"Butterfly" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... these occasions, as I was sauntering along the edge of Eaglesham-wood, looking at the industrious bee going from flower to flower, and the idle butterfly, that layeth up no store, but perisheth ere it is winter, I felt as it were a spirit from on high descending upon me, a throb at my heart, and a thrill in my brain, and I was transported out of myself, and seized with the notion of writing a book—but ...
— The Annals of the Parish • John Galt
... easy to fancy how Pinocchio felt! He longed to be a cricket, or a mouse, so that he might hide in some hole. How he wished that he were a butterfly or a bird and ...
— Pinocchio in Africa • Cherubini
... brief span of life. In a few cases in the familiar life about us we see the evolutionary process abridged, and transformations like those of unrecorded time take place before our eyes, as when the tadpole becomes the frog or the grub becomes the butterfly. These rapid changes are analogous to those which in the depths of geologic time have evolved the bird from the fish or the reptile, or the seal and the manatee from a fourfooted land animal. Our ...
— Time and Change • John Burroughs
... the cares of her little menage as was rendered incumbent by the limited amount of her husband's income. She seemed, in short, the same thoughtless pleasure-loving, pleasure-seeking girl as ever; now that she was captured, the same volatile butterfly as when surrounded and chased by butterflies like herself. But her captor? asks some modern Petruchio—had he not, or could he not contrive to clip ...
— The Wedding Guest • T.S. Arthur
... rhythm of a flute and a pair of Indian bells. Her round white arms seemed ever beckoning and striving to entice to her side some youth who was fleeing from her allurements. She appeared to pursue him, with movements light as a butterfly; her whole mien was like that of an inquisitive Psyche, or a floating spirit that might at any moment ...
— Herodias • Gustave Flaubert
... the nautch-girl to the pipe and wires, Fluttering like some vain, painted butterfly From glade to glade along the forest path, Nor dreamed her light words echoed on the ear Of him, that holy man, who sate so rapt Under the fig-tree by the path. But Buddh Lifted his great brow as the wantons passed, And spake: 'The foolish ofttimes teach the wise; I strain too much this ...
— The Light of Asia • Sir Edwin Arnold
... be hard, No care take I; I'll make my joy like this Small Butterfly; Whose happy heart has power To ...
— Modern British Poetry • Various
... covet the company of strangers. And indeed the cheerfulness of temper, and activity of mind, which made her so charming an acquisition to a small circle, rendered her independent of general society. Busy as a bee, sportive as a butterfly, she passed the greater part of her time in the open air, and having caught from me that very contagious and engrossing passion, a love of floriculture, had actually undertaken the operation of restoring the old garden at the Court—a coppice of brambles, thistles, ...
— Country Lodgings • Mary Russell Mitford
... hatches upon the leaves and in the forming heads of cabbage and other vegetables of the cabbage group, comes from the eggs laid by the common white or yellow butterfly of early spring. Pick off all that are visible, and spray with kerosene emulsion if the heads have not begun to form. If they have, use hellebore instead. The caterpillar or worm of tomatoes is a large green voracious one. Hand-picking is ...
— Home Vegetable Gardening • F. F. Rockwell
... we had concluded the above remarks comes a pretty little note sealed with a pretty little butterfly—bearing a northern postmark—and to the ...
— The Book of Snobs • William Makepeace Thackeray
... is out of the cocoon of the three bodies it escapes forever from the law of relativity and becomes the ineffable Ever-Existent. {FN43-10} Behold the butterfly of Omnipresence, its wings etched with stars and moons and suns! The soul expanded into Spirit remains alone in the region of lightless light, darkless dark, thoughtless thought, intoxicated with its ecstasy of joy in God's dream of ...
— Autobiography of a YOGI • Paramhansa Yogananda
... was no cessation of the piano-playing. Little Guiraud, in her Alsatian costume, with a butterfly of black ribbon in her golden hair, swung round in the dance with a harlequin twice her height. A Highlander whirled Marguerite Tissot round so madly that she lost her milk-pail. The two Berthier ...
— A Love Episode • Emile Zola
... does," he insisted. "It matters a lot. The point is that it isn't you at all. Some day you'll slough it the way a butterfly does ...
— The Sheriff's Son • William MacLeod Raine
... a relieved face to Joan, "how is the round of gayety? Are you tired of being a butterfly yet? I suppose after this Salt-haven won't be good ...
— Salthaven • W. W. Jacobs
... slipped by in a haze—a haze of long evenings on the club veranda with the graphophone playing "Poor Butterfly" inside... for "Poor Butterfly" had been the song of that last year. The war seemed scarcely to touch them and it might have been one of the senior springs of the past, except for the drilling every other afternoon, ...
— This Side of Paradise • F. Scott Fitzgerald
... had ceased, the movement quickened. With a gesture of abandonment the girl threw her head back, and, her arms extended, she fluttered like a butterfly on a rose. She ran forward. The sambuca rang quicker, the harp quicker yet. She threw herself to one side, then to the other, her hips swaying as she moved. The buds at her girdle fell one by one; she ...
— Mary Magdalen • Edgar Saltus
... declared himself of a totally different opinion, and quoted Dr. Johnson against her, who had told him that, taking away her Greek, she was as ignorant as a butterfly. ...
— Autobiography, Letters and Literary Remains of Mrs. Piozzi (Thrale) (2nd ed.) (2 vols.) • Mrs. Hester Lynch Piozzi
... abode as this, and such inhabitants of it as ourselves, and them picture the descent among us—as of a goddess dropping from the clouds—of a lively, handsome, fashionable young lady—a bright, gay, butterfly creature, used to flutter away its existence in the broad sunshine of perpetual gayety—a child of the new generation, with all the modern ideas whirling together in her pretty head, and all the modern ...
— The Queen of Hearts • Wilkie Collins
... only a paraphrase of the old story of the grub and the butterfly. The little, starveling drudge who had found him in the store, that first day, had completely vanished; it was as if she had never been. In her place he discovered a girl all grace and loveliness, her slender figure ripening into gracious womanhood; ...
— The Fortune Hunter • Louis Joseph Vance
... head. Oh, of course, he had a way with him—a certain magnetism—for the people who liked him, and whom he liked. Lady Maud, for instance—how well they had got on at breakfast? Naturally, she thought him adorable. And Lady Maud's girl. To see Buntingford showing her the butterfly collections in the library—devoting himself to her—and the little thing blushing and smiling—it was simply idyllic! And then to contrast the scene with that other scene, in the same ...
— Helena • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... butterfly in this country has reached such an alarming stage that cautious butterflies are now going about ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 153, Sept. 26, 1917 • Various
... awaited the arrival of the king, with whom she had appointed the rendezvous. The sound of many feet upon the gravel walk made her turn round. Louis XIV. was hatless, he had struck down with his cane a peacock butterfly, which Monsieur de Saint-Aignan had picked up ...
— Ten Years Later • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... months ago of angina pectoris, and Lola was with him at the end. Eleanor Faversham has married a Colonial bishop. Campion, too, has married—and married the last woman in the world to whom one would have thought of mating him—a frivolous butterfly of a creature who drags him to dinner-parties and Ascot and suppers at the Savoy, and holds Barbara's Building and all it connotes in vixenish detestation. He roars out the agony of his philanthropic spirit to Lola and myself, ...
— Simon the Jester • William J. Locke
... then I heard the harsh music of rusty chains and bolts, a light flashed in my eyes, and that butterfly, Clarence, stood before me! I gasped with surprise; my breath almost got ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... Moreover, though purchased pictures have other values, the old cases set on the walls of one's den bring back memories that are the joy and solace of many idle moments later in life—each rarer egg, each extra butterfly picturing some day or place of keen triumph, otherwise long since forgotten. Here, for instance, is a convolvulus hawk father found killed on a mountain in Switzerland; there an Apollo I caught in the Pyrenees; here a "red burnet" with "five eyes" ...
— A Labrador Doctor - The Autobiography of Wilfred Thomason Grenfell • Wilfred Thomason Grenfell
... secret stands Within her woven cell: the humming prey, Regardless of their fate, rush on the toils Inextricable, nor will aught avail Their arts, or arms, or shapes of lovely hue; The wasp insidious, and the buzzing drone, And butterfly, proud of expanded wings Distinct with gold, entangled in her snares, Useless resistance make; with eager strides, She towering flies to her expected spoils; Then, with envenomed jaws, the vital blood Drinks of reluctant foes, and to her cave Their bulky carcasses ...
— The Book of Humorous Verse • Various
... writing verses; but it is easy to read, through their poems, their personal history: any one acquainted with parties can name every figure: this is Andrew, and that is Rachael. The sense thus remains prosaic. It is a caterpillar with wings, and not yet a butterfly. In the poet's mind, the fact has gone quite over into the new element of thought, and has lost all that is exuvial. This generosity bides with Shakspeare. We say, from the truth and closeness of his pictures, that he knows ...
— Essays • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... the long, long summer hours, The golden light should lie, And thick young herbs and groups of flowers Stand in their beauty by. The oriole should build and tell His love-tale, close beside my cell; The idle butterfly Should rest him there, and there be heard The ...
— Edgar Allan Poe's Complete Poetical Works • Edgar Allan Poe
... worn less often, began to grow rusty in the great halls, and the nobles, coming forth from their coats-of-mail like the butterfly from the chrysalis, showed themselves all glistening in silk, pearls in their ears, their heads full of Italian madrigals and mythological similes, a new society was formed, salons of a kind were organized, and the role of the women was enlarged. English mediaeval times had been ...
— The English Novel in the Time of Shakespeare • J. J. Jusserand
... the courage of the creature she had fancied a sort of lovely butterfly to be crushed by a single blow, Christie took heart, and, instead of soothing sympathy, gave her the solace best fitted for strong natures, something to do for others. What inspired her, Christie never knew; perhaps it was the year of self-denying service ...
— Work: A Story of Experience • Louisa May Alcott
... Hammersmith, even before her aunt wrote to ask her not to come. Lee Hannaford's aloofness from his wife's relatives had turned to hostility; he spoke of them with increasing bitterness, threw contempt on Dr. Derwent's scientific work, and condemned Irene as a butterfly of fashion. Olga ceased to visit the house in Bryanston Square, and the cousins only corresponded. It was Dr. Derwent's opinion that Hannaford could not be quite sane; he was much troubled on his sister's account, ...
— The Crown of Life • George Gissing
... we find items to be added to a charge than erased. In this respect, the Pyrenees will prove less expensive than Switzerland, for they are so little touched by the money-reckless Anglo-Saxon. That ubiquitous tourist has not yet come, to brush with o'er rude hand the silvery dust from their butterfly wings. Nor—to complete the statement—have they yet learned to brush with o'er rude hand the golden dust from his butterfly wings. The latter fact is perhaps as important ...
— A Midsummer Drive Through The Pyrenees • Edwin Asa Dix
... aspect—wretched, famished, gaunt with hunger, ready for any desperate deed. And, yet, he seemed at ease in this garb; it yielded to his every movement, as if he had worn it for a long time. The butterfly had become a chrysalis again. Chupin's admiring smile must have repaid him for his trouble. Since the young clerk evinced approval, M. Fortunat felt sure that Vantrasson would take him for what he wished to appear—a poor devil of an agent, who ...
— The Count's Millions - Volume 1 (of 2) • Emile Gaboriau
... hopelessly artificial. Indeed, so far is it removed from the plane of every day existence that we are rudely jolted by the introduction of too commonplace a thought, as when Sharpless in the English version of "Madame Butterfly" warbles mellifluously: "Highball or straight?" And when we reach musical comedy and vaudeville, all thought of drama, technically speaking, is abandoned in watching the capers of the "merry-merry" or the outrageous "Dutch" comedian wielding his ...
— The Dramatic Values in Plautus • Wilton Wallace Blancke
... gambolling; or, earlier in the spring, had gathered great armfuls of blue bonnets from over in the south meadow. Now when she found herself away from the house, skirting San Franciscito in an eager chase for a butterfly, she could have thought the past ten months all a dream,—except for a certain small brown dog tearing madly from one gopher-hole to another, while Don, in the veteran's scorn for the novice, refused to be enticed from his ...
— Blue Bonnet's Ranch Party • C. E. Jacobs
... necessary to make life completely happy—the ability to forget all and enjoy the moment. I have watched you for years. It has been so in the past, and will be so in the future. Other men who see me, men born to the plane, have the quality—call it butterfly if you will—to enjoy the 'now.' It appeals to me—I am of their manner born." Their eyes met and she finished slowly, "It's injustice to you, I ...
— A Breath of Prairie and other stories • Will Lillibridge
... against the afternoon sun, behind its almost closed shutters through which, however, a reflection of the sunlight had contrived to slip in on its golden wings, remaining motionless, between glass and woodwork, in a corner, like a butterfly poised upon a flower. It was hardly light enough for me to read, and my feeling of the day's brightness and splendour was derived solely from the blows struck down below, in the Rue de la Cure, by Camus (whom Francoise had assured ...
— Swann's Way - (vol. 1 of Remembrance of Things Past) • Marcel Proust
... may still do so! Let the world's prudish owl unheeded flutter by; Freedom converts the grub into a butterfly! ...
— Love's Comedy • Henrik Ibsen
... Snare? His culture and his artistry, his visions and his exaltations—what had they been but a lure for the female? The iris of the burnished dove, the ruff about the grouse's neck, the gold and purple of the butterfly's wing! Even his genius, his miraculous, ineffable genius—that had been the plume of the partridge, the crowning glory before which his mate ...
— Love's Pilgrimage • Upton Sinclair
... to learn, I made considerable progress. My spare time was spent almost entirely in the company of little Emily. I was never tired of attending on her. As was then the custom, she wore a little red mantle as a walking dress. One day we were out in the fields, when she ran off in chase of a butterfly. At the further end of the field a bull was grazing, having been turned out to indulge his sulky humour by himself. The sight of the red cloak fluttering over the green meadow suddenly excited his rage, and with a loud roar he came rushing up towards it. I saw the little ...
— Ben Burton - Born and Bred at Sea • W. H. G. Kingston
... his protests, the long red scarf was wound about his waist and tied with many deft twists and pats into a butterfly bow at the back. Seeing that protests were quite useless, and being still chilled from his long ride, he decided to resist no longer, but to take the bath that was so insisted upon, and be free to watch undisturbed ...
— The Honorable Percival • Alice Hegan Rice
... broad public roads were lined with oleanders, magnolias, laburnums, jasmines, orange and lemon-trees; and there were honeysuckles, white, scarlet, yellow; and tiger-lilies of marvelous size, each leaf looking as if it were a butterfly, and the whole flower forming a group of them lit upon a stem. Urns, from which drooped variegated flowers, relieved by wreathing smilax, ornamented the posts of gates, and lined the smooth, white graveled paths about the verandas of these suburban palaces in miniature. The ...
— Due West - or Round the World in Ten Months • Maturin Murray Ballou
... me, Flitting Butterfly!" sobbed Lesa. "I have lost my comb, my golden comb. What shall I do? My mother will fret, my father will scold, my little sister will cry, and some harm will surely come to me if I do ...
— A Kindergarten Story Book • Jane L. Hoxie
... costume, short enough to display her thin, elderly ankles, and adorned with many flying ribbands and furbelows. An impossibly high garden hat crowned her faded head, allowing certain rather unattached-looking ringlets of colourless blonde hair to stray about her cheeks. She made one think of a butterfly, no longer young, but attempting to keep up the illusions of spring. Hilda and her mother smiled and returned the ...
— Greifenstein • F. Marion Crawford
... merely one of definitions and that a definition is a description of something given to it after—not before—it is finished. A definition is a tag, like the label the entomologist ties to the pin after he has the butterfly nicely dead. Of questionable profit it would be to you, struggling to waken your playlet into life, to worry about a definition that might read "Here Lies ...
— Writing for Vaudeville • Brett Page
... explore those dark mysterious coves, or strike across the slanting sunlight poured from clefts in the impendent hills. Inshore the substance of the ice sparkled here and there with iridescence like the plumelets of a butterfly's wing under the microscope, wherever light happened to catch the jagged or oblique flaws that ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece • John Addington Symonds
... systematically catching them. Medical experience has shown that if houses are kept clear of mosquitos, there is very little fever, even in places where the water pools and channels are left unsterilized. Wire screening, supplemented by a butterfly net, is the great preventive. But we can not attain the good without an admixture of evil: behind the wire screening the indoor atmosphere becomes very oppressive. Yellow fever, the scourge of the isthmus in former days, has been completely ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 21 - The Recent Days (1910-1914) • Charles F. Horne, Editor
... The butterfly and humble-bee Come to the pleasant woods with me; Quickly before me runs the quail, The chickens skulk behind the rail, High up the lone wood-pigeon sits, And the woodpecker pecks and flits. Sweet woodland ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 6, No. 34, August, 1860 • Various
... Spring, Flowers that smile nor birds that sing. Bumble-bee nor butterfly, Nor grassy hill nor anything Of magic keep me safe to rhyme In this Heaven beyond my time. No! for ...
— Fairies and Fusiliers • Robert Graves
... anent which Kingigamoot cherishes a pretty superstition. This flower blossoms in profusion about mid June around Cape Prince of Wales, and by the end of July has withered away. Simultaneously a tiny golden butterfly makes its appearance for about a fortnight, and also disappears. I was gravely informed by perhaps the greatest inebriate in the village that the poppy and the insect bear a similar name, for when the former has bloomed for a while it develops a pair of wings ...
— From Paris to New York by Land • Harry de Windt
... dear friend,' said he, 'this is a sublime moment! To see you, the gay companion, the good fellow, the butterfly, I may say, of other days, a member of this great body is certainly soul-stirring! So you have realized your ambition? What next? The Senate? And then—then?' he pointed upward, 'higher yet? and still higher? Ha! The White House? Who knows?' he ...
— The Statesmen Snowbound • Robert Fitzgerald
... bridged by an American." Our wave-splitting clippers have changed the whole model of sailing-vessels. One of them, which was to have been taken in tow by the steam-vessels of the Crimean squadron, spread her wings, and sailed proudly by them all. Our iron water-beetles would send any of the old butterfly three-deckers to the bottom, as quickly as one of these would sink a ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 13, No. 78, April, 1864 • Various
... her years,' muttered the Scotchman, and the party moved on. Frank and Maude lingered to have a further look at the unfortunate princess, the bright French butterfly, who wandered from the light and warmth into that grim country, a land ...
— A Duet • A. Conan Doyle
... little butterfly brothers, one white, one red, and one yellow. They played in the sunshine, and danced among the flowers in the garden, and they never grew tired because ...
— Good Stories For Great Holidays - Arranged for Story-Telling and Reading Aloud and for the - Children's Own Reading • Frances Jenkins Olcott
... who cannot remember having, in their boyhood, taken a caterpillar and shut it up in a box. Before long the creature assumed a chrysalis form, and finally developed into a butterfly, with a completely new power not possessed by the caterpillar. Instead of only being able to grovel on the ground, the creature in its new existence is able to soar high into the air. This is one of Nature's conversions, and is a faint ...
— General Gordon - A Christian Hero • Seton Churchill
... 'abit bad. I ain't averse—one more new word I've learned— Averse to tea, when tea is to be 'ad; An' when it comes I reckon that it's earned. It's jist a drink, as fur as I'm concerned, Good for a bloke that's toilin' on the land; But when a caller comes, 'ere I am turned Into a social butterfly, off-'and. ...
— Digger Smith • C. J. Dennis
... vivacious and light of heart as a feathery summer cloud; and, I was about to say, reminding one of a butterfly; but there was nothing of the sedate, slow, hovery movement of that beautiful insect. Her's was an extremely animated, aggressive daintiness. She always seemed to be hovering near or peeping into a bunch of flowers ...
— Chit-Chat; Nirvana; The Searchlight • Mathew Joseph Holt
... beneath the leaves that kept them dry Flew many a glittering insect here and there, And darted up and down the butterfly, That seemed a living blossom of the air. The flocks came scattering from the thicket, where The violent rain had pent them; in the way Strolled groups of damsels frolicksome and fair; The farmer swung the scythe or turned the hay, And 'twixt the heavy swaths ...
— Poems • William Cullen Bryant
... me once that she could not take her eyes off a butterfly which was flitting about in the church all the time I was speaking of the resurrection of the dead. I told the people that in Greek there was one word for the soul and for a butterfly—Psyche; that I thought as the light ...
— Annals of a Quiet Neighbourhood • George MacDonald
... deep for either you or me to fathom. I gave it up as a bad job long ago. What you just said about having a knife stuck into you comes the nearest to my own notion. I feel a good deal as I fancy a butterfly must when he has been intercepted in a gay and joyous flight and stuck against the wall with a sharp pin, among a million other specimens which the great entomologist has gathered for some purpose which no one but himself can understand. All I try to do is to ...
— The Redemption of David Corson • Charles Frederic Goss
... was over Philip thought he had a new light on the character of Ruth. Her absorption in the small gaieties of the society there surprised him. He had few opportunities for serious conversation with her. There was always some butterfly or another flitting about, and when Philip showed by his manner that he was not pleased, Ruth laughed merrily enough and rallied him on his soberness—she declared he was getting to be grim and unsocial. He talked indeed more with Alice than with Ruth, and ...
— The Gilded Age, Part 3. • Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens) and Charles Dudley Warner
... her which only those are able to assume who are not pestered with creditors. She wore two beautiful diamond rings upon her hands outside her perfectly fitting glove, and her bonnet was adorned with flowers so exquisitely fashioned that a butterfly would have been deceived and would have perched on ...
— Castles in the Air • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... be lost. Flyaway must overtake the girls, and, if possible, get to heaven before they did. She flew about like a distracted butterfly. ...
— Dotty Dimple's Flyaway • Sophie May
... this earth, behold! See all but man with unearned pleasure gay! See her bright robes the butterfly unfold, Broke from her wintry tomb in prime of May. What youthful bride can equal her array? Who can with her for easy pleasure vie? From mead to mead with gentle wing to stray, From flower to flower on balmy gales to fly, Is all she has to do ...
— English Poets of the Eighteenth Century • Selected and Edited with an Introduction by Ernest Bernbaum
... not explain that silk [61] is originally spun from the bowels of a caterpillar, and that it composes the golden tomb, from whence a worm emerges in the form of a butterfly. Till the reign of Justinian, the silk-worm who feed on the leaves of the white mulberry-tree were confined to China; those of the pine, the oak, and the ash, were common in the forests both of Asia and Europe; but as their education is more difficult, and their produce more uncertain, ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 4 • Edward Gibbon
... a well-worn metaphor a parallel is drawn between the life of man and the metamorphosis of a caterpillar into a butterfly; but the comparison may be more just as well as more novel, if for its former term we take the mental progress of the race. History shews that the human mind, fed by constant accessions of knowledge, periodically grows ...
— Thomas Henry Huxley; A Sketch Of His Life And Work • P. Chalmers Mitchell
... and orange orchids or vanillas. Common to them were all the fantastic and enormous shapes with which Nature bedecks her robes beneath the fierce suns and fattening rains of the tropic forest. Common were forms and colors of bird, and fish, and butterfly, more strange and bright than ever opium-eater dreamed. The long processions of monkeys, who kept pace with them along the tree-tops, and proclaimed their wonder in every imaginable whistle, and grunt, and howl, had ceased to move their laughter, ...
— Westward Ho! • Charles Kingsley
... a peculiar manner of flying; flitting about with odd jerks, and vacillations, not unlike the motions of a butterfly. Doubtless the flight of all hirundines is influenced by, and adapted to, the peculiar sort of insects which furnish their food. Hence it would be worth inquiry to examine what particular group of insects affords ...
— The Natural History of Selborne • Gilbert White
... are distasteful to birds and predaceous insects. "These acrid secretions are probably due to the character of the plants upon which the caterpillars feed," says Dr. Holland, in his beautiful and invaluable "Butterfly Book." "Enjoying on this account immunity from attack, they have all, in the process of time, been mimicked by species in other genera which have not the same immunity." "One cannot stay long around a patch of milkweeds without ...
— Wild Flowers, An Aid to Knowledge of Our Wild Flowers and - Their Insect Visitors - - Title: Nature's Garden • Neltje Blanchan
... between a ivory bodkin with a butterfly head and a ivory hook with a posy on the handle, when I hearn the voice of my pardner, seemin'ly makin' a trade with somebody, and I turned a little corner and there I see him stand tryin' to beat ...
— Around the World with Josiah Allen's Wife • Marietta Holley
... meant no harm. He had no evil ways; was always pleasant, good-natured, and affectionate, in his own careless fashion; but was no more to be relied on than a straw that every wind blows hither and thither; or, to use a common simile, a butterfly that never sees any thing farther than the nearest flower. His was, in short, the pleasure-loving temperament, not positively sinful or sensual, but still holding pleasure as the greatest good; and ...
— Mistress and Maid • Dinah Craik (aka: Miss Mulock)
... was well that the girl had no evil tendencies and was, upon the whole, well-principled, warm-hearted, and good-natured, or she might have gone very grievously astray. As it was, she was now at seventeen a bright butterfly, flitting from one to another of the flowers of life, and sipping as much honey as she could from each. She was fond of all sorts of bright, pretty things, handsome clothes and jewelry included. She liked to sing and she liked to dance, to go to parties when there ...
— Katie Robertson - A Girls Story of Factory Life • Margaret E. Winslow
... happy. I have always wanted to be of some use in the world. I assure you, Master Zane, I am not the butterfly I seem. I have worked hard all day, that is, until your sister Betty came over. All the girls have helped me fix up the cabin until it's more comfortable than I ever dreamed one could be on the frontier. Father is well content here, and that makes ...
— The Last Trail • Zane Grey
... all countries many refer to insects, birds, animals, persons, actions, trades, food or children. In Chinese rhymes we have the cricket, cicada, spider, snail, firefly, ladybug and butterfly and others. Among fowls we have the bat, crow, magpie, cock, hen, duck and goose. Of animals, the dog, cow, horse, mule, donkey, camel, and mouse, are the favorites. There are also rhymes on the snake and frog, and others without ...
— The Chinese Boy and Girl • Isaac Taylor Headland
... thought he had pulverized him in the press (it was soon after the Parnell Commission, when Pigott, the informer, had committed suicide in Spain), Whistler one evening thrust this pleasant note into Mr. Menpes's letter-box, scrawled on a half-sheet of paper, with the well-known butterfly ...
— Whistler Stories • Don C. Seitz
... character of her assigned disguise. She had had visions of something very splendid, something almost barbaric in its richness—had nursed a day-dream of herself flaunting radiantly through the chiaroscuro of the moonlight fete like some great jewelled butterfly. ...
— Nobody • Louis Joseph Vance
... joy when she first beheld herself in cap and gown. For she looked exactly like other girls! It didn't matter at all, this year, whether or not she had a new suit or a new overcoat. The gown was all-concealing. Donning it was like turning from caterpillar to butterfly with a single ...
— Lydia of the Pines • Honore Willsie Morrow
... hand strayed to the open neck of her blouse. Then she dropped her hand in dismay. Her butterfly, her pretty talisman, where was it? She remembered wearing it to school that morning, or thought she remembered. Oh, yes, she now recalled that she had pinned it to her coat lapel. It had always shone so bravely against the soft ...
— Marjorie Dean High School Freshman • Pauline Lester
... a southern continent as a balance was supposed to be unanswerable; and so it was, till Captain Cook found there was no such thing. We are poor silly animals: we live for an instant upon a particle of a boundless universe, and are much like a butterfly that should argue about the nature of the seasons and what creates their vicissitudes, and does not exist itself to see one ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole, V4 • Horace Walpole
... grass, the dead rock. . . . But now, what is this on the turf? A gay blue cricket! A cricket—only that? Nay, a war-horse, a magic little steed, a "real fairy, with wings all right." And there too on the rock, like a drop of fire, that gorgeous-coloured butterfly. ...
— Browning's Heroines • Ethel Colburn Mayne
... thought of all thou wouldst have, is the list complete, Janet; canst thou not suggest something more? I will send it to one of the court mantua-makers and if thou sendest the proper measurements our lady will soon be a modish butterfly." At the word modish a sudden thought came to Katherine and she leant over and whispered in Janet's ear; then ...
— Mistress Penwick • Dutton Payne
... anxious face, lines of nervous unrest; she saw that her father's coming had not brought refreshment or relief; and truly she did not perceive why it should. Dolly was wholly inexperienced, in all but the butterfly life of very happy young years; nevertheless, she could not fail to read, or at least half read, some signs of another sort of life. She noticed that her father's manner wanted its ordinary careless, confident ease; there was something forced about it; his face bore tokens of loss of ...
— The End of a Coil • Susan Warner
... briar pipe. Presently he began to hunt carefully about on the ground. He picked together half a handful of brownish things which had to be dried leaves. He stuffed them into the pipe, struck a match, and lighted it. He puffed away gloomily, surrounded by wholly monstrous vegetation. A butterfly fluttered over the top of the steel globe. Its wings were fully a yard across. It flittered lightly to a plant and seemed to wait, and abruptly a vivid carmine blossom opened wide; wide ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science January 1931 • Various
... around her an air of restraint and cold modesty that was admirable in every way—only it would never do in Baiae. And so Cornelia, without ceasing to be admired, became less courted; and presently, quite tiring of the butterfly life, was thrown back more and more on herself and on her books. This did not disturb her. A levee or a banquet had never given her perfect pleasure; and it was no delight to know that half the women ...
— A Friend of Caesar - A Tale of the Fall of the Roman Republic. Time, 50-47 B.C. • William Stearns Davis
... as ever sensible man was weak enough to marry. For," said she, "Mr. Home is a sensible man in his way, though not very practical: he is fond of science, and lives half his life in a laboratory trying experiments—a thing his butterfly wife could neither comprehend nor endure; and indeed" confessed my godmother, "I should not ...
— Villette • Charlotte Bronte
... man who had first asked her for her love. She thought much and she thought often of the young lord; but she took the impress of her lover's mind, and learned to regard her cousin, the Earl, as an idle, pretty popinjay, born to eat, to drink, and to carry sweet perfumes. "Just a butterfly," said the tailor. ...
— Lady Anna • Anthony Trollope
... engaged in brandishing a large horsewhip. The book is dedicated by Mr. H. de Vere Stacpoole, to Sir E. Carson and Mr. Redmond, and in a short preface he says: "The Irish Roman Catholic priest is the main factor in present-day Irish affairs. I have attempted to catch him at his best in the butterfly net of this trivial story...." I am anxious not to do Mr. Stacpoole an injustice, but I do feel that (as an entomologist) he gets easily tired. In the 250 pages of Father O'Flynn there is a good deal of very tolerable Irish "atmosphere"; a ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, May 13, 1914 • Various
... publications of Newbery and Harris, early in the nineteenth century, we encounter examples more nearly typical of the child's book as we regard it to-day. Among them Harris's "Cabinet" is noticeable. The first four volumes, "The Butterfly's Ball," "The Peacock at Home," "The Lion's Masquerade," and "The Elephant's Ball," were reprinted a few years ago, with the original illustrations by Mulready carefully reproduced. A coloured series of sixty-two books, priced at one shilling and sixpence each (Harris), ...
— Children's Books and Their Illustrators • Gleeson White
... that we plant today What will you be when we're old and gray? "The savings bank of the squirrel and mouse, For robin and wren an apartment house, The dressing-room of the butterfly's ball, The locust's and katydid's concert hall, The school-boy's ladder in pleasant June, The school-girl's tent in the July noon. And my leaves shall whisper them merrily, A tale of the children who ...
— Ohio Arbor Day 1913: Arbor and Bird Day Manual - Issued for the Benefit of the Schools of our State • Various
... said the fool, thinking. "Since Eve fell into sin, women's counsel is often the best. You, Nunkey, shall be turned into a butterfly, and not into a drone, and grace the flowers ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... egg of a butterfly has its ichneumon parasite, a microscopic wasp, which lays its own egg within the larger one, which ultimately hatches a wasp instead of ...
— My Studio Neighbors • William Hamilton Gibson
... and pick orchids," Bertram suggested, leaning over the gate. "Just see how pretty they are! The scented white butterfly! It loves moist bogland. Now, Mrs. Monteith, wouldn't a few long sprays of that lovely thing look charming on ...
— The British Barbarians • Grant Allen
... the outer sill with Bob, it seemed all right. So that evening when the children's bedtime came, pansy flower was told by Pansy little girl what her kind mamma and uncle had planned for her benefit, and with what Pansy called a kiss, a very butterfly kiss it was, for the little girl was as afraid of hurting the pansy as if it had been a sensitive plant, the flower-pot was placed ...
— The Thirteen Little Black Pigs - and Other Stories • Mrs. (Mary Louisa) Molesworth
... out, and with the rising of the curtain the little drama of tenderness and cruelty held the stage. From the distance, Butterfly could be heard approaching, her voice coming nearer as the typical Puccini progressions followed her ascent. There was the marriage, the cursing of Butterfly by the Bonze, and the exquisite love duet, so full of passionate ...
— The Parts Men Play • Arthur Beverley Baxter
... loitered along a winding path above the inn, and made love to one another. Their journey had made them indolent, the afternoon was warm, and it seemed impossible to breathe a sweeter air. The flowers and turf, a wild strawberry, a rare butterfly, and suchlike little intimate things had become more interesting than mountains. Their flitting hands were always touching. ...
— Ann Veronica • H. G. Wells
... she always carried knitting or some other "handy work"; a white handkerchief was laid primly around the wrinkled throat and fastened with a pin containing a lock of gray hair; her cap was of black lace and lutestring ribbon, not one of the butterfly affairs that perch on the top of the puffs and frizzes of the modern old lady, but a substantial structure that covered her whole head and was tied securely under her chin. She talked in a sweet old treble with a little lisp, caused by the absence of teeth, and her laugh ...
— Aunt Jane of Kentucky • Eliza Calvert Hall
... that you had come back to Russia to cultivate the soil; you have come back to dangle after young girls in your old age. Directly the news of your freedom came, you threw up everything, forgot everything; you ran like a boy after a butterfly.".... ...
— A House of Gentlefolk • Ivan Turgenev
... it either, it seems. It's one of the clearwings—transparent. Here's a transparent silver one. But this new one is gold, transparent gold, and the spots are opaque gold.' His mouth fairly watered. 'I tell you, I will spend anything, pay anything, to get that gold butterfly. And if the natives can't or won't find it for me, my friend, I'll send for some one who can ...
— Master Tales of Mystery, Volume 3 • Collected and Arranged by Francis J. Reynolds
... with the girl, watching through her eyes a butterfly as it fluttered to rest on a flower and perched there, gently waving its ...
— The Inhabited • Richard Wilson
... and married a third time, died as the Princesse de Chimay. The ninth of Thermidor saved them both from the guillotine. In the days immediately subsequent they had abundant opportunity to display their light but clever natures. Mme. Beauharnais, as well as her friend, unfolded her wings like a butterfly as she escaped from the bars of her cell. Being a Creole, and having matured early, her physical charms were already fading. Her spirit, too, had reached and passed its zenith; for in her letters of that time she describes herself as listless. Nevertheless, in ...
— The Life of Napoleon Bonaparte - Vol. I. (of IV.) • William Milligan Sloane
... herself), she is not displeased. She will be a countess and an ambassadress; she will have infinite jewels; her husband will probably be handsome and agreeable; he will certainly dance with her, and may very possibly not object to joining in innocent sports like butterfly-catching. So she sets off to Berlin quite cheerfully, and the meeting takes place. Alas! the count is a "civil count" (as Beatrice says) enough, but he is the reverse of handsome and charming. ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 2 - To the Close of the 19th Century • George Saintsbury
... with eagerness. She flitted about like a butterfly, bent on choosing the best position for the desired snap-shot. Blanche, Mabel, and Elsie came hurrying up anxious to join the group, and fixed themselves ...
— The Jolliest School of All • Angela Brazil
... Me boy!" he said tenderly. "The old house at Exham is not a futile ruin. 'Tis the cocoon that gave birth to the butterfly wings of a great hope. Look up, Still! You've friends with you till ...
— Still Jim • Honore Willsie Morrow
... breathe; and I put myself all into that. I look and listen. The bees buzz and hum in the hive; a dove sits on the roof and coos; a hen comes along with her chickens to peck up crumbs; or a sparrow flies in, or a butterfly—that's a great treat for me. Last year some swallows even built a nest over there in the corner, and brought up their little ones. Oh, how interesting it was! One would fly to the nest, press close, feed a young one, and off again. Look again: the other would be ...
— A Sportsman's Sketches - Volume II • Ivan Turgenev
... at teas, at the theater, who think of little but dress and gossip, or of the latest novels and music, who evade their natural duties of motherhood or give over care of home and children to hired servants, that they may be freer to live the butterfly life, are still too little rebuked by their hard-working sisters and by men. We must impress it upon all that the inheritance of money does not excuse laziness; if the pressure to earn a living is removed, there are numberless ways in which the rich can serve, privileged ways, happy ways, which ...
— Problems of Conduct • Durant Drake
... the fly is just; but are not provocations an element in the interest of every pursuit, the pepper which flavours all pleasant occupation? I collect butterflies, and my friends think I am a man to be envied because I have such a taste. Do they suppose a butterfly catcher has no provocations? Was it seventeen or seventy times (I forget) in one page that I laid down my pen, put off my spectacles and caught up my net to rush after that brute of a Papilio polymnestor, who just came to the duranta flowers to ...
— Behind the Bungalow • EHA
... by Gregory Nazianzen (A.D. 370), "Ad Hellenium pro Monarchis Carmen:" "Silver and gold some bring to God, or the fine thread by Seres spun."[251] Basil illustrates the idea of the resurrection by the birth of the butterfly from ...
— Needlework As Art • Marian Alford
... is like May. Yesterday I saw bluebirds and a butterfly; so this whiter of a fortnight is over. I fancy there is a trifle less coughing in the camp. We hear of other stations in the Department where the mortality, chiefly from yellow fever, has been frightful. Dr. —— is rubbing his hands professionally ...
— Army Life in a Black Regiment • Thomas Wentworth Higginson
... of pewter, terra-cotta, or wood, in every shape of bird, or beast, or fish. Rafael had a bird-whistle, Edith's was a yellow butterfly, and the tops which they spun were dressed like dolls, ...
— Rafael in Italy - A Geographical Reader • Etta Blaisdell McDonald
... Lettice. I believe she was born with a company voice in her mouth; and she would flit like a butterfly from one grown-up person to another, chit-chattering, whilst some of us stood pounding our knuckles in our pockets, and tying our legs into knots, as we wished the drawing-room carpet would open and let us through into the cellar ...
— Melchior's Dream and Other Tales • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... few or none had known and loved you in the world: May be! flower that's full-blown tempts the butterfly, not flower that's furled. But more learned sense unlocked you, loosed the sheath and let expand Bud to bell and out-spread flower-shape at the least warm touch of hand —Maybe throb of heart, beneath which,—quickening ...
— Robert Browning • Edward Dowden
... mischievous smile she could scarcely smother, Yet a glance, in its daring, half-awed and shy, She added,—"While they were about it, mother, I wish they'd just finished the butterfly!" ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 25, November, 1859 • Various
... to No. 227, but without handle; with a double scalloped band around the constricted portion, and a single one around the mouth; figure of an insect on the upper half; apparently intended to represent a butterfly or large moth. ...
— Illustrated Catalogue Of The Collections Obtained From The Indians Of New Mexico And Arizona In 1879 • James Stevenson
... night, the Spirit of God will touch that man's heart and transform him into one of the holiest and most useful of men. It has often occurred in the past and will doubtless often occur in the future. There sits before you a woman, who is a mere butterfly of fashion. She seems to have no thought above society and pleasure and adulation. Why preach to her? Without the regenerating power of the Holy Spirit, it would be foolishness and a waste of time; but you can never tell, perhaps ...
— The Person and Work of The Holy Spirit • R. A. Torrey
... 'yes'! He come," said Toby, in awe. "An' what d'ye s'pose? He done buyed a heap of Corson's spec'mens an' paid him more'n a hundred dollars for 'em. And that ain't countin' that there dead-head butterfly ye made sech ...
— Nan Sherwood at Pine Camp - or, The Old Lumberman's Secret • Annie Roe Carr
... from the arms of sleep, And, like the sky-bird, hail the bright-cheek'd morn With gleeful song, then o'er the bladed mead To chase the blue-wing'd butterfly, or play With curly streams; or, led by watchful Love, To hear the chorus of the trooping waves, When the young breezes laugh them into life! Or listen to the mimic ocean roar Within the womb of spiry sea-shell wove,— From sight and sound to catch intense delight, And infant gladness ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 12, No. 336 Saturday, October 18, 1828 • Various
... of Immortality. To the occultist, the physical body is merely a temporary vehicle for the soul which the latter discards at the proper time. It has nothing to do with the real being of the soul. It is merely the shell which is discarded by the soul, as the chrysalis shell is discarded by the butterfly when it spreads its wings for its aerial flight into ...
— Mystic Christianity • Yogi Ramacharaka
... watched Exploding Eggs, with a piece of box not bigger than a fat man's shirt-front, take wave after wave, standing on the board, dashing far across the breakers to the shore, with never a failure, while Gedge's little half-breed daughter, a beautiful fairy-like creature, darted upon the sea as a butterfly ...
— White Shadows in the South Seas • Frederick O'Brien
... battery. The swinging of a spider's web across a garden walk led to the invention of the suspension bridge. The oscillation of a lamp in the temple of Pisa led Galileo to invent the measurement of time by a pendulum. A butterfly's wing suggested the combination of colors. So little things are suggestive ...
— Wit, Humor, Reason, Rhetoric, Prose, Poetry and Story Woven into Eight Popular Lectures • George W. Bain
... divinely dressed and in a fashion too young for her age, counting her twenty-five years as a wife. Nevertheless, she wore well a gown with small pink stripes, a cape embroidered and edged with lace, boots pretty as the wings of a butterfly. She carried in her hand a ...
— A Street Of Paris And Its Inhabitant • Honore De Balzac
... But the butterfly, you will say, a flying flower! I dream of one that should be as large as a hundred worlds, with wings whose shape, beauty, colors, and motion I cannot even express. But I see it—it flutters from star to star, refreshing them and perfuming them with the light and ...
— Selected Writings of Guy de Maupassant • Guy de Maupassant
... their hats and broad-brimmed, Lined with pale pink lining, On them dew-drops often shining— Yes, yes, yes. No butterfly goes near them, No brown bee hums to cheer them, And what these Quaker folks are called I want ...
— Harper's Young People, September 21, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... cannot see that these actions, performed without experience by the young, and in nearly the same manner by each individual, performed with eager delight by each breed, and without the end being known,—for the young pointer can no more know that he points to aid his master, than the white butterfly knows why she lays her eggs on the leaf of the cabbage,—I cannot see that these actions differ essentially from true instincts. If we were to see one kind of wolf, when young and without any training, as soon as it scented ...
— On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection • Charles Darwin
... that she was William's well-spring of poesy. Not that the journal is necessarily involved. No need to suppose that he even read it. But that she could make him see, and be moved by, what she had seen is proved by this: "17th.— ... I saw a robin chasing a scarlet butterfly this morning"; and "Sunday, 18th.— ... William wrote the poem on The Robin and the Butterfly." No, beautiful beyond praise as the journals are, it is certain that she was more beautiful than they. And what a discerning, illuminative eye she had! "As I lay down on the grass, I observed the glittering ...
— In a Green Shade - A Country Commentary • Maurice Hewlett
... young lady, and before long, too. Laura LaRue's daughter isn't going to settle down to being either a butterfly or a blue-stocking. You are going on the stage and you know it. No use, Holiday. You won't be able to hold her back. It's in the blood. You may be able to dam the tide for a time, but ...
— Wild Wings - A Romance of Youth • Margaret Rebecca Piper
... hate you, Milady, because of your Order—because of your nation—because of your fine, dainty ways—because of your aristocrat's insolence—because you treat my soldiers like paupers—because you are one of those who do no more to have the right to live than the purple butterfly that flies in the sun, and who oust the people out of their dues as the cuckoo kicks the poor birds that have reared it, out of the nest of down, to which it never has carried a twig ...
— Under Two Flags • Ouida [Louise de la Ramee]
... corrupt, nor thieves break through and steal; and is within the reach of every person's imitation, for the poorest may thus turn their necessary expenses into virtuous actions. In this they excel others, as much as the bee does the common butterfly; they both feed on the same flowers, but while the butterfly only gains a transient subsistence and flies and flutters in all its gaudy pride, the bee lays up a precious store for its future well-being, and may brave ...
— A Description of Millenium Hall • Sarah Scott
... it well. He added a touch or two of luxury, the faintest aroma of splendor. Pettingill had designed the curiously wayward table, with its comfortable atmosphere of companionship, and arranged its decoration of great lavender orchids and lacy butterfly festoons of white ones touched with yellow. He had wanted to use dahlias in their many rich shades from pale yellow to orange and deep red, but Monty held out for orchids. It was the artist, too, who had found in a rare and happy moment the ...
— Brewster's Millions • George Barr McCutcheon
... dumb darlings, the spotted flycatchers, seem to have absolutely nothing to say, and accordingly have the wit to hold their tongues; and devote the whole of their small intellect to sitting on the iron rails, flitting off them a yard or two to catch a butterfly in air, and flitting back ...
— Prose Idylls • Charles Kingsley
... money, and his lady friend went off with his dearest companion, to whose purse she had taken a sudden liking. Villiers, deserted by all his acquaintances, sank lower and lower in the social scale, and the once brilliant butterfly of fashion became a billiard marker, then a tout at races, and finally a bar loafer with ...
— Madame Midas • Fergus Hume
... swimming. I went to the aquarium where stranger kinds of fishes swam behind glass—fishes shaped like toy-kites, and fishes shaped like sword-blades, and fishes that seemed to turn themselves inside out, and funny, pretty fishes of butterfly-colors, that move like dancing-girls, ...
— Kokoro - Japanese Inner Life Hints • Lafcadio Hearn
... enough to pierce the frozen earth, which, therefore, produces nothing but moss. No sweet ears of corn grow to reward the toils of the woman; no wild flowers spring up for the youthful maiden to pluck. The child wanders forth to gather no berries; no bird of sweet music sings on the branch; no butterfly flits in the valley. Chill and dreary are the autumns, cold and bitter the winters; men drink melted ice, when in other lands buds are bursting open, and wear for a summer garment the skins of the otter and the beaver. Instead of ...
— Traditions of the North American Indians, Vol. 1 (of 3) • James Athearn Jones
... nets most frequently hauled on board: rays, including spotted rays that were oval in shape and brick red in color, their bodies strewn with erratic blue speckles and identifiable by their jagged double stings, silver-backed skates, common stingrays with stippled tails, butterfly rays that looked like huge two-meter cloaks flapping at middepth, toothless guitarfish that were a type of cartilaginous fish closer to the shark, trunkfish known as dromedaries that were one and a half feet long and had humps ending ...
— 20000 Leagues Under the Seas • Jules Verne
... plainly that his rule is to change the least that can possibly be changed. Yet the gentle grace, the lingering musical sweetness, the taking simplicity, of the wise old poet, vanishes—brushed away like the down from the butterfly's wing, by the lightest ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Vol 58, No. 357, July 1845 • Various
... announced itself to the two chairs accidentally placed there, as an aid to polite conversation, a graceful trifle in china to be chatted over by callers, as they airily trifled away the visiting moments of a butterfly existence, in that rugged old village on the Cumberland Fells. The very footstool could not keep the floor, but got upon a sofa, and there-from proclaimed itself, in high relief of white and liver-coloured wool, a favourite spaniel ...
— The Lazy Tour of Two Idle Apprentices • Charles Dickens
... Fifteenth Duke notwithstanding. They take no more keep than rough ones, and they're always saleable. That red short-horn heifer belongs to the Butterfly Red Rose tribe; she was carried thirty miles in front of a man's saddle the day she was calved. We suckled her on an old brindle cow; she doesn't look the worse for it. Isn't she a beauty? ...
— Robbery Under Arms • Thomas Alexander Browne, AKA Rolf Boldrewood
... sitting on the top of the cars with a mill party from Missouri going west for his health. Desolate flat prairie upon all hands. Here and there a herd of cattle, a yellow butterfly or two; a patch of wild sunflowers; a wooden house or two; then a wooden church alone in miles of waste; then a windmill to pump water. When we stop, which we do often, for emigrants and freight travel ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 23 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... departure. Could he have been ignorant that ours is, in general, greater than the Periclean for the very reason that the Divinity is neither the devil nor a bungler; that three thousand years of human consciousness is not nothing; that a whole is greater than its part, and a butterfly than a chrysalis? But it was the assumption that it was therefore in any way great in the abstract that occasioned my profound astonishment, and indeed contempt. Civilisation, if it means anything, can only mean the art by which men live musically together—to the lutings, as it were, of ...
— Prince Zaleski • M.P. Shiel
... materials necessary, then worked for days and some nights in the basement. Finally, the thing was completed. It had a twist-rubber propeller, and would actually fly a little—not much. But it was a thing of beauty, and its varnished butterfly planes spread majestically and glistened in the sunlight. There were the stays and the rudder, the pilot's seat and the complicated triggers by which it was supposed to be governed. Well, the boys came from far and near to look at it, and the biggest fun the owner ...
— "Say Fellows—" - Fifty Practical Talks with Boys on Life's Big Issues • Wade C. Smith
... who loves him,... he buys a packet of bonbons in the streets and eats them, and it is false. An exquisite artist; physically and spiritually he is art; he is the muse herself, or rather, he is one of the minions of the muse. Passing from flower to flower he goes, his whole nature pulsing with butterfly voluptuousness. He has written poems as good as Hugo, as good as Leconte de Lisle, as good as Banville, as good as Baudelaire, as good as Gautier, as good as Coppee; he never wrote an ugly line in his life, but he never wrote ...
— Confessions of a Young Man • George Moore
... a feast, Dreams of delight when the feasting has ceased, Poppy and rose, Drain them and doze; This is a song that the butterfly knows. ...
— Child Songs of Cheer • Evaleen Stein
... the butterfly courted the bee, And the owl the porcupine; If churches were built on the sea, And three times one were nine; If the pony rode his master, And the buttercups ate the cows; And the cat had the dire disaster To be worried, sir, by a mouse; And mamma, sir, sold her baby, To a ...
— Memories and Anecdotes • Kate Sanborn
... as if in flight. They were great barges coming from Noirmoutiers, laden to the very edge with white salt sparkling all over with shining spangles, and worked by picturesque crews; men with the great three-cornered hat of the Breton salt-worker, and women whose great cushioned caps with butterfly wings were as white and glittering as the salt. Then there were coasting vessels like floating drays, their decks piled with sacks of flour and casks; tugs dragging interminable lines of barges, or perhaps some three-master of Nantes arriving from the other side of the world, ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern — Volume 11 • Various
... said Margaret, contemplating a butterfly of the penwiper class, whose constitution her dexterous needle had been rendering less rickety than Blanche had ...
— The Daisy Chain, or Aspirations • Charlotte Yonge
... sixteen pounds sterling, were the means of subsistence for herself and her family. When she first returned to Cartside a few religious friends called to welcome her home. The gay and wealthy part of her former acquaintances, who, like the butterfly, spread their silken wings only to bask in the warmth of a summer sun, found not their way to the lonely cottage of an afflicted widow. Her worth, though in after-life rendered splendid by its own fruits, was at this time ...
— The Power of Faith - Exemplified In The Life And Writings Of The Late Mrs. Isabella Graham. • Isabella Graham
... all his transports the lure was still there. She was like a butterfly, he thought, yellow and white or blue and gold, fluttering over a hedge of ...
— The Titan • Theodore Dreiser
... life-principle is my principle. It is the seed from which I spring. It is my blood, my breath, my brain. I cannot cut myself off from it; it cannot cut itself off from me. Having formed the mastodon to meet one set of needs and the butterfly to meet another, it will form, something to meet mine, even if something altogether new. The new—or what seems new to me—is apparently the medium in which it is most at home. It repeats itself never—not in two rosebuds, not in two snowflakes. Who ...
— The Conquest of Fear • Basil King
... exhausted. The huge male animal follows, and as he passes her, infuriated by her indestructible politeness, he sticks his head against her little one and says, threateningly, "What's the matter with you, anyway?" He could crush her like a butterfly, and, moreover, she is about ready to faint. But suddenly, in uncontrollable anger, she lifts that tiny gloved hand and catches the huge male animal a smart smack in the face. "Can't you be polite?" she hisses. Then she drops back, blushing, horrified by what she has done. She ...
— Your United States - Impressions of a first visit • Arnold Bennett
... a painted butterfly to dazzle him, my friend," said Mrs. Denison. "His eyes are too keen, and go below the surface at a glance. The woman he loves may regard the fact ...
— The Hand But Not the Heart - or, The Life-Trials of Jessie Loring • T. S. Arthur
... The butterfly—a flying flower - Wheels swift in flashing rings, And flutters round his quiet kin, With brave flame-mottled wings. The wild Pinks burst in crimson fire The Phlox' bright clusters shine, And Prairie-Cups are swinging free ...
— Pike County Ballads and Other Poems • John Hay
... Time whenever a man would fain lay hold of him. All created beings, from Behemoth to a butterfly, dread and fly (as best they may) that universal butcher—man. And as nothing is more carefully killed by the upper sort of mankind than Time, how can he help making off for his life when anybody wants ...
— George Bowring - A Tale Of Cader Idris - From "Slain By The Doones" By R. D. Blackmore • R. D. Blackmore
... are conditioned by the opportunity that nature or art furnishes for his spirit to exercise itself. In the reading of poetry, for example, we seek the expression of ourselves. Our first emotion is, perhaps, a simple, unreflecting delight, the delight which a butterfly must feel among the flowers or that of a child playing in the fields under the warm sun; it is a delight wholly physical,—pure sensation. A quick taking of the breath, the escape of a sigh, inarticulate and uncritical, are the ...
— The Enjoyment of Art • Carleton Noyes
... but impeccable," she laughed. "Well, I flittered and fluttered up and down the avenue, like a distracted butterfly. I spent a few hours in Tiffany's with ...
— Bambi • Marjorie Benton Cooke
... wrote, "when little Jenny had climbed to the top of the mast, resting on the powerful shoulders of Orso, and from this eminence, suspended above the earth, in danger of death, she outstretched her arms and poised like a butterfly, the circus became silent and all eyes and hearts followed with trembling the movements of this wonderful child. That he who saw her on the mast or on a horse," concluded the Saturday Review, "will never forget her, because the greatest painter in the world, even ...
— Sielanka: An Idyll • Henryk Sienkiewicz
... part of the time and could not attend to the education of his little girl as he would like to do. His wife was not of our faith and was also too busily occupied to look after the child. He did not mention that her occupation was that of society butterfly, who sacrificed homelife, husband and child in the pursuit of pleasure. Would Reverend Mother kindly undertake the charge of his little Nita's education, spiritual as well as intellectual? Would she be to the child what father and mother ...
— The Alchemist's Secret • Isabel Cecilia Williams
... fascinated Nick's gaze, there was a hole through the gristle of his right ear, scarred about as if it had been burned, and through this hole the fellow had tied a bow of crimson ribbon, like a butterfly alighted upon ...
— Master Skylark • John Bennett
... an acquaintance of yours, I believe, so I need not describe her, except to say that she is somewhat changed from the gay butterfly of fashion she used to be, and in time will make as demure a little Quakeress as one could wish to see. She visits constantly among my poor, who love her almost as well as they once loved ...
— The Rector of St. Mark's • Mary J. Holmes
... and, like most young persons in the agony of a primal disappointment, he believed that the world had now no charms for him, and that in future his existence would be little better than a long sad bore. He looked back upon his career of gaudy magnificence without regret, and felt like a blase butterfly, who would gladly return to the sober obscurity of the chrysalis. He found that wealth and station, though they might command the admiration of the world, could not insure him happiness; and he thought how readily he would resign all the gifts and glories which Fortune had showered on ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, No. 20, June, 1859 • Various
... and sewing something pinned to her knee; while a full-lipped, full-blooded little urchin, his trousers held up by a single gallows, stood beside her, impatiently twitching her gown to call her attention to a butterfly he had caught. Steavens, impressed by the tender and delicate modelling of the thin, tired face, had asked him if it were his mother. He remembered the dull flush that had burned up ...
— Youth and the Bright Medusa • Willa Cather
... species of lepidoptera in South Varanger, at 69 deg. 40' north latitude. Sandberg succeeded in following the development from the egg onward of some species of the extreme north. Oeneis bore, Schn., a purely Arctic butterfly, may be taken as an example. This species has never been found outside of Arctic regions, and even there occurs only in places of purely Arctic stamp. It flies from the middle of June onward, and lays its eggs on different species of grass. The eggs hatch ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 520, December 19, 1885 • Various |
