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Seed   /sid/   Listen
Seed

noun
(pl. seed or seeds)
1.
A small hard fruit.
2.
A mature fertilized plant ovule consisting of an embryo and its food source and having a protective coat or testa.
3.
One of the outstanding players in a tournament.  Synonym: seeded player.
4.
Anything that provides inspiration for later work.  Synonyms: germ, source.
5.
The thick white fluid containing spermatozoa that is ejaculated by the male genital tract.  Synonyms: come, cum, ejaculate, semen, seminal fluid.



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"Seed" Quotes from Famous Books



... Acclimatation. Eggs of birds packed in its garden have safely crossed the Atlantic, seventy-five per cent. hatching on their arrival. So immensely has the business of the society increased that more ground has had to be secured for nursery and seed-raising purposes, and the whole vast Zoological Gardens of Marseilles have been secured and turned into a "tender," as it were, to the Jardin d'Acclimatation at Paris. This was a very important acquisition. Marseilles, ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 26, July 1880. • Various

... Bible he found that the wonder-working power in man's nature was Faith. Faith! What was it? What did it mean? Had he faith? He was but 'a poor sot,' and yet he thought that he could not be wholly without it. The Bible told him that if he had faith as a grain of mustard seed, he could work miracles. He did not understand Oriental metaphors; here was a simple test which could be ...
— Bunyan • James Anthony Froude

... applause when our labour was completed, but never uttered the slightest expression of gratitude for that, or for any thing else we could do for her. She was constantly asking us to lend her different articles of dress, and when we declined it, she said, "Well, I never seed such grumpy folks as you be; there is several young ladies of my acquaintance what goes to live out now and then with the old women about the town, and they and their gurls always lends them what they asks for; I guess you Inglish ...
— Domestic Manners of the Americans • Fanny Trollope

... hold. What has made a woman like this pick up a fellow of his stamp? Hum-m-m! Puppy, I think you are a good move," stroking the ears of the mongrel dog; "a very much better move than a cage of useless parakeets that are meant to throw suspicion in the wrong direction and have a seed-cup so large and so obviously overfilled that it is safe to say there is nothing hidden in it and never has been! And madame has a fancy for waxlights," his gaze travelling upward to the glittering chandelier. "Hum-m-m! How well they ...
— Cleek: the Man of the Forty Faces • Thomas W. Hanshew

... get a few seed catalogues, pick out a list of the vegetables most enthusiastically described by the (wholly disinterested) seedsman, and then, when the time came, to put them in at one or two plantings, and sowing each kind ...
— Home Vegetable Gardening • F. F. Rockwell

... iron, forasmuch as thou sawest the iron mixed with miry clay. 42. And as the toes of the feet were part of iron, and part of clay, so the kingdom shall be partly strong, and partly broken. 43. And whereas thou sawest iron mixed with miry clay, they shall mingle themselves with the seed of men: but they shall not cleave one to another, even as iron is not mixed with clay. 44. And in the days of these kings shall the God of heaven set up a kingdom, which shall never be destroyed: and the kingdom shall not be left to other people, but it shall break in pieces and consume all these ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ezekiel, Daniel, and the Minor Prophets. St Matthew Chapters I to VIII • Alexander Maclaren

... rights of hospitality enough not to touch his weapon even when he thought her Irish, "we harm not women and babes save when they are even as the Amalekites. Let my brother go, child. I touch thee not, though thou be of an ungodly seed; and I counsel thee, Steadfast, touch not the accursed thing, but rid thyself thereof, ...
— Under the Storm - Steadfast's Charge • Charlotte M. Yonge

... often see it exercised in behalf of the brute animals, whose proper natures are totally unconscious of it; while their gentleness and quietness seem to rebuke this shallow, human sentimentality, as something wandering from its sphere, or as seed wasted upon the sand. Your sympathy has its legitimate uses, and it is against the economy of nature to misuse it, or bestow it upon natures foreign to its own. If we pity the slave because he is not ...
— The Right of American Slavery • True Worthy Hoit

... and resolue it selfe into a Dew: Or that the Euerlasting had not fixt His Cannon 'gainst Selfe-slaughter. O God, O God! How weary, stale, flat, and vnprofitable Seemes to me all the vses of this world? Fie on't? Oh fie, fie, 'tis an vnweeded Garden That growes to Seed: Things rank, and grosse in Nature Possesse it meerely. That it should come to this: But two months dead: Nay, not so much; not two, So excellent a King, that was to this Hiperion to a Satyre: so louing to my Mother, That he might not beteene the windes of heauen Visit her face ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare

... is closed for aye, where the long weeds sigh, In the churchyard by the stream: And fame—oh! mine were gorgeous hopes Of a flashing and young renown: But early, early the flower-leaf drops From the withering seed-cup down. ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volume IV. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various

... no man dreams, there will be nothing for the workers to fulfil—the future, not of Canada only but of the world—when the 'red rain' of Langemarck and Verdun shall have brought forth a golden harvest—not in a year or two, as some foolishly think, but a generation later, when the seed sown now shall have had time to germinate and grow. Yes, I'm glad I came, Rilla. It isn't only the fate of the little sea-born island I love that is in the balance—nor of Canada nor of England. It's the fate of mankind. ...
— Rilla of Ingleside • Lucy Maud Montgomery

... telt ye, I'm booked to ship wi' the black,—'sheik' I've heerd them ca' him. Well: from what I ha'e seed and heerd, there's nae doot they're gaein' to separate an' tak different roads. I did na ken muckle o' what they sayed, but I could mak oot two words I hae often heerd while cruisin' in the Gulf o' Guinea. They are the names o' two great toons, a ...
— The Boy Slaves • Mayne Reid

... and 'simmon beer to eat for days atter dat. White folks never had no mo', not till a new crop was grow'd. Dat year de seasons was good and gardens done well. Till den us nearly starved and we never had no easy time gitting garden seed to ...
— Slave Narratives: a Folk History of Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves • Works Projects Administration

... remaining stationary for a time, it will begin to recede to its former position. The seasons must therefore follow each other in regular sequence, and throughout all time, reminding us of the promise of the Creator, 'that while the Earth remaineth seed-time and harvest, and cold and heat, and summer and winter ...
— The Astronomy of Milton's 'Paradise Lost' • Thomas Orchard

... growing out of one another, and resembling thick leaves joined by their ends. Along the sides of these joints there are numerous notches, springing from which are the large handsome flowers. On looking carefully, we perceive that the long stalk-like expansion is not a stalk, because it is above the seed vessel, which is, of course, a portion of the flower itself. It is a hollow tube, and contains the long style or connection between the seed vessel and the stigma, a (Fig. 2). This tube, then, must be the calyx, and the small scattered ...
— Cactus Culture For Amateurs • W. Watson

... bright sun of consolation may visit her children there. But here a new hope rises to our view. Who knows but that emancipation, like a beautiful plant, may, in its due season, rise out of the ashes of the abolition of the Slave-trade, and that, when its own intrinsic value shall be known, the seed of it may be planted in other lands? And looking at the subject in this point of view, we cannot but be struck with the wonderful concurrence of events as previously necessary for this purpose, namely, that ...
— The History of the Rise, Progress and Accomplishment of the Abolition of the African Slave Trade by the British Parliament (1808) • Thomas Clarkson

... names from a real or supposed musky odor are, besides several that are called musk-plant, the musk-rose, the musk-hyacinth, the musk-mallow, the musk-orchid, the musk-melon, the musk-cherry, the musk-pear, the musk-plum, muskat and muscatels, musk-seed, musk-tree, musk-wood, etc.[60] But a musky odor is not merely widespread in Nature among plants and the lower animals, it is peculiarly associated with man. Incidentally we have already seen how it is regarded ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 4 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis

... his attention, and he had no time to give to the further investigation of new religions; and yet the seed which had been sown was gradually germinating, so that when after a few months he found himself again near Great Peace, in a small place where was an opium refuge, Mr. Fu went in to see the man who was in charge. Although he had never smoked opium himself, Mr. Fu was on this occasion in possession ...
— The Fulfilment of a Dream of Pastor Hsi's - The Story of the Work in Hwochow • A. Mildred Cable

... mine arede,[4] (Whom age hath taught the trains[5] that fancy useth) Leave foolish love, for beauty wit abuseth, And drowns, by folly, virtue's springing seed. ...
— Rosalynde - or, Euphues' Golden Legacy • Thomas Lodge

... the human race be were it not for the ideals of men? It is idealists, in a large sense, that this old world needs to-day. Its soil is sadly in need of new seed. Washington, in his day, was decried as an idealist. So was Jefferson. It was commonly remarked of Lincoln that he was a "rank idealist." Morse, Watt, Marconi, Edison—all were, at first, adjudged idealists. We say of the League of Nations ...
— The Americanization of Edward Bok - The Autobiography of a Dutch Boy Fifty Years After • Edward William Bok

... maturity under conditions more certain than those that have produced this horror. Crush humanity out of shape once more, under similar hammers, and it will twist itself into the same tortured forms. Sow the same seed of rapacious license and oppression over again, and it will surely yield the same fruit according to ...
— A Tale of Two Cities - A Story of the French Revolution • Charles Dickens

... cultivate the ground in spring to procure the means of subsistence, you see them just turn the turf once lightly over, and, without manuring the ground, or even breaking the clods of earth, throw in the seed in the same careless manner, and leave the event to chance, without troubling themselves further till it is fit ...
— The History of Emily Montague • Frances Brooke

... plow thou put thy hand Let not thy spirit waver, Heed not the world's allurements grand, Nor pause for Sodom's favor. But plow thy furrow, sow the seed, Though tares and thorns thy work impede; For they, who sow with weeping, With joy ...
— Hymns and Hymnwriters of Denmark • Jens Christian Aaberg

... not going to be hard on you," Helen said, and though she spoke with genuine amusement, she felt a little seed of anger germinating in her breast. That was what George had done to her: he had made her heart a fertile place for ...
— Moor Fires • E. H. (Emily Hilda) Young

... it did much to consolidate the Republic, contained in it a seed of dissension. We have seen how, in the Convention, the need of keeping an even balance between Northern and Southern sections was apparent. That need was continually forced into prominence as new States were added. The presence or absence of Negro ...
— A History of the United States • Cecil Chesterton

... winter encroaches on the spring, and makes late seed time, the first favorable weather is a temptation to overwork the slaves, too strong to be resisted by those who hold men as mere working animals. So when frosts set in early, and a great amount of work is to be done in a little time, or great loss suffered. So also after a ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society

... there had been reason for my fears, 'even if I had been a very harsh and severe grandmother, your concealment would have done no good in the end,' she said. 'It would have been like the first little tiny seed of deceit, which might have grown into a great tree of evil, poisoning all your life. Oh, Nelly, never never plant that seed, for once it has taken root who can say how difficult it may ...
— Grandmother Dear - A Book for Boys and Girls • Mrs. Molesworth

... will be wise!" I read farming books, I calculated crops; I attended markets; and in short, in spite of the devil, and the world, and the flesh, I believe I should have been a wise man; but the first year, from unfortunately buying bad seed, the second from a late harvest, we lost half our crops. This overset all my wisdom, and I returned, "like the dog to his vomit, and the sow that was washed, to ...
— The Complete Works of Robert Burns: Containing his Poems, Songs, and Correspondence. • Robert Burns and Allan Cunningham

... all I could, mum, soon as I seed that cloud," the girl puffed, with the air of one who is seriously thankful to have escaped a ...
— The Old Wives' Tale • Arnold Bennett

... out of doubt, the Lord discovered somewhat of his mind in it. The serpent is the devil; the synod, the representative of the churches of Christ in New England. The devil had formerly and lately attempted their disturbance and dissolution; but their faith in the seed of the woman overcame him and ...
— Woman's Life in Colonial Days • Carl Holliday

... said, out loud, "Home! My home!" And out of a clear sky, for no earthly reason, I began to cry like a baby. Women are such fools, sometimes! I told Dinky-Dunk we must get books, good books, and spend the long winter evenings reading together, to keep from going to seed. ...
— The Prairie Wife • Arthur Stringer

... sorghum, rice, peanuts, sunflower seed, tobacco, cotton, sugarcane, cassava (tapioca); cattle, goats, pigs, poultry, beef, pork, poultry meat, milk, ...
— The 1999 CIA Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.

... day of departure Agatha came into her, and chid her, and bade her be merry: "I have seen the Lord and told him what I would, and found it no hard matter to get him to yeasay our plot, which were hard to carry out without his goodwill. Withal the seed that I have sowed two days or more ago is bearing fruit; so that thou mayst look to it that whatsoever plight we may be in, we ...
— The Well at the World's End • William Morris

... pencil, she had marked the sixteenth and twenty-fifth verses of the thirty-seventh Psalm,—"A little that a righteous man hath, is better than the riches of the wicked."—"I have been young and am now old, yet have I not seen the righteous forsaken, nor his seed ...
— The Heart of Mid-Lothian, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott

... Loud sings the cuckoo; Groweth seed and bloweth mead, And springs the wood now. Sing, cuckoo; The ewe bleateth for her lamb, The cow loweth for her calf, The bullock starteth. The buck verteth, Merrily sings the cuckoo, Cuckoo, cuckoo; Well sings the ...
— Locusts and Wild Honey • John Burroughs

... which grew on a lean, plucked neck like that of an old fowl, had brought his face into the light. It was long, and run to seed, and had a large, red nose; its thin, colourless lips were twisted sideways and apart, showing his semi-toothless mouth; and his eyes had that aged look of eyes in which all colour runs into a thin rim round the iris; and over them kept coming films like the films over parrots' eyes. He was, or ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy

... young trees had put forth new leaves, and the seed we had sown had come up through the moist ground. The air had a fresh sweet smell, for it bore the scent of the bloom which hung like snow flakes on the boughs of the fruit trees; the songs and cries of the birds were to be heard on all sides, and we could ...
— The Swiss Family Robinson Told in Words of One Syllable • Mary Godolphin

... too vivid. The padres brought the mustard seed later. A little south of the present mission," I continued, "you will see a group of willows bending to drink the crystal waters of the Arroyo de los Dolores, so named because Anza and his followers discovered it on ...
— The Lure of San Francisco - A Romance Amid Old Landmarks • Elizabeth Gray Potter and Mabel Thayer Gray

... son, as you say he was, as soon as he can get over the side of the ship, always bears up for his parent's house. With the help of your barnacles, I worked my way clean through the whole yarn, and I seed the report of killed and wounded; and I'll take my affidavy that there warn't an officer in the fleet as lost the number of his mess in that action, and a most clipping affair it was; only think of mounseer turning tail to marchant vessels! Damn my old buttons! ...
— Newton Forster • Frederick Marryat

... with them. Eagerness in reading counts as much as it does in living. A live reader who reads the wrong books is more promising than a dead one who reads the right ones. Being alive is the point. Anything can be done with life. It is the Seed of Infinity. ...
— The Lost Art of Reading • Gerald Stanley Lee

... design; and I am loth to mortify him, by asserting he hath done none at all. For I never yet saw so poor an atheistical scribble, which would not serve as a twig for sinking libertines to catch at. It must be allowed in their behalf, that the faith of Christians is not as a grain of mustard seed in comparison of theirs, which can remove such mountains of absurdities, and submit with so entire a resignation to such apostles. If these men had any share of that reason they pretend to, they would retire into Christianity, merely to give it ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, Vol. III.: Swift's Writings on Religion and the Church, Vol. I. • Jonathan Swift

... days when King Abuse did reign We sigh for, but we shall not see again. Then Eldon sowed the seed of equity That grew to bounteous harvest, and with glee A Bar of modest numbers shared the grain. Then lived the pleaders who could issues feign, Who blushed not to aver that France or Spain Was in the Ward of Chepe;[I] no more can be ...
— Briefless Ballads and Legal Lyrics - Second Series • James Williams

... delicate little drills across the breadth of her nicely-prepared bed; little drills all alike, just so deep and just so far apart. Then she went to a basket hard by for a little paper of seeds; two papers; and began deftly to scatter the seed along the drills, with delicate and careful but quick fingers. Mrs. Barclay watched her till she had filled all the rows, and began to cover the seeds in; that, too, she did quick ...
— Nobody • Susan Warner

... it that the beneficiary, if she liked one, had to go in for them all. "Just my object," Miss Swinkerton would remark triumphantly as she set the flower-pots down on the Bibles, only to find that the bank-books had got stored away with the seed. Clearly Mrs Iver, chief aide-de-camp, had no leisure. Harry was at Blent; no word and no sign came from him. Bob Broadley never made advances. The field was clear for the Major. Janie, grateful for his attentions, yet felt vaguely that ...
— Tristram of Blent - An Episode in the Story of an Ancient House • Anthony Hope

... most of the high families in the archipelago, and traces his descent to a shark and a heroic woman. Directed by an oracle, she swam beyond sight of land to meet her revolting paramour, and received at sea the seed of a predestined family. "I think lie," is the king's emphatic commentary; yet he is proud of the legend. From this illustrious beginning the fortunes of the race must have declined; and Tenkoruti, the grandfather of Tembinok', was the chief of a village at the north end of the island. Kuria and ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 18 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson

... the ground, while, behind them, buggies and horsemen were drawn up. Conspicuous in that gay throng appeared the Captain of the "Rhine," seated on a brown horse, amid female equestrians. Beyond the audience rose a belt of tamarind and flamboyant trees, the latter with gigantic green and brown seed-pods hanging from their branches; and above these woods, sloping upwards to the blue sky, extended the hills, with winding roads, visible here and there through the foliage that covered them, and with many a flagstaff and white cottage scattered ...
— The Idler Magazine, Volume III, June 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various

... in the 1980s has softened the impact of population growth on unemployment, social tranquility, and the environment. Agricultural output has continued to expand, reflecting the greater use of modern farming techniques and improved seed that have helped to make India self-sufficient in food grains and a net agricultural exporter. However, tens of millions of villagers, particularly in the south, have not benefited from the green revolution and live in abject poverty. Industry has ...
— The 1991 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.

... regulation. He showed all the stretch of fancy at once; and if he has failed in some of his flights, it was but because he attempted everything. A work of this kind seems like a mighty tree, which rises from the most vigorous seed, is improved with industry, flourishes, and produces the finest fruit: nature and art conspire to raise it; pleasure and profit join to make it valuable: and they who find the justest faults, have only ...
— The Iliad of Homer • Homer

... grow from the root-end of the embryo of the seed are called primary roots; those growing from slips or from stems anywhere are ...
— Trees of the Northern United States - Their Study, Description and Determination • Austin C. Apgar

... an intended unity must be the result of composition. A paviour cannot be said to compose the heap of stones which he empties from his cart, nor the sower the handful of seed which he scatters from his hand. It is the essence of composition that everything should be in a determined place, perform an intended part, and act, in that part, advantageously for everything ...
— The Crown of Wild Olive • John Ruskin

... them not to be framed nor fashioned like the nations, Lev. xix. 27, 28, and xxi. 5, and Deut. xiv. 1. And what else was meant by those laws which forbade them to suffer their cattle to gender with a diverse kind, to sow their field with diverse seed, to wear a garment of diverse sorts, as of woollen and linen, to plough with an ox and an ass together? Levit. xix. 19, Deut. xxii. 6-11. This was the hold that people in simplicity and purity, ne hinc inde accersat ritus alienos, saith Calvin, ...
— The Works of Mr. George Gillespie (Vol. 1 of 2) • George Gillespie

... day Kane went to Cho's house, and begged for the loan of some seed-rice and some silkworms' eggs, for last season had been unfortunate, and he was in want ...
— Boys and Girls Bookshelf (Vol 2 of 17) - Folk-Lore, Fables, And Fairy Tales • Various

... vegetation. It is a rather remarkable fact, that the average African warrior thinks it a degradation for him to engage in agriculture. He will fell trees, and help move a village, but will not go into the field to work. The women—generally the married ones—do the gardening. They carry the seed on their heads in a large basket, a hoe on their shoulder, and a baby slung on the back. They scatter the seed over the ground, and then break up the earth to the depth of three ...
— History of the Negro Race in America From 1619 to 1880. Vol 1 - Negroes as Slaves, as Soldiers, and as Citizens • George W. Williams

... of the healer, and the lack of receptivity in the patient, are local limitations. There are sudden cures, but as a rule recovery will be in the nature of a progressive growth. Lack of immediate results often causes disappointment, and leads to an abandonment of the treatment before the seed has had time to take root. The healer is the sower, and the patient's unconscious mind is the soil. Often rubbish must be cleared away before any fertile spot is found. The cure must come from within. Sometimes the patient is cherishing some secret sin, or giving place to ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 23, October, 1891 • Various

... testimony in such a case? Is it sufficient to countervail the experience of all in every age—"the great cloud of witnesses"—who have unanimously declared that "the Lord hath not forsaken them that seek Him," and that "He hath not said to the seed of Jacob, Seek ye my face in vain"? Which is entitled to the greater weight, the testimony of Mr. Holyoake, or that of the Psalmist, "I waited patiently for the Lord, and He inclined unto me, and heard my cry;" or that of the prophet, ...
— Modern Atheism under its forms of Pantheism, Materialism, Secularism, Development, and Natural Laws • James Buchanan

... seed potatoes and the seeds of cabbages and turnips. The potatoes were cultivated with care and success. One tribe had sufficient self-control not to eat any for three years; then they had abundance. Gradually the potato ...
— The Long White Cloud • William Pember Reeves

... making remarks on his catalogue with a pencil; and Mrs. Roundabout, from Leadenhall, who had brought her son Dicky to see the show, as she called it, declared it was the 'most finest sight she ever seed, lifting up her hand and eyes at the same time as Dicky read over the list, and charmed her by reciting the various scraps of poetry inserted in the catalogue to elucidate the subjects. It was altogether a source of inexpressible delight and amusement. Tom, whose taste for the ...
— Real Life In London, Volumes I. and II. • Pierce Egan

... rarely, there is born to a race or people men who are like an irruption of life from another world, who belong to another order, who bring other standards, and sow the seed of new and larger types; who are not the organs of the culture or modes of their time, and whom their times for the most part decry and disown,—the primal, original, elemental men. It is here, in my opinion, that ...
— Whitman - A Study • John Burroughs

... the things I'd eat was pretty peppery. 'Now,' thinks I, 'if there had been just one can o' peaches sech as I seen shinin' in the stars last night!' An' just then, as I was walkin' aft, all by myself, I seed lodged on the stump of the mizzenmast a box with one corner druv down among the splinters. It was half split open, an' I could see the tin cans shinin' through the crack. I give one jump at it, an' wrenched the side off. On the top of the first can I seed was a picture of a big white ...
— The Magic Egg and Other Stories • Frank Stockton

... much low peasantry would then be gleaned From the true seed of honour?] The meaning is, How much meanness would be found among the great, and how much greatness among the mean. But since men are always said to glean corn though they may pick chaff, the sentence had been more agreeable ...
— Johnson's Notes to Shakespeare Vol. I Comedies • Samuel Johnson

... and his people, to be destroyed by anything short of an earthquake. He summed up his race, his country, the elemental force of ardent life, of tropical nature. He had its luxuriant strength, its fascination; and, like it, he carried the seed ...
— Tales of Unrest • Joseph Conrad

... hearth. If the servants they had were like Southern slaves, would they have performed such comparatively menial offices for themselves? Hear too the plaintive lamentation of Abraham when he feared he should have no son to bear his name down to posterity. "Behold thou hast given me no seed, &c., one born in my house is mine heir." From this it appears that one of his servants was to inherit his immense estate. Is this like Southern slavery? I leave it to your own good sense and candor to decide. Besides, such was the footing upon which Abraham ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society

... a weaving-girl. But as both of the star-deities were worshiped on the seventh of the seventh month, some Japanese scholars have not been satisfied with the common explanation of the name, and have stated that it was originally composed with the word tan['e] (seed, or grain), and the word hata (loom). Those who accept this etymology make the appellation, Tanabata-Sama, plural instead of singular, and render it as "the deities of grain and of the loom,"—that is to ...
— The Romance of the Milky Way - And Other Studies & Stories • Lafcadio Hearn

... Marseilles is a beautiful town or an ugly one. Few people, I expect, would have seen anything attractive in it this dark, rainy October afternoon, but to us it was a sort of Paradise regained. We had tea at a cafe, real French tea tasting of hay-seed and lukewarm water, and real French cakes; we wandered through the streets, stopping to stare in at every shop window; we bought violets to adorn ourselves, and picture-postcards, and sheets of foreign stamps for Peter, and all the time the ...
— Olivia in India • O. Douglas

... longed to have the freedom of that garden. Jims loved gardens. There had been a garden at the little house but there was none here—nothing but an old lawn that had been fine once but was now badly run to seed. Jims had heard Uncle Walter say that he was going to have it attended to but nothing had been done yet. And meanwhile here was a beautiful garden over the wall which looked as if it should be full of children. But no children were ever in it—or anybody else apparently. And so, in ...
— Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1909 to 1922 • Lucy Maud Montgomery

... great sacrifices are yet not capable of the little ones which are all that are required of them. God seems to take pleasure in working by degrees; the progress of the truth is as the permeation of leaven, or the growth of a seed: a multitude of successive small sacrifices may work more good in the world than many a large one. What would even our Lord's death on the cross have been, except as the crown of a life in which he died daily, giving ...
— Weighed and Wanting • George MacDonald

... his name. Bob done it. He seed him leave the Yankee camp, an' follered him, an' while they were ridin' along together, he tuk out his pistol an' told the Yank to give up his we'pons; but the feller wouldn't do it, an' Bob had to shoot him. But he didn't kill him; ...
— Frank on the Lower Mississippi • Harry Castlemon

... worked, sowing seed and gathering the fruit of his labor; and at last his body was laid at rest close to his first church at Saul. Thus one of the great men of the ...
— Ireland, Historic and Picturesque • Charles Johnston

... was a negative thing; an intellectual squalor; a swamp of prejudices and fears. She would have to make them take hers. She was not a Vincent de Paul, to govern and mold a people. What of that? The tiniest change in their distrust of beauty would be the beginning of the end; a seed to sprout and some day with thickening roots to crack their wall of mediocrity. If she could not, as she desired, do a great thing nobly and with laughter, yet she need not be content with village nothingness. She would plant one seed ...
— Main Street • Sinclair Lewis

... would be one of the delights of possession? Put my money into the ground like seed, in order that the fruit may be gathered by him! I'm not a good enough Christian, Mr. Carey, to take much delight in that. I'll tell you what it is, Mr. Carey. The place is a hell upon earth to me, till I can call it my own." At last he ...
— Ralph the Heir • Anthony Trollope

... noble expressions of moral truth from a corrupt heart thinly varnished by a coating of affectation. Turn it how we may, the thing is impossible. Pope was more than a mere literary artist, though he was an artist of unparalleled excellence in his own department. He was a man in whom there was the seed of many good thoughts, though choked in their development by the growth of innumerable weeds. And I will venture, in conclusion, to adduce one more proof of the justice of a lenient verdict. I have had already to quote many phrases familiar to everyone who is tinctured in the slightest degree ...
— Hours in a Library, Volume I. (of III.) • Leslie Stephen

... the jungle round, a-killin' of tigers an' time; I seed a kind of an author man a writin' a rousin' rhyme; 'E was writin' a mile a minute an' more, an' I sez to 'im, "'Oo are you?" Sez 'e, "I'm a poet—'er majesty's poet—soldier an' sailor, too!" An 'is poem began in Ispahan an' ended in Kalamazoo, It 'ad army in it, an' navy in ...
— The Book of Humorous Verse • Various

... scarcely dry on the agreement to permit the Japanese to experiment in cotton growing before a Japanese steamer appeared in Puntarenas with twenty-one young and alert Japanese and a bag of cotton seed. They were "laborers," Wakabayashi explained. The "laborers" were put up in first-class hotels and took life easy while Wakabayashi and one of the laborers started hunting a suitable spot on which to plant their bag of seed. All sorts of land was offered to them, but Wakabayashi ...
— Secret Armies - The New Technique of Nazi Warfare • John L. Spivak

... illustrate the general truth, that you cannot revolutionize classes and their relations without revolutionizing culture. It is idle to suppose you can communicate to a democracy the heritage of an aristocracy. You may give them books, show them pictures, offer them examples. In vain! The seed cannot grow in the new soil. The masses will never be educated in the sense that the classes were. You may rejoice in the fact, or you may regret it; but at least it should be recognized. For my own part I regret it, and I regret it because I conceive that ...
— A Modern Symposium • G. Lowes Dickinson

... result of argument; but it was intolerably dull, and having the fear of her schoolmistress greatly before her eyes, Miss Sedley did not venture, in her presence, to give way to any ablutions of private grief. A seed-cake and a bottle of wine were produced in the drawing-room, as on the solemn occasions of the visits of parents, and these refreshments being partaken of, Miss Sedley ...
— Boys and girls from Thackeray • Kate Dickinson Sweetser

... were closed, and the windows above were curtainless and begrimed with dust. A notice "To let," stared out from a board beside the front door, and the once cosy little front garden was weed-grown and run to seed. ...
— A Dog with a Bad Name • Talbot Baines Reed

... hungrily to other gardens whose gates were open to me in those early days. In one of these was a vast bed of purple heartsease, flower of the beautiful name. Year after year they had blossomed and gone to seed till the harvest of flowers in their season was past gathering, and any child in the neighborhood was at liberty to pluck them by handfuls, while the wicked ones played at "chicken fighting" and littered the ground with decapitated ...
— Aunt Jane of Kentucky • Eliza Calvert Hall

... Hazel Ripwinkley," she began; as if she had said, I am Pease-blossom or Mustard-seed; "I go to school with Ada." And went on, then, with her compliments and her party. And at the end ...
— Real Folks • Mrs. A. D. T. Whitney

... Let us then snatch him from death's jaws, lest the son of Saturn be angry should Achilles slay him. It is fated, moreover, that he should escape, and that the race of Dardanus, whom Jove loved above all the sons born to him of mortal women, shall not perish utterly without seed or sign. For now indeed has Jove hated the blood of Priam, while Aeneas shall reign over the Trojans, he and his children's children ...
— The Iliad • Homer

... they are formed of a combination of contrary elements, undergo a continual dissolution of their structure, so by the forethought of the clergy a remedy should be found, by means of which the sacred book paying the debt of nature may obtain a natural heir and may raise up like seed to its dead brother, and thus may be verified that saying of Ecclesiasticus: His father is dead, and he is as if he were not dead; for he hath left one behind him that is like himself. And thus the ...
— The Philobiblon of Richard de Bury • Richard de Bury

... should she tell?" "Because we are bad friends." "Has she not done it?" "No, she is not sixteen." "How do you know she has not?" "Why we sleep together and I know." "Who sleeps in the other bed?" "Fearther." "In the same room?" "Yes." "Don't you know anything against her?" "No, last hay-making I seed a young man trying to put his hands up her clothes, that's all; she has only been a woman a few months." If she tells of her, she will tell of me, I thought. It might come to my aunt's ears, Fred would know, and I ...
— My Secret Life, Volumes I. to III. - 1888 Edition • Anonymous

... another, Daddy," says the feller, warmin' up, A-speakin' 'cost a saucerful, as Uncle tuk his cup—, "When I seed yer sign out yander," he went on, to Uncle Jake- -, "'Come in and git some coffee like yer mother used to make'— I thought of my old mother, and the Posey County farm, And me a little kid ag'in, a-hangin' in her arm, As she set the pot: a-bilin', broke ...
— Afterwhiles • James Whitcomb Riley

... palms, and retaining it as a worldly oyster between spiritual shells. "Why, my daughter, why, but because we do not bow to that Image daily, nightly, hourly, momently! We do not worship it that its seed may be sown in us. We do not cling to it, that in return it may ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith

... place, you remember one deluge only, whereas there were many of them; and, in the next place, you do not know that there dwelt in your land the fairest and noblest race of men which ever lived, of whom you and your whole city are but a seed or remnant. And this was unknown to you, because for many generations the survivors of that destruction died and made no sign. For there was a time, Solon, before that great deluge of all, when the city which now is Athens was first ...
— The Antediluvian World • Ignatius Donnelly

... glad she was gone. Every day Phil put fresh flowers on her grave. Sometimes it was only a stiff red coxcomb or a little stemless geranium that had escaped the early frost. Sometimes it was only a handful of bright grasses gone to seed. The doctor's neglected garden flaunted few blooms this autumn, but the little fellow, grieving long and sorely, did all he could to show ...
— The Story of Dago • Annie Fellows-Johnston

... from the time I seed 'em"—here he stopped abruptly, glanced out of the window toward the tavern, spit thirstily, and then ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXIII No. 3 September 1848 • Various

... plants of cellular tissue, and which have no flowers, (cryptogamia,) as lichens, mosses, fungi, ferns, sea-weeds. Above these stand plants of vascular tissue, and bearing flowers, in which again there are two great subdivisions; first, plants having one seed-lobe, (monocotyledons,) and in which the new matter is added within, (endogenous,) of which the cane and palm are examples; second, plants having two seed-lobes, (dicotyledons,) and in which the new matter is added on the outside under the bark, (exogenous,) ...
— Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation • Robert Chambers

... feared yo'd went up in de flames," cried Gustus, and added, "but I had dat dar grain of mustard seed dat made me b'lieve de Lo'd would somehow ...
— A Little Florida Lady • Dorothy C. Paine

... of the seed is very nutritious, and is supposed to have been the food of St. John while in the wilderness, as it is the same kind of locust bean that grows in Palestine, and in various parts of Asia Minor. The Spanish name is ...
— The Wonder Island Boys: Exploring the Island • Roger Thompson Finlay

... darkness took the throne; At the sixth hour, the earth shook and the wind cried; At the seventh hour, the hidden seed was sown; At the eighth hour, it gave up ...
— The Second Book of Modern Verse • Jessie B. Rittenhouse

... Honourable Hilary's persisted in tracing only a slightly ragged line throughout the beautiful month of May, in which favourable season the campaign of the Honourable Adam B. Hunt took root and flourished—apparently from the seed planted by the State Tribune. The ground, as usual, had been carefully prepared, and trained gardeners raked, and watered, and weeded the patch. It had been decreed and countersigned that the Honourable Adam B. Hunt was the flower that ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill

... congestion I always include fenugreek seed tea brewed at the strength of approximately one tablespoon of seeds to a quart of water. Expect the tea to be brown, thick and mucilaginous, with a reasonably pleasant taste ...
— How and When to Be Your Own Doctor • Dr. Isabelle A. Moser with Steve Solomon

... nigh onter forty yar, but we hab clung to one anoder; we hab loved one anoder; and fru eberyting, in de bery darkest days, de sun ob joy an' peace hab broke fru de clouds, an' sent him blessed rays down inter our hearts. We started jess like two young saplin's you's seed a growin' side by side in de woods. At fust we seemed way 'part, fur de brambles, an' de tick bushes, an' de ugly forns—dem war our bad ways—war atween us; but love, like de sun, shone down on us, and we grow'd. We grow'd till our heads got above de bushes; till dis little ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol 3 No 3, March 1863 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various

... and the doctrine of impermanence, inculcated by the discarded faith, continued an essential factor in spiritual development, for the inconstancy of the national mind only found a temporary halting-place in each successive creed which arrested it. The seed was sown, the bud opened, and the flower faded, with incredible rapidity, but the growth while it lasted, showed phenomenal luxuriance. The erection of these Hindu sanctuaries signalised the zenith of Javanese power; their fame travelled across the seas, ...
— Through the Malay Archipelago • Emily Richings

... the support of those who gather it; as it is said "with the fat of kidneys of wheat" (Deut. xxxii. 14). Each kidney will be as large as "the kidneys of the fattest oxen." To prove that this is nothing wonderful, an account is given of a rape seed in which a fox once brought forth young. These young ones were weighed, and found to be as heavy as sixty pounds of Cyprus weight. Lest these statements should be thought a contradiction of the verse "There is no ...
— Hebrew Literature

... Robertson, Dugald Stewart, Blair, "Duchess Gordon and all the gay world," were of his acquaintance. Such a revolution is not to be found in literary history. He was now, it must be remembered, twenty-seven years of age; he had fought since his early boyhood an obstinate battle against poor soil, bad seed, and inclement seasons, wading deep in Ayrshire mosses, guiding the plough in the furrow, wielding "the thresher's weary flingin'-tree"; and his education, his diet, and his pleasures, had been those of a Scots ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 3 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson

... is, sir," replied Bounce; "an' if ye'd seed him, as I did not many weeks agone, a-ridin' on the back of a buffalo bull, ye'd mayhap say he was ...
— The Wild Man of the West - A Tale of the Rocky Mountains • R.M. Ballantyne

... secrets the solemn safeguards for child and mother, and forgettest thou that the phantom that served thee hath power over its own gifts,—over the lives it taught thee to rescue from the grave? Dost thou not know that Fear and Distrust, once sown in the heart of Love, spring up from the seed into a forest that excludes the stars? Dark, bright one! the hateful eyes glare beside the mother and ...
— Zanoni • Edward Bulwer Lytton

... said Bill, "if ye except the niggers themselves; there's none on the islands but a lizard or two, and some sich harmless things. But I never seed any myself. If there's none on the land, however, there's more than enough in the water, and that reminds me of a wonderful brute they have here. But come, I'll show it to you." So saying, Bill arose, and, leaving the men still busy with the baked pig, led me into the forest. After proceeding ...
— The Coral Island - A Tale Of The Pacific Ocean • R. M. Ballantyne

... dinna ken; I daur say it's nonsense, but they say she has gathered the fern-seed, and can gang ony gate she likes, like Jock the Giant-killer in the ballant, wi' his coat o' darkness and his shoon o' swiftness. Ony way she's a kind o' queen amang the gipsies; she is mair than a hundred year auld, folk say, and minds the coming in o' the moss-troopers in the troublesome ...
— Guy Mannering, or The Astrologer, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott

... of a great population. Thousands, rather than hundreds, she thought, since close at hand in the middle of one of these round houses, grew a mighty baobab tree, that could not have seen less than ten or fifteen centuries since the seed whence it sprang pierced the cement floor which was still visible ...
— Benita, An African Romance • H. Rider Haggard

... On her dress was no ornament whatever, neither was there a ring on her hand, or a necklace or carcanet about her neck. But her slippers glimmered with the light of the Milky Way, for they were covered with seed-pearls and opals in one mass. Her face was that of a ...
— The Princess and the Goblin • George MacDonald

... cage was cleaned, she always had a cup of canary seed; but at other times she ate potato, cracker, bread, apple, and sometimes a piece of raw meat. She liked, too, to pick a chicken bone, and would nibble away upon it, laughing and talking to herself ...
— Minnie's Pet Parrot • Madeline Leslie

... in their affliction, and to keep himself unspotted from the world." [James 1:27; see vv. 22-26] This Talkative is not aware of; he thinks that hearing and saying will make a good Christian, and thus he deceiveth his own soul. Hearing is but as the sowing of the seed; talking is not sufficient to prove that fruit is indeed in the heart and life; and let us assure ourselves, that at the day of doom men shall be judged according to their fruits. [Matt. 13, 25] It will not be said then, Did you believe? but, Were you doers, ...
— The Pilgrim's Progress - From this world to that which is to come. • John Bunyan

... knowing not what else to do with myself, I resolved to spend the rest of the evening as a looker on. Presently a rioting noise was heard without. Starting up, the landlord cried, That's the Grampus's crew. I seed her reported in the offing this morning; a three years' voyage, and a full ship. Hurrah, boys; now we'll have the latest news from the Feegees. A tramping of sea boots was heard in the entry; the door was flung open, and in rolled a wild set of mariners enough. Enveloped in their shaggy ...
— Moby-Dick • Melville

... apprehension of a woman too wise to deceive herself! The little girl, fresh from her nap, was round and undefined, and the mother took her into her arms, cuddling her close to her breast, as if nothing, not even the seed of Larry, could separate her from this one; as if she felt in her heart all the ills and sorrows, the woman's pains to be,—the eternal feminine defeat,—in this tiny ball of freshness. And the ironical smile subtly softened ...
— Together • Robert Herrick (1868-1938)

... the day I came upon a figure scarcely less impressive. Beyond the new quarter of the town, on the ragged edge of its wide, half-peopled streets, lies a tract of olive orchards and of seed-land; there, alone amid great bare fields, a countryman was ploughing. The wooden plough, as regards its form, might have been thousands of years old; it was drawn by a little donkey, and traced in the soil—the generous southern ...
— By the Ionian Sea - Notes of a Ramble in Southern Italy • George Gissing

... productive soil!" exclaimed Max, in mock admiration. "If oysters will take root, and grow here, I suppose pretty much any thing will: I believe I will plant my boots to-morrow: they may do for seed, and are good for nothing else any longer—don't you begin to think this must be an ...
— The Island Home • Richard Archer

... laws grant protection for industrial property. Many of them, indeed, have formed the subjects of patents which, from one reason or another, lapsed long before the expiration of the maximum terms. Nature is ever prodigal of seeds and of "seed-thoughts" but comparatively niggardly of places in which the young plant will find exactly the kind of soil, air, rain, and sunshine which ...
— Twentieth Century Inventions - A Forecast • George Sutherland

... estimate the amount of good done by this earnest whole-souled Indian boy during his short career? He sowed good seed, and we trust there may be an abundant harvest in the hearts and lives of the other boys. When asked how many of them had received special benefit by their intercourse with William, twenty boys rose to their feet. Many testified that they had been spoken to by him of ...
— Missionary Work Among The Ojebway Indians • Edward Francis Wilson

... up his jug en jog on to'rds home. When he git mos' dar he stop en tell de little Rabs fer stay back dar out er sight, en wait twel he call um 'fo' dey come. Dey wuz mighty glad ter do des like dis, kaz dey done seed Brer Wolf tushes, en Brer Fox red tongue, en dey huddle up in de broom-sage ez still ez a mouse in ...
— The Book of Stories for the Storyteller • Fanny E. Coe

... gifts of their own. In proportion as you trust them, in proportion as you back them up, in proportion as you lend them your strength, are they strong. The things that have happened in New Jersey since 1910 have happened because the seed was planted in this fine fertile soil of confidence, of trust, of ...
— The New Freedom - A Call For the Emancipation of the Generous Energies of a People • Woodrow Wilson

... clean spunge and a tight wad. Guinea score a foul anchor, in your own fashion, on a half dozen of the shot; and, after the matter is all over, they who live through it may go aboard the enemy, and see in what manner Richard Fid has planted his seed." ...
— The Red Rover • James Fenimore Cooper

... was dead, according to its existing form, and should receive burial, silent, somewhat sorrowful, yet not without hope of eventual resurrection in regard to the nobler part of it. The fair coloured petals of the flower fall away from the maturing fruit, the fruit rots to set free the seed. Yet the vital principle remains, life lives on, though the material clothing of it change. And, therefore, Katherine—an upspringing of patience and chastened fortitude within her, the result of her reconciliation to the Divine Light and resignation of herself to its indwelling—set ...
— The History of Sir Richard Calmady - A Romance • Lucas Malet



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