"Weeds" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... are born of humble weeds, That faint and perish in the pathless wood; And out of bitter life grow noble deeds To ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 2, 1917 • Various
... day some of us met at the parsonage to take a survey. Last year the house was without a tenant, and it had come to be in rather a dilapidated condition. The fence gate was off the hinges. The garden was over-grown with weeds. The sink in the kitchen was badly rotted. One of the parlor blinds was off. There was a bad leak over the back porch, and the plastering looked just ready to fall, and the whole looked ...
— Laicus - The experiences of a Layman in a Country Parish • Lyman Abbott
... snapped Kano. "She stands among rocks and weeds, and looks marvellously like——" He broke off, thinking it better not to mention his daughter's name. "But I ...
— The Dragon Painter • Mary McNeil Fenollosa
... various fowls are crown'd. Tobacco is the worst of things, which they To English landlords, as their tribute, pay. 30 Such is the mould, that the bless'd tenant feeds On precious fruits, and pays his rent in weeds. With candied plantains, and the juicy pine, On choicest melons, and sweet grapes, they dine, And with potatoes fat their wanton swine. Nature these cates with such a lavish hand Pours out among them, that our coarser land Tastes of that bounty, and does cloth return, Which not for warmth, but ...
— Poetical Works of Edmund Waller and Sir John Denham • Edmund Waller; John Denham
... most true That musing meditation most affects The pensive secrecy of desert cell, Far from the cheerfull haunt of men, and herds, And sits as safe as in a Senat house, For who would rob a Hermit of his Weeds, 390 His few Books, or his Beads, or Maple Dish, Or do his gray hairs any violence? But beauty like the fair Hesperian Tree Laden with blooming gold, had need the guard Of dragon watch with uninchanted eye, To save her blossoms, ...
— The Poetical Works of John Milton • John Milton
... of its birth a baby enters the child's garden of life. In this beautiful place there are weeds as well as flowers, and father and mother must guide the little adventurer so that only the good flowers are developed, while the weeds are held in check and the poisonous plants torn up and destroyed. Earnest parents feel this responsibility ...
— Boys and Girls Bookshelf; a Practical Plan of Character Building, Volume I (of 17) - Fun and Thought for Little Folk • Various
... see the wreckage of the city—shattered walls, tumbled buildings, streets with rubble still piled in them. Weeds and creeping vines grew over the broken bones of this city as if they were attempting to hide the ...
— Be It Ever Thus • Robert Moore Williams
... assembly. This night it shall be granted you to know their secret deeds: how hoary-bearded elders of the church have whispered wanton words to the young maids of their households; how many a woman, eager for widows' weeds, has given her husband a drink at bedtime and let him sleep his last sleep in her bosom; how beardless youths have made haste to inherit their fathers' wealth; and how fair damsels—blush not, sweet ones—have ...
— Mosses from an Old Manse and Other Stories • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... frequently than in summer even, as if their beauty was not ripe till then; even cotton-grass, cat-tails, mulleins, johnswort, hard-hack, meadow-sweet, and other strong-stemmed plants, those unexhausted granaries which entertain the earliest birds—decent weeds, at least, which widowed Nature wears. I am particularly attracted by the arching and sheaf-like top of the wool-grass; it brings back the summer to our winter memories, and is among the forms which art loves to copy, and which, in the vegetable kingdom, have the same relation ...
— Walden, and On The Duty Of Civil Disobedience • Henry David Thoreau
... music, this place of thoughtfulness, had made something break in his heart... Some of our young officers, but not many, knelt on the cane chairs and prayed, face in hands. French officers crossed themselves and their medals tinkled as they walked up the aisles. Always there were women in black weeds kneeling before the side—altars, praying to the Virgin for husbands and sons, dead or alive, lighting candles below holy pictures and statues. Our men tiptoed past them, holding steel hats or field—caps, and putting their packs against the pillars. ...
— Now It Can Be Told • Philip Gibbs
... him. "She was at least a part of youth, and youth was dear." Why should she be pilloried since youth must stand fettered with her for the old wrongs that were a part of the old imagined sweetness? The sweetnesses and the wrongs had grown together like roots inextricably mingled. To tear out the weeds you would rend also the roots they ...
— The Prisoner • Alice Brown
... hunter returned, who had been seeing his horses provided for; that is to say, he had economically let them loose in the fields, where the poor beasts had to content themselves with the scanty moss they could pull off the rocks and a few meagre sea weeds, and the next day they would not fail to come of themselves and resume the labours of the ...
— A Journey to the Interior of the Earth • Jules Verne
... glove money he allowed her clear perquisites; though once when he saw her in a new gown saved out of the weed ashes, he told her to my face (for he could say a sharp thing), that she should not put on her weeds before her husband's death. But in a dispute about an abatement, my lady would have the last word, and Sir Murtagh grew mad;[N] I was within hearing of the door, and now I wish I had made bold to step in. He spoke so loud, the whole kitchen was out on the stairs.[O] ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. IV • Maria Edgeworth
... navigating were not over three yards in width. They were long and gloomy; and tall, massive palaces, sombre and spectral in the gloom, rose out of the sea on either hand. There were columns at their entrances, with occasional pieces of statuary, for which time had woven a garland of weeds. Their lower windows were heavily grated; their marble steps were laved by the idle tide; and their warehouse doors, through which had passed, in their time, the merchandise of every clime, had long been unopened, and were ...
— Pilgrimage from the Alps to the Tiber - Or The Influence of Romanism on Trade, Justice, and Knowledge • James Aitken Wylie
... old I was put to work on the farm with other children, picking weeds, stone up and tobacco worms and to do other work. We all got new shoes for Christmas, a dress and $2.50 for Christmas or suits of clothes. We spent our money at Mr. Randorph's store for things that we wanted, but was punished if the money was spent ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States - From Interviews with Former Slaves - Maryland Narratives • Works Projects Administration
... its supreme hour that while foolhardiness may be magnificent, it is not war. I would have put a cordon of soldiers about that pathetic remnant of Napoleon's greatness and held it there to this good day rather than have plowed it down as a farmer plows jimson weeds into a pile of compost; but John Bull is not built that way—is impregnated with the chivalry of Baylor. Cambronne's reply is the only objectionable word in the entire work, and certain it might be pardoned in a scrap ...
— Volume 1 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann
... roads. Few of the farmers had cleared more than half their ground; many only a few acres. The patch, in which the house with its little clump of trees stood nearly in the center, was of some forty or fifty acres in extent, and though now rank with weeds, had evidently been carefully cultivated, for all the stumps had been removed, and the fence round it was of a stronger and neater character than that which most of the cultivators ...
— With Lee in Virginia - A Story of the American Civil War • G. A. Henty
... this degenerate brother of the King when the most memorable of his victims crossed his blighting path one summer day in the year 1771, at Brighton—a radiantly beautiful young woman who had just discarded her widow's weeds, and was arrayed ...
— Love Romances of the Aristocracy • Thornton Hall
... in thy desert what is like to thee? Thy very weeds are beautiful; thy wastes More rich than other lands' fertility; Thy wreck a glory, and ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume VII • John Lord
... curtain of leaves he looked in. The interior was a garden, but evidently in a neglected state. It appeared the ruin of a once noble garden and shrubbery. Broken fountains and statues crumbling among weeds, and untrained rose-trees, met the eye. The voices were more distinct, but those who uttered them were hidden by a hedge of jessamines. Rolfe stepped silently up to this hedge and peeped through an opening. The picture presented was indeed an ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXIII No. 4 October 1848 • Various
... wrote to a fine and titled lady, 'is very barren of weeds.' Such, however, was rarely the case. Peers, and still better, peeresses,—politicians, actors, actresses,—the poor poet who knew not where to dine, the Maecenas who was 'fed with dedications'—the belle of the season, the demirep of many, ...
— The Wits and Beaux of Society - Volume 2 • Grace & Philip Wharton
... by the way; deep blue lakes with fairy islands, and clustering boats with awnings of bright colours and sails of beautiful forms; vast piles of building mouldering to dust; hanging-gardens where the weeds had grown so strong that their stems, like wedges driven home, had split the arch and rent the wall; stone-terraced lanes, with the lizards running into and out of every chink; beggars of all sorts everywhere: pitiful, picturesque, hungry, merry; children ...
— Little Dorrit • Charles Dickens
... wit That men, like burglary, commit; Wit falser than a padder's face, That all its owner does betrays; Who therefore dares not trust it when 965 He's in his calling to be seen; Disperse the dung on barren earth, To bring new weeds of discord forth; Be sure to keep up congregations, In spight of laws and proclamations: 970 For Charlatans can do no good Until they're mounted in a crowd; And when they're punish'd, all the hurt Is but to fare the better for't; As long as confessors ...
— Hudibras • Samuel Butler
... unlike those at home, only here and there some very queer ones are mixed with them—cocoa-nut palms, and great trees that are covered with bloom like red hawthorn but not near so bright; and from them all thick creepers hang down like ropes, and ugly-looking weeds that they call orchids grow in the forks of the branches; and on the ground many prickly things are dotted, which they call pine-apples. I suppose every one ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 18 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... the soldier of Waterloo, the adventurer into this Far West, the man who had died with some secret sorrow, or some sorrow for which he found no words or no confidant. Above me was the blinding sun, before me the prairie, at my feet this hillock of clay, where weeds had already begun to sprout. Mr. Brooks watched me; and seeing me move he started on; and I followed him through the broken ...
— Children of the Market Place • Edgar Lee Masters
... brown seepage of mud and rotting straw before the door. Two small, slouchily built stacks of weather-stained hay occupied a fenced-off enclosure, beside which, with no attempt to protect them from the weather, stood a dish-wheeled hay rake, and a rusty mowing machine, its cutter-bar buried in weeds. ...
— The Gold Girl • James B. Hendryx
... the barren sands had borne before. Thinking it might be some strange sea bird caught in the meshes of the sea-weed, he ran to the crate and looked within. It was half filled with sea-moss and feathery algae. The cry was repeated. He brushed aside the weeds with his hands. It was not a wounded sea bird, but a living ...
— Drift from Two Shores • Bret Harte
... (Her weeds fall from her, and she appears clothed as a fairy. The Queen places a diamond coronet on her head, and embraces her. ...
— The Complete Plays of Gilbert and Sullivan - The 14 Gilbert And Sullivan Plays • William Schwenk Gilbert and Arthur Sullivan
... the lines offered many opportunities for patrolling; a belt of clover and rank weeds, knee-deep, in which our wire was enclosed, was succeeded by a deep watery ditch, also festooned with wire, and, beyond a fringe of willows on the further side, ran a wide field of rye able to conceal the tallest man. Each side cleared the ground immediately in front of ...
— The War Service of the 1/4 Royal Berkshire Regiment (T. F.) • Charles Robert Mowbray Fraser Cruttwell
... interesting to the reader. When he first went to Newstead, on his arrival from Aberdeen, he planted, it seems, a young oak in some part of the grounds, and had an idea that as it flourished so should he. Some six or seven years after, on revisiting the spot, he found his oak choked up by weeds, and almost destroyed. In this circumstance, which happened soon after Lord Grey de Ruthen left Newstead, originated one of these poems, which consists of five stanzas, but of which the few opening lines will be ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. I. (of VI.) - With his Letters and Journals. • Thomas Moore
... many a noble dame, Whose bright, pearl-glittering robes did mock the flame Of the night's burning lights, did sit to see How every senator, in his degree, Adorn'd with shining gold and purple weeds, And stately mounted on rich trapped steed, Their guard attending, through the streets did ride Before their foot-bands, graced with glittering pride Of rich gilt arms, whose glory did present A sunshine to the eye, as if it meant ...
— The Customs of Old England • F. J. Snell
... "Why, this—all weeds and briers, and the paths overgrown?" and as Betty surveyed the unkempt waste that had once been a lawn, a little frown fixed itself on her ...
— The Prodigal Judge • Vaughan Kester
... river, and brook, is carefully cut with the sickle, and carried home, on the heads of women and children, in baskets, or tied in large cloths. Nothing of any kind that can possibly be made of any use is lost. Weeds, nettles, nay, the very goose-grass which covers waste places, is cut up and taken for the cows. You see the little children standing in the streets of the villages, in the streams which generally run down them, busy washing these weeds before they are given to the ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 4, September, 1850 • Various
... water. The village is situated on the left bank, about a mile from the mouth of the river, and contains twenty habitations, nearly all of which are merely hovels, built of lath-work and mud. The short streets, after rain, are almost impassable on account of the many puddles, and are choked up with weeds—leguminous shrubs, and scarlet-flowered asclepias. The atmosphere in such a place, hedged in as it is by the lofty forest, and surrounded by swamps, is always close, warm, and reeking; and the hum and chirp ...
— The Naturalist on the River Amazons • Henry Walter Bates
... genius has its day of humiliation for the wasted water of life, Neal may put on sackcloth, for he never economized his power; but for the soul's fire quenched in idleness, or smothered in worldliness, certainly for these years, he need wear no weeds. ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 2, No 3, September, 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy. • Various
... and the mob in the street, there was a whirlwind in my mind that made me incapable of reason. But when we had passed through the town-end port, and the cart had stopped at the minister's carse till I could throw off my female weeds and put on a sailor's garb, provided for the occasion, tongue nor pen cannot express the passion wherewith my yearning ...
— Ringan Gilhaize - or The Covenanters • John Galt
... cone-strewn path. Evidently enough the extensive grounds had been neglected for years, and that few pedestrians and fewer vehicles ever sought Friar's Park was demonstrated by the presence of luxurious weeds in the carriage-way. Having proceeded for some distance, until the sheer hillside seemed to loom over me like the wall of a tower, I paused, peering about in the ever growing darkness. I was aware of a physical chill; certainly no ray of sunlight ...
— The Green Eyes of Bast • Sax Rohmer
... that a chalked tile at each corner of a field and one in the centre thereof were rural charms that prevented weeds growing; and the three following charms are given in ...
— The Mysteries of All Nations • James Grant
... the floods did compass me about; In the midst of the sea, thy waves were sent, And all thy billows which my head o'erwent. Then said I though thy presence hath forsook Me, to thy holy temple will I look. The waters compassed about my soul, And the great deeps did round about me roll, The weeds were wrapt about my head, I went Down to the bottom of the element; The earth with her strong bars surrounded me, Yet thou, O Lord, from death hast set me free. When my soul fainted, on the Lord I thought, And to thee, to thy temple then was brought My prayer. They their own mercies do ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... where thorns and thistles abound is soon killed out by their smothering growth; even so with a human heart set on riches and the allurements of pleasure—though it receive the living seed of the gospel it will produce no harvest of good grain, but instead, a rank tangle of noxious weeds. The abundant yield of thorny thistles demonstrates the fitness of the soil for a better crop, were it only free from the cumbering weeds. The seed that falls in good deep soil, free from weeds and prepared for the sowing, strikes root and grows; the sun's ...
— Jesus the Christ - A Study of the Messiah and His Mission According to Holy - Scriptures Both Ancient and Modern • James Edward Talmage
... My old age hides in the gloom. And the years to be have been, Could I spell the lore of that brain. But the river flows between, Over the weeds of pain, Over the snares of death, Maybe, should I leap to hold, With myself grown old, Council there in the gloom Under the ...
— Miscellany of Poetry - 1919 • Various
... for future house-builders. Here and there an advertising landowner had cemented a few rods of walk and planted a few trees to trap the possible purchaser into thinking the place "improved." But the cement walks were crumbling, the trees had died, and rank thorny weeds choked about their roots. The cross streets were merely lined out, a deep ditch on either ...
— The Web of Life • Robert Herrick
... around two-thirds of the island, four miles from shore, and all the opera glasses in the ship were called into requisition to settle disputes as to whether mossy spots on the uplands were groves of trees or groves of weeds, or whether the white villages down by the sea were really villages or only the clustering tombstones of cemeteries. Finally we stood to sea and bore away for San Miguel, and Flores shortly became a dome ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... going along finely, and feeling better every minute as I went down the bank of an old creek that had gone dry, and started up the other side toward the sugar camp not far from the Big Woods. The bed was full of weeds and as I passed through, ...
— Laddie • Gene Stratton Porter
... water-voles will not eat young chickens and ducklings; nor do they find their way into stacks and consume the corn; their food is entirely confined to vegetables, such as the roots and stems of water-weeds. I feel, however, pretty sure that the water-vole is fond of beans, and will occasionally do some mischief where a field of newly-sown beans adjoins the river or stream, in the banks of which these animals form their ...
— Country Walks of a Naturalist with His Children • W. Houghton
... divorce, divorcement; separation; judicial separation, separate maintenance; separatio a mensa et thoro [Lat.], separatio a vinculo matrimonii [Lat.]. trial separation, breakup; annulment. widowhood, viduity^, weeds. widow, widower; relict; dowager; divorcee; cuckold; grass widow, grass widower; merry widow. V. live separate; separate, divorce, disespouse^, put ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... hall, still coughing. The match smell had given way to the harsh, caustic stench of burning weeds. He stared at his cigarette in horror and threw it into the sink. The smell grew worse. He threw open the hall closet, expecting smoke to come billowing out. "Ellie! Somebody's burning ...
— The Coffin Cure • Alan Edward Nourse
... one's ankles in a sportive way, and round one's knees in the hollows in the path. On we go, the path underneath the water seems a pretty equal mixture of rock and mud, but they are not evenly distributed. Plantations full of weeds show up on either side of us, and we are evidently now on the top of a foot-hill. I suspect a fine view of the sea could be obtained from here, if you have an atmosphere that is less than 99.75 per cent. of water. As it is, a ...
— Travels in West Africa • Mary H. Kingsley
... that it may be washed by the waves only once in a lifetime, and that, in case of some terrible flood. But I rejoice daily in the sweet and natural return of the tide. How the shores wait for it! Strewn with weeds and wreck, scorched by the sun, chilled by the night, how it listens for the sound of its coming! until it rushes in—ah! ...
— Cape Cod Folks • Sarah P. McLean Greene
... damaged by weeds, mankind is damaged by passion: therefore a gift bestowed on the passionless brings ...
— Sacred Books of the East • Various
... garden work, and then my mother's cup of contentment fairly overflowed its brim. So far as we knew she had no care, no regret. Day by day she sat in an easy chair under the trees, watching us as we played ball on the lawn, or cut weeds in the garden; and each time we looked at her, we both acknowledged a profound sense of satisfaction, of relief. Never again would she burn in the suns of the arid plains, or cower before the winds of a desolate winter. She was secure. "You need never work again," I assured her. ...
— A Daughter of the Middle Border • Hamlin Garland
... overlooking part of a wilderness of garden, which revealed itself through an arch in an overgrown laurel hedge. She had glimpses of unkempt grass paths and unclipped topiary work which had lost its original form. Among a tangle of weeds rose the heads of clumps of daffodils, stirred by a passing wind of spring. In the park beyond a cuckoo ...
— The Shuttle • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... and perseverance. His affectionate parents had studiously neglected the few goodly shoots which the youth had brought into the world with him, and had embarked all their energies in the cultivation of the weeds that grew noxious and numerous around the unhappy boy's heart. His mother lived to see her darling expelled from Eton—the father to see much worse, and yet not the worst that the hopeful one was doomed to ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 54, No. 338, December 1843 • Various
... termination of the line, which, hollowing inwards, recedes near the bottom into a shallow cave, roughened with tufts of fern and bunches of long silky grass, here and there enlivened by the delicate flowers of the lesser rock-geranium. A shower of drops patters from above among the weeds and rushes of the little pool. My friend the minister stopped short. "There," he said, pointing to the hollow, "you will find such a bone cave as you never saw before. Within that opening there lie the remains of an entire race, palpably ...
— The Cruise of the Betsey • Hugh Miller
... settin' around M'skeeter Bend fer nigh on ten years, mostly watchin'. Now, mebbe, y' ain't never sot no plant, an' bedded it gentle wi' sifted mould, an' watered it careful, an' sot right ther' on a box, an' watched it grow in a spot wher' ther' wa'n't no bizness fer anythin' but weeds?" ...
— The Night Riders - A Romance of Early Montana • Ridgwell Cullum
... used after they have gone to top, it is injurious. Salt has been applied to asparagus beds in such quantities as to completely cover them, and with apparent benefit to the plants. Of course large doses of salt kill all weeds, and thus save labor and the injury to the asparagus roots, which would result from their removal by hoeing. Salt may be used advantageously in any of the foregoing manners, but should always be applied with care. For ordinary farm purposes, it is undoubtedly ...
— The Elements of Agriculture - A Book for Young Farmers, with Questions Prepared for the Use of Schools • George E. Waring
... towards the instrument. A little queen! That was what he had always called her in his heart. His little queen! Oh, how had he dared to enthrone her there? Presumptuous idiot! she was as far from him as the stars are from the weeds. But the girl at the piano thought of nothing but the sharp, sweet odour of new-mown hay. Sharp as a sword and sweet as love, it pierced and thrilled her being. Then, like a fragrant blossom, a melody sprang from the hidden sources of her pain. The sympathetic musical expressiveness of her ...
— An Algonquin Maiden - A Romance of the Early Days of Upper Canada • G. Mercer Adam
... the ancient parents, Without the crown of pride; They were moving slow, in weeds of woe— No maiden was ...
— The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries: - Masterpieces of German Literature Translated into English, Volume 5. • Various
... settled, at his immediate entrance into life; a gentleman and lady will always be regarded as such, let what will be their behaviour.—It is therefore highly commendable when they seek to adorn their minds by culture, or pluck out those weeds, which in hot countries will spring up among the riches of the harvest, and afford a sure, but no immediately pleasing proof of the soil's natural fertility. But my country-women would rather hear a little of our ...
— Observations and Reflections Made in the Course of a Journey through France, Italy, and Germany, Vol. I • Hester Lynch Piozzi
... honourable nature, were the Yorkes. If Lady Augusta had only toiled to foster the good, and eradicate the evil, they would have grown up to bless her. Good soil was there to work upon, as there was in the Channings; but, in the case of the Yorkes, it was allowed to run to waste, or to generate weeds. In short, to do ...
— The Channings • Mrs. Henry Wood
... of a very steep hill, when the Raven's eyes, always on the watch, as a scout's eyes should be, caught a gleam of something glittering in a great bed of weeds beside the road. He stopped, parted the weeds with his staff, and disclosed a broken bicycle, diamond-framed, lying on its side. It was the bright nickelled handle-bar which ...
— The Wolf Patrol - A Tale of Baden-Powell's Boy Scouts • John Finnemore
... vineyard. And follow this order of mine and you shall have your freedom from me. And the master of the servant went abroad. Now when he had gone the servant took and fenced the vineyard, and when he had finished the fencing of the vineyard he saw that the vineyard was full of weeds. Therefore he reasoned in himself, saying: I have finished this order of the Lord; I will next dig this vineyard, and it will be better when it is dug, and having no weeds will yield more fruit, not being choked by the weeds. He ...
— Landmarks in the History of Early Christianity • Kirsopp Lake
... withholding the rain; drying up cows; killing domestic and wild beasts; afflicting the nations with pestilence, famine, and war; causing all manner of diseases; betwitching men, women, and children; planting doubts in the mind and weeds in the fields; and in brief, doing about everything that was disagreeable to man in general, or that offended the priests ...
— The Necessity of Atheism • Dr. D.M. Brooks
... a broad channel from the mainland, to which it became united by the gradual rise of the land and by the alluvium deposited by the river. The great swamp so formed is in one place as much as 18 miles wide, and is covered with stunted mangrove trees and rank weeds and bushes. The decaying vegetation gives the water of the bayous and stagnant ponds a dirty coffee color and taints the air with malarial miasma. The opening of channels and draining of the swamp would remedy the defects, at the same time providing important means of communication ...
— Santo Domingo - A Country With A Future • Otto Schoenrich
... widow's weeds, approached the tomb, and laid on it, as a peace-offering to the manes of the dead, a splendid pall of silk ...
— Hereward, The Last of the English • Charles Kingsley
... ran on and saw a drake flying at the hawk and pecking at its wings, and the duck, quacking in the utmost alarm, tried to get all her little ducklings under her wings; but, alas! one little truant ran into the weeds, and the hawk caught it in his claws, and, in spite of all the efforts of the poor drake, ...
— Harry's Ladder to Learning - Horn-Book, Picture-Book, Nursery Songs, Nursery Tales, - Harry's Simple Stories, Country Walks • Anonymous
... one to search for me. The simple habitans of the village I had left knew me not—I was a stranger among them: they only knew me as a stranger, and fancied me a strange individual; one who made lonely excursions, and brought home hunches of weeds, with birds, insects, and reptiles, which they had never before seen, although gathered at their own doors. My absence, besides, would be nothing new to them, even though it lasted for days: I had often been absent before, a week at ...
— The Hunters' Feast - Conversations Around the Camp Fire • Mayne Reid
... matter of common observation that if weeds are allowed to grow unchecked in a garden they will soon destroy a number of the flowers. It is not so commonly known that if a garden is left to become altogether wild, the weeds that first take possession of it, often ...
— Darwinism (1889) • Alfred Russel Wallace
... brains," laughed Scraps. "Such brains as you have are of the common sort that grow in your heads, like weeds in a garden. I'm sorry for you people who have to be born ...
— The Lost Princess of Oz • L. Frank Baum
... victory was due, was honourably mentioned in the military despatches of the day; and her memory should be a perpetual inspiration to patriotic daring to every son and daughter of Canada. [Footnote: A portrait of Mrs. Secord, as a venerable old lady of ninety-two, in a widow's cap and weeds, is given in Lossing's Pictorial Field Book of the War of 1812, page 621; also her autograph and a letter describing her exploit. The Prince of Wales, after his return from Canada in 1860, caused the sum of L100 sterling ...
— Neville Trueman the Pioneer Preacher • William Henry Withrow
... streams should have their margins carefully cleaned and covered with gravel to prevent weeds and grass at ...
— The Eugenic Marriage, Volume IV. (of IV.) - A Personal Guide to the New Science of Better Living and Better Babies • Grant Hague
... supper was being prepared. Believing we were well out of the range of hostile Indians, I did not object to their going alone. They passed a considerable distance beyond the growth of Cereus giganteus, over a level stretch covered with knee-high bunch-grass and desert weeds, without seeing a hare. Pausing on the brink of a shoal, dry ravine, they stood side by side, and rested the butts of their guns upon the ground. Just then a shout of "Supper! supper!" came from the ...
— Captured by the Navajos • Charles A. Curtis
... have us believe that romance and beauty are dead, that the spirit of heroic achievement and chivalry has been crushed by the juggernautic wheels of civilisation. Poor blind, sad-hearted fools—their dreary, unlovely minds have risen like gaunt weeds from the ashes of their wasted opportunities. Romance dead? Never! And in order to disprove their dismal forebodings, I have included in my portrait gallery studies of such national heroes as—Snurge, Spout, Puffwater and Plinge. Men selected purposely not merely for the glory of their achievements ...
— Terribly Intimate Portraits • Noel Coward
... vntill the twelue Celestiall Signes Haue brought about their annuall reckoning. If this austere insociable life, Change not your offer made in heate of blood: If frosts, and fasts, hard lodging, and thin weeds Nip not the gaudie blossomes of your Loue, But that it beare this triall, and last loue: Then at the expiration of the yeare, Come challenge me, challenge me by these deserts, And by this Virgin palme, now kissing ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare
... father, "it was amidst the old ruins of the castle, there where I had first seen Ellinor, that, winding my arm round Roland's neck as I found—him seated amongst the weeds and stones, his face buried in his hands,—it was there that I said, 'Brother, we both love this woman! My nature is the calmer of the two, I shall feel the loss less. Brother, shake hands! and God speed you, for ...
— The Caxtons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... "honest traders." In certain seeds of grass there was 32 per cent. of gains of sand, coloured so as to Receive even an experienced eye; other samples contained from 52 to 22 per cent. only of pure seed, the remainder being weeds. Seeds of vetch contained 11 per cent. of a poisonous grass (nielle); a flour for cattle-fattening contained 36 per cent. of sulphates; and ...
— Mutual Aid • P. Kropotkin
... yellowish colour veined with purple. On each side of the lower surface, or foot, there is a broad membrane, which appears sometimes to act as a ventilator, in causing a current of water to flow over the dorsal branchiae or lungs. It feeds on the delicate sea-weeds which grow among the stones in muddy and shallow water; and I found in its stomach several small pebbles, as in the gizzard of a bird. This slug, when disturbed, emits a very fine purplish-red fluid, ...
— The Voyage of the Beagle • Charles Darwin
... Patent Agency an improved troller, the novel feature in which consists in attaching a float to the shank of the implement under the revolving blade, the object being to keep the troller near the surface of the water, where the fish may see it more readily, and whereby the liability of catching in weeds ...
— Scientific American, Volume XXXVI., No. 8, February 24, 1877 • Various
... perhaps, stranger than yourself! The would-be nun of the English convent walking the streets in male attire, and even, as you tell us, with your hands in your pockets! Yet when little Solange came to live with you, as we understand, you put on your weeds of weakness again;—your little daughter made you once more ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, Issue 49, November, 1861 • Various
... contempt for those fragile structures which they so easily overwhelm, they are utterly incapable of raising anything on the ruins. If they leave something standing it is only by involuntary accident, and if they prepare the soil for anything, it is commonly only for wild-flowers and weeds. Revelations are seldom beneficent, therefore, unless there is more evil in the world to destroy than good to preserve; and mysticism, under the same circumstances, may also liberate and ...
— The Life of Reason • George Santayana
... the Knight of Nordmannstein In the Flagellants' weeds? From land to land, From town to town, we cry, "Death to the Jews! Hep! hep! "Hierosolyma est perdita!" They die like rats; in Gotha they are burned; Two of the devil brutes in Chatelard, Child-murderers, wizards, breeders of the Plague, Had the truth squeezed ...
— The Poems of Emma Lazarus - Vol. II. (of II.), Jewish Poems: Translations • Emma Lazarus
... of deathless music; "With malice toward none, with charity for all.', Out of me the forgiveness of millions toward millions, And the beneficent face of a nation Shining with justice and truth. I am Anne Rutledge who sleep beneath these weeds, Beloved in life of Abraham Lincoln, Wedded to him, not through union, But through separation. Bloom forever, O Republic, From the dust ...
— Spoon River Anthology • Edgar Lee Masters
... a sum of love, And death but to lose it all? Weeds be for those that are left behind, And not for those that ...
— Queechy, Volume II • Elizabeth Wetherell
... Sharon's spacious avenues—little torpid, indecent gnomes in sashes and open rags, with crowning-steeple straw hats, and murder dozing in their small black eyes. They might have crawled from holes in the sand, or hatched out of brown cracked pods on some weeds that trailed through the broken bottles, the old shoes, and the wire fences. Outside these ramparts began the vacuum, white, gray, indigo, florescent, where all the year the sun shines. Not the semblance of any tree dances in the heat; only rocks and lumps ...
— The Jimmyjohn Boss and Other Stories • Owen Wister
... turnip field, and a row of women were stooping over it, picking out the weeds. The one that was best off had great boots, a huge weight to carry in themselves; but most had them sadly torn and broken. Their skirts, of no particular colour, were tucked up, and they had either a very old man's coat, or a smock-frock cut short, or a small old woollen ...
— The Carbonels • Charlotte M. Yonge
... for another race, bringing with them all those faculties which are in us decayed; and capable, which we ourselves have ceased to be, of taking our parts and figuring on the stage of life so long as it may please the Supreme Manager to busy them in earthly scenes! Then talk no more to me of weeds and mourning, but show me christenings and all those who give employ ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... when he is discharged from the labor of uniting two incongruous styles, when he is at liberty to indulge his choral raptures without reserve, that he rises even above himself. Then, like his own good Genius bursting from the earthly form and weeds of Thyrsis, he stands forth in celestial freedom and beauty; he ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume XIII • John Lord
... horses' hoofs. The building, whatever it was, stood a hundred yards or more from the river on a little southern slope which had been once terraced carefully. Over the walls, which were ruinous, the weeds grew rankly, and among them a young tree had found a rooting. The place had been undisturbed for long years; and I thought that it seemed as if men shunned it as haunted, for of a certainty not a foot had gone within half ...
— A King's Comrade - A Story of Old Hereford • Charles Whistler
... Philadelphia Exposition, 1876, she sent a "Kingfisher and Catkins," a "Flock of Snow Birds," and the "Corner of a Rye-Field." Of the last a writer in the Art Journal said: "Miss Bridges' 'Edge of a Rye-Field,' with a foreground of roses and weeds, is a close study, and shows that she is as happy in the handling of oil colors as in those ...
— Women in the fine arts, from the Seventh Century B.C. to the Twentieth Century A.D. • Clara Erskine Clement
... infested, he said there was now an excellent opportunity for Dr. Johnson to step forth. I agreed with him that you might knock Hume's and Smith's heads together, and make vain and ostentatious infidelity exceedingly ridiculous. Would it not be worth your while to crush such noxious weeds in the moral garden? ...
— The Life Of Johnson, Volume 3 of 6 • Boswell
... distance beyond the Albanian College. Then, suddenly, it ends. Walking to Acri, however, by the old track, one picks up, here and there, conscientiously-engineered little stretches of it, already overgrown with weeds; these, too, break off as abruptly as they began, in the wild waste. For purposes of wheeled traffic these picturesque but ...
— Old Calabria • Norman Douglas
... quite low and commonplace. Darkling at the foot of it was what looked like a moat choked with underbrush and weeds. The spot was about a mile and a half from the hotel, yet it seemed to be only a minute's walk from me. But then a bird that was flying over that moat at the moment, winging its way straight across it, was apparently making no progress. Was this ...
— The Rise of David Levinsky • Abraham Cahan
... and you'll just glimpse what seems to be the stone base of an old abandoned windmill, I think, Jack. All overgrown with weeds and brush, it is too. I saw a number of men moving about, and some of them were crouching back of their biggest machine-guns. This is one of those jumbo forts we've heard of; no mistake ...
— Air Service Boys Flying for Victory - or, Bombing the Last German Stronghold • Charles Amory Beach
... good care not to let any of Scannell's friends get in," a man behind Benito confided. "The Sheriff's sent a dozen 'plants' this morning but Bluxome weeds them out unfailingly." ...
— Port O' Gold • Louis John Stellman
... time merrily with song and music till break of day. Every one who comes brings fresh fuel for the fire, and they say, "Now we all gather together, where St. John's fire burns. He who comes not to St. John's fire will have his barley full of thistles, and his oats full of weeds." Three logs are thrown into the fire with special ceremony; in throwing the first they say, "Gold of pleasure (a plant with yellow flowers) into the fire!" in throwing the second they say, "Weeds to the unploughed ...
— Balder The Beautiful, Vol. I. • Sir James George Frazer
... was going on out there. He could not see the garden from the corner where his bed stood, but the nurse propped a large mirror up against a chair in a way to reflect the entire scene. Norman was vigorously hoeing weeds, and Mary, armed with a large magnifying glass, was on a hunt for the worms that ...
— The Little Colonel's Chum: Mary Ware • Annie Fellows Johnston
... look of impertinent daring. All the fastenings were broken away, and only the old branches, from habit, kept their places against it. Everything all about seemed striving back to a dear disorder and salvage liberty. The walks were covered with weeds, and almost impassable with unpruned branches, while here lay a heap of rubbish, there a smashed flower-pot, here a crushed water-pot, there a broken dinner-plate. Following a path that led away from the wall, he came upon a fountain ...
— Warlock o' Glenwarlock • George MacDonald
... made so as to intercept a flow of surface water, have been in use from immemorial time, and are described by the earliest writers. Before the advent of the Draining Tile, covered drains were furnished with stones, boards, brush, weeds, and various other rubbish, and their good effect, very properly, claimed the attention of all improvers of wet land. When the tile first made its appearance in general practice, it was of what is called the "horse-shoe" form, and,—imperfect though it was,—it was better ...
— Draining for Profit, and Draining for Health • George E. Waring
... called zahorra. In all cases the nopals are set at distances of half a yard, in trenches at least three feet deep. The 'streets,' or intervals, must measure nearly two yards, so that water may flow freely and sunshine may not be arrested. Good ground, if irrigated in winter and kept clear of weeds by the hacada (hoe), produces a cactus capable of being 'seeded' after the second year; if poor, a third is required. The plant lasts, with manure to defend it from exhaustion, a full decade. [Footnote: The compost ...
— To the Gold Coast for Gold - A Personal Narrative in Two Volumes.—Vol. I • Richard F. Burton
... things, and I studied up the catalogues until I could tell the carrots from the cucumbers; but I must admit that beyond givin' the different beds the once-over every now and then, and pullin' up a few tomato plants that I thought was weeds, I didn't do much more than underwrite ...
— Torchy and Vee • Sewell Ford
... be reasonable," said the zoologist. "To shower benefits on Mr. Laevsky is, to my thinking, as senseless as to water weeds or to ...
— The Duel and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... place was about three miles along the White Sands road. I knew the house as soon as I came to it by its neglected appearance. It needed paint badly; the blinds were crooked and torn; weeds grew up to the very door. Plainly, there was no woman about THAT place. Still, it was a nice house, and the barns were splendid. My father always said that when a man's barns were bigger than his house it was a sign that his income exceeded his expenditure. So it was all right that they should ...
— Chronicles of Avonlea • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... little master out there asleep on the grass in the fence-corner, as he had suggested. On reaching the spot where he had last seen the boy he made a careful examination of the ground, and it was not long before his keen and practiced eye discovered in the crushed leaves and bruised weeds the traces of three Indians. The savages had evidently crept upon the child and made him their captive before he could cry for help, while he who would have rescued him or perished was blithely singing at his work on the other side of ...
— Burl • Morrison Heady
... said the captain mournfully, as became the weeds he wore, "you are looking poorly. You need a change. We both need one after the trouble we have been through. I think a run up to London would brace us up. Would you ...
— Roger Ingleton, Minor • Talbot Baines Reed
... in that rough mesh, The sea has only just o'er-whispered! Live whelks, each lip's beard dripping fresh, As if they still the water's lisp heard Through foam the rock-weeds thresh. ...
— Introduction to Robert Browning • Hiram Corson
... Louvreloeil, "the storm burst, and soon of all the happy homesteads nothing was left: the hamlets, with their barns and outhouses, the isolated farmhouses, the single huts and cottages, every species of building in short, disappeared before the swift advancing flames as wild flowers, weeds, and roots fall before ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... and rusty six-pound field howitzer, suggested to the captain of the troop stationed there the propriety of celebrating the day. So the old piece was dragged from its place under a clump of elms, where it had been hidden in the grass and weeds ever since the Mexican War probably, and brought near the house. The captain and Maxwell acted the role of gunners, the former at the muzzle, the latter at the breech; the discharge was premature, blowing out the captain's eye and taking off his arm, while Maxwell ...
— The Old Santa Fe Trail - The Story of a Great Highway • Henry Inman
... ready, lest the dead animal should have had a mate, he climbed down into the nullah. He had not gone ten yards before his foot struck against something hard. In the pressed-down weeds was the half-gnawed skull of a man. The skin and flesh of the face were fairly intact. He took the head up in his hands. On the forehead were painted three white horizontal strokes. The tiger's last prey had been a Brahmin. A thought ...
— The Elephant God • Gordon Casserly
... rise of summer a hundred beasts and trees Join in gladness that the Season bids them thrive. Stags and does frolic in the deep woods; Snakes and insects are pleased by the rank grass. Winged birds love the thick leaves; Scaly fish enjoy the fresh weeds. But to one place Summer forgot to come; I alone am left like a withered straw ... Banished to the world's end; Flesh and bone all in distant ways. From my native-place no tidings come; Rebel troops ...
— More Translations from the Chinese • Various
... the banks of the lane, near the gateway—look, too, in uninteresting places behind incomplete buildings on the mounds cast up from abandoned foundations where speculation has been and gone. There weeds that would not have found resting-place elsewhere grow unchecked, and uncommon species and unusually large growths appear. Like everything else that is looked for, they are found under unlikely conditions. At the back of ponds, just inside the enclosure of woods, angles of corn-fields, old quarries, ...
— Field and Hedgerow • Richard Jefferies
... a singing together, & such a whispering together, & such a snuggling together of cozy, soft colors, & such kissing & caressing, & such pretty blushing when the sun breaks out & catches those dainty weeds at it—you remember that weed-garden of mine?—& then —then the far hills sleeping in a dim blue trance—oh, hearing about it is nothing, you should be here ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... do with the useless weeds in your garden," she asked significantly. "Do you carefully tend them, while drouth and frost and lack of nourishment cause your choice plants to wither ...
— Mizora: A Prophecy - A MSS. Found Among the Private Papers of the Princess Vera Zarovitch • Mary E. Bradley
... was the dull, cold, gray, hopeless desolation of the approach of minter. The hard, wiry grass that thinly covered the once and sand, the occasional stunted weeds, and the sparse foliage of the gnarled and dwarfish undergrowth, all were parched brown and sere by the fiery heat of the long Summer, and now rattled drearily under the pitiless, cold rain, streaming ...
— Andersonville, complete • John McElroy
... spake then the Lady Siegelind, "so will I speed thee on thy journey, mine only child, with the best of weeds that ever knight did wear, thee and thy ...
— The Nibelungenlied • Unknown
... the house had long since become overgrown with rank grass and weeds. Faintly traceable through the mass of green could be seen a rough footpath which the two followed carefully. They met no one. As they approached the night of black pines the mass of the old mansion began to loom up before ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, March 1930 • Various
... their port about midday, and Dan, at the wheel, heard the captain swear as they stood in through a maze of broken water, where coral reefs sprouted like weeds in a neglected garden, towards the hills that stood low above the horizon. He had been furnished, it seemed, with a chart concerning whose trustworthiness he entertained the bitterest doubts. There was some discussion with the mate about anchoring and sending in a ...
— Those Who Smiled - And Eleven Other Stories • Perceval Gibbon
... of sheep is evident in the appearance of the greater area of permanent pasture in the mountainous regions of the eastern states. Bushes, briers, and other weeds must be destroyed if pasture land would be kept in a profitable state, and only the sheep or the goat is the fully efficient aid of man in caring for such land. The presence of dogs makes the tariff on wool, or lack of it, a minor matter. The cost to the country, ...
— Crops and Methods for Soil Improvement • Alva Agee
... backyards grow only alders, elders, and weeds. Everywhere docks thrust up heads through cracks in the fences to catch at the legs or the skirts of passers-by, while masses of nettles squeeze their way under fences to sting little children. Apropos, the latter are all thin and hungry, in the highest degree ...
— Through Russia • Maxim Gorky
... for years 'n' years. 'Twas a real cur'us bundle, made up out o' little things in the road that'd got in his way, or hurt him, or put him back. Some on 'em was jest little stones that had hurt his feet, and some was little stingin' weeds that smarted him as he went by 'em, and some was jest mites o' dirt somebody'd throwed at him, not meanin' no great o' harm. He'd picked 'em all up, every bit o' worryin', prickin', hurtin' little thing, and he'd piled 'em up on his back till he had a big bundle that he allers ...
— Story-Tell Lib • Annie Trumbull Slosson
... chair; the sobs of Roxane recall him to reality; he looks long at her, and, touching her veil): I would not bid you mourn less faithfully That good, brave Christian: I would only ask That when my body shall be cold in clay You wear those sable mourning weeds for two, And mourn awhile ...
— Cyrano de Bergerac • Edmond Rostand
... popularity." Here the Baron paused. Somehow, in his search after truth, he had fallen down some seventy pages, and was on his back again at p. 33, Vol. I. Refreshment was necessary. Iced. Also a Nicotinian sacrifice, as of primitive days, when heifers, adorned, not altars, but weeds, vegetables, and early produce only. Smokeamus! Veni, vidi, visky! 'Fore GEORGE! Your health ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 100, June 27, 1891 • Various
... weeds I entered it; I saw the viceroy feasting at his board— Judge if I'm master of myself or no! I saw the tyrant, and I ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... of words and not of deeds, Is like a garden full of weeds; And when the weeds begin to grow, It's like a garden full of snow; And when the snow begins to fall, It's like a bird upon the wall; And when the bird away does fly, It's like an eagle in the sky; And ...
— A History of Nursery Rhymes • Percy B. Green
... Before this anchoring ground, however, lay several rocky ledges, that were covered with sea-weed; but I was told that there was not less than eight and nine fathom over all of them. It will probably be thought strange, that where weeds; which grow at the bottom, appear above the surface, there should be this depth of water; but the weeds which grow upon rocky ground in these countries, and which always distinguish it from sand and ooze, are of an enormous size. The leaves are four feet long, and some of the stalks, ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 12 • Robert Kerr |
