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Moth   Listen
noun
Moth  n.  A mote. (Obs.)






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Moth" Quotes from Famous Books



... metamorphosed do not possess either antennae or legs; and in those cases, as Quatrefages[654] believes, we are enabled to see the precise period at which the normal progress of development has been troubled. But the nature of the food given to a caterpillar sometimes affects the colours of the moth, without the caterpillar itself being affected; therefore it seems possible that other characters in the mature insect might be indirectly modified through the larvae. There is no reason to suppose that organs which have been ...
— The Variation of Animals and Plants Under Domestication, Volume II (of 2) • Charles Darwin

... so profoundly astonished, that his features remained contracted, his lips parted, and his eyes fixed. He did not move an inch, nor articulate a sound. Nothing could be heard in that large chamber but the wing-whisper of a little moth, which was fluttering to its death about the candles. Aramis, without even deigning to look at the man whom he had reduced to so miserable a condition, drew from his pocket a small case of black wax; he sealed the letter, and stamped it with a seal ...
— The Man in the Iron Mask • Alexandre Dumas, Pere

... than the male. Female spiders, bees, wasps, hornets, and butterflies are larger than the males, and the difference is noticeable even in the larval stage. So considerable is the difference in size between the male and female cocoons of the silk-moth that in France they are separated by a particular mode of weighing.[24] The same superiority of the female is found among fishes and reptiles; and this relation, wherever it occurs, may be associated with a habit of life in which food conditions are simple and stimuli mandatory. ...
— Sex and Society • William I. Thomas

... 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

... grown in a new country is often fair.—Every horticulturist knows that apples grown in a new country, that is suited to them, are healthy and fair; but, sooner or later, the scab, and codling moth, and bitter rot, and bark louse arrive, each to begin its particular mode of attack. Peach trees in new places, remote from others, are often easily grown and free from dangers; but soon will arrive the yellows, borers, leaf curl, rot, and other enemies. For a few years plums ...
— Seed Dispersal • William J. Beal

... saw-palmetto stretched away before us to the base of the hills; game trails ran through it in every direction like sheep paths; a few moth-eaten Florida deer trotted away ...
— Police!!! • Robert W. Chambers

... the metallic lustre of his 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 ...
— Children of the Mist • Eden Phillpotts

... "Lay not up for yourselves treasures upon earth, where moth and rust doth corrupt and where ...
— The Light of Egypt, Volume II • Henry O. Wagner/Belle M. Wagner/Thomas H. Burgoyne

... to the window across the moth-eaten carpet with its faded doves and roses. She flung the casement out ...
— Little Miss By-The-Day • Lucille Van Slyke

... sound whirls around, Down, down! As the fawn draws the hound, 65 As the lightning the vapour, As a weak moth the taper; Death, despair; love, sorrow; Time both; to-day, to-morrow; As steel obeys the spirit of the ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley Volume I • Percy Bysshe Shelley

... of red, their cloaks of green, Are hung with silver bells, And when they're shaken with the wind Their merry ringing swells, And riding on the crimson moth, With black spots on his wings, They guide them down the purple sky With golden ...
— Boys and Girls Bookshelf; a Practical Plan of Character Building, Volume I (of 17) - Fun and Thought for Little Folk • Various

... of hosts."' Now, it so happened that some of Mr. Prywell's most private and not at all professional papers—papers evidently, and on the face of them, connected with the state of the spy's own soul—came into my hands as good lot would have it just the other night. The moth-eaten chest was full of his old papers, but the pieces that took my heart most were, as it looked to me, actually gnashed through with his remorseful teeth, and soaked and sodden past recognition with his sweat and his tears and his agonising hands. But after some late hours over those ...
— Bunyan Characters - Third Series - The Holy War • Alexander Whyte

... she retorted. "I don't require the shave, thank goodness, but I certainly need a bath—and clothes. I wish I had the gray suit that's probably getting all moldy and moth-eaten at the Pine River cabin. I wonder if I can get anything fit to ...
— North of Fifty-Three • Bertrand W. Sinclair

... 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 ...
— The Fifth-Dimension Tube • William Fitzgerald Jenkins

... John Bull, Is of all dreams the first hallucination; So that the streets of coloured lamps are full, That sage (said John) surrenders at discretion[ho] His purse, his soul, his sense, and even his nonsense, To gratify, like a huge moth, this one sense. ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 6 • Lord Byron

... of a girl blurred across his thoughts uncertainly, like a bright moth hovering in the distance whose shadow fell across his dusty path. But it was far away and vague, and only a glance in her eyes belonged to him. She ...
— The Search • Grace Livingston Hill

... forgive them, as their own worst enemies. They know nothing of the luxury of doing good, and when they are called to make up their last account, they will mourn that they have no investments in those funds that never fluctuate—in that bank "where moth and rust doth not corrupt, and where thieves do not break through nor steal." Let such remember, moreover, that as they brought nothing into world, so they can carry nothing out of it. And let it also be remembered, in the language of another, that were there as many worlds as there are ...
— Ups and Downs in the Life of a Distressed Gentleman • William L. Stone

... interested and affected. Three or four thousand old and disabled soldiers have here a beautiful and comfortable home. We went to the morning service. The church is very large, and the colors taken in battle are hung on the walls. Some of them are so old as to be moth-eaten. The service is performed, as near as possible, in imitation of the service before a battle. The drum beats the call to assemble, and the common soldiers march up and station themselves in the centre of the church, under the commander. All the services are regulated by the beat ...
— The Life of Harriet Beecher Stowe • Charles Edward Stowe

... the day they sat down to eat their bit o' nunch under a tree, and empty their flagon. Afterwards both of 'em fell asleep as they sat. John Chiles was the first to wake, and as he looked towards his fellow-mower he saw one of those great white miller's-souls as we call 'em—that is to say, a miller-moth—come from William's open mouth while he slept, and fly straight away. John thought it odd enough, as William had worked in a mill for several years when he was a boy. He then looked at the sun, and ...
— Life's Little Ironies - A set of tales with some colloquial sketches entitled A Few Crusted Characters • Thomas Hardy

... blossoms, and bearing a crop of golden, juicy pears; but that was the last sign of life it ever gave, and all the gold they ever found. There, too, had been the wide, dark-eaved garrets full of moth-devoured relics of splendor; who knew what might be lying hidden in those vast hair-covered chests? They were there no longer now; for once, in an access of angry irreverence, Margaret had had them all dragged down, and had sold their contents to the rag-man, ...
— Our Young Folks—Vol. I, No. II, February 1865 - An Illustrated Magazine for Boys and Girls • Various

... it could have been done much better, very much better. You have a talent for your work, that's evident; but you lack experience; you become elated by a trifling advantage, or discouraged by a mere nothing; you fail, and yet persist in holding fast to a fixed idea, as a moth flutters about a candle. Then, you are young. But never mind that, it's a fault you will outgrow only too soon. And now, to speak frankly, I must tell you that you have made a ...
— Monsieur Lecoq • Emile Gaboriau

... gray and red? how the great white patches took distinct form, and some were dashed with red and bordered with black, and others eye-shaped with crescents of pale blue? It must have taken an hour for all this to come about—for the great wings to unfurl to their widest extent and the cecropia moth to show himself in all his beauty ...
— Miss Elliot's Girls • Mrs Mary Spring Corning

... Wallace who tried to help an emperor-moth, and only harmed it by his ill-considered ministry? He came upon the creature beating its wings and struggling wildly to force its passage through the narrow neck of its cocoon. He admired its fine proportions, ...
— Mushrooms on the Moor • Frank Boreham

... happiness, are real blessings, which are from the Divine: this the Lord also teaches in Luke: 12 ch., 33-34. "Make to yourselves a treasure that faileth not in the heavens, where the thief cometh not, nor the moth corrupteth; for where your treasure is, there will your ...
— Life and Literature - Over two thousand extracts from ancient and modern writers, - and classified in alphabetical order • J. Purver Richardson

... the moment to conversation, but when the last sausage had gone the way of all flesh, Vaughan returned to the sore subject like a moth to a candle. ...
— The Pothunters • P. G. Wodehouse

... on Anna-Rose rather quickly, hurrying away from the awful vision, "one knows one doesn't have clothes in heaven because they don't have the moth there. It says so in the Bible. And you can't have the moth without having anything for it to ...
— Christopher and Columbus • Countess Elizabeth Von Arnim

... made up her mind not to tell her secret to any one at present, Adelle could not refrain from looking up the stone mason the first thing in the morning. She seemed to be attracted to him as the moth is to the proverbial flame, all the more after her new understanding of the situation between them. And she was also apprehensive of what Archie might be up to. If he were violent, and the two men had another quarrel, she might be forced to declare ...
— Clark's Field • Robert Herrick

... changes of this mortal life often bear heavily upon us. But there these things have no place. Moth and rust, change and decay, sorrow and death cannot ...
— The Teaching of Jesus • George Jackson

... question among Biblical commentators whether the Rhinoceros or the Hippopotamus is the Behemoth of Scripture, but as the Rhinoceros feeds on furze and the Hippopotamus does not, it would seem that the terminal syllable "moth" more properly applies to the latter. As numerous fossil remains of the animal have been found from time to time in the Rhenish provinces of Germany, it is supposed by some archaeologists that prior to the Noachian Deluge its principal habitat ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 15, July 9, 1870 • Various

... within the fort, and, as a first evidence of the liberality ascribed to him by his Commander, the fastest of these (if a choice there was) he selected for his own use. Neither were the trappings out of keeping with the steeds they decked. Moth eaten saddles, almost black with age, beneath which were spread pieces of dirty blanket to prevent further excoriation of the already bared and reeking back—bridles, the original thickness of which had been doubled ...
— The Canadian Brothers - or The Prophecy Fulfilled • John Richardson

... 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 will not be ...
— The Young Maiden • A. B. (Artemas Bowers) Muzzey

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

... tar camphor) White crystalline compound, C10H8, derived from coal tar or petroleum and used in manufacturing dyes, moth repellents, and explosives and ...
— Mother's Remedies - Over One Thousand Tried and Tested Remedies from Mothers - of the United States and Canada • T. J. Ritter

... or moth collection is very simple and inexpensive. We shall need an insect net to capture our specimens. This can be made at home from a piece of stiff wire bent into the shape of a flattened circle about a foot across. Fasten the ring securely ...
— Outdoor Sports and Games • Claude H. Miller

... strength, against a monster who racked him in a fierce embrace. A thousand scenes flashed through Valmond's brain, before his eyes, while the great wheel of torture went round, and he was broken, broken-mended and broken again, upon it. Spinning—he was for ever spinning, like a tireless moth through a fiery air; and the world went roaring past. In vain he cried to the wheelman to stop the wheel: there was no answer. Would those stars never cease blinking in and out, or the wind stop whipping the swift clouds past? So he went on, endless years, driving through space, some ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker

... of realm and wealthy dower, O'er which aye turns the restless wheel, I say: I speak of what it is not in the power Of Fortune to bestow, or take away. Much fame is here, whereon Time and the Hour, Like wasting moth, in this our planet prey. Here countless vows, here prayers unnumbered lie, Made by us sinful ...
— Orlando Furioso • Lodovico Ariosto

... distilling apparatus, made of silver. He did not see the lady's face, and she, too, did not appear to see him. But when he noticed that her dress was green and yellow, he knew at once that she was a sorceress, for the caterpillar of the hawk-moth is green and yellow, and it, too, knows how to bewitch the eye. The lower end of its body looks as if it were its head and has a horn like a unicorn, so that it frightens away its enemies with its mock face, while it feeds in peace with that part of its body ...
— In Midsummer Days and Other Tales • August Strindberg

... simpler, and therefore bolder than a Trout; for he will rise twenty times at a fly, if you miss him, and yet rise again. He has been taken with a fly made of the red feathers of a paroquet, a strange outlandish bird; and he will rise at a fly not unlike a gnat, or a small moth, or, indeed, at most flies that are not too big. He is a fish that lurks close all Winter, but is very pleasant and jolly after mid-April, and in May, and in the hot months. He is of a very fine ...
— The Complete Angler • Izaak Walton

... suppose, what his mind is, and Joe's mind was as completely changed as if he had been born into a different sphere. The moth comes out of the grub, the gay Hussar out of ...
— The Humourous Story of Farmer Bumpkin's Lawsuit • Richard Harris

... on ordinary days. The freshly waxed floors shone. Yakob himself paraded in a dress coat and a white necktie, while Egorka, Petrushka and Stepka, the latter of whom had been fetched from the village and had not yet found his legs, had been put into old liveries which did not fit them and smelt of moth. The dining-room and the reception room had been fumigated just before ...
— The Precipice • Ivan Goncharov

... the most opulent man, and they do nothing. This contempt, which, when it is not caused by idleness, contributes greatly to the elevation of the soul, inspired Jesus with some charming apologues: "Lay not up for yourselves treasures upon earth," said he, "where moth and rust doth corrupt, and where thieves break through and steal, but lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust doth corrupt, and where thieves do not break through nor steal: for where your treasure is, there will your heart ...
— The Life of Jesus • Ernest Renan

... you wish to protect—your furs, your flannel, or your clothes—and pack each article carefully in a newspaper, joining the edges with a double fold, well pinned. If this joining is properly done, the Moth will never get inside. Since my advice has been taken and this method employed in my household, the old damage has ...
— The Wonders of Instinct • J. H. Fabre

... have not. I did see deuced pretty girls, but the emotion, as you call it, vanished as I handed the last fair bundle of shawls into her carriage. While the light burns, you know, the moth hangs around it, but when the flame goes out, spent in a weary flicker, after 'braving it' for a whole night, the moth goes to roost, when he has not been singed, or otherwise personally damaged without insurance. Well, what are you thinking of ...
— Honor Edgeworth • Vera

... given rooms beside each other and were amused at the heterogeneous collection of odd pieces of furniture in them. The old four-posted beds with funereal canopies and moth-eaten curtains had probably been brought from England a hundred years before. In small chambers off their rooms, with marble walls and floors, and windows filled with thin slabs of alabaster carved in the most exquisite tracery as delicate as lace, galvanised iron tubs to be used as baths ...
— The Elephant God • Gordon Casserly

... some day marry him, yet he evidently found it impossible to marry anybody else. This was the touching fact about Franklin, the one bright point, as it were, in his singularly colourless personality. His fidelity was like a fleck of orange on the wing of some grey, unobtrusive moth; ...
— Franklin Kane • Anne Douglas Sedgwick

... so. For instance, she had started a grove of paper-shelled pecans, which was soon due to bear; the ranch house and its clump of palms was all but hidden by a forest of strange trees, which were reported to ripen everything from moth-balls to bicycle tires. Blaze Jones was perhaps responsible for this report, for Alaire had shown him several thousand eucalyptus saplings ...
— Heart of the Sunset • Rex Beach

... one immediately below me, a moth-eaten desiccated tortoiseshell; its eyes are closed and a red tongue hangs out of the mouth. I drop a small pebble. It wakes up and regards me stoically for a moment. ...
— Alone • Norman Douglas

... do, and that he resolved upon before he closed his eyes in sleep in the faint dawning of the following day. He would not flutter as a poor moth where he could not be received ...
— A Knight Of The Nineteenth Century • E. P. Roe

... or moth had fluttered across our path, and in an instant Stapleton was rushing with extraordinary energy and speed in pursuit of it. To my dismay the creature flew straight for the great mire, and my acquaintance never paused for an instant, bounding from tuft to tuft behind it, his green net waving ...
— Hound of the Baskervilles • Authur Conan Doyle

... did not evade the eyes of the man stock still beside the hemlock; no detail of the drama that was being enacted beside the brook escaped him. He who could observe with ease the smashing of a moth's wing thirty rods from shore, possessed a clearness of vision akin to that of a hawk. A bird fluttered in the underbrush ...
— The Lady of Big Shanty • Frank Berkeley Smith

... sizes 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 sharp barb in ...
— Allan and the Holy Flower • H. Rider Haggard

... button-holes from the neck to the bottom of the skirt, and was padded and stiffened with buckram. The cuffs were very large, of a different colour, and turned up to the elbows. The whole was lined with white satin, which, from its being very much moth-eaten, appeared as if it had been dotted on purpose to show the buckram between the satin lining. His waistcoat was of rich green striped silk, bound with gold lace; the buttons and buttonholes of gold; the flaps very large, and completely ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre

... diminished—ears of various domesticated animals (human preference and increased weight evidently aiding), and also for the inferior instincts seen in them and in artificially-fed caterpillars of the silk-moth, which now "often commit the strange mistake of devouring the base of the leaf on which they are feeding, and consequently fall down." Anyhow, I fail to see that anything is proved by this latter case, ...
— Are the Effects of Use and Disuse Inherited? - An Examination of the View Held by Spencer and Darwin • William Platt Ball

... the tiny, pin-head-like eggs of the silk-worm moth they are minute creatures. Therefore the mulberry leaves are chopped very fine indeed. They are chopped less and less fine as the silk-worms grow, until finally whole leaves and leaves adhering to the ...
— The Foundations of Japan • J.W. Robertson Scott

... 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 ...
— Chats on Old Lace and Needlework • Emily Leigh Lowes

... very coarse and heavy flannel, and were yellow with age. "Them was part of my fittin' out. I spun an' wove 'em myself, whilst Sprigg an' me was walkin' out together," she explained, carefully peering into the folds of the cloth, in search of any vagrant moth. ...
— The Brass Bound Box • Evelyn Raymond

... sports I heard; Nor doubt I aught, but, when they hear This muster of the mountaineer, Their pennons will abroad be flung, Which else in Doune had peaceful hung.' 'Free be they flung! for we were loath Their silken folds should feast the moth. Free be they flung!—as free shall wave Clan-Alpine's pine in banner brave. But, stranger, peaceful since you came, Bewildered in the mountain-game, Whence the bold boast by which you show Vich-Alpine's vowed and mortal foe?' ...
— The Lady of the Lake • Sir Walter Scott

... manhood, the principal moral quality we perceive is a peevish irritation at the slow development of life. He was just twenty-one when the death of his mother, to whom he was passionately attached, woke him out of this paralyzed condition, and it is remarkable that, in breaking, like a moth from a chrysalis, out of his network of futile and sterile sophisms, it was immediately on the contingency of war that he fixed his thoughts. The news of his mother's death, by a strange and rapid connexion of ideas, reminded him of his future responsibility as an officer in the coming ...
— Three French Moralists and The Gallantry of France • Edmund Gosse

... consciously, away; but, almost immediately, she drifted back, brushing his shoulder; it seemed that she returned inevitably, blindly; in the gloom her gown fluttered like the soft, white wings of a moth ...
— Mountain Blood - A Novel • Joseph Hergesheimer

... halted this dissertation with upraised hand. "Scraggs, it's about time you found out I ain't no potato bug, an' if you think McGuffey's a coddlin' moth you're wrong agin. Fork over them eggs an' the coffee an' a coupler slices o' dummy an' be quick about it or ...
— Captain Scraggs - or, The Green-Pea Pirates • Peter B. Kyne

... 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 ...
— Mysticism in English Literature • Caroline F. E. Spurgeon

... our neighbor is all we take with us. I will be so delighted with a home that I can call mine, forever. I like nice wearing apparel but I will not be deceived by spending my time and means for that which will hinder me from having them where moth and rust doth not corrupt and where thieves do not break through and steal. So I wish to make to myself friends of the mammon of unrighteousness and not enemies, for the hoarded dollars are bitter foes that will be witnesses against these rich men at That Day. I am praying that God may send me ...
— The Use and Need of the Life of Carry A. Nation • Carry A. Nation

... was in full bloom; it had pretty little blue flowers as delicate as the wings of a moth, or even more so. The sun shone, and the showers watered it; and this was just as good for the flax as it is for little children to be washed and then kissed by their mother. They look much prettier for it, and ...
— Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen • Hans Christian Andersen

... on broad green leaves Below the ripples of the mill, When the white moth is hovering In the dim sky so hushed and still, I watch beneath the pollard ash The greedy trout leap up ...
— Victorian Songs - Lyrics of the Affections and Nature • Various

... steeds, the day died in the lagoons and in the shadowed banana groves and in the mangrove swamps, where the great blue crabs were beginning to crawl to land for their nightly ramble. And it died, at last, upon the highest peaks. Then the brief twilight, ephemeral as the flight of a moth, came and went; the Southern Cross peeped with its topmost eye above a row of palms, and the fire-flies heralded with their torches the ...
— Cabbages and Kings • O. Henry

... than one, for never had the city seemed more dirty or more deserted, or indeed, more stifling. Winter and its festivities were a dream laid away in moth balls. Surely Cinderella's life had held no greater contrasts! To this day the odour of matting brings back to Honora the sense of closed shutters; of a stifling south wind stirring their slats at noonday; ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill

... she had brought, and from which she had previously been reading. "There is a verse there which tells us that we are to lay up riches in heaven, where neither moth nor rust doth corrupt, and where thieves do not break through and steal," she answered in an unaffected tone. "I should not expect interest, and I am very sure that I should ...
— Ned Garth - Made Prisoner in Africa. A Tale of the Slave Trade • W. H. G. Kingston

... before me four are composed externally of little bits of green moss, cotton, and seed-down, and the silk of the wild mulberry-moth torn from the cocoons, with which last material, however, the others appear to be bound together within. The lining of two is of the long hairs of the yak's tail, two of which died on the estate where ...
— The Nests and Eggs of Indian Birds, Volume 1 • Allan O. Hume

... imperfections didn't hurt it the least in the world as I managed it,—and the faded breadth makes a good apron, so you see. And just so I got that red spotted flannel dress I wore last winter. It was moth-eaten in one or two places, and I made them let me have it at half-price;—made exactly as good a dress. But after all, Mara, I can't trim a bonnet as you can, and I can't come up to your embroidery, nor your lace-work, nor I can't draw and paint as you can, and I can't sing like you; and then as ...
— The Pearl of Orr's Island - A Story of the Coast of Maine • Harriet Beecher Stowe

... Don't write or come near me again until your sham house and your sham life are in ruins, and you yourself in the wilderness. I may take you to my heart again then. I cannot tell. But to-day I loathe you. You are a creature of no account—a foolish, dazzled moth. Don't dare to ring your bells. I need no flunkeys to show me the way ...
— The Moving Finger • E. Phillips Oppenheim

... 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 ...
— Select Conversations with an Uncle • H. G. Wells

... been better and more honest to have left this letter without an answer. But I see that I have cheated myself in thinking that nothing will happen, and that it would be brutal of me not to come. The soul—poor moth—flies toward the light which may burn, but can neither warm nor light it. What has attracted me here? Is it love? Can I answer the question as to whether I still love this woman—so unlike my pure sweetheart of former years—this half lioness, whose reputation has been torn to shreds by human ...
— So Runs the World • Henryk Sienkiewicz,

... Ch'ing Wen's ire was actually stirred up, and her beautiful moth-like eyebrows contracted, and her lovely phoenix eyes stared wide like two balls. So she immediately shouted out ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book II • Cao Xueqin

... clay-colored border. In the centre of each wing there is a long reddish-white spot, and on the tip of each fore-wing is a dark bluish eye. On the head are delicate feathered antennae. Mamma found a picture of the moth in a book. We are sure it belongs to the genus Attacus, and we think it is ...
— Harper's Young People, September 21, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various

... from Miss Armstrong; Knowles and Ted had long ago joined Miss Haviland at the other end of the room, where Mr. Dixon Barnett, still irresistibly attracted by Katherine, hovered round and round the little group, with the fatal "desire of the moth for the star." Audrey stood up; Miss Armstrong was holding out her hand and pleading a further engagement. The little woman looked sour and ruffled: Wyndham's manner had acted on her like vinegar on milk. She was followed by Mr. Flaxman ...
— Audrey Craven • May Sinclair

... demands it. While they live as they do, they are only a moth and a curse. The moment they are reformed, society is relieved of its greatest burden. The poor-house and the ...
— Select Temperance Tracts • American Tract Society

... mysterious words which Jacqueline took for truth; the light was joyful and blessed, and of all things to be desired, though it smote the life from one like lightning. She waited alone with faith, watching till it should come,—left alone with this beam glimmering like a moth through darkness!—for thus was a believer, or one who resolved on believing, left in that day, when he turned from the machinery of the Church, and stood alone, searching for God without ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 6, No. 34, August, 1860 • Various

... 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 ...
— On the Old Road Vol. 1 (of 2) - A Collection of Miscellaneous Essays and Articles on Art and Literature • John Ruskin

... helping others. She represents the composite beauty, sweetness, and nobility of all those who scorn self for the sake of love and her handmaiden duty—of all those who seek the brightness of truth not as the moth to be destroyed thereby, but as the lark who soars and sings to the great sun. She is of those who have so much to give they want no time to take, and their name is legion. She is as full of beautiful possibilities as a perfect harp, and she realizes that ...
— Pulpit and Press • Mary Baker Eddy

... few butterflies and of many moths are spinners of fibers similar to silk. Among these last is the beautiful pale-green lunar moth. Spiders spin a lustrous fiber, and it is said that a lover of spiders succeeded, by a good deal of petting and attention, in getting considerable material from a company of them. Silkworms, however, are the only providers of real silk for the world. Once in a while glowing accounts are published ...
— Makers of Many Things • Eva March Tappan

... curious notice 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 ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. XIX. No. 541, Saturday, April 7, 1832 • Various

... had been much annoyed by the insects which were attracted to his electric lights found a solution in the pneumatic moth trap described in a recent issue of Popular Mechanics. He fixed a funnel to the end of the intake tube of a vacuum cleaner and hung it under a globe. The insects came to the light, circled over the funnel and disappeared. He captured several pounds in a few ...
— The Boy Mechanic: Volume 1 - 700 Things For Boys To Do • Popular Mechanics

... the twinkling of an eye. In an incredibly short time, the five youngsters were dressed, each to satisfy his own peculiar taste: Joseph as an Indian in blanket and beads, with a crimson band about his head; Jacob, carrying a sword, wore a moth-eaten smoking jacket, a bright sash and crimson Turkish turban; Rachel and Matilda were two dainty ladies in full skirts of blue and pink, with deep bonnets; while Rebecca was rather splendid in a yellow silk wrapper, a long veil fastened ...
— The New Land - Stories of Jews Who Had a Part in the Making of Our Country • Elma Ehrlich Levinger

... A moth lays an egg, which egg becomes a caterpillar, which caterpillar, after going through several stages, becomes a chrysalis, which ...
— Life and Habit • Samuel Butler

... Fondaco-house; driven forth by impatience and heart-sickness, from morning till night he was in his boat, or on the grand Piazza, or on the watery highways; and inasmuch as he ever fluttered to where ladies of rank and beauty were to be found, as a moth flies to the light, that evil woman was ever in his path, day after day, and whensoever her hosts would suffer it, Ursula would be with her. Nay, and the German maiden, who had learned better things of the Carthusian sisters, was not ashamed to aid and abet that sinful Italian woman. Thus my ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers

... tiny imps, who scarcely stooped to gather The slender harebell, or the purple heather; No taller than the foxglove's spiky stem, That dew of morning studs with silvery gem. Then every butterfly that crossed our view With joyful shout was greeted as it flew, And moth and lady-bird and beetle bright In sheeny gold were each a wondrous sight. Then as we paddled barefoot, side by side, Among the sunny shallows of the Clyde, Minnows or spotted par with twinkling fin, Swimming in mazy rings the pool within, A thrill of gladness through our bosoms sent Seen ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 3 • Various

... moth flew busily past the open window and vanished into the night. He thought of his own books; for writers, painters, preachers, musicians, these were trying to say it too. "If I could describe that moth exactly," he murmured to himself, "give the sensation of its flight, its ...
— The Extra Day • Algernon Blackwood

... out in the end, as by a sudden freshet, on these ultimate islands. And I admire and bow my head before the romance of destiny." Does not this sentence read as if it were written in stress of some effusive febrile emotion, as if he wrote while still pursuing his idea? And so it reminds us of a moth fluttering after a light. But however vacillating, the sentence contains some pretty clauses, and it will be remembered though not perhaps in its original form. We shall forget the "laughter and the tears" and the "sudden freshet," and a simpler phrase will form itself ...
— Memoirs of My Dead Life • George Moore

... he have left his theft and become a true man first. And he who gave this counsel knew well enough what he said, for it was our Saviour himself, who in the sixth chapter of St. Matthew saith, "Hoard not up your treasures in earth, where the rust and the moth fret it out and where thieves dig it out and steal it away. But hoard up your treasures in heaven, where neither the rust nor the moth fret them out, and where thieves dig them not out nor steal them away. For where thy treasure is, ...
— Dialogue of Comfort Against Tribulation - With Modifications To Obsolete Language By Monica Stevens • Thomas More

... 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 ...
— Main Street and Other Poems • Alfred Joyce Kilmer

... a moth: and from morning even unto the evening they endure not. Because they were not able to help themselves, they perished; he breathed upon them and they died, because they had ...
— The Forbidden Gospels and Epistles, Complete • Archbishop Wake

... word, and the very stormy afternoon when Jill got into trouble, Merry was working busily at her little bower. In the blue chest she found a variety of treasures, and ignoring the moth holes, used them to the best advantage, trying to imitate the simple comfort with a touch of elegance which prevailed in ...
— Jack and Jill • Louisa May Alcott

... time have converted into an Estaminet.[1] I was conducted up a dark, narrow staircase into the close, dingy room, by an ugly, ignorant frau, who seemed to wonder what earthly inducement I had to visit her dwelling-house. Lumber and moth-eaten furniture were carelessly scattered around. A solitary window, partly blocked up by an old mattress, barely admitted light sufficient to make objects visible. All was neglect and desolation. It seemed almost ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 388 - Vol. 14, No. 388, Saturday, September 5, 1829. • Various

... youth is not a matter of a few years at the wrong end of life. Her hair was fashionably arranged, but she was attired in a worn black silk, her only ornament a hair brooch. Her hands were small and well kept, although the skin hung loose upon them, spotted with the moth-patches of age. Her figure was ...
— The Bell in the Fog and Other Stories • Gertrude Atherton

... is in his ruins grand. His powers of development are little less than infinite. They begin with the cradle, but do not end with the grave. No other being begins so low and ascends so high. In his beginning, he is "crushed before the moth;" in the fullness of his power he shall "judge angels." In this world he scarcely begins to live. This life is too short and this world too small for the development of his God-given faculties. Here he scarcely learns the alphabet preparatory to God's ...
— Autobiography of Frank G. Allen, Minister of the Gospel - and Selections from his Writings • Frank G. Allen

... morning in the garden. She was still dressed in the shabby old frock and pinafore, and as she came creeping in, threading her way deftly amongst the young ladies in starched muslins and gay ribbons who were fluttering about, she made the effect of a little brown moth who had strayed into the midst of a swarm of brilliant butterflies. No one took any notice of her, and she made her way up to the large round table which had been pushed into the far corner of the room, and near which Graham ...
— My Little Lady • Eleanor Frances Poynter

... auction. Its owner's pal starts the bidding at $400, and the four, not being up in horse values, are thereby induced to reach for it at between $400 to $500. But human nature, whether at horse sales or at stock-gambling, loves to be "hinky-dinked" as much as the moth loves to play tag with the candle flame. In five minutes Sugar was selling at 221, and the frantic shorts were grabbing for it as though there never was to be another share put on sale, while Barry Conant and his lieutenants were most industriously pushing it ...
— Friday, the Thirteenth • Thomas W. Lawson

... made of mean tallow becomes a star if placed in an opening in the darkness. The moth flies ...
— The Man Who Laughs • Victor Hugo

... literally true, for we had hardly time to look around the dusty and moth-eaten apartment in which we found ourselves before the door opened and a big, clean-shaven bald-headed man stepped lightly into the room. He had a large red face, with pendulous cheeks, and a general air of superficial benevolence which was marred ...
— The Disappearance of Lady Frances Carfax • Arthur Conan Doyle

... tapestry of cherry-trees, honey-suckles, and China roses, which cover our walls—now tracing the gay gambols of the common butterflies as they sport around the dahlias; now watching that rarer moth, which the country people, fertile in pretty names, call the bee-bird;[1] that bird-like insect, which flutters in the hottest days over the sweetest flowers, inserting its long proboscis into the small tube ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 10, Issue 265, July 21, 1827 • Various

... three sisters to spare from their earnings, but they were eager to print, eager to make sacrifices, as though in some dim way they saw already the glorious goal. But at present there was business to do. They bought one of the numerous little primers that are always on sale to show the poor vain moth of amateur authorship how least to burn his wings—little books more eagerly bought and read than any of those that they bring into the world. Such a publisher's guide, meant for ambitious schoolboys, ...
— Emily Bront • A. Mary F. (Agnes Mary Frances) Robinson

... 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 ...
— The Triple Alliance • Harold Avery

... growers are warned to be on their guard against the wingless moth, for lime-washing the trees is ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 153, October 31, 1917 • Various

... and water, and cedar, and moth balls, and dust, and the ghost of a perfumery that Pinky used to use pervaded the hot attic. Mrs. Brewster, head and shoulders in a trunk, was trying not to listen and not to seem not to listen to Miz' Merz' recital of ...
— O Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1919 • Various

... sagged, small-boy fashion, and formed a little roll of cloth just above his shoe tops. He pulled them up. How on earth had all that mud gotten there? In a moment he was at the head of the stairs, shouting, "Mother, Mother, Moth-a-a-a-r! Where are some clean stockings?" and went off to her room in search of them. His boots, too, were dusty and scratched; how long was it ...
— A Son of the City - A Story of Boy Life • Herman Gastrell Seely

... Lord has again most kindly helped us. It came to my mind that there were some new blankets in the Orphan-Houses, which had been given some time since, but which are not needed, and might therefore be sold. I was confirmed in this by finding that the moth had got into one pair. I therefore sold ten pairs, having a good opportunity to do so. Thus the Lord not only supplied again our present need for the three houses, but I was also able to put by the rent for this week and the next, acting out the light which He had given us this day week. There ...
— A Narrative of some of the Lord's Dealings with George Mueller - Written by Himself. Second Part • George Mueller

... waiting for 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 to discern much save a good-sized ...
— A Wayfarer in China - Impressions of a trip across West China and Mongolia • Elizabeth Kendall

... the Microscope to be more then half of the surface of the Feather which is open and visibly pervious; which conjecture will yet seem more probable from the texture of the brushie wings of the Tinea argentea, or white Feather wing'd moth, which I shall anone describe. But Nature, that knows best its own laws, and the several properties of bodies, knows also best how to adapt and fit them to her designed ends, and whoso would know those properties, ...
— Micrographia • Robert Hooke

... he had expected to see—until he spied the wheel chair. Then he seemed surprised, and greatly interested. He laid his hat among the breakfast cups and crossed the room softly to look down at the little old man crumpled, sleeping, in the folds of the moth-eaten coat, ...
— The Rich Little Poor Boy • Eleanor Gates

... some store Of emmets' eggs: what would he more But beards of mice, a newt's stew'd thigh, A bloated earwig, and a fly: With the red-capp'd worm, that is shut Within the concave of a nut, Brown as his tooth; a little moth, Late fatten'd in a piece of cloth; With wither'd 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 Ne'er ravish'd from the flatt'ring ...
— Specimens with Memoirs of the Less-known British Poets, Complete • George Gilfillan

... 'Foster-father, sooth it is that I have been to the wood, but there have I seen nought of manfolk worse than myself. Now as to my raiment, needs must I keep it from the moth. And I am weary withal, and this kirtle is light and easy to me. Moreover, I look to see the Bride here again, and I would pleasure her with the sight of gay raiment ...
— The Roots of the Mountains • William Morris

... greater part, on pleasure. Robert felt that he would have given gladly the treasures of a universe for just the time to think a little while of his own love. So far that great attachment had brought him aberrations, sorrow, and perplexities; all its sweetness had flown, moth-like, into his heart, there to be burnt—burnt yet left unburied: all its happiness had glorified his life against his will; all its beauty had been starved with a pitiless rigour. What then had remained? A certain state of mind—a passionate resignation to its own indomitable cravings. ...
— Robert Orange - Being a Continuation of the History of Robert Orange • John Oliver Hobbes

... and had made excellent improvement of both; it was in vain to try to persuade him that seed-time and harvest were the same thing, and that he had nothing to do but to rest in what he had done; show his bright colours and flutter like a moth in the sunshine, or sit down like a degenerate bee in the summer time and eat his own honey. The power of action which he knew in himself could not rest without something to act upon. It longed to ...
— Queechy, Volume I • Elizabeth Wetherell

... coherent masses, all attached to a common stalk, the end of which is expanded into a sort of button, with a glutinous adhesive face (like a bit of sticking-plaster), and this is placed exactly where the head of a moth or butterfly will be pressed against it when it sucks nectar from the flower, and so the pollen will be bodily conveyed from blossom to blossom, with small chance of waste or loss. The floral world is full of such ...
— Darwiniana - Essays and Reviews Pertaining to Darwinism • Asa Gray

... conservatory and gazed in upon a ruin of limp leaves and flaccid petals, killed by the powerful gases. Suddenly, with an exclamation of astonishment, the investigator stooped and lifted from the floor a marvel of ermine body and pale green wings. The moth, spreading nearly a foot, ...
— Average Jones • Samuel Hopkins Adams

... "Case of moth chasin'," says I, "from the kerosene circuit to the white lights. But, say, I didn't know before that Broadway had so many recruitin' stations. They ought to put Boothbay Harbor on the map ...
— On With Torchy • Sewell Ford

... As the summer was approaching he had changed his winter suit for a combination of brown linen bound with black—(second hand, of course, its former owner having gone out of mourning) and at the moment sported a moth-eaten, crape-encircled white beaver with a floppy, two-inch brim, a rusty black stock that grabbed him close under the chin, completely submerging his collar, and a pair of congress gaiters very much run down at the heel. He was evidently ...
— Kennedy Square • F. Hopkinson Smith

... unspeakable indifference, and this moment will never be taken from us; time cannot rob us of it but, as far as we are concerned, it will last for ever and ever without flying. So that, even for the most wretched and most guilty, there is a heaven at last where neither moth nor rust doth corrupt and where thieves do not break through nor steal. To himself every one is an immortal: he may know that he is going to die, but he can never ...
— The Note-Books of Samuel Butler • Samuel Butler

... caused the bishop to pay particular attention to the other of the two individuals in question. He beheld a stumpy and pompous-looking personage, flushed in the face, with a moth-eaten grey beard and shifty grey eyes, clothed in a flannel shirt, tweed knickerbockers, brown stockings, white spats and shoes. Such was the Commissioner's invariable get-up, save that in winter he wore a cap ...
— South Wind • Norman Douglas

... not occur to him to depict those qualities. I am not sure that the best equipment for an artist is not that he should see and admire great and noble and beautiful things, and feel his own deficiency in them acutely, desiring them with the desire of the moth for the star. The best characters in my own books have been, I am sure, the people least like myself, because the creation of a character that one whole-heartedly admires, and that yet is far out of one's reach, ...
— The Altar Fire • Arthur Christopher Benson

... visit from a huge beetle which we heard battering the tent, then it gradually got nearer, next hitting the tent pole and falling on the small table on which my candle flickers, the glare of which had attracted him. Kellas caught a moth and kept it for me. It was nothing much to look at, but it is the very first I have seen here. He also describes another moth he saw to-day as fluttering in front of a flower without alighting on it, but hovering ...
— The Incomparable 29th and the "River Clyde" • George Davidson

... will be destroyed. Burn the straw about the last of May. But those who are too indolent or busy to do this often till their season is past, may melt India-rubber over a hot fire, and smear bandages of cloth or leather previously put tight around the tree. This will prevent the female moth from crossing and reaching the limbs. Tar is used, but India-rubber is better, as weather will not injure it as it will tar, so as to allow the moth to pass over. Put this on early and well, and let it remain ...
— Soil Culture • J. H. Walden

... spirit full of eyes, Doors of light in every part; Open windows to the skies That no moth corrupt my heart. ...
— Poetical Works of George MacDonald, Vol. 2 • George MacDonald

... Royal Oak, when the Dutch fired his vessel in the Thames, sent his men ashore, but was burned along with her himself rather than desert his post without orders. Just then, perhaps the Merry Monarch was chasing a moth round the supper-table with the ladies of his court. When Raleigh sailed into Cadiz, and all the forts and ships opened fire on him at once, he scorned to shoot a gun, and made answer with a flourish of insulting trumpets. I like this bravado better than the wisest dispositions to ensure victory; ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition - Vol. 2 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson

... or cachmere; nay, had not some worthy matter-of-fact soul let slip a stray hint about ice and sleighing parties in December, I verily believe, hating as I do all superfluous baggage, I should have left my greatcoats to the moth and fog of ...
— Impressions of America - During the years 1833, 1834 and 1835. In Two Volumes, Volume I. • Tyrone Power

... gates, and on monastery ground, in a seclusion which the tidings of the sequence of his editions hardly reaches. There is no disturbing renown to be got among the cabins of the Flintshire hills. Homeward, over the verge, from other valleys, his light figure flits at nightfall, like a moth. ...
— Essays • Alice Meynell

... her pillows, watched her friend as she flitted like a gray moth about the room, intent on various comforting offices, and when at last Sophie brought to her a steaming cup Diana said, "Do you know, Sophie, I've always thought myself ...
— Glory of Youth • Temple Bailey

... vrom e'thly eyes To be a-kept in darksome sleep, Until the good ageaen do rise A-jay to souls they left to weep. The rwose wer doust that bound her brow; The moth did eat her Zunday ceaepe; Her frock wer out o' fashion now; Her shoes wer dried up out o' sheaepe— The shoes that woonce did glitter black ...
— Poems of Rural Life in the Dorset Dialect • William Barnes

... silence within the room—and for a moment she glanced a little fearfully at the recumbent figure in the old, deep-backed chair. Pratt had stretched himself fully in his easy quarters—-his legs lay extended across the moth-eaten hearth-rug; his head and shoulders were thrown far back against the faded tapestry, and he was so still that he might have been supposed to be dead. But Esther Mawson had tried the effect ...
— The Talleyrand Maxim • J. S. Fletcher

... about two inches deep in 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 ...
— The Commercial Products of the Vegetable Kingdom • P. L. Simmonds

... a lot in the attic," replied the oldest girl, smiling happily at the children's appreciation of her labor; but she did not explain that a gorgeous, moth-eaten, old afghan had been raveled to provide all ...
— At the Little Brown House • Ruth Alberta Brown

... 1891 Pawkins, whose health had been bad for some time, published some work upon the "mesoblast" of the Death's Head Moth. What the mesoblast of the Death's Head Moth may be does not matter a rap in this story. But the work was far below his usual standard, and gave Hapley an opening he had coveted for years. He must have worked night and day to make ...
— The Country of the Blind, And Other Stories • H. G. Wells

... black dark, save for a thin crack of light from the wood fire and torches of the hall. The crack made on the earthen floor a line like a golden river. Biorn, cuddled up on a bench in his little bear-skin, was drawn like a moth to that stream of light. With his heart beating fast he would creep to it and stand for a moment with his small body bathed in the radiance. The game was not to come back at once, but to foray into the farther darkness before returning to the sanctuary of bed. ...
— The Path of the King • John Buchan

... did not notice that the sun had set, and night had come. It got so dark that I could not see my dog lying at my feet. Suddenly I felt something touch me and pass lightly over my hair. I thought it was an ant or a night moth, and I raised my hand to chase it away. Then it changed its place, and I felt it at the nape of my neck. I tried to catch the thing that was making my neck itch, and caught a hand, soft and warm. I shuddered and ...
— In Those Days - The Story of an Old Man • Jehudah Steinberg

... average size as compared with the beetles themselves. If too small they are despised, as they would not yield a sufficient mouthful. If they are too large the beetle is unable to handle them. The caterpillars of the Sphinx moth and the Great Peacock moth, for example, would fall an easy prey to the beetle were it not that at the first bite of the assailant the intended victim, by a contortion of its powerful flanks, sends the former flying. After several attacks, all of which end by the beetle ...
— Social Life in the Insect World • J. H. Fabre

... cumulous clouds behind the Holy Cross. The humming night-hawk, up in the indigo of mid-heaven, uttered a lonely, far, fading call, as of life in flight; and a rustle of wind, faint as the brushing of moth ...
— The Freebooters of the Wilderness • Agnes C. Laut

... from sleep. Ages and ages ago when she started on that dread journey, the dwarf to her left was stretching out her hand to steady the bowl at her feet, and now it had but just reached the bowl. A great moth had singed its wings in the lamp, and was fluttering to the ground—it was still in mid-air. Noie was placing her arm about her neck, and it had but begun to fall upon ...
— The Ghost Kings • H. Rider Haggard

... a royal game I was before my cradle; Was ever gambler hurling gold who lost such things as I? The purple moth that died an hour ere I was born of That great green sunset God shall make three days ...
— Poems • G.K. Chesterton

... go out. A moth had flown down its chimney, was sizzling, charring, inside ... Paul lifted off the globe. Burnt his hands, but said nothing ... flicked the wingless, blackened ...
— Tramping on Life - An Autobiographical Narrative • Harry Kemp

... clubs to save the lifes of flise and snaiks and intch wirms and moth millers and cockroches, but he wood gnock enny feller pizzle end upwards that raised time in chirch. today we had to a sine a book and pay five cents and promise not to take the life of animal or bird or ...
— Brite and Fair • Henry A. Shute

... good deed, through the ages Living in historic pages, Brighter grows and gleams immortal, Unconsumed by moth or rust ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

... passed on, crossed a stile and walked up a narrow, laurel-bordered path towards the light of another window which was drawing him, moth-like, by its gleam. It also, though in the "Removable's" house, was unshuttered, testifying to the peaceful state of the district. He could see a cheerful sitting-room, gay with flowers and chintzes, the light ...
— The Argosy - Vol. 51, No. 6, June, 1891 • Various

... honah; didn't see 'em, I asshaw you. Was it Baby Blake and her moth-ah, now, ah?" and he smiled complacently, as if he had given me ...
— She and I, Volume 1 • John Conroy Hutcheson

... have a nice smell of his cigarettes, because my borrowed volume has. Of course, I wouldn't have done it for anything, though, so don't think I'm worse than I am. And really, really, I don't believe I'm exactly in love. I hope I'm not so foolish. It's just a kind of infatuated fascination of a moth—not for a candle, but for a great, brilliant motor lamp. I've seen them at night dashing themselves against the glass of our Bleriots once or twice when we've been out late, and I know how hopelessly they smash their soft, silly wings. I should ...
— Set in Silver • Charles Norris Williamson and Alice Muriel Williamson

... drowsy human lovers, Maid Marian and her outlawed Robin Hood. They are in dire peril; yet we may not break Our vows of silence. Many a time Has Robin Hood by kindly words and deeds Done in his human world, sent a new breath Of life and joy like Spring to fairyland; And at the moth-hour of this very dew-fall, He saved a fairy, whom he thought, poor soul, Only a may-fly in a spider's web, He saved her from the clutches of that Wizard, That Cruel Thing, that dark old Mystery, Whom ye ...
— Collected Poems - Volume Two (of 2) • Alfred Noyes

... beautiful young woman was revolving round him. His looks, his wealth, his taste, his reputation, invested him with a certain sun-like quality; but his age, the recession of his locks, and the advancement of his waist were beginning to dim his lustre, so that whether he was moth or candle was becoming a moot point. It was moot to me, watching him and Miss Sabine Monroy at Charleston throughout the month of March. The casual observer would have said that she was "playing him up," as a young poet of my acquaintance ...
— The Best British Short Stories of 1922 • Edward J. O'Brien and John Cournos, editors

... you, what can I do about my serene Princess Grifoni? Alas! I owe her two letters, and where to find a beau sentiment, I cannot tell! I believe I may have some by me in an old chest of draws, with some exploded red-heel shoes and full-bottom wigs; but they would come out so yellow and moth-eaten! Do bow to her, in every superlative degree in the language, that my eyes have been so bad, that as I wrote you word, over and over, I have not been able to write a line. That will move her, when she hears what melancholy descriptions I write, of my not being able to write-nay, ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole, Volume 1 • Horace Walpole

... clouds, they went, and down again, towards the defenceless Earth, that could not flee from the chariot of the Sun. Great rivers hid themselves in the ground, and mountains were consumed. Harvests perished like a moth that is singed ...
— Old Greek Folk Stories Told Anew • Josephine Preston Peabody

... the edge of his bed, in the shaded light, she looked like some rare, pale moth in her moon-coloured sari flecked and bordered with gold; amber earrings and a rope of amber beads—his own gift; first fruits of poetic earnings. The years between had simply ripened and embellished her; rounded a little the oval of her ...
— Far to Seek - A Romance of England and India • Maud Diver

... elbow, on this occasion, some high-minded and lofty spirit, some magnanimous and true-hearted monitor, possessing the means of local knowledge, and ready to supply the honorable member with every thing, down even to forgotten and moth-eaten two-penny pamphlets, which may be used to the disadvantage of his own country. But as to the Hartford Convention, Sir, allow me to say, that the proceedings of that body seem now to be less ...
— The Great Speeches and Orations of Daniel Webster • Daniel Webster

... some grotesque, goatish-looking deer which did not interest him, and came suddenly upon a paddock containing a bull moose, two cows, and a yearling calf. The calf looked ungainly and quite content with his surroundings. The cows were faded and moth-eaten, but well fed. He had no concern for them at all. But the bull, a splendid, black-shouldered, heavy-muffled fellow, with the new antlers just beginning to knob out from his massive forehead, ...
— Kings in Exile • Sir Charles George Douglas Roberts

... richness and taste displayed in all the details of this the scholar's sanctum. The very atmosphere of the chamber, filled with the perfume of the cedar wood employed as a specific against the ravages of the moth and bookworm, seemed to the young man redolent of midnight learning; and the superb front of the presiding god, calm in the grandeur of its ineffable benignity, who appeared to his excited fancy to smile serene protection on the pursuits of the ...
— The Roman Traitor (Vol. 1 of 2) • Henry William Herbert

... gave the excuse her heart longed for, and her fingers rested for a moment, light as the moth itself, on his hair. There was something in the touch which made him open his eyes—uncomprehending at first, and then ...
— With Edged Tools • Henry Seton Merriman

... 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; ...
— Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra

... have Proteoteras aesculana boring in the terminal green twigs of both maple and buckeye, in Missouri, and often producing a swelling or pseudo-gall. Exceptionally it works in the leaf-stalk. It also feeds on the samara of maple, as we reared the moth in June, 1881, from larvae infesting these winged seeds that had been collected by Mr. A.J. Wethersby, ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 363, December 16, 1882 • Various

... I be a disembodied spirit, and no longer subject to the petty annoyances that belong to the flesh?" cried he, fretfully. "My knowledge, too, is a moth,—only vexing me by a sense of the limitations of my condition. If I could grasp Nature,—if I could handle the stars,—if I could wake the thunder,—if I could summon the cloud! That would be worth something,—to send ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 3, No. 18, April, 1859 - [Date last updated: August 7, 2005] • Various

... includes it in his list, and marks it as having been found both in Guernsey and Sark. There is no specimen of the Long-eared Owl at present in the Museum. If there has been one it must have got moth-eaten, like many of the other birds ...
— Birds of Guernsey (1879) • Cecil Smith

... learning, with soul under proper control, ever waiting upon the aged, and subdued senses; possessed thus of every accomplishment, he is like unto a blazing fire. What fool, doomed to destruction and deprived of sense, will jump, moth-like, into that blazing and irresistible Pandava fire! Alas, I have behaved deceitfully towards him. The king, like unto a fire of long flames, will destroy all my foolish sons in battle without leaving any alive. I, therefore, think ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 2 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli

... know. I perfectly understand what you mean. Mr. Brierly is nothing—simply nothing. He is a moth singed, that is all—the trifler with women thought he was a wasp. I have no pity for him, not the least. You may tell him not to make a fool of himself, and to keep away. I say this on your account, not his. You are not like him. It is enough ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain

... black against the eve; The white moth flitters through the fragrant glooms; How beautiful the heav'ns!—But yet we grieve And wander restless from the ...
— A Treasury of War Poetry - British and American Poems of the World War 1914-1917 • Edited, with Introduction and Notes, by George Herbert Clarke

... the gushing flame enveloped him. He staggered, flung up both arms and fell stone dead, the life seared clean out of him, as a lamp sears a moth. ...
— The Air Trust • George Allan England



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