"Chameleon" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... delighted; you don't suppose that every one can live, chameleon-like, on air, or worse still, on false quantities. Ha, ha, ha! And those pictures too. That snow is more violet ...
— A Mere Accident • George Moore
... hand, and put on his finger as she spoke a massive gold ring of a peculiar make, with a chameleon and a vessel under full ...
— John Deane of Nottingham - Historic Adventures by Land and Sea • W.H.G. Kingston
... [331] that "there is no fixed rule by which to construe the Indians; for each one needs a new syntax, all being anomalous. With the Indians the argument does not conclude by induction, since no one is like to himself; for, in the short circuit of a day, he changes into more colors than a chameleon, takes more shapes than a Proteus, and has more movements than a Euripus. [332] He who has most to do with them, knows them least. In short, they are an aggregate of contrarieties, and the best logician cannot reconcile them. They are an obscure and confused chaos, in which no species ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898 - Volume 40 of 55 • Francisco Colin
... expression of Mrs. Lorraine's countenance, while Vivian was speaking, would have baffled the most cunning painter. Her complexion was capricious as the chameleon's, and her countenance was so convulsed that her features seemed of all shapes and sizes. One large vein protruded nearly a quarter of an inch from her forehead, and the dank light which gleamed in her tearful eye was like an unwholesome meteor quivering in a marsh. When he ended she ...
— Vivian Grey • The Earl of Beaconsfield
... Morality, a fine female form, hooded in a veil, which, chameleon-like, sported all colours. She held Virtue and Vice by the hands, and danced a trio with them. For music, a naked savage played upon an oaten pipe, a European philosopher scraped the fiddle, while an Asiatic beat the drum; and although these contradictory tones would have distracted an harmonious ...
— Faustus - his Life, Death, and Doom • Friedrich Maximilian von Klinger
... lively pink reflection from the upper atmosphere; the vast variety of tints with which the greens and the reds, the purples and the fiery crimsons of the western sky tincture the receptive surface of the neutral-hued granites; and the chameleon-shiftings of the dying day, as it sinks into the arms of night. Nor less admirable are the feats of the fairy Refraction. The mighty curtain seems to rise and fall as if by magic: it imitates, as it were, the framework of man. In early morning the ...
— The Land of Midian, Vol. 2 • Richard Burton
... same is she. [POINTING TO CELIA.] Out, thou chameleon harlot! now thine eyes Vie tears with the hyaena. Dar'st thou look Upon my wronged face?—I cry your pardons, I fear I have forgettingly transgrest Against ...
— Volpone; Or, The Fox • Ben Jonson
... black snappers, red snappers, and rock fish, and a vast variety, for all of which, however, Wagtail had names pat, until at length I caught a most lovely dolphin—a beauty to look at—but dry, terribly dry to eat. I cast it on the deck, and the chameleon tints of the dying fish, about which so many lies have been said and sung, were just beginning to fade, and wax pale, and ashy, and deathlike, when I felt another strong jiggery jiggery at my line, which little Reefpoint had, in the meantime, baited afresh. "Zounds! ...
— Tom Cringle's Log • Michael Scott
... it was sufficiently full of incident to banish monotony. Without such incident existence would have been intolerable. Nature herself seemed to be almost somnolent in these parts, for, besides a few chameleon-like lizards, a stray jackal or hawk, and a plentiful supply of small black beetles which stood on their heads when interfered with, all other forms of life were absent. Even vegetation was reduced to a few rushes and a ...
— The 28th: A Record of War Service in the Australian Imperial Force, 1915-19, Vol. I • Herbert Brayley Collett
... together, she had turned to Gratton. Now, here in her father's log house in the mountains, she wondered that she could have done so. Did men change colour like chameleons, shifted from one environment to another? Or was it she who had been unstable, she who was the chameleon? A queer sensation which had been hers before, and which she was to know more than once in days to follow, mastered her. It seemed that within her, coexistent and for ever in conflict, there were two Glorias: ...
— The Everlasting Whisper • Jackson Gregory
... somewhat the measure of their blind faith and hope. Their talk became desultory. The blue and silver of afternoon gave way to the blue and gold of approaching evening. The tide came in and the amber sky took on the luminous tints of rose and jade, cobalt and orange. The heaving, chameleon sea, unruffled by a breath of wind, gave back the colors quivering, burnished, opalescent, like the bowl of an abalone shell. They, on the Lookout, felt themselves alone inside the tinted bubble of the world. Ellen's ...
— Where the Sun Swings North • Barrett Willoughby
... chameleon in interpreting his authors. Wherever the scenario shows traces of The Clansman, the original book, by Thomas Dixon, it is bad. Wherever it is unadulterated Griffith, which is half the time, it is good. The Reverend Thomas Dixon is a rather ...
— The Art Of The Moving Picture • Vachel Lindsay
... damned him, and there was a woman's name on rumor's many tongues when rumor talked of Harby. So it came to be that he rode sooner than he had proposed, and far harder than he had proposed, through green, level Cambridgeshire, through green, hilly Oxfordshire, with Harby for his goal. Chameleon-like, he changed hues on the way, shifting, with the help of his wallet, back into a gaudier garb less likely to be frowned on in ...
— The Lady of Loyalty House - A Novel • Justin Huntly McCarthy
... man of science have inevitably figured in hostile reviews under the head of colour-changing sauroids. The popular notion respecting the colour-changing powers of these lizards is, that at will the chameleon can habit itself in any colour of the rainbow; that by turns it is a red chameleon, a blue chameleon, a green chameleon, and a yellow chameleon. The fact of the case is very far-from this notion. Chameleons are found chiefly in Africa ...
— How to See the British Museum in Four Visits • W. Blanchard Jerrold
... say, yes, I would discriminate in the Territories wherever it is needful to assert the right of citizens.... I have heard many a siren's song on this doctrine of non-intervention; a thing shadowy and fleeting, changing its color as often as the chameleon."[785] ...
— Stephen A. Douglas - A Study in American Politics • Allen Johnson
... sympathetic joy or sorrow from the varied aspect of mortal affairs, even as my figure catches a gleam from the lighted windows, or is blackened by an interval of darkness. Not that mine is altogether a chameleon spirit, with no hue of its own. Now I pass into a more retired street, where the dwellings of wealth and poverty are intermingled, presenting a range of strongly contrasted pictures. Here, too, may be found the golden mean. Through yonder ...
— Beneath An Umbrella (From "Twice Told Tales") • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... Olga. "Life is any color one wishes, and sometimes the color one does not wish. Very pale at times, gray, yellow and at times red—oh, so red! The soul is the chameleon which absorbs and reflects it. Today," she signed, "my chameleon has taken a vacation." She rose abruptly and threw out her arms ...
— Madcap • George Gibbs
... seeing your swetheart{sic} wearing a chameleon chained to her, shows she will prove faithless to you if by changing she can better her fortune. Ordinarily chameleons signify deceit and self advancement, even though ...
— 10,000 Dreams Interpreted • Gustavus Hindman Miller
... D'Israeli, "are the creators or creatures of opinion: the great form the epoch; the many reflect the age." Chameleon-like, most of them take the political, social, and religious hues of the period in which they live, while a few illustrate it perhaps quite as forcibly ...
— English Literature, Considered as an Interpreter of English History - Designed as a Manual of Instruction • Henry Coppee
... place, they do not hesitate to make what promises may be demanded of them, possessing as they do the art of escape by lying with equivocations and mental reservations' (ib. vol. ii. p. 147). 'The Jesuit is a man of every color; he repeats the marvel of the chameleon' (ibid. p. 105). 'When they play a losing game, they yet rise winners from the table. For it is their habit to insinuate themselves upon any condition demanded, having arts enough whereby to make themselves masters of those who bind them by prescribed rules. They are glad to enter in the ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volumes 1 and 2 - The Catholic Reaction • John Addington Symonds
... "A chameleon that needed the influence of a good woman. Then he gave me this box of Cuban chocolates, to keep me from crying, I suppose. Have one! They're not nearly as nasty ...
— South Wind • Norman Douglas
... has the greatest chance of electing their candidates; it matters not what party it may be, as Roman Catholicism has no politics, as her only desire is power, and it does not matter from what source she receives it, so long as it is granted her, as Romanism is like a chameleon, as she will change her political color to suit her surroundings if she is assured that she will be permitted to inject her deadly virus into ...
— Thirty Years In Hell - Or, From Darkness to Light • Bernard Fresenborg
... much excited now, evidently; he relinquished my unwilling hand coldly—on which he had, doubtless, missed the conspicuous ring, significant of my engagement. His chameleon eyes seemed to emit sparks of phosphorescent fire, as if every one of the dull-yellow sparks therein had become suddenly ignited. I saw then, for the first time, what his ire could be, and what reason I had ...
— Miriam Monfort - A Novel • Catherine A. Warfield
... is then your plea, replied the dame, Which, well inform'd, will ever be the same. But yours is much of the chameleon hue, To change the dye with every distant view. When first the Lion sat with awful sway, 790 Your conscience taught your duty to obey: He might have had your Statutes and your Test; No conscience but of subjects was profess'd. He found your temper, and no farther tried, But on ...
— The Poetical Works of John Dryden, Vol I - With Life, Critical Dissertation, and Explanatory Notes • John Dryden
... languages. Intermixed and living promiscuously and vitally together, he possessed in these languages a reservoir of expression in which a myriad Billy Sundays could drown. Of no race, a mongrel par excellence, a heterogeneous scrabble, the genius of the admixture was superlatively Abel Ah Yo's. Like a chameleon, he titubated and scintillated grandly between the diverse parts of him, stunning by frontal attack and surprising and confouding by flanking sweeps the mental homogeneity of the more simply constituted souls who came in to his ...
— On the Makaloa Mat/Island Tales • Jack London
... was as if her designer were trying to make a craft invisible at sea. As near as Madden could determine in the strange light, she was painted a pale sky-blue. During the day, no doubt, she melted into the sky like a chameleon. ...
— The Cruise of the Dry Dock • T. S. Stribling
... more, much more. The Other, as she called it—giving the entity a thought-form that implied complete alienage—had a strangely chameleon-like method of feeding. It lived on life-force, as well as I could understand, draining the vital powers of a mammal vampirically. And it assumed the shape of its prey as it fed. It was not possession, in the strict sense of the word. It ...
— Where the World is Quiet • Henry Kuttner
... took off his leather apron with a troubled face, and, as he passed his daughter, gently laid his tremulous, stained hand upon her head. He felt her least uneasiness, it would seem, as a chameleon feels a cloud ...
— Men, Women, and Ghosts • Elizabeth Stuart Phelps
... the "creeps" in her feet and back hair, and she never recovers until she has had tea. But it was a charming lane, with views by and by of wide, purple moorland, sunset-red with new heather; and the sky had turned from bluebell azure to green and rose, in a wonderful, chameleon way, which it seems that the sky has in Cornwall. I suppose it was a Celtic habit! All about us billowed a profusion of wild beauty; and though for a long time there was nothing alive in sight except a flock of bright pink sheep, ...
— Set in Silver • Charles Norris Williamson and Alice Muriel Williamson
... colour from the surroundings of the moment. They are swayed by every fresh change of circumstance, influenced by every strong mind with whom they come in contact. If such a man goes on from year to year in the same even groove of work, the chameleon mind may not be apparent on the surface; but if by any chance he is suddenly jolted from his accustomed groove, the mental instability becomes ...
— Swirling Waters • Max Rittenberg
... fight against them, and for God's sake besought him that he might be permitted so to do. Whereunto Pantagruel would not give consent, but commanded him to depart thence speedily and begone as he had told him, and to that effect gave him a boxful of euphorbium, together with some grains of the black chameleon thistle, steeped into aqua vitae, and made up into the condiment of a wet sucket, commanding him to carry it to his king, and to say unto him, that if he were able to eat one ounce of that without drinking after it, he might then ...
— Gargantua and Pantagruel, Complete. • Francois Rabelais
... his in both. Some temperaments always lean their heads on their hands when they are weary, and others support their chins. A determined character sets her feet down firmly and decidedly at every step—though of course it needn't be thumping—while a dependent chameleon kind of a woman minces along uncertainly. Why, sometimes just from the angle at which a person lifts his head to listen, you can tell if he ...
— Beatrice Leigh at College - A Story for Girls • Julia Augusta Schwartz
... you have so good an opinion of yourself, Mr. Chance," she replied. "I was vexed with you at first, but am not so now. To watch the changes of your chameleon mind, not always successful in getting the right colour at the right moment, is just as good as a play. If you really mean to come again and again I shall not object—it will amuse me. Only do not come at two o'clock in the morning; it might compromise me, ...
— Fan • Henry Harford
... the age of the soul of man? As she hath the virtue of the chameleon to change her hue at every new approach, to be gay with the merry and mournful with the downcast, so too is her age changeable as her mood. No longer is Leopold, as he sits there, ruminating, chewing the cud of reminiscence, ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce
... but—hardly the garment of good writing. Good writing is only the perfect clothing of mood—the just right form. Shakespeare's form, you will say, was extraordinarily loose, wide, plastic; but then his spirit was ever changing its mood—a true chameleon. And as to the form of Mr. Shaw—who was once compared with Shakespeare—why! there is none. And yet, what form could so perfectly express Mr. Shaw's glorious crusade against stupidity, his wonderfully sincere and lifelong mood of sticking pins into ...
— Another Sheaf • John Galsworthy
... was twenty-six—an age which has something in common with almost every one of the seven celebrated by Shakespeare. Like most men in their twenties, he had the character of a chameleon, and adapted himself to his surroundings with almost uncanny facility. At college he had been an ardent member of a dozen cliques, even falling under the egotism of the men who dabbled in Spiritualism, but a ...
— The Parts Men Play • Arthur Beverley Baxter
... scattering over the plain, is swelled by Moslem, Sikh, Hindu, Parsee, and Buddhist allies, until its millions hold India's domain. The perspective becomes confused, outlines jumble, figures are inverted, lights and shadows intermingle their chameleon hues, until under widened folds of British and Russian canvas "Lion" and "Bear" divide the "foray," still regarding each other with "rolling ...
— Oswald Langdon - or, Pierre and Paul Lanier. A Romance of 1894-1898 • Carson Jay Lee
... many, from the chameleon upwards," replied Swinton. "By the bye, there is one which is said to be very venomous. I have heard many well-authenticated stories of the bite being not only very dangerous, but in some instances fatal. I have specimens of the animal in my collection. ...
— The Mission; or Scenes in Africa • Captain Frederick Marryat
... second-oldest, but yet a very unvenerable order. This, truly, seems the likeliest hypothesis of all. Names and appearances alter so strangely, in some half-score centuries; and all fluctuates chameleon-like, taking now this hue, now that. Thus much is very plain, and does not change hue: Landlord Edmund was seen and felt by all men to have done verily a man's part in this life-pilgrimage of his; and benedictions, and out-flowing love and admiration ...
— Past and Present - Thomas Carlyle's Collected Works, Vol. XIII. • Thomas Carlyle
... else should I call what has so often filled me with the deepest rapture? The Greek language has no more fitting expression for the grand and lofty things that hovered before me, and which I called by that chameleon of a word. Yet I have a different meaning from what appears before you at its sound. Were I to call it truth, you would scarcely understand me, but when I conjure before my soul the image of Alexandria, with all that springs ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... lifted a little and, once more quite self-possessed, she rejoined, lightly, "I have a chameleon mind; it chimes with ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... robe of chameleon-hued satin, so artfully woven, with a warp of golden thread and woof of crimson silk, that, as with every change of light and shade, it glowed in ruby coals or blazed in amber flames; and as with every motion of her graceful form it flashed ...
— Cruel As The Grave • Mrs. Emma D. E. N. Southworth
... Fern Owl; Mr. Rennie's interesting Notes on the Cleanliness of Animals; Mechanism of the Voice in Singing; the Vision of Birds of Prey; New species of British Snake; Animalculae in Snow; Habits of the Chameleon; Peculiarity of the Negro Stomach; Growth of Spanish Flies; British Pearl Fishery on the Conway; the cause of Goitre; seat of the sense of touch and taste; stones found in the stomach of Pikes; Learned Poodles at Paris; Faculties ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 17, No. - 488, May 7, 1831 • Various
... seemingly-spiritual Forms" without the inward Life and Power which are always the mark of true religion. These "mimical Christians" reform their looks, instruct their tongues, take up the fitting set of duties and system of opinions, underprop their religion with sacred performances; "chameleon-like, they even turn their insides to whatever hue and colour" is demanded of religion; they "furnish this domestick Scene of theirs with any kind of matter which the history of religion affords them"—only, however they "cunningly fashion out ...
— Spiritual Reformers in the 16th & 17th Centuries • Rufus M. Jones
... the holy slipper for a hundred of the smiles that hover round thy vermillion lips? Laughing lassie, if thou wouldst remain always fresh and young, weep no more; think of riding the brideless fleas, of bridling with the golden clouds thy chameleon chimeras, of metamorphosing the realities of life into figures clothed with the rainbow, caparisoned with roseate dreams, and mantled with wings blue as the eyes of the partridge. By the Body and the Blood, by the ...
— Droll Stories, Complete - Collected From The Abbeys Of Touraine • Honore de Balzac
... feelings toward the brave men who had served with him are shown by a note in his diary, which was probably not intended for any other eye than his own: "Nov. 7. I had the comfort of making an old AGAMEMNON, George Jones, a gunner into the CHAMELEON brig." ...
— The Life of Horatio Lord Nelson • Robert Southey
... of the Two Messengers.—Zulu story of the chameleon and the lizard, 60 sq.; Akamba story of the chameleon and the thrush, 61 sq.; Togo story of the dog and the frog, 62 sq.; Ashantee story of the goat and the sheep, ...
— The Belief in Immortality and the Worship of the Dead, Volume I (of 3) • Sir James George Frazer
... confidence commended me in dumb show to the landlady of the Inn, a Mrs. Nature, if I understood him aright. This person was still comely, though of uncertain age, wore cherry ribbons, smiled rather vacantly from vague, wonderful, indescribable eyes that seemed to change colour, like the chameleon, according to ...
— Henry Brocken - His Travels and Adventures in the Rich, Strange, Scarce-Imaginable Regions of Romance • Walter J. de la Mare
... glorious sight." That's excellent.—"His mouth was full, and less intellectual than his other features." True again. But when our artist pronounces that "his eyes were large and blue" and that "his hair was auburn," I am naturally reminded of the fable of the "Chameleon":—"They're brown, Ma'am,—brown, I assure you!" The fact is, the lady was enchanted—and I cannot wonder at it—with the whole character of that beaming face; and "blue" and "auburn" being the favorite tints of the human ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 7, No. 39, January, 1861 • Various
... of mind he drooped idly over the rail as the yacht drew out of the bay, the evening of the second day. The glories of the southern sunset lingered and vanished, a-begging, without his senses being roused by them; and long after the sea, chameleon-like, changed from rose to lavender, from lavender to gray, the mountains yet jealously clung to their vivid aureolas of phantom gold. Fitzgerald saw nothing but ...
— A Splendid Hazard • Harold MacGrath
... colouring. Two other explanations have, however, been suggested: first, that the prevalent white of the arctic regions directly colours the animals, either by some photographic or chemical action on the skin, or by a reflex action through vision (as in the chameleon); secondly, that a white skin checks radiation and keeps the animals warm. But there are some exceptions to the rule of white colouring in arctic animals which refute these hypotheses, and confirm the author's. The sable remains ...
— Logic - Deductive and Inductive • Carveth Read
... to fear lest you might be wet," she said, emulating his polite equanimity. Genuine tact is always chameleon-like in quality. "It rains quite ...
— At Last • Marion Harland
... that, from the old apple or cherry tree, or red cedar, announces the approach of rain, and baffles your every effort to see or discover it. It has not (as some people imagine) exactly the power of the chameleon to render itself invisible by assuming the color of the object it perches upon, but it sits very close and still, and its mottled back, of different shades of ashen gray, blends it perfectly with the bark of nearly every tree. The only change in its ...
— The Writings of John Burroughs • John Burroughs
... exhibited in manifold ways. He is as fine in relief as in the round. His decorative quality is as eminent as his purely sculptural side. Compared with his Italian contemporaries he is at once full of feeling and severe. He has nothing of Pilon's chameleon-like imitativeness. He does not, on the other hand, break with the traditions of the best models known to him—and, undoubtedly he knew the best. His works cover and line the Louvre, and anyone who visits Paris may get a perfect ...
— French Art - Classic and Contemporary Painting and Sculpture • W. C. Brownell
... excited any attention being the continual renewal of the blood-stain on the library floor. This certainly was very strange, as the door was always locked at night by Mr. Otis, and the windows kept closely barred. The chameleon-like colour, also, of the stain excited a good deal of comment. Some mornings it was a dull (almost Indian) red, then it would be vermilion, then a rich purple, and once when they came down for family prayers, according to the simple ...
— Lord Arthur Savile's Crime and Other Stories • Oscar Wilde
... draw that veil for you, sir," he said. "You may take your chameleon color from your friends the Varicks and remain gray, or from the Butlers and turn red, or from the Schuylers and turn blue ...
— The Maid-At-Arms • Robert W. Chambers
... green, brown and copper colour, from two inches to two feet and a half long, are ever and anon rustling among the fallen leaves and crossing the path before you, whilst the chameleon is busily employed in chasing insects round the trunks ...
— Wanderings In South America • Charles Waterton
... in brief. The Yogis have discovered the reason of the wondrous capacity of the chameleon to assume the appearance of plumpness or of leanness. This animal looks enormous when his lungs are filled with air, but in his normal condition he is quite insignificant. Many other reptiles as well acquire the possibility of swimming across large rivers quite easily by the same process. ...
— From the Caves and Jungles of Hindostan • Helena Pretrovna Blavatsky
... floor, and a sickening odor of moist flesh in the room. The people who worked here followed the ancient custom of nature, whereby the ptarmigan is the color of dead leaves in the fall and of snow in the winter, and the chameleon, who is black when he lies upon a stump and turns green when he moves to a leaf. The men and women who worked in this department were precisely the color of the "fresh ...
— The Jungle • Upton Sinclair
... nourishing, is relaxing, and sufficiently difficult of digestion. Lending itself, as it does, he says, in all the flowery imagery of the French tongue and manner, "to so many metamorphoses, it may be called, without exaggeration, the chameleon of the kitchen. Who has not eaten calf's head au naturel, simply boiled with the skin on, its flavour heightened by sauce just a little sharp? It is a dish as wholesome as it is agreeable, and one that ...
— The Book of Household Management • Mrs. Isabella Beeton
... style. It may seek to please by description of scenery, or by dissection of motive. It may be empty of action and filled with philosophy. It may be humorously perverse in its license of digression,—as it was in Sterne's hands, for example. It may be all things to all men: it is a very chameleon-weathercock. And it is too varied, too negligent, too lax, to spur its writer to his utmost effort, to that stern wrestle with technic which is a ...
— Inquiries and Opinions • Brander Matthews
... Venice—the magic city—there were days of mists, silvery and gray, when life took on the indistinctness and indecision of a dream; as there were days less lucent, when sea and sky melted in an indistinguishable line and the chameleon tints of the marshes mellowed into a monotonous gray surface—when the wonted brilliancy of the sunset clouds, and the glittering domes and campaniles were only faint gray shadows on the gray whiteness of the waters. And gondoliers came suddenly into vision, parting the mists with ...
— A Golden Book of Venice • Mrs. Lawrence Turnbull
... dramatist; a critic who might not impossibly have been great, a miscellanist of ability, and a verse-writer than whom many a worse has somehow or other obtained the name of poet. He began novel-writing very early (Falkland is of 1827), he continued it all his life, and he was the very Proteus-chameleon of the novel in changing his styles to suit the tastes of the day. He never exactly copied anybody: and in all his various attempts he went extremely near to the construction of masterpieces. In the novel of ...
— The English Novel • George Saintsbury
... the tartan wanted. And it is certainly curious enough to find, in one of our commonest fishes, a property which used to be regarded as one of the standing marvels of the zoology of those remote countries of which the chameleon is a native. ...
— My Schools and Schoolmasters - or The Story of my Education. • Hugh Miller
... Moors; old, white bearded fellows, in turbans and burnouse. Each of them offered a present of some kind. One of them brought a beautiful pair of Barbary pheasants, another a young wild pig in a crate; others, quaint arms, and one had a chameleon of a rare species, which he carried on the twig of a tree. An address of welcome to Morocco was read by one of their number and then they asked Paul he would not kindly walk on the water in the daylight for them as the soldiers had seen him do when he ...
— The Story of Paul Boyton - Voyages on All the Great Rivers of the World • Paul Boyton
... am. Alone, by myself I think I should care nothing for the prettiest Eden in all England. I don't think I would care for a walk through the Elysian fields by myself. I am a chameleon, and take the color of those with whom I live. My future colors will not be very bright, as I take it. It's a gloomy place enough, is it not? But there are fine trees, you see, which are the only things which one can ...
— The Claverings • Anthony Trollope
... never injure, stultify, or kill the body by its mischievous guerilla tactics, by its little, active, imp-like agents—morbid impulses. We thus find that there is a deep truth in utilitarianism, after all—the rose-color romancings of chameleon writers. To make a man a clear-judging member of society, doing wise actions in the present moment, and saying wise and beautiful things for all time, a great indispensable is—to see that the house that his spirit has received ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Vol. 3, July, 1851 • Various
... instability, unstable equilibrium; vacillation &c. (irresolution) 605; fluctuation, vicissitude; alternation &c. (oscillation) 314. restlessness &x. adj. fidgets, disquiet; disquietude, inquietude; unrest; agitation &c. 315. moon, Proteus, chameleon, quicksilver, shifting sands, weathercock, harlequin, Cynthia of the minute, April showers[obs3]; wheel of Fortune; transientness &c. 111[obs3]. V. fluctuate, vary, waver, flounder, flicker, flitter, flit, flutter, shift, shuffle, shake, totter, tremble, vacillate, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... polyhedric Peter, or a Peter with many sides. He changes colours like a chameleon, and his coat like a snake. He is a Proteus of a Peter. He was at first sublime, pathetic, impressive, profound; then dull; then prosy and dull; and now dull—oh so very dull! ...
— Peter Bell the Third • Percy Bysshe Shelley
... modifications made necessary in tint by different exposure to light, by supposing that some one member of the family prefers yellow to all other colours, one who has enough of the chameleon in her nature to feel an instinct to bask in sunshine. I will also suppose that the room most conveniently devoted to the occupation of this member has a southern exposure. If yellow must be used in her room, the quality of it should be very different from that which could be properly and profitably ...
— Principles of Home Decoration - With Practical Examples • Candace Wheeler
... however, he succeeded in accumulating a considerable sum of money, but as he had tasted the bitter poison of destitution, and had for a very long time earned the heavy load of poverty upon his back, and fearing to lose his property by the chameleon-like changes of fortune, he took up his money on a certain night, carried it out of the city, and buried it under a tree. After some time had passed be began sorely to miss the presence of his treasure, ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 2 • Richard F. Burton
... particularly his superiors. He knew how to govern under the appearance of obeying. He possessed exquisite tact in appreciating the characters of those far above him in rank and beneath him in intellect. He could accommodate himself with great readiness to the idiosyncrasies of sovereigns. He was a chameleon to the hand which fed him. In his intercourse with the King, he colored himself, as it were, with the King's character. He was not himself, but Philip; not the sullen, hesitating, confused Philip, however, but Philip endowed with eloquence, readiness, ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... considerable promise, and received the commendation of Sir Walter Scott. In 1827, he published "The Ant," a work in two volumes, one of which consists of entirely original, and the other of selected matter. "The Chameleon," a publication of the nature of an annual, commenced in 1831, and extended to three octavo volumes. Of this work, a melange of prose and poetry, the contents for the greater part were of his own composition. The last volume appeared in September ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volume IV. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... "Symbolical Painting of the Four Elements," represents the sea by fishes, the earth by moles, fire by a salamander, and air by a camel! Evidently he mistook the chameleon (which traditionally lives ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama, Vol 1 - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook • The Rev. E. Cobham Brewer, LL.D.
... known as the "Hatherly Distillery," owned by a chameleon millionaire German-Jew, named Sammy Marks. Oh, that fine old Scotch whisky! The labels announcing this un-fact are, I understand, obtained from the Old Country and gummed on the ...
— A Yeoman's Letters - Third Edition • P. T. Ross
... to have been of a different opinion. The murder of Murray did not involve Buchanan's fall. He had avenged it, as far as pen could do it, by that 'Admonition Direct to the Trew Lordis,' in which he showed himself as great a master of Scottish, as he was of Latin, prose. His satire of the 'Chameleon,' though its publication was stopped by Maitland, must have been read in manuscript by many of those same "True Lords;" and though there were nobler instincts in Maitland than any Buchanan gave him credit for, the satire breathed an honest indignation against that wily turncoat's ...
— Health and Education • Charles Kingsley
... was a sleepy, bald-headed man upon whose shining, nodding, snoring pate several flies were resting in quiet enjoyment of the sermon. All at once, this toothsome collection attracted the attention of a very large bright-eyed chameleon admirer who launched himself through the air upon said bald head in pursuit of his dinner. With a yell of fear, the sleeper struck the animal with his huge hand, sending the long tailed frolicsome creature heels over head directly upon the clergyman's manuscript, ...
— The Gentleman from Everywhere • James Henry Foss
... disgrace than adorn their persons, as by their niceness in apparel, for which I say most nations do not unjustly deride us, as also for that we do seem to imitate all nations round about us, wherein we be like to the polypus or chameleon; and thereunto bestow most cost upon our arses, and much more than upon all the rest of our bodies, as women do likewise upon their heads and shoulders. In women also, it is most to be lamented, that they do now far exceed the lightness of ...
— Chronicle and Romance (The Harvard Classics Series) • Jean Froissart, Thomas Malory, Raphael Holinshed
... went through transformation after transformation, outvying the legendary chameleon. He was a tobacconist, a park-keeper, a rent collector, a commission agent, a clerk, another clerk, still another clerk, a sweetstuff seller, a fried fish merchant, a coal agent, a book agent, a pawnbroker's assistant, a dog-breeder, a door-keeper, a board-school ...
— The Matador of the Five Towns and Other Stories • Arnold Bennett
... ridiculous points. But to laugh a whole evening at vulgar nondescripts,—is that an employment for one who was born passionately to love, to admire, to sustain truth? This would be much more excusable in a chameleon like me. Yet, whatever may be the vulgar view of my character, I can truly say, I know not the hour in which I ever looked for the ridiculous. It has always been forced upon me, and is the accident of my existence. I would not want the sense of it when it comes, ...
— Memoirs of Margaret Fuller Ossoli, Vol. I • Margaret Fuller Ossoli
... fools the positive philosophers seem to me the worst; and the most abject kind of conceit is that of alleged consistency. Why will you insist on a definiteness which has so little place in nature? The world is a chameleon, and you and I ...
— A Pessimist - In Theory and Practice • Robert Timsol
... and President, A theatre manager, and resident Director of the Opera House, and mine Are Erie and the Boston steamboat line. Of merchant, banker, broker, every shade Am I; in fact, a Jack of every trade. More varied than the hues of the Chameleon; Far heavier than Ossa piled on Pelion Are all my duties! Really it's confusing, At times, to a degree that's quite amusing. When am I this, when that, when which, when what? And am I always FISK, or am I not? Thus, constantly I get into a fix, And one thing with another sadly mix; Many a time ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 7, May 14, 1870 • Various
... represented by large carpets of marine crystal, a little umbelliferous plant very good to pickle, which also bears the name of pierce-stone and sea-fennel. Conseil gathered some bundles of it. As to the fauna, it might be counted by thousands of crustacea of all sorts, lobsters, crabs, spider-crabs, chameleon shrimps, and a large number of shells, rockfish, and limpets. Three-quarters of an hour later we had finished our circuitous walk and were on board. The crew had just finished loading the sodium, and the Nautilus could have left that instant. But Captain Nemo gave no order. ...
— Twenty Thousand Leagues under the Sea • Jules Verne
... and swirled her limp muslins in such a way that she fairly suggested a moral duster. There was the making of an actress in Susan. Nobody had ever been able to decide what her true individual self was. Quite unconsciously, like a chameleon, she took upon herself the characteristics of even inanimate things. Just now she was a duster, and a ...
— The Copy-Cat and Other Stories • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... he informed me in confidence. "Thinks no end of herself, and always trying to hang on to some woman with a title, even if she's only a baronet's wife. Some ill-natured woman has nicknamed her the Chameleon—because she changes her dresses so often and is so fond of bright colours. But she's a good old sort," he added. "Always pretty free with her tips. Her ...
— The Count's Chauffeur • William Le Queux
... itself as if quite unaware that a suit for three hundred and fifty thousand francs damages was suspended over it like the sword of Damocles, was covered with a mass of rich auburn-colored hair. She is as changeable as a chameleon in the matter of her hair: I never see her twice with the same ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 26, September 1880 • Various
... passes on to describe the organs of animals. The animals are dealt with in groups—viviparous and oviparous quadrupeds, fish, serpents, birds, etc. The ape, elephant, chameleon, and some others ...
— Fathers of Biology • Charles McRae
... have thus considered are those mainly depended on in support of the Calvinistic doctrine of election. The doctrine, like the chameleon, has different shades, according to the school. The high predestinarians, or, as they are called, "supra -lapsarians," maintain, as we have seen, that God created a certain number to be saved, and a certain number to be lost. The infra- or sublap-sarians, ...
— The Doctrines of Predestination, Reprobation, and Election • Robert Wallace
... ignorant both of laws and letters, he introduced into his civil government the rigor and even cruelty of military discipline; but if his severity was sometimes dangerous to the innocent, it was always formidable to the guilty. His religious inconstancy was taxed by the epithet of Chameleon, but the Catholics have acknowledged by the voice of a saint and confessors, that the life of the Iconoclast was useful to the republic. The zeal of his companion Michael was repaid with riches, honors, and military command; ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 4 • Edward Gibbon
... Giraud's mind against me. He was too simple and honest to have conceived unaided such thoughts as he now harboured. Moreover, he was, like many good-hearted people, at the mercy of every wind that blows, and, like the chameleon, took his colour from ...
— Dross • Henry Seton Merriman
... withstanding as they do the action of the sunbeam, become by time, foul air, and the influence of other pigments, inferior to the ochres. So the dazzling scarlet of iodine and mercury must yield the palm of excellence to the more sober vermilion, being a chameleon colour, subject to the most sudden and opposite changes. And the blues of cobalt, as always tending to greenness and ...
— Field's Chromatography - or Treatise on Colours and Pigments as Used by Artists • George Field
... delightful book on "The Colours of Animals", "can be adjusted to harmonise with changes in the environment or to correspond with the differences between the environment of different individuals." The seasonal change of colour in northern animals is a well-known instance of the former, and the chameleon's alterations of hue ...
— The Naturalist in Nicaragua • Thomas Belt
... equivalent of which is "reo," and means the method or order of service to the gods, whereas, "ceremony" may mean anything and everything, from the terms of a brutal prize fight to the conduct of divine service within the church. But, no such chameleon-like definition or construction can properly be placed upon the word "rite," for it means distinctly, if it means anything at all, the serious usage and sacred method of conducting service in honor of the gods, or of superiors, and requires the attendance of the prophet or priest, ...
— The Light of Egypt, Volume II • Henry O. Wagner/Belle M. Wagner/Thomas H. Burgoyne
... up the lace sunshade and long gloves which her friend had lent her. "There was not much more that was genuine about her character—that was her very own, I mean—than there is about my appearance at this moment. She was always the dearest little chameleon in the world, taking everybody's colour in the most flattering way, and giving back, I must say, a most charming reflection—if you'll excuse the mixed metaphor; but when one got her by herself, with no reflections to catch, one found she hadn't any particular ...
— The Fruit of the Tree • Edith Wharton
... all his acquisitions, whether in love, in learning, in wit, or in wealth. How or when his stock of knowledge was laid in, nobody knew—it was as much a matter of marvel to those who never saw him read, as the existence of the chameleon has been to those who fancied it never eat. His advances in the heart of his mistress were, as we have seen, equally trackless and inaudible, and his triumph was the first that even rivals knew of his ...
— Memoirs of the Life of the Rt. Hon. Richard Brinsley Sheridan V1 • Thomas Moore
... whirl and follow Through the heavens wide and hollow, Sheltered by the warm embrace Of thy soul from hungry space, 480 Drinking from thy sense and sight Beauty, majesty, and might, As a lover or a chameleon Grows like what it looks upon, As a violet's gentle eye 485 Gazes on the azure sky Until its hue grows like what it beholds, As a gray and watery mist Glows like solid amethyst Athwart the western mountain it enfolds, ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley Volume I • Percy Bysshe Shelley
... little of the chameleon, and takes a different hue with every different companion; he is very attentive and officious, and somewhat sentimental, with Lady Lillycraft; copies out little namby-pamby ditties and love-songs for her, and draws quivers, and ...
— Bracebridge Hall • Washington Irving
... said in every age," I protested. "But our Dante baffles me. He changes his moods as a chameleon changes his coat, and feeds each mood so full. Yesteryear he was mad for the open air, and the games, and the joy of life. To-day he is mewed in the cloisters of knowledge. He is damned in his Latin. I will wait no ...
— The God of Love • Justin Huntly McCarthy
... Sprudell closed his office door, he locked this adamantine, quibbling, frankly penurious, tyrannical man of business inside, and the chameleon does not change its color with greater ease than Sprudell took on another and distinct personality. On the instant he became the "good fellow," his pink face and beaming eyes radiating affability, conviviality, ...
— The Man from the Bitter Roots • Caroline Lockhart
... perspective, and in the angles of the corners he painted the four elements, making for each an appropriate animal—for the earth a mole, for the water a fish, for the fire a salamander, and for the air a chameleon, which lives on it and assumes any colour. And because he had never seen a chameleon, he painted a camel, which is opening its mouth and swallowing air, and therewith filling its belly; and great, indeed, was his simplicity ...
— Lives of the Most Eminent Painters Sculptors and Architects - Vol 2, Berna to Michelozzo Michelozzi • Giorgio Vasari
... elephant and the chameleon is equally interesting. One day the chameleon challenged the elephant to a race. The latter accepted the challenge and a meeting was arranged for the following morning. During the night the chameleon placed all his brothers from point to point along ...
— An African Adventure • Isaac F. Marcosson
... through the baby diseases and had taught him the elementary things, because that was what she was paid for, corrected his table manners and tried to make him the kind of boy that she would have preferred to be herself had nature fortunately not decided the matter otherwise, and chameleon-like, Jerry reflected her tepor, her supineness and femininity. She recounted his virtues with pride, while I questioned her, hoping against hope to hear of some prank, the breaking of window-panes, the burning of a haystack ...
— Paradise Garden - The Satirical Narrative of a Great Experiment • George Gibbs
... anything for the job!" They had also invented an original mode of settling a bargain; having ascertained the market price of provisions, they paid that, but no more. If the traders refused to leave the ship till the price was increased, a chameleon, of which the natives have a mortal dread, was brought out of the cabin; and the moment the natives saw the creature, they at once sprang overboard. The chameleon settled every dispute in ...
— A Popular Account of Dr. Livingstone's Expedition to the Zambesi and Its Tributaries • David Livingstone
... make a desperate effort to "assume a virtue if I had it not." I, too, sauntered elegantly, lifted my hat killingly, and approached my charmer just as if I didn't realize that I was turning all the colors of the chameleon. ...
— The Blunders of a Bashful Man • Metta Victoria Fuller Victor
... delegation far more than he did his own officer, for he, too, had remotely reptilian forbears. Indeed he still sported a flexible tail and, save for his own orange and blue uniform, ablaze with precious stones, resembled nothing so much as a giant Terrestrial chameleon. The uniforms were no accident. Surveymen wore anything or nothing as the case called for it, and the Falsethsa admired bright colors, having few of their own and a good color sense. The gleaming jewels on Mazechazz's uniform stressed ...
— Join Our Gang? • Sterling E. Lanier
... eating them, and gaily flinging the stones at Scapin; or with a rueful countenance he is trying to catch a fly, and with his hand, in comical despair, would chop off the wings before he swallows the chameleon game. These, with similar Lazzi, harmonise with the remonstrance of Scapin, and re-animate it; and thus these "Lazzi, although they seem to interrupt the progress of the action, yet in cutting it they slide back into it, and connect or tie ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. II (of 3) - Edited, With Memoir And Notes, By His Son, The Earl Of Beaconsfield • Isaac D'Israeli
... of curiosity; it may have been abandoned to its fate, and left to hide itself among the numerous corners and crevices which are found among the timbers of a vessel's hold? It might procure sustenance in the bilge-water, or in the ballast rubbish, or perhaps, like the chameleon, crabs could ...
— The Boy Tar • Mayne Reid
... kinds of merit, culture, and cleverness the author possesses. It would be impossible to be more penetrating, more subtle, and less fettered in mind, than this wizard of language, with his irony and his chameleon-like variety. Victor Cherbuliez, like the sphinx, is able to play all lyres, and takes his profit from them all, with a Goethe-like serenity. It seems as if passion, grief, and error had no hold on this impassive soul. The key ...
— Amiel's Journal • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... crawling up the tree-trunk or lying along the slope of a lliana. The green lizard scuttles along the path—the basilisk looks with glistening eyes from the dark interstices of some corrugated vine—the biting peckotin glides among the dry leaves in pursuit of its insect prey—and the chameleon advances sluggishly along the branches, while it assumes their ...
— The Rifle Rangers • Captain Mayne Reid
... thousand other birds flitting to and fro in their aerial city and chirping to each other. Two tiny squirrels have just run along a branch nearly over my head, in a desperate hurry apparently, their tails cocked over their backs, and a sky blue chameleon is standing on the trunk near where it parts. There is always a breeze in this great tree; the leaves are always moving, and there is a continuous rustle and murmur up there. A mango-tree and tamarind ...
— The Soul of a People • H. Fielding
... explains man's attitude toward his fellows. The proverb says man makes his own world. Each sees what is in himself, not what is outside. The jaundiced eye yellows all it beholds. The chameleon takes its color from the bark on which it clings. Man gives his color to what his thought is fastened upon. The pessimist's darkness makes all things dingy. The youth disappointed with his European trip said he was a fool for going. He was, for the reason that he was a fool before he ...
— The Investment of Influence - A Study of Social Sympathy and Service • Newell Dwight Hillis
... George Harvey seems to have suspected, without wishing to be disagreeable, for Raleigh had to hint to Cobham that the Lieutenant might be blamed if it were discovered that letters were passing. Cobham shifted from hour to hour, and changed colour like a moral chameleon; Raleigh could not depend on him, nor even influence him. Meanwhile Cobham was transferred to the Tower, and now communication between the prisoners seemed almost impossible. However, the servant who was waiting upon Raleigh, a man ...
— Raleigh • Edmund Gosse
... (M. turbiniforme, now M. truncatum) and also a "Gryllus" (Acridian), closely resembling the pebbles with which their locality was strewn. He says of both of these, "The intention of Nature, in these instances, seems to have been the same as when she gave to the Chameleon the power of accommodating its color, in a certain degree, to that of the object nearest to it, in order to compensate for the deficiency of its locomotive powers. By their form and colour, this insect may pass unobserved by ...
— Darwin and Modern Science • A.C. Seward and Others
... his death, in which I find fifty-five newspaper articles written by him, of from one to three columns in length, presenting, in his own terse, humorous, glowing, vigorous, convincing way, all sides of this chameleon-hued question; now analyzing the amendment and the laws to enforce it, turning aside here to answer the cavil of some carping critic, then to demolish and bury some blatant political defender of the whisky element; arraigning the Governor, Senate and House of Representatives for their gingerly ...
— Personal Recollections of Pardee Butler • Pardee Butler
... Smith, yet could not well identify the same. I knew him North, I knew him South, I knew him East and West— I knew him all so well I knew not which I knew the best. His eyes, I recollect, were gray, and black, and brown, and blue, And, when he was not bald, his hair was of chameleon hue; Lean, fat, tall, short, rich, poor, grave, gay, a blonde and a brunette— Aha, amid this London fog, John Smith, I see you yet; I see you yet, and yet the sight is all so blurred I seem To see you in composite, or ...
— John Smith, U.S.A. • Eugene Field
... curves, hollows, and crests of the coast-hills in Southern California heighten these chameleon effects of the spring verdure; they are like nothing in nature except the glitter of a brilliant lizard in the sun or the iridescent ...
— Ramona • Helen Hunt Jackson
... ptarmigan, which in summer harmonises with the brown heather and grey rock, while in winter it changes to the white of the snow-fields, lead us up gradually to such ultimate results of the masquerading tendency. There is a tiny crustacean, the chameleon shrimp, which can alter its hue to that of any material on which it happens to rest. On a sandy bottom it appears grey or sand-coloured; when lurking among seaweed it becomes green, or red, or brown, according to the nature of ...
— Falling in Love - With Other Essays on More Exact Branches of Science • Grant Allen
... said I. "But, surely, if you are the young gentleman with whom I spent the hours yesterday, you have the chameleon art of changing your appearance; I never could have ...
— The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner • James Hogg
... a species of human chameleon—scholar, general, law-giver, leader, etc. Brought up as the Emperor's grandson with more than a good chance of coming to the throne, one thing only between him and it—Truth—what a choice! What a temptation! A throne for a ...
— The Chocolate Soldier - Heroism—The Lost Chord of Christianity • C. T. Studd
... eyes out in trying to see it for himself. But when he took to preaching, he was dwelling in the midst of a Hard-shell community; and, perhaps, like the overwhelming majority of mankind, from enlightened to savage, from Christian to fetich, Burlman Reynolds was but chameleon to his surroundings. Yet, notwithstanding the somber complexion of his new vocation, and the more than somber complexion of his creed, outside of the pulpit his reverence was as genial, jolly, and joky ...
— Burl • Morrison Heady
... of chameleon-like girl whose vagaries and "sweet uncertainties" form the theme of many short stories, in most of which she is pictured ...
— How to Analyze People on Sight - Through the Science of Human Analysis: The Five Human Types • Elsie Lincoln Benedict and Ralph Paine Benedict
... at whom, as any one out of our retired household would have known, and as John did know well—all the world was already pointing the finger, on account of Mr. Gerard Vermilye. She, on her part, with her chameleon power of seizing and sunning herself in the delight of the moment, was in a state of the highest enjoyment. She turned "shepherdess," fed the poultry with Edwin, pulled off her jewelled ornaments, and gave them to Walter for playthings; ...
— John Halifax, Gentleman • Dinah Maria Mulock Craik
... Jocelyn, "'tis plain to see No maid but a chameleon is she, For here we have her brown and green and blue, And if not brown then rosy is her hue, And, if not red, why then 'tis very plain That brown she is or blue or green again. Now fain, sir, would I ask and question whether She e'er is ...
— The Geste of Duke Jocelyn • Jeffery Farnol
... Buchanan's fall. He had avenged it, as far as pen could do it, by that "Admonition Direct to the Trew Lordis," in which he showed himself as great a master of Scottish, as he was of Latin prose. His satire of the "Chameleon," though its publication was stopped by Maitland, must have been read in manuscript by many of those same "True Lords;" and though there were nobler instincts in Maitland than any Buchanan gave him credit for, the satire breathed an honest indignation against ...
— Historical Lectures and Essays • Charles Kingsley
... didn't exactly teach me to say it—she didn't give me lessons in it—but she says it herself. She said the damned chameleon was lovely; and I want to see it. She didn't say I ought to see it. But I want to. I've been wanting to ever since. She said it at lunch today, and I do want to. Lots of other boys go to the Zoo, and why shouldn't I? I want to ...
— Tenterhooks • Ada Leverson
... species. One is popularly known as the chameleon on account of its rather showy colours, but does not really belong to that family. And a beautiful grass-snake, which, as it is limbless, is often mistaken for a tree-snake, is also ...
— The Heart of Nature - or, The Quest for Natural Beauty • Francis Younghusband
... liable to encounter. The human heart, which will be the subject of my letters, presents so many contrasts, that whoever lays it bare must fall into a flood of contradictions. You think you have something stable in your grasp, but find you have seized a shadow. It is indeed a chameleon, which, viewed from different aspects, presents a variety of opposite colors, and even they are constantly shifting. You may expect to read many strange things in what I shall say upon this subject. I will, however, give you my ideas, though they may often seem strange; however, that shall ...
— Life, Letters, and Epicurean Philosophy of Ninon de L'Enclos, - the Celebrated Beauty of the Seventeenth Century • Robinson [and] Overton, ed. and translation.
... held his levees in the great vaulted chamber into which I was first shown, but in a smaller and more sombre room, that of de Maintenon. The character and dress of those present reflected with a chameleon's fidelity the change in His Majesty's habits. Madame sat near the King, working upon a piece of tapestry which, when she was interested in what went on, lay idle in her lap. Behind her chair stood the ...
— The Black Wolf's Breed - A Story of France in the Old World and the New, happening - in the Reign of Louis XIV • Harris Dickson
... considering woman's costumes, for ordinary use, in their relation to background, unless some chameleon-like material be invented to take on the colour of any background, one must be content with the consideration of one's own rooms, porches, garden, opera-box or automobile, etc. For a gown to be worn when away from home, when lunching, at receptions or dinners, the first consideration must be ...
— Woman as Decoration • Emily Burbank
... in the nature of altered emphasis in the expression of traits already present. These minor changes occur as by-products of active response to the personality of the mate in many small daily contacts, and not as a result of exhortation. Nor are they necessarily permanent. A chameleon changes color easily to match its environment or temper of the moment, but a human being's more lasting change is not so ...
— The Good Housekeeping Marriage Book • Various
... his acquaintance was a church dignitary who blew alternately hot and cold upon him. When advised of some new illustration of the divine's uncertainty of attitude, the Bibliotaph merely said, 'He's more of a chameleon ...
— The Bibliotaph - and Other People • Leon H. Vincent
... beautiful, very shrewd, and very wicked Roman donzella, Lorenza Feliciani by name; and the worthy couple, combining their various talents, and regarding the world as their oyster, at once proceeded to open it in the most scientific style. I cannot follow this wonderful human chameleon in all his transformations under his various names of Fischio, Melissa, Fenice, Anna, Pellegrini, Harat, and Belmonte, nor state the studies and processes by which he picked up sufficient knowledge of physic, chemistry, the hidden properties of numbers, astronomy, astrology, mesmerism, ...
— The Humbugs of the World • P. T. Barnum
... the vast multitude in the Place. Brightly and rapidly the rich light roved over the waters that leaped towards it from the fountain in all the loveliness of natural and evanescent form. Bathed in that brilliant glow, the smooth porphyry colonnades reflected, chameleon like, ethereal and varying hues; the white marble statues became suffused in a delicate rose-colour, and the sober-tinted trees gleamed in the innermost of their leafy depths as if steeped in the exhalations of a golden mist. While, contrasting strangely with the ...
— Antonina • Wilkie Collins
... become aware of our presence, for, ceasing his contemplation of the sinking sun, he scanned us both with his slow, thoughtful eyes, which somehow reminded me of those of a chameleon, although they were not prominent, but, ...
— Child of Storm • H. Rider Haggard
... Browning Up at a Villa—Down in the City Robert Browning All Saints' Edmund Yates An Address to the Unco Guid Robert Burns The Deacon's Masterpiece Oliver Wendell Holmes Ballade of a Friar Andrew Lang The Chameleon James Merrick The Blind Men and the Elephant John Godfrey Saxe The Philosopher's Scales Jane Taylor The Maiden and the Lily John Fraser The Owl-Critic James Thomas Fields The Ballad of Imitation Austin Dobson The Conundrum of the Workshops Rudyard Kipling The V-a-s-e James Jeffrey ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 3 (of 4) • Various
... an example of the chameleon-like changes of science (even of 'science falsely so called' if you please) that when he wrote his book, in 1871, Mr. Tylor could not possibly have anticipated ...
— The Making of Religion • Andrew Lang
... an automobile, and motored out to Potsdam. Then when we were outside the old Palace we heard that the Kaiser's "strong-for-peace" policy had been of no avail, that the Czar had insulted his messenger, and that now war was inevitable. We ourselves, chameleon-like, assumed the German colour. We believed what we were told, and felt sorry for the man who was called upon unwillingly to shed his nation's blood. On our way back to the hotel Kitty and I went to see Mr. Schermerhorn's cousin, ...
— An Account of Our Arresting Experiences • Conway Evans
... for herself. She made her point without over-emphasis. On the other hand, Honora had read Mrs. Kame. No very careful perusal was needed to convince her that the lady was unmoral, and that in characteristics she resembled the chameleon. But she read deeper. She perceived that Mrs. Kame was convinced that she, Honora, would adjust herself to the new conditions after a struggle; and that while she had a certain sympathy in the struggle, Mrs. Kame was of opinion ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... darted tail first, with the rapidity of an arrow, from one side of the pool to the other, at the same instant discolouring the water with a dark chestnut-brown ink. These animals also escape detection by a very extraordinary, chameleon-like power of changing their colour. They appear to vary their tints according to the nature of the ground over which they pass: when in deep water, their general shade was brownish purple, but when placed on ...
— The Voyage of the Beagle • Charles Darwin
... it!" said Allen, catching up the dog and holding him to the lamp, while Janet observed that he was a sort of chameleon, for his body, which had been black, was now yellow, and his chops which had been tan, had ...
— Magnum Bonum • Charlotte M. Yonge
... and mind,—it was thought made visible. The voice, with its thousand intonations, took the place of motions, gestures, attitudes. The variations of the complexion, changing color like the famous chameleon, made the illusion, perhaps we should say the mirage, complete. That suffering head lying on the white pillow edged with laces was a ...
— The Brotherhood of Consolation • Honore de Balzac
... events of our lives are chameleon-hued: their colors vary according to the light by which we view them. Thus Eve, who the night before had seen nothing but happiness in the final arrangement between Adam and herself, awoke on the following morning with ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 26, July 1880. • Various
... "Here we four women—Mrs. Grinnell, and Mrs. Winthrop and Leonore and myself—have been quarrelling over you, and each insisting you are something different. I believe you are not a bit firm and stable, as people say you are, but a perfect chameleon, changing your tint according to the color of the tree you are on. Leonore was the worst, though! She says that you talk and joke a great deal. We could have stood ...
— The Honorable Peter Stirling and What People Thought of Him • Paul Leicester Ford
... theory of science is the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, and then find a revision of the statement necessary to-day, I certainly am inconsistent. This jewel of consistency certainly loses its lustre, if not its identity, in such a process of shifting. I do hope these chameleon artists will leave us the multiplication table, the yardstick, and the ablative absolute. I'm not so particular about the wine-gallon, for prohibition will probably do away with that anyhow. When I was in school I could tell to a foot the equatorial and the ...
— Reveries of a Schoolmaster • Francis B. Pearson
... have excited satiety itself, and chained inconstancy. To have Clarimonde was to have twenty mistresses; ay, to possess all women: so mobile, so varied of aspect, so fresh in new charms was she all in herself—a very chameleon of a woman, in sooth. She made you commit with her the infidelity you would have committed with another, by donning to perfection the character, the attraction, the style of beauty of the woman who appeared to please you. She returned my love a hundred-fold, ...
— Clarimonde • Theophile Gautier
... Byron's character was obliterated by his versatility, his mobility, that he was carried away by his imagination, and became the thing he wished to be, or conceived himself as becoming. But his nature was not chameleon-like. Self-will was the very pulse of the machine. Pride ruled his years. All through his life, as child and youth and man, his one aim and endeavour was the subjection of other people's wishes to, his own. He would subject even fate if he could. He has two main objects ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 4 - "Bulgaria" to "Calgary" • Various
... custom in preparing the cobra-tel poison (note) The green calotes Chameleon Ceratophora Geckoes,—their power of reproducing limbs 185, Crocodiles Their power of burying themselves in the mud Tortoises—Curious parasite Land tortoises Edible turtle Huge Indian tortoises (note) Hawk's-bill ...
— Ceylon; an Account of the Island Physical, Historical, and • James Emerson Tennent
... followed you," he said. "On the Pennsylvania line we cornered you; but you changed garb and shape and speech, almost under our eyes—as a chameleon changes color, matching the leaf it hides on.... I halted at that squatter's house—sure of you at last—and the pretty squatter's daughter cooked for us while we hunted you in the hills—and when I returned she gave me her bed to ...
— Special Messenger • Robert W. Chambers
... of the one in contemplating the life of the other. The billing and cooing of the newly-married couple filled him with horror. Anger, shame, pity, and despair seized upon him by turns. He fell into a forlorn condition, forsaking his books, eating little save of the chameleon's dish, the air, drinking deep of Rhenish, letting his long, black locks go unkempt, and neglecting his dress—he who had hitherto been "the glass of fashion and the mould of form," as Ophelia had ...
— A Midnight Fantasy • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... they reached Paris, which they did in about a fortnight; this dreadful conflagration had such an effect upon them that they were incapable of taking the least refreshment for three months after, but, chameleon-like, lived ...
— The Surprising Adventures of Baron Munchausen • Rudolph Erich Raspe
... Brienne gave the nickname "straw nose"—paille-au-nez—to both the brothers. The pronunciation, therefore, was probably as uncertain as the form, Napaille-au-nez being probably a distortion of Napouillone. The chameleon-like character of the name corresponds exactly to the chameleon-like character of the times, the man, and the lands of his birth and of his adoption. The Corsican noble and French royalist was Napoleone de Buonaparte; the Corsican republican ...
— The Life of Napoleon Bonaparte - Vol. I. (of IV.) • William Milligan Sloane
... hearken, sir; though the chameleon 160 Love can feed on the air, I am one that am nourished by my victuals, and would fain have meat. O, be not like your mistress; ...
— Two Gentlemen of Verona - The Works of William Shakespeare [Cambridge Edition] [9 vols.] • William Shakespeare |
