one of the greatest of English racehorses. Camberwell, when willows grew about a village stream, long since dry, named a butterfly; but Camberwell Beauties, though they sleep sometimes in Surrey woodstacks, and flaunt their white-laced wings in Surrey sunshine perhaps twice in a summer, fly no more by brooks in Camberwell. Perhaps in the old days the Tradescants, ...
— Highways and Byways in Surrey • Eric Parker
... with pleasure as the little creature bounded toward her. "Oh, it looks like a bird or a butterfly!" she cried as she picked it up; and the dog put its paws on her shoulders and looked at her with eyes "like a Christian's." After that she would never have it out of her sight, and petted and talked to it as if ...
— The Early Short Fiction of Edith Wharton, Part 1 (of 10) • Edith Wharton
... have a yellow streak." His lip curled as he studied the pallid features of the heir to the Van Cleft millions. Fearless himself, he could still understand the tremors of this care-free butterfly: yet he knew he must crush the dangerous thoughts which were developing. "If you mistrust me, hustle for yourself. You have the death-certificate, the services will be over in a few days, and then you will have ...
— The Voice on the Wire • Eustace Hale Ball
... exercise, rising an octave at the first bound and then fluttering down like some gorgeous butterfly of sound till it rested on the octave below. And at each renewed flight it began a note higher until it climbed at last to high C. Then it ran up in roulades and galloping bravuras, it trilled and sought out new flights; yet always with the pellucid tones ...
— Silver and Gold - A Story of Luck and Love in a Western Mining Camp • Dane Coolidge
... WOLSEY, and a long way after, too,—one of the most pathetic pictures ever presented on the stage. So lonely in her grandeur, so grand, and yet so pitiable in her loneliness is this poor Queen of Beauty, this Empress-Butterfly, who can conquer conquerors, and for whose sake not only her noble lovers, but her poor humble serving-maids, ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 99., December 6, 1890 • Various
... the glass, which a woman ne'er misses. Nor ever wants time for a sly glance or two, A butterfly,[1] fresh from the night-flower's kisses. Flew over the mirror, and shaded her view. Enraged with the insect for hiding her graces, She brushed him—he fell, alas; never to rise: "Ah! such," said the girl, "is the pride of our faces, "For which ...
— The Complete Poems of Sir Thomas Moore • Thomas Moore et al
... they went on, keeping just where the sand gave place to firm ground, for the birds were excessively tame, and gave evident proof that they were not much disturbed; while every now and then amid the lovely insects which thronged wherever there were flowers, appeared some magnificent butterfly, several inches across its wings, tempting Sir John to cease exploring for ...
— Jack at Sea - All Work and no Play made him a Dull Boy • George Manville Fenn
... 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 shell, he saw a fine butterfly settled 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 at last he flew to the king's court. ...
— Fairy Tales Every Child Should Know • Various
... transformed the butterfly into a new woman. Leonora adored Keller as a ray of light gone astray from the glowing star now extinguished forever; she felt the joy of humbleness, the sweetness of sacrifice, seeing in him not the ...
— The Torrent - Entre Naranjos • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... peacock butterfly flaunted Its four great crimson wings, As over the edge of the chalk it flew Black as a ship on the Channel blue ... When Salomon sailed from Ophir,— He brought, as the high sun brings, Honey ...
— The Lord of Misrule - And Other Poems • Alfred Noyes
... Mariposa, Spanish for butterfly, was a fit name for the pretty Indian maiden. She paid great deference not only to her tall father, Red Cloud, but to the pale faces whenever in their presence. For four years Mariposa, unusually bright, attended the Indian school ...
— The Harris-Ingram Experiment • Charles E. Bolton
... dew a-layin' soft and cool on the other posies' faces, and the sun a-shinin' warm on 'em as they held 'em up, and sometimes she'd see a butterfly come down and light on 'em real soft, and kind o' put his head down to 'em, 's if he was kissin' 'em, and she thought 'twould be powerful nice to hold her face up to all them pleasant things. ...
— Story-Tell Lib • Annie Trumbull Slosson
... extended her vision to survey a yellow butterfly and a red-and-black butterfly that were flitting along in company, and then became aware that Dick was advancing ...
— Under the Greenwood Tree • Thomas Hardy
... had decided upon a ball at Rotherwood, and an absolute creation of a gown that was to be sent for from Paris. There would have been some eclat then in emerging from the chrysalis stage of the school-room and becoming a butterfly of society. To make her first grown-up appearance at Mrs. Desmond's dance and in a home-made dress seemed not so much a "coming out" as an "oozing out." There are degrees in butterflies, and she feared her appearance would resemble not the gorgeous "Red Admiral" or ...
— A Popular Schoolgirl • Angela Brazil
... wore a paper collar and a butterfly necktie, as befitted a man of his station in life. He was a short, squarely made Scotchman, with sandy whiskers much grayed and with a keen, in-tensely ...
— Main-Travelled Roads • Hamlin Garland
... As good a heart as hers, but somewhat given To hunt the nearest butterfly, and light The fire of fancy without hanging o'er it The porridge-pot of practice. ...
— The Saint's Tragedy • Charles Kingsley
... feet, so nobody could hear—dances she and I made up together out of stories she used to tell me. The Shadow Dance and the Statue Dance which you saw, came out of those stories, and there are more you didn't see, which I do sometimes—a butterfly dance, the dance of the wheat, and two of the East, which were in stories she told me after we knew Cassim ben Halim. They are the dance of the smoke wreath, and the dance of the jewel-and-the-rose. I could dance quite well even ...
— The Golden Silence • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... grew to the sound of Annie's voice uttering not Runic Rhymes, but old Scotch ballads, or such few sweet English poems, of the new revelation, as floated across her way, and folded their butterfly wings in ...
— Alec Forbes of Howglen • George MacDonald
... methinks that thou dost grow more unmannerly each day. Thou art as unthinking as the butterfly, else thou wouldst not have burdened my ...
— In Doublet and Hose - A Story for Girls • Lucy Foster Madison
... broad-brimmed, Lined with pale pink lining, On them dew-drops often shining— Yes, yes, yes. No butterfly goes near them, No brown bee hums to cheer them, And what these Quaker folks are called I want you all ...
— Harper's Young People, September 21, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... from beneath the leaves that kept them dry Flew many a glittering insect here and there, And darted up and down the butterfly, That seemed a living blossom of the air. The flocks came scattering from the thicket, where The violent rain had pent them; in the way Strolled groups of damsels frolicksome and fair; The farmer swung the scythe ...
— Poems • William Cullen Bryant
... 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 there, and there be heard The housewife bee ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 6 • Various
... affection. She was never so demonstrative as the other girls. Her devotions had ways of expressing themselves in an occasional compliment tendered perhaps in some whimsical, back-handed fashion, or in a fleeting caress, which came and was gone like the touch of a butterfly's wing. ...
— The Camp Fire Girls in the Outside World • Margaret Vandercook
... replied, "but in the closet, the jam is kept in a stone crock, while yours was always in the butterfly jar that I ...
— Princess Polly At Play • Amy Brooks
... the nautch-girl to the pipe and wires, Fluttering like some vain, painted butterfly From glade to glade along the forest path, Nor dreamed her light words echoed on the ear Of him, that holy man, who sate so rapt Under the fig-tree by the path. But Buddh Lifted his great brow as the wantons passed, And spake: 'The foolish ofttimes teach the wise; I strain too ...
— The Light of Asia • Sir Edwin Arnold
... crimson sea-weeds of the most delicate tracery. It is much to be regretted that these lower marine animals are not better known. The plumage of the tropical birds, the down on the most brilliant butterfly's wing, are not more beautiful in coloring than the hues of many Radiates, and there is no grace of motion surpassing the movements of some of them in their native element. The habit of keeping marine animals in tanks ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 57, July, 1862 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... fact, the sudden outbreak of active hostilities with the Table Hill contingent had had the effect of taking the minds of Spider Reilly and his warriors off Cosy Moments and its affairs, much as the unexpected appearance of a mad bull would make a man forget that he had come out butterfly-hunting. Psmith and Billy could wait; they were not likely to take the offensive; but the Table Hillites ...
— Psmith, Journalist • Pelham Grenville Wodehouse
... bowls with figures of quadrupeds from Sikyatki 672 CXXXI. Ornamented ladles from Sikyatki 674 CXXXII. Food bowls with figures of reptiles from Sikyatki 676 CXXXIII. Bowls and dippers with figures of tadpoles, birds, etc., from Sikyatki 676 CXXXIV. Food bowls with figures of sun, butterfly, and flower, from Sikyatki 676 CXXXV. Vases with figures of butterflies from Sikyatki 678 CXXXVI. Vases with figures of birds and feathers from Sikyatki 678 CXXXVII. Vessels with figures of human hand, birds, ...
— Archeological Expedition to Arizona in 1895 • Jesse Walter Fewkes
... from larva to butterfly took place in the young, handsome, and clever Charles-Edouard, Comte Rusticoli de la Palferine. Until this moment of his life he had lived miserably, covering his deficits with an audacity equal to that of Danton. But he now paid his debts; he now, by advice of Maxime, had a ...
— Beatrix • Honore de Balzac
... you are!" said the flowers. "You must be a butterfly or a poet, Bebee, to be as foolish as that. Some one will do all he did. We are of market value, you know. Care, indeed! when the sun is so warm, and there is not an earwig in the ...
— Bebee • Ouida
... the cabin of that peerless steamer, the New World, and a splendid company were assembled about the table. Among the passengers thus prepared for gastronomic duty, was a little creature of the genus Fop, decked daintily as an early butterfly, with kids of irreproachable whiteness, "miraculous" neck-tie, and spider-like quizzing glass on his nose. The little delicate animal turned his head ...
— The Book of Anecdotes and Budget of Fun; • Various
... pavement below. The city seemed to be exuding the soaked-in heat of the long summer's day. The women who floated by were dressed in the lightest of muslins; even the plainest of them gained a new charm in their airy and butterfly-looking costumes. The men walked bareheaded, waistcoatless, fanning themselves with straw hats. Here and there, as they turned into Shaftesbury Avenue, an immaculately turned-out young man in evening dress passed along the baked pavements and dived into one of the ...
— Nobody's Man • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... happy—the ability to forget all and enjoy the moment. I have watched you for years. It has been so in the past, and will be so in the future. Other men who see me, men born to the plane, have the quality—call it butterfly if you will—to enjoy the 'now.' It appeals to me—I am of their manner born." Their eyes met and she finished slowly, "It's injustice to you, I know; ...
— A Breath of Prairie and other stories • Will Lillibridge
... the side of the designer—the morality, unexceptionable certainly, the author's capital. Here are then, to these moralities, a smiling train of mirths supplied by George Cruikshank. See yonder little fellows butterfly-hunting across a common! Such a light, brisk, airy, gentleman-like drawing was never made upon such a theme. Who, ...
— George Cruikshank • William Makepeace Thackeray
... cheerfulness was so infectious, that Sylvia already began to forget her gloom, and hurried away to do her part. Putting on a short, girlish gown, kept for scrambles among the rocks, she improvised a pinafore, and braided her long hair a la Morlena Kenwigs, with butterfly bows at the ends. When she went down, she found her husband in garden jacket, collar turned over a ribbon, hair in a curly tumble, and jackknife in hand, seated on the rug before a roaring fire, and a semicircle of apples, whittling and whistling like a very boy. They ...
— Moods • Louisa May Alcott
... flew off and landed right on Susie's paw. Oh, wasn't she glad! And the fairy said: "The ring will last, because that is blue, and I am blue, too. Now, good bye, Susie." And with that she disappeared, changing into a butterfly with golden wings. Then Susie started to get in the golden coach and ride home, but, would you believe me, if those horses didn't run away, upsetting the coach and breaking it, and scattering all the ten boxes of chocolate-covered carrots all over. Oh, how badly Susie felt, ...
— Sammie and Susie Littletail • Howard R. Garis
... a most beautiful butterfly fluttered in the air, in the very middle of the open window. When we first saw it, it was flitting gaily and happily amongst the plants and flowers that were blooming in the balcony, but it gradually became ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 20, No. - 582, Saturday, December 22, 1832 • Various
... own I like not Johnson's turgid style, That gives an inch the importance of a mile; Casts of manure a wagon-load around To raise a simple daisy from the ground; Uplifts the club of Hercules—for what?— To crush a butterfly or brain a gnat; Creates a whirlwind from the earth to draw A goose's feather or exalt a straw; Sets wheels on wheels in motion—such a clatter! To force up one poor nipperkin of water; Bids ocean labour with tremendous roar, To heave a cockle-shell upon ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 14, Issue 394, October 17, 1829 • Various
... that means," answered Amy. "I will be forced to give up my church work and be a useless butterfly again; and besides, the conditions father insists ...
— That Printer of Udell's • Harold Bell Wright
... admire Augustus Clarence Percy Marmaduke Grobble (learned in millinery; competent, as modes varied, to discuss harem, hobble, pannier, directoire, slit, or lamp-shade skirts, berthes, butterfly-motif embroideries, rucked ninon sleeves, chiffon tunics, and similar mysteries of the latest ...
— Driftwood Spars - The Stories of a Man, a Boy, a Woman, and Certain Other People Who - Strangely Met Upon the Sea of Life • Percival Christopher Wren
... tear-stained slates, awful examples and punishments of a hundred lines of Vergil, by wholesome good-cheer and limpid forgetfulness of self in drawing pictures of spiders and noting the difference between a wasp and a bee, a butterfly and a moth, a frog and a toad, a mushroom and a toadstool. And so the reason Rousseau is read is because there is much in his work that is essentially modern. No thinker writes on political economy without quoting the "Social Contract," either for the sake ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 9 - Subtitle: Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Reformers • Elbert Hubbard
... a life must be equal, and how do we lack in this? There are thousands today who flit along on the crest of the wave of life's current, butterfly-like; they never really have a conscious thought. If "it only does not affect me" is their watchword, and freedom from anything serious is their only really serious problem. They know in an indifferent way that hearts break, that tears fall, that there are prayers that stagger ...
— Freedom Talks No. II • Julia Seton, M.D.
... hard-workin' folks sink all their money in a butterfly like that. Bet she uses up the meat bill every month. And look what she gets out of it. Bet she's twenty-six if she's a day. And all she got was Hawkins. I must have looked good to her for a ...
— Stubble • George Looms
... dressed in a costume of white linen with a cloud of chiffon tied about her small hat and a parasol that she had purchased this summer in Paris, which consisted of an enormous gold lace butterfly. She was fuller in figure than before her child had come and in perfect health, though still pale. Fresh and well cared for, she was if not beautiful very attractive and dainty—all that money could make of her human person. Adelle was ...
— Clark's Field • Robert Herrick
... mighty good keer of sick slaves. He allus called in a doctor for 'em, and kept plenty of castor ile, turpentine, and de lak on hand to dose 'em wid. Miss Emily made teas out of a heap of sorts of leaves, barks, and roots, sich as butterfly root, pine tops, mullein, catnip and mint leaves, feverfew grass, red oak bark, slippery ellum bark, and black gum chips. Most evvybody had to wear little sacks of papaw seeds or of assyfizzy (asafetida) 'round deir necks to ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves - Georgia Narratives, Part 3 • Works Projects Administration
... sure; I see what it is. He's about growin' a pair of wings for his wit to fly away wid. But musha good gracious, he needn't ha' throubled himself to be gettin' them that sizable. Somethin' the bigness of a hedge-sparrer's, or maybe a weeny white butterfly's, 'ud ha' plinty stren'th enough for the job, if that was all they had to do." Ned meant no harm, but his witticisms did not fall in with Con's humour, so he snatched back the cap and went off affronted, nor did he call at the ...
— Strangers at Lisconnel • Barlow Jane
... examined the outer sill with Bob, it seemed all right. So that evening when the children's bedtime came, pansy flower was told by Pansy little girl what her kind mamma and uncle had planned for her benefit, and with what Pansy called a kiss, a very butterfly kiss it was, for the little girl was as afraid of hurting the pansy as if it had been a sensitive plant, the flower-pot was placed on ...
— The Thirteen Little Black Pigs - and Other Stories • Mrs. (Mary Louisa) Molesworth |
