"Tortoise" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... quite right," said the old lady decisively, dropping her tortoise-shell lorgnon into her lap, and suppressing a yawn. "Only, it is you who are charming! I must go to the Grosvenor as soon as it opens to see if your clever husband, who seems to be able to paint everything and everybody, has done you justice.... But you mustn't sit talking to an ...
— A Comedy of Masks - A Novel • Ernest Dowson and Arthur Moore
... breezes played O'er levels in the freshest shade. He saw a fig-tree like a cloud With mighty branches earthward bowed. It stretched a hundred leagues and made For hermit bands a welcome shade. Thither the feathered king of yore An elephant and tortoise bore, And lighted on a bough to eat The captives of his taloned feet. The bough unable to sustain The crushing weight and sudden strain, Loaded with sprays and leaves of spring Gave way beneath the feathered king. Under the shadow of the ...
— The Ramayana • VALMIKI
... round world rested on thy spacious nape; Upon thy neck, like a mere mole, it stood: O thou that took'st for us the Tortoise-shape, Hail, Keshav, hail! Ruler of ...
— Indian Poetry • Edwin Arnold
... in a tattered robe, leaned upon his staff of thornwood, and stared about him blindly as though the sun bewildered him. The guards came to thrust him away, but he waved his staff, and they fell back from him as though there were power in that staff. Now his slow, tortoise-like eyes seemed to catch sight of the glittering throne, and of him who sat upon it, and with long strides he walked to the throne and halted in front of it, again leaning on ...
— Morning Star • H. Rider Haggard
... yellow ribbon in her hair. Kathleen and Julia were in the white dresses brought them by Cousin Ann, and Mrs. Carey wore her new black silk, made with a sweeping little train. Her wedding necklace of seed pearls was around her neck, and a tall comb of tortoise shell and pearls rose from the low-coiled ...
— Mother Carey's Chickens • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... when I came up to them, invariably turned out to be only portions of gorse bushes projecting through the snow. My optical delusions as to colour were perhaps the most remarkable; the protruding rocks invariably appeared of a strange orange yellow, with black lines along them, producing a short of tortoise-shell effect. I took these mysterious appearances at first for dead animals, ponies or sheep, and touched them to try to ascertain the fact. My hands, however, were so utterly devoid of sensation, that they were of no more use than my eyes ...
— A Night in the Snow - or, A Struggle for Life • Rev. E. Donald Carr
... white cotton cloth or muslin and quite plain, with neither frill, tuck, flounce, nor anything of the kind. Necklaces and ear-rings are worn, but I am glad to say the nose in Ceylon seems to be preserved from the indignity of rings. The men's dress is rather scanty, their weakness being a large tortoise-shell comb, which every one wears; it reaches from ear to ear, and the hair is combed straight back and confined by it. Women are denied this crowning ornament, and must content themselves with a pin in the hair, the head of ...
— Round the World • Andrew Carnegie
... style, with oak panelling, and heavily carved bedsteads, of Queen Elizabeth's time, or of the Stuarts, hung with rich tapestry curtains of similar date, and with beautiful old cabinets of carved wood, sculptured in relief, or tortoise-shell and ivory. The very pictures and realities, these rooms were, of stately comfort; and they were called by the name of kings,—King Edward's, King Charles II's, King Henry VII's chamber; and they were hung with beautiful pictures, many of them portraits of these ...
— Passages From the English Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... of lofty mirrors, and The tables, most of ebony inlaid With mother of pearl or ivory, stood at hand, Or were of tortoise-shell or rare woods made, Fretted with gold or silver:—by command The greater part of these were ready spread With viands and sherbets in ice—and wine— Kept for all comers at all hours ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 6 • Lord Byron
... had given Alexander the honour again. He drove even more deliberately than before. For quite half a minute he stood over his ball, pawing at it with his driving-iron like a cat investigating a tortoise. Finally he despatched it to one of the few safe spots on the hillside. The drive from this tee has to be carefully calculated, for, if it be too straight, it will catch the slope and ...
— The Clicking of Cuthbert • P. G. Wodehouse
... now, hey? Suppose your astonishment if a lady in an assembly were to offer you a prise? I can remember a lady with such a box as this, with a tour, as we used to call it then; with paniers, with a tortoise-shell cane, with the prettiest little high-heeled velvet shoes in the world!— ah! that was a time, that was a time! Ah, Eliza, Eliza, I have thee now in my mind's eye! At Bungay on the Waveney, did I not walk with thee, Eliza? Aha, did I not love thee? Did I not walk with ...
— The Lock and Key Library • Julian Hawthorne, Ed.
... motion is only a name given to a series of conditions, each of which, considered separately, is rest. "Rest is force resistant; motion is force triumphant."[457] The famous puzzle of "Achilles and the Tortoise," by which he endeavored to prove the unreality of motion, has been rendered ...
— Christianity and Greek Philosophy • Benjamin Franklin Cocker
... willing! if you were only willing! ... I have a pavilion on a promontory, in the midst of an isthmus between two oceans. It is wainscotted with plates of glass, floored with tortoise-shells, and is open to the four winds of Heaven. From above, I watch the return of my fleets and the people who ascend the hill with loads on their shoulders. We should sleep on down softer than clouds; we should ...
— The Temptation of St. Antony - or A Revelation of the Soul • Gustave Flaubert
... Emperors of the West! The mistress was completely gained over, and easily carried her point with Louis, who had, indeed, wrongs of his own to resent. His feelings were not quick; but contempt, says the Eastern proverb, pierces even through the shell of the tortoise; and neither prudence nor decorum had ever restrained Frederic from expressing his measureless contempt for the sloth, the imbecility, and the baseness of Louis. France was thus induced to join the coalition; and the example of France determined the conduct of Sweden, then completely ...
— Critical and Historical Essays, Volume III (of 3) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... was supplied by the clan-symbol, called a totem. This was always an animal of some kind, and an image of it was often rudely painted over a lodge-entrance or tattooed on the clansman's body. All who belonged to the clan of the Wolf, or the Bear, or the Tortoise, or any other, were supposed to be descended from a common ancestress; and this kinship was the tie that held them together in a certain alliance, though living far apart. It mattered not that the original clan had been split up and its fragments scattered among several different tribes. ...
— French Pathfinders in North America • William Henry Johnson
... water, in which huge monsters careered, uncontrolled and wild. From the upper there descended to the lower a creating spirit, in the form of a beautiful woman. She alighted on the back of a huge tortoise, gave birth to a pair of male twins and expired. Thereupon the shell of the tortoise began to enlarge, and grew until it became a "big island" and formed ...
— An account of Sa-Go-Ye-Wat-Ha - Red Jacket and his people, 1750-1830 • John Niles Hubbard
... indued her feet with goloshes and pinned up her skirts till they looked like some demented Paris mode. An ancient bonnet was tied under her chin with strings, and her equipment was completed by an exceedingly smart tortoise-shell-handled umbrella, which, she explained, had been a Christmas ...
— Huntingtower • John Buchan
... beginning, a few men rose out of the ground, but there was no woman among them. One of them found out a road to heaven, where he met a woman; they offended the Great Spirit, upon which they were both thrust out. They fell on the back of the tortoise; the woman was delivered of male twins; in process of time, one of these twins ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 12, No. 338, Saturday, November 1, 1828. • Various
... for his work. We sometimes see most wonderful efforts made by individuals in an overdone trade; for example, those of a hatter, who feels that he must give mankind a special direction to his shop, or die. Half-a-dozen tortoise-like missionaries do nothing but walk about the streets from morning to night, proclaiming from carapace and plastron,[1] that there are no hats equal to those at No. 98 of such a street. A van like the temple of Juggernauth parades about all day, propagating the same ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 420, New Series, Jan. 17, 1852 • Various
... animal life found on the desert are the wildcat, coyote, rabbit, deer, rat, tortoise, scorpion, centipede, tarantula, Gila monster, chuck-walla, desert rattlesnake, side-winder, humming-bird, eagle, quail, and road-runner. Wild horses and wild donkeys, or "burros," frequent these great wastes, cropping the vegetation that grows on ...
— Wealth of the World's Waste Places and Oceania • Jewett Castello Gilson
... house, in which I almost lived in Spring and Summer-time, and from which I managed to extract a great deal of enjoyment; while for companions and playmates I had old Karl, my aunt's gardener, a pigeon-house full of pigeons, three staid elderly cats, and a tortoise. In the way of education I fared scantily enough, learning just as little as it pleased my aunt to teach me, and having that little presented to me under its ...
— Monsieur Maurice • Amelia B. Edwards
... They got their iron ore from the hills, which they smelt, where they dig it. In every village they saw a fetish house in good repair, adorned with painted figures of human beings, as also the boa, the alligator, and the tortoise. The country is well cultivated with corn, yams, and cotton; but the ant-hills were the highest the travellers had ever seen, being from fifteen to twenty feet high, and resembling so many gothic cathedrals ...
— Lander's Travels - The Travels of Richard Lander into the Interior of Africa • Robert Huish
... me," the major filled in the pause, "that you are a trifle short on a woman's long suit—patience. Now in the case of David Kildare, you don't want to give him one moment of tortoise speed but must keep him pacing with the hare entirely. Remember the result ...
— Andrew the Glad • Maria Thompson Daviess
... a pair of fierce-looking eyes glared at the interrupter of the studies from beneath enormously-produced, thick, white eyebrows, and through a great pair of round tortoise-shell spectacles. ...
— The Lost Middy - Being the Secret of the Smugglers' Gap • George Manville Fenn
... stick so plaguey close that I cannot so much as bend my knees!" "For shame!" they answered. "It is fear and not armour that stiffens your legs." Thus rebuked, Sancho endeavoured to move, but fell flat on the earth like a great tortoise; while in the darkness the others made a clash with their swords and shields, and trampled upon the prone governor, who quite gave himself up for dead. But at break of day they raised a cry of "Victory!" and, lifting ...
— The Worlds Greatest Books - Vol. II: Fiction • Arthur Mee, J. A. Hammerton, Eds.
... pirogues, the crews of which had jumped into the sea, were captured. Of great length and well made, these boats were decorated in front with a man's head carved, the eyes of which were formed of mother of pearl, the ears of tortoise-shell, ...
— Celebrated Travels and Travellers - Part 2. The Great Navigators of the Eighteenth Century • Jules Verne
... proud of his running, and used to brag that in a foot race he could beat anything that lived between the Wide Grass Lands and the edge of the world. He used to talk about it to almost everybody that came along, and one day when he met one of the Turtle family who used to be called 'Mr. Tortoise' in those days, he stopped and began to brag to him how fast he could run and how nobody in the Big Deep Woods dared to race ...
— How Mr. Rabbit Lost his Tail • Albert Bigelow Paine
... the dancing master, "would be my cousin Alexandre. He escaped during the Terror hidden under a load of hay, his son driving in a blouse and red nightcap. Will Mr. Cary honour me?" and out came a tortoise-shell snuff-box. ...
— Lewis Rand • Mary Johnston
... lofty cavern wandering 25 He found a tortoise, and cried out—'A treasure!' (For Mercury first made the tortoise sing) The beast before the portal at his leisure The flowery herbage was depasturing, Moving his feet in a deliberate measure 30 Over the turf. Jove's profitable ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley Volume I • Percy Bysshe Shelley
... Rigault was seated writing (seemingly very absorbed). He appeared to me to be a man of about thirty-five or forty years old, short, thick-set, with a full, round face, a bushy black beard, a sensuous mouth, and a cynical smile. He wore tortoise-shell eyeglasses; but these could not hide the wicked expression of his ...
— In the Courts of Memory 1858-1875. • L. de Hegermann-Lindencrone
... defend, and while the Greeks oppose As all the Dardan and Argolic race Had been contracted in that narrow space; Or as all Ilium else were void of fear, And tumult, war, and slaughter, only there. Their targets in a tortoise cast, the foes, Secure advancing, to the turrets rose: Some mount the scaling ladders; some, more bold, Swerve upwards, and by posts and pillars hold; Their left hand gripes their bucklers in th' ascent, ...
— The Aeneid • Virgil
... more paradoxical tenet of our philosopher's finds it justification here. He says that the units of motion are indivisible, that they are acts; so that to solve the riddle about Achilles and the tortoise we need no mathematics of the infinitesimal, but only to ask Achilles how he accomplishes the feat. Achilles would reply that in so many strides he would do it; and we may be surprised to learn that these strides are indivisible, so that, apparently, Achilles could not have stumbled ...
— Winds Of Doctrine - Studies in Contemporary Opinion • George Santayana
... understand, and show him the pictures of Momotaro, who was born out of a peach and who grew up to be so strong and brave that he went to the Ogres' Island and carried off all their treasures,—caps and coats that made their wearers invisible, jewels which made the tide come or go, coral and amber and tortoise-shell,—and all these things the little Peach Boy took back to his kind old foster mother and father, and they all lived happily forever after. And in the telling O Sana Man's voice would thrill, and her almond eyes grow bright, while her slender ...
— Miss Mink's Soldier and Other Stories • Alice Hegan Rice
... tall, learned-looking man, about fifty, slightly stooped, with a bulging midriff, tortoise-shell glasses, graying hair, and a strange look in his eyes. I'd noticed him standing outside Shannon's Bar for about ten minutes, pacing back and forth. Then he came in and sat down next to me. It was late afternoon, ...
— "To Invade New York...." • Irwin Lewis
... delicious. I may here mention that several days later I became aware that this same broth—the origin of which puzzled me at the moment, though not enough to prevent me from taking it—had been prepared from a kind of tortoise, the existence of which in large numbers on the spit Hutchinson had accidentally discovered that very morning, and in pursuit of which he had sent out two of the most slightly wounded with a sack, and instructions to catch and bring in as many of the creatures as ...
— A Middy of the Slave Squadron - A West African Story • Harry Collingwood
... the creature?" inquired Miss Campbell, raising her tortoise shell lorgnette in order the better to see the ...
— The Motor Maids at Sunrise Camp • Katherine Stokes
... were an empty flask, thrown on the ground, and a cup and ball in palm wood, of which the ball, made of the head of a tortoise, was ...
— Eight Hundred Leagues on the Amazon • Jules Verne
... some while fluttering in the Air, not finding Ground whereupon to put her Foot. But that the Fishes moved with Compassion for her, immediately held a Consultation to deliberate which of them should receive her. The Tortoise very officiously offered its Back on the Surface of the Water. The Woman came to rest upon it, and fixed herself there. Afterwards the Filthiness and Dirt of the Sea gathering together about the Tortoise, there was formed by little and little that vast Tract of Land, ...
— Seventh Annual Report • Various
... bed, but freshened and brightened and deceptively free from pain, he woke at last to find the pleasant yellow sunshine mottling his dingy carpet like a tortoise-shell cat. Instinctively with his first yawny return to consciousness he reached back under his pillow ...
— Molly Make-Believe • Eleanor Hallowell Abbott
... looked like, and it is not at all unlikely that the poet intended we should not see him very clearly. He is a hideous spectacle, scarcely human, yet resembling a man in some respects. He is called in various places villain, slave and tortoise; a moon-calf, that is, a shapeless lump; a fish, with legs like a man and fins like arms; a puppy-headed monster; a man monster; half a fish and half a monster; a plain fish; a mis-shaped knave; "as strange a thing as e'er I looked upon;" and it is said of him ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 8 • Charles H. Sylvester
... poor blind aunt And her old mother,—for they love you well." "A present! Why, Miss Percival, there's nothing I do so love to do as to make presents. I've made three in my lifetime; one a ring Of tortoise-shell; and one—" ...
— The Woman Who Dared • Epes Sargent
... swelling spread of live water it is, and safe, except, as one of my fellow-passengers informed me, for a rock off the Punta del Carnero, or Mutton Point. The rock is covered when the tide is high (for there is a tide here), but rears its tortoise-like back over the surface for some hours at the ebb. The Channel squadron was coming out of Gib some years before when an ironclad grounded on this rock, but was got off without more damage than a ...
— Romantic Spain - A Record of Personal Experiences (Vol. II) • John Augustus O'Shea
... consisting of rolling slopes of no great elevation well spotted with scrub. It boasted a fine breed of chameleon, and we also found a number of little tortoises, which were pressed into the service to give a bit of sport! Tortoise racing was a slow business, but eminently sporting, because the tortoise is so splendidly unreliable. On one occasion one of the competitors in a big sweepstake was discovered to consist of a shell only—the tortoise who ...
— The Fifth Battalion Highland Light Infantry in the War 1914-1918 • F.L. Morrison
... that the prince would leave in the morning, traveling swiftly by automobile, but he, plodding on foot, or in any way he could, would surely follow. It gave him courage to remember the old fable of the tortoise and the hare, a fable which doubtless has proved a vain consolation to many a man, far ...
— The Hosts of the Air • Joseph A. Altsheler
... would scald them over the fire to make the vermine come out, and then boil them, and drink up the liquor, and then beat the great ends of them in a mortar, and so eat them. They would eat horse's guts, and ears, and all sorts of wild birds which they could catch; also bear, venison, beaver, tortoise, frogs, squirrels, dogs, skunks, rattlesnakes; yea, the very bark of trees; besides all sorts of creatures, and provision which they plundered from the English. I can but stand in admiration to see the wonderful power of God in providing ...
— Captivity and Restoration • Mrs. Mary Rowlandson
... the soul can attain, is action without passion. The mind is to be entirely independent of external objects; to preserve its undisturbed serenity it should have the conscious power of withdrawing all its senses within itself, as the tortoise draws all its limbs beneath in shell." Action is necessary, but action must produce no emotion—no sensation on the calm spirit within; whatever may be their consequences, however important, however ...
— Nala and Damayanti and Other Poems • Henry Hart Milman
... of the stuffed leopard in the hall very soon had the matter decided. Evelyn slid a pace or two this way and that, and pronounced that the floor was excellent. Signor Rodriguez informed them of an old Spaniard who fiddled at weddings—fiddled so as to make a tortoise waltz; and his daughter, although endowed with eyes as black as coal-scuttles, had the same power over the piano. If there were any so sick or so surly as to prefer sedentary occupations on the night in question to spinning and watching others spin, the drawing-room and billiard-room ...
— The Voyage Out • Virginia Woolf
... a moderate drinker; ah, sir, do you bear in mind How the plodding tortoise in the race left the leaping hare behind? 'Twas because he held right on and on, steady and true, if slow, And that's the way, I'm thinking, that the moderate drinkers go! Step over step—day after day—with sleepless, tireless pace, ...
— Poems Teachers Ask For • Various
... tall that he was obliged to stoop as he entered the doorway. Within was an ordinary peasant's kitchen, but cleaner than the average. In spite of the weather the floor boards were freshly scrubbed. The hearth was swept, and by the stove lay a sleek tortoise-shell cat. There was a wooden dresser, a chimney shelf with rows of plates standing on it, and in a doorway just beyond an elderly ...
— Kings, Queens And Pawns - An American Woman at the Front • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... way to the Duc de Grandlieu's, in the costume of a retainer of a superior class. He wore the ribbon of the Legion of Honor at his button-hole. He had made up a withered old face with powdered hair, deep wrinkles, and a colorless skin. His eyes were hidden by tortoise-shell spectacles. He looked like a retired office-clerk. On giving his name as Monsieur de Saint-Denis, he was led to the Duke's private room, where he found Derville reading a letter, which he himself had dictated to one of his agents, the ...
— Scenes from a Courtesan's Life • Honore de Balzac
... opals, rubies, and emeralds; cabinets of ivory, curiously wrought; mosaic tables, set with jasper, blood-stone, and lapis-lazuli, their feet carved into the claws of lions and eagles; screens of old raised Oriental Japan; massive musical clocks, richly chased with ormulu and tortoise-shell; ottomans superbly damasked; Persian and other carpets, with corresponding hearth-rugs bordered with ancient family crests and armorial ensigns in the centre, and rich hangings of English tapestry. The carved chimney-pieces ...
— Women in the fine arts, from the Seventh Century B.C. to the Twentieth Century A.D. • Clara Erskine Clement
... know about those things," declared Herb, carelessly. "Sometimes a native can save twenty miles by shooting through where a passage runs across a neck of wooded land. But I guess the good old Comfort will stick to the main stream. I may be the tortoise in this race, but there's lots of chances the hares will lie down for a little nap in the way, and let ...
— Motor Boat Boys Mississippi Cruise - or, The Dash for Dixie • Louis Arundel
... was reared upon the grass Of spice-wood and of sassafras; On pillars of mottled tortoise-shell Hung the burnished canopy— And o'er it gorgeous curtains fell Of the tulip's crimson drapery. The monarch sat on his judgment-seat, On his brow the crown imperial shone, The prisoner Fay was at his feet, And his peers were ranged around the throne. ...
— The Culprit Fay - and Other Poems • Joseph Rodman Drake
... a little scream, and the Duchess, Mrs. Simonson's handsome tortoise-shell cat, so named from her extreme dignity, who lay at full length upon a rug, drew herself up ...
— Wired Love - A Romance of Dots and Dashes • Ella Cheever Thayer
... fell a victim to the disease which attacks so many of its kind when brought under the influence of a northern climate. Its master appeared to be profoundly affected by its loss, and never quite recovered the level of spirits that he had recently attained. In company with the tortoise, which Colonel John presented to him on his last visit, he potters about his lawn and kitchen garden, with none of his erstwhile sprightliness; and his nephews and nieces are fairly well justified in alluding to him ...
— The Chronicles of Clovis • Saki
... corrupted by different nations, scattered and wandering through the globe as the descendants of Noah, without a written language. The Hindoo therefore in his belief that the earth was actually drawn up at the flood, by the tusks of a boar, and that it rests at this hour on the back of a tortoise: and the North American Indian in his wild supposition that Waesackoochack, whose reputed father was a snake, formed the present beautiful order of creation after the deluge, by the help of a musk-rat, afford no inconsiderable proof that the Bible is of far greater antiquity ...
— The Substance of a Journal During a Residence at the Red River Colony, British North America • John West
... 'Tis but a polished tortoise-shell, of which the living inhabitant has long since crumbled to dust; but it still gleams in the ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 1, Issue 2, December, 1857 • Various
... course of a few days had effected all the necessary repairs, and then steered westward for Admiralty Island, calling at various islands on our way, trading with the wild natives for coco-nut oil, copra, ivory nuts, pearl-shell and tortoise-shell, and doing very poorly; for a large American schooner, engaged in the same business, had been ahead of us, and at most of the islands we touched at we secured nothing more than a few hundredweight ...
— The Call Of The South - 1908 • Louis Becke
... what hidden bond can connect the flower which a girl wears in her hair and the blood which courses through her youthful veins; or, what is there in common between the dense and resisting mass of the oak, or the strong fabric of the tortoise, and those broad disks of glassy jelly which may be seen pulsating through the waters of a calm sea, but which drain away to mere films in the hand which raises ...
— Autobiography and Selected Essays • Thomas Henry Huxley
... as the tortoise goes, Heavy and slow; And the same rose blows, and the same sun glows, And the same brook sings ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 2 (of 4) • Various
... tortoise is perhaps the most remarkable of all the animals of the desert. It is rare, and little is known of its habits except that it lives in the most arid valleys of southeastern California, far removed ...
— The Western United States - A Geographical Reader • Harold Wellman Fairbanks
... equipage, for she was too proud to consent to appear at Court like a poor and humble frog from the marshes. A little sedan-chair was made for her, large enough to hold a couple of eggs comfortably, and this was covered outside with tortoise-shell and lined with lizard-skin. From the little green frogs that hop about the meadows she selected fifty to act as maids of honour, and each of these was mounted on a snail. They had dainty saddles, and rode in dashing style with the leg thrown over the saddle-bow. ...
— Old-Time Stories • Charles Perrault
... Hindu (later), believe that the earth rests on the back of a turtle or tortoise[5], and that this is ruled over by the sun and moon, the first being a good spirit; the second, malignant. The good spirit interposes between the malice of the moon and mankind, and it is he who makes rivers; for when the earth was parched, all the water being held back ...
— The Religions of India - Handbooks On The History Of Religions, Volume 1, Edited By Morris Jastrow • Edward Washburn Hopkins
... evening, when the fire is burning brightly and you are chatting gayly beside it, he should take off one of your shoes and stockings, put your foot on his lap, and in a moment of forgetfulness carry irreverence so far as to kiss it; if he likes to pass your large tortoise-shell comb through your hair, if he selects your perfumes, arranges your plaits, and suddenly exclaims, striking his forehead: "Sit down there, darling; I have an idea how to arrange ...
— Monsieur, Madame and Bebe, Complete • Gustave Droz
... prevent their drying. By this method many investigations have been made of muscular contractions in isolated muscles. Landois has noted that the muscles of a man may be made to contract two hours and a half after removal, those of the frog and the tortoise 10 days after. Recently Burrows (1911) has noted a slight increase in the myotomes of the embryo chick after they have been kept for 2 to 6 days ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 21 - The Recent Days (1910-1914) • Charles F. Horne, Editor
... them gratefully, and as we went from one island to another I laid in stores of cloves, cinnamon, and other spices. In one place I saw a tortoise which was twenty cubits long and as many broad, also a fish that was like a cow and had skin so thick that it was used to make shields. Another I saw that was like a camel in shape and color. So by degrees ...
— Oriental Literature - The Literature of Arabia • Anonymous
... the rain from reaching the earth. Here we find depicted with childlike simplicity and directness the Vedic conception of Indra overcoming the demon Vritra. Stempell describes this scene as "the elephant-headed god B standing upon the head of a serpent";[141] while Seler, who claims that god B is a tortoise, explains it as the serpent forming a footstool for the rain-god.[142] In the Codex Cortes the same theme is depicted in another way, which is truer to the Indian conception of Vritra, as "the ...
— The Evolution of the Dragon • G. Elliot Smith
... its own punishment. I advise none of my readers to try it on. If they are naturally energetic and smart, they have a much better chance of rising in the world than Ned has; but let them, when they laugh at Ned and abuse him, remember the fable of the hare and the tortoise. ...
— Parkhurst Boys - And Other Stories of School Life • Talbot Baines Reed
... that came in his way. Two half-grown llamas, which are naturally as quiet and timid as sheep, bit each other very furiously, until they foamed at the mouth. And, lastly, a large mastiff made his appearance, walking in a slow, measured gait, with a sleek tortoise-shell cat on his back; and she, in turn, was surmounted by a mouse, which formed the ...
— A Voyage to the Moon • George Tucker
... up with, madam. It has been a dreadful experience. Last night, after I had extinguished the candle in my bedroom, I placed my foot upon something smooth and hard, which scuttled from under me. Imagine my horror! I lit the gas, and came upon a well-grown tortoise which Clara has thought fit to introduce into the house. I call it a filthy custom to ...
— Beyond the City • Arthur Conan Doyle
... elaborate head of hair in his window and leave it at that—he did, indeed, place there a smiling lady with a wonderful jewelled comb and a radiant row of teeth, but around this he built up a magnificent world of silver brushes, tortoise-shell combs, essences and perfumes and powders, jars and bottles and boxes. Manning was the finest artist in the town. Ponting, at the top of the street just at the corner of the Close, was an artist too, but in quite another fashion. Ponting was the best established, most ...
— Jeremy • Hugh Walpole
... reason, though Mr. Chillip often asked me to go and see him (he was a widower, having, some years before that, lost a little small light-haired wife, whom I can just remember connecting in my own thoughts with a pale tortoise-shell cat), it was but seldom that I enjoyed the happiness of passing an afternoon in his closet of a surgery; reading some book that was new to me, with the smell of the whole Pharmacopoeia coming up my nose, or pounding something in a mortar ...
— David Copperfield • Charles Dickens
... pool of stagnant, scummy water we hooked up and plunged ahead, creaking and groaning and dust enveloped, constantly outstripped by the hurrying construction trains thundering over the newly laid rails, we ourselves the tortoise in ...
— Desert Dust • Edwin L. Sabin
... course I 'd wish you; pray observe me. We see that undermining more prevails Than doth the cannon. Bear your wrongs conceal'd, And, patient as the tortoise, let this camel Stalk o'er your back unbruis'd: sleep with the lion, And let this brood of secure foolish mice Play with your nostrils, till the time be ripe For th' bloody audit, and the fatal gripe: Aim ...
— The White Devil • John Webster
... this pride and affection of uncle and mother had been trampled down by Pen's wicked extravagance and idleness! I don't envy Pen's feelings (as the phrase is), as he thought of what he had done. He had slept, and the tortoise had won the race. He had marred at its outset what might have been a brilliant career. He had dipped ungenerously into a generous mother's purse; basely and recklessly spilt her little cruse. O! it was a coward hand that could strike and rob a creature ...
— The History of Pendennis • William Makepeace Thackeray
... him, but never looked up. A low table was placed in front, on which there was a two- spouted kettle full of sake, some sake bottles, and some cups, and on another there were some small figures representing a fir-tree, a plum-tree in blossom, and a stork standing on a tortoise, the last representing length of days, and the former the beauty of women and the strength of men. Shortly a zen, loaded with eatables, was placed before each person, and the feast began, accompanied by the noises which signify ...
— Unbeaten Tracks in Japan • Isabella L. Bird
... combustible materials, alternately surrendering and regaining chemical energy, the round being kept going by the motive force of the sun's rotation.[1160] This, however, was merely to perch the globe upon a tortoise, while leaving the tortoise in the air. The sun's rotation contains a certain definite amount of mechanical power—enough, according to Lord Kelvin, if directly converted into heat, to keep up the sun's emission during 116 ...
— A Popular History of Astronomy During the Nineteenth Century - Fourth Edition • Agnes M. (Agnes Mary) Clerke
... house remain standing until the ant has drunk all the waves of the sea and the tortoise ...
— Foch the Man - A Life of the Supreme Commander of the Allied Armies • Clara E. Laughlin
... and muslin, and the dull-green carpet neither stared one out of countenance nor made one fearful to set foot upon it. It was a jolly, chummy sort of carpet that seemed to say, "Walk on me all you want to, and don't be afraid to spill your crumbs; I like crumbs." A very large tortoise-shell cat lay stretched along the arm of the couch, half asleep, and purred as Eve dipped her fingers in the long fur. The windows on the side of the room were open and the draperies swayed gently with the little ...
— The Lilac Girl • Ralph Henry Barbour
... the hare hadn't stopped to take a nap the tortoise would not have won the race," Matt replied. "So far as I can see, all business is a gamble and every investment is a bet; hence, a good business man is ...
— Cappy Ricks • Peter B. Kyne
... thought that Tocamora, apart from the beauty of the name, appeared to promise gold, so they decided to go thither as soon as they had careened and refitted. Boca del Toro, the anchorage in which they lay, was full of "green tortoise" for ships short of food. There were handy creeks, among the islands, for the ships to careen in, when their hulls were foul. The pirates hauled their ships into the creeks, and there hove them down, while their Moskito allies speared the tortoise, and the manatee, along the coast, and ...
— On the Spanish Main - Or, Some English forays on the Isthmus of Darien. • John Masefield
... "The Slave Ship," a glory of red, yellow, and blue running riot over a sunset sky, the whole reflected in a troubled sea, remarked to his companion: "Very wonderful! Seen it before. Always reminds me of a tortoise-shell cat having a fit in ...
— Outdoor Sketching - Four Talks Given before the Art Institute of Chicago; The Scammon Lectures, 1914 • Francis Hopkinson Smith
... opprobrious name which the Turks bestow on the infidels, is expressed Kabour by Ducas, and Giaour by Leunclavius and the moderns. The former term is derived by Ducange (Gloss. Graec tom. i. p. 530) from Kabouron, in vulgar Greek, a tortoise, as denoting a retrograde motion from the faith. But alas! Gabour is no more than Gheber, which was transferred from the Persian to the Turkish language, from the worshippers of fire to those of the crucifix, ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 6 • Edward Gibbon
... though it passed like a tortoise, and we came to the Lucayas, to the outposts of the vast hunting ground of Spaniard and pirate and buccaneer, the fringe of that zone of beauty and villainy and fear, and sailed slowly past the ...
— To Have and To Hold • Mary Johnston
... the offending list, and told Cotton the house-master's opinions. Jim Cotton had not very quick feelings, but contempt can pierce the shell of a tortoise, and as Philips innocently retailed the message, the secretary of the Penfold Tablet Fund knew there was one man who held him ...
— Acton's Feud - A Public School Story • Frederick Swainson
... built close beside a small creek which had cut deep into the bottom of a narrow valley between two pinon-covered hills. It squat in the valley like a tortoise, but was much more comfortable than most ranch houses of the county. It was surrounded by long sheds and circular corrals of pine logs, and looked to be what it was, a den in which to seek shelter. A blacksmith's forge was sending up a shower of sparks as Mose rode through the gate ...
— The Eagle's Heart • Hamlin Garland
... and I a woman: we look with differing eyes, each sex to the other, and perceive by contrast. Else—why, how else could you forgive my presumption? He sees me as an eagle sees the creeping tortoise. I see him as the moon the sun, never weary of gazing. I borrow his radiance to observe him by. But I weary you with my garrulous tongue.... Have you no plan at all in your journey? 'Tis not the dangers, but to me the endless restlessness of such a venture—that 'Oh, where ...
— Henry Brocken - His Travels and Adventures in the Rich, Strange, Scarce-Imaginable Regions of Romance • Walter J. de la Mare
... the poor Countess behaved herself very well, though she looked as if she might burst an important blood-vessel, as Terry carefully turned his car on the slippery surface of the road's tortoise-back. I was not happy myself, for it would have been as "easy as falling off a log" for the automobile to leap gracefully into the Roya; but the brakes held nobly, and as Terry had said, there was better going round ...
— My Friend the Chauffeur • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... having ridiculed the slow movements of a Tortoise, was challenged by the latter to run a race, a Fox to go to the goal and be the judge. They got off well together, the hare at the top of her speed, the Tortoise, who had no other intention than making his antagonist exert herself, ...
— Fantastic Fables • Ambrose Bierce
... astonished at the idea. There were so many interesting things to do. For instance, there was a large family of pet beasts and birds, some living in the barn in cages, and some free. Snuff the terrier was the most intimate and friendly of these last, and Methuselah the tortoise the greatest stranger. The children regarded him with respectful awe, for he passed so much of his life hidden away in the cold dark earth, that he must know many strange and wonderful things which went on there; but, like all people of really wide experience, he ...
— The Hawthorns - A Story about Children • Amy Walton
... would puzzle us would be for him and his troops to march away into Upper Egypt and lead us a long dance there. In this tremendous heat our fellows would not be able to march far, and it would be like a tortoise trying to catch a hare, hunting them all over the country. The more men Arabi gets together the more likely he is to make a stand and fight ...
— A Chapter of Adventures • G. A. Henty
... Estsan (Salt-woman) was in the west, and her house was of the substance of a mirage; the youth Co'nen[)i]li (Water-sprinkler) danced before her door. In the north Cqaltlaqale[1] made a house of green duckweed, and S[)i]stel' (Tortoise) lay at that door. ...
— Navaho Houses, pages 469-518 • Cosmos Mindeleff
... conscious tail her joy declared: The fair round face, the snowy beard, The velvet of her paws, Her coat that with the tortoise vies, Her ears of jet, and emerald eyes— She saw, ...
— The Golden Treasury - Of the Best Songs and Lyrical Poems in the English Language • Various
... is decidedly a thievish place. The shops are all shut at dark, after the Oracion, for fear of thieves. Ladies used to wear immense tortoise-shell combs at the back of their heads, where the mantilla is fastened on; but, when it became a regular trade for thieves to ride on horseback through the streets, and pull out the combs as they went, the fashion had to be given up. These curiously carved and ornamented combs ...
— Anahuac • Edward Burnett Tylor
... and had to fight his way through. Tiny particles stung him as they rushed by, and it seemed to him that millions of fish were darting here and there, snapping at something. It was rice. Gradually it dawned on Piang that he had reached his goal; the tortoise had reached it first, and the secret lay hidden in that dark thing ...
— The Adventures of Piang the Moro Jungle Boy - A Book for Young and Old • Florence Partello Stuart
... same monotonous sound, requiring but one smooth round stepping stone for a bridge, we sigh and feel that the change of years is upon us, for here almost every thing speaks of decay. True the hills, the ponds, the rocks (and I had almost said the speckled tortoise that has crawled up to sun itself on ...
— Withered Leaves from Memory's Garland • Abigail Stanley Hanna
... twine, etc., is made of the Bark of a Tree, and some from the Kind of Silk grass. Their fishing lines and saines are in Point of goodness preferable to any of ours. Their fishing Hooks are very curiously made of Tortoise, Pearl Oyster Shells, etc. They have a sort of Saine that is made of Coarse broad grass like flags; these are twisted and tied together in a loose manner until the whole is as thick as a large sack, ...
— Captain Cook's Journal During the First Voyage Round the World • James Cook
... life which comes up to us from the town with its population of a hundred thousand souls. As to the products of this locality, they are mostly figured porcelain, embroidered silks, japanned goods, ebony and tortoise-shell finely carved and manufactured into toy ornaments. Every small, low house has a shop in front quite open to the street; but small as these houses are, room is nearly always found in the rear or at the side for a little flower-garden, fifteen or twenty ...
— Foot-prints of Travel - or, Journeyings in Many Lands • Maturin M. Ballou
... threshold; heroes tall Dislodging pinnacle and parapet Upon the tortoise creeping to the wall; [4] ...
— The Early Poems of Alfred Lord Tennyson • Tennyson
... ramparts of machinery, we entered the domain of the table-workers, and I was turned over to Phoebe, a tall girl in tortoise ear-rings and curl-papers. Phoebe was assigned to "learn" me in the trade of "finishing." Somewhat to my surprise, she assumed the task joyfully, and helped me off with my coat and hat. From the loud-mouthed tirades ...
— The Long Day - The Story of a New York Working Girl As Told by Herself • Dorothy Richardson
... with themselves, and they all seemed to make a point of absolutely ignoring Pritchard's presence. Elizabeth was the one exception. She was carrying a tiny Chinese spaniel under one arm; with the fingers of her other hand she held a tortoise-shell mounted monocle to her eye, and stared directly at the two men. Presently she came languidly ...
— The Tempting of Tavernake • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... a pink little thing, laid down the pen he had snatched up as I entered the room, and began gazing at me quizzically through enormous tortoise-shell-rimmed goggles, after the fashion of a precocious infant who tries to look like daddy. What might he do ...
— Alone • Norman Douglas
... them. In the dwelling-house the whole family pigged together, with raw flesh drying on the rafters, stinking skins in a corner, parasitical vermin of all sorts blackening the floor, and particularly a small, biting, and odoriferous tortoise, compared with which the insect a London washerwoman brings into your house in her basket, is a stroke with a feather—and all this without the excuse of penury; for many of these were shepherd kings, sheared four thousand fleeces a year, and owned a hundred ...
— A Simpleton • Charles Reade
... shall see camels as variegated as cats, which in the woods are all of the uniformly-streaked tabby—the males inclining to the brown shade—the females to blue among them;—but being bred down, become tortoise-shell, and red, and every variety of colour, which domestication ...
— Observations and Reflections Made in the Course of a Journey through France, Italy, and Germany, Vol. I • Hester Lynch Piozzi
... not so certain of this," she observed, shaking her white head slowly as she spoke, and, lifting a pinch of snuff from her tortoise-shell box (the companion of her whole married life, as she acquainted us), she inhaled it with an air of meditative self-complacency, then offered it quietly to the gentlemen, who were still sitting over their wine and peaches; passing by Marion, Alice Durand, and myself, completely, ...
— Sea and Shore - A Sequel to "Miriam's Memoirs" • Mrs. Catharine A. Warfield
... voices sounded through the glass and the mummy-case; but that the searchers were standing within a foot of his hiding-place Sheard was painfully certain. He shrank behind the sarcophagus lid like a tortoise within its shell, fearful lest a hand, an arm, a patch of clothing ...
— The Sins of Severac Bablon • Sax Rohmer
... confession that the tortoise is referred to. Such enigmas, moreover, were not wanting even among the Attic tragedians, who on that account were often and sharply taken to task ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen
... laboriously hoisted himself up, his head emerging from his tumbled collar like the head of a tortoise aroused from sleep, and gave into Colville's affectionate grasp a ...
— The Last Hope • Henry Seton Merriman
... Was, upon its face, absurd; Yet the hare, with expedition, Took the tortoise at his word, Ran until the final lap, Then, supposing he'd outclassed him, Laid him down and took a nap And ...
— Fables for the Frivolous • Guy Whitmore Carryl
... of King Dryops, beloved by Apollo. Apollo, having changed himself into a tortoise, was taken by Dryope into her lap, and became the father of Amphis'sos. Ovid says that Dryope was changed into ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama, Vol 1 - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook • The Rev. E. Cobham Brewer, LL.D.
... means a tortoise—is fond of his shell; but if you put a live coal on his back, he crawls out of it. So the ...
— The Professor at the Breakfast Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes (Sr.)
... to Little Peachling, and brought out the treasures which they had laid up. There were caps and coats that made their wearers invisible, jewels which governed the ebb and the flow of the tide, coral, musk, emeralds, amber, and tortoise shells, besides gold and silver. All these were laid before Little Peachling by the ...
— The Junior Classics, Volume 1 • Willam Patten |
