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More "Butterfly" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Broderip's, of Bristol, which entertained us very much. My father observed he had but very few butterflies, and he said, "No, sir, a circumstance which happened to me some time ago, determined me never to collect any more butterflies. I caught a most beautiful butterfly, thought I had killed it, and ran a pin through its body to fasten it to a cork: a fortnight afterward I happened to look in the box where I had left it, and I saw it writhing in agony: since that time ...
— The Life And Letters Of Maria Edgeworth, Vol. 1 • Maria Edgeworth
... the boy's education. Violence of direction in education falls flat: man is a lonely creature, and has to work out his career in his own way. To help the grub spin its cocoon is quite unnecessary, and to play the part of Mrs. Gamp with the butterfly in its chrysalis stage is to place ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 5 (of 14) • Elbert Hubbard
... midst of that fevered and delirious energy. He took her through the plant, elucidating the mechanical processes of the daily miracle of publication, more far-reaching than was ever any other voice of man, more ephemeral than the day of the briefest butterfly. Throughout, the visitor's pensive eyes kept turning from the creature to the creator, until, back in the trim quietude of his office, famed as the only orderly working-room of journalism, she ...
— Success - A Novel • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... the rare occasions when visitors were admitted, an unfinished landscape in oils was always on the easel, in a prominent place in his sitting room. He would invariably refer to it, telling one in his humorously unconvincing way that 'he had just put in the butterfly.' Those of us who had seen his work in the drawing class presided over by 'Bully' Wakeman at Portora were not likely to ...
— Oscar Wilde, Volume 1 (of 2) - His Life and Confessions • Frank Harris
... admire it, and say something about it. Harder and harder grew the frost, yet still the forest-clad hills possessed a something that drew the mind open to their largeness and grandeur. Earth is always beautiful—always. Without colour, or leaf, or sunshine, or song of bird and flutter of butterfly's wing; without anything sensuous, without advantage or gilding of summer—the power is ever there. Or shall we not say that the desire of the mind is ever there, and will satisfy itself, in a measure at least, even with ...
— Field and Hedgerow • Richard Jefferies
... 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 ...
— Herodias • Gustave Flaubert
... only incipient stages, tadpole states of men, as caterpillars are social, but the butterfly not. The true and finished man ...
— The American Mind - The E. T. Earl Lectures • Bliss Perry
... where the linnets nested, the mocking birds that sang all night long; the perfume of the jasmine, of the orange-blossoms, the pink flame of the peach trees in April, the ever-changing color of the mountains. And I remember Ninette, my little Creole mother, gay as a butterfly, carefree as a meadow-lark. 'Twas she who planted ...
— Cupid's Understudy • Edward Salisbury Field
... ways, and devoted to all kinds of animals, used to like sitting in a kitchen that was infested with these repulsive creatures, and told me that when she was alone they would run over her dress and were not in the least startled when she took them up. I have heard of a butterfly which used to come and sip sugar from the hand of a lady; and those who have kept spiders and ants declare that these intelligent creatures learn to distinguish their friends. So also fish, like the great ...
— Introduction to the Science of Sociology • Robert E. Park
... think I would rather be your bridegroom, Borghild." The memory was sweet but it was bitter too; and the bitterness rose and filled her heart. She threw her head back proudly, and laughed a strange, hollow laugh. "A bastard's bride, ha, ha! A fine tale were that for the parish gossips." A yellow butterfly lighted on her arm, and with a fierce frown on her face she caught it between her fingers. Then she looked pityingly on the dead wings, as they lay in her hand, and murmured between her teeth: "Poor thing! Why did you come in ...
— Tales From Two Hemispheres • Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen
... say that the father of all men and animals was the butterfly, Cherwit Make (earth-maker), who fluttered down from the clouds to the Blue Cliffs at the junction of the Verde and Salt Rivers, and from his own sweat made men. As the people multiplied they grew selfish and quarrelsome, so that Cherwit Make ...
— Myths And Legends Of Our Own Land, Complete • Charles M. Skinner
... of that transmutation to the senses of other men would be called 'death'.—Even as to caterpillars; in all probability the caterpillar dies, and he either does not see, which is most probable, or at all events he does not see the connection between the caterpillar and the butterfly, the beautiful Psyche ...
— The Life of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - 1838 • James Gillman
... keen old eye had not long to look before it saw the truth, and then, silently, the old man turned back. His hands trembled on the chair, and he slowly thrust them into his pockets, breathing hard through his nose. The boy expected an outbreak, but none came. A bee buzzed above them. A yellow butterfly zigzagged by. Blackbirds chattered in the firs. The screech of a peacock shrilled across the yard, and a ploughman's singing ...
— The Little Shepherd of Kingdom Come • John Fox
... mysterious woods; and when, in fancy, he looked beneath that veil into her eyes, as unfathomable as the ocean itself, he was struck dumb with reverence and wonder, for they held in keeping all the secrets of the moon and the stars, of dawn and sunset, of green things growing and flowers in bloom, of the butterfly in the crysalis and on the wing, of still waters ...
— The Dreamer - A Romantic Rendering of the Life-Story of Edgar Allan Poe • Mary Newton Stanard
... journeyed through life. 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" captured as ...
— A Labrador Doctor - The Autobiography of Wilfred Thomason Grenfell • Wilfred Thomason Grenfell
... like the butterfly, without volition or effort? Human appointments are different. Work is the inevitable, and with the proper tools, ...
— Short Story Writing - A Practical Treatise on the Art of The Short Story • Charles Raymond Barrett
... rudimental and the complete; corresponding with the two conditions of the worm and the butterfly. What we call "death," is but the painful metamorphosis. Our present incarnation is progressive, preparatory, temporary. Our future is perfected, ultimate, immortal. The ultimate life is ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 2 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... deep-seated gratitude to her for his son, Anthony Dexter cherished no emotion for the sake of his dead wife. She had come and gone across his existence as a butterfly crosses a field, touching lightly here and there, but lingering not at all. Except for Ralph, it was as though she had never been, so little did she now ...
— A Spinner in the Sun • Myrtle Reed
... like fire. The Chevalier du Halga was still there, and the last deal of a lively mouche was going on. Charlotte de Kergarouet, in despair at Calyste's indifference, was paying attention to his father as a means of promoting her marriage. Calyste wandered hither and thither like a butterfly which had flown into the room by mistake. At last, when mouche was over, he drew the Chevalier du Halga into the great salon, from which he sent away Mademoiselle ...
— Beatrix • Honore de Balzac
... with its fresh bunches of blossoms was waving above the window, casting in flickering shadows upon the floor: the evergreens of the shrubbery twinkled in the sun, as the light breeze swept over them: the birds were chirruping all about, and a yellow butterfly alighted and trembled on the window-sill at the moment. It was one of the softest and gayest days of spring; and the best thing was to do nothing but enjoy it. She moved to the south window with her work, and sewed or let the wind blow upon her face ...
— Deerbrook • Harriet Martineau
... should pervert those opportunities into a mere platform for the display of a harmful badness. Evolution was not aiming at Belgravia when it set out on its long journey from the flaming mist of the nebula. We cannot suppose that Nature is content with the egoism of the social butterfly. The very blood of dead humanity cries ...
— The Mirrors of Downing Street - Some Political Reflections by a Gentleman with a Duster • Harold Begbie
... I exclaimed, a little surprised, surveying her dress of palest and softest Indian muslin; for she looked to me far too much of a butterfly for such serious work. "Do you really mean it; or are you one of the ten thousand modern young ladies who are in quest of a Mission, without understanding that Missions are unpleasant? Nursing, I can tell you, is not all crimped cap and ...
— Hilda Wade - A Woman With Tenacity Of Purpose • Grant Allen
... fragile silks and laces. Gillian kissed the top of his head, shook solemnly an insistent paw, and put him on one side. She moved to the dressing table and inspected herself critically in the big mirror. She looked with grave amusement. Was that Gillian Locke? She wondered did a butterfly feel more incongruous when it shed its dull grub skin. For so many years she had worn the sombre garb of the convent schoolgirl, the change was still new enough to delight and the natural woman within her responded to the fascination of pretty clothing. The dark draperies of the convent ...
— The Shadow of the East • E. M. Hull
... with me As with the flower; Blooming on its own tree For butterfly and bee Its summer morns: That I might bloom mine hour 20 A ...
— Goblin Market, The Prince's Progress, and Other Poems • Christina Rossetti
... the red sham to her skirt, Sissy was able to chaperon her senior all the more effectively at Crosby Pemberton's party. Irene danced like a thing whose vocation is motion. She was a twig in a rain-storm, a butterfly seeking sweets, a humming-bird whose wing beat the air with a very rhapsody of rhythm. She was on the floor with the first note Professor Trask struck, and she danced down the side of the little hall, when the waltz was over and all the other couples had seated themselves, as ...
— The Madigans • Miriam Michelson
... own I like not Johnson's turgid style, That gives an inch the importance of a mile; Casts of manure a wagon-load around To raise a simple daisy from the ground; Uplifts the club of Hercules—for what?— To crush a butterfly or brain a gnat; Creates a whirlwind from the earth to draw A goose's feather or exalt a straw; Sets wheels on wheels in motion—such a clatter! To force up one poor nipperkin of water; Bids ocean labour with tremendous roar, To heave a cockle-shell upon the shore. Alike in every theme his ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 14, Issue 394, October 17, 1829 • Various
... answered her, "since being dressed as a butterfly does not prevent one from being an insect, and the best sustained preservation lasts at most till the ...
— The Memoirs of Madame de Montespan, Complete • Madame La Marquise De Montespan
... occupied in surveying the luxuries of a box at the top of the house, called a bed-chamber, which seemed just large and just hot enough for a chrysalis, and a corresponding box below, termed the back parlour, which would certainly not have been large enough for the said chrysalis when turned into a butterfly, Mr. Morris Brown, after duly, expatiating on the merits of Clarence, proceeded to speak of the terms; these were soon settled, for Clarence was yielding and the lady not above three times as extortionate as ...
— The Disowned, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... protruding and hanging out. An ox feeding, and putting up his muzzle to pull down a mouthful of hay; but seeing me, a stranger, in the upper part of the field, he remains long gazing, and finally betakes himself to feeding again. A solitary butterfly flitting to and fro, blown slightly on its course by a cool September wind,—the coolness of which begins to be tempered by a bright, glittering sun. There is dew on the grass. In front, beyond the lower spread of forest, ...
— Passages From The American Notebooks, Volume 1 • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... silence he has heard Talking bee and ladybird, And the butterfly has flown O'er him as he ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 14 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... necessity of 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
... his fingertips that Selincourt was watching him with an amused smile, Lawrence returned Mrs. Cleve's nod with less than his usual ease. Her eye ranged on from Selincourt, to whom she waved a butterfly salute, over the rather faded elegance of Laura Clowes and the extremely youthful charms of Isabel: apparently she did not admire Lawrence's ladies: she spoke to her cavalier, an elderly, foreign-looking man with a copper complexion and curly dark hair, and they laughed together. What ensued between ...
— Nightfall • Anthony Pryde
... her head down the dark limbs to her feet. Deep silence prevailed. The head of the Nubian was thrown back as if in a rigid swoon but above it the crotals still tinkled with an extraordinary languor, a dying vibration, quick and soft as the wing flutterings of a captured butterfly. Her eyes grew dim but in their inner depths glittered two sparks; the face remained severe, impersonal, but upon the sensuous red lips of that sphinx-like mouth a smile trembled, faint as the dying sound of ...
— The Satyricon, Complete • Petronius Arbiter
... feathery, crimson sea-weeds of the most delicate tracery. It is much to be regretted that these lower marine animals are not better known. The plumage of the tropical birds, the down on the most brilliant butterfly's wing, are not more beautiful in coloring than the hues of many Radiates, and there is no grace of motion surpassing the movements of some of them in their native element. The habit of keeping marine animals ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 57, July, 1862 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... stooping, stood alone in the middle of the room between the rows of butterfly cases. "Ach! is it you, my friend?" he said sadly, peering through his glasses. A drab sack-coat of alpaca hung, unbuttoned, down to his knees. He had a Panama hat on his head, and there were deep furrows on his pale cheeks. "What's the matter now?" I asked ...
— Lord Jim • Joseph Conrad
... emergency, they hit upon the expedient of dismissing their servant, and starving themselves through the winter and spring, for the purpose of making a display in the summer; and this last they were now doing. Eugenia fluttered like a butterfly, sometimes in white satin, sometimes in pink, and again in embroidered muslin; while her mother, a very little disgusted with society, but still determined to brave it through, held aside her cambric wrapper and made faces over three glasses of spring water in the morning, drowned herself ...
— Dora Deane • Mary J. Holmes
... Oh dear, what a horrid thing it is to be poor!" and Jessie surveyed the shabby little shoes affectionately, as her eyes filled with tears; for the road looked very rough and steep now. when she remembered how she used to dance through life as happy as a butterfly in a garden full of ...
— A Garland for Girls • Louisa May Alcott
... cabin of that peerless steamer, the New World, and a splendid company were assembled about the table. Among the passengers thus prepared for gastronomic duty, was a little creature of the genus Fop, decked daintily as an early butterfly, with kids of irreproachable whiteness, "miraculous" neck-tie, and spider-like quizzing glass on his nose. The little delicate animal turned his ...
— The Book of Anecdotes and Budget of Fun; • Various
... a vision of a bright butterfly with "dye-dusty wings" in stiff, glass-covered brittleness. He wondered if marrying might ...
— Old Crow • Alice Brown
... metallic starlings by the dozen, and little green pigeons—for those domiciled come and go at all hours of the day. Occasionally a sulphur-crested cockatoo comes sailing down to the diminishing pool through interwoven leafage noiselessly as a butterfly; but scrub fowls, scared by the apparition in white, scamper off with a clatter, scattering the dead leaves. In such narrow quarters, birds are under restraint, and show anxiety and apprehension. There is no sport or play. ...
— Tropic Days • E. J. Banfield
... returned, with heightened color. "We will not refer to this again;" and she brushed away a butterfly that was fluttering about her conceitedly in its ...
— The Queen of Sheba & My Cousin the Colonel • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... and her weary aching eyes gathering a few impressions in a passive way. On the walls hung dimly seen portraits strangely familiar to her. The man in a green dressing gown with floating hair had a face she knew; so had the lady in the yellow ruff. And was that not the old crest, the Delavie butterfly, with the motto, Ma Vie et ma Mie, carved on the mantelpiece? Thus she knew that she must be in Delavie House, and felt somewhat less desolate as she recognised several portraits as duplicates of those at the Great ...
— Love and Life • Charlotte M. Yonge
... Bridal of earth and sky. Bride. Bridegroom. Bridle (tongue). Brightness of sun. Bright side of child-life. Broom. Brother (bone). (younger). Brotherhoods. Brother-stars. Bruises. "Bub." Bube. Bud. Buddha. Bulbulhezar. "Bull-roarer." Buried armies. Buschgroszmutter. Butter. Butterfly. Butz. ...
— The Child and Childhood in Folk-Thought • Alexander F. Chamberlain
... step, and the entomologist may revel to his heart's content among gaudily coloured Heliconiae, Hesperiae, and Erycinae, or watch the larger butterflies of the restricted genus Papilio, slowly winging their lazy flight among the trees just beyond the reach of his insect net. A common butterfly here (Peridromia amphinome) has the singular habit of frequenting the trunks and limbs of the trees where it rests with expanded wings, and generally manages adroitly to shift its position, and escape when swept at with the net. Some large ...
— Narrative Of The Voyage Of H.M.S. Rattlesnake, Commanded By The Late Captain Owen Stanley, R.N., F.R.S. Etc. During The Years 1846-1850. Including Discoveries And Surveys In New Guinea, The Louisiade • John MacGillivray
... card, although I love play. I go much in society; I shine there, and walk home to save the cost of a carriage. My door-keeper cleans my rooms and keeps my linen in order. My private life is sad, dull, and humiliating. It is the black chrysalis of the bright butterfly which you know. That is what Prince Panine is, my dear Jeanne. A gentleman of good appearance, who lives as carefully as an old maid. The world sees him elegant and happy, and its envies his luxury; but this luxury is as deluding as watch-chains ...
— Serge Panine, Complete • Georges Ohnet
... change!" thought Doctor Mack. "It seems only yesterday that Walter started for college, a bashful, unformed boy, full of good resolutions, and determined to distinguish himself in scholarship. Now he has become a gay butterfly. And, what is worse, he has learned to deceive his old guardian, and his chief aim seems to be to have a good time. What can I do to ...
— Walter Sherwood's Probation • Horatio Alger
... dozen turns in the air, and the point of it came down lightly, like a butterfly, on the man's shoulder. He lowered it further, as if seeking a particular spot, and then, deliberately, he pushed it in as ...
— The Vultures • Henry Seton Merriman
... mass of red-gold hair, as stupid as she was sly, and as rich as she was spendthrift, the lovely Olimpia had been sent adventuring to the bees of Ferrara, not as lacking honey for Venice, but as being too great a treasure for her mother's house. Her mother was La Farfalla—a swollen butterfly in these days—and frankly said that she could not afford such a daughter. Olimpia had no instructions; in fact, needed none. She went cheerfully out to what Monna Nanna and the Blessed Virgin should prepare for ...
— Little Novels of Italy • Maurice Henry Hewlett
... his knees. There was only one other man breakfasting. He was a small, wiry person, white of hair, and spectacled, and was at that moment curiously employed. He had pinned to the table a small butterfly, yellow, with tiny dots on the wings. He was critically inspecting his find through a ...
— A Splendid Hazard • Harold MacGrath
... 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 ...
— Poems • William Cullen Bryant
... little girl. Uncle Elbert," said Varney, "is a bit of a social butterfly. Mrs. Carstairs is an earnest domestic character. As I gather, that was what they clashed on—the idea of what a home ought to be. When the split came, Mrs. Carstairs took the child and Uncle Elbert was willing enough to have her do it. That was natural enough, Peter. ...
— Captivating Mary Carstairs • Henry Sydnor Harrison
... word. His heavy lids were dropped over his deep-set eye; he stood motionless, nervously fiddling with his butterfly net—awkwardness, and, as it seemed, irresponsiveness, in his ...
— Robert Elsmere • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... of mysterious flutes; As if the music of a god's good-will Had taken on material attributes In blooms, like chords; and in the water-gleam, That runs its silvery scales from stream to stream; In sunbeam bars, up which the butterfly, A golden note, vibrates then flutters on— Inaudible tunes, blown on the pipes of Pan, That have assumed a visible entity, And drugged the air with beauty so, a Faun, Behold, I seem, and ...
— Myth and Romance - Being a Book of Verses • Madison Cawein
... all of these the learned gentleman knows nothing. With all these wretched beings, hard, raw reality wipes off the poetic coloring more easily than does the hand the colored dust of the wings of a butterfly. One look, cast by the professor at those unnumbered female sufferers, would have seriously disturbed his poetically colored picture, and spoiled his concept. The women, whom he sees, make up but a trifling minority, and that ...
— Woman under socialism • August Bebel
... professor producing his revolver, a weapon that might have proved fatal to a butterfly, but certainly would not be of any effect against the shaggy foes ...
— The Boy Aviators' Polar Dash - Or - Facing Death in the Antarctic • Captain Wilbur Lawton
... many female women together in your born days. Think of it, thousands and thousands with crimson books fluttering in their hands, as if each woman had caught a great red butterfly and was holding him out by the wings. All these female women were rigged out in gorgeous dresses, rustling, moving, and flaming with all sorts of colors, like a hillside covered with gorgeous flowers, broken up ...
— Phemie Frost's Experiences • Ann S. Stephens
... not misunderstand the mechanical view of things. When we use the word "machine," we call before our minds certain gross and relatively simple mechanisms constructed by man. Between such and a flower, a butterfly, and a human body, the difference is enormous. He who elects to bring the latter under the title of mechanism cannot mean that he discerns no difference between them and a steam engine or a printing press. He can only mean that he believes he might, could he attain to a glimpse into their ...
— An Introduction to Philosophy • George Stuart Fullerton
... would you answer? I could not answer, but should maintain my ground. Will you think over this, and some time, either by letter or when we meet, tell me what you think? Also I want to know whether your FEMALE mimetic butterfly is more beautiful and brighter than the male. When next in London I must get you to show me your kingfishers. My health is a dreadful evil; I failed in half my engagements during this ...
— The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin, Volume II • Francis Darwin
... that it was difficult to believe that the little insignificant creature in the cradle had really been the shapeless colourless chrysalis out of which this pretty, living, golden-locked boy had proceeded, like a beautiful butterfly. But—what seemed of more importance—along with this pleasing grace of physical form the boy soon displayed such eminent intellectual faculties as astonished both his foster-father and his teachers. Johannes grew up in a workshop which sent forth some ...
— Weird Tales, Vol. II. • E. T. A. Hoffmann
... stockings, and the little white feet were certainly much prettier to look at. "Now," cried Star, "I will go down-stairs and wait for Daddy Captain, and perhaps he will think I am a real fairy. Oh, wouldn't that be fun? I am sure I look like one!" and down the stairs she flitted like a golden butterfly. Once in the kitchen, the housewife in her triumphed for a moment over the fairy: she raked up the fire, put on more wood, and swept the hearth daintily. "But Ariel did such things for Prospero," she said. "I'm Ariel just the same, so I may as well fill the kettle and put some apples down ...
— Captain January • Laura E. Richards
... walked home, I saw such a sweet little white girl, carried in the arms of a great black woman, whose head looked like an immense butterfly, fastened on her shoulders; for she had a handkerchief on it, of all the colors of the rainbow, and it was spread out on ...
— The Little Nightcap Letters. • Frances Elizabeth Barrow
... of a lifetime of misery—one little day of bliss! Just one day in which there shall be no yesterday, and no to-morrow—one day of Elysium against years of Purgatory! Let us have our idyl, dear, as my mother and father had theirs—even though it must be as brief as a butterfly's existence, let us not deny ourselves that much. I ask only ...
— One Day - A sequel to 'Three Weeks' • Anonymous
... purpose; the skin is cast; the form is changed; a pair of wings, painted like the morning flowers, spring out, and presently the ugly worm that trailed its slow length through the dust is transformed into the beautiful butterfly, basking in the bright sunshine, the envy of the child and the admiration of the man. Is there no appeal in this wonderful and enchanting fact to man's highest reason? Does it contain no suggestion that man, representing the highest pinnacle of created life upon the globe, must undergo a final ...
— Hidden Treasures - Why Some Succeed While Others Fail • Harry A. Lewis
... gawped. I don't know as I could be blamed. Course, I'd seen bunchy little blondes before; but this was the first time I'd ever seen one that had draped herself in a rainbow. That's the only word for it. The thin, fluttery silk thing with the butterfly sleeves is shaded from cream white to royal purple, and underneath is one of these Dolly Varden gowns of flowered pink, set off by a Roman striped sash two feet wide. And when you add to that such details as gold shoes, ...
— Shorty McCabe on the Job • Sewell Ford
... Life is too 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 ...
— The Redemption of David Corson • Charles Frederic Goss
... Gaiety and Innocence! The moment when the fatal fruit was eaten, They parted ne'er to meet again; and Malice Has ever since been playmate to light Gaiety, From the first moment when the smiling infant Destroys the flower or butterfly he toys with, To the last chuckle of the dying miser, Who on his deathbed laughs his last to hear His wealthy neighbour has become ...
— The Talisman • Sir Walter Scott
... I knew," answered Nicky-Nan. "I glimpsed him followin' me, back along the path; an' when I turned about for a chat, he dodged behind a furze-bush like as if he was pouncin' on some valuable butterfly. 'That's odd,' I thought: for I'd never heard of his collectin' such things. But he's often told me how lonely a constable feels, an' I thought he might have picked up wi' the habit to amuse himself. So on I walked, waitin' for him to catch me up; an' by-an'-by turned about to look for en. ...
— Nicky-Nan, Reservist • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch (Q)
... tree produces sixty pounds of olives, which yield fifteen pounds of oil: the best quality selling at twelve sous the pound, retail, and ten sous, wholesale. The high hills of Languedoc still covered with snow. The horse-chestnut and mulberry are leafing; apple trees and peas blossoming. The first butterfly I have seen. After the vernal equinox, they are often six or eight months without rain. Many separate farm-houses, numbers of people in rags, and abundance of beggars. The mine of wheat, weighing thirty pounds, costs four ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson
... not sympathise with the extravagance of generosity any more than with that of presumption and credulity. He walked the straight line of life, and felt an equal contempt for the man who wandered up the hill-sides, no matter whether to chase a butterfly, or to catch a prospect of ...
— Zanoni • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... them is it that their summer, is a short one, and the parwong not abundant, or cholera might be added to the other dangers of Arctic residence. But the days of the buttercup and the daisy, and of the butterfly and the mosquito are few. With the winter comes the all-pervading snow, and the keen, bracing north-west wind, the rosy cheek and the frozen nose; but with it also comes rugged health and a steady diet of ...
— Schwatka's Search • William H. Gilder
... Time, and all such as can pay, For the Summer-green country are up and away; But what of the poor pale-faced waifs of the slums? Oh, the butterfly flits, and the honey-bee hums O'er the holt and the heather, the hill and the plain, But they flit and they hum for Town's children in vain; Unless—ah! unless—there is hope in that word!— Mrs. JEUNE'S kindly plea by the Public is heard. Heard? Everyone feels 'tis a duty to listen. The eyes ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 99, August 16, 1890 • Various
... into some higher life; if all that it changes in us is our body—the mere shell and husk of us— such a change as comes over the snake, when he casts his old skin, and comes out fresh and gay, or even the crawling caterpillar, which breaks its prison, and spreads its wings to the sun as a fair butterfly. Where is the sting of death, then, if death can sting, and poison, and corrupt nothing of us for which our friends have loved us; nothing of us with which we could do service to men or God? Where is the victory of the grave, if, so far from the grave holding us down, it frees us ...
— The Water of Life and Other Sermons • Charles Kingsley
... reaped an excellent harvest both of seeds and plants. Here as well as at every other place that we had landed upon within the tropic, the air is crowded with a species of butterfly, a great many of which were taken. It is doubtless the same species as that which Captain Cook remarks are so plentiful in Thirsty Sound. He says, 'We found also an incredible number of butterflies, so that for the space of three or ...
— The History of Australian Exploration from 1788 to 1888 • Ernest Favenc
... cast them in a mould whence the metal will issue in a different shape, so life liquefies the grub, a mere digesting machine, now thrown aside, and out of its running matter produces the perfect insect, bee, butterfly or beetle, the final manifestation of ...
— The Life of the Fly - With Which are Interspersed Some Chapters of Autobiography • J. Henri Fabre
... 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 over the fearful tales ...
— Army Life in a Black Regiment • Thomas Wentworth Higginson
... Collingwood, ses as 'ow a want of ox-eye-gent, being a French name, as 'e called the atmispeare, were fearful for pullin' people down, an' makin' 'em go off their food, which you hardly eats anythin', an' not bein' a butterfly it's expected as your ...
— The Mystery of a Hansom Cab • Fergus Hume
... said Beppo, brightening a little, as Beppina flung him a butterfly kiss and ran back to her room. She threw on her clothes in two minutes, fastened her long black hair with a hair-pin, and appeared again in the corridor just as Beppo returned from the kitchen with a pan of crumbs in ...
— The Italian Twins • Lucy Fitch Perkins
... beaten puppy. The smaller bird (apparently indigenous and a new species) was occasionally seen flying over the water during the day, but the larger ones come out almost exclusively at night. A light attracts them and Hamilton, with the aid of a lantern and a butterfly-net, tried to catch some. Others swooped about, well out of range, shrieking the while in an uncanny way. Numbers of them were secured afterwards by being dug out of their holes, Mac being just as keen to locate them as Hamilton was to secure ...
— The Home of the Blizzard • Douglas Mawson
... was trusted."—Nixon cor. "A packhorse which is driven constantly one way and the other, to and from market."—Locke cor. "By instructing children, whose affection will be increased."—Nixon cor. "He had a comely young woman, who travelled with him."—Hutchinson cor. "A butterfly, who thought himself an accomplished traveller, happened to light upon a beehive."—Inst., p. 267. "It is an enormous elephant of stone, which disgorges from his uplifted trunk a vast but graceful shower."—Ware cor. ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown
... in toward shore, looked like a giant butterfly; and her name, emblazoned in gold on her prow, was, appropriately, the Farfalla. Earlier in the season, with a green hull and a dingy brown sail, she had been, prosaically enough, the Maria. But since the advent of the girl all this had been changed. The Farfalla ...
— Jerry • Jean Webster
... sure they had gagged me, and bound me, and stripped me almost stark naked, and locked me up as fast as a butterfly, 'till she came and made me a man again; and therefore I have reason to love her the longest ...
— The Works of John Dryden, Vol. II • Edited by Walter Scott
... the rest, gathered more flowers than any of them. On being praised by Venus, her companions, being envious of her, told the goddess that Astery had been assisted by Cupid, Venus's son, in culling the blossoms. For this supposed offence she was immediately turned by Venus into a butterfly, and her wings, which before were white, were stained with the colours of all the flowers she had gathered, "for memory of her pretended crime, though crime none ...
— The Death of Saul and other Eisteddfod Prize Poems and Miscellaneous Verses • J. C. Manning
... wellnigh to overflowing. Most of them had brought silver—shall I say alas! or happily? Generally some pretty trifle which vouched for the sentiment and taste of the gift horse without seeming to tax the poor animal's resources. For instance, Mrs. Guy Sloane brought a silver butterfly intended for a pen-wiper, and my old friend Sam Bolles a silver paper-knife. Polly Flinders (I never remember her married name), who has babies of her own, gave Josephine a silver whistle, ostensibly intended for my grandson, and Gillespie ...
— The Opinions of a Philosopher • Robert Grant
... 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 Panpipes, ...
— Prince Zaleski • M.P. Shiel
... "red and yellow"—we must say what red and what yellow, and how much of each. A magenta-coloured dahlia and a lemon put together would set, I should think, any teeth on edge; yet ripe corn goes well with poppies, but not too many poppies—while if one wing of our butterfly were of its present yellow and the other wing of the same scarlet as the spot, it would be an ugly object instead of one of the delights of God. It is interesting, it is fascinating to take the hint from such things—to splash the golden wings of your Resurrection ...
— Stained Glass Work - A text-book for students and workers in glass • C. W. Whall
... The only one of the family that professed not to "think much of her," was the contemptuous Cornelius. Even Vavasor, who soon became a frequent caller, if he chanced to utter some admiring word concerning the pretty deft creature that had just flitted from the room like a dark butterfly, would not in reply draw from him more than a grunt and a half sneer. Yet now and then he might have been caught glowering at her, and would sometimes, seemingly in spite of himself, ...
— Weighed and Wanting • George MacDonald
... tired of displaying her feet and ankles (and a little more) in gales of wind on cliff and pier and parade, or climbing the Malvern Hills. When she puts on goloshes it nearly breaks his heart, and he would fly to other climes! He revels in her infantile pouts and jealousies and heart-burnings and butterfly delights and lisping mischiefs; her mild, innocent flirtations with beautiful young swells, whose cares ...
— Social Pictorial Satire • George du Maurier
... butterflies live on honey, but the previous caterpillar lives on vegetable leaves, while the maggots of large flies require flesh for their food. What induces the bee, who lives on honey, to lay up vegetable powder for its young? What induces the butterfly to lay its eggs on leaves when itself feeds on honey?... If these are not deductions from their own previous experience or observation, all the actions of mankind must ...
— Evolution, Old & New - Or, the Theories of Buffon, Dr. Erasmus Darwin and Lamarck, - as compared with that of Charles Darwin • Samuel Butler
... the Countess; 'but we both serve the same person, as you know - or if you do not, then I have the pleasure of informing you. Your conduct is so light - so light,' she repeated, the fan wavering higher like a butterfly, 'that perhaps you do not truly understand.' The Countess rolled her fan together, laid it in her lap, and rose to a less languorous position. 'Indeed,' she continued, 'I should be sorry to see any young woman in your situation. You began with every advantage ...
— Prince Otto • Robert Louis Stevenson
... of 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 accomplishments ...
— The Queen of Hearts • Wilkie Collins
... had always been, this new Margaret was to the old as a radiant butterfly to its chrysalis,—as the glory of the opening flower to the promise of the bud. And Hennie Penny's quickened intelligence, projecting itself into the future, could fathom heights and depths and greater ...
— Pearl of Pearl Island • John Oxenham
... the end of improvement and upward growth, the increase in real virtue, in knowledge, and in wisdom. Nature is a silent preacher which holds forth upon week-days as on Sabbaths. We see the acorn grow into the oak, the egg into the bird, the maggot into the butterfly. Shall we doubt, then, that the human soul, the most precious of all things, is also upon the upward path? And how can the soul progress save through the cultivation of virtue and self-mastery? What other way is there? There is none. We may say with confidence, then, that we are placed here ...
— Micah Clarke - His Statement as made to his three Grandchildren Joseph, - Gervas and Reuben During the Hard Winter of 1734 • Arthur Conan Doyle
... Donito Miguelito is staying with us now; you can fancy the joy of tending this saintly old man in his feebleness. I prepare myself the little dishes that please him; it is a sacred task; it is like feeding a holy butterfly. ...
— Fernley House • Laura E. Richards
... its spectacular course; Ione Burke, Polly Marshall, and Mrs. Vining were in the cast; tableau succeeded tableau; "I wish I were in Dixie," was sung, and the popular burlesque ended in the celebrated scene, "The Birth of the Butterfly in the Bower of Ferns," with the entire company kissing their finger-tips to a vociferous ...
— Ailsa Paige • Robert W. Chambers
... market."—LOCKE: Joh. Dict. "By instructing children, the affection of which will be increased."—Nixon's Parser, p. 136. "He had a comely young woman which travelled with him."—Hutchinson's Hist., i, 29. "A butterfly, which thought himself an accomplished traveller, happened to light upon a beehive."—Inst., p. 143. "It is an enormous elephant of stone, who disgorges from his uplifted trunk a vast but graceful shower."—Zenobia, i, 150. "He was met by a dolphin, who sometimes swam before him, ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown
... window of his brougham. He saw a chariot in distress, a chariot such as would have become an Ondine by the waters of the Serpentine, and the very last sort of equipage that you could expect to see smashed in the Poultry. It was really breaking a butterfly upon a wheel to crush its delicate springs, and crack its dark brown panels, soil its dainty hammer-cloth, and endanger the lives of its young coachman in a flaxen wig, and its two tall footmen in short coats, worthy ...
— Tancred - Or, The New Crusade • Benjamin Disraeli
... the pale butterfly, with its dainty spots of orange, he sees before him the stately halls of fair gold, with their slender saffron pillars, and is taught how the delicate drawing high upon the walls shall be traced in tender tones of orpiment, and repeated by ...
— The Gentle Art of Making Enemies • James McNeill Whistler
... then a pigeon flashed by the windows, sheering away high above the sunlit city. Once, wind-caught, or wandering into unaccustomed heights, high in the blue a white butterfly glimmered, still mounting to infinite altitudes, fluttering, ...
— The Common Law • Robert W. Chambers
... seem to indicate successive ages of grub and butterfly-life; certainly Rome has been a grub long enough. Let us hope the sun of Victor Emmanuel, the King of Gallant Men, will hasten the time when the Romans shall wing their way to the light of Liberty. These mockeries of architecture shall then stand as warning fingers to the Romans of the ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 2, No. 2, August, 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... hat, and her hair was coiled close about her exquisite head. White and black, regular, significant, antique—like a cameo of some Greek woman, long dead. She stood by a little table, one hand on it, the other like some butterfly against her gown.... It was like a pose—but unconscious, he ...
— The Wind Bloweth • Brian Oswald Donn-Byrne
... by my baby's bed That's open to the sky, There fluttered round and round my head A radiant butterfly. ...
— Ballads of a Bohemian • Robert W. Service
... 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
... bright worsted, hangs from the middle of the low ceiling; and hung against the wall, between two glaring woodcuts representing "Lady Caroline" in red and "Highland Mary" in blue, is a deep frame filled with worsted flowers, to which a butterfly and a bumble-bee have been pinned. Paper lacework depends from their kitchen-shelves, and common eggshells, artificially colored, decorate the lilac-bushes in the side yard. They are always making new mats or piecing quilts in a ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 26, July 1880. • Various
... the boy interested. I unfolded my story, as it occurred to me at the moment. 'Yes,' said I, 'ten years ago I saw her first. Dancing as a butterfly dances from flower to flower. Dancing on the stage—a fairy sprite. I loved her—worshiped her. It could never be. There in the dark of the wings, she told me so. And she shed a tear—a sweet tear ...
— Seven Keys to Baldpate • Earl Derr Biggers
... went merrily. Lady Honoria never enjoyed herself more in her life. She revelled in the luxurious gaiety around her like a butterfly in the sunshine. How good it all was—the flash of diamonds, the odour of costly flowers, the homage of well-bred men, the envy of other women. Oh! it was a delightful world after all—that is when one did ...
— Beatrice • H. Rider Haggard
... silvery wings, not feathered, but glistening almost as brilliantly as new-killed fish and with the same subtle play of colour, and these wings were not built on the plan of bird-wing or bat, Mr. Wace learned, but supported by curved ribs radiating from the body. (A sort of butterfly wing with curved ribs seems best to express their appearance.) The body was small, but fitted with two bunches of prehensile organs, like long tentacles, immediately under the mouth. Incredible as it appeared to Mr. Wace, the persuasion at last became irresistible, that it was these creatures which ...
— Tales of Space and Time • Herbert George Wells
... vital: the father of the baroness, a financier, who could be easily turned into a "heavy" conventional father, but, as played by Hermann Nissen, is a positively original characterisation. Max the butterfly (Ernst Dumcke) was wholly admirable. I shall be very much surprised if Der gute Ruf does not soon appear on the stage of other lands. Its picture of manners, its mundane environment, its epigrams and dramatic bravoura will make ...
— Ivory Apes and Peacocks • James Huneker
... some force outside of herself and stronger than gravitation, strong as destiny. It was only an inch to lean, and it was accomplished without volition on her part. Her shoulder touched his as lightly as a butterfly touches a flower, and just as lightly was the counter-pressure. She felt his shoulder press hers, and a tremor run through him. Then was the time for her to draw back. But she had become an automaton. Her actions had passed beyond the control of her will—she never thought of control or will in ...
— Martin Eden • Jack London
... of clever nonsense but sheering quickly away if any more serious strain of thought crept into the conversation. For an instant she might plumb the depths, the next she would be winging lightly over the surface again, while a spray of sparkling laughter rose and fell around her. With butterfly touch she opened the cupboard of memory, daring Peter the while with her eyes, skimming the thin ice of bygone times with the ...
— The Moon out of Reach • Margaret Pedler
... hear him. It seemed that the butterfly in her was crushed, as Dr. Forden and Miss Tracy gently ...
— The Dream Doctor • Arthur B. Reeve
... more questions, but she looked at her stepdaughter with an air of great surprise. For some weeks past she had had no pleasure in looking at Jacqueline. She began to be aware that near her, at her side, an exquisite butterfly was about for the first time to spread its wings—wings of a radiant loveliness, which, when they fluttered in the air, would turn all eyes away from other butterflies, which had lost some of their freshness during ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... home with Mistress Pauncefort, but Lady Annabel's little daughter was not in her usual lively spirits; many a butterfly glanced around without attracting her pursuit, and the deer trooped by without eliciting a single observation. At length she said, in a thoughtful tone, 'Mistress Pauncefort, I should have liked to have gone and seen the ...
— Venetia • Benjamin Disraeli
... fraught with inestimably good things; that is, the act of dying, and not merely the being dead. It is no doubt as necessary to the nature of the soul, to its psychology, its soul-life, as the changes of the worm, chrysalis, and butterfly, are to the insect. And thus, as in all other things, where sin abounded, grace much more abounds, and even death, like a cross, is turned into a ...
— Catharine • Nehemiah Adams
... on, the marsh in which he swam—and thus in his humble way a physiologist too, depicts the habits, size, appearance of the beings whereof he has to treat;—traces this slimy reptile through the mud, and describes his habits filthy and rapacious; prods down this butterfly with a pin, and depicts his beautiful coat and embroidered waistcoat; points out the singular structure of yonder more important animal, the megatherium of ...
— The Newcomes • William Makepeace Thackeray
... a mysterious vibration of reciprocity, an indescribable response to his love from the "soul" of the tree, the plant, and the earth. Let an animal enter upon the scene, or a bird, or a windblown butterfly, or a flickering flight of midges or gnats, their small bodies illumined by the sun. These new comers he also loves; and is obscurely conscious that between their "souls" and his own there vibrates a strange reciprocity. Let a human being enter, familiar or unfamiliar, and if his will ...
— The Complex Vision • John Cowper Powys
... stream), Lady Beaumont and all the Blues, with Lady Charlemont at their head." Again on December 1, "To-morrow there is a party purple at the 'blue' Miss Berry's. Shall I go? um!—I don't much affect your blue-bottles;—but one ought to be civil.... Perhaps that blue-winged Kashmirian butterfly of book-learning Lady Charlemont will be there" (see Letters, 1898, ii. 333, 358, ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 4 • Lord Byron
... tall grass without bending it, like a gigantic butterfly: not an obstacle was in sight; it was an ocean of verdure ...
— Five Weeks in a Balloon • Jules Verne
... spat contemptuously upon the floor at the holy name. "You are a fool, Angelique des Meloises, to speak thus to me! Do you know who and what I am? You are a poor butterfly to flutter your gay wings against La Corriveau; but still I like your spirit! women like you are rare. The blood of Exili could not have spoken bolder than you do; you want the life of a woman who has kindled the hell-fire of jealousy in your heart, and you want me to tell you ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby
... pretty butterfly, How beautiful its wings, How quick it flies! now low, now high, From flower to ...
— Rose of Affection • Anonymous
... bee nor glancing butterfly; They fled on rapid wings before the snow: Your sister lilies laid them down to die, ...
— Verses • Susan Coolidge
... with a tender flush of scarlet, like a rose bursting into blossom; a garland of lilies-of-the-valley confined the scattered curls of her small, round head,—and two peacock feathers quivered amusingly, like the feelers of a butterfly, above ...
— A Reckless Character - And Other Stories • Ivan Turgenev
... bending over our much tried and now positively flabbergasted damsel, brushed her hair with a butterfly kiss. ...
— Deadham Hard • Lucas Malet
... the storm in Galilee, Pity the homeless now, and the travelers by sea; Pity the little birds that have no nest, that are forlorn; Pity the butterfly, pity the honey bee; Pity the roses that are so helpless, and the unsheltered ...
— Defenders of Democracy • Militia of Mercy
... off-hand manner. The Cabbage may be called a lime plant, and a clay plant; but, like almost every other plant that is worth growing, a deep well-tilled loam will suit it better than any other soil under the sun. It has one persistent plague only. Not the Cabbage butterfly; for although that is occasionally a troublesome scourge, it is not persistent, and may be almost invisible for years together. Nor is it the aphis, although in a hot dry season that pest is a fell destroyer of the crop. The great plague is club or anbury, for which ...
— The Culture of Vegetables and Flowers From Seeds and Roots, 16th Edition • Sutton and Sons
... below my care; I meddle, goddess! only in my sphere. I tell the naked fact without disguise, And, to excuse it, need but show the prize; Whose spoils this paper offers to your eye, Fair ev'n in death! this peerless butterfly.' ...
— Poetical Works of Pope, Vol. II • Alexander Pope
... at one conclusion. It is only because I have met so few men, that one dare make such an overwhelming impression on me. I rebel; and shall amaze Maman by becoming a social butterfly for a season. So, in future bring all your most charming friends to see me; but no tall, athletic, ...
— The Bondwoman • Marah Ellis Ryan
... pond! She had wings, of course, and half petrified with horror though she was, she yet fluttered away from that stagnant water. But alas, in the very effort to escape, she had caught the eye of the Professor; he sprang up—pond, animalcule all forgotten in the chase of this extraordinary butterfly. The fairy's courage failed her: her presence of mind vanished, and the wild gyrations of the owl, who, too late, realised the peril of his companion, only increased her confusion. In another moment she was a prisoner under ...
— 'That Very Mab' • May Kendall and Andrew Lang
... the root of the green bill, and the bright red iris of the eye have wonderful effect in warming the color of the whole bird: and with beautiful fancy Mr. Gould has put the Stellaris among yellow water-lilies to set off its gray; and a yellow butterfly with blue and red spots, and black-speckled wings (Papilio Machaon), to harmonize both. It is just as if the flower were gradually turning into the bird. Examples of the Starry Allegret have been 'obtained'—in the British Islands. It is said to be numerous, unobtained, in India, China, ...
— Love's Meinie - Three Lectures on Greek and English Birds • John Ruskin
... Successor's, with whom we dined at Moritzburg so recently, there will be mention by and by. November 28th, 1763, in the interval between these two, the wretched Bruhl had died. April 14th, 1764, died the wretched Pompadour;—"To us not known, JE NE LA CONNAIS PAS:"—hapless Butterfly, she had been twenty years in the winged condition; age now forty-four: dull Louis, they say, looked out of window as her hearse departed, "FROIDEMENT," without emotion of any visible kind. These little concern Friedrich or us; we will restrict ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XXI. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... after a certain evening spent in gazing at the Jungfrau, had saved him from casting everything to the winds and yielding to the slavery of Dora Bellairs's sunny smiles and charming coquetries. He had always thought that that sort of girl had no attractions for him, just as Mary had despised 'butterfly-men' like Charlie Ellerton. Well, they were wrong. The only comfort was that shallow natures felt these sorrows less; it would have broken Mary's heart (thought John), or John's (thought Mary), but Dora and Charlie would soon find ...
— Comedies of Courtship • Anthony Hope
... "I don't mean forever, of course, but just as people have grown tired of remaining like plants in the places in which they grew. Alan has been a caterpillar for untold ages; can he not become the butterfly?" "Since we have found out how to straighten the axis," said Deepwaters, "might we not go one better, and improve the orbit as well?—increase the difference between aphelion and perihelion, and give those that still like a changing climate a chance, while incidentally we should see more of the ...
— A Journey in Other Worlds • J. J. Astor
... birds to sing, Bees to hum, their praise, Butterflies to visit them Through the summer days. Bee but seldom hums for you, Bird but seldom sings, Butterfly is ne'er ...
— Harper's Young People, August 3, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... said Dorothy, in great indignation at this treatment, and then, standing up, she gazed about the dell rather disconsolately; but there was no living thing in sight except a fat butterfly lazily swinging up and down on a blade of grass. Dorothy touched him with her finger to see if he were awake, but the Butterfly gave himself an impatient shake, and said, fretfully, "Oh, don't," and, after waiting a ...
— The Admiral's Caravan • Charles E. Carryl
... by a beaten puppy. The smaller bird (apparently indigenous and a new species) was occasionally seen flying over the water during the day, but the larger ones come out almost exclusively at night. A light attracts them and Hamilton, with the aid of a lantern and a butterfly-net, tried to catch some. Others swooped about, well out of range, shrieking the while in an uncanny way. Numbers of them were secured afterwards by being dug out of their holes, Mac being just as keen to locate them as Hamilton ...
— The Home of the Blizzard • Douglas Mawson
... 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
... just as Eagle had forgotten me. Behind Eagle's slight figure towered massively Major Vandyke's splendid bulk; and as I waved my handkerchief to Eagle, while the train slid slowly out, I was vaguely aware of Diana's outstretched arm and a butterfly flutter of something white and small. Eagle's eyes went past me to her, though his smile was for me also; and Di was able deftly to kill her two birds with one stone, at the last. Her farewell look ...
— Secret History Revealed By Lady Peggy O'Malley • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... say '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 a ...
— Nan Sherwood at Pine Camp - or, The Old Lumberman's Secret • Annie Roe Carr
... uniform bright and showy colour, natural selection might be sufficient to account for it. How is it, then, that this is not the case? We have not only colour, but colour diversified in the most elaborate and charming manner. Look at the exquisite patterns on a butterfly's wing! look at the various delicate arrangements of colour and pattern in flowers; or look again at the arrangement of colour on a humming-bird—sometimes the tail, sometimes the breast is ornamented, sometimes a splendid crest covers the ...
— Creation and Its Records • B.H. Baden-Powell
... Jud!" he said. "But with this change, that now it's you who are the respectable member of the community, and I'm the—well, we'll call it the butterfly." ...
— The Breaking Point • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... light of the sun swathed these two women's figures, so that Katharine seemed to hear the flutter against the window-glass of a brown butterfly that, having sheltered in the hall all winter, now sought to take a part in the new brightness of the world. Katharine kept her knees, her eyes upon the floor; the Queen, motionless and soft, let her eyes rest upon Katharine's hood. From time to time they travelled to her face, to the medallion that ...
— Privy Seal - His Last Venture • Ford Madox Ford
... which we passed,—where the pine-trees rise so grandly in their awful height, that they seem to look into heaven itself. Hardly a living thing disturbed this solemnly beautiful wilderness. Now and then a tiny lizard glanced in and out among the mossy roots of the old trees, or a golden butterfly flitted languidly from blossom to blossom. Sometimes a saucy little squirrel would gleam along the somber trunk of some ancient oak, or a bevy of quail, with their pretty tufted heads and short, quick tread, would trip athwart ...
— The Shirley Letters from California Mines in 1851-52 • Louise Amelia Knapp Smith Clappe
... lived in our meadow. The beautiful Turk's-turban (Lilium superbum) growing on stream-banks was rare in our neighborhood, but the orange lily grew in abundance on dry ground beneath the bur-oaks and often brought Aunt Ray's lily-bed in Scotland to mind. The butterfly-weed, with its brilliant scarlet flowers, attracted flocks of butterflies and made fine masses of color. With autumn came a glorious abundance and variety of asters, those beautiful plant stars, together with goldenrods, sunflowers, daisies, and liatris of different species, while ...
— The Story of My Boyhood and Youth • John Muir
... butterfly fluttered across the grass, revelling the sunlight. Sanine watched its progress just as intently as he listened ...
— Sanine • Michael Artzibashef
... 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 farther ...
— Robert Browning • Edward Dowden
... hue, as it flies over the dead leaves in the dense forest looks "like a wandering petal of a flower." Very abundant is the Heliconius, which plays such an important figure, by its variations, in Wallace's theory of the origin of species. On the Maranon we found Callidryas eubule, a yellow butterfly common in Florida. The most brilliant butterflies are found on the Middle Amazon, out of reach of the strong trade winds. The males far outnumber the other sex, are more richly colored, and generally lead a ...
— The Andes and the Amazon - Across the Continent of South America • James Orton
... useful members of society; and in the ease, luxury and vacuity with which they are surrounded their lives parallel those of demi-mondaines. Indeed, save for the marriage ceremony, there is small difference between them. The social butterfly flutters to the millionaire as naturally as the night moth of the Tenderloin. Hence the tendency to marry money is greater than ever before in the history ...
— The "Goldfish" • Arthur Train
... involuted character. Not to mention other things, she instituted and practised economies as alien to her nature as to her husband's, and in their narrowing affairs she kept him out of debt. She was prudent; she was alert; and while presenting to the world all the outward effect of a butterfly, she possessed some of the best qualities ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... Close the Windows It is time to make an end of speaking. A Line-storm Song It is the autumnal mood with a difference. October He sees days slipping from him that were the best for what they were. My Butterfly There are things that can ...
— A Boy's Will • Robert Frost
... brighter one. It is springtime, the sun shines brightly, and Nature smiles. She is rejoicing because her dead are coming to life again. The trees, the grass, the flowers all rise up in the glory of a new and beautiful life. Chrysalis and egg are not strong enough to keep back the new life of butterfly and bird which rises skyward to rejoice, ...
— Games For All Occasions • Mary E. Blain
... arguest like an atheist and a beast, and standest in this full flat against the Son of God (Mark 7:9-13). Must a gift, and a little of the glory of the butterfly, make thee that thou shalt not do for, and honour to, thy father and mother? 'A wise son maketh a glad father: but a foolish man despiseth his mother' (Prov 15:20). Though thy parents be never so low, and thou thyself never so high, yet he is thy father, and she thy mother, ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... he could say; he merely stood in front of her, holding out his arms. Her fingers, still laced over the Red Cross, fluttered nervously, as a butterfly, at the beginning of a summer storm, will cling to a flower—wanting, yet not daring to leave lest its frail wings, caught upon the wind, might carry it far out into an unexplored world. But her eyes gazed at him with illimitable yearning; then gently she swayed, stretched out her hands, and ...
— Where the Souls of Men are Calling • Credo Harris
... Wherewith the jay hints tragedies; All piquancies of prickly burs, And smoothnesses of downs and furs Of eiders and of minevers; All limpid honeys that do lie At stamen-bases, nor deny The humming-birds' fine roguery, Bee-thighs, nor any butterfly; All gracious curves of slender wings, Bark-mottlings, fibre-spiralings, Fern-wavings and leaf-flickerings; Each dial-marked leaf and flower-bell Wherewith in every lonesome dell Time to himself his ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 15, - No. 90, June, 1875 • Various
... the rose asked the butterfly. 'What have you done?' the mimosa blossom asked the little blue bird, whose wings fluttered amongst her leaves. 'You have taken love from me, love which is the ...
— The Great Prince Shan • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... in a tight riding-dress of green velour cloth, and her white face seemed to come from the close collar like a white lily from its sheath. She was e'er flower-like, asleep or waking, as I have said, and her pretty head was sleek and yellow, like a butterfly's wing. She was so sound that it appeared to me and Marian as though one longer breath might transform the mimicry into the actual thing—death. But by-and-by awe fell from us, as it doth ever fall, even in the presence of that which hath awed us, and ...
— A Brother To Dragons and Other Old-time Tales • Amelie Rives
... your hats, and away let us haste To the Butterfly's ball and the Grasshopper's feast; For the trumpeter Gadfly has summoned his crew, And the revels are ...
— The Butterfly's Ball - The Grasshopper's Feast • R.M. Ballantyne
... talking in a corner of the room with the girl, and fell to studying her face anew. A closer inspection merely consolidated her earlier judgment. She smiled inwardly as she remembered Jack Glover's ridiculous warning. It was like killing a butterfly with a steam hammer, to loose so much vengeance against this frail ...
— The Angel of Terror • Edgar Wallace
... "heaven sends dew for the flower, honey for the bee and butterfly, the worm for the bird, and beef for the Briton. Let us then be duly thankful that we are ...
— Peregrine's Progress • Jeffery Farnol
... Ellen ran for the pieces of Bristol board which were to form the backs of the needlebook, and brought them to the library; and explained how room was to be left in the middle of each for a painting, a rose on one, a butterfly on the other; the writing to be as elegant as possible, above, beneath, and roundabout, as the fancy of the ...
— The Wide, Wide World • Elizabeth Wetherell
... keep a straight face. "Better call someone with a strait jacket—or a butterfly net!" he said, quaking with laughter. "I'm afraid he's just pulling your ...
— Tom Swift and The Visitor from Planet X • Victor Appleton
... brown submarginal marks on the lower wings, in the form and extent of the yellow band, and in the size of the specimens. The most extreme forms, as well as the intermediate ones, are often found in one locality and in company with each other. A small butterfly (Terias hecabe) ranges over the whole of the Indian and Malayan regions to Australia, and everywhere exhibits great variations, many of which have been described as distinct species; but a gentleman in Australia bred two of these distinct forms (T. hecabe and T. Aesiope), with several intermediates, ...
— Darwinism (1889) • Alfred Russel Wallace
... follow step by step with a sickly deliberation. They are all yellow and pink, and next to spiders seem the most loathsome creatures on God's earth. Talking about spiders [Bowers always had the greatest horror of spiders]—I have to collect them as well as insects. Needless to say I caught them with a butterfly net, and never touched one. Only five species were known before, and I found fifteen or more—at any rate I have fifteen for certain. Others helped me to catch them, of course. Another interesting item to science is the fact that I ...
— The Worst Journey in the World, Volumes 1 and 2 - Antarctic 1910-1913 • Apsley Cherry-Garrard
... 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 ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 4 • Edward Gibbon
... of Chaucer leaves the verse. You see 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
... cottage, some five miles from town, Lived a pretty young maiden, by name Daphne Brown, Like a butterfly, pretty and airy: In a village hard by lived a medical prig, With a rubicund nose, and a full-bottomed wig, Apollo, ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 13, No. 375, June 13, 1829 • Various
... plaid shawl about her shoulders in place of the usual blanket, her hair braided smoothly with bright, red ribbons entwined through it. Her dress was a plain slip of bright calico, which had four-inch roses, very briery and each with a gaudy butterfly poised upon the topmost petals running over it in an inextricable tangle. Beaded moccasins were on her feet, and her eyes were frightened eyes, with the wistfulness of a timid animal. Yet she did not seem to ...
— Good Indian • B. M. Bower
... 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 To ...
— Pike County Ballads and Other Poems • John Hay
... pleasure as the little creature bounded toward her. "Oh, it looks like a bird or a butterfly!" she cried as she picked it up; and the dog put its paws on her shoulders and looked at her with eyes "like a Christian's." After that she would never have it out of her sight, and petted and talked to it as if it had been a child—as indeed it was the nearest ...
— The Early Short Fiction of Edith Wharton, Part 1 (of 10) • Edith Wharton
... Summer seemed to have lingered, and had left poppies, honeysuckle, foxgloves, and other blossoms that were certainly out of season. Tattie, who was keen on entomology, recorded a red admiral, a clouded yellow butterfly, and a gamma moth, though she did not consider them worth chasing and catching ...
— Monitress Merle • Angela Brazil
... a little hesitation, "every morning. She fluttered about the studio like a pink-and-white butterfly, sending me a kiss from her dainty fingers whenever I looked her way. She watched over my shoulder every stroke, and when I did something that pleased her, I felt her lips on my neck, behind my ear, and heard her say, 'That is ...
— Murder in Any Degree • Owen Johnson
... wretches, like its leaves, are green; Ere chill October shakes the latest down, They, like the foliage, change their tint to brown; On the blue flower a bluer flower you spy, You stretch to pluck it—'tis a butterfly; The flattened tree-toads so resemble bark, They're hard to find as Ethiops in the dark; The woodcock, stiffening to fictitious mud, Cheats the young sportsman thirsting for his blood; So by long living on a single lie, Nay, on one truth, will ...
— The Poetical Works of Oliver Wendell Holmes, Complete • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... me see: The world seems one e-nor-mous flower-garden, and Me the butterfly it all belongs to." She spake, and to confirm her words the airy thing went waltzing, sailing, and fluttering round the room, and sipping mamma every now and then ...
— Hard Cash • Charles Reade
... before To hold the leaves for her to pass, and softly She came, and like a golden butterfly Her small hand fluttered down upon his arm. He caught his breath as tho' the leaping blood That fled before this touch were very flame, Then slowly, slowly turned, and in her eyes Gave up his heart's desire. No word ...
— The Rose of Dawn - A Tale of the South Sea • Helen Hay
... sorrow, in the centre of his well-shaped, almost philosophical head, and movements light and temperate as those of a meditative squirrel. Having just dined he was naturally in evening dress, with a butterfly tie, gleaming pumps, and a buttonhole of violets. He shut the door gently, glanced at his nice-looking grandmothers, and, walking forward very quietly and demurely, applied his eye to the telescope, lowering himself slightly by a Sandow exercise, which he had practised before he became ...
— The Prophet of Berkeley Square • Robert Hichens
... don't it? I say, Jack, if there be anything in the old myth that a soul is typified by a butterfly, well, then the one that this chrysalis sent forth was a very noble specimen and took all the sunlight on its wings. See here!' He uncovered the face. Horrible, indeed, it looked, as though stained with blood. But I knew him at once, Jacob Settle! My friend pulled the winding ...
— Dracula's Guest • Bram Stoker
... duke swore by, the 'Splendour of God.' My eye wandered upward and rested upon the great chevrons resembling sword-cuts that seemed deep-hacked within the rounded arches of the Triforium. Thence onward my gaze fluttered like a butterfly, and rested upon a leering corbel, which seemed to scoff at priest and priest-craft with protruding tongue. The mighty stone roof soaring aloft—a ship's keel upturned—drew my eye eastward to ...
— Border Ghost Stories • Howard Pease
... W. H. Furness, jr., strikes us as a picture carefully disfigured. The part in the hair is singularly continued in the part between the wings of the golden butterfly ornamenting the head, the eyes are just sufficiently turned aside to give them the appearance of avoiding a direct gaze, and the tight-fitting gown is of white moire, a material of stiff texture and chaotic pattern. The shimmer of waves in sun or moonlight is beautiful ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol. 5, No. 6, June, 1864 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... and unexpected timidity came upon him. He had heard of a cheap popular hotel, much frequented by the returning gold-miner, who entered its hospitable doors—which held an easy access to shops—and emerged in a few hours a gorgeous butterfly of fashion, leaving his old chrysalis behind him. Thence he inquired his way; hence he afterwards issued in garments glaringly new and ill fitting. But he had not sacrificed his beard, and there was still something fine and original in his handsome ...
— Stories in Light and Shadow • Bret Harte
... a very young gentleman with a very old face, a face dried up with its own eagerness, framed in blue-black hair and a black butterfly tie. He was the emissary in England of the colossal American daily called the Western Sun—also humorously described as the "Rising Sunset". This was in allusion to a great journalistic declaration (attributed to Mr ...
— The Wisdom of Father Brown • G. K. Chesterton
... I to close my eyes, I should say to myself, 'What weary old man is thus venting his spleen against the ambition which has failed, and the love which has forsaken him?' Outwardly the very personation of youth, and revelling like a butterfly in the warmth of the sun and the tints of the herbage, why have you none of the golden passions of the young,—their bright dreams of some impossible love, their sublime enthusiasm for some unattainable glory? The sentiment you have just clothed in the illustration by which you place yourself ...
— A Strange Story, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... the treasure of Franchard," replied her husband, "See, here are the first-fruits; a pine-apple, a dress for my ever-beautiful—it will suit her—trust a husband's, trust a lover's taste! Embrace me, darling! This grimy episode is over; the butterfly unfolds its painted wings. To-morrow Casimir will come; in a week we may be in Paris—happy at last! You shall have diamonds.—Jean-Marie, take it out of the boot, with religious care, and bring it piece by piece ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 6 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... a rare and beautiful butterfly fluttered close over Mr. Medland's head. He paused and watched it for a moment. Then he looked carefully round him: no one was in sight: the butterfly settled for a moment on a flowerbed. Mr. Medland looked round again. Then he cautiously ...
— Half a Hero - A Novel • Anthony Hope
... an event to wretches to whom the world was reduced to the narrow space of a few toises, and for whom the winds and waves contended in their fury as they floated above the abyss; an event happened which diverted our minds from the horrors of our situation. All on a sudden a white butterfly, of a species common in France, came fluttering above our heads, and settled on our sails. The first thought this little creature suggested was, that it was the harbinger of approaching land, and we clung to the hope with a delirium of joy. It was the ninth day we had been upon the raft; the ...
— Thrilling Narratives of Mutiny, Murder and Piracy • Anonymous
... laughing, and talking, and fun, many of them looking on it as a new, and accordingly, agreeable source of amusement, but there was also a great deal of simple, unaffected earnestness which kept the work alive when these butterfly supporters, who hailed it as a new excitement, wearied of it and one by ...
— Hollowmell - or, A Schoolgirl's Mission • E.R. Burden
... solitary meditations he deliberately shakes off his own personality, as a butterfly abandons the shelter of its chrysalis, and, following the example of that gorgeous insect, he flies away on the wings of his dreams in the guise of the being that he ...
— Poise: How to Attain It • D. Starke
... aspens, bright green in their new foliage, with small spruce and pine. Here and there a few flowers showed; by the side of the road the wild roses peeped up from the denser growths of foliage, and a vagrant butterfly or so made the round of blossom after blossom. It was spring-summer down here, sharp contrast indeed to the winter which lurked above and which would not fade until June had far progressed. But with it all, its beauty, its serenity, its peace and soft moistness, Houston ...
— The White Desert • Courtney Ryley Cooper
... examination approaches, the economy of our friend undergoes a complete transformation, but in an inverse entomological progression—changing from the butterfly into the chrysalis. He is seldom seen at the hospitals, dividing the whole of his time between the grinder and his lodgings; taking innumerable notes at one place, and endeavouring to decipher them at the other. Those who have ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 1, Complete • Various
... insects around the orchid, and think how the orchid has to select its own particular species of insect and cater for that, and the insect among all the flowers has to select the particular species of orchid; and how the insect, whether butterfly or bee or moth or gnat or ant, or any other of the numerous kinds of insect, and the orchid have to adapt themselves to each other—we see how marvellous the mutual adaptation of flower to insect and insect to flower must have been. We see ...
— The Heart of Nature - or, The Quest for Natural Beauty • Francis Younghusband
... there and gawped. I don't know as I could be blamed. Course, I'd seen bunchy little blondes before; but this was the first time I'd ever seen one that had draped herself in a rainbow. That's the only word for it. The thin, fluttery silk thing with the butterfly sleeves is shaded from cream white to royal purple, and underneath is one of these Dolly Varden gowns of flowered pink, set off by a Roman striped sash two feet wide. And when you add to that such details as gold shoes, pink silk stockin's, long pearl ear danglers, ...
— Shorty McCabe on the Job • Sewell Ford
... will get a view of the world as oddly coloured as Harlequin's clothes, with puffs of sentiment dear to the soul of Columbine, and Clownish fun with Pantaloonish wisdom and chuckles. When you were young, you used, I think, to enjoy a butterfly's kiss; and that, you remember, was when your mother brushed your cheek with her eye-lashes. And also when you were young you held a buttercup under other children's chins to see if they liked butter, and they always did, and the golden glow showed and the world was glad. And you ...
— The Harlequinade - An Excursion • Dion Clayton Calthrop and Granville Barker
... Like a butterfly whose feet are caught in the incandescent wax of a taper, Rouget rapidly dissipated his remaining strength. In presence of that decay, the nephew remained as cold and impassible as the diplomatists of 1814 during the ...
— The Two Brothers • Honore de Balzac
... after the other, and broke at his feet in long wreaths of creamy foam,—and presently one or two light gusts of a rather chill wind warned him that he had best be returning homeward. While he yet hesitated, a leaf of paper blew towards him, and danced about like a large erratic butterfly, finally dropping just where the stick on which he leaned made a hole in the sand. He stooped and picked it up. It was covered with fine small handwriting, and before he could make any attempt to read it, a man sprang up ...
— The Treasure of Heaven - A Romance of Riches • Marie Corelli
... spreading gradually all their ramifications, till one end of the animal seems crowned with feathery, crimson sea-weeds of the most delicate tracery. It is much to be regretted that these lower marine animals are not better known. The plumage of the tropical birds, the down on the most brilliant butterfly's wing, are not more beautiful in coloring than the hues of many Radiates, and there is no grace of motion surpassing the movements of some of them in their native element. The habit of keeping marine animals in tanks is happily growing constantly more popular, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 57, July, 1862 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... cried, with a certain tone of irony in his voice, "that you think I am a mere society butterfly. What do you think I care for all the scented drawing-rooms in the world, for polo, for Hurlingham, for a stuffy reception in some great house in town? Nothing—nothing! Give me the open prairie land, the tall, brown grass, the open sky, ...
— High Noon - A New Sequel to 'Three Weeks' by Elinor Glyn • Anonymous
... trying to stay in the glitter, and by every art attempting to keep the color in her cheek, and the wrinkles off her brow, attempting, without any success, all the arts of the belle,—an old flirt, a poor, miserable butterfly without any wings. ...
— The Abominations of Modern Society • Rev. T. De Witt Talmage
... his plan his return to his native town was heralded by a few short visits at respectable intervals. A sort of human butterfly, he streaked rapidly across one or two streets, alighted for half an hour to resume an old friendship, and then disappeared again. Having given at least half-a-dozen hints of this kind, he made a final return to Ramsbury and entered into occupation ...
— Deep Waters, The Entire Collection • W.W. Jacobs
... though it was low in the sky, and its rays glittered on the fine webs on the grass. The leaves shivered in the soft breeze; the wood-pigeon cooed; the lark sang loud enough to make himself hoarse; the sparrows chirped; the bee buzzed, and a yellow butterfly ...
— The National Nursery Book - With 120 illustrations • Unknown
... indifferently, she made up for her linguistic deficiencies by a pair of eyes which let nothing escape them; and she stared at us continually throughout the afternoon, seeming to be studying this new species of woman as intently as a naturalist might some strange butterfly under a microscope. Whenever we caught her eye she looked away hastily as if detected in an impropriety, and then furtively resumed her inspection, taking in every detail of our wearing-apparel, from the real hats upon our heads ...
— A Woman's Journey through the Philippines - On a Cable Ship that Linked Together the Strange Lands Seen En Route • Florence Kimball Russel
... support Toy-gardens, Syrian scents enshrined in gold And alabaster, cakes of every sort That in their ovens the pastrywomen mould, When with white meal they mix all flowers that bloom, Oil-cakes and honey-cakes. There stand portrayed Each bird, each butterfly; and in the gloom Of foliage climbing high, and downward weighed By graceful blossoms, do the young Loves play Like nightingales, and perch on every tree, And flit, to try their wings, from spray to spray. Then see the gold, the ebony! Only ...
— Theocritus • Theocritus
... all rosy 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 ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 12, No. 336 Saturday, October 18, 1828 • Various
... past and stood defiantly just out of his reach. Mr. Raleigh attempted to seize her, but he might as easily have put his hand on a butterfly; she eluded him always when within his grasp, and led him such a dance up and down the forest-path as none other than a will-o'-the-wisp, it seemed, could have woven. All at once a dark figure glided out from another alley ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 6, No. 37, November, 1860 • Various
... Joseph bought me a book on butterflies, with coloured plates, which so interested me that I began collecting the very next day, and captured a large cabbage butterfly. ...
— Nat the Naturalist - A Boy's Adventures in the Eastern Seas • G. Manville Fenn
... Allen, I have recently learned, advances in Science in Arcady the theory that there is a natural selective cause fostering the bright blooms of alpines. The selective cause is, however, by him referred to the greater abundance of butterfly relatively to bee fertilizers. The former, he says, display more aesthetic instinct than bees. In the valley the bees secure the fertilization of all. I may observe that upon the Fridolins Alp all the fertilizers we observed were bees. I have always found butterflies very scarce at altitudes ...
— The Birth-Time of the World and Other Scientific Essays • J. (John) Joly
... wrath. One word, if I list to speak it, could turn his day of humiliation and fasting into a day of thankfulness and rejoicing, and breaking of bread. O, I know it by my own heart? Dearer to me is the child Kenneth, who chaseth the butterfly on the banks of the Aven, than ten sons who are mouldering in earth, or are preyed on by the fowls of ...
— A Legend of Montrose • Sir Walter Scott
... angry indignation, sending the outraged blood through every pulse; then, as it cooled, the act appeared so utterly unwomanly. If she had passed him by carelessly—but to designedly attract his glance, and stab it thus, was as if a giant had taken a club to kill a butterfly because it breathed the fragrance of the rose. He shut out that vision. You can tell what impression she had made upon him, when he always thought of her as he saw her in the glow of Sylvie's pretty parlor, that ...
— Hope Mills - or Between Friend and Sweetheart • Amanda M. Douglas
... you far and away rather be a singer—a famous singer?" demanded madame. "You'd get into grand opera, you know. You'd be lovely as Juliet or Butterfly even now." ...
— Elsie Marley, Honey • Joslyn Gray
... while by doing so I may be able to bring you to a sense of what is necessary for your safety. Your Grace has been the pupil of mirthful folly too long; you must now assume manly policy, or be crushed like a butterfly on the bosom of the flower you are ...
— The Fair Maid of Perth • Sir Walter Scott
... The motive for his eager pursuit of bird or beast must be sought elsewhere; it will be found in the natural craving to extinguish life, which exists in his soul. Why does a child impulsively strike at a butterfly as it flits past him? He cares nothing for the insect when once it is beaten down at his feet, unless it be quivering in its agony, when he will watch it with interest. The child strikes at the fluttering creature because it has life in it, and he ...
— The Book of Were-Wolves • Sabine Baring-Gould
... of Silverwater, now lying unruffled by any breath of wind, went flickering a little blue butterfly, as blue as if a gentian blossom had taken to itself wings or a speck of sky had fluttered down to meet its bright reflection in the lake. It was a foolish expedition for the little explorer, so far from shore, and over that ...
— Children of the Wild • Charles G. D. Roberts
... coming spring, forcing the sprouts of plants out of the earth, gives me explanations of the awful riddle of death, and contradicts my anxious fears about an everlasting sleep. The swallow that we find stiffened in winter, and see waking up to life after; the dead grub coming to life again as the butterfly and rising into the air,—all these give excellent pictures ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... he, resisting an irritable desire to correct the lady, "got mislaid to-day. It sha'n't happen again, I promise you. He's a very busy person just now, though. He hasn't time for social dissipation. I'm the butterfly ...
— Jason • Justus Miles Forman
... 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 ...
— A Midsummer Drive Through The Pyrenees • Edwin Asa Dix
... almost from before our eyes, it rose again in the air, and gave us another chase, till it again disappeared as before. At length we saw Mr Sedgwick fall almost prostrate, with his net over the leaves; and then what appeared to be a dry leaf suddenly rose and turned into a large butterfly. It was, however, under his net, and was quickly made his prisoner. We soon discovered the curious arrangement by which the creature is enabled to escape capture. The end of the upper wings terminated in a fine point, just as is the case with the leaves of many ...
— In the Eastern Seas • W.H.G. Kingston
... be frank!" Mrs. Ilkington's manner implied that he was a bold, bad butterfly, but that she had his entomological number, none the less. "Tell me," she changed the subject abruptly, "how ...
— The Bandbox • Louis Joseph Vance
... fluttered away like the pretty butterfly that she was, leaving Constance to wonder at the natural gravitation of plungers in the money market toward ...
— Constance Dunlap • Arthur B. Reeve
... of Whistler should be without this handsome book; it contains works of Art of exquisite beauty; it contains a delightful picture of the outward Whistler that the man himself wished to be mistaken for the real thing—half butterfly, half ...
— Rembrandt • Mortimer Menpes
... study of physical and mental evolution. From the crude to the perfect is the law; if this perfection of species, or of phases, could be attained without pain, it were well. Pain comes from lack of wisdom to realize that out of the lower the higher inevitably springs, as the butterfly springs from the cocoon; as the flower springs from the seed; "as above so below" is a translation of an old Sinto saying, which also bids us "trust in ...
— Cosmic Consciousness • Ali Nomad
... radiant ridges borne out on the offshore wind, I have sailed as a butterfly sails whose priming wings unfurled Leave the familiar gardens and visited fields behind To follow a cloud in the east rose-flushed on the rim ...
— Poems • Alan Seeger
... 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 harmonious breath ...
— Selected Writings of Guy de Maupassant • Guy de Maupassant
... good to bask here in the meadows and look out upon the grand panorama of Quebec, with its beautiful bay sweeping in bold segments of shoreline to the mouth of the River St Charles. The king-bird, too lazy to give chase to his proper quarry, the wavering butterfly, sways to and fro upon a tall weed; and there, at the bend of the brook, sits an old kingfisher on a dead branch, gorged with his morning meal, and regardless of his reflected image in the still pool beneath. The goguelu[1] rises suddenly up from his tuft of grass, and, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Number 9, July, 1858 • Various
... landing from the boat he has obtained some consolation from the beauty and variety of the insect and bird life around him, for he is absolutely whole-hearted in his devotion to science. He spends his days flitting through the woods with his shot-gun and his butterfly-net, and his evenings in mounting the many specimens he has acquired. Among his minor peculiarities are that he is careless as to his attire, unclean in his person, exceedingly absent-minded in his habits, and addicted to smoking a short briar pipe, which is seldom ...
— The Lost World • Arthur Conan Doyle
... sweep of the scythe, before the charge to which his spirit imparted its triumphant energy;—but, be that as it might, there was never in his heart so much cruelty as would have brushed the down off a butterfly's wing. I have not known the man to whose innate kindliness I would ...
— The Scarlet Letter • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... idea," assented the professor producing his revolver, a weapon that might have proved fatal to a butterfly, but certainly would not be of any effect against the ...
— The Boy Aviators' Polar Dash - Or - Facing Death in the Antarctic • Captain Wilbur Lawton
... brought about without effort by some ingenious and lucky accident, and the colours are of such clear transparency that we think the whole of the variegated fabric may be blown away with a breath. The fairy world here described resembles those elegant pieces of arabesque, where little genii with butterfly wings rise, half embodied, above the flower-cups. Twilight, moonshine, dew, and spring perfumes, are the element of these tender spirits; they assist nature in embroidering her carpet with green leaves, many-coloured flowers, and glittering insects; in the human world they do but make ...
— Lectures on Dramatic Art and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel
... avenue of the Tuileries. This Adonis, by name Henri de Marsay, was born in France, when Lord Dudley had just married the young lady, already Henri's mother, to an old gentleman called M. de Marsay. This faded and almost extinguished butterfly recognized the child as his own in consideration of the life interest in a fund of a hundred thousand francs definitively assigned to his putative son; a generosity which did not cost Lord Dudley too dear. French funds were worth at that time seventeen francs, ...
— The Thirteen • Honore de Balzac
... the captain grew tired of Naples and its bustle. In the cafes of the Street of Toledo and the Gallery of Humbert I, he had to defend himself from some noisy youths with low-cut vests, butterfly neckties and little felt hats perched upon their manes, who, in low voices, proposed to him unheard-of spectacles organized for the ...
— Mare Nostrum (Our Sea) - A Novel • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... peculiar emanations serving to announce from afar to the male the presence of the female and to excite in him the sexual desire. Facts have been observed with respect to insects even, which cannot be otherwise accounted for than by odorous effluvia. If, for instance, the female of the bombyx butterfly, be placed in a box accurately closed, it will not be long before several males will be seen flying around the prison, and which could not possibly have known, by means of their visual organs, the presence of their captive Dulcinea. Now the ...
— Aphrodisiacs and Anti-aphrodisiacs: Three Essays on the Powers of Reproduction • John Davenport
... those opportunities into a mere platform for the display of a harmful badness. Evolution was not aiming at Belgravia when it set out on its long journey from the flaming mist of the nebula. We cannot suppose that Nature is content with the egoism of the social butterfly. The very blood of dead humanity cries out for a ...
— The Mirrors of Downing Street - Some Political Reflections by a Gentleman with a Duster • Harold Begbie
... in it dead leaves lay everywhere, stems up, stems down, in reckless confusion. The scarlet sage-pods were brown and seeds were dropping from their tiny gaping mouths. The marigolds were frost-nipped and one lonely black-winged butterfly was vainly searching them one by one for the lost sweets of summer. The gorgeous crowns of the sun-flowers were nothing but grotesque black mummy-heads set on lean, dead bodies, and the clump of big castor-plants, buffeted by the wind, leaned this way and that like giants in ...
— The Trail of the Lonesome Pine • John Fox, Jr.
... had rather a contempt for them,—as things at the best for patching up and cosseting life, new windings and wrappings for its cocoon;—whereas he would have had the whole cocoon stripped away, and the butterfly beautifully airing its wings. Be that as it may, there are, shall we say, stenographers among his disciples, and his sayings come down to us. They have to do with the Way, the Truth, and the Life; which things, and much else, are included in Chinese ...
— The Crest-Wave of Evolution • Kenneth Morris
... handle of his stick in his mouth, he would move about his garden in a short hurried step, now stopping to contemplate a butterfly, a flower, or a snail, and now earnestly engaged in some new arrangement ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 12, - Issue 343, November 29, 1828 • Various
... gods on their shoulders. A readjustment of the pink carnations in a tall glass vase, a turning round of a long-stemmed rose in a silver holder, a punch here and there to the pillows of the davenport and at last dropping down on her desk chair as a hovering butterfly ...
— Raspberry Jam • Carolyn Wells
... what a butterfly of a day," said Miss (an expression she remembered of Lady Towers), "was poor Profusiana!—What a sad thing to be so dazzled by worldly grandeur, and to have so many admirers, and not ...
— Pamela (Vol. II.) • Samuel Richardson
... the lure was still there. She was like a butterfly, he thought, yellow and white or blue and gold, fluttering over a hedge ...
— The Titan • Theodore Dreiser
... engaged young men going on in that way. I suppose I'm very old fashioned; but I think when a young man is engaged, he ought to remember it and to show it. It ought to make him a little serious, and he shouldn't be going about like a butterfly, that may do just as it pleases in ...
— The Claverings • Anthony Trollope
... O butterfly! stop just one moment, I pray: Have you seen a boy dressed in jacket of gray, Who carried my three little birdies away? He had pretty blue eyes, And was small of his size. Ah! he must be wicked, and not ...
— Voices for the Speechless • Abraham Firth
... heart's content among gaudily coloured Heliconiae, Hesperiae, and Erycinae, or watch the larger butterflies of the restricted genus Papilio, slowly winging their lazy flight among the trees just beyond the reach of his insect net. A common butterfly here (Peridromia amphinome) has the singular habit of frequenting the trunks and limbs of the trees where it rests with expanded wings, and generally manages adroitly to shift its position, and escape when swept ...
— Narrative Of The Voyage Of H.M.S. Rattlesnake, Commanded By The Late Captain Owen Stanley, R.N., F.R.S. Etc. During The Years 1846-1850. Including Discoveries And Surveys In New Guinea, The Louisiade • John MacGillivray
... 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
... circumstance: destined to storm rocky heights, from which hard-won eminences he shall command great views of sweeping plains and far-off mountain ranges; the other a pretty chrysalis on the eve of her change into a butterfly of butterflies; who is, nevertheless, to attempt flights overhigh and overfar for her frail wings; venturing to unfriendly lands whence she must return with frayed and tired pinions and a bruised and bleeding little soul. And their two destinies, so divergent, are yet fated, ever ...
— The Genius • Margaret Horton Potter
... Darwinians went far beyond denying consciousness to trees. Weismann insisted that the chick breaks out of its eggshell automatically; that the butterfly, springing into the air to avoid the pounce of the lizard, 'does not wish to avoid death; knows nothing about death,' what has happened being simply that a flight instinct evolved by Circumstantial Selection reacts promptly to a visual impression ...
— Back to Methuselah • George Bernard Shaw
... Quiches, Mayas, Peruvians, Araucanians, and Algonkins as sacred to the lord of the dead. "The Owl" was one of the names of the Mexican Pluto, whose realm was in the north,[106-1] and the wind from that quarter was supposed by the Chipeways to be made by the owl as the south by the butterfly.[106-2] As the bird of night, it was the fit emissary of him who rules the darkness of the grave. Something in the looks of the creature as it sapiently stares and blinks in the light, or perhaps that it works while others ...
— The Myths of the New World - A Treatise on the Symbolism and Mythology of the Red Race of America • Daniel G. Brinton
... make it tell me. That and no more. And so with the stars. People who pretend to read the riddle of our affairs in the pageant of the stars are deceiving themselves or are trying to deceive others. They are giving their own little fancies the sanction of the universe. The butterfly that I see flitting about in the sunshine outside might as well read the European war as a comment on its aimless little life. The stars do not chatter about us, but they have a balm for us if we will be silent. The "huge and thoughtful night" ...
— Pebbles on the Shore • Alpha of the Plough (Alfred George Gardiner)
... 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
... his loftier aspirations, he was engaged, one April day, upon a carefully represented lilac with a butterfly about to light on it, when he became cognizant of a ragged rogue of an urchin regarding him with a grin. Peter Quick Banta misinterpreted this sign ...
— From a Bench in Our Square • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... sea had died away outside, and the blossoms were still. A yellow butterfly floated lazily past the window. The song of the birds hushed—I smelt the sea—I smelt the perfume of heated summer air rising from fields and flowers, the ineffable scents of June and of the long days of the year—and with it, from countless green meadows beyond, came the hum of myriad ...
— The Empty House And Other Ghost Stories • Algernon Blackwood
... Balesuna. But the trail still continued to bend to the right till it promised to make a loop, and the point of intersection seemed to be the edge of the plantation where the horses had been left. Crossing one of the quiet jungle spaces, where naught moved but a velvety, twelve-inch butterfly, they heard the ...
— Adventure • Jack London
... said, "if we lived still in the days of the ancient gods, I would not trust any butterfly nor any bird, nay, not even a gold-piece, for, behind every thing, I should suspect Jove disguised, for the purpose of surprising my ...
— LOUISA OF PRUSSIA AND HER TIMES • Louise Muhlbach
... that swings, Pursuing soft a butterfly of snow, In spiral flights and subtle traversings, One winging high, ...
— Enamels and Cameos and other Poems • Theophile Gautier
... their legs well shaken down before they could be got in, even there— and then, ten to one but they began to tumble out at the door, which was but imperfectly fastened with a wire latch—but what was THAT against it! Consider the noble fly, a size or two smaller than the elephant: the lady-bird, the butterfly—all triumphs of art! Consider the goose, whose feet were so small, and whose balance was so indifferent, that he usually tumbled forward, and knocked down all the animal creation. Consider Noah and his family, like idiotic tobacco-stoppers; ...
— Some Christmas Stories • Charles Dickens
... yours to-day. All that you do, I have done; All your childish ways I've run, All your joys and pangs I've had— All that make you gay or sad; I have sported in the brook, Truant from my work or book; Chased the butterfly and bee, Robb'd the bird's nest on the tree; Damm'd the brook and built my mill; Flew my kite from hill to hill; Sported with my top and ball— Childish joys, I know them all. Childish sorrows, too I've felt— Anguish that my heart would melt; Tears have wet my burning cheek, ...
— The Poets and Poetry of Cecil County, Maryland • Various
... girl ran in, laughing and calling to her mother to see a butterfly which she had caught; but at the sight of that mother's tears she grew quiet of a sudden, and went up close, and received a kiss on ...
— A Woman of Thirty • Honore de Balzac
... thou hast 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 ...
— Mistress Penwick • Dutton Payne
... ministry"; and des Lupeaulx, unable to keep from laughing, let the matter pass. The most harmless of Bixiou's jokes perpetrated among the clerks was the one he played off upon Godard, presenting him with a butterfly just brought from China, which the worthy man keeps in his collection and exhibits to this day, blissfully unconscious that it is only painted paper. Bixiou had the patience to work up the little masterpiece for the sole purpose of ...
— Bureaucracy • Honore de Balzac
... 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 a line that some one of his ...
— Confessions of a Young Man • George Moore
... of art at an early time. Some time before the twenty-ninth Olympiad, Butades of Sicyon, the potter, settled there. The record of [231] early inventions in Greece is sometimes fondly coloured with human sentiment or incident. It is on the butterfly wing of such an incident—the love-sick daughter of the artist, who outlines on the wall the profile of her lover as he sleeps in the lamplight, to keep by her in absence—that the name of Butades the potter has come down to us. The father fills up the outline, long ...
— Greek Studies: A Series of Essays • Walter Horatio Pater
... and yelping, and looking wistfully over the swollen flood, which the poor thing had not the courage to brave. This day, for the first time, I heard the song of the Canada sparrow, a soft, sweet note, almost running into a warble. Saw a small, black velvety butterfly with a yellow border to its wings. Under a warm bank found two flowers of the houstonia in bloom. Saw frogs' spawn near Piny Branch, ...
— Wake-Robin • John Burroughs
... established and confuted! For instance, the necessity of 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 annual ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole, V4 • Horace Walpole
... there might have been an awkward pause; for if you expect a cousin, and there alights a butterfly of the tropics, what hospitality can you offer? But no sense of embarrassment ever came near Malbone, especially with the children to swarm over him and claim him for their own. Moreover, little Helen got in the first remark in ...
— Malbone - An Oldport Romance • Thomas Wentworth Higginson
... there is no reason that there should be any harm in it. I would much rather he had some real business in hand than be merely a butterfly of fashion. You must not entertain that horror of ...
— The Marriage of Elinor • Margaret Oliphant
... he did 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 massive gold candelabra—ancient things of a more luxurious ...
— Brewster's Millions • George Barr McCutcheon
... mind, all his evil days vanished, and all hatred. Age was forgotten, and at this moment, when his soul began to flutter its wings like a new butterfly, all the foregoing was blotted out; there was no longer any suffering, nor dying. Timeless! There was nothing but spring air, lovely, hopeful spring air. And truly, the evil days of old age, of mockery, and of the railroad, of autumn tempests on the road, of a pulse that slackened in the veins—nothing ...
— The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries - Masterpieces of German Literature Vol. 19 • Various
... East Aurora only two hours—"not long enough" she said, "to knock the gold and emerald off the butterfly's beautiful wings." ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 6 - Subtitle: Little Journeys to the Homes of Eminent Artists • Elbert Hubbard
... hand, is one who has high health and spirits, who has the free use of his limbs, with all his wits about him, who feels the circulation of his blood and the motion of his heart, who is ready to laugh and cry in a breath, and who had rather chase a ball or a butterfly, feel the open air in his face, look at the fields or the sky, follow a winding path, or enter with eagerness into all the little conflicts and interests of his acquaintances and friends, than doze over a musty spelling-book, repeat barbarous distichs after his master, ...
— Table-Talk - Essays on Men and Manners • William Hazlitt
... about "breaking a butterfly upon a wheel" came to him as she chattered on, telling him delightedly how she had made up her mind to surprise him with tomato bisque if it was her last act, and how she had discovered a box that was labeled "condensed milk," and opened it with infinite ...
— I've Married Marjorie • Margaret Widdemer
... the noise of the brook; overhead leaves stirred and whispered in the breezes; shadows moved; sun-spots waxed and waned on tree-trunk and leaf and on the brown ground under foot. A scarlet-banded butterfly—he they call the Red Admiral—flitted persistently about an oak tree where the stain of sap darkened ...
— Athalie • Robert W. Chambers
... shall pay his; and I tell you what, sir, we three will have a thoroughly good outing. We'll take it easy, and we'll travel just where you like, and while you make notes, Lawrence here and I will fish and run about and catch butterflies, eh? Hang it, I haven't caught a butterfly these three or four and thirty years, and I think it's time I had a try. Eh, what ...
— Yussuf the Guide - The Mountain Bandits; Strange Adventure in Asia Minor • George Manville Fenn
... since Abel's time, I do suppose, but it was all new to us; and indeed, my two companions had fresh ways of putting things that seemed to make them their own in a manner. Yvon maintained that gaiety was the best that life had to give; that the butterfly being the type of the human soul, the nearer man could come to his prototype, the better for him and for all. Sorrow and suffering, he cried, were a blot on the scheme, a mistake, a concession to the devil; if all would ...
— Rosin the Beau • Laura Elizabeth Howe Richards
... 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 such a ...
— Bambi • Marjorie Benton Cooke
... Ellen's wish to obtain living creatures, and they were constantly seeking about, and coming back sometimes with a beautiful butterfly or moth, sometimes with parrots ...
— On the Banks of the Amazon • W.H.G. Kingston
... reformation of the rules for the legitimate and reasonable conduct of the game of "Kicke-ball." No, mon cher Monsieur, these they are agreeable to leave as they are, remembering that the ball, formidable though he may be on account of his size, is harmless as a butterfly in the contact, being filled only with air. Moreover they see no reason to change when an "Onze" of this New Athletic France can, with the old rules, claim as she does the noble victory of le deux "tries" to nothing, ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 98, March 15, 1890 • Various
... made an effort to live, between the close of the eighth volume of the Spectator and the beginning of the present century. Of these a few have still a place on our shelves, but for the most part they enjoyed a butterfly existence, and serve but to prove the immeasurable superiority of the writers who created ...
— The Age of Pope - (1700-1744) • John Dennis
... I love play. I go much in society; I shine there, and walk home to save the cost of a carriage. My door-keeper cleans my rooms and keeps my linen in order. My private life is sad, dull, and humiliating. It is the black chrysalis of the bright butterfly which you know. That is what Prince Panine is, my dear Jeanne. A gentleman of good appearance, who lives as carefully as an old maid. The world sees him elegant and happy, and its envies his luxury; but this luxury is as deluding ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... at this moment, fighting indeed desperately with himself not to yield at all, Edgar kept away from his sister's step-daughter still more, as if a quarrel had fallen between them; and Adelaide gained in proportion, for suddenly that butterfly, undecided fancy of his seemed to settle on the rector's daughter, to whom he now paid more court than to the whole room beside—court so excessive and so patent that it made the families laugh knowingly, and say among themselves evidently the Hill would soon receive its new mistress, and the rector ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XVII. No. 101. May, 1876. • Various
... Variegation. — N. variegation; colors, dichroism, trichroism; iridescence, play of colors, polychrome, maculation, spottiness, striae. spectrum, rainbow, iris, tulip, peacock, chameleon, butterfly, tortoise shell; mackerel, mackerel sky; zebra, leopard, cheetah, nacre, ocelot, ophite[obs3], mother-of-pearl, opal, marble. check, plaid, tartan, patchwork; marquetry-, parquetry; mosaic, tesserae[obs3], strigae[obs3]; ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... gained, even sometimes in the case of closely related beings, by the most diversified means. How differently constructed is the feathered wing of a bird and the membrane-covered wing of a bat; and still more so the four wings of a butterfly, the two wings of a fly, and the two wings with the elytra of a beetle. Bivalve shells are made to open and shut, but on what a number of patterns is the hinge constructed, from the long row of neatly interlocking teeth in a Nucula to the simple ligament of ...
— On the Origin of Species - 6th Edition • Charles Darwin
... always that—smooth-tongued, until he has lured his victim to ruin!" retorted Ned, bitterly. "Beware of him, lady, for he is a rattlesnake in the disguise of a bright-winged butterfly." ...
— Deadwood Dick, The Prince of the Road - or, The Black Rider of the Black Hills • Edward L. Wheeler
... mere vegetative form is here seen withdrawing in order that a higher manifestation of the spirit may take place. The same principle can be seen at work in the insect kingdom, when the caterpillar's tremendous vitality passes over into the short-lived beauty of the butterfly. In the human being it is responsible for that metamorphosis of organic processes which occurs on the path from the metabolic to the nervous system, and which we came to recognize as the precondition for the appearance of consciousness ...
— Man or Matter • Ernst Lehrs
... those spokesmen of the a priori, one of those nurslings of the womb, like a bee or a butterfly, a dogmatic, inspired, perfect, and incorrigible creature.... Being a finished child of nature, not a joint product, like most of us, of nature, history, and society, he abounded miraculously in his own clear sense, but was obtuse to the droll miscellaneous lessons ...
— Human Traits and their Social Significance • Irwin Edman
... foolish, but I do want to be a regular butterfly for a little while and see what it is like. You know I couldn't help seeing a good deal of fashionable life abroad, though we were not in it, and here at home the girls tell me about all sorts of pleasant things that are ...
— Rose in Bloom - A Sequel to "Eight Cousins" • Louisa May Alcott
... colour of a room should never be arbitrarily prescribed or settled for the one who is to be its occupant. It should be as much a matter of nature as the lining of a shell is to the mussel, or as the colour of the wings of a butterfly. ...
— Principles of Home Decoration - With Practical Examples • Candace Wheeler
... flowers are exquisite. The Chinese are expert at making artificial flowers which are true to nature in every detail. Often above the flower a beautiful butterfly is poised on a delicate spring, and looks so natural that it is easy to be deceived into believing it to be alive. When the jasmine is in bloom beautiful creations are made of these tiny flowers by means of standards from which protrude fine wires on which ...
— Court Life in China • Isaac Taylor Headland
... upon my word!" said Dorothy, in great indignation at this treatment, and then, standing up, she gazed about the dell rather disconsolately; but there was no living thing in sight except a fat butterfly lazily swinging up and down on a blade of grass. Dorothy touched him with her finger to see if he were awake, but the Butterfly gave himself an impatient shake, and said, fretfully, "Oh, don't," and, after waiting a moment, to be sure that was all he had to say, she ...
— The Admiral's Caravan • Charles E. Carryl
... Cuban senoritas—refugees at Tampa—dark-eyed, of course, languid of manner, to be sure, and with the eloquent fan, ever present, omnipotent—shutting and closing, shutting and closing, like the wings of a gigantic butterfly; adventurers, adventuresses; artists, photographers; correspondents by the score—female correspondents; story writers, novelists, real war correspondents, and real draughtsmen—artists, indeed; and a host of lesser ...
— Crittenden - A Kentucky Story of Love and War • John Fox, Jr.
... And thou, hast thou not found One heart-throb for the pity, though thine eye Lights at the gold and purple butterfly Brightening the ...
— Silhouettes • Arthur Symons
... 'Why did you mix yourself up in my affairs at all?' he went on. Again she made no reply, but the question set her thinking: why had she mixed herself up in this mysterious business? It was quite at variance with the usual methods of her gay and butterfly existence to meddle at all with serious things. Had she acted merely from a desire to see justice done and wickedness punished? Or was it the desire of adventure? Or was it, perhaps, the desire to be of service to His Serene ...
— The Grand Babylon Hotel • Arnold Bennett
... women. Ah, those dear butterfly creatures will come to the nasty sticky papers that were meant to catch bluebottles only; well, then, they must take the consequences. What! Lady Merivale—the fair Eveline. Does she ...
— Adrien Leroy • Charles Garvice
... of the caterpillar comes the butterfly; with mankind it is the other way round, out of the butterfly comes ...
— Note-Book of Anton Chekhov • Anton Pavlovich Chekhov
... and stalked up to Emily Travis. He looked her over, keenly and carefully, every square inch of her. Especially did he appear interested in her silky brown hair, and in the color of her cheek, faintly sprayed and soft, like the downy bloom of a butterfly wing. He walked around her, surveying her with the calculating eye of a man who studies the lines upon which a horse or a boat is builded. In the course of his circuit the pink shell of her ear came between his ...
— The Spinner's Book of Fiction • Various
... legends, but the desire to be impartial, is, I hope, perfectly consistent with a tender regard for the legendary background of history. To subject a legend or tradition to the logical process of reasoning and analysis, is like crushing a butterfly or breaking a scent bottle, and expecting still to keep the beauty of the one and the fragrance of the other. I do not, therefore, push the inquiry further than to remark that legend and tradition are generally the reflection of a certain amount of truth, and the truth in this case is that ...
— Fragments of Two Centuries - Glimpses of Country Life when George III. was King • Alfred Kingston
... one was Mr. Fountain. He sat disconsolate on a seat all alone. Mrs. Bazalgette fluttered about like a butterfly, and sparkled like ...
— Love Me Little, Love Me Long • Charles Reade
... of a compound do not fully coalesce, as to-day, to-night, to-morrow; or when each retains its original accent, so that the compound has more than one, or one that is movable, as first-born, hanger-on, laughter-loving, garlic-eater, butterfly-shell, the hyphen should ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown
... repulsed, or torn away, it had no choice but to wither on the ground. Dorothy's acuteness taught her that severity would crush the spirit of the child, and she nurtured him with the gentle care of one who handles a butterfly. Her husband manifested an equal affection, although it grew daily ...
— Bible Stories and Religious Classics • Philip P. Wells
... be truly difficult to hold the butterfly and force it to be still without brushing the down from its beautiful wings. But, paint now, Pesne, I will seat myself behind your ...
— Berlin and Sans-Souci • Louise Muhlbach
... be irritated. She was such a friendly little soul and so obviously devoted to Ruth that he felt she was entitled to be a nuisance as a sitter. He wondered more and more what weird principle of selection had been at work to bring Bailey and this butterfly together. He had never given any deep thought to the study of his brother-in-law's character; but, from his small knowledge of him, he would have imagined some one a trifle more substantial and serious as the ideal wife for him. Life, he conceived, ...
— The Coming of Bill • P. G. Wodehouse
... admitted (but refused to show me), consisted of a butterfly-cocoon rattle, an eagle-bone whistle, and a feather headband. "I don't really do nothing but help nature," he said. When I replied that only some people know how to help nature he was gratified and smiled. "Oh well, it's all psychological anyway," he answered, ...
— Washo Religion • James F. Downs
... peeping of hylas; Sunday, the 4th, was enlivened by a farewell visitation of bluebirds; during the first week, at least four sorts of butterflies—Disippus, Philodice, Antiopa, and Comma—were on the wing, and a single Philodice (our common yellow butterfly) was flying as late as the 16th. Wild flowers of many kinds—not less than a hundred, certainly—were in bloom; among them the exquisite little pimpernel, or poor man's weather-glass. My daily notes ...
— The Foot-path Way • Bradford Torrey
... convention, her independence, had captivated him. Sometimes he believed that he thoroughly understood her, when all at once he would find himself mentally peering into some dark corner into which the penetrating light of his usually swift deduction could throw no glimmer. She possessed the sins of the butterfly and the latent possibilities of a Judith. She was the most interesting feminine problem he had in his long years encountered. The mother mildly amused him, for he could discern the character that she was sedulously striving to batten ...
— The Place of Honeymoons • Harold MacGrath
... haven't found it so yet," said Alice, "but when you have to turn into a chrysalis, you know, and then after that into a butterfly, I should think it'll feel a little queer, don't ...
— Alice's Adventures Under Ground • Lewis Carroll
... Now the butterfly dance followed the others. This was danced by the boys and girls together, and the pairs were equal in size, age and the color of their garments. When all the dances had ended, the dancers marched ...
— The Chinese Fairy Book • Various
... "I know all about bees, but I didn't know befo' that a butterfly could sting. But I'd ruther be stung than to have no attention paid to me at all." She arose to go away, but he intercepted her. "Beggin' yo' pardon, ma'm, for what I've said an' what I am about to say, will you let me talk business to you for ...
— The Starbucks • Opie Percival Read
... I should see a butterfly," he said, "a butterfly that had flown up from the land of eternal summer, and ...
— The Black Pearl • Mrs. Wilson Woodrow
... blizzard-scourged ice-field. A silent rage burned suddenly through all his veins—which was well, since the cold of that spring-fed river had already begun to finger stealthily about his heart. A delicate little pale-blue butterfly, like a periwinkle-petal come to life, fluttered over Barnes's grim, upturned face, and went dancing gaily out across the shining water, joyous in the sun. In its dancing it chanced to dip a hair's-breadth too low. The treacherous, bright surface caught it, ...
— The Backwoodsmen • Charles G. D. Roberts
... is like a butterfly, thinking only of the pleasures of the moment. Nellie Ribsam came down close to the edge of the creek and threw some crumbs out upon the surface. In the clear water she could see the shadowy figures of the minnows, as they glided upward ...
— Through Forest and Fire - Wild-Woods Series No. 1 • Edward Ellis
... cried Star, "I will go down-stairs and wait for Daddy Captain, and perhaps he will think I am a real fairy. Oh, wouldn't that be fun? I am sure I look like one!" and down the stairs she flitted like a golden butterfly. Once in the kitchen, the housewife in her triumphed for a moment over the fairy: she raked up the fire, put on more wood, and swept the hearth daintily. "But Ariel did such things for Prospero," she said. "I'm Ariel just the same, so I may as well fill the ...
— Captain January • Laura E. Richards
... small kingdom, my stage-manager and lieutenant-general, was a girl of twelve, Mariposa by name. She received the fanciful title from a young visitor to the plantation who had studied Spanish. "Mariposa" meant butterfly, she told the baby's mother, who gratefully accepted the compliment to her newly born daughter. The mother and her mates called her "Mary Posy." The mistress, who was fond of the madcap sponsor, retained ...
— When Grandmamma Was New - The Story of a Virginia Childhood • Marion Harland
... opened its leaves, and out of the middle of it stepped a beautiful little fairy woman, no taller than your finger. She had a white robe on, a little crown on her long yellow hair; there were two wings on her shoulders, just like the downy brown wings of a butterfly, and in her hand she had a little ...
— Wonder-Box Tales • Jean Ingelow
... herself talking in a corner of the room with the girl, and fell to studying her face anew. A closer inspection merely consolidated her earlier judgment. She smiled inwardly as she remembered Jack Glover's ridiculous warning. It was like killing a butterfly with a steam hammer, to loose so much vengeance against this frail piece ...
— The Angel of Terror • Edgar Wallace
... the second or third floor, or out on the pavement below. The city seemed to be exuding the soaked-in heat of the long summer's day. The women who floated by were dressed in the lightest of muslins; even the plainest of them gained a new charm in their airy and butterfly-looking costumes. The men walked bareheaded, waistcoatless, fanning themselves with straw hats. Here and there, as they turned into Shaftesbury Avenue, an immaculately turned-out young man in evening dress passed along the baked pavements and dived ...
— Nobody's Man • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... and Nothing but Juliet Butterfly Love Romantic Stories of Non-Romantic Love Obstacles to Monopolism Wives and Girls in Common Trial Marriages ...
— Primitive Love and Love-Stories • Henry Theophilus Finck
... another to clothe the landscape with profuse and luxuriant vegetation. How strange to see the humming-bird dart like a streak of golden light among the fragrant shrubs; stranger still to see the butterfly, attracted by the lines of some stray wild flower, flutter away again, repelled by the chilling neighbourhood of the last remnant of a snow-drift lying in a sheltered corner, where no sunbeam ever finds ...
— The King's Warrant - A Story of Old and New France • Alfred H. Engelbach
... represents the moral truth: the minister's black veil, emblem of the secret of every human heart; the print of a hand on the heroine's cheek in "The Birthmark," a sign of earthly imperfection which only death can eradicate; the mechanical butterfly in "The Artist of the Beautiful," for which the artist no longer cares, when once he has embodied his thought. Zenobia in "The Blithedale Romance" has every day a hot-house flower sent down from a Boston conservatory and wears it in her hair or the bosom of her gown, where it seems to express her ...
— Four Americans - Roosevelt, Hawthorne, Emerson, Whitman • Henry A. Beers
... those strangely constituted beings who cannot bear to see any innocent thing suffer. It matters not whether it be a worm in the dust, a butterfly in the air, a bird, a flower, or a human creature. The first time I saw you I knew that your state of health precluded you from the enjoyment of life natural to your sex and age. I also perceived that the physicians had been at work upon you trying to probe into the causes of your ailment, and ...
— A Romance of Two Worlds • Marie Corelli
... rushes, or bedeck the thorn With daisies sparkling with the dews of morn; While she, these simple gifts would grateful take—- Love for their own and for the giver's sake. Or, they would chase the butterfly and bee From flower to flower, shouting in childish glee; Or hunt the cuckoo's echo through the glade, Chasing the wandering sound from shade to shade. Or, if she conned the daily task in vain, A word from Edmund ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Volume XXIV. • Revised by Alexander Leighton
... 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, returning ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern — Volume 11 • Various
... epoch with his lyre, 110 And fill the earth with feats of Chivalry:[308] His Fancy like a rainbow, and his Fire, Like that of Heaven, immortal, and his Thought Borne onward with a wing that cannot tire; Pleasure shall, like a butterfly new caught, Flutter her lovely pinions o'er his theme, And Art itself seem into Nature wrought By the transparency of his bright dream.— The second, of a tenderer, sadder mood, Shall pour his soul out o'er Jerusalem; ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 4 • Lord Byron
... 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 this very night the Spirit of God will shine in that darkened ...
— The Person and Work of The Holy Spirit • R. A. Torrey
... vast and starry Heavens may terrify us; its immensity may seem to overwhelm us. But our inquiring thought flies curiously on the wings of dream, toward the remotest regions of the visible. It rests on one star and another, like the butterfly on the flower. It seeks what will best respond to its aspirations: and thus a kind of communication is established, and, as it were, protected by all Nature in these silent appeals. Our sense of solitude has disappeared. We feel that, if only as infinitesimal atoms, we form ...
— Astronomy for Amateurs • Camille Flammarion
... 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 with ...
— Prose Idylls • Charles Kingsley
... example from A Butterfly; That on a rough, hard rock Happy can lie; Friendless and all ...
— Modern British Poetry • Various
... had long golden hair of which she was very proud. She was different from her sister, and never helped with the work, but spent the day combing her hair and catching butterflies. She would catch a pretty butterfly, cruelly stick a pin through it, and fasten it in her hair. Then she would go down to the lake to see her reflection in the clear water, and would laugh to see the poor butterfly struggling in pain. The people disliked ...
— Philippine Folklore Stories • John Maurice Miller
... 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 ...
— The Power of Faith - Exemplified In The Life And Writings Of The Late Mrs. Isabella Graham. • Isabella Graham
... position were not so sad, I should be tempted to smile," said Florence. "Mr. de Brabazon will not do this thing. His emotions are as strong as those of a butterfly." ...
— Adrift in New York - Tom and Florence Braving the World • Horatio Alger
... off half Park Lane and that wonderful district which she would have us believe lay all about it. One met the oddest people in her drawing-room, where she fluttered about among them like a gay little butterfly while Sir Arthur, her serious husband, locked ...
— The Story of Bawn • Katharine Tynan
... kindliness of 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! ...
— Fairies and Fusiliers • Robert Graves
... BUTTERFLY, Madame, a little Japanese lady whose child has remained the same size and age for the past ...
— Who Was Who: 5000 B. C. to Date - Biographical Dictionary of the Famous and Those Who Wanted to Be • Anonymous
... king that he had spoken insolently to her. The king sent for him. Tom, to escape his fury, crept into an empty snail shell, and lay there till he was almost starved; when peeping out of the shell he saw a fine butterfly settled on the ground: he now ventured out, and getting on it, the butterfly took wing, and mounted into the air with little Tom on his back. Away he flew from field to field, from tree to tree, till at last he flew to the king's court. The king, ...
— Cole's Funny Picture Book No. 1 • Edward William Cole
... 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
... so," agreed Mr. Brown. "We'll have to look for Tom. Bunny and Sue, you stay with me. Uncle Tad, you and Bunker walk around in the woods. It may be that Tom fell and hurt himself, when running after a bird or butterfly, and can't ...
— Bunny Brown and His Sister Sue at Camp Rest-A-While • Laura Lee Hope
... don't remember my tellin' you about Lucy Lee, the Virginia butterfly we took in over the week-end once and how I had to scratch around one Saturday to find some male dinner mate for her, and picked this hard-boiled egg from the bond room, one of these buddin' John D.'s who keeps an expense ...
— Torchy As A Pa • Sewell Ford
... 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
... things with his hands and feet, was a very distinguished pupil of Mr. MacLaren's; for the little gentleman was as active as a monkey, and - to quote his own remarkably figurative expression - was "a great deal livelier than the Bug and Butterfly."* ...
— The Adventures of Mr. Verdant Green • Cuthbert Bede
... the Baptists. There are four or five chapels set apart for their improvement in Preston, and the smartest of these is in Fishergate. In Leeming-street it was in the chrysalis state; in Fishergate the butterfly epoch has been reached. A dull, forlorn looking edifice, afterwards taken advantage of by the Episcopalian party, and now cleared off to make way for St. Saviour's church, once formed the sacred asylum of a portion of the Baptists; but ...
— Our Churches and Chapels • Atticus
... known and picturesque of the Indian dances, follows somewhat the lines of a Virginia Reel. The Indian maidens stand in a line facing each other, their blankets wrapped about them. The head couple, facing each other, spread wide their blankets behind them like great butterfly wings. Then they dance forward and back, forward and back, beckoning, retreating, gesturing, and finally dance off, with one blanket wrapped about two pairs of shoulders. Then the next couple, and so on. All sorts ...
— Patriotic Plays and Pageants for Young People • Constance D'Arcy Mackay
... to be a certain small collier lying in the downs, awaiting a fair wind to carry her into the port of London. This collier (a schooner) was named the "Butterfly," perhaps because the owner had a hazy idea that there was some resemblance between an insect flitting about from flower to flower and a vessel sailing from port to port! Black as a chimney from keelson to truck, ...
— The Lifeboat • R.M. Ballantyne
... after this somewhat gross and material fashion, for the berries she gave him, the flowers she wove in his hair, and the brooks that drove his mimic mills. He chased the butterfly, he climbed the trees, he would stand in the rain, paint his cheeks with berry juice, dabble in the mud, and nothing was secure from his prying fingers and curious eyes. He must touch and taste of everything, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 11, September, 1858 • Various
... they pleased, there were plenty of Chinese husbands whose purses were full enough to keep the merchants of Chinatown contented. The tiny, dressed-up Oriental dolls—boy and girls—who strolled about with pink balloons or butterfly kites, in the short intervals between "Mellican" school and Chinese school, were not baby-actors playing parts on the stage, but real flesh and blood children, who had no idea that they were odd to look at in their gay-coloured gowns and ...
— The Port of Adventure • Charles Norris Williamson and Alice Muriel Williamson
... Ercole. "This is a bad world. A man falls in love with a pretty little caterpillar; he wakes up and finds himself married to a butterfly. Oh, this is a very ...
— Whosoever Shall Offend • F. Marion Crawford
... This elegant stranger, who had emerged from mystery to disturb the Christmas day of a humble organist, now leaned on the friendly arm of the little man, walking along with him, not as he once sauntered through the promenade, a butterfly disdaining all but the brightest of sunbeams, the sweetest of flowers. Poor worm! he was half frozen in this wintry brightness, this exhilarating atmosphere, in which ...
— Gifts of Genius - A Miscellany of Prose and Poetry by American Authors • Various
... I answered her, "since being dressed as a butterfly does not prevent one from being an insect, and the best sustained preservation lasts at most till ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... 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
... at the expense of our friends—this butterfly may fold his wings, and lie under cover in the cold air of Glendearg; but were he at Holyrood, he would, did his life depend on it, expand his spangled drapery in the eyes of the queen and court—Rather than fail of distinction, he would sue for love to our gracious ...
— The Monastery • Sir Walter Scott
... which with extended arms he gradually fluttered round, keeping time with the music. In some of the quicker movements he either snapped his fingers or used wooden castanets, or held the pleated skirt of his coat fully extended like butterfly wings. There was very little variation to his dancing which, like the Persian was more a feat of endurance and speed than a graceful performance. The ankle did ...
— Across Coveted Lands - or a Journey from Flushing (Holland) to Calcutta Overland • Arnold Henry Savage Landor
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