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Moth   Listen
noun
Moth  n.  (pl. moths)  
1.
(Zool.) Any nocturnal lepidopterous insect, or any not included among the butterflies; as, the luna moth; Io moth; hawk moth.
2.
(Zool.) Any lepidopterous insect that feeds upon garments, grain, etc.; as, the clothes moth; grain moth; bee moth. See these terms under Clothes, Grain, etc.
3.
(Zool.) Any one of various other insects that destroy woolen and fur goods, etc., esp. the larvae of several species of beetles of the genera Dermestes and Anthrenus. Carpet moths are often the larvae of Anthrenus. See Carpet beetle, under Carpet, Dermestes, Anthrenus.
4.
Anything which gradually and silently eats, consumes, or wastes any other thing.
Moth blight (Zool.), any plant louse of the genus Aleurodes, and related genera. They are injurious to various plants.
Moth gnat (Zool.), a dipterous insect of the genus Bychoda, having fringed wings.
Moth hunter (Zool.), the goatsucker.
Moth miller (Zool.), a clothes moth. See Miller 3 (a).
Moth mullein (Bot.), a common herb of the genus Verbascum (Verbascum Blattaria), having large wheel-shaped yellow or whitish flowers.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Moth" Quotes from Famous Books



... rural Magistrates, your plan: Firm be your justice, but be friends to man. He whom the mighty master of this ball We fondly deem, or farcically call, To own the patriarch's truth however loth, Holds but a mansion crushed before the moth. Frail in his genius, in his heart, too, frail, Born but to err, and ...
— English Poets of the Eighteenth Century • Selected and Edited with an Introduction by Ernest Bernbaum

... flowers which he probes so hurriedly, one after the other, with his long, slender bill. That long, tubular, fork-shaped tongue may be sucking up the nectar from those rather small cylindrical blossoms, or it may be capturing tiny insects housed away there. Much more like a large sphynx moth hovering and humming over the flowers in the dusky twilight, than like a bird, appears this delicate, fairy-like beauty. How the bright green of the body gleams and glistens in the sunlight. Each imperceptible stroke of those tiny wings conforms to ...
— Birds Illustrated by Color Photography [December, 1897], Vol 2. No 6. • Various

... the habit of stopping there on Sunday afternoons, quite oblivious of the fact that Mrs. Richie did not display any pleasure at seeing him. After one of these calls he was apt to be late in reaching "The Top," as his grandfather's place was called, and old Benjamin Wright, in his brown wig and moth-eaten beaver hat, would glare at him with ...
— The Awakening of Helena Richie • Margaret Deland

... bullets. Following the wall closely he managed to circle the room without mishap. His searching fingers finally came in contact with a door frame, and he breathed a sigh of relief. Here there was nothing to bar his progress except some moth-eaten portieres. These he ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, March 1930 • Various

... colleague. He was dressed to go home, and was topped by a low-crowned, broad-brimmed, black hat, set rather far back on his head, and floating like a shallop on the curling wave of his grizzled hair. His eyebrows, gray, with two black tufts near the nose, resembled the antennae of a moth. His loose coat, his baggy trousers, and a huge umbrella finished the picture. He was a veritable German professor—a figure worthy of Die ...
— The Tyranny of the Dark • Hamlin Garland

... letter! (Reads.) 'And so the moth has come too near the candle at last, and has been singed into—shall I say Respectability? I congratulate him, and hope he will be as happy as he deserves to be.' What does that mean? Is she congratulating ...
— Soldiers Three • Rudyard Kipling

... chaining her attention, could be no longer withheld from approaching Mrs. Morley, and venting her admiration of that lady's wreath, earrings, robes, flounces. This dazzling apparition had on her the effect which a candle has on a moth—she fluttered round it, and longed to absorb herself in its blaze. But the wreath especially fascinated her—a wreath which no prudent lady with colourings less pure, and features less exquisitely delicate than the pretty champion ...
— The Parisians, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... their demeanor was quite covered by the deportment of the Archimandrite. In the new robe presented to him for the occasion by the Prime Minister (for the moth had got into his own) he looked superb, and behaved with a majesty beside which Jingalo's home-bred royalty sank into insignificance. Max frankly recognized his superior, and bowed low. "This is a descent of the spirit, ...
— King John of Jingalo - The Story of a Monarch in Difficulties • Laurence Housman

... quick as he to detect a simulated interest, or a wily effort to make him ridiculous; and few tried this a second time, for he had a rapier-like gift of repartee that transfixed the offender like a moth on a pin. He had a way of eyeing me at times, his glasses in his hand, a queer smile on his lips, as much as to imply that there was one at least among the lost who was made for better things. Not that my work was ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill

... be ragged Tattered and iagged Rudely rain-beaten Rusty and moth-eaten If ye talke well therewyth Yt hath in ...
— Animaduersions uppon the annotacions and corrections of some imperfections of impressiones of Chaucer's workes - 1865 edition • Francis Thynne

... with gloomy despair, and here are the phantom-like thoughts which tap, with wings of a bat, the beak of a vulture, the body of a death's-head moth, upon the walls of the palace in which, enkindled by desire, glows your brain like a lamp ...
— Petty Troubles of Married Life, Part First • Honore de Balzac

... trumpet to the world: my heart's subdu'd Even to the very quality of my lord: I saw Othello's visage in his mind; And to his honors and his valiant parts Did I my soul and fortunes consecrate. So that, dear lords, if I be left behind, A moth of peace, and he go to the war, The rites for which I love him are bereft me, And I a heavy interim shall support By his dear absence. Let ...
— Othello, the Moor of Venice • William Shakespeare

... this wicked plan with horror. Nevertheless, after her sisters were gone, she brooded over what they had said, not seeing their evil intent; and she came to find some wisdom in their words. Little by little, suspicion ate, like a moth, into her lovely mind; and at nightfall, in shame and fear, she hid a lamp and a dagger in her chamber. Towards midnight, when her husband was fast asleep, up she rose, hardly daring to breathe; and coming softly to his side, ...
— Good Stories For Great Holidays - Arranged for Story-Telling and Reading Aloud and for the - Children's Own Reading • Frances Jenkins Olcott

... a moth extinguished the lamp. Chopin would not have it relighted, and played in the dark. When he had finished his delighted auditors overwhelmed him ...
— Frederick Chopin as a Man and Musician - Volume 1-2, Complete • Frederick Niecks

... point, for long beforehand the males often alight close to the female and brush against her with fluttering wings. I have watched the process exactly as I have described it in a common Northern Noctua, the antler moth (Charaeax graminis), and I have seen the same thing among beetles." (E.B. Poulton, The Colors of Animals, 1890, p. 391.) This author mentions that among some butterflies the females take the active part. The example here quoted of courtship among ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 3 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis

... two pictures before us. One, on paper yellow with the moth of years, is the portrait of an actor in the costume of Richard III. What a classic face! English features are rarely cast in that antique mould. The head sits lightly on its columnar neck, and is topped with dark-brown curls, that cluster like the acanthus; ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 103, May, 1866 • Various

... youth, if they would avoid the shipwreck of their respectability and character. As the loveliness of girlhood fades from their cheeks, and the liquid brilliancy of youth departs from their eyes, let them make unto themselves charms which neither the rust nor moth of time can corrupt; let the warmth of goodness yield its gentle tinting to their cheek, and let tears of tenderness, of mercy, of loving-kindness, make their eyes moist with those beauties which ...
— The Young Maiden • A. B. (Artemas Bowers) Muzzey

... are hangings. Perhaps, now and then—of course, I would not suggest continual inconstancy—a slight change, a little rearrangement, even a partial replacement, might brighten up the dear old dwelling-place. An ideal may be clung to too fondly. When the moth gets into it, or the dust—did not Carlyle warn us against this, lest they 'accumulate and at last produce suffocation'? I am exactly at one with ...
— Select Conversations with an Uncle • H. G. Wells

... smell about the house—a smell that brings to me now, when I find it in old and unlighted buildings, the memory of the high ceiling, the shining floor over which I moved so cautiously, and the long melancholy rows of moth-eaten ...
— The Romance of a Plain Man • Ellen Glasgow

... our hearts, seeing one night That moth-winged ship drifting across the bay, Her broad sail dimly white On cloudy waters and hills as vague as they? Some new thing touched our spirits with distant delight, Half-seen, half-noticed, as we loitered down, Talking in whispers, to the little town, Down from ...
— Georgian Poetry 1920-22 • Various

... sniffed audibly, and raised their somewhat moth-eaten eyebrows at each other in virtuous disapproval of a young female who provoked such remarks from strangers. The valet, who had the air of being engaged to the maid with the nose, confined himself to a non-committal grin, but the second and third ...
— The Motor Maid • Alice Muriel Williamson and Charles Norris Williamson

... alleyway, but as he turned they let him have it. He throwed up his arms and made one long stagger, right acrost the bar of light that streamed out of the windows, and he fell into the shadder, out of sight, jest like a scorched moth drops dead into the ...
— Danny's Own Story • Don Marquis

... new countries ambition gets the better of discretion, but fortunately soon finds its natural level: the violent ultra-tory, and the violent ultra-demagogue sink alike, after a few years of excitement, into the moth-eaten receptacle of newspaper renown, alike unheeded, and alike forgotten, by a newer and more enlightened generation, who find that, to the cost of the real interest of the people, the mouthing orator, the agitator, the exciter, is not ...
— Canada and the Canadians, Vol. 2 • Richard Henry Bonnycastle

... through whom I learned The sweet of folly and the pains of love, My Rose, my Star, my Comforter, my Dove, For whom, poor moth, I burned. ...
— The Poems of Emma Lazarus - Vol. I (of II.), Narrative, Lyric, and Dramatic • Emma Lazarus

... the poet's head Streamed on the page and on the cloth, And twice and thrice there buffeted On the black pane a white-wing'd moth; 'Twas Annie's soul that beat outside And 'Open, open, ...
— Green Bays. Verses and Parodies • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch

... dug deeper. A soft groan escaped Margaret's lips. This very minute, now while she crouched in the grass,—oh, if she put out her hands and felt she would feel the checks! She had been to an orph—to a place once with Moth—with Her and seen the aprons herself. They ...
— The Very Small Person • Annie Hamilton Donnell

... be a spiteful little cat, which is what she once called me, than to be moth-eaten on the inside, like that!" she commented. Then she went on: "With Miss Farnham out of it—and I knew she must be out of it, since Broffin didn't strike—there was still Mr. Galbraith. You didn't know why I was so anxious to have you get acquainted with him, but you know now. And ...
— The Price • Francis Lynde

... anticipate so far as to say that, in my view, the question must be negatived. At any rate, we must exclude all creeds which tolerate the idea of a creation in the popular sense of the word, or of a final catastrophe. True, the individual objects, great or small, from a galaxy to a moth, which have to us apparently a separate existence, have all been evolved out of preceding modes of being, by a process which seems to us to involve a beginning, and to ensure an end. But in the view of Pantheism, ...
— Pantheism, Its Story and Significance - Religions Ancient And Modern • J. Allanson Picton

... Lethe, neither twist Wolf's-bane, tight-rooted, for its poisonous wine; Nor suffer thy pale forehead to be kiss'd By nightshade, ruby grape of Proserpine; Make not your rosary of yew-berries, Nor let the beetle, nor the death-moth be Your mournful Psyche, nor the downy owl A partner in your sorrow's mysteries; For shade to shade will come too drowsily, And drown the ...
— The Hundred Best English Poems • Various

... For the last two days I lent her to the cook, to put into her pantry, but I have got her back again, and I would not part with her for a crown; no, not for the best silver crown that ever was coined in the Tower.' Then, through a little moth hole in the lining of the coat, I saw him lift her up, stroke her, and put her upon the back of one of the horses, where she stretched herself out, and ...
— The Life and Perambulations of a Mouse • Dorothy Kilner

... 'A moth loves the light though his wings are burnt. Though his wings are singed, he throws himself against the flame. He does not love the light because it has conferred some benefits upon him. Therefore he hovers round the light, though he sacrifice his wings. This is the highest ...
— The Reconciliation of Races and Religions • Thomas Kelly Cheyne

... saw, through the tatters of her frock—do not laugh at me—a bunch on each shoulder, of the most gorgeous colours. Looking yet more closely, I saw that they were of the shape of folded wings, and were made of all kinds of butterfly-wings and moth-wings, crowded together like the feathers on the individual butterfly pinion; but, like them, most beautifully arranged, and producing a perfect harmony of colour and shade. I could now more easily believe the rest of her story; especially as I saw, every now and then, ...
— Phantastes - A Faerie Romance for Men and Women • George MacDonald

... alike, so as to secure the ordered symmetry of classical enrichment. But the Gothic fullness of thought is not therefore left without expression; at the edge of each leaf is an animal, first a cicala, then a lizard, then a bird, moth, serpent, snail—all different, and each wrought to the very life—panting—plumy—writhing—glittering—full of breath and power. This harmony of classical restraint with exhaustless fancy, and of architectural propriety with imitative finish, is found throughout all the fine periods of the Italian ...
— On the Old Road Vol. 1 (of 2) - A Collection of Miscellaneous Essays and Articles on Art and Literature • John Ruskin

... across the bit of even ground to the friendly trees and found ourselves in a thin strip of shadow. Beneath the trees, waiting for us, was the Indian maid. She would not speak or tarry, but flitted before us as dusk and noiseless as a moth, and we followed her into the darkness beyond the firelight. Here a wigwam rose in our path; the girl, holding aside the mats that covered the entrance, motioned to us to enter. A fire was burning within the lodge and it showed us Nantaquas standing ...
— The Literary World Seventh Reader • Various

... not common, and we scarcely know whether to be thankful for them or not. Unlike the early petit point, they were worked in worsteds, whereas the early pictures were wrought in silk. The moth has a natural affinity for wool, as we all know, and his tribe has cleared off many hundreds of examples. Why so many of the old Jacobean hangings remain is that they were worked for use, and not ornament, and even after they ceased to be fashionable ornaments for sitting ...
— Chats on Old Lace and Needlework • Emily Leigh Lowes

... drawing the attention of His hearers to the analogies in the law we see working around us to the same law working in the spiritual world. The yearly harvest, the sower and his seed, the leaven in the loaf, the grain of mustard-seed, the lilies of the field, the action of fire, worms, moth, rust, bread, wine, and water, the mystery of the wind, unseen and yet felt—each one of these is shown to contain and exemplify a great and ...
— Mysticism in English Literature • Caroline F. E. Spurgeon

... one greater than I, 'Let the ax be laid at the roots of the tree.' And this also do I say, Go to, ye rich men, weep and howl for your miseries that shall come upon you! Your riches are corrupted, and your garments moth-eaten! Your gold and silver is cankered and the rust of them shall be a witness against you and shall eat your flesh as it were fire. Ye have heaped treasure together for the last days! Behold! The hire of the laborers ...
— The Coming of the King • Bernie Babcock

... moth of the silkworm borrowed from Hokusai. Otto H. Bacher thought the addition of a sting to the signature came from this incident at Venice: In 1880 he found a scorpion and impaled it on his etching needle. As the little creature writhed and struck, Whistler exclaimed: "Look at the beggar now! ...
— Whistler Stories • Don C. Seitz

... every-day observer the most enticing field of natural history is that in which common flowers and common insects work out their unending co-partnery. A blossom by its scent, its beauty of tint, allures a moth or bee and thus, in effect, is able to take flight and find a mate across a county so as to perpetuate its race a hundred miles from home. Our volume closes with a sketch of the singular ties which thus bind together the fortunes of blossom ...
— Little Masterpieces of Science: - The Naturalist as Interpreter and Seer • Various

... and a waving blind, And the beat of a clock from a distant floor; On this scene enter—winged, horned, and spined— A longlegs, a moth, and a dumbledore; While 'mid my page there idly stands A sleepy fly, ...
— Figures of Several Centuries • Arthur Symons

... Throws green light Like a garment, A wrinkled one, On bluish land. But from the edge Of the city, Like a soft hand without fingers, Gently rises And fearfully threatening like death Dark, nameless... Rising Without sound, An empty slow sea swells towards us— At first it was only like a weary Moth, which crawled over the last houses. Now it is a black bleeding hole. It has already buried the city and half the sky. Ah, had I flown— Now it is too late. My head falls into Desolate hands. On the horizon an apparition like a shriek ...
— The Verse of Alfred Lichtenstein • Alfred Lichtenstein

... any dimness came even to the forest, or golden shafts down colonnades which were before all cathedrals, they found the old camp that they sought, which still had a clear flavour of magic for Morano on account of the moth-like coming and going of his three horses after he had tied them to that tree. And here they looked for the King of Shadow Valley; and then Rodriguez called him; and then all three of them called him, shouting ...
— Don Rodriguez - Chronicles of Shadow Valley • Edward John Moreton Drax Plunkett, Baron, Dunsany

... in the mountain villages, is gradually leaving them and settling in the towns on the railways, on account of the greater facility of transport. [Headnote: PROCESSIONAL CATERPILLAR. PIPES.] The curious caterpillar of the Moth, Bombyx processionaria, feeds on the leaves of the Aleppo and maritime pine trees. Their nests, made of a cobweb material, and shaped like a soda-water bottle, are firmly attached to the branches. On cutting ...
— The South of France—East Half • Charles Bertram Black

... and meagre fauna of the Coal Measures. With these ancient cockroaches a few locusts and beetles have been found associated, together with a small Tinea,—a creature allied to the common clothes-moth, and a Phasmia,—a creature related to the spectre insects. But the group is an inconsiderable one; for insects seem to have occupied no very conspicuous place in the carboniferous fauna. The ...
— The Testimony of the Rocks - or, Geology in Its Bearings on the Two Theologies, Natural and Revealed • Hugh Miller

... fulfilment, and the world was all abloom. Faint mists of May were rising from the earth, and filmy clouds half veiled the moon. The loneliness of the house was unbearable, so Miss Evelina went out into the garden, her veil fluttering, moth-like, about her head. ...
— A Spinner in the Sun • Myrtle Reed

... no law in affairs of this kind, but his first encounter with Blondell put a check to the dark plans he had formed—for the rancher had the bearing of an aged, moth-eaten, but dangerous old bear. His voice was a rumble, his teeth were broken fangs, and his hands resembled the paws of a gorilla. Like so many of those Colorado ranchers of the early days, he was a Missourian, and his wife, big, fat, worried and complaining, was a Kentuckian. ...
— They of the High Trails • Hamlin Garland

... with some curiosity round the gloomy oak-paneled chamber, where the fire-light flashed on the carved four-poster, with its faded yellow damask curtains, and lit up the moth-eaten tapestry that adorned a portion of the upper part of the walls, but scarcely illumined the dark corners which lay beyond. There were quaint old presses and chests roomy enough to hide a dozen ghosts in, and a portrait of a gentleman in the elaborate costume of the Stuart ...
— The Jolliest School of All • Angela Brazil

... misunderstanding and crushing defeat grind you into the dust, then you may arise, forgetting time and space and self, and take refuge in mansions not made with hands; and find a certain sad, sweet satisfaction in the contemplation of treasures stored up where moth and rust do not corrupt, and where thieves do not break ...
— Love, Life & Work • Elbert Hubbard

... of wainscot, dark stairs, and gaping closets; its small chambers, communicating with each other by winding passages or narrow steps; its many nooks, scarce larger than its corner-cupboards; its very dust and dulness, are all dear to me. The moth and spider are my constant tenants; for in my house the one basks in his long sleep, and the other plies his busy loom secure and undisturbed. I have a pleasure in thinking on a summer's day how many butterflies have sprung for the first time into light and sunshine from ...
— Master Humphrey's Clock • Charles Dickens

... up through the myriad nettles, but only to be seized and choked by columbine. A late moth looks for flowers not quite in vain. It hovers on wing-beats that are invisibly swift by its lonely autumn flower, then darts away over the desolation which is no desolation to a moth: man has destroyed man; nature comes back; it is well: that ...
— Unhappy Far-Off Things • Lord Dunsany

... motley. Quite close to him a dead branch thrust upwards from the water, and the river swirled in oily play of wrinkles and dimples beyond it. Here, with some approach to his old skill, the angler presently cast a small brown moth. It fell lightly and neatly, cocked for a second, then turned helplessly over, wrecked in the sudden eddy as a natural insect had been. A fearless rise followed, and in less than half a minute a small trout was in the angler's net. John Grimbal landed this little fish carefully and regarded it ...
— Children of the Mist • Eden Phillpotts

... came peace and joy. No moth nor rust nor thief had appeared, and the lustrous lengths of shimmering silk defied the sun itself to find ...
— Across the Years • Eleanor H. Porter

... comin' o' Judgment Day. Mrs. Lathrop, you c'n believe me or not jus' 's you please, but I give you my Gospel word of honor as when I turned down the flap o' a trunk 'n' see that old mousey letter stuck in it cornerways, I no more thought o' findin' a cousin than I did o' findin' a moth, 'n' you know how scarce moths is with me; I ain't so much 's seen one 'xcept on your side o' the house in twenty years, I do believe. 'N' I could n't in conscience say 's I was pleased when I did see the letter, f'r I thought's like 's not it was a bill, 'n' anyhow ...
— Susan Clegg and Her Friend Mrs. Lathrop • Anne Warner

... tree-fern jungle upon an unknown planet. The heavy, sickly-sweet scents of closed jungle blossoms filled their nostrils. The reek of feverishly growing green things saturated the air. A steady wind blew down the Tube, and it bore innumerable unfamiliar odors into the laboratory. Once a gigantic moth bumped and blundered into the Tube, and finally crawled heavily out into the light. It was scaled, and terrible because of its monstrous size, but it had broken a wing and could not fly. So it crawled with feverish haste toward a brilliant electric light. Its eyes were especially horrible because ...
— The Fifth-Dimension Tube • William Fitzgerald Jenkins

... was of the simplest. The walls were covered with tapestry so faded that the pattern could hardly be detected. The hearth yawned dark and dull, and by it stood one chair with a moth-eaten cushion. A heavy oaken table and two forms were in the middle of the room, and there was the dreary, fusty smell of want of habitation. The Queen, whose instincts for fresh air were always a distress to her ladies, sprang to the mullioned ...
— Unknown to History - A Story of the Captivity of Mary of Scotland • Charlotte M. Yonge

... not up for yourselves treasures upon the earth, where moth and rust consume, and where thieves break through and steal: but lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust doth consume, and where thieves do not break through nor steal: for where thy treasure is there will thy heart be also. The lamp of ...
— The Social Principles of Jesus • Walter Rauschenbusch

... to all varieties being worked on blight-resistant stocks, there is very little American blight (woolly aphis). Scale insects do a certain amount of damage, but are easily kept in check by winter spraying, and codling moth is not bad unless grossly neglected, many orchards being quite free from this great pest of the apple-grower. So far, the growing of apples has been confined entirely to the growing of fruit for the local markets, no attempt having been made to export same. A very small quantity is dried, ...
— Fruits of Queensland • Albert Benson

... article of food, and equally abundant at a particular season of the year, in the eastern portion of the continent, is a species of moth which the natives procure from the cavities and hollows of the mountains in certain localities. This, when roasted, has something of the appearance and flavour of an almond badly peeled. It is called ...
— Journals Of Expeditions Of Discovery Into Central • Edward John Eyre

... Home-made chain armour, composed of wads of leather secured together by pieces of iron, bear witness to the secrecy with which the Ronins made ready for the fight. To have bought armour would have attracted attention, so they made it with their own hands. Old moth-eaten surcoats, bits of helmets, three flutes, a writing-box that must have been any age at the time of the tragedy, and is now tumbling to pieces; tattered trousers of what once was rich silk brocade, now all unravelled and befringed; scraps of leather, ...
— Tales of Old Japan • Algernon Bertram Freeman-Mitford

... at home than when squeezing all the human traits and humour out of a given situation, which was subsidiary to the plot, yet in atmosphere complete in itself. The Hunter's drawing-room just after the funeral, in "The Climbers;" the church scene in "The Moth and the Flame," which for jocularity and small points is the equal of Langdon Mitchell's wedding scene in "The New York Idea," though not so sharply incisive in its satire; the deck on board ship in "The Stubbornness ...
— Representative Plays by American Dramatists: 1856-1911: The Moth and the Flame • Clyde Fitch

... into a gloomy forest and for some time saw nothing but a huge brown moth, which looked almost like a bat on the wing. Suddenly we heard high upon the trees a short shrieking sort of noise ending in a hiss, and our guide became excited and said, "Toucan!" The birds were very wary and made off. They are much in quest and often ...
— Birds Illustrated by Color Photograph [January, 1897] - A Monthly Serial designed to Promote Knowledge of Bird-Life • Various

... House, Red, w. Verandahs, & builded in y^e Fash^n of Her Maiestie Q. Anne.—Found a mightie Housefull of People.—Will, his Wife, a verie proper fayre Ladie, who gave me moste gracious Reception, M^rss Smithe, y^e ii Gresham girles (knowne as y^e Titteringe Twins), Bob White, Virginia Kinge & her Moth^r, Clarence Winthrop, & y^e whole Alexander Family.—A grete Gatheringe for so earlie in y^e Summer.—In y^e afternoone play'd Lawne-Tenniss.—Had for Partner one of y^e Twinns, ag^st Clarence Winthrop & y^e other Twinn, wh. by beinge Confus'd, I ...
— Stories by American Authors (Volume 4) • Constance Fenimore Woolson

... and much more local in habitat. So concealed were the stalks by the ferns that the flowers appeared to grow on their fronds. On the mounds grew corn marigolds, so brilliantly yellow that they seemed to shine in the sunlight, and on a wall moth-mullein flowered high ...
— The Life of the Fields • Richard Jefferies

... The English bourgeoisie is violently scandalised at the extravagant living of the workers when wages are high; yet it is not only very natural but very sensible of them to enjoy life when they can, instead of laying up treasures which are of no lasting use to them, and which in the end moth and rust (i.e., the bourgeoisie) get possession of. Yet such a life is demoralising beyond all others. What Carlyle says of the cotton spinners is true of all English industrial ...
— The Condition of the Working-Class in England in 1844 - with a Preface written in 1892 • Frederick Engels

... hair and a squashed face, and Brother Raymond, attractive and bird-like, and considered a great Romanizer by the others. There is also Brother Walter, who is only a probationer and is not even allowed wide sleeves and a habit like Brother Lawrence, but has to wear a very moth-eaten cassock with a black band tied round it. Brother Walter had been marketing in High Thorpe (I wonder what the Bishop of Silchester thought if he saw him in the neighbourhood of the episcopal castle!) and having lost himself on the way home he had arrived back late ...
— The Altar Steps • Compton MacKenzie

... the pears in the carts, and the box you dropped the train tickets into," he said encouragingly, "and I remember Margar's bottles that you used to let me wash! You'd take me into the parks, and down to the beach, wouldn't you, Moth'?" ...
— Martie the Unconquered • Kathleen Norris

... taken up to the box-room and made as comfortable as possible in a snug nook between an old nursery fender and the wreck of a big four-poster. They gave him a big rag-bag to sit on, and an old, moth-eaten fur coat off the nail on the door to keep him warm. And when they had had their own tea they took him some. He did not like the tea at all, but he liked the bread and butter, and cake that went with it. They took it in turns to sit with him during ...
— The Story of the Amulet • E. Nesbit

... laugh at his boxes full of bugs. But Seth used to study them over, and talk about them with his teacher, who told him all she knew, and helped him to find books about them. And it was when she was leaning over a beautiful specimen of a night-moth that Oscar had performed his most remarkable feat of keeping three balls in the air for a second and a half. This was in ...
— The Last of the Peterkins - With Others of Their Kin • Lucretia P. Hale

... home poor in pocket and wearied in spirit. He became what I beheld him. "My lot is fixed now," said he, in conclusion; "but I find there is all the difference between quiet and content: my heart eats itself away here; it is the moth fretting the garment laid by, more than the storm or the ...
— Devereux, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... I with"—O'er his branches just then something flew; It seemed like moth, large and grayish of hue. But it was a Fairy. Her voice soft did sound, "Be the tree that bears apples all ...
— The Adventures of A Brownie - As Told to My Child by Miss Mulock • Miss Mulock

... It may have been the sudden change from London air and London noise; something in the clear transparency of the April day, in the flute-like melody of the birds' song, in the dream-like beauty of the scene before him, that made all the moth and rust that had consumed the remembrances of the past more apparent. There was little of the treasure of heaven there,—it had mostly been nonsense or vanity or worse. He wanted, oh, how he wanted, to be able just for once to surrender himself to ...
— Robinetta • Kate Douglas Wiggin

... comrades or rivals, though thou comest in peace yet thy object is hostile:—for one single moment that my mistress associated with a rival, it went well-nigh to slay me with jealousy. Smiling, she replied: "O Sa'di! I am the torch of the assembly; what is it to me if the moth consume itself?" ...
— Persian Literature, Volume 2, Comprising The Shah Nameh, The - Rubaiyat, The Divan, and The Gulistan • Anonymous

... when the simple moth doth blindly rush To reach the flame, its life oft pays the debt Of folly. Yet 'tis nobler thus to die Midst all the brightness of a waking life, Than from the world ooze out through darkened ways By beggarly instalments—none to feel Thy life but thine own poor ignoble self: And none to tell the ...
— The Death of Saul and other Eisteddfod Prize Poems and Miscellaneous Verses • J. C. Manning

... the tree in three rows, so close that not a mouse could have crept between them unobserved. The thief must have wings, for he could not reach the tree by the ground. But Sharpeye could detect nothing all day which looked like a thief. Towards sunset a little yellow moth fluttered round the tree, and at last settled on a branch which bore a very fine apple. Everybody could understand just as well as Sharpeye that a little moth could not carry a golden apple away from the tree, but as he could ...
— The Hero of Esthonia and Other Studies in the Romantic Literature of That Country • William Forsell Kirby

... of the Acherontia Atropos, or Death's-head Moth, we extract from "The Journal of a Naturalist:"—"The yellow and brown-tailed moths," he observes, "the death-watch, our snails, and many other insects, have all been the subjects of man's fears, but the dread excited in England by the appearance, noises, or increase of insects, ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. XIX. No. 541, Saturday, April 7, 1832 • Various

... appears to be that the sexes are nearly equal, but in Italy, as I hear from Professor Canestrini, many breeders are convinced that the females are produced in excess. This same naturalist, however, informs me, that in the two yearly broods of the Ailanthus silk-moth (Bombyx cynthia), the males greatly preponderate in the first, whilst in the second the two sexes are nearly equal, or the ...
— The Descent of Man and Selection in Relation to Sex • Charles Darwin

... tricks or unusual gestures, to which we shall presently recur. To those who admit the gradual evolution of species, a most striking instance of the perfection with which the most difficult consensual movements can be transmitted, is afforded by the humming-bird Sphinx-moth (Macroglossa); for this moth, shortly after its emergence from the cocoon, as shown by the bloom on its unruffled scales, may be seen poised stationary in the air, with its long hair-like proboscis uncurled ...
— The Expression of Emotion in Man and Animals • Charles Darwin

... so the smaller Solomon's seal, yellow spikes of toad-flax, blue and pink phlox, glossy May apple; high up on the hillside, the fire pink and wintergreen; and, down by the sandy shore, great beds of blue wild lupin, and occasionally stately spikes of the familiar moth mullein. ...
— Afloat on the Ohio - An Historical Pilgrimage of a Thousand Miles in a Skiff, from Redstone to Cairo • Reuben Gold Thwaites

... with some store Of emmets' eggs; what would he more? But beards of mice, a newt's stewed thigh, A bloated earwig and a fly; With the red-capp'd worm that's shut Within the concave of a nut, Brown as his tooth. A little moth Late fatten'd in a piece of cloth: With withered cherries, mandrakes' ears, Moles' eyes; to these the slain stag's tears The unctuous dewlaps of a snail, The broke-heart of a nightingale O'ercome in music; with a wine ...
— The Hesperides & Noble Numbers: Vol. 1 and 2 • Robert Herrick

... that kettle, Jamie, and that pot of boiling broth, I know a dismal story of a candle and a moth. For while your pot is boiling and while your kettle sings My moth makes love to candle flame and burns away ...
— Country Sentiment • Robert Graves

... common; it is occasionally caught in plantain gardens, as it resorts to the leaves of that tree for shelter during the night, and may sometimes be discovered in the folds of a leaf. As Jerdon remarks, it looks more like a butterfly or a moth when disturbed during the day time. Dr. Dobson pertinently observes that the colours of this bat appear to be the result of the "protective mimicry" which we see so often in insects, the Mantidea and other genera, the colours being adapted to their abiding ...
— Natural History of the Mammalia of India and Ceylon • Robert A. Sterndale

... of diseases, may pass that red lantern entrance at first, but at the next block his tainted imagination will have overcome the fear, and with the reckless confidence that he will know how to protect himself and that he will have good luck he, too, like the moth, will feel attracted toward the red light and will turn back. We can prohibit alcohol, but we cannot prohibit the stimulus to sexual lust. It is always present, and the selfish desire, made rampant by a society which craves amusement, will always be stronger than any social ...
— Psychology and Social Sanity • Hugo Muensterberg

... the beds already prepared, and at the distance of twelve to eighteen inches apart, the whole nursery to be well shaded both on top and sides, the earth kept moist and clear of weeds, and well smoked by burning wet grass or weeds in it once a week, to drive away a very small moth-like insect that is apt to infest young plants, laying its eggs on the leaf, when they become covered with yellow spots, and perish if not attended ...
— The Commercial Products of the Vegetable Kingdom • P. L. Simmonds

... morning. Rivulets should send A voice of gladness from their winding paths, Deep in o'erarching grass, where playful winds, Stirring the loaded stems, should shower the dew Upon the grassy water. Newly-blown Roses, by thousands, to the garden-walks Should tempt the loitering moth and diligent bee. The longest, brightest day in all the year Should be the day on which thy cheerful eyes First opened on the earth, to make thy haunts Fairer and gladder for thy kindly looks. Thus might a poet say; but I must bring A birthday offering ...
— Poetical Works of William Cullen Bryant - Household Edition • William Cullen Bryant

... one sense, no mere fancy. Numbers actually have found it; and numbers actually still continue to find it. The question is not whether the worth exists, but on what is the worth based. How far is the treasure incorruptible; and how far will our increasing knowledge act as moth and rust to it? There are some things whose value is completely established by the mere fact that men do value them. They appeal to single tastes, they defy further analysis, and they thus form, as it were, the bases of all pleasures and happiness. ...
— Is Life Worth Living? • William Hurrell Mallock

... Weeper, and is radiant of delicate fancy. But surely such tones are not worthy of flitting moth-like about the holy sorrow of a repentant woman! Fantastically beautiful, they but play with her grief. Sorrow herself would put her shoes off her feet in approaching the weeping Magdalene. They make much of her ...
— England's Antiphon • George MacDonald

... have persisted. The introduction of a new disease into an isolated people has often been attended with dire consequences. It is much the same thing with the introduction of disease of plants. In Europe the brown-tail moth and the gypsy moth produce continuously a certain amount of damage to the trees, but their parasitic enemies have developed with them and check their increase. These pests were brought to this country in which there were ...
— Disease and Its Causes • William Thomas Councilman

... uncommon. These finished—and the sheets of manuscript were printed, eighteen months later, almost without change—he caught a sudden fever of entomology: hunted daily for specimens, but preserved, eventually, only six of his captures: a moth, silver and green; a butterfly of steely, iridescent blue; a solemn, black-coated cricket; a bee bound round with the five golden rings of Italy; a tiny, rainbow-hued humming-bird, found dead in a fast-shut ...
— The Genius • Margaret Horton Potter

... Baer, Rathke, Reichert, Bischoff, and Remak, have almost completely unravelled them, so that the successive stages of development which are exhibited by a Dog, for example, are now as well known to the embryologist as are the steps of the metamorphosis of the silkworm moth to the school-boy. It will be useful to consider with attention the nature and the order of the stages of canine development, as an example of the process in ...
— Lectures and Essays • T.H. Huxley

... girls, tense and startling in its unusual turns. Every reader interested in aviation will be thrilled to follow the strange adventures of Ruth Darrow in her racing monoplane, the Silver Moth. Aided by her chum, Jean Harrington, and her loyal friend, Sandy Morland, Ruth takes part in an exciting air race and solves many ...
— Marjorie's Busy Days • Carolyn Wells

... torchlight procession that night, he found that a good many felt as Buster Bumblebee did. They declined to break their life-long rule of going early to bed. But there were others, such as Mr. Moses Mosquito, Kiddie Katydid, and Mehitable Moth, who said at once that they were glad he asked them and that they wouldn't miss the fun ...
— The Tale of Freddie Firefly • Arthur Scott Bailey

... 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

... humour; he, alas! can be dirty like the rest, when necessary: but humour he has of the highest quality. 'The Ordinary' is full of it; and Moth, the Antiquary, though too much of a lay figure, and depending for his amusingness on his quaint antiquated language, is such a sketch as Mr. Dickens need not ...
— Plays and Puritans - from "Plays and Puritans and Other Historical Essays" • Charles Kingsley

... o'erflows with joy; I hold them as a sacred trust. I fain would hide them in my heart, Safe from tarnish of moth and rust. ...
— Sparkling Gems of Race Knowledge Worth Reading • Various

... and know everything. To what then shall be directed that vague look, equally attracted to all points for want of any fixed rule? At what shall it stop? It will rest on that which shines most brilliantly, like a moth attracted by light. Now, nothing shines more brightly than success; nothing more solicits the attention. The glorification of success is the first and most infallible consequence of moral indifference. In leaving ourselves to be fashioned ...
— The Heavenly Father - Lectures on Modern Atheism • Ernest Naville

... head backward somewhat after the manner of a spirited horse. And then, the old irritable demon prompting him to give another good pinch at the moth-wings of poor Mr. Casaubon's glory, he went on, "And I have seen since that Mr. Casaubon does not like any one to overlook his work and know thoroughly what he is doing. He is too doubtful—too uncertain of himself. I may not be good for much, but he ...
— Middlemarch • George Eliot

... understanding, we are forever approaching it, with forever the joy of something new to master or to learn. New perceptions, new comprehensions, new insights gained, new victories, even little victories, won, constitute, I think, our treasures laid up in that heaven where neither moth nor wear-and-tear destroys, and where thieves do not break in and steal. Where this treasure is, there, naturally enough, our hearts will be also. Looking back over the ages since the life-principle first glided into our planet waters—how it did so is as yet part of our unsolved mystery—what ...
— The Conquest of Fear • Basil King

... Antoinette a present of Le Petit Trianon. Much has been said of the extravagant expense lavished by her upon this spot. I can only declare that the greater part of the articles of furniture which had not been worn out by time or were not worm or moth-eaten, and her own bed among them, were taken from the apartments of former Queens, and some of them had actually belonged to Anne of Austria, who, like Marie Antoinette, had purchased them out of her private savings. Hence it is ...
— The Memoirs of Louis XV. and XVI., Volume 4 • Madame du Hausset, and of an Unknown English Girl and the Princess Lamballe

... red-faced, red-whiskered stage driver who nagged at his four horses incessantly and never was known to beat one of them; a garrulous, soft-hearted stage driver who understood very well how lonely these two young folks must be, and who therefore had some moth-eaten joke ready for whoever might be waiting for him at the macaroni box. Whenever Helen May apologized for the favor she must ask of him—which was every time she handed him a list—the stage driver invariably ...
— Starr, of the Desert • B. M Bower

... of repulsion toward those twin monstrosities be altogether lust, seeing that so charming a maiden deems them worthy of veneration. And they even cease to seem ugly as I watch her standing there between them, dainty and slender as some splendid moth, and always naively gazing at the foreigner, utterly unconscious that they might have seemed to him both ...
— Glimpses of an Unfamiliar Japan - First Series • Lafcadio Hearn

... moon is like a shepherd with a flock of starry lambkins, The wind is like a whisper to the mountains from the sea, The sun a gold moth browsing on a flower's pearl-dusted pollen; But my words can scarcely utter what my love ...
— Stories in Verse • Henry Abbey

... leaf but one,[17] a great advantage, as the monkish student could more easily detect at a glance whether the volume was perfect. The armarian was, moreover, particularly enjoined to inspect with scrupulous care the more ancient volumes, lest the moth-worms should have got at them, or they had become corrupt or mutilated, and, if such were the case, he was with great care to restore them. Probably the armarian was also the bookbinder to the monastery in ordinary cases, for he is here directed to cover the ...
— Bibliomania in the Middle Ages • Frederick Somner Merryweather

... just caught a moth in the flame of the candle. She carried it to the window. "You will come back soon, of course?" her back ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science - Vol. XI, No. 27, June, 1873 • Various

... surrounded by a host of determined enemies in their own country? But many thought, and I thought so too, that it was special favour and mercy which Heaven showed to Spain in permitting the destruction of that source and hiding place of mischief, that devourer, sponge, and moth of countless money, fruitlessly wasted there to no other purpose save preserving the memory of its capture by the invincible Charles V; as if to make that eternal, as it is and will be, these stones were needed to support it. The fort also fell; but the Turks had to win it inch by inch, for the ...
— Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra

... Her mood was all obsessed now with the conviction that this was the end to her life of a moth. An end to everything; come morning and she must be cast forth in disgrace, to go back to ...
— Nobody • Louis Joseph Vance

... face quickly Bloom bends to examine on the halltable the spaniel eyes of a running fox: then, his lifted head sniffing, follows Zoe into the musicroom. A shade of mauve tissuepaper dims the light of the chandelier. Round and round a moth flies, colliding, escaping. The floor is covered with an oilcloth mosaic of jade and azure and cinnabar rhomboids. Footmarks are stamped over it in all senses, heel to heel, heel to hollow, toe to toe, feet locked, a morris of shuffling feet ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce

... there came the Moth, with her plumage of down, And the Hornet, with jacket of yellow and brown, Who with him the Wasp, his companion, did bring— They promised that evening ...
— The Butterfly's Ball - The Grasshopper's Feast • R.M. Ballantyne

... of any build-up of DDT in soils that has been detrimental. I don't know what the situation would be if DDT was used to the same extent as arsenate of lead. It was not uncommon for some growers to put on anywhere from 6 to 15 lead sprays in a season in order to control codling moth, as they used to do in certain apple orchards, particularly in ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Incorporated 39th Annual Report - at Norris, Tenn. September 13-15 1948 • Various

... yet, nor the pleasure of seeing the way again, the lifting of the darkness leaves heaviness beneath it, and if a rashly early bird flops down upon the grass, he cannot count his distance, but quivers like a moth. ...
— Springhaven - A Tale of the Great War • R. D. Blackmore

... in some places in France they call us the moth birds, for they believe that our bodies will keep away moths ...
— Birds Illustrated by Color Photograph, Volume 1, Number 2, February, 1897 • anonymous

... witch-like gracious-ness, her dark head ducked between her shoulders, at once humble and powerful. She was happy as a child attending to her father-in-law and to me. But there was something ominous between her eyebrows, as if a dark moth were settled there—and something ominous in her ...
— Wintry Peacock - From "The New Decameron", Volume III. • D. H. Lawrence

... respects interesting to us, more especially because they have varied largely at an early period of life, and the variations have been inherited at corresponding periods. As the value of the silk-moth depends entirely on the cocoon, every change in its structure and qualities has been carefully attended to, and races differing much in the cocoon, but hardly at all in the adult state, have been produced. With the races of most other domestic animals, the young resemble each other closely, ...
— The Variation of Animals and Plants under Domestication - Volume I • Charles Darwin

... God; and all these things shall be added unto you. Fear not, for it is the Father's good pleasure to give you the kingdom. Sell what ye have and give alms; provide yourselves a treasure in the heavens that faileth not, where no thief approacheth, or moth corrupteth." ...
— Mother Stories from the New Testament • Anonymous

... sound—only once the faint cry of some wild animal in the far-off woods, and the flutter of a night-moth on the wing. Helen's face was turned eastwards towards the ...
— Vera Nevill - Poor Wisdom's Chance • Mrs. H. Lovett Cameron

... a different type of values from the other group—to a lower type. What is the test, the touchstone, by which we can tell to which class any value belongs? We shall find the test clearly stated in the Sermon on the Mount. Is the treasure in question one that moth and rust can corrupt or that thieves can break through and steal? If so, it belongs to the lower class, to Property. But if it is one that cannot be taken away, then it is a Possession and belongs to the higher type. There is another test, which is really a part of this: Can you share it without ...
— The Booklover and His Books • Harry Lyman Koopman

... by Lebert, and named by him Panhistophyton; for the reason that in subjects in which the disease is strongly developed, the corpuscles swarm in every tissue and organ of the body, and even pass into the undeveloped eggs of the female moth. But are these corpuscles causes, or mere concomitants, of the disease? Some naturalists took one view and some another; and it was not until the French Government, alarmed by the continued ravages of the ...
— Discourses - Biological and Geological Essays • Thomas H. Huxley

... ground. It is not difficult to study the transformations of the butterflies and moths, and it is always very interesting to feed a caterpillar until it transforms, in order to see what kind of a butterfly or moth comes out of ...
— Boy Scouts Handbook - The First Edition, 1911 • Boy Scouts of America

... first time we find the name of the mother who has often been mentioned in the story. Farashah is the fem. or singular form of "Farash," a butterfly, a moth. Lane notes that his Shaykh gives it the very unusual ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 7 • Richard F. Burton

... be readily supposed, was the main thing in this establishment; insomuch indeed that it shouldered comfort out of doors, and jostled the domestic arrangements at every turn. Thus in the miserable bedrooms there were files of moth-eaten letters hanging up against the walls; and linen rollers, and fragments of old patterns, and odds and ends of spoiled goods, strewed upon the ground; while the meagre bedsteads, washing-stands, and scraps of carpet, were huddled ...
— Life And Adventures Of Martin Chuzzlewit • Charles Dickens

... and colours, and well he knows how to suit them to each particular fish. But white or black, every fish takes one fly or the other, and then comes the question—is the fish that has swallowed the big gaudy lure so much worse or more foolish than that which has fallen to the delicate white moth with the same ...
— Allan and the Holy Flower • H. Rider Haggard

... trick was worn out, other waggish gentlemen had introduced the practice of dropping wax matches on the floor and treading on them, and of hunting an imaginary moth—an irresistibly humorous proceeding, in which the participators rushed about brandishing books and magazines, ever and anon crying, "There he is!" and smiting on the head some quiet, unoffending reader. Some evil-minded young miscreant went so far as to put bits of india-rubber on ...
— The Triple Alliance • Harold Avery

... solemnly watching him with the expression of a schoolgirl looking at her matinee idol at about the juncture in the last act when that hero puts on his kingly robes which have been hidden for a hundred years in the moth closet of his twenty-story apartment house on upper ...
— L. P. M. - The End of the Great War • J. Stewart Barney

... upon a rounded hillock, on which are a snail and spray of possible foxglove, and out of which grow a red carnation and another flower. In the upper right-hand corner is a gabled cottage with a tree, and under it a moth, flower, and caterpillar. Towards the upper left-hand corner is a bank of cloud with red and yellow rays issuing therefrom, and under it a pear-tree with flower and fruit, and a many-coloured butterfly. All the background is ...
— English Embroidered Bookbindings • Cyril James Humphries Davenport

... Howard Dunbar's The Shell of Sense is another instance of jealousy reaching beyond the grave. The Messenger, one of Robert W. Chambers's early stories and an admirable example of the supernatural, has various thrills, with its river of blood, its death's head moth, and the ancient but very active skull of the Black Priest who was shot as a traitor to his country, but lived on as an energetic ...
— Famous Modern Ghost Stories • Various

... way down the middle aisle, opposite a pew, the faint flush of his lantern falling on the nearest upturned face. A long thin candle was fastened to this pew. The firefly of a taper, held aloft in his trembling hand, flickered uncertainly like a moth, and rested on the top of this candle. Then the wick kindled and burned. As its rays felt their way over the vast interior, struggling up into the dark roof, reaching the gilded ornaments on the side ...
— A Gentleman Vagabond and Some Others • F. Hopkinson Smith

... way back to that unsavory asylum. So I dived into a pawnbroker's shop, where I was a stranger only upon my present errand, and within the hour was airing a decent if antiquated suit, but little corrupted by the pawnbroker's moth, and a new straw hat, on ...
— Raffles - Further Adventures of the Amateur Cracksman • E. W. Hornung

... Edna and she followed along through the deserted rooms, catching sight of a moth-eaten cover here, a bunch of withered flowers there. Books, long untouched, lay half open on a table in one room, the bed was still unmade in ...
— A Dear Little Girl's Thanksgiving Holidays • Amy E. Blanchard

... allowed her to lead him into the room. There she lighted a candle, and as it came gradually alive, it shed a pale yellow light around, and revealed a bare chamber, with a bedstead and the remains of a moth-eaten mattress in a corner. Leopold threw himself upon it, uttering a sound that more resembled a choked scream than a groan. Helen sat down beside him, took his head on her lap, and sought to soothe him with such tender loving words ...
— Thomas Wingfold, Curate • George MacDonald

... to-day if the delicate statues and temples of the Greeks, if the broad roads and massy walls of the Romans, if the noble architecture, castles and towns of the Middle Ages had not been ground to dust by blind rage of man. It is man that is the consumer; he is moth and mildew and flame." All the galleries and temples and libraries and cities have been destroyed by his baneful presence. Thrice armies have made an arsenal of the Acropolis; ground the precious marbles to powder, and mixed their dust with his ashes. ...
— The Investment of Influence - A Study of Social Sympathy and Service • Newell Dwight Hillis

... The Queen her prayer renewed, When in came a moth at the window, And fluttered about ...
— Women of the Romance Countries • John R. Effinger

... room from which she had fled that very morning, she could not bring herself to seek his charity or ask his pity. She realised well enough that one such as she could never hope to win a look of love from him; but like the moth that hovers round the flame which brings it danger she nevertheless determined ...
— Adrien Leroy • Charles Garvice

... they are caught, moth-like, and hurt by its flame—if they copy our vile vices, which are no part of our Christianity, but the remnants of our own original savagery cropping out in spite of Christianity—if so, is it surprising? Their eyes are bothered by the sudden change from black darkness ...
— Quiet Talks with World Winners • S. D. Gordon

... permission to enter the temple, I inspected the stuffed animals—dogs, calves, leopards—suspended on the verandah. They were fast going to decay from dust and moth, but I was told that they were reputed sacred. The temple, which we were forced to enter from a side door, was large and high, hung with scrolls and banners and filled with images, but it was so dark that I found it difficult ...
— A Wayfarer in China - Impressions of a trip across West China and Mongolia • Elizabeth Kendall

... the antiquities His honest hold, his birthright is! And things unheard of or unread, Defaced by moth or rust or mold, To him are treasures more than gold, ...
— Poems - Vol. IV • Hattie Howard

... burned; Two boots he had, but not kin, One leather, the other was tin; And for stirrups he had two patten rings, Tied fast to the girth with two strings; Yet he wanted a good saddle cloth, Which long had been eat by the moth. 'Twas a sad misfortune, you'll say, But still he looked gallant and gay, And his name it was Arthur O'Bradley! O! rare Arthur O'Bradley! wonderful Arthur O'Bradley! ...
— Ancient Poems, Ballads and Songs of England • Robert Bell

... I am assured by ladies conversant with such mysteries) gives evidence of a now forgotten art, not to be discovered even by the process of picking out the threads. This rag of scarlet cloth—for time, and wear, and a sacrilegious moth had reduced it to little other than a rag—on careful examination, assumed the ...
— The Scarlet Letter • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... to-day. He lived for himself alone, and he lived only for this world. He had sunk all his capital in his gold and silver, and purple and fine linen. He had no treasure laid up in Heaven. So when the moth and rust had done their work, and death had broken through like a thief and stolen all his earthly goods, he had nothing left. This parable is full of sharp contrasts. First, there is the contrast in the life of ...
— The Life of Duty, v. 2 - A year's plain sermons on the Gospels or Epistles • H. J. Wilmot-Buxton

... the friendly advances of her neighbours troubled the younger sister not at all. She remembered none of the past grandeur, the old Blake power of rule, and the stories of gallant indiscretions and powdered beaux seemed to her as worthless as the moth-eaten satin rags which filled the garret. She loved the familiar country children, the making of fresh butter, and honest admiration of her beauty; and except for the colourless poverty in which they lived, she might easily have found her ...
— The Deliverance; A Romance of the Virginia Tobacco Fields • Ellen Glasgow

... we throw a rhyme to God, Singing His praise when other songs are done. But thou, who knewest paths Teresa trod, Losing thyself, what is it thou hast won? O bleeding feet, with peace and glory shod! O happy moth, that flew into ...
— Main Street and Other Poems • Alfred Joyce Kilmer

... her daughter sat together in the conservatory, and both were silent; the baroness intently watching a bright moth, which was bent upon flying into the lamp, and came knocking its thick little body over and over against the glass which ...
— Debit and Credit - Translated from the German of Gustav Freytag • Gustav Freytag

... song may yet peal forth the Rachel cry—but thou belongest to the heart forever, and none of these can dispossess the soul of its unforgotten transport. Nor fire, nor flood, nor fraud can prevail against thee! Thy treasures moth and rust doth not corrupt nor thieves break ...
— St. Cuthbert's • Robert E. Knowles

... will drive you home. These mules are too skittish for him to handle. Fine pair, eh, William?' And right there in the early dawn, almost in front of the garage that contained his touring Chauvinnais and my gray roadster, father stood in his velvet dressing-gown and admired the two moth-eaten old animals. Now, I honestly ask you, Matthew, could a woman of heart refuse at least to attempt to see those two great old boys through the rest of their lives in peace and comfort together? Elmnest is roof and land and ...
— The Golden Bird • Maria Thompson Daviess

... change the fixed eternal law of life That good from good, evil from evil flows?" This said, he stooped and loosed the panting goat, None staying him, so great his presence was. And then with loving tenderness he taught How sin works out its own sure punishment; How like corroding rust and eating moth It wastes the very substance of the soul; Like poisoned blood it surely, drop by drop, Pollutes the very fountain of the life; Like deadly drug it changes into stone The living fibres of a loving heart; Like fell disease, ...
— The Dawn and the Day • Henry Thayer Niles

... along the path, like a white night-moth out of the fields. The years seemed to stretch before her like the land; spring, summer, autumn, winter, spring; always the same patient fields, the patient little trees, the patient lives; always the same yearning, the same pulling ...
— O Pioneers! • Willa Cather

... "cycle on epicycle, orb on orb," with which crude theorizers had crowded the stellar spaces; from the uncurbed poetry of Hyginus writing the floor of heaven over with romantic myths in planetary words, to the more wondrous truth of Le Verrier measuring the steps from nimble Mercury flitting moth like in the beard of the sun to dull Neptune sagging in his cold course twenty six hundred million miles away; from the half inch orb of Hipparchus's naked eye, to the six feet speculum of Rosse's awful tube; from the primeval belief in one world studded around with skyey ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger



Words linked to "Moth" :   Mediterranean flour moth, pyralid, geometrid moth, gypsy moth, giant silkworm moth, raisin moth, lymantriid, gold-tail moth, grain moth, tent-caterpillar moth, wax moth, moth bean, codlin moth, moth orchid, heliothis moth, tussock moth, gipsy moth, antler moth, pernyi moth, carpet moth, corn borer moth, luna moth, Malacosoma americana, casemaking clothes moth, miller, bee moth, mothy, hawk moth, sphingid, European corn borer moth, saturniid, tiger moth, saturniid moth, lasiocampid, webbing moth, moth mullein, moth plant, codling moth, pyralid moth, potato moth, tineoid, clothes moth, imperial moth, moth miller, sphinx moth, tortricid, noctuid moth, potato tuber moth, owlet moth, atlas moth, webbing clothes moth



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