"Octopus" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... ruined, by English influence on behalf of English interests. Then you ask us to believe that we have benefited by our union with England! We do not believe it. England has been the greatest modern curse, spreading her octopus arms over every weak country in the world. She goes to make money, and says she only wishes to push forward civilisation. Read Labouchere's opinion of England, and you will see what she is—a greedy, whining hypocrite. She holds India by fear, at the point ...
— Ireland as It Is - And as It Would be Under Home Rule • Robert John Buckley (AKA R.J.B.)
... for old Miss Pollie Bumpus? She live all by herself, and she 'bout a million years old, and Doctor Sanford ain't never brung her no chillens 'cause she ain't got 'er no husban' to be their papa, and she got a octopus in her head, and she poor as a post and deaf as job's ...
— Miss Minerva and William Green Hill • Frances Boyd Calhoun
... trout, rock cod, true cod, clams, mussels, &c. Pollock, called by the Hydas skill, are caught off the west coast, principally for their oil, which is extracted by boiling them in large wooden tanks by means of heated stones. Dried herring spawn, salmon roe, sea and birds' eggs, chitons and octopus are favorite articles of diet. Berries and crabapples are gathered in large quantities and eaten both fresh and dried, frequently mixed with oolachan grease, their choicest condiment, obtained from the Nass Indians. Potatoes, generally of an inferior size, are ...
— Official report of the exploration of the Queen Charlotte Islands - for the government of British Columbia • Newton H. Chittenden
... Indeed, when we were staying there, we always had relays of children to play on the sands and enjoy themselves. We had a place staked round with strong hurdles, where we could bathe in safety from sharks and alligators, who both infested the coast. I have often seen quantities of jelly-fish and octopus sticking on the outside of the hurdles: they sting dreadfully, so they were ...
— Sketches of Our Life at Sarawak • Harriette McDougall
... by a sense of the prodigious length and breadth of the contest, by the fact, at last patent to the most unthinking, that the war is an octopus which has wound its tentacles about every limb and every organ of the vitality of France. A revelation of the overwhelming violence of enormous masses of men has broken down the tradition of chivalry. War is now accepted with a sort of indifference, ...
— Three French Moralists and The Gallantry of France • Edmund Gosse
... have succeeded to the throne of their father; and the portions of Constantine II, the eldest of the three, and Constans, the youngest, have at last fallen into the hands, or the web, of Constantius,—a sort of cross between a spider, an octopus, and an elderly maiden aunt,—and in general about as unpleasant a creature as ever sat on a throne. Constantine the Great, indeed, had willed the succession into the hands of a much larger number of his relatives; but this Constantius, ...
— The Crest-Wave of Evolution • Kenneth Morris
... whole interior. Fish are particularly attracted by their white appearance. They take it, perhaps, to be some marble hall erected for their accommodation; so in they swim, big and little squid equally beguiled! How the whale's mouth must water when he feels a fine huge juicy octopus playing about his tongue! Up goes the lower jaw like a trap-door, and cephalapods, small and large, find their bright marble palace turned into a dark, black prison, from which there is no return; for, giving a turn ...
— Old Jack • W.H.G. Kingston
... Ecuador Aphrodite. Bas-relief from Cerro-Jaboncillo (after Saville, "Antiquities of Manabi, Ecuador," Preliminary Report, 1907, Plate XXXVIII). A grotesque composite monster intended to represent a woman (compare Saville's Plates XXXV, XXXVI, and XXXIX), whose head is a conventionalized Octopus, whose body is a Loligo, and whose limbs ...
— The Evolution of the Dragon • G. Elliot Smith
... were in Boston. Are you likely to come here again within a month or two? If not, I wish you would write me all the news of the Guardian and all about the great legal fight which you and the Commonwealth of Massachusetts are waging against the octopus. I try to keep in touch with it through Uncle Silas, who of course is intensely interested and who seems another man of late, but he has not your gift of explaining in words of one syllable. Have you ever thought of getting out a textbook of 'First Principles' of anything, for juvenile intellects ...
— White Ashes • Sidney R. Kennedy and Alden C. Noble
... exterior design is divided into panels, as in the preceding case; the figures are simple and geometric. The inside of the upright portion of the wall is decorated with vertical lines and bands and the bottom is covered with an octopus-like figure, now ...
— Ancient art of the province of Chiriqui, Colombia • William Henry Holmes
... system of leaning on the government, is spreading like a blight over England and America, and everywhere we suffer from it. Government, that in theory represents a union of effort and a saving of force, sprawls like an octopus over the land. It has become like a dead weight upon us. Wherever it touches industry it cripples it. It runs railways and makes a heavy deficit: it builds ships and loses money on them: it operates the ships and loses more money: it piles up taxes to fill the vacuum ...
— My Discovery of England • Stephen Leacock
... his War Secretary and replacing him by some one agreeable to General Grant; but all in vain. This official "old man of the sea" kept his seat on the Presidential neck, never closing crafty eye nor traitorous mouth, and holding on with the tenacity of an octopus. ...
— Destruction and Reconstruction: - Personal Experiences of the Late War • Richard Taylor
... still underneath the water, and a fear came over me that Alb had knocked his head against something, or got a cramp. But he appeared, spluttering, and announced that he had been cutting the wire through with the chisel. There it was in his hand, a thick, ugly coil, dangerous as an octopus. ...
— The Chauffeur and the Chaperon • C. N. Williamson
... answer. I set my teeth, and struggled to free myself until the veins in my forehead were knotted and my bonds cut into the flesh. But, alas! I was held as in the tentacles of an octopus. Every limb was gripped, so that already a numbness had overspread them, while my ...
— Hushed Up - A Mystery of London • William Le Queux
... Farmer scowled at the octopus that sprawled on his living-room couch, rubbed his stubbly jaw with a stubby fist, and ...
— Stairway to the Stars • Larry Shaw
... subjugate and annex the richest portion of Mexico. Why should not Mexico therefore reclaim her own? Why not turn the tables and annex a part of the vast territory stolen from her by the octopus ...
— Starr, of the Desert • B. M Bower
... and Swallowfield. On this occasion I conceived a dislike to Reading which I have never quite got over, for it seemed an unconscionably big place for two slow pedestrians to leave behind. Worse still, when we did leave it we found that Reading would not leave us. It was like a stupendous octopus in red brick which threw out red tentacles, miles and miles long in various directions—little rows and single and double cottages and villas, all in red, red brick and its weary accompaniment, the everlasting hard slate roof. These ...
— Afoot in England • W.H. Hudson
... lifted her to her seat and fastened her in, and took his place beside her. He whistled, and two men came, and the buoyant ship slid down the track toward the water; the big propeller waved for a moment its octopus arms, then started with ...
— Glory of Youth • Temple Bailey
... uttering the pious wish that the devil was dead," answered Cornelius; "—boiled like an octopus! ha! ha! ha!" ...
— Weighed and Wanting • George MacDonald
... what she meant, and that it was as useless to try to divert her from her intention as to argue with an octopus. The very fact that she knew Mrs. Janis would probably put an extinguisher on April's career as a governess. Her impersonation of Lady Diana was bound to come out, and if Mrs. Janis was cut on the same pattern as her ...
— Blue Aloes - Stories of South Africa • Cynthia Stockley
... We want tumult and war to give us forgetfulness, sublime moments of peace to enjoy a kiss in; but we are expected to be home to dinner at seven, and to say and do nothing that might shock the neighbours. Respectability has wound itself about society, a sort of octopus, and nowhere are you quite free from one of its horrible suckers. The power of the villa residence is supreme: art, science, politics, religion, it has transformed to suit its requirements. The villa goes to the Academy, the villa goes to the theatre, and therefore the art of to-day is mildly ...
— Confessions of a Young Man • George Moore
... adventure. He was about to dive over from the side of the sloop into the cool water for a bath, when he saw some dark object moving on the bottom and checked himself. It was well that he did so for the object proved to be an octopus, or devil fish, edging its way nearly under the sloop toward the shore. Its great tentacles stretched out nine or ten feet from its round body and a more repulsive or dangerous looking creature is hard to be imagined. ...
— The Story of Paul Boyton - Voyages on All the Great Rivers of the World • Paul Boyton
... but the grass and the weeds were verra thick, and they closed aboot me the way the arms of an octopus mich and it was scary work gettin' free. When I did my head and shoulders showed above the ...
— Between You and Me • Sir Harry Lauder
... now the head of the giant octopus of the "feather trade" that has reached out its deadly tentacles into the most remote wildernesses of the earth, and steadily is drawing in the "skins" and "plumes" and "quills" of the most beautiful and most interesting ...
— Our Vanishing Wild Life - Its Extermination and Preservation • William T. Hornaday
... I am leading with the ogre of the King's wrath forever hanging over me; Prince George's intrigues, octopus-like, ...
— Secret Memoirs: The Story of Louise, Crown Princess • Henry W. Fischer
... a single-peak glacier system whose equal has not yet been discovered. Twenty-eight living glaciers, some of them very large, spread, octopus-like, from its centre. It is four hours by rail ...
— The Book of the National Parks • Robert Sterling Yard
... termination of the war against Germany. Venizelos has never lost faith in the mission of Greece in the eastern Mediterranean. He insists that a balance of power in the Balkans will prevent an all powerful Bulgaria from selling herself and her neighbors to the Pan-German octopus which has stretched its tentacles toward Constantinople and on to the ...
— Defenders of Democracy • The Militia of Mercy
... aloofness of character, and as he grew older this trait became intensified; the riddle of his life had forced itself upon him, and he vainly wrestled with it. Music drew him as iron filings to the magnet, or as the tentacles of an octopus carry to its parrot-shaped beak its victim. It was monstrous, he abhorred it, but could no more resist it than the ...
— Melomaniacs • James Huneker
... will understand why I make no effort to describe it. This wonderful thing is yet more "all over the shop" than its kindred. Its dorsal sepal measures three inches in length, its "tail," five inches, with an enormous lip between. They term it the Squid Flower, or Octopus, in Mexico; and a good name too. But in place of the rather weakly colouring habitual it has a grand decision of character, though the tones are like—pale yellow and greenish; its raised spots, red and deep green, are distinct as points ...
— About Orchids - A Chat • Frederick Boyle
... long arms had been severed at the ends when suddenly the octopus came out of his den to fight for his life. He was a reddish-purple globe of horrid flesh, horned all over, with a head not unlike an elephant's, but with large, demoniacal eyes, bitter, hating eyes that roved ...
— White Shadows in the South Seas • Frederick O'Brien
... mulse, nor house In pibcorns when the youth of Wales carouse ... No tournure doth the toucan's tail contort ... So I am sad! ... and yet, on Summer eves, When xebecs search the whishing scree for whelk, And the sharp sorrel lifts obcordate leaves, And cryptogamous plants fulfil the elk, I see the octopus play with his feet, And find within ...
— The Book of Humorous Verse • Various
... quarters of the world; he had a cabinet of stuffed and dried fishes, of shells, sea-weeds, corals, and madrepores, that was the admiration and envy of the Royal Society. He had penetrated into the watery den of the Sepia Octopus, disturbed the conjugal happiness of that turtle-dove of the ocean, and come off victorious in a sanguinary conflict. He had been becalmed in the tropical seas, and had watched, in eager expectation, though unhappily always in vain, to see the colossal ...
— Nightmare Abbey • Thomas Love Peacock
... small edition of the giant devilfish or octopus. It has ten tentacles, a tapered body about ten inches long, and is armed with the usual defensive ink-sac, by means of which it squirts a cloud of black fluid at a pursuing enemy, ...
— The Harbor of Doubt • Frank Williams
... a very nice little boy," said Gwen. "Anyhow, he's pretty. And Dolly's a darling." This may have been partly due to the way in which Dolly had overwhelmed the young lady—the equivalent, as it were, of a kind of cannibalism, or perhaps octopus-greed—which had stood in the way of a maturer friendship with her brother. However, there had really been ...
— When Ghost Meets Ghost • William Frend De Morgan
... the ocean swell. Only in one part could we see the white sand at the bottom of the pool, for the depth of water was some six or seven fathoms. Both blue and brown groper are very fond of crabs; in fact, when a big, wary fellow will not look at either a piece of octopus or the flesh of the aliotis shell, he cannot resist a crab. We soon secured plenty of crabs of all sizes and colours, and, baiting our lines with two of the largest, dismembered the others, and flung portions of them into the pool. A number of small parrot-fish, ...
— Ridan The Devil And Other Stories - 1899 • Louis Becke
... no heart; he is a machine!" said young Denton. "He is simply a human octopus for pulling in money. Not that I object to money," he added, with a laugh, "but I hate to see men make it ...
— For Gold or Soul? - The Story of a Great Department Store • Lurana W. Sheldon
... is an octopus whose feelers reach far, and they, within her toils, cannot escape her omnipresence. She sends after them no guns: yet they are blown to atoms; the sea becomes a death-trap thick with pitfalls and shipwreck; one by ...
— The Lord of the Sea • M. P. Shiel
... interiors into silicones for themselves. When silicone tissue is metabolized, the carbon and hydrogen go to CO{2} and H{2}O, which are breathed out, while the silicone goes into SiO{2}, which is deposited as more teeth and armor. (Compare the terrestrial octopus, which makes armor-plating out of calcium urate instead of excreting urea or uric acid.) The animals can, of course, eat each other too, or make a meal of the small carbonaceous ...
— Uller Uprising • Henry Beam Piper, John D. Clark and John F. Carr
... that they guessed his presence before they saw him. And sometimes it happened that the catch was nothing but a few sea crabs, who would half devour the other unfortunate fish imprisoned with them. Another day a great octopus appeared, and Esperance grew pale with fright at sight of his ...
— The Idol of Paris • Sarah Bernhardt
... pension habituee the whole arrangement of her life had been taken out of her hands; even her clothes had been settled for her by one of those octopus London firms which like to reduce their customers to dummies; and her transit from hotel to hotel, and from English visits back to hotels, had become a mere automatic process. She had not made a decision for so many years that though her nieces and nephews were witty over her vacillation, and ...
— The Third Miss Symons • Flora Macdonald Mayor
... a horrible, grasping octopus with hundreds of poisonous, death-dealing tentacle that squeeze out the culture and refinement of a man," ...
— The Day of the Beast • Zane Grey
... secret cell. But what was that horrible thing beneath the dim sky-light? Dick's electric torch was failing, and we could not see distinctly, and a very oppression of fear seized upon us both. What was the gruesome object in front that resembled a dead octopus ...
— Border Ghost Stories • Howard Pease
... under the luminescence of the infirmary's overhead. I was naked on the padding of the table. I could see a respirator off to my right, and a suction octopus near it. The medic was just stowing an auto-heart. But for a different tingling in my leg and an all-is-lost sensation south of my diaphragm, I ...
— Attrition • Jim Wannamaker
... accountable for many errors of the day. The incubus of this school is fastened upon the vocal profession with octopus-like tentacles which reach out in every direction, and which strive to strangle the truth in every possible way; but, while "life is short, art is long;" the truth ...
— The Renaissance of the Vocal Art • Edmund Myer
... that the Chesapeake Bay "looks like the deck plan of an octopus," but the mental image created by the phrase tells but a fraction of the story. Rivers and creeks empty into the bay by the dozens, and every river, and most of the creeks, have tributaries. Even some of ...
— The Flying Stingaree • Harold Leland Goodwin
... It was almost dark, and the ice of the Neva was coloured a faint green under the grey sky; the buildings rose out of it like black bubbles poised over a swamp. I was in that strange quarter of Petrograd where the river seems, like some sluggish octopus, to possess a thousand coils. Always you are turning upon a new bend of the ice, secretly stretching into darkness; strange bridges suddenly meet you, and then, where you had expected to find a solid mass of hideous flats, there will be ...
— The Secret City • Hugh Walpole
... is bad enough, but, for evil looks, the Octopus is worse still. With his tough, brownish skin, knobbed like the toad's back, his large staring eyes, his parrot's beak, and ugly bag of a body, the Octopus is a horrid-looking creature. Add to this eight long arms twisting and writhing like snakes, and ...
— Within the Deep - Cassell's "Eyes And No Eyes" Series, Book VIII. • R. Cadwallader Smith
... Hugo's credulity may be mentioned, for it was astonishing in a man of such colossal genius. He believed in the most incredible things, as the "Man in the Iron Mask," the twin brother of Louis XIV; in the octopus that has no mouth and feeds itself through its arms; and in the reality of the Japanese sirens which the Japanese were said to make out of an ape and a fish. He had some excuse for the sirens as the Academie des Sciences believed in them ...
— Musical Memories • Camille Saint-Saens
... held within the octopus arms of Greater London. Round it are a number of large houses with fine, spacious grounds—country estates they were when Queen Victoria ascended the throne of England. At Olive's special choice, her husband had purchased one of the mansions and had it re-decorated for her in ...
— Swirling Waters • Max Rittenberg
... countenance, vinegar aspect, hanging look, wry face, "spretae injuria formae" [Vergil]. [person who is ugly] eyesore, object, witch, hag, figure, sight, fright; monster; dog[coll.], woofer[coll.], pig[coll.]; octopus, specter, scarecrow, harridan|!, satyr|!, toad, monkey, baboon, Caliban, Aesop[obs3], "monstrum horrendum informe ingens cui lumen ademptum" [Latin][Vergil]. V. be ugly &c. adj.; look ill, grin horribly a ghastly smile, make faces. render ugly &c. adj.; ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... a fashion which may well put to shame many of us. Remember how Paul had to deal at length with the duty of the Corinthians in view of the way in which every meal was a sacrifice to some god, and how the same permeation of life with religion is found in all these 'false faiths.' The octopus has coiled its tentacles round the whole body of its victim. Bad and sad and mad as idolatry is, it reads a rebuke to many of us, who keep life and religion quite apart, and lock up our Christianity in our pews with ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Isaiah and Jeremiah • Alexander Maclaren
... incidentally, as one of the objects toward which science has turned its attention, and I assert with the utmost confidence that the time will come, unless science should get a set-back, when the present hunting-case oyster will give place to the open-face oyster, grafted on the octopus and big enough to feed a hotel. Further than that, the oyster of the future will carry in a hip-pocket a flask of vinegar, half a dozen lemons and two little Japanese bottles, one of which will contain salt and the other pepper, and there will be some way provided ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume VII. (of X.) • Various
... Chester. A young giant with a grip like an octopus. 'The fairest ornament of her sex.' Never, never heard of him before. Some old flame of Dorothy's, who has discovered her whereabouts and brazenly followed her, even on ...
— At the Sign of the Jack O'Lantern • Myrtle Reed
... savage with a hare-lip, jumped up from the main-hatch where he was squatting and came aft, his hideous red lips twisting and squirming like the tentacles of an octopus as he masticated a mouthful of betel-nut. Taking the pipe and tobacco from his master he sat down cross-legged beside the companion. Barry eyed him for an instant with anger and disgust. He returned the ...
— Edward Barry - South Sea Pearler • Louis Becke
... "a few hundred miles are all that are granted to me. And London is like a terrible octopus. Its arms stretch ...
— The Avenger • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... great epoch, the Silurian, that the cuttle-fish tribe, still fairly represented by the nautilus, the argonaut, the squid, and the octopus, first began to make their appearance upon this or any other stage. The cuttle-fishes are among the most developed of invertebrate animals; they are rapid swimmers; they have large and powerful eyes; and they can easily enfold their prey (teste Victor Hugo) in their long and slimy sucker-clad ...
— Falling in Love - With Other Essays on More Exact Branches of Science • Grant Allen
... awoke to find herself in the grasp of a horrible octopus, from which she did not escape for three generations, and only then at the loss of much ...
— Sketches of the Covenanters • J. C. McFeeters
... munitions, while her professors and historians, harnessed to the car of militarism, inflamed the people against England as the jealous enemy of Germany's legitimate expansion. Abroad, like a great octopus, she was fastening the tentacles of permeation and penetration in every corner of the globe, honeycombing Russia and Belgium, France, England and America with secret agents, spying and intriguing and abusing our hospitality. ...
— Mr. Punch's History of the Great War • Punch
... Pliny himself had seen, and describes it (in his chapter on the use of eggs) as being like a medium-sized apple, having a cartilaginous shell covered with small processes like the discs on the arms of an octopus. This can scarcely have been, as most commentators suppose, the shell of an echinus (with which Pliny was well acquainted), even if fossil. His description rather seems to point to some fossil covered ...
— Early Britain—Roman Britain • Edward Conybeare
... devil-fish," proclaimed Ben, who had joined the group as the monster vanished, "some calls 'em octopus, but devil-fish is a better word, to ...
— The Boy Aviators' Treasure Quest • Captain Wilbur Lawton
... whole advance was a screen of men, and in front of the screen, little patrols with scouts ahead. When all were in the position the G.O.C. signalled "Advance." An army on the move is a fascinating sight. It is like an octopus—the main body with a thousand tendrils, or arms, thrown out. These recoil as they touch the enemy, telling the brain that danger ...
— The Kangaroo Marines • R. W. Campbell
... quicksand limed with blood; Horse-leech Marat, blear-eyed, vile vulture born; Fair Charlotte's dagger robbed the guillotine! Black-biled, green-visaged, traitorous Robespierre, That buzzard-beaked, hawk-taloned octopus Who played with pale poltroonery of men, And drank the cup of flattery till he reeled; Hell's pope uncrowned, immortal for a day. Tinville, relentless dog of murder-plot— Doom-judge whose trembling victims ...
— The Feast of the Virgins and Other Poems • H. L. Gordon
... the octopus around Black Bill,' says I. And then I told him about the deputy sheriff, and how I'd described him to the deputy, and what the deputy said about ...
— Options • O. Henry
... of the square and into ragged, poverty-haunted Varick Street. Up the narrow stairway of a squalid brick tenement he led the penitent offspring of the Octopus. He knocked on a door, and a clear voice ...
— Strictly Business • O. Henry
... projected from the aura of the thinker. Sometimes, as in the case of a vigorous thinker or speaker, these thought-form bombs will be seen to explode when they reach the aura of the person addressed or thought of. Other forms appear like nebulous things resembling an octopus, whose twining tentacles twist around the person to ...
— Clairvoyance and Occult Powers • Swami Panchadasi
... is necessary and the squid is a favorite bait. A squid is a baby octopus, or "devil fish." The squid is caught by jigging up and down a lead weight filled with wire spikes and painted bright red. It seizes the weight with its tentacles. When raised into the boat it releases ...
— The Story of Grenfell of the Labrador - A Boy's Life of Wilfred T. Grenfell • Dillon Wallace
... mahogany and the floor, was hidden by a valance of white dimity, garnished with wide cotton fringe. Over this spacious place of repose, a patchwork quilt of the "rising sun" pattern displayed its gaudy rays, resembling some sprawling octopus, rather than ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson
... harmonies, who only matches stars with angels or lambs with spring flowers, he indeed may be frivolous; for he is taking one mood at a time, and perhaps forgetting each mood as it passes. But a man who ventures to combine an angel and an octopus must have some serious view of the universe. The man who should write a dialogue between two early Christians might be a mere writer of dialogues. But a man who should write a dialogue between an early Christian and the Missing ...
— Appreciations and Criticisms of the Works of Charles Dickens • G. K. Chesterton
... locked the door behind him and placed the key in his pocket. When they reached the entrance hall Colwyn paused outside the door of the recess where the housekeeper lurked, like an octopus in a pool. At Colwyn's knock a white face, topped by a white cap, came into view through the narrow slit in the curtained glass half of the door, and swam towards them in the interior gloom after the manner of the head of a materialized ghost in a spirit medium's parlour. ...
— The Hand in the Dark • Arthur J. Rees
... tell him, with gay digressions, about the invention which enabled Westangle to buy up the other clothes-pins and merge them in his own—to become a commercial octopus, clutching the throats of other clothespin inventors in the tentacles of the Westangle pin. "But he isn't in clothespins now. He's in mines, and banks, and steamboats, and railroads, and I don't know what all; and Mrs. Westangle, the second of her ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... have cast Bently Brown, costume and all, for a comedy mining engineer or something of that sort. You know the type: He arrives on the stage that is held up, and is always in the employ of the monied octopus, and the cowboys who pursue and capture the bandits have fun afterwards with the engineer,—so much fun that he crawls out of an up-stairs window in the night and departs hastily and forever from that place. You are perfectly familiar with the ...
— The Phantom Herd • B. M. Bower
... pedestal, expedite, expediency, expedition, quadruped, impediment, biped, tripod, chiropodist, octopus, pew; (2) centiped, pedicle, pedometer, velocipede, sesquipedalian, antipodes, podium, polypod, ...
— The Century Vocabulary Builder • Creever & Bachelor
... am convinced that your friend is none other than the picturesque and romantic criminal whose octopus hand is upon almost every great theft in Europe, and whom the police always fail to catch, so elusive ...
— Mademoiselle of Monte Carlo • William Le Queux
... shells of two kinds of existing animals, the pearly Nautilus and the Spirula, and only in them. These animals belong to the same division—the Cephalopoda—as the cuttle-fish, the squid, and the octopus. But they are the only existing members of the group which possess chambered, siphunculated shells; and it is utterly impossible to trace any physiological connection between the very peculiar structural characters of a cephalopod and the presence of a chambered shell. In fact, the ...
— On the Method of Zadig - Essay #1 from "Science and Hebrew Tradition" • Thomas Henry Huxley
... of my native land as a beautiful mermaid, about whom the giant's cold, chilly arms were slowly creeping, and I feared that some day those arms would crush her. That day has come. The helpless mermaid lies prostrate in the clutch of the octopus. Not that the constitution of Finland has been annulled, as has been so often erroneously stated, and quite generally believed. The Russian Government has made only a few inroads upon it. The great grievance of the Finns is not with what has been absolutely ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 21 - The Recent Days (1910-1914) • Charles F. Horne, Editor
... the Cephalopods, to which belong the cuttle-fish and the octopus (sacred to Victor Hugo), may be, for all we can say to the contrary, an order with a future. Their kindred, the Gastropods, have, in the case of the snail and slug, learnt the trick of air-breathing. And not improbably there are even now genera of this order ...
— Certain Personal Matters • H. G. Wells
... dimensions of the tribe among whom Van Bu was held captive were certainly larger than those of the migratory tribes of Australian blacks in more modern times. The "sea spider" described by Van Bu in his second adventure was probably the octopus, which attains to great size in the Pacific. The "hopping animals" are doubtless the kangaroos, with ...
— Adventures in Southern Seas - A Tale of the Sixteenth Century • George Forbes
... o'clock the headache-fiend had entered into full possession, had perched itself in the centre of consciousness, and seemed to Flint's excited nerves to be working its octopus claws in and out among the folds ...
— Flint - His Faults, His Friendships and His Fortunes • Maud Wilder Goodwin
... had no pay, and apparently no power and no duties. He was neither a Governor nor a Government, but a kind of forerunner of approaching empire—one of those harmless and far-reaching tentacles which the British octopus extends into the recesses of ocean, searching for prey to satisfy the ...
— The Book of the Bush • George Dunderdale
... almost came too late, for two Spanish galleons ranged alongside and swung grappling irons into his rigging in order to close with the moving vessel. The Englishmen struck at them with oars and hand-spikes, knocking the tentacles of the on-coming octopus aside, and, with sails flying and shots rattling, the Judith bore ...
— Famous Privateersmen and Adventurers of the Sea • Charles H. L. Johnston
... a small town near Paris told me that she had heard these women say more than once they didn't care how long the war lasted; owing to the prevalence of the alcoholism octopus which has fastened itself on France of late years the men often beat their wives as brutally as the low-class Englishmen, and this vice added to the miserliness of their race made their sojourn in the trenches ...
— The Living Present • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton
... call the octopus a devil-fish," said Mr. Choate. "This is all wrong. They are both large and vicious creatures, but entirely different in looks. The devil-fish belongs to the ray family, and, as you see, is a huge bat-like creature ...
— Around the World in Ten Days • Chelsea Curtis Fraser
... this advance-guard of a cogent Yellow Peril, the face of Dr. Fu-Manchu rarely had been absent from my dreams day or night. The millions might sleep in peace—the millions in whose cause we labored!—but we who knew the reality of the danger knew that a veritable octopus had fastened upon England—a yellow octopus whose head was that of Dr. Fu-Manchu, whose tentacles were dacoity, thuggee, modes of death, secret and swift, which in the darkness plucked men from life and left no ...
— The Insidious Dr. Fu-Manchu • Sax Rohmer
... sometimes decided at the polls with varying degrees of success. Perhaps the nearest approach to the Rhodesian line-up was the struggle of the California wheat growers against the Southern Pacific Railway, which Frank Norris dramatized in his book, "The Octopus." ...
— An African Adventure • Isaac F. Marcosson
... regretted taking almost as soon as we started, we set out on our quest of Dantesque scenery. At first our road ran along the quays by the river side. A camouflaged Admiralty oiler was loading fuel oil by means of three pipes that looked like the tentacles of an octopus clutching on to the side of the ship. Near this quay was a gate, and we entered the wire fence that surrounds the works and the area of the tanks and struck out ...
— A Dweller in Mesopotamia - Being the Adventures of an Official Artist in the Garden of Eden • Donald Maxwell
... got power over an eight-armed octopus even: so am merely a very helpless loving nonentity which merges itself most happily in you, and begs to be lifted to no pedestal at all, ...
— An Englishwoman's Love-Letters • Anonymous
... energy reverse control. The force was now fully repelling. Still the billowing whiteness drew nearer. It boiled and bubbled with the ferocity of one of the hot lava cauldrons of Mercury. Changing shape rapidly, it threw out long streamers that writhed and twisted like the arms of an octopus. Reaching. ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, November, 1930 • Various
... blundered at one time or another and left loopholes through which the police were able to attack them and break them up. But Rudolph Rayne had flung his octopus-like tentacles so far afield that he had actually attached to him—by fear of blackmail—an eminent Counsel who appeared for the defense of any member of the circle who happened to make a slip. That well-known member ...
— The Golden Face - A Great 'Crook' Romance • William Le Queux
... all the birds and beasts and fishes whose appetites and digestions are normal. Paris alone is the analogical apotheosis of the octopus. Product of centralisation carried to an ad absurdum, it fairly represents the devil fish; and in no respects is the resemblance more curious than in the similarity of ...
— Dracula's Guest • Bram Stoker
... of his mind was turned only on the Western conspirators, and he feared no villainy in the world save the Detroit schemer who had robbed him of his birthright. "By Heavens! I'll give up trade, the service of this greedy octopus. I will go abroad and so escape Worthington's ...
— The Midnight Passenger • Richard Henry Savage
... confronted with another battle—a worse one than that with the house, namely, a battle with her long-ago baby-love, and her father's love too—Henrietta.—Henrietta, so strangely powerful, so amazingly persistent—Henrietta who enclosed you in arms, apparently so soft but furnished with suckers, octopus arms adhering, never letting you go? She had played with the idea of this intrusion of Henrietta's and its effect upon Miss Felicia, at first as something amusing. It ceased to be amusing. ...
— Deadham Hard • Lucas Malet
... for the first time, only a few years ago, there was a fine burst of disapproval. The corporation was declared a scheme of oppression, a hungry octopus, a grinder of the individual. And to prove the case various instances of hardship were cited; and no doubt there was much suffering, for many people are never able to adjust themselves to new conditions without ...
— Love, Life & Work • Elbert Hubbard
... Brazilian names would convey to a stranger but little idea of the fish themselves. There was an enormous rock fish, weighing about three hundred pounds, with hideous face and shiny back, and fins; large ray, and skate, and cuttle fish—the octopus, or pieuvre, described with so much exaggeration in Victor Hugo's "Travailleurs de la Mer," to say nothing of the large prawns for which the coast is famous—prawns eight or ten inches long, with antennae of twelve or fourteen inches in length. Such prawns suit those only who care ...
— Celebrated Women Travellers of the Nineteenth Century • W. H. Davenport Adams
... in their opposition. What could a few score of peasants, and one poor ecclesiastic, do against all the omnipotence of Parliament, of millionaires, of secretaries of State, of speculators, of promoters, tenacious and forcible and ravenous as the octopus? ...
— The Waters of Edera • Louise de la Rame, a.k.a. Ouida
... heroes in your own silly set. How I loathe that word—altruism! As if the sacrifice of your personality does not always lead to self-deception, to hypocrisy! It is an excuse for the busybody-rich to advertise their charities. If they were as many armed as Briareus or the octopus, their charity would be known to each and every hand on their arms. These sentimental anarchs! They even marry our girls and carry them off to coddle their conscience with gilded gingerbread. Yet they would turn their backs on Christ if he came to ...
— Visionaries • James Huneker
... and miseries of celebrity when they have passed the age of forty know how to defend themselves. They are at the beginning of a series of small worries, thunderbolts hidden under flowers, but they know how to hold in check that monster advertisement. It is a sort of octopus with innumerable tentacles. It throws out on the right and on the left, in front and behind, its clammy arms, and gathers in through its thousand little inhaling organs all the gossip and slander and praise afloat, to spit ...
— My Double Life - The Memoirs of Sarah Bernhardt • Sarah Bernhardt
... voices, the laughter of some of the people in the conservatory. Stafford sat, his head still upon his hands, as if her were half stupefied. And indeed he was. He felt like a man who has been seized by the tentacles of an octopus, unable to struggle, unable to move, dumb-stricken, and incapable even of protest. Sir Stephen had spoken of fate: Fate held Stafford under its iron heel, and the mockery of Fate's laughter mingled with the strains of the waltz, the murmur of voices. Unconsciously he rose ...
— At Love's Cost • Charles Garvice
... the bowl were quite plain, but on the edge of the bowl was perched some kind of lizard. I told myself it was an octopus when I first saw it, but I have since had reason to believe that it was some almost unique member of the lizard tribe. The creature was represented as climbing over the edge of the bowl down toward the stem, and its legs, or feelers, or tentacula, or whatever the things are called, were, ...
— The Lock And Key Library - Classic Mystery And Detective Stories, Modern English • Various
... his climaxes. But then, she herself knew what it was to be poor—as Annie Johns had been. She understood what it would mean to lack your tram-fare on a rainy morning—according to Mr. Strachey this was the motor impulse of the thefts—because a lolly shop had stretched out its octopus arms after you. She could imagine, too, with a shiver, how easy it would be, the loss of the first pennies having remained undiscovered, to go on to threepenny-bits, and from these to sixpences. More particularly since the money had been taken, without ...
— The Getting of Wisdom • Henry Handel Richardson
... white as snow, or as green as emerald, toss to and fro, and make obeisance to old Neptune. Sea onions, with stems thirty feet long, and bulbous air-filled sacks, reach out their long snaky arms, like an octopus, and woe to the swimmer who becomes entangled in ...
— Byways Around San Francisco Bay • William E. Hutchinson
... cannery buildings, greatly expanded and multiplied now and glistening with fresh paint. Back of them again lay the town, its stumpy, half-graded streets terminating in the forest like the warty feelers of a stranded octopus. Everywhere was hurry and confusion, and over all was the ever-present shroud of mist which thickened into showers or parted reluctantly to let ...
— The Iron Trail • Rex Beach
... of us a moral poison. Given a nervous, hysterical, feeble woman, shut out from the world, and if she does not in time become irritable, exacting, hungry for sympathy and petty power, she is one of nature's noblest. A mother or sister gives herself up to caring for her. She is in the grip of an octopus. Every fine quality of her nature helps to hurt her, and at last she breaks down utterly and can do no more. She, too, is become nervous, unhappy, and feeble. Then every one wonders that nobody had the sense to see what was ...
— Doctor and Patient • S. Weir Mitchell
... (uncleanness) 653. forbidding countenance, vinegar aspect, hanging look, wry face, spretae injuria formae [Vergil]. [person who is ugly] eyesore, object, witch, hag, figure, sight, fright; monster; dog [Coll.], woofer [Coll.], pig [Coll.]; octopus, specter, scarecrow, harridan^, satyr^, toad, monkey, baboon, Caliban, Aesop^, monstrum horrendum informe ingens cui lumen ademptum [Lat.] [Vergil]. V. be ugly &c adj.; look ill, grin horribly a ghastly smile, make faces. render ugly ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... that it was octopus, or ink-fish, the favourite food of the sperm whale. I would rather have kept to the bread-fruit and rice; but Oliver was not so particular, and took a little with some red pepper. On his pronouncing it very good, I followed his ...
— In the Eastern Seas • W.H.G. Kingston
... his arms and legs were so tightly pinioned that, despite his utmost exertions, he found it absolutely impossible to move. But knowledge came to him the next moment—the knowledge that he was in the embrace of an enormous octopus! And as he realised this fact, he heard the horrid rasping of the fierce creature's powerful mandibles ...
— With Airship and Submarine - A Tale of Adventure • Harry Collingwood
... approaching a real art of living is perfected among us, the present ethical system will be wholly outmoded. Meanwhile, pressure brought to bear on the least welcome of all virtues is merely going to make bad behavior worse. But that is Volstead's business, not ours. Let him do battle with that octopus, while we bring up reinforcements to his enemies. Women know all about how to be bad and comfortable while the law goes on trying to make them good and otherwise. Just look at a few of the things on which they ...
— Nonsenseorship • G. G. Putnam
... protectors, and an unprotected widow in India stands in a dangerous place. We knew it, and tried to persuade her to take refuge in Jesus. She listened, almost decided, then drew back; afterwards we found out why. You have seen the picture of a man sucked under sea by an octopus; it was like that. You have imagined the death-struggle; it was like that. But it all went on under the surface of the water, there was nothing seen above, till perhaps a bubble rose slowly and broke; it was like that. One day, in the broad noontide, a woman suddenly fell in the street. Someone ...
— Things as They Are - Mission Work in Southern India • Amy Wilson-Carmichael
... the boatman answered. "Bot' of zem have arms wavin' around, but zey look quite diff'rent, I t'ink. An' a squid has ten arms, but an octopus has jus' eight." ...
— The Boy With the U. S. Fisheries • Francis Rolt-Wheeler
... brute, fully six feet tall, and he was the possessor of two of the strongest-looking hands I had ever seen. They were claws, that's what they were. The great fingers were slightly crooked, as if waiting, like the tentacles of an octopus, for something to get in their grip. The body was heavy, and, in a manner that I cannot explain, it made me think of animals that lived and died in long past ages. The big brute looked so capable of making an inexcusable attack that one's primitive instincts warned ...
— The White Waterfall • James Francis Dwyer
... his love of home and country, called to him. For a moment the longing to take his part in helping England to drive back this huge fighting octopus, which was longing to stretch out its tentacles all over Europe, ...
— All for a Scrap of Paper - A Romance of the Present War • Joseph Hocking
... vine not unlike the honeysuckle, only of tougher fibre. On this I clambered up to take a look about me, and discovered that I was much nearer shore than I supposed. Hardly had I done this when, to my horror, I saw the arms of an octopus stretching towards me, its horid beak projecting from between its ugly eyes. More alarmed than at any previous danger, I strove to retain my self-command, but the fearful creature was already touching ...
— Prince Lazybones and Other Stories • Mrs. W. J. Hays
... and then developed mal-du-pays to such an extent that the local priest and devil-catcher, one Pare-vaka, was sent for by her female attendants. Pare-vaka was not long in making his diagnosis. A little devil in the shape of an octopus was in Tene-napa's brain. And he gave instructions how to get the fiend out, and also further instructions to one of the girl attendants to fix, point-upwards, in the sick woman's mat the foto, or barb of the sting-ray. ...
— The Ebbing Of The Tide - South Sea Stories - 1896 • Louis Becke
... of him was a huge octopus, or devil fish, over three feet in diameter, with long, ...
— The Wizard of the Sea - A Trip Under the Ocean • Roy Rockwood
... closer and closer, till he satisfies himself that there is no line attached—then he makes a lightning-like dart, and vanishes in an instant with the morsel between his strong, thick jaws. If, however, he sees the most tempting bait—a young yellow-tail, a piece of white and red octopus tentacle, or a small, silvery mullet—and detects even a fine silk line attached to the cleverly hidden hook, he makes a stern-board for a foot or two, still eyeing the descending bait; then, with languid contempt, he slowly turns away, and swims ...
— The Colonial Mortuary Bard; "'Reo," The Fisherman; and The Black Bream Of Australia - 1901 • Louis Becke
... into it. I began walking, therefore, in a big curve, seeking some point of vantage and continually looking at the sand heaps that hid these new-comers to our earth. Once a leash of thin black whips, like the arms of an octopus, flashed across the sunset and was immediately withdrawn, and afterwards a thin rod rose up, joint by joint, bearing at its apex a circular disk that spun with a wobbling motion. What could be ...
— The War of the Worlds • H. G. Wells
... the "Buli's" hut and lived on the fat of the land. At meal times quite a procession of men and women, glistening all over with coconut oil, would enter our hut bearing all sorts of native food, including fish in great variety, yams, octopus, turtle, sucking-pig, chicken, prawns, etc. They were brought in on banana and other large leaves, and we, of course, ate them with our fingers. Good as the food undoubtedly was, I was always glad when the meal was over, as it is very far from ...
— Wanderings Among South Sea Savages And in Borneo and the Philippines • H. Wilfrid Walker
... gave it so much of its solemn dignity was thirty-five feet high and some seven feet thick. The prison proper, which was not visible from the outside, consisted of seven arms or corridors, ranged octopus-like around a central room or court, and occupying in their sprawling length about two-thirds of the yard inclosed within the walls, so that there was but little space for the charm of lawn or sward. The corridors, ...
— The Financier • Theodore Dreiser
... Some, as the sound of a human footstep warns them of danger, rush for safety among the submerged clefts and crevices of their temporary retreat, only to be mercilessly and fatally enveloped by the snaky, viscous tentacles of the ever-lurking octopus, for every hole and pool among the rocks contains one or more ...
— By Rock and Pool on an Austral Shore, and Other Stories • Louis Becke
... reflected while descending the upper slope. The darkness due to the overshadowing trees made it necessary for him to go slowly, so giving him time. But it did not hinder his keeping to the path. With his long arms like the tentacles of an octopus he was able to direct his course, now and then using them to grasp overhanging branches, or the parasites dependent therefrom. Withal he went cautiously, and so silently, that the sentinel—for sure enough one was there—heard no noise to warn him of an enemy behind. In his monkish garb, he was ...
— The Free Lances - A Romance of the Mexican Valley • Mayne Reid
... Arithmetics and Harvey's Grammars. Most of these met with acceptance and this was so full and universal throughout the central West as to give opportunity to the competing agents of other houses to honor Van Antwerp, Bragg & Co. with such titles as "Octopus" and "Monopoly," names that were used before "Trusts" were invented. They also called the firm in chosen companies, "Van Anteup, Grabb & Co." These were mere playful or humorous titles in recognition of the fact that this firm had, by its ...
— A History of the McGuffey Readers • Henry H. Vail
... these postcards are remarkable. As ikons for men to vow by; as lessons for women to show their children in days to come—when the Hun octopus roots himself again in the comity of civilised nations, lying in wait at our doorways, stretching out his antennae, like those foul things that lurk at sea-cavern mouths—these eight pictures have historical ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 152, April 4, 1917 • Various
... are ablaze with them. Somebody lifting up the face, and facing God in some mood or moment of briefer or longer duration—this is Hugo's method. In "Toilers of the Sea," Galliatt, by almost superhuman effort, and physical endurance and fortitude and fertility in resource, defeats octopus and winds and rocks and seas, and in lonely triumph pilots the wreck home—and all of this struggle and conquest for love! He is a somber hero, but a hero still, with strength like the strength of ten, since his love is as the love of a legion. The power to do is his, and the nobility to ...
— A Hero and Some Other Folks • William A. Quayle
... also may find all the help we need in meeting our discouragements—the ignorance which tries our patience, the indifference to God which nothing seems to stir, the vice which holds its victim as an octopus, the sin which is as subtle as it is strong. Against them all we have no power, and may well pray as Asa did. "Lord, help us." Then He will fulfil the promise, "When the enemy comes in like a flood, the spirit of the Lord will lift up a ...
— Men of the Bible; Some Lesser-Known Characters • George Milligan, J. G. Greenhough, Alfred Rowland, Walter F.
... acceptance. Blenkinsop, the leader-writer on The Plainsman, took a half-column in which to point out in emphatic and vigorous Western phrase the dangers that threatened the commonwealth in this very evident coalition of the railroad octopus and ...
— The Honorable Senator Sage-Brush • Francis Lynde
... appear to either of the Girdlestones to be a very important one. The haze on the horizon to the north was rather thicker than elsewhere, and a few thin streaky clouds straggled upwards across the clear cold heaven, like the feelers of some giant octopus which lay behind the fog bank. At the same time the sea changed in places from the appearance of quicksilver to that of ...
— The Firm of Girdlestone • Arthur Conan Doyle
... to think of it, Haredale did not find it amusing in the slightest degree. Julius Rohscheimer was an octopus whose tentacles were fastened upon the heart of society. Haredale was so closely in the coils that, short of handing in his papers, he had no alternative but to appear as Rohscheimer's social alter ego. Lord and Lady Vignoles were regular visitors to the house in Park Lane; and ...
— The Sins of Severac Bablon • Sax Rohmer
... meet at the different girls' houses every week. I subscribe for THE GREAT ROUND WORLD. It is one of the principal things we read, and we all enjoy it very much. We were very much interested in the article about the cuttlefish or octopus found on the coast of Florida, in Number 16. I am surprised to hear to-day that it has been examined by some scientific men, who say that it is not an octopus at all, but only the head of a deformed whale. I am very anxious to hear what the ...
— The Great Round World And What Is Going On In It, April 22, 1897, Vol. 1, No. 24 - A Weekly Magazine for Boys and Girls • Various
... an octopus. My competitors all were arrayed against me with a force I had never before experienced. They spared no effort to crush the man who had beaten them over and over again in battles for commercial supremacy. It was their turn now and they ...
— The Romance and Tragedy • William Ingraham Russell
... from his dog, he found the animal held by black sticky bands which had chafed the skin to bleeding point. These bands were branches of a newly-discovered carnivorous plant which had been aptly named the 'land octopus.' The branches are flexible, black, polished and without leaves, and ...
— A Series of Lessons in Gnani Yoga • Yogi Ramacharaka
... convinced that it is as necessary to the welfare of the world to smite supernaturalism in religion as capitalism in politics, but while many are able and willing to attack the octopus of capitalism, this is true of only a few in the case of the dragon of supernaturalism. Some hesitate because they feel with one of the critics of Communism and Christianism that revolutionary forces are coming to the surface in ...
— Communism and Christianism - Analyzed and Contrasted from the Marxian and Darwinian Points of View • William Montgomery Brown
... occasion. Under the tactful guidance of Edward Tredgold the conversation was led to shipwrecks, fires at sea, and other subjects of the kind comforting to the landsman, Mr. Chalk favouring them with a tale of a giant octopus, culled from Captain Bowers's collection, which made Mrs. Stobell's ...
— Dialstone Lane, Complete • W.W. Jacobs
... unlike Pompeian lamps—while others still were square or rectangular or lozenge-shaped—were to be seen in many spots on the moraine-like tails that extended southward, like the tentacles of an octopus, and in the heaps of much carbonized rock and solidified froth produced by what was once boiling rock. The mounds of froth ...
— Across Unknown South America • Arnold Henry Savage Landor
... And whirl the ancient snows of Hecla sheer into Orion's eyes. I dance on the deep under the big Indian stars, And wrap the water spout about my sinuous hips As a dancer winds her girdle. The ocean's horrid crew, The octopus, the serpent, and the shark, with the heart of a coward, Plunge downward when they hear my feet above on the sea-floor, And hide in their slimy coverts. Brave men pray upon the straining decks Till comes my mood to end them, and I strew ...
— Pan and Aeolus: Poems • Charles Hamilton Musgrove
... gondolas up to the slippery steps offered to show how it should be done, and other performers, all skilled, seemed to rise from the stones of the pavement. Poppa invited them all, by pantomime, to walk up and have an octopus, and when the crowd began to gather from the side alleys, and the enthusiasm grew too promiscuous, he bought the barrel outright and watched the carnival from the middle of the canal. He often speaks of his enjoyment of the Venetian octopus, ...
— A Voyage of Consolation - (being in the nature of a sequel to the experiences of 'An - American girl in London') • Sara Jeannette Duncan
... Octopus must watch his ways and guard his awful arms, And keep his eyes peeled mighty close around the Kansas farms; The days of peace are over there! too long the robber-trust Has rifled all their pocket-books and left them but a crust; But Kansas has a sudden way of stopping all the fun, When once ...
— Oklahoma Sunshine • Freeman E. (Freeman Edwin) Miller
... to look into the soul, of a nation at war? It is a monster, composed of many myriads of conglomerated lives, of lives that are distinct and conflicting, lives that move in all directions and are yet joined at the base like the tentacles of an octopus.... It is a confused mingling of all the instincts, and of all the reasons, and of all the unreasons.... Blasts of wind from the abyss; sightless and raging forces issuing from the seething depths of animalism; a mad impulse towards destruction and self-destruction; ...
— The Forerunners • Romain Rolland
... made the earthquake, the volcano, the cyclone; the shark, the viper, the tiger, the octopus, the poison berry; and the deadly loathsome germs of cholera, consumption, typhoid, smallpox, and the black death. God has permitted famine, pestilence, and war. He has permitted martyrdom, witch-burning, slavery, massacre, torture, and human sacrifice. He has for millions of years ...
— God and my Neighbour • Robert Blatchford
... memory, concerning his part in the affray, but to his dismay he found that Sheeley had already been summoned to the office of the prosecuting attorney. In every direction he turned he encountered the octopus ...
— A Romance of Billy-Goat Hill • Alice Hegan Rice
... under different names, does not disguise its deadly character under a beautiful exterior like the stinging fish of Micronesia, which I have described above. The nofu which is also met with on the coasts of Australia, is a devil undisguised, and belongs to the angler family. Like the octopus or the death-adder (Acanthopis antarctica) of Australia, he can assimilate his colour to his environment. His hideous wrinkled head, with his staring goggle eyes, are often covered with fine wavy seaweed, which in full-grown specimens sometimes extends right down ...
— John Corwell, Sailor And Miner; and, Poisonous Fish - 1901 • Louis Becke
... invites us, soon finds that he is on an inclined plane well greased, and that compulsion is on him to go on, though he may recoil from the descent, and be shudderingly aware of what the end must be. Let no man say, 'I will do this doubtful thing once only, and never again.' Sin is like an octopus, and if the loathly thing gets the tip of one slender filament round a man, it will envelop him altogether and drag him down ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... somethin' movin' on the wather," exclaimed Mrs Lynch, who, during the occurrences just described, had held on to a belaying pin with the tenacity and strength of an octopus. ...
— The Island Queen • R.M. Ballantyne
... you remain fixed fast, while that monstrous feather-abomination called a pillow, yielding to pressure, rises up on either side of your head and engulfs eyes and nose and everything else into its folds. No escape! You are strangled, smothered; you might as well have gone to bed with an octopus. In this horrid contrivance you lie for eight long hours, clapped down like a corpse in its coffin. Every single bed in rural England ought to be burnt. Not one of them is fit for a Christian ...
— Alone • Norman Douglas
... of the giant octopus, the devil fish of Indian Ocean legend, multiplied a thousand times," he replied. "When the octopus lays its eggs, they hatch out into the larval form. The free swimming larva is known as a trochosphere, and I am positive that that is what we see; but look at the size of the thing! Man ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, December 1930 • Various
... film which is slowly closing over her eyes. She labors in a true landscape garden—the small circle wrested with cutlass and fire from the great jungle, and kept free only by constant cutting of the vines and lianas which creep out almost in a night, like sinister octopus tentacles, to strangle the strange upstarts and rejungle ...
— Edge of the Jungle • William Beebe
... had some money in those days, and lived in a decent apartment house near Westbrook's. The two families often went to theatres and dinners together. Mrs. Dawe and Mrs. Westbrook became "dearest" friends. Then one day a little tentacle of the octopus, just to amuse itself, ingurgitated Dawe's capital, and he moved to the Gramercy Park neighborhood where one, for a few groats per week, may sit upon one's trunk under eight-branched chandeliers and opposite Carrara ...
— Strictly Business • O. Henry
... that for centuries it had been reputed to be under a sort of spell of evil and to be cursed by a dreadful visitant known as 'The Red Crawl'—a hideous and loathsome creature. It was neither spider nor octopus, but horribly resembled both and was supposed to 'appear' at intervals in the middle of the night and, like the fabled giants of fairy tales, carry off ...
— Cleek, the Master Detective • Thomas W. Hanshew
... and rooting around with his left hand. Then tentacle after tentacle, myriad-suckered and wildly waving, emerged. Laying hold of his arm, they writhed and coiled about his flesh like so many snakes. With a heave and a jerk appeared the entire squid, a proper devil-fish or octopus. ...
— On the Makaloa Mat/Island Tales • Jack London
... popular principles, and that here was an opportunity for the Democratic party to fulfil its pledges and serve the people. Stringer and his associates were uttering in the Senate burning words against the audacious menace of what they termed the franchise octopus. Did the people realize that this bill to combine gas companies, which looked so innocent on its face, was a gigantic scheme to wheedle them out of a valuable franchise for nothing? Did they understand that they were deliberately putting their necks in the grip of a monster ...
— Unleavened Bread • Robert Grant
... to grip Tom Blair. At first a mere suggestion, then a horrible certainty, possessed him as to the identity of the relentless being who opposed him. Again the other's hand, like the creeping tentacle of an octopus, sought his throat, would not be stayed. He struggled with all his might against it, until it seemed the blood-vessels of his neck would burst, but still the hold tightened. He clutched at the long fingers desperately, bit at them, felt his breath coming hard. ...
— Ben Blair - The Story of a Plainsman • Will Lillibridge
... is alive in an instant, and grasping for its prey. In the centre of the illustration are two specimens of this animal-plant, the wondrous flesh-eating flower of the ocean. To the left may be seen a specimen of the Eledone moschata—a small and very common member of the octopus family. The eledone is a hideous-looking beast. Its small eyes, which it can open and shut at will, are glistening, and of changing iris. Its long arms are strong enough to grasp a mussel shell, and hold it firmly until its contents are devoured. At the least touch a dark color instantly appears ...
— Harper's Young People, April 13, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... proved he had not forgotten her existence or her needs. She had claimed marriage to him by Gandharva rite, and he had tacitly consented, but she was not ready yet to try conclusions with the secret, octopus influence of the priests; ...
— Guns of the Gods • Talbot Mundy
... aveno. object : objekto, ajxo, (aim) celo. oblige : devigi; fari komplezon. observe : rimarki; vidi, observi. obstinate : obstina. obstruct : bari, obstrukci. obtain : ricevi, akiri, havigi al si. occasion : okazo, okazigi. occur : okazi. octopus : okpiedulo. off : for, de. offend : ofendi. offence : ofendo, kulpo, peko. offer : propono. office : ofico, oficejo, kontoro. officer : oficisto, (milit.) oficiro. officiate : funkcii; dejxori; servi kiel. offspring : ido, idaro. ...
— The Esperanto Teacher - A Simple Course for Non-Grammarians • Helen Fryer
... of the 100,000 species of backboneless animals belonging to the zoological group known as the Mollusca. Mollusks include not only the familiar clams, scallops and snails, but also the squids, octopus and Chambered Nautilus. Other "shells" found in the ocean include those of crabs, lobsters, barnacles and ...
— Let's collect rocks & shells • Shell Oil Company
... of drugging. It has fought the debauching of a nation's manhood by the legalized sale of a deadly poison, alcohol. And it has fought without quarter the pernicious activity of morally stunted brewers and distillers, whose hellish motto is, 'Make the boys drink!' It has fought the money octopus, and again and again has sounded to the world the peril which money-drunken criminals like Ames and his clique constitute. And for that we must now wear the crown ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking
... Nelson worked along the beach, finding sea-urchins, anemones, and worms, which he taught the sailors the names of—polycheats and sepunculids, I think he called them. He caught various fishes, including sea-perches, garfish, coralfish, and an eel, a small octopus and a quantity of sponges. Trigger-fish were so abundant that many of them were speared from the ship with the greatest of ease, and Rennick harpooned a couple from a boat with an ordinary dinner fork. Lillie, who had recovered from measles, was all about, and his party went for flowering plants ...
— South with Scott • Edward R. G. R. Evans
... standing like a scaled tower a hundred feet above the rift, its eyes scanning that movement I had seen along the course of its lair. There was a hissing; the crown of horns fell, whipped and writhed like the tentacles of an octopus; the towering length ...
— The Moon Pool • A. Merritt
... Octopus," deals with the war between the wheat grower and the Railroad Trust; the second, "The Pit," is the fictitious narrative of a "deal" in the Chicago wheat pit; while the third, "The Wolf," will probably ...
— The Pit • Frank Norris
... Jimson, I guess," the captain said, as they wended their way homeward; "but he's got as many ways of holdin' a feller as an octopus. And lemme tell you, that's a plenty! Arms seem to grow on devilfish 'while you wait' as the ...
— Cap'n Abe, Storekeeper • James A. Cooper
... plunged into an ant hill, throwing him to the jungle floor. "Damn!" He cursed again, for the tenth time, and stood uncertainly in the dimness. From tall, moss-shrouded trees, wrist-thick vines hung quietly, scraping the spongy ground like the tentacles of some monstrous tree-bound octopus. Fitful little plants grew straggly in the shadows of the mossy trunks, forming a dense underbrush that made walking difficult. At midday some few of the blue sun's rays filtered through to the jungle floor, but now, ...
— Survival Tactics • Al Sevcik
... his jokes witty? Not at all. He is a silent fellow, scarce opening his mouth except to curse the poor scrub of a maid servant, or to abuse a man who has not paid his score. He slinks in and lights his pipe, smokes it silently, and slinks out again. He is the octopus of the hamlet, fastening on the cottage homes and sucking the life-blood from them. He misses nothing, and nothing ...
— Hodge and His Masters • Richard Jefferies
... of the pool where the octopus dwelt, a silly young cormorant was standing gazing into the water, so fascinated with something it saw there that it forgot even to jerk its ...
— A Maid of the Silver Sea • John Oxenham
... on several occasions, by watching the habits of an Octopus, or cuttle-fish. Although common in the pools of water left by the retiring tide, these animals were not easily caught. By means of their long arms and suckers, they could drag their bodies into very narrow crevices; and when thus fixed, it required great force to remove them. At ...
— The Voyage of the Beagle • Charles Darwin
... has shown that in the octopus (Octopus vulgaris) courtship is carried on with considerable delicacy, and not brutally, as had previously been supposed. The male gently stretches out his third arm on the right and caresses the female with its extremity, ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 3 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... With one hand on the buttons of his uniform and the other on the desk, he believed himself to look like Napoleon. Like Napoleon he looked straight into my eyes. But his weak and thin fingers were always moving like a small octopus—Napoleon's were stronger. ...
— Rescuing the Czar - Two authentic Diaries arranged and translated • James P. Smythe
... loved the Octopus, Since we were boys together. I love the Vulture and the Shark: ...
— Greybeards at Play • G. K. Chesterton
... obstreperous. Brainerd grabbed him by the scruff of the neck and landed him all in a heap in the coal. Then he climbed up on the right-hand side of the cab and took charge of things himself. There were myriads of tracks stretching out before him like the long arms of some giant octopus, but all traffic was suspended on account of the strike and the main line was clear. The train flew down the line like a scared rabbit and in thirty minutes reached the camp at Blake Park. I had arrived there that morning from the south for special service and when I saw Brainerd climb down ...
— Danger Signals • John A. Hill and Jasper Ewing Brady
... propose to live solely for somebody else, you shake me off, and repudiate me? Selfish you think? I dare say I am, but religion now-a-day winks at that, nay fosters it. Each church is an octopus, and the members are laboriously striving to disprove the Saviour's admonition: 'Ye cannot serve God and mammon.' I am no worse than my ritualistic sisters whom I meet and gossip with, under cover of the organ muttering, ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson
... work for them to do. In a few seconds the fish was torn asunder and engulfed—those inky eyes the while unwinking and unmoved. A darker, livid hue passed fleetingly over the pallid body of the octopus. Then it slipped back under the shelter of the rock; and the writhing tentacles composed themselves once more to stillness upon the bottom, awaiting the next careless passer-by. Once more they seemed mere inert trailers of weed, not worth the notice ...
— Kings in Exile • Sir Charles George Douglas Roberts
... patch of woodland covering five or six square miles, occupying a kind of oblong basin, extending from the foot of Ytaioa on the north to a low range of rocky hills on the south. From the wooded basin long narrow strips of forest ran out in various directions like the arms of an octopus, one pair embracing the slopes of Ytaioa, another much broader belt extending along a valley which cut through the ridge of hills on the south side at right angles and was lost to sight beyond; far away in the west and south and north distant mountains ...
— Green Mansions - A Romance of the Tropical Forest • W. H. Hudson |
