"Roc" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... a hive covered by a swarm of burning bees; others, that it is the enchanted palace in the gardens of Gul in the depths of the Arabian nights,—like a gigantic tiara set with wonderful diamonds, larger than those which Sinbad found in the roc's valley,—like the palace of the fairies in the dreams of childhood,—like the stately pleasure-dome of Kubla Khan in Xanadu, and twenty other whimsical things. At nearly midnight, when we go to bed, we take a last look at ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 4, No. 24, Oct. 1859 • Various
... sprout grew mightily, like a tree, and an ear of millet sprang up out of it like a canopy, large enough to shade half an acre of ground. In the fall the ear was ripe. Then the little brother took his ax and chopped it down. But no sooner had the ear fallen to the ground, than an enormous Roc came rushing down, took the ear in his beak and flew away. The little brother ran after him as far as ...
— The Chinese Fairy Book • Various
... which circled mediaeval theories of the world's shape. "Somewhere in the Indian Ocean between Comorin and Madagascar," became the compromise when the mountain could not be found off any of the known coast-lines; it was mixed up with notions of the Roc, and the Moon Mountains in Africa, of the Magnet Island and of the Eastern Kingdom made out of one vast pearl; and even in Roger Bacon it serves as an algebraic sign for a mathematical centre of ...
— Prince Henry the Navigator, the Hero of Portugal and of Modern Discovery, 1394-1460 A.D. • C. Raymond Beazley
... after they had taken off the skin, presented me with a knife, telling me it would be useful to me on an occasion which they would soon explain. "We must sew you in this skin," said they, "and then leave you; upon which a bird of a monstrous size, called a roc, will appear in the air, and taking you for a sheep, will pounce upon you, and soar with you to the sky: but let not that alarm you; he will descend with you again, and lay you on the top of a mountain. When you find yourself on the ground, ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments Complete • Anonymous
... behind any one of these fretted arches might one come upon a king, half man, half jet-black marble. The most captious of genies could have found no fault with the Hall of the Ambassadors save the absence of the roc's egg; and despite my impatience the storied enchantment of the place soon had me in ...
— The Car of Destiny • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... yet it moved, arose, held out one hand, and a bird as large as the fabled roc alighted on the ...
— The Black Wolf Pack • Dan Beard
... mechanism he unrolled the valves of a gigantic incubator. Within, recumbent on cotton wool, the almost frenzied spectators perceived two monstrous eggs, like those of the Roc of Arabian fable. Te-iki-pa now chanted a brief psalm in his own language. One of the eggs rolled gently in its place; then the other. A faint crackling noise was heard, first from one, then from the other egg. From each emerged the featherless head of a fowl—the species hitherto ...
— The Disentanglers • Andrew Lang
... quest, though, is simpler of Roc's egg or Sangreal, Easier to fashion a flying machine, Than for my Muse to fake up (forgive Cockney slang) real Readable rhymes in praise ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 104, May 6, 1893 • Various
... les bois ou dormaient Viviane et Merlin! L'Aigle de mont n'est fait que pour ta gibeciere; La neige vierge est la pour fournir ta glaciere; Le torrent qui bondit sur le roc sybillin, Et vole, diamant, neige, ecume et poussiere, N'est plus bon qu'a tourner tes ...
— Essays in Little • Andrew Lang
... while Crochnuit bore another son to Roc Diocain, that was Head Steward to Angus. Roc Diocain went then to Donn, and asked would he rear up his son for him, the way Angus was rearing Donn's son. But Donn said he would not take the son of a common man into his house, and it would be best for Angus to take ...
— Gods and Fighting Men • Lady I. A. Gregory
... are sensible, and, above all, intelligible, I can get on with them. It is only the vague, superfine sensations, and extremely wire-drawn notions, that put me about. Let a woman ask me to give her an edible or a wearable—be the same a roc's egg or the breastplate of Aaron, a share of St. John's locusts and honey or the leathern girdle about his loins—I can, at least, understand the demand; but when they pine for they know not what—sympathy, sentiment, ...
— Shirley • Charlotte Bronte
... The exquisite colouring and forms astonished and charmed him, who had scarcely ever seen any but a hen's egg or an ostrich's, and by the time he was lugged away to bed he had learned the names of at least twenty sorts, and dreamed of the glorious perils of tree-climbing, and that he had found a roc's egg in the island as big as Sinbad's, and clouded like a tit-lark's, in blowing which Martin and he had nearly ...
— Tom Brown's Schooldays • Thomas Hughes
... to get everything to rights; and your Aunt Grace had the misfortune to sprain her ankle yesterday, so she can't attend to things as she otherwise would. But whatever you want just you come straight and tell your Uncle Teddy, and you shall have it, if it's a roc's egg." ...
— Patty Fairfield • Carolyn Wells
... under the pressure of the little daily emergencies, when exactly the thing wanted was sure not to be at hand. It was quite wonderful how she devised substitutes for all sorts of deficiencies. Elsie, amazed at her cleverness, declared herself sure that if Dr. Hope were to say that a roc's egg was needful for Imogen's recovery, Clover would reply, as a matter of course, "Certainly,—I will send it up directly," and thereupon proceed to concoct one out of materials already in the house, which would answer as well as the original article and do Imogen just as much good. ...
— In the High Valley - Being the fifth and last volume of the Katy Did series • Susan Coolidge
... that he might pretend to take her place, came to live in the palace. The princess, thinking him really the holy woman, heeded all that he said. One day, admiring the beauty of the hall, he told her that nothing could surpass it if only a roc's egg were hung from the middle of the dome. "A roc," he said, "is a bird of enormous size which lives at the summit of Mount Caucasus. The architect who built your palace ...
— The Children's Hour, v 5. Stories From Seven Old Favorites • Eva March Tappan
... other names, cry, scold, and sometimes tear off horns and skin, declaring fiercely that they "won't play." The few privileged persons who have studied them are inclined to think them a remarkable mixture of the monkey, the sphinx, the roc, and the queer creatures seen by ...
— Little Men - Life at Plumfield With Jo's Boys • Louisa May Alcott
... veil down for fear of discovery. The Princess showed him the hall, and asked him what he thought of it. "It is truly beautiful," said the false Fatima. "In my mind it wants but one thing." "And what is that?" said the Princess. "If only a roc's egg," replied he, "were hung up from the middle of this dome, it would be the wonder of ...
— The Blue Fairy Book • Various
... its details or those of the "Pilgrim's Progress." Sindbad the Sailor carrying the Old Man of the Sea; Giant Despair scowling from a make-believe window in a fictitious castle of eroded sandstone; a roc with wings eighty feet long, poising on a giddy pinnacle to pounce upon an elephant; pilgrim Christian advancing with sword and buckler against a demon guarding some rocky portal, would have ...
— Overland • John William De Forest
... a breeze danced and pranced, and shook drops of sunlight like falling golden coins into the brown water of the canal. Down stream slowly drifted a long string of galliots piled with crimson cheeses. The little boy thought they looked as if they were roc's eggs, blocks of big ruby eggs. He said, "Oh!" with delight, and pressed against the window ...
— Men, Women and Ghosts • Amy Lowell
... which our common nature is susceptible—to say that he was in a perfect paralysis of surprise, and that he wandered into the most stupendous and theretofore unattainable heights of complicated amazement—would be to shadow forth his state of mind in the feeblest and lamest terms. If a roc, an eagle, a griffin, a flying elephant, a winged sea-horse, had suddenly appeared, and, taking him on its back, carried him bodily into the heart of the 'Salwanners,' it would have been to him as an everyday occurrence, in comparison with what he now beheld. To be sitting quietly by, seeing ...
— Barnaby Rudge • Charles Dickens
... commonplaces, blind denials, and balloon-like conclusions, in that mighty sort of language which would have made a new Koran for a knot of followers. I mean no disrespect to the ancient Koran, but one would not desire the roc to lay more eggs and give us a whole wing-flapping brood to soar and ...
— Impressions of Theophrastus Such • George Eliot |
