"Mousing" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... as the mousing owl, Night-hawk, or other nocturnal fowl,— But more profitless vigils keeping,— Wide awake in the dark they stare, Filling with phantoms the vacant air, As if that Crookback'd Tyrant Care Had plotted to kill ...
— The Poetical Works of Thomas Hood • Thomas Hood
... one of your snapping, sparkling, busy sort of girls, began at once to develop her womanhood, and show her principles, and was as different from her former self as your careworn, mousing old cat is from your rollicking, frisky kitten. Not but that Sophie was a good girl. She had a capital heart, a good, true womanly one, and was loving and obliging; but still she was one of the desperately painstaking, conscientious sort of women whose very blood, as they grow older, is devoured ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 13, No. 76, February, 1864 • Various
... memories of the homeward walk S. must have been mistaken in his eloquent reference to the crake of the landrail, though he might have been correct as to the weak, piping cry of the circling bats, and the ghostly passage of flitting owl mousing low over the meadow. These alone, he said, broke the silence; in this M. took him to task, having himself heard the tinkling of sheep bells and the barking ...
— Lines in Pleasant Places - Being the Aftermath of an Old Angler • William Senior
... across the lawn again towards the house. I presently heard the wind mousing softly in the limes. The air was fresh and cool. The first stars were out. I saw the laburnum drooping, as though thick clusters of these very stars had drifted earthwards among the branches; I saw the gleam of the lilac; across the dim tangle of the early ...
— The Garden of Survival • Algernon Blackwood
... flaming downe she on the plaine was felde, And soone her bodie turn'd to ashes colde. I saw the foule that doth the light dispise Out of her dust like to a worme arise. [* Haughtie, lofty.] [** Raught, reached.] [VII. 1-14.— "A falcon, tow'ring in her pride of place, Was by a mousing owl hawk'd ...
— The Poetical Works of Edmund Spenser, Volume 5 • Edmund Spenser
... I was mousing around the other day in a book that is somewhat disjointed and disconnected, and yet interesting—"The Standard Dictionary"—when I came across the word "scamp." It is a handy word to fling, and I am not sure but that it has ...
— Little Journeys To The Homes Of Great Teachers • Elbert Hubbard
... of view, but it had long been a ruling principle with Mrs. Gouverneur that whatever Philip wanted he was to have, if it were procurable, and as the husband of such a woman as Phillida he ought to be a great deal happier than in mousing among old books and moping over questions that nobody could solve. Besides, Phillida possessed one qualification second to no other in Mrs. Gouverneur's opinion—there could be no question that her family was a first-rate ...
— The Faith Doctor - A Story of New York • Edward Eggleston
... have her sold piecemeal and broken up. We attended the auction on the beach and bought each piece as it came to the hammer. Getting her off was the trouble. We adopted tactics of our own invention. Mousing together the two mastheads with a bight of rope, we put on it a large whoop traveller, and to that fastened our stoutest and longest line. Then first backing down to her on the very top of high water, we went "full speed ahead." Over she ...
— A Labrador Doctor - The Autobiography of Wilfred Thomason Grenfell • Wilfred Thomason Grenfell
... it may have won a heart, true though proud!" said Wildschloss; "but mousing was cured before by the wise training of the mother. Your highness will have taken out the sting of submission, and you will scarce ...
— The Dove in the Eagle's Nest • Charlotte M. Yonge
... that the old gentleman had been lingering in the neighborhood. The corn wasn't quite ripe enough to suit him. So he had decided to go a-mousing that morning. ...
— The Tale of Master Meadow Mouse • Arthur Scott Bailey
... think it was all envy of the gall who was so lucky, as to be unlucky; but I know better than that. If the owner of the house should be foolish enough to be up so early, or entirely take leave of his senses, and ask him why he was mousing about there, he flatters himself he is just the child to kick him. Indeed he feels inclined to flap his wings and crow. He is very proud. Celestina is in love with him, and tells him (but he knew that before) he is very ...
— Nature and Human Nature • Thomas Chandler Haliburton
... dear, it speaks nothing more than the truth," Eliza declared. "Just as well a certain gentleman should reckon with Peachie's real position," she said to herself—"specially with that stuck-up Serena Lovegrove cat-and-mousing about on the other side of the Green. It does not take a Solomon ...
— The Far Horizon • Lucas Malet
... and effect of his physique. He was accompanied by a travelling companion, in many respects an exact contrast to himself. He was short and slender, lithe and catlike in his motions, and had a peering, mousing expression about his keen black eyes, with which every feature of his face seemed sharpened into sympathy; his thin, long nose, ran out as if it was eager to bore into the nature of things in general; his sleek, thin, black hair ...
— Uncle Tom's Cabin • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... small birds and the like, very well. Teleology tells us that they do so because they were expressly constructed for so doing—that they are perfect mousing apparatuses, so perfect and so delicately adjusted that no one of their organs could be altered, without the change involving the alteration of all the rest. Darwinism affirms on the contrary, that there was no express construction concerned in the matter; but that ...
— Darwiniana • Thomas Henry Huxley
... to be a greater favorite with the poets than the proud, soaring hawk. The owl is doubtless the more human and picturesque bird; then he belongs to the night and its weird effects. Bird of the silent wing and expansive eye, grimalkin in feathers, feline, mousing, haunting ruins" and towers, and mocking the midnight stillness with thy uncanny cry! The owl is the great bugaboo of the feathered tribes. His appearance by day is hailed by shouts of alarm and derision from ...
— Birds and Poets • John Burroughs
... boy,—and a little of the old feeling came to him. He lingered a little; but just then Mrs. Nailor came out of the door near him. For a moment Keith could almost have fancied he was back on the verandah at Gates's. Her mousing around had turned back the dial a ...
— Gordon Keith • Thomas Nelson Page
... public. I hope I shall not be misunderstood as implying any reproach against the inquirers who, in order to get at facts which ought to be known, apply to all whom they can reach for information. Their inquisitiveness is not always agreeable or welcome, but we ought to be glad that there are mousing fact-hunters to worry us with queries to which, for the sake of the public, we are bound to give our attention. Let me ...
— Over the Teacups • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. |
