"Moth" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... his thought glanced from John Dana to Mr. Pinkham and the Rev. Arthur Langly, both of whom were assiduous visitors at the house. The former had lately taken to accompanying Margaret on the piano with his dismal little flute, and the latter was perpetually making a moth of himself about her ...
— The Stillwater Tragedy • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... took for truth; the light was joyful and blessed, and of all things to be desired, though it smote the life from one like lightning. She waited alone with faith, watching till it should come,—left alone with this beam glimmering like a moth through darkness!—for thus was a believer, or one who resolved on believing, left in that day, when he turned from the machinery of the Church, and stood alone, searching for God without ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 6, No. 34, August, 1860 • Various
... had lost its lightness and elasticity, and seemed to oppress and weigh us down. Presently we saw the dark cloud rise gradually from behind the hills, completely clearing their summits, and then sweeping along until it hung over the valley, in form and appearance like some monstrous night-moth, resting the tips of its enormous wings on the mountains on either side. To our right we still saw the roofs and walls of Quidricovi, apparently ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXLII. Vol. LV. April, 1844 • Various
... had led her from the flat of the delicatessen merchant, through various shabby lairs, into the pension of a vaudeville favorite of prehistoric fame. The house was dilapidated, and the brownstone front had the moth-eaten look ...
— We Can't Have Everything • Rupert Hughes
... to be expected. It cost sixty dollars, and brought only thirty. But this loss was to be preferred to the destruction such an army of moth as it was sending forth, ...
— Trials and Confessions of a Housekeeper • T. S. Arthur
... The moth's kiss, first! Kiss me as if you made believe 50 You were not sure, this eve, How my face, your flower, had pursed Its petals up; so, here and there You brush it, till I grow aware Who wants me, and wide ope ...
— Dramatic Romances • Robert Browning
... There were some old, moth-eaten hangings about the walls here and there, and I took one down and laid it over Hollins, wondering while I did this office for him what strange secret it was that he had carried away into death, and why that queer and puzzled expression had crossed ...
— Dead Men's Money • J. S. Fletcher
... caught it; and she vanished, Waving her hand, a little floating moth, Between the pine-trees, into the warm dark night. He turned into his room, and quickly thrust Under his pillow that forbidden fruit; For the door opened, and the hot red face Of Otto Brahe, his father, glowered ...
— Watchers of the Sky • Alfred Noyes
... deed, through the ages Living in historic pages, Brighter grows and gleams immortal, Unconsumed by moth or rust ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
... Amurca was the dregs of olive oil. Cato recommends its use for many purposes in the economy of the farm, for a moth proof (XCVIII), as a relish for cattle (CIII), as a fertilizer (CXXX), and as an anointment for the threshing floor to kill ...
— Roman Farm Management - The Treatises Of Cato And Varro • Marcus Porcius Cato
... ye rural Magistrates, your plan: Firm be your justice, but be friends to man. He whom the mighty master of this ball We fondly deem, or farcically call, To own the patriarch's truth however loth, Holds but a mansion crushed before the moth. Frail in his genius, in his heart, too, frail, Born but to err, and erring ...
— English Poets of the Eighteenth Century • Selected and Edited with an Introduction by Ernest Bernbaum
... "am Pietro Moresco. I have-a da nice political posish, an' nice-a barber-shop on Mulberry-a Strit. Some-a day I getta on da force—da pollis-force. Sure t'ing. I been-a home to see ma moth. I go-a back to make-a da more mon." He pulled out from his corded bundle of red quilts and coats and rugs some bottles of cheap wine. "I getta place for all you men." He was beginning, thus early in the voyage of these would-be citizens, to prepare to use ...
— The Old Flute-Player - A Romance of To-day • Edward Marshall and Charles T. Dazey
... world; or stupid misunderstanding and crushing defeat grind you into the dust, then you may arise, forgetting time and space and self, and take refuge in mansions not made with hands; and find a certain sad, sweet satisfaction in the contemplation of treasures stored up where moth and rust do not corrupt, and where thieves do not break through ...
— Love, Life & Work • Elbert Hubbard
... steeped in moonlight. In Drayton all is clear day, or the most unromantic of nights; though everything is charming, there is no attempt at idealization, little of the higher faculty of imagination; but great realism, and much play of fancy. Herrick's verses were written by Cobweb and Moth together, Drayton's by Puck. Granting, however, the initial deficiency in subtlety of charm, the whole poem is inimitably graceful and piquant. The gay humour, the demure horror of the witchcraft, the terrible seriousness of the battle, wonderfully realize the mock-heroic gigantesque; ...
— Minor Poems of Michael Drayton • Michael Drayton
... hats, toy shovels, patent medicines and caps. Small boys began barefoot experiments. Miss Tamson Black departed for Nantucket to visit a cousin. Mr. Raish Pulcifer had his wife resurrect his black-and-white striped flannel trousers from the moth chest and hang them in the yard. "No use talkin'," so Zach Bloomer declared, "summer is headin' down our way. She'll be here afore ...
— Galusha the Magnificent • Joseph C. Lincoln
... it you?" said she, with as much composure as if she had not been caught gazing at herself. "I was looking at this," pointing to an inverted tumbler on the mantel-piece. "Is it not strange that we should see a moth at this cold season? Amilly found it this afternoon ...
— Verner's Pride • Mrs. Henry Wood
... duties precludes real companionship, the interchange of emotions, thoughts, sentiments,—a living, and palpable, and vivid contact of mind with mind, of heart with heart. They see others whose leisure ministers to grace, accomplishments, piquancy, and attractiveness, and the moth flies towards the light by his own nature. Because he is a wise, and virtuous, and honorable moth, he does not dart into the flame. He does not even scorch his wings. He never thinks of such a thing. He merely circles around the pleasant light, sunning ...
— Gala-days • Gail Hamilton
... of this habit when they imagine themselves in danger. For instance, the "fever worm," the larva of one of our common moths,—the Isabella tiger-moth,—is a noted death-feigner, and will "pretend dead" on the slightest provocation. Touch this grub with the toe of your boot, or with the tip of your finger, or with a stick, and it will at once curl up, to all appearances absolutely ...
— The Dawn of Reason - or, Mental Traits in the Lower Animals • James Weir
... and keen: why isn't he the head of a school of other keen, witty writers? He has provided an attractive form—the play with an essay as preface. He has provided stock characters, such as the handsome-hero male-moth, who protests so indignantly at the fatal attraction of candles. He has developed above all that useful formula which has served many a dramatist—the comic confrontation of reason and instinct in man. Yet this whole apparatus lies idle, except for the ...
— The Crow's Nest • Clarence Day, Jr.
... clothed? We have no prophet of the Lord at whose prayer the meal and oil will not waste. Such minute attention must be given the wardrobe to preserve it that I have learned to darn like an artist. Making shoes is now another accomplishment. Mine were in tatters. H. came across a moth-eaten pair that he bought me, giving ten dollars, I think, and they fell into rags when I tried to wear them; but the soles were good, and that has helped me to shoes. A pair of old coat-sleeves saved—nothing is thrown away now—was in my trunk. I cut an exact pattern from ...
— Famous Adventures And Prison Escapes of the Civil War • Various
... their curiosity, cannot see and know everything. To what then shall be directed that vague look, equally attracted to all points for want of any fixed rule? At what shall it stop? It will rest on that which shines most brilliantly, like a moth attracted by light. Now, nothing shines more brightly than success; nothing more solicits the attention. The glorification of success is the first and most infallible consequence of moral indifference. In leaving ...
— The Heavenly Father - Lectures on Modern Atheism • Ernest Naville
... dormitory, or middle state. I do not want to handle, to profane the leaves, their winding-sheets. I could as soon dislodge a shade. I seem to inhale learning, walking amid their foliage; and the odor of their old moth-scented coverings is fragrant as the first bloom of those sciential apples which grew amid the ...
— Pearls of Thought • Maturin M. Ballou
... careful training and education of the rising generation, that they may be useful, and justly command the respect of their fellow-men. Labor for a competency, but give not your whole attention to amassing the wealth that perishes; but seek to lay up for yourselves "treasures where moth doth not corrupt, nor thieves ...
— Twenty-Two Years a Slave, and Forty Years a Freeman • Austin Steward
... gone vrom e'thly eyes To be a-kept in darksome sleep, Until the good ageaen do rise A-jay to souls they left to weep. The rwose wer doust that bound her brow; The moth did eat her Zunday ceaepe; Her frock wer out o' fashion now; Her shoes wer dried up out o' sheaepe— The shoes that woonce did glitter black Along ...
— Poems of Rural Life in the Dorset Dialect • William Barnes
... aquatic lore of which the other is admittedly ignorant, and be apt in devices towards which the attitude of the salt-water man is adverse, if not contemptuous. The fresh-water man is skilful in the use of a net shaped something like the secondary wings of a certain species of moth, and expanding and closing similarly. It is made of fine twine (one-inch mesh), preferably from the bark of one of the fig-trees or the brown kurrajong, tightly stretched on two pieces of lawyer-cane each bent to form the half of an irregular ellipse. This net ("moorgaroo") ...
— Tropic Days • E. J. Banfield
... hastily out, she saw some Indians below, talking with one of the men, who was shaking his head and motioning to them that they must go on, that this was no place for them to stop. The Indian motioned to his squaw, sitting on a dilapidated little moth-eaten burro with a small papoose in her arms and looking both dirty and miserable. He muttered as though ...
— A Voice in the Wilderness • Grace Livingston Hill
... other ladies with laughing lips And sidelong glances under moth-eye brows; Whose cheeks are fresh and red; Ladies both great of heart and long of limb, Whose beauty by sobriety is matched. Well-padded cheeks and ears with curving rim, High-arching eyebrows, as with compass drawn, ...
— More Translations from the Chinese • Various
... the soft glow of Interlaken and the towns in the Rhone valley. Once he had been moved in spite of himself, as one of the huge German volors had passed in the night, a blaze of ghostly lights and gilding, resembling a huge moth with antennae of electric light, and the two ships had saluted one another through half a league of silent air, with a pathetic cry as of two strange night-birds who have no leisure to pause. Milan and Turin had been quiet, for Italy was organised on other principles than France, ...
— Lord of the World • Robert Hugh Benson
... outward foe, When thou thyself thy harm dost feed? Of grief or hurt, of pain or woe, Within each thing is sown the seed. So fine was never yet the cloth, No smith so hard his iron did beat, But th' one consumed was with moth, Th' other with ...
— England's Antiphon • George MacDonald
... Garibaldi had read the history of his country; in imagination he saw the glory that was Greece and the grandeur that was Rome. And better still, he had figured out in his own mind why sleep and death, and moth and dust, and rust and ruin had settled down upon the race, and mankind had endured a thousand years ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 9 - Subtitle: Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Reformers • Elbert Hubbard
... a year!" Feather breathed. From her delicate shoulders hung floating scarf-like sleeves of black transparency and she lifted one of them and held it out like a night moth's wing—"This cost forty pounds," she said, her voice quite faint and low. "A good nurse would cost forty! A cook—and a footman and a maid—and a coachman—and the brougham—I don't know how much ...
— The Head of the House of Coombe • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... amount of ailing health. His imagination fastened at once on the glowing eyes, on the dainty curls rippling with light, on the dazzling fairness of her skin, and hovered about those bright points as the moth hovers about the candle flame. For her spirit made such appeal to his that he could no longer see the woman as she was. Her feminine exaltation had carried him away, the energy of her expressions, a little staled in ...
— Lost Illusions • Honore De Balzac
... Wen's ire was actually stirred up, and her beautiful moth-like eyebrows contracted, and her lovely phoenix eyes stared wide like two balls. So she immediately shouted out ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book II • Cao Xueqin
... chief teacher and the rest of the assembly had left me, some boys who were also engaged in the gymnasian exercise, followed me home, and stood near me for a little while as I was writing: and lo! at that instant they saw a moth running upon my paper, and asked in surprise what was the name of that nimble little creature? I said, "It is called a moth; and I will tell you some wonderful things respecting it. This little animal contains in itself as many members ...
— The Delights of Wisdom Pertaining to Conjugial Love • Emanuel Swedenborg
... magnificence, his sister, Madame Mancini, was the wife of a petty Italian baron, who was struggling to bring up her five daughters on a pathetically scanty purse—as far removed from her magnificent brother as a moth from a star. There was, on the face of things, every reason why the great and all-powerful Cardinal should leave his nieces to their genteel poverty; and we can imagine both the astonishment and delight with which Madame Mancini received the summons to Paris which ...
— Love affairs of the Courts of Europe • Thornton Hall
... dug deeper. A soft groan escaped Margaret's lips. This very minute, now while she crouched in the grass,—oh, if she put out her hands and felt she would feel the checks! She had been to an orph—to a place once with Moth—with Her and seen the aprons ...
— The Very Small Person • Annie Hamilton Donnell
... vast as Behemoth, Seems but a veil of silver breath; And soundless as a flittering moth, And gentle as the ...
— October Vagabonds • Richard Le Gallienne
... staircase, and doors all round it. The walls in both halls were painted grass green; and from little chains in the ceiling stuffed hawks and eagles, shot by Uncle Joachim, and grown with years very dusty and moth-eaten, hung swinging in the draught. The floor was boarded, and was still damp from a recent scrubbing. There was no carpet. A wooden bracket on the wall, with brass hooks, held a large assortment of whips and hunting crops; and in one corner stood an arrangement for coats, ...
— The Benefactress • Elizabeth Beauchamp
... everything gained in sanctity by its age: the moth-eaten furniture was hallowed by tradition. The rheumatic old dog of uncertain breed, to which he had never vouchsafed a caress became now, when banished to the stable, a tried and ...
— The Tyranny of Weakness • Charles Neville Buck
... be a disembodied spirit, and no longer subject to the petty annoyances that belong to the flesh?" cried he, fretfully. "My knowledge, too, is a moth,—only vexing me by a sense of the limitations of my condition. If I could grasp Nature,—if I could handle the stars,—if I could wake the thunder,—if I could summon the cloud! That would be worth something,—to ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 3, No. 18, April, 1859 - [Date last updated: August 7, 2005] • Various
... Miss Perkins pointed out that the cadgers in Cardigan Street went out better dressed than she on Sunday, and Mrs Yabsley gave in. Miss Perkins refused to accept a fur necklet, slightly damaged by moth, reduced to twelve-and-six, but took a plain leather belt for eighteen pence. They were going out to-morrow for the first time to show the new clothes, and she had left Miss Perkins at home altering the waistband of the skirt and the hooks on the bodice, as there had been some difficulty in ...
— Jonah • Louis Stone
... beggar once more for the sake of art: We have always held the divine Muse sacred, but who can keep up a brave heart when he sees her persecuted! She may only be worshipped in darkness in these days, and the Queen of Gods and men shuns the light like a moth, a bat, an owl. If we must die let it be with and for Her! Once more let pure and perfect song rejoice this old heart, and if afterwards . . . My children, we have no place in this dim, colorless world. While the Arts lived there was Spring on the earth. Now they are condemned to death and it ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... perfumer's warehouse; when ground, it does well to form a body for sachet powder. Slips of cedar wood are sold as matches for lighting lamps, because while burning an agreeable odor is evolved; some people use it also, in this condition, distributed among clothes in drawers to "prevent moth." On distillation it yields an essential oil ...
— The Art of Perfumery - And Methods of Obtaining the Odors of Plants • G. W. Septimus Piesse
... the mountain villages, is gradually leaving them and settling in the towns on the railways, on account of the greater facility of transport. [Headnote: PROCESSIONAL CATERPILLAR. PIPES.] The curious caterpillar of the Moth, Bombyx processionaria, feeds on the leaves of the Aleppo and maritime pine trees. Their nests, made of a cobweb material, and shaped like a soda-water bottle, are firmly attached to the branches. On cutting ...
— The South of France—East Half • Charles Bertram Black
... just a moment and looked up. Fred scarcely dared to breathe. He knew what had happened. The twine had brushed against the sentry's cheek. But then a puff of wind carried it away, and the man went on, brushing at his cheek, thinking, perhaps, a moth had touched it. ...
— The Boy Scouts In Russia • John Blaine
... two; there's a moth; What silly beggars they are to blunder in And scorch their wings with glory, liquid flame— No, no, not that,—it's bad to think of war, When thoughts you've gagged all day come back to scare you; And it's been proved that soldiers don't go mad Unless they lose control ...
— The War Poems of Siegfried Sassoon • Siegfried Sassoon
... Brook, Indiana, freeze, annually, George Ade, for instance, knows that, instead of hibernating, it is time for him to take his white flannel suits, hang them on the clothesline in the back yard until the fragrance of the moth-ball has departed, pack them in his wardrobe trunk, and take his winter flight to the Belleview. He knows that, at the Belleview, he will meet hundreds of men and women who are suffering from the malady ...
— American Adventures - A Second Trip 'Abroad at home' • Julian Street
... "Moth—" I began insinuatingly, but the sacred word died unfinished on my lips. The next instant I was scurrying down the platform to where I ...
— A Fool and His Money • George Barr McCutcheon
... found in the middle of the day, such as the willow-fly; and the cow-dung-fly is sometimes carried on the water by winds. In March there are several flies found on most rivers. The grannam, or green-tail-fly, with a wing like a moth, comes on generally morning and evening, from five till eight o'clock, A.M. in mild weather, in the end of March and through April. Then there are the blue and the brown, both ephemerae, which come on, the first in dark days, the second ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume XII., No. 324, July 26, 1828 • Various
... word, and the very stormy afternoon when Jill got into trouble, Merry was working busily at her little bower. In the blue chest she found a variety of treasures, and ignoring the moth holes, used them to the best advantage, trying to imitate the simple comfort with a touch of elegance which prevailed in ...
— Jack and Jill • Louisa May Alcott
... had been dead long ago, for I saw some signs of moth in the fur, and as I was in Paris at the bidding of my employer, I consented, and carrying the little Peke beneath my arm I walked along the Quai du Louvre to the old bridge which, in two parts, spans the river. Just before I gained ...
— The Golden Face - A Great 'Crook' Romance • William Le Queux
... dream, with feast and rioting to blend; And once, while among mortals dreaming thus, She saw the young Corinthian Lycius Charioting foremost in the envious race, Like a young Jove with calm uneager face, And fell into a swooning love of him. Now on the moth-time of that evening dim He would return that way, as well she knew, To Corinth from the shore; for freshly blew The eastern soft wind, and his galley now Grated the quaystones with her brazen prow In port Cenchreas, from Egina isle Fresh anchor'd; whither ...
— Lamia • John Keats
... around the girl like a moth around a candle-flame. Not yet could he reconcile Ruth with her duties as ship's first officer. It seemed so absurd. She and the giant bosun divided the watches between them. What an ill-assorted brace! And she was the superior. She was the ...
— Fire Mountain - A Thrilling Sea Story • Norman Springer
... the myriads of insects, whose hum and buzz make a good part of the noise and stir of a summer afternoon, are all gone. No whirring wings rush past; there is no sound of "dragon-fly, or painted moth, or musical winged bee" to break the stillness; all the insect-world seems dead, or flown south with the swallows—though, as there are still spiders' webs to be seen, each delicate thread marked in sharp ...
— Twilight And Dawn • Caroline Pridham
... this faint, floating fragrance that drew the flitting brown moth by way of the quicksand, swiftly, swiftly, along the moonlit shore travelling with mysterious certainty, irresistibly attracted? There was no pause in its rapid progress, though the course it followed was tortuous. It pursued, with absolute confidence, an invisible, ...
— The Tidal Wave and Other Stories • Ethel May Dell
... A moth ate a word. To me that seemed A curious happening when I heard of that wonder, That a worm should swallow the word of a man, A thief in the dark eat a thoughtful discourse 5 And the strong base it stood on. He ...
— Old English Poems - Translated into the Original Meter Together with Short Selections from Old English Prose • Various
... Then came a huge moth, and almost simultaneously a bat, to whirr round and round over the bed and along the ceiling, while from off the dark waters of the fen came from time to time strange splashings and uncouth cries, which would have startled a wakeful stranger to these parts. Now and then ...
— Dick o' the Fens - A Tale of the Great East Swamp • George Manville Fenn
... his mortal mould, Man, amongst men, descended from his throne! The moth that chased the star now frets the fold, Our cares, our faults, our follies are his own. Passions as idle, and desires as vain, Vex the wild heart, and dupe the erring brain. From Freedom's field the recreant Horace flies To kiss the ...
— The Pilgrims Of The Rhine • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... sealed it up in a coffin or sarcophagus, which they laid in a chamber hewn in the bowels of the mountain. All these things were done to protect the physical body against damp, dry rot and decay, and against the attacks of moth, beetles, worms and wild animals. But these were not the only enemies of the dead against which precautions had to be taken, for both the mummified body and the spiritual elements which had inhabited it upon earth had to be protected ...
— The Book of the Dead • E. A. Wallis Budge
... of growth, yet let us at last see thy face, and receive the white stone from thy hand. That thus we may grow, give us day by day our daily bread. Fill us with the words that proceed out of thy mouth. Help us to lay up treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust doth corrupt. ...
— Unspoken Sermons - Series I., II., and II. • George MacDonald
... The moth that indicates the advent of the army-worm has a Quaker-like simplicity in its light, chocolate-colored body and wings, and, from its harmless appearance, would never be taken for the destroyer of vast fields ...
— Camp-Fire and Cotton-Field • Thomas W. Knox
... we all know; most of us have seen their minute eggs. Many are quite visible to the unaided eye; others are extremely minute. A gives the egg of the small white butterfly;[4] B, that of the small tortoiseshell; C, that of the waved umber moth; D, that of the thorn moth; E, that of the shark moth; at F we have the delicate egg of the small emerald butterfly, and at G an American skipper; and finally, at H, the egg of a moth known as mania maura. In all this you see a ...
— Scientific American Supplement, Vol. XIX, No. 470, Jan. 3, 1885 • Various
... simple moth doth blindly rush To reach the flame, its life oft pays the debt Of folly. Yet 'tis nobler thus to die Midst all the brightness of a waking life, Than from the world ooze out through darkened ways By beggarly instalments—none to feel Thy life but thine own poor ignoble self: ...
— The Death of Saul and other Eisteddfod Prize Poems and Miscellaneous Verses • J. C. Manning
... the moth follows the flickering, dancing flame, foolish Sally Gardiner, without a thought of danger, took the arm of the handsome stranger whom she had known but a few short weeks, and sauntered out upon ...
— Jolly Sally Pendleton - The Wife Who Was Not a Wife • Laura Jean Libbey
... his fat chin covered his neckerchief, tied in a knot; he wore his cloak thrown over his shoulders, and his shirt-sleeves fastened at the wrist. He cared little for outward appearance. He wanted his clasps of gold, but it did not matter if the stuff did shine with grease, or the trimming was moth-eaten. From his broad Turkish girdle no sword hung, but behind was stuck a battle hammer, and above his boot-tops appeared a knife-hilt, studded with turquoises. In all his motions, there was an arrogance that brooked no contradiction, ...
— Peter the Priest • Mr Jkai
... moth, anyhow," said Nigel with a nod, as he bade him good-night, and carefully closed the wicker door to check the incursions of uncaptured specimens. Being rather tired with the day's journey, he lay down on a mat beside the hermit, who was ...
— Blown to Bits - The Lonely Man of Rakata, the Malay Archipelago • R.M. Ballantyne
... bag; Gladding his palate with some store Of emmets' eggs: what would he more But beards of mice, a newt's stew'd thigh, A bloated earwig, and a fly: With the red-capp'd worm, that is shut Within the concave of a nut, Brown as his tooth; a little moth, Late fatten'd in a piece of cloth; With wither'd cherries; mandrakes' ears; Moles' eyes; to these, the slain stag's tears; The unctuous dewlaps of a snail; The broke heart of a nightingale O'ercome in music; with a wine Ne'er ravish'd from the flatt'ring rine, But gently press'd ...
— Specimens with Memoirs of the Less-known British Poets, Complete • George Gilfillan
... at Caroline with gloomy despair, and here are the phantom-like thoughts which tap, with wings of a bat, the beak of a vulture, the body of a death's-head moth, upon the walls of the palace in which, enkindled by desire, glows your brain like a ...
— Petty Troubles of Married Life, Part First • Honore de Balzac
... thinks the Englishman killed his son. But look you, send Sunni to me. HE saved mine. And I tell you,' said the Maharajah, looking at Surji Rao fiercely with his sunken black eyes, 'not so much of his blood shall be shed as would stain a moth's wing.' ...
— The Story of Sonny Sahib • Sara Jeannette Duncan
... form in the centre a perfect square. Being thus disposed, each of them makes its cocoon, or pod, of a coarse and short silk, in which it is transformed from the grub into the chrysalis, and from the chrysalis into the papilio, or moth. In proportion as they afterwards quit their confinement, to take wing, they detach wherever it is most convenient to them, their envelope, or web, a portion of which remains suspended to the trunk of the tree, where it waves to and fro like a streamer, and which becomes more or less ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 17, Number 490, Saturday, May 21, 1831 • Various
... the direction towards which his eyes were turned, and saw a magnificent moth sucking gum exuding from a branch. It was more beautiful than any I had seen. The body was of a flesh colour; the wings broad and of a tender green, with blue, crimson, and orange spots. I stopped while he ...
— In the Wilds of Florida - A Tale of Warfare and Hunting • W.H.G. Kingston
... electric fires, Stuyvesant went over in mind other little things that had come to his ears, for many men were of a mind with regard to Billy Ray's daughter, and the young officer found himself vaguely weighing the reasons why he should now cease to play the moth,—why he should be winging his flight away from the flame and utterly ignoring the fact that his feet, as though from force of habit, were bearing him steadily towards it. The snap and ring of a bayoneted rifle ...
— Ray's Daughter - A Story of Manila • Charles King
... air. Presently an old uniform with worn trimmings was swinging its sleeves in the air and embracing a brocade gown; from behind it peeped a court-coat, with buttons stamped with coats-of-arms, and moth-eaten collar; and white kersymere pantaloons with spots, which had once upon a time clothed Ivan Nikiforovitch's legs, and might now possibly fit his fingers. Behind them were speedily hung some more in the shape of the letter pi. Then came a blue Cossack jacket, which Ivan Nikiforovitch ...
— Taras Bulba and Other Tales • Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol
... in habitat. So concealed were the stalks by the ferns that the flowers appeared to grow on their fronds. On the mounds grew corn marigolds, so brilliantly yellow that they seemed to shine in the sunlight, and on a wall moth-mullein flowered high ...
— The Life of the Fields • Richard Jefferies
... on looking more closely, I saw, through the tatters of her frock—do not laugh at me—a bunch on each shoulder, of the most gorgeous colours. Looking yet more closely, I saw that they were of the shape of folded wings, and were made of all kinds of butterfly-wings and moth-wings, crowded together like the feathers on the individual butterfly pinion; but, like them, most beautifully arranged, and producing a perfect harmony of colour and shade. I could now more easily believe the rest ...
— Phantastes - A Faerie Romance for Men and Women • George MacDonald
... some places in France they call us the moth birds, for they believe that our bodies will keep away moths from ...
— Birds Illustrated by Color Photograph, Volume 1, Number 2, February, 1897 • anonymous
... complimenting you, I was complimenting Ireland," said Silas sweetly. She was silent, a white moth passing close to her held her gaze for a moment, then it flitted ...
— The Ghost Girl • H. De Vere Stacpoole
... and, when recovered half a century later, was hung up in the cathedral at Slesvig, where gradually it fell to pieces. In the first half of the Nineteenth Century, when national feeling and national pride were at their lowest ebb, it was taken down with other moth-eaten old banners, one day when they were cleaning up, and somebody made a bonfire of them in the street. Such was the fate of "the flag that fell from heaven," the sacred standard of the Danes. ...
— Hero Tales of the Far North • Jacob A. Riis
... nests now before me four are composed externally of little bits of green moss, cotton, and seed-down, and the silk of the wild mulberry-moth torn from the cocoons, with which last material, however, the others appear to be bound together within. The lining of two is of the long hairs of the yak's tail, two of which died on the estate where these nests were found, and a third is lined with black human hair. The other three are formed ...
— The Nests and Eggs of Indian Birds, Volume 1 • Allan O. Hume
... they went, and down again, towards the defenceless Earth, that could not flee from the chariot of the Sun. Great rivers hid themselves in the ground, and mountains were consumed. Harvests perished like a moth that ...
— Old Greek Folk Stories Told Anew • Josephine Preston Peabody
... groaned as it hit the corona. Vast whirlwinds of flame shook it. The motors coughed and spat. Then the gyroscopes took over. It steadied itself and went through. Like a moth fluttering through a candle-flame, The Nebula drew away from the star. But this moth was unharmed—and a million cells had drunk so much energy that the ship reeled with ...
— Hunters Out of Space • Joseph Everidge Kelleam
... some of Emerson's pages it seems as if another Arcadia, or the new Atlantis, had emerged as the fortunate island of Great Britain, or that he had reached a heaven on earth where neither moth nor rust doth corrupt, and where thieves do not break through nor steal,—or if they do, never think of denying that they have done it. But this was a generation ago, when the noun "shoddy," and the verb "to scamp," had not grown such familiar ...
— Ralph Waldo Emerson • Oliver Wendell Holmes
... leaves, eventually causing them to fall, thus robbing the plant of its only means of elaborating food. Its most deadly enemy in the insect world is a small insect of the lepidopterous variety, which is known as the coffee-leaf miner. It is closely related to the clothes moth and, like the moth, bores in its larval stage, feeding on the mesophyl of the leaves. This gives the leaves an appearance of being shriveled or dried ...
— All About Coffee • William H. Ukers
... was more in character: "Bridget threatens to leave. She does not work well under Anne. The children are not manageable under her, either. Little Judith is sallow and fretful. I suspect Anne gives her sweets between meals. I saw a moth flying in my ...
— Life at High Tide - Harper's Novelettes • Various
... Like a little moth attracted by a flame, Dick wandered down the stair in the direction of the light. The candle was standing on the table in a bedroom,—a pretty room, Dickie thought, though it did not seem as if anybody could have lived in it lately. He didn't know why this idea came into his mind, ...
— Nine Little Goslings • Susan Coolidge
... were of a very graceful form, and moved on the water exactly like a snake, with the head a little elevated; when they dived they turned up on their backs before they sank: we caught one of these snakes, also a moth and butterfly. A large bat (Pteropus ?) flew about the vessel this evening and pitched several times on the boat astern. I once struck it as it passed me, it appeared much fatigued; we were 150 miles from the main and thirty from the nearest ...
— Journals Of Two Expeditions Of Discovery In North-West And Western Australia, Vol. 1 (of 2) • George Grey
... talking together, Parsley, who stood with her ears wide open and had some suspicion of the gossip, overheard all that had passed. And when Night had spread out her black garments to keep them from the moth, and the Prince had come as they had appointed, she let fall her hair; he seized it with both hands, and cried, "Draw up." When he was drawn up she made him first climb on to the rafters and find the gall-nuts, knowing well what effect they would have, as she had been ...
— Stories from Pentamerone • Giambattista Basile
... would be inaccurate to maintain that there is nothing on the subject in the Gospels. An eminent American divine pointed out in print, as regards the advice against laying up treasure where moth and rust doth corrupt, that "moth and rust do not get at Mr. Rockefeller's oil wells, and thieves do not often break through and steal a railway. What Jesus condemned was hoarding wealth." See Upton Sinclair, The Profits of Religion, 1918, ...
— The Problem of China • Bertrand Russell
... musique, and at last of glasses, and I find him still the same ingenuous man that ever he was, and do among other fine things tell me that by his microscope of his owne making he do discover that the wings of a moth is made just as the feathers of the wing of a bird, and that most plainly and certainly. While we were talking came by several poor creatures carried by, by constables, for being at a conventicle. They go like lambs, without any resistance. I would to God they would either conform, ...
— Diary of Samuel Pepys, Complete • Samuel Pepys
... Terraces are set upon the mountainside like a gigantic staircase, and fringed with railings of stone so artistically wrought as to suggest the grill-work of the matchless Taj Mahal. Great gray monkeys descend from the mountain slope to feed from the hands of your guides; and they are not of the moth-eaten variety seen in captivity, but are freeborn denizens of the forest, whose coats glisten and whose curly tails ...
— East of Suez - Ceylon, India, China and Japan • Frederic Courtland Penfield
... envelop the tree in a web they spin about the end of May; they enclose themselves in a leaf curled up, and remain in a chrysalis state until the middle of June or July, when they change into a pale greenish small moth that flies about the trees in myriads, and lay their eggs in the bark of the trees for future mischief, and then die. There seems to be no means of checking their ravages. The rooks come in great numbers, and they and other birds destroy great quantities. ...
— The Forest of Dean - An Historical and Descriptive Account • H. G. Nicholls
... contemnes, as a novelty of this latter age; but a manuscript he pores on everlastingly; especially if the cover be all moth-eaten, and the dust make a parenthesis between ...
— Bracebridge Hall • Washington Irving
... of a host to Dick Follingsbee, found himself, after a while, looking on him with pity, as a poor creature, like the rich fool in the Gospels, without faith, or love, or prayer; spending life as a moth does,—in vain attempts to burn himself up in the candle, and knowing nothing better. In fact, after a while, the stiff, tow-colored moustache, smart stride, and flippant air of this poor little man struck him somewhere in the region between a smile and a tear; and his enforced ...
— Pink and White Tyranny - A Society Novel • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... had gone now when it was in our power to go without interference, we should have been spared the most tragic and heart-rending event of all that occurred during the course of our wandering. But Edmund seemed to feel the fascination of Venus as a moth feels that of ...
— A Columbus of Space • Garrett P. Serviss
... side is the straight-up rock; And a path is kept 'twixt the gorge and it By bowlder-stones, where lichens mock The marks on a moth, and small ferns fit Their teeth ...
— Introduction to Robert Browning • Hiram Corson
... some were dashed with red and bordered with black, and others eye-shaped with crescents of pale blue? It must have taken an hour for all this to come about—for the great wings to unfurl to their widest extent and the cecropia moth to show himself in all his beauty to our ...
— Miss Elliot's Girls • Mrs Mary Spring Corning
... may not disregard the sacred wish of a cow and the wish of a Brahman. I will take it. But look! There burns the candle. I keep about me a moth for the express purpose of extinguishing candles. I will let him enter the flame. This is his place and hour. May this moth which I here release, depart to flutter above the flame in varying circles. The breeze from the insect's ...
— The Little Clay Cart - Mrcchakatika • (Attributed To) King Shudraka
... felt sure. "All the other animals are afraid of fire. Such exceptions as the moth are really not exceptions at all; the moth is simply driven so mad by the sight of flame that it commits suicide in it. Horses sometimes do ...
— The Devolutionist and The Emancipatrix • Homer Eon Flint
... Lacrymae Christi that has turned sour. At times the good Viscount drops molasses into the skin to take away the taste of vinegar; at other times, he drops in more vinegar to take away the sweet taste of the molasses. He is both moth-eaten ...
— Youth and Egolatry • Pio Baroja
... his master, seating himself upon the escritoire and swinging his leg, "I want some old clothes, shabby clothes—moth-eaten, stained, battered, and torn. Also a muffler and an old hat. ...
— The Definite Object - A Romance of New York • Jeffery Farnol
... shocked to hear me go on so about myself; but you oughtn't to be. It isn't lawful for any one else, because praise is intrusion; but if the rose please to open her heart to the moth, what then? You know, too, I didn't make myself; it's no virtue to be so fair. Louise couldn't speak so of herself: first place, because it wouldn't be true; next place, she couldn't, if it were; and lastly, she made her beauty by growing a soul in her eyes, I suppose,—what you call good. I'm ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 27, January, 1860 • Various
... stained with tears and gore! We make, and moil, like children in their gardens, And spoil with dabbled hands, our flowers i' the planting. And yet a saint is made! Alas, those children! Was there no gentler way? I know not any: I plucked the gay moth from the spider's web; What if my hasty hand have smirched its feathers? Sure, if the whole be good, each several part May for its private blots forgiveness gain, As in man's tabernacle, vile elements Unite to one fair stature. Who'll gainsay ...
— The Saint's Tragedy • Charles Kingsley
... day was cooler; the kitten hoisted its tail for the first time in their acquaintance, and betrayed a feeble interest in the flight of a white dusk-moth that came ...
— Special Messenger • Robert W. Chambers
... criticisms, making some specially good remarks on those which refer to orchids. He shows how, by a "beautiful self-acting adjustment," the nectary of the orchid Angraecum (from 10 to 14 inches in length), and the proboscis of a moth sufficiently long to reach the nectar, might be developed by natural selection. He goes on to point out that on any other theory we must suppose that the flower was created with an enormously long nectary, and that ...
— The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin, Volume II • Francis Darwin
... he forsook his cot in the women's quarters. When the door was shut it was black dark, save for a thin crack of light from the wood fire and torches of the hall. The crack made on the earthen floor a line like a golden river. Biorn, cuddled up on a bench in his little bear-skin, was drawn like a moth to that stream of light. With his heart beating fast he would creep to it and stand for a moment with his small body bathed in the radiance. The game was not to come back at once, but to foray into the farther darkness ...
— The Path of the King • John Buchan
... But these obviously belong to a different type of values from the other group—to a lower type. What is the test, the touchstone, by which we can tell to which class any value belongs? We shall find the test clearly stated in the Sermon on the Mount. Is the treasure in question one that moth and rust can corrupt or that thieves can break through and steal? If so, it belongs to the lower class, to Property. But if it is one that cannot be taken away, then it is a Possession and belongs ...
— The Booklover and His Books • Harry Lyman Koopman
... falling earthward, but could not reach the surface. Leaning her shoulder a little forward, she placed the finger-tip against it, but lightly, scarcely touching, and moving continuously, with a motion rapid as that of a fluttering moth's wing; while the spider, still paying out his line, remained suspended, rising and falling slightly at nearly the same distance from the ground. After a few moments she cried: "Drop down, little spider." Her finger's ...
— Green Mansions - A Romance of the Tropical Forest • W. H. Hudson
... resemblance to that of the kingfisher, this may probably account for its being taken for one; it feeds entirely upon insects; it sits on a branch in motionless expectation, and as soon as a fly, butterfly, or moth pass by, it darts at it, and returns to the branch it had just left. It seems an indolent, sedentary bird, shunning the society of all others in the forest. It never visits the plantations, but is found ...
— Wanderings In South America • Charles Waterton
... specimens from the mines and the river-beds filled a dozen cases. The butterflies, of which we collected a large number, were all spoilt by the moth for want of camphor. 'Insect-powder' had been our only preservative. I had also a thirty-gallon cask of plants preserved in spirits, two boxes well stuffed, a large case of orchids, and a raceme of the bamboo-palm (Raphia vinifera), whose use has ...
— To The Gold Coast for Gold, Vol. II - A Personal Narrative • Richard Francis Burton and Verney Lovett Cameron
... weeds quite a long list might be made without including any of the so-called wild flowers. A favorite of mine is the little moth mullein that blooms along the highway, and about the fields, and maybe upon the edge of the lawn, from midsummer till frost comes. In winter its slender stalk rises above the snow, bearing its round seed-pods on its pin-like stems, and is pleasing even then. Its flowers are yellow or white, large, ...
— A Year in the Fields • John Burroughs
... "Case of moth chasin'," says I, "from the kerosene circuit to the white lights. But, say, I didn't know before that Broadway had so many recruitin' stations. They ought to put Boothbay Harbor ...
— On With Torchy • Sewell Ford
... but didn't go out. A moth had flown down its chimney, was sizzling, charring, inside ... Paul lifted off the globe. Burnt his hands, but said nothing ... flicked the wingless, blackened ...
— Tramping on Life - An Autobiographical Narrative • Harry Kemp
... you see, I've never done it—always had you. But I'm thinking it must be rather fun to fold things carefully, and put them in cedar chests, and sprinkle moth-balls over them, and ...
— If You Touch Them They Vanish • Gouverneur Morris
... open window stood lady Margaret with Molly in her arms. The night was so warm that the child could take no hurt; and indeed what could hurt her, with the nameless fever-moth within, fretting a passage for the new winged body which, in the pains of a second birth, struggled to break from ...
— St. George and St. Michael • George MacDonald
... it from getting damp. I fixed all the woollens with fresh camphire and tobacco the last o' the winter; you have to be dreadful careful in one o' these old houses, 'less everything gets creaking with moths in no time. Miss Katharine, how she did hate the sight of a moth-miller! There's something I'll speak about before I forget it: the mice have eat the backs of a pile o' old books that's stored away in the west chamber closet next to Miss Katharine's room, and I set ...
— Deephaven and Selected Stories & Sketches • Sarah Orne Jewett
... said the little frog; "What isn't water is mostly bog." "Oh, not at all!" said the little fly; "It's full of spiders, and very dry!" "The world is dark," said the moth polite, "With ruddy windows and bows of light." "My poor young friend, you have much to learn: The world is green," said the swaying fern. "O listen to me," sang the little lark: "It's wet and dry, and it's green and dark. To think that's all would ...
— Childhood's Favorites and Fairy Stories - The Young Folks Treasury, Volume 1 • Various
... the starch from the paste that fastens on her wall paper, and from book-bindings, so you see it makes things fall to pieces. But my! what a pretty rascal it is! Besides its name of silver fish, it is also called fish moth, though it is not a moth at all. It is also called bristle-tail, because of the long, bristle-like parts at the end of its body; and in some places it is called a slink, because, you know, it loves dark places, and when ...
— The Insect Folk • Margaret Warner Morley
... doesn't always see the moth, you know," offered Lee, a little intoxicated by the first "vision" of this kind he ...
— Judith of Blue Lake Ranch • Jackson Gregory
... thousand applications, many of them no doubt quite misplaced, as I have seen in Islington Churchy'd (I think) an Epitaph to an Infant who died AEtatis 4 months, with this seasonable inscription appended, Honor thy Fath'r. and Moth'r. that thy days may be long in the Land &c.—Sincerely wishing your children better [words ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Vol. 5 • Edited by E. V. Lucas
... not what men call love; But wilt thou accept not The worship the heart lifts above And the Heavens reject not: The desire of the moth for the star, Of the night for the morrow, The devotion to something afar From the ...
— The Golden Treasury - Of the Best Songs and Lyrical Poems in the English Language • Various
... rivals, though thou comest in peace yet thy object is hostile:—for one single moment that my mistress associated with a rival, it went well-nigh to slay me with jealousy. Smiling, she replied: "O Sa'di! I am the torch of the assembly; what is it to me if the moth consume itself?" ...
— Persian Literature, Volume 2, Comprising The Shah Nameh, The - Rubaiyat, The Divan, and The Gulistan • Anonymous
... notwithstanding the friendly light, a vessel strikes upon the rocks, and the people are tossed into the surging waters. They have visitors too; often in the night the wild sea-birds, fascinated by the light, as the moth is by the candle, come dashing against the lantern with such violence as to break the glass. But whatever happens, close to the tower, or away over the stormy waters, the man knows his duty, and does it, by keeping the light burning ...
— Grace Darling - Heroine of the Farne Islands • Eva Hope
... made a long round, and unaware was approaching the house. He had not thought what he must do. Nothing so practical as going away had yet occurred to him. She had not been unkind! She had even pressed on him a sister's love! The moth had not yet burned away enough of its wings to prevent it from burning its whole body! it kept fluttering about the flame. Nor was absent the childish weakness, the unmanly but common impulse, to make the woman feel how miserable ...
— Home Again • George MacDonald
... ramshackle cabs of the town and took in Bordeaux. It was vastly unlike either Emporia or Wichita, or anything in Kansas, or anything in America; or so far as that goes, to Henry and me, it was unlike anything else in the wide and beautiful world. "All this needs," said Henry, as he lolled back upon the moth-eaten cushions of the hack that banged its iron rims on the cobbles beneath us, and sent the thrill of it into our teeth, "all this needs is Mary Pickford and a player organ to be a good film!" The only thing we saw that made us homesick was the group of firemen in front of the engine house ...
— The Martial Adventures of Henry and Me • William Allen White
... Of Peas are fewer in number than might be expected in the case of so nutritive a plant. Against the weevil, the moth, and the fly, we are comparatively powerless, and perhaps the safest course is occasionally to dust the plants with lime or soot, in which case the work must be carefully done, or the leaf growth will be checked, to the injury of the crop. Light ...
— The Culture of Vegetables and Flowers From Seeds and Roots, 16th Edition • Sutton and Sons
... old, packed me up in his coach and hemmed me in with a folding and jingling barrier of steps, as if he were going to take me fifty miles. His getting on his box, which I remember to have been decorated with an old weather-stained pea-green hammercloth moth-eaten into rags, was quite a work of time. It was a wonderful equipage, with six great coronets outside, and ragged things behind for I don't know how many footmen to hold on by, and a harrow below them, to prevent amateur footmen ...
— Great Expectations • Charles Dickens
... woke, In bed-gown woke her dames; For shouts were heard 'mid fire and smoke, And twice ten hundred voices spoke "The playhouse is in flames!" And, lo! where Catharine street extends, A fiery tail its luster lends To every window-pane; Blushes each spout in Martlet Court And Barbican, moth-eaten fort, And Covent Garden kennels sport, A bright ensanguined drain; Meux's new brewhouse shows the light, Rowland Hill's chapel, and the height Where patent shot they sell; The Tennis-Court, so fair and tall, Partakes the ray, with Surgeons' Hall, The ...
— The Humourous Poetry of the English Language • James Parton
... and crime is disregarded by the law, rise and take position in society-not only entering into more respectable business-but joining in that phalanx who are seeking the life-blood of the old Southerner, and like a silent moth, working upon his decay. There is a deep significance in the answer so frequently given in Charleston to the interrogatory, "Who lives in that splendid dwelling-it seems to have been the mansion of a prince, but ...
— Manuel Pereira • F. C. Adams
... of the Hall; and there was some low talk, from time to time, among the hinds and country people, whether it would not be as well to break into old Bridget's cottage, and save such of her goods as were left from the moth and rust which must be making sad havoc. But this idea was always quenched by the recollection of her strong character and passionate anger; and tales of her masterful spirit, and vehement force of will, were whispered about, till the very thought of offending her, by touching any ...
— Curious, if True - Strange Tales • Elizabeth Gaskell
... climbed over the rail, who looks like an early patriarch, but his dignity is impaired by the moth-eaten high silk hat which surmounts his white hair. The people regard him with apparent deference, due either to the hat or his inherent character. Looking at his fine old face, one is inclined to believe it ...
— Le Petit Nord - or, Annals of a Labrador Harbour • Anne Elizabeth Caldwell (MacClanahan) Grenfell and Katie Spalding
... night, even as the Purple Emperor said, if you will stand on the bridge across the freightyard, looking down upon the four-track way, at 2:30 A. M., neither before nor after, when the White Moth, that takes the overflow from the Purple Emperor, tears south with her seven vestibuled cream-white cars, you will hear, as the yard-clock makes the half-hour, a far-away sound like the bass of a violoncello, and then, a hundred ...
— The Day's Work, Volume 1 • Rudyard Kipling
... of Falk. He would not. His mind flew round and round that name like a moth round the candle-light. He heard half-past ten strike, first in the dining-room, then slowly on his own mantelpiece. A moment later, through his study door that was ajar, he heard the letters fall with a soft stir into the box, then the sharp ring of the bell. ...
— The Cathedral • Hugh Walpole
... quiver did not evade the eyes of the man stock still beside the hemlock; no detail of the drama that was being enacted beside the brook escaped him. He who could observe with ease the smashing of a moth's wing thirty rods from shore, possessed a clearness of vision akin to that of a hawk. A bird fluttered in the underbrush ...
— The Lady of Big Shanty • Frank Berkeley Smith
... flew busily past the open window and vanished into the night. He thought of his own books; for writers, painters, preachers, musicians, these were trying to say it too. "If I could describe that moth exactly," he murmured to himself, "give the sensation of its flight, its unconscious attraction to the light, its plunge back into the darkness, its precise purpose in the universe, its marvellous aim and balance—its life, ...
— The Extra Day • Algernon Blackwood
... upon which their kind-hearted Amphitrion regaled them. But neither clean canvass, nor simulated piety, sufficed to draw upon the ambitious schemers the favourable notice of Queen Pomaree. Accustomed to sailors, she held them cheap. A uniform, though but the moth-eaten undress of a militia ensign, would have been a powerful auxiliary to their projects of aggrandisement. Like some others of her sex, Pomaree loves a soldier's coat, and maintained in more prosperous days a formidable regiment of body-guards, in ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 61, No. 380, June, 1847 • Various
... struck can take it off. You ARE yourself and so BE yourself. Stick to it and abide by it. Passion or no passion, ecstasy or no ecstasy, urge or no urge, there's no goal outside you, where you can consummate like an eagle flying into the sun, or a moth into a candle. There's no goal outside you—and there's no God outside you. No God, whom you can get to and rest in. ...
— Aaron's Rod • D. H. Lawrence
... now how the moth feels who plunges wildly into the flame that lures him to his death, and yet fascinates him beyond the power of resistance. The door was very small, or it might have been already too late, when Optima touched the shoulder of this modern Parsee, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 83, September, 1864 • Various
... sat on a heavy cross-beam and looked down upon the packed contents while into her nostrils crept subtly the odour of old herbs and spicy defences against moth and mould which had been renewed from time to time through the lagging decades until ...
— The Roof Tree • Charles Neville Buck
... little creature, with a very red face just fading into yellow, about as much golden down on his little pate as would furnish a moth with plumage, and eyes like sloe-berries. It was fortunate rather than otherwise that he was so ailing for some weeks that the good wife's anxieties came over again, and, in the triumph of being this time successful, much of the bitterness ...
— Jan of the Windmill • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... bride. She was handed into the coach behind the white-haired negro coachman, and by his side Kate's fine new hair trunk. Ah! That was a bitter touch! Kate's trunk! Kate's things! Kate's husband! If it had only been her own little moth-eaten trunk that had belonged to her mother, and filled with her own things—and if he had only been her own husband! Yet she wanted no other than David—only if he could ...
— Marcia Schuyler • Grace Livingston Hill Lutz
... ambition gets the better of discretion, but fortunately soon finds its natural level: the violent ultra-tory, and the violent ultra-demagogue sink alike, after a few years of excitement, into the moth-eaten receptacle of newspaper renown, alike unheeded, and alike forgotten, by a newer and more enlightened generation, who find that, to the cost of the real interest of the people, the mouthing orator, the agitator, the ...
— Canada and the Canadians, Vol. 2 • Richard Henry Bonnycastle
... chaining her attention, could be no longer withheld from approaching Mrs. Morley, and venting her admiration of that lady's wreath, earrings, robes, flounces. This dazzling apparition had on her the effect which a candle has on a moth—she fluttered round it, and longed to absorb herself in its blaze. But the wreath especially fascinated her—a wreath which no prudent lady with colourings less pure, and features less exquisitely delicate than the pretty champion ...
— The Parisians, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... away. As she did so, she looked exactly like a crushed brown moth. In the passage she stopped, glanced furtively around her, and then, shocking to relate, put her ear to the key-hole. She felt both sore and angry; they were saying horrid things of Beatrice, ...
— The Honorable Miss - A Story of an Old-Fashioned Town • L. T. Meade
... as their own worst enemies. They know nothing of the luxury of doing good, and when they are called to make up their last account, they will mourn that they have no investments in those funds that never fluctuate—in that bank "where moth and rust doth not corrupt, and where thieves do not break through nor steal." Let such remember, moreover, that as they brought nothing into world, so they can carry nothing out of it. And let it also be remembered, in the language of another, that were there ...
— Ups and Downs in the Life of a Distressed Gentleman • William L. Stone
... rose, threw a shawl over her shoulders, and went straight to the window next the Merrill house, whence the sound had come. She opened it cautiously and peered out. Down on the ground below stood a long, triangle-shaped figure, like a night-moth. ...
— By the Light of the Soul - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... and feeding on caterpillar's food, was always striving to turn itself into a chrysalis; and as that would be an unhappy chrysalis which should lie awake at night and roll restlessly in its cocoon, in efforts to turn itself prematurely into a moth; so will that art be unhappy and unprosperous which, instead of supporting itself on the food, and contenting itself with the customs, which have been enough for the support and guidance of other arts before it and like it, is struggling and fretting under the natural limitations of its ...
— Selections From the Works of John Ruskin • John Ruskin
... White crystalline compound, C10H8, derived from coal tar or petroleum and used in manufacturing dyes, moth repellents, and explosives ...
— Mother's Remedies - Over One Thousand Tried and Tested Remedies from Mothers - of the United States and Canada • T. J. Ritter
... daybreak is not come yet, nor the pleasure of seeing the way again, the lifting of the darkness leaves heaviness beneath it, and if a rashly early bird flops down upon the grass, he cannot count his distance, but quivers like a moth. ...
— Springhaven - A Tale of the Great War • R. D. Blackmore
... effectual. The culprit generally confessed at the sight and even the mention of the light instrument; but if he did not, the scarf would be waved over his head until his soul was caught in it like a moth or a fly, after which it would be carefully folded up and nailed to the small end of a chief's canoe, and for want of his soul the suspected person would pine ...
— The Belief in Immortality and the Worship of the Dead, Volume I (of 3) • Sir James George Frazer
... 'A moth loves the light though his wings are burnt. Though his wings are singed, he throws himself against the flame. He does not love the light because it has conferred some benefits upon him. Therefore he hovers round the light, though he sacrifice his wings. This is the ...
— The Reconciliation of Races and Religions • Thomas Kelly Cheyne
... smaller Solomon's seal, yellow spikes of toad-flax, blue and pink phlox, glossy May apple; high up on the hillside, the fire pink and wintergreen; and, down by the sandy shore, great beds of blue wild lupin, and occasionally stately spikes of the familiar moth mullein. ...
— Afloat on the Ohio - An Historical Pilgrimage of a Thousand Miles in a Skiff, from Redstone to Cairo • Reuben Gold Thwaites |
