"Blue-bottle" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... observed in Poketown it seemed that this little store was the most neglected and woeful looking. Its two show windows were a lacework of dust and flyspecks. In the upper corners were ragged spider webs; and in one web lay a gorged spider, too well fed to pounce on the blue-bottle fly buzzing in the toils within easy pouncing distance! Only glimpses of a higgledy-piggledy of assorted wares were to be caught behind the panes. Across the front of the building was a faded ...
— Janice Day at Poketown • Helen Beecher Long
... blue-bottle fly buzzed past the table, passed on to the window where it fluttered about aimlessly, bumping itself against the pane here and there. Mechanically Phil watched its gyrations. It was one of the hardest moments of ...
— Wild Wings - A Romance of Youth • Margaret Rebecca Piper
... has committed such ravages in the town of St. James, that numerous people have been ruined, and the governor calls out for aid against them. In other so-called new countries a wave of English weeds follows the tide of English emigration, and so with insects; the European house-fly chases away the blue-bottle fly in New Zealand. Settlers have carried the house-fly in bottles and boxes for their new locations, but what European insect will follow us and extirpate the tsetse? The Arabs have given the Makonde bugs, but we have the house-fly wherever we go, ...
— The Last Journals of David Livingstone, in Central Africa, from 1865 to His Death, Volume I (of 2), 1866-1868 • David Livingstone
... Pilot laid his great brown hand on his daughter's shoulder. "Don't be ruffled. Let an old sailor have his joke: it won't hurt, God bless us; it won't hurt more'n the buzzing of a blue-bottle fly. But you're that prim and proper, that staid and straight-laced, you make me tease you, just to rouse you up. Oh! them calm ones, Mr. Scarlett, beware of 'em. It takes a lot to goad 'em to it, but once their hair's on end, it's time a sailor went to sea, and a landsman took to the bush. It's ...
— The Tale of Timber Town • Alfred Grace
... the St. Francis way; the wasp is not my little sister; but I hate to see any living creature unnecessarily, senselessly, done to death. There are other creatures I can see killed without a qualm—flies, for instance, especially houseflies and the big blue-bottle; these are, it was formerly believed, the progeny of Satan, and modern scientists are inclined to endorse that ancient notion. The wasp is a redoubtable fly-killer, and apart from his merits, he is a perfect and beautiful being, and there ...
— A Traveller in Little Things • W. H. Hudson
... subtleties. They were hungry, and they were feeding close inshore, and the Babe was having great sport. The fish were not large, but they were clean, trim-jawed, bright fellows, some of them not far short of the half-pound; and the only blue-bottle in the ointment of the Babe's exultation was that Uncle Andy was not on hand to see his triumph. To be sure, the proof would be in the pan that night, browned in savory cornmeal after the fashion of the New Brunswick backwoods. But the Babe had in him the makings of a true sportsman, ...
— Children of the Wild • Charles G. D. Roberts
... insects, mighty Sol, (A Fly upon the chariot pole Cries out), what Blue-bottle alive Did ever with such fury drive? Tell Belzebub, great father, tell (Says t' other, perch'd upon the wheel), Did ever any mortal Fly Raise such a cloud of dust as I? My judgment turn'd the whole debate: My valor sav'd the sinking state. ...
— The Humourous Poetry of the English Language • James Parton
... have had a sale. You will see other forms that represent hams and sidemeat. You will, perchance, detect the lean streak as most people do. This meat needs no sugarcuring or smoking and will keep many more years with no fear of the blue-bottle fly. Glittering stalactites. blaze in front of you; fluted columns and draperies in broad folds with a formation that resembles the finest hemstitching may be seen all around you, while Pluto's chasm, a wide rift in the walls, contains a spectre clothed in shadowy ...
— See America First • Orville O. Hiestand
... every boy that receives such a reward; but you must have pleased the fairy Fauna, by being kind to all the creatures, great and small. Yes, she has heard no doubt how you open the window, and put the bees and the blue-bottle flies out, instead of killing them. I shouldn't wonder if it was that great spider whose life you spared who told her. You remember your cousin Dick wanted to kill it; and I noticed she guided the bee with threads ...
— The Cockatoo's Story • Mrs. George Cupples
... of her, but took, instead, two or three hard peas out of his pocket, and shot them with his thumbnail against the window, vaguely at first, but presently with the distinct aim of hitting a superannuated blue-bottle which was exposing its imbecility in the spring sunshine, clearly against the views of Nature, who had provided Tom and the peas for the speedy destruction ...
— The Mill on the Floss • George Eliot
... understood what he meant. Several times during the past weeks she had attempted to open his eyes to the truth; but he would neither see nor hear, and had insisted upon rushing on to his fate like a great blundering bluebottle ...
— A Noble Woman • Ann S. Stephens
... awake? Donakins! I say, old sport, do stir yourself and blink an eye! What a dormouse you are! D'you want shaking? Rouse up, you old bluebottle, ...
— A Patriotic Schoolgirl • Angela Brazil
... had been working for months, arranging his house, by the river side. "Why do you take all that trouble?" said a lazy bluebottle Fly; "I never work."—"That is the reason," answered the Beaver, "why so many of you die of ...
— Rock A Bye Library: A Book of Fables - Amusement for Good Little Children • Unknown
... from the bluebottle's blustering blim Twirls the toads in a tooroomaloo, And the whiskery whine of the wheedlesome whim Drowns the roll of the rattatattoo, Then I dream in the shade of the shally-go-shee, And the voice of the bally-molay ...
— A Nonsense Anthology • Collected by Carolyn Wells
... much. To test this, therefore, I made several experiments. For instance, one cold day my Ants were almost all in their nests. One only was out hunting and about six feet from home. I took a dead bluebottle fly, pinned it on to a piece of cork, and put it down just in front of her. She at once tried to carry off the fly, but to her surprise found it immovable. She tugged and tugged, first one way and then another for about twenty minutes, and then went straight off to the nest. During that time not ...
— The Beauties of Nature - and the Wonders of the World We Live In • Sir John Lubbock
... and helped himself, and drained his glass, and stood it bottom upward on the table, as though he had just caught a bluebottle in it. ...
— The Mystery of Edwin Drood • Charles Dickens
... asked a big bluebottle fly, who was buzzing away at a great rate. But he didn't know, and neither did a big darning needle that was skimming over the ...
— Billy Bunny and Uncle Bull Frog • David Magie Cory
... around her: the Germans had ceased firing on Bazeilles, probably to avoid killing their own men, who were now masters of the village; but within the last few minutes she had heard the whistling of bullets, that peculiar sound like the buzzing of a bluebottle fly, that she recognized by having heard it described. There was such a raging, roaring clamor rising to the heavens in the distance, the confused uproar of other sounds was so violent, that in it she failed to distinguish the report of musketry. As she was turning the ...
— The Downfall • Emile Zola
... take my verses too kindly, but you will admit, for such a bluebottle of a versifier to enter the house of Gertrude, where her necklace hangs, was not a little brave. Your kind invitation, I fear, must remain unaccented; and yet - if I am very well - perhaps next spring - (for I mean to be very well) - my wife might.... But all ...
— Letters of Robert Louis Stevenson - Volume 2 • Robert Louis Stevenson
... what will he matter, this Pevensey? His ascent and his declension will have been completed, and his foolish battles and treaties will have given place to other foolish battles and treaties and oblivion will have swallowed this glistening bluebottle, plumes and fine lace and stately ruff and all. Why, he is but an adviser to the queen of half an island, whereas my Tamburlaine was lord of all the golden ancient East: and what does my Tamburlaine matter now, save that he gave Kit Marlowe the subject of ...
— O Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1919 • Various
... if you remember, who married old Tom Travers en secondes noces, as I believe the expression is, the year Bluebottle won the Cambridgeshire, and once induced me to write an article on What the Well-Dressed Man is Wearing for that paper she runs—Milady's Boudoir. She is a large, genial soul, with whom it is a pleasure to hob-nob. In her spiritual make-up there is none of that subtle gosh-awfulness ...
— Right Ho, Jeeves • P. G. Wodehouse
... farmer's body and the tree, he had no difficulty in finishing the work he had begun. Dancing like an elf with the line in his hand, he spun round and round the tree till the line was wound round to its very last extremity, and the farmer looked like some big bluebottle fly entangled in the fine meshes of a spider's web. Still he slept on, and with a delighted chuckle Teddy sped back to his little companion; her eyes were dancing with mirth, and she clapped her hands at the ...
— Teddy's Button • Amy Le Feuvre
... world was a globe hanging in the heavens, he would, if he had imagination enough to take the thought in at all, put it to himself in a form suited to his previous knowledge and conceptions. It would seem to him that The Wasp flew about the skies with the world in his mouth, as he carries a bluebottle fly; and that would be the astronomy of his tribe henceforth. Absurd enough; but—as every man who is acquainted with old mythical cosmogonies must know—no more absurd than twenty similar guesses on record. Try to imagine the gradual genesis of such myths as the Egyptian scarabaeus and egg, or ...
— Health and Education • Charles Kingsley
... the girl? You cannot mean the girl. A man who reaches the age of thirty without understanding women is like a bluebottle who devotes a summer morning to an endeavour to fly through a ...
— The Orchard of Tears • Sax Rohmer
... extraordinarily bright gray eyes peered up into hers.) "That is how Alec won his throne. He is all heart. Those who paved the way for him were all brain. They plotted, and contrived, and spun their web with the murderous zeal of a spider; but, poof! in buzzes bluebottle Alec, and where are the schemers? Ah, my angel, if you knew everything you would be cheery as I and marry your ...
— A Son of the Immortals • Louis Tracy
... as he sat in the door of his dugout, cleaning his rifle, or making a careful scrutiny of his shirt for those unwelcome little parasites which made life so miserable for him at all times. There were pleasant cracklings of burning pine sticks and the sizzle of frying bacon. Great swarms of bluebottle flies buzzed lazily in the warm sunshine. Sometimes, across a pool of noonday silence, we heard birds singing; for the birds didn't desert us. When we gave them a hearing, they did their cheery little best to assure ...
— Kitchener's Mob - Adventures of an American in the British Army • James Norman Hall
... paneled beam. Bright oak cupboards, their fronts carved with rude figures, were set into the walls, which were whitened, and bore one illuminated text and three prints in black and white. The furniture was heavy and old. There was a spinning-wheel under the wide window-board. A bluebottle buzzed about the ceiling; a slant of sunlight crossed the floor. The ...
— A Son of Hagar - A Romance of Our Time • Sir Hall Caine
... wholly and unsparingly devoted to one pursuit: he was an entomologist. With a black beetle and a microscope he was happy for the day. Piles upon piles of manuscripts had he written upon the forms and classification of the bluebottle fly. He could tell you how many legs are flourished by the house-spider, and was thoroughly versed in the anatomy of the common gnat. This pursuit, or science as he called it, engrossed his whole attention. It was fortunate he had such an absorbing occupation, ...
— Kate Coventry - An Autobiography • G. J. Whyte-Melville
... fly-paper in the stewards' pantry one day. I was looking at it, and wishing flies needn't be made at all. Then I wished I could let the poor things all loose, no matter how horrible they are. There was one big bluebottle that had got stuck there on his back with his wings in the sticky stuff. He struggled and struggled till—Oh, horrible!—his wings came off. Then he crawled and crawled, over other dead flies till he got to the edge of the paper. And he went all wobbly and horrible ...
— Captivity • M. Leonora Eyles
... continued to smile. The men looked at him with aversion, but the women, although shocked, did not think him repulsive. Was he not a tall, broadshouldered, graceful lad, with a complexion like milk and blood, and eyes the colour of a bluebottle, and did he not trim his moustaches and beard like a nobleman? It was a pity he was not a foreman with plenty of opportunities of ordering the girls about! The men, however, were whispering among themselves that he was a scoundrel who would come ...
— Selected Polish Tales • Various
... active, with no original laziness in his composition, no old bones to rest, or pipe to smoke, kept after him like a bluebottle fly. It was in vain that he tried to stave him off with stories about fairies and Cluricaunes. Dick wanted to ...
— The Blue Lagoon - A Romance • H. de Vere Stacpoole
... estimates of Napoleon (see Lectures on the English Poets, 1818, p. 304, and Don Juan, Canto 1. stanza ii. line 7, note to Buonaparte). Inkel seems to be meant for Byron himself, and Tracy, a friend, not a Lake poet, for Moore. Sir Richard and Lady Bluebottle may possibly symbolize Lord and Lady Holland; and Miss Lilac is, certainly, Miss Milbanke, the "Annabella" of Byron's courtship, not the "moral Clytemnestra" of ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 4 • Lord Byron
... desecrated with the marks of your irreverential contempt for all things human and divine. Would that—(and the wish is expressed more in sorrow than in anger)—would that your entire species were condensed into one enormous bluebottle, that we might crush you ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 12, Issue 346, December 13, 1828 • Various |
