"Splay" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... red, and flaming like a carbuncle; its ears green, like a Prasin emerald; its teeth like a topaz; its tail long and black, like jet; its feet white, diaphanous and transparent like a diamond, somewhat broad, and of the splay kind, like those of geese, and as Queen Dick's used to be at Toulouse in the days of yore. About its neck it wore a gold collar, round which were some Ionian characters, whereof I could pick out but two words, US ATHENAN, ...
— Gargantua and Pantagruel, Complete. • Francois Rabelais
... that he felt it, running his splay fingers through his beard in evident embarrassment, while Rainey took the book silently, looking through the pages for the ritual of ...
— A Man to His Mate • J. Allan Dunn
... me to swear to his face, but he wore a covert-coat of un-English length, and the lamp across the road played steadily on his boots; they were very yellow, and they made no noise when he took a turn. I strained my eyes, and all at once I remembered the thin-soled, low-heeled, splay yellow boots of the insidious foreigner, with the soft eyes and the brown-paper face, whom I had turned from the door as a palpable fraud. The ring at the bell was the first I had heard of him, there had been no warning step upon the stairs, and my suspicious eye had searched his ...
— Raffles - Further Adventures of the Amateur Cracksman • E. W. Hornung
... that leaped upon the breast of the panthan to tear at his jugular. Twice Turan struck it away as he sought to regain his feet, but both times it returned with increased ferocity to renew the attack. Its only weapons are its jaws since its broad, splay feet are armed with blunt talons. With its protruding jaws it excavates its winding burrows and with its broad feet it pushes the dirt behind it. To keep the jaws from his flesh then was Turan's only concern and this he succeeded in doing until chance gave him a hold ...
— The Chessmen of Mars • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... tinselled gayly o'er, for evening wear, Till the next quarter brings a new-fledged pair. "Inspired by me—(pursued this waggish Fairy)— "That best of wives and Sapphos, Lady Mary, "Votary alike of Crispin and the Muse, "Makes her own splay-foot epigrams and shoes. "For me the eyes of young Camilla shine, "And mingle Love's blue brilliances with mine; "For me she sits apart, from coxcombs shrinking, "Looks wise—the pretty soul!—and ...
— The Complete Poems of Sir Thomas Moore • Thomas Moore et al
... She always called De Bernis her pigeon pattu (splay-footedpigeon—on account of his large feet and his love-songs). Voltaire had previously nicknamed him Babet le bouquetiere, at first because the abbe always introduced flowers into his poetry; afterward, on account of the resemblance he bore to a flower girl who ...
— International Miscellany of Literature, Art and Science, Vol. 1, - No. 3, Oct. 1, 1850 • Various
... as the elbow, but the lower part resembles a fin; they are amphibious, living equally well on the mud or in the water; in moving in the mud they walk, as it were, on their elbows, and the lower arm or fin then projects like a great splay foot; but in swimming the whole of this apparatus is used as a fin. They have also the property of being able to bury themselves almost instantaneously in the soft mud when disturbed. The uncouth gambols and leaps of these anomalous creatures were ...
— Journals Of Two Expeditions Of Discovery In North-West And Western Australia, Vol. 1 (of 2) • George Grey
... which expressed itself in his growing shyness, his splay-footed awkwardness, his rapidly increasing deference to Father, Mr. Hartwig saw Lena, the maid, spread forth tables for the social and intellectual game of progressive euchre; saw Father combat mightily ...
— The Innocents - A Story for Lovers • Sinclair Lewis
... be out at night," he said to Catherine. "Then you don't keep looking off at things; you can look inside;" and he struck his breast with his splay hand. ...
— A Mountain Woman and Others • (AKA Elia Wilkinson) Elia W. Peattie
... into the duties of a soldier, many things seem absolute tyranny which would appear to a civilised man a mere necessary restraint. To keep the restless body of an African negro in a position to which he has not been accustomed; to cramp his splay feet, with his great toes standing out, into European shoes made for feet of a different form; to place a collar round his neck, which is called a stock, and which to him is cruel torture; above all, to confine him every night to his ...
— The History of the First West India Regiment • A. B. Ellis |
