"Peacock" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... obliged to construct for her out of its own fabric; she knew what the girls would look like if they went to a Drawing Room and she often wondered if they would feel shy when the page spread out their lovely peacock tails for them and left them to their own devices. It was mere Nature that she should have pondered and pondered and sometimes unconsciously longed to feel herself part of the flood of being sweeping past her as she stood apart on ...
— The Head of the House of Coombe • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... they cannot easily be contained in a book ... so that one of their wise men, who knew that the country had been called the bird's tail, owing to the supposed resemblance of the earth to a bird with extended wings, remarked that that bird was the peacock, the principal beauty of which was in the tail." These panegyrics are not in all cases exactly consistent; for while the famous geographer, Obeydullah Al-Bekri, "compares his native country to Syria for purity of air and water, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXLII. Vol. LV. April, 1844 • Various
... could now follow with our eyes dans toute son etendue. A beautiful etendue it was, the water keeping its extraordinary brilliance of colour, even in the far distance; vivid in changing blue-greens, flecked with gold, like the spread tail of a peacock ...
— The Princess Passes • Alice Muriel Williamson and Charles Norris Williamson
... have differed much herein, for it is said that some of them have been accounted the most ill-favoured of men: but in that kin have been also many men of great prowess in many wise, such as Kiartan, the son of Olaf Peacock, and Slaying-Bardi, and Skuli, the son of Thorstein. Some have been great bards, too, in that kin, as Biorn, the champion of Hit-dale, priest Einar Skulison, Snorri Sturluson, and ...
— The Story Of Gunnlaug The Worm-Tongue And Raven The Skald - 1875 • Anonymous
... may be his wife, she has no right to go Before your wife and my wife, as she would have gone last night Had they not caught at her dress, and pulled her as was right; And she makes light of us though our wives do all that they can. She spreads her tail like a peacock and ...
— The Green Helmet and Other Poems • William Butler Yeats
... accomplished scientists nor educational experts should be heard. These—and there are many such—ask, What is the end which we should seek to attain? Can science alone be trusted to prevent education becoming, in the words of that sturdy old pagan, Thomas Love Peacock, a "means for giving a fixed direction to stupidity"? The answer they, or many of them, give to these questions is that the main end of education is to teach people to think, and that they are not prepared to play ...
— Political and Literary essays, 1908-1913 • Evelyn Baring
... assertion that the Parliament of 1868 did nothing for England or Scotland, on account of its absorption in Irish affairs. But he was not writing a formal history, and these points did not appeal to him at all. He drew with inimitable skill a picture of the despised and fantastic Jew, vain as a peacock and absurdly dressed, alien in race and in his real creed, smiling sardonically at English ways, enthusiasms, and institutions, until he became, after years of struggle and obloquy, the idol of what was then the proudest aristocracy ...
— The Life of Froude • Herbert Paul
... and sapphires the value of which they did not attempt to estimate; and, besides these, a miscellaneous assortment of semiprecious stones. There was a fine collection of opals of every size and color, among which were a number of huge flat black ones, indescribably gorgeous with their ever-changing peacock hues. But finest of all the lot were the pearls. Where old Don Esteban had secured these latter was a mystery, for he had not been a widely traveled man. They were splendid, unrivaled in size and luster. Some ...
— Rainbow's End • Rex Beach
... condition. The gifts which a rich and generous matron of Peloponnesus presented to the emperor Basil, her adopted son, were doubtless fabricated in the Grecian looms. Danielis bestowed a carpet of fine wool, of a pattern which imitated the spots of a peacock's tail, of a magnitude to overspread the floor of a new church, erected in the triple name of Christ, of Michael the archangel, and of the prophet Elijah. She gave six hundred pieces of silk and linen, of various use and denomination: the silk was painted with the Tyrian ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 5 • Edward Gibbon
... on to the scene, and sang—in a rather peacock voice—a little ditty lamenting the weather, at which a velvet-coated cavalier came to the rescue, and chanting his offer of help sheltered her with a huge green umbrella, under which they proceeded to make love, and finally executed a ...
— The Jolliest School of All • Angela Brazil
... came to the birds, I found those which frequented the island so correctly described, that I had no longer any doubt on the subject. Perhaps what interested me most were the plates in which the barn-door fowls and the peacock were described, as in the background of the first were a cottage and figures, representing the rural scenery of England, my own country; and in the second there was a splendid mansion, and a carriage and four horses driving up to the door. In short, it is impossible ...
— The Little Savage • Captain Marryat
... Leave him to settle down for the night and come back after him another day? Or try another cast for him at once? A fish on Saturday evening is worth two on Monday morning. I changed the Queen of the Water for a Royal Coachman tied on a number fourteen hook,—white wings, peacock body with a belt of crimson silk,—and sent it out again, a foot farther up the stream and a shade closer to the weeds. As it settled on the water, there was a flash of gold from the shadow beneath ...
— Fisherman's Luck • Henry van Dyke
... an outer garment is a token of true penitence and amendment of life. But it is the inner garments I must deal with, the raiments and habits of the soul. Some of these robes—such as vanity and pride—are as gay and showy as a peacock; others are dirty and leprous, and we should not dare to bring them to the door, and display them in the light. But all need severe treatment; they must be torn, fibre from fibre, and ...
— My Daily Meditation for the Circling Year • John Henry Jowett
... cold pride so harsh and hard, Fancy a peacock in a poultry yard. Behold him in conceited circles sail, Strutting and dancing, and now planted stiff, In all his pomp of pageantry, as if He felt "the eyes of Europe" on his tail! As for the humble breed retain'd by man, He scorns the whole domestic clan— He bows, he bridles, He wheels, ...
— The Poetical Works of Thomas Hood • Thomas Hood
... cousin; in these the whitecaps, the tall masts, the spices and hot nights, the scarlet tropics and the dusky, startled natives tip with flame the quiet chronicles of the sisters left at home; and gorgeous peacock fans, rosy, enamelled shells, strings of sandalwood beads, riotous, bloomy embroideries and supple folds of exotic muslin weave their scents and suggestions through the sober-coloured stuff of everyday. Indeed, New England as I have known her, both as a child in her chief and representative city, ...
— Margarita's Soul - The Romantic Recollections of a Man of Fifty • Ingraham Lovell
... calico dress and sun-bonnet, both made by poor Mrs. McCutchen of the Donner Party, who had to take in sewing for a livelihood; but to the Seminary, I should wear grandpa's gift, a costly alpaca, changeable in the sunlight to soft mingling bluish and greenish colors of the peacock. Its wide skirt reached to my shoetops, and the gathers to its full waist were gauged to a sharp peak in front. A wide open V from the shoulder down to the peak displayed an embroidered white Swiss chemisette. The sleeves, ...
— The Expedition of the Donner Party and its Tragic Fate • Eliza Poor Donner Houghton
... Ida, harken ere I die. On the tree-tops a crested peacock lit, And o'er him flow'd a golden cloud, and lean'd Upon him, slowing dropping fragrant dew. Then first I heard the voice of her, to whom Coming thro' Heaven, like a light that grows Larger and clearer, ...
— The Early Poems of Alfred Lord Tennyson • Tennyson
... intentional act on her part. She desired to terminate the conversation and took this rude, insolent means of doing so. Never had he been so flagrantly insulted,—and for what reason? He had been courteous, deferential, friendly. What right had she,—this insufferable peacock,—to consider herself his superior? Hot words rushed to his lips, but he checked them. He contented himself with an angry contemplation of her slender, graceful figure as she poised in the open doorway, holding the latch in one hand while the other was ...
— Viola Gwyn • George Barr McCutcheon
... principal tenants and their wives, to which the clergyman was invited, and Miss Galindo, Mrs. Medlicott, and one or two other spinsters and widows. The glory of the supper-table on these occasions was invariably furnished by her ladyship: it was a cold roasted peacock, with his tail stuck out as if in life. Mrs. Medlicott would take up the whole morning arranging the feathers in the proper semicircle, and was always pleased with the wonder and admiration it excited. It was considered a due reward and fitting compliment to her exertions that Mr. Horner ...
— My Lady Ludlow • Elizabeth Gaskell
... fifth, an uncoloured glass button; sixth, an opaque white shell button; seventh, a plain gilt button; eighth, a gilt button with flowers in relief; ninth, a gilt button with engraved flowers. The buttons indicate simply rank, not office. The peacock feathers worn in their hats are an order granted as reward of merit, and indicate neither rank nor office. The Yellow Jacket similarly is a decoration, ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 2 - "Chicago, University of" to "Chiton" • Various
... mountains with the plain. Five minutes' walk from the hotel brought us to a ridge where the precipice fell suddenly and almost sheer over one arm of Lugano Lake. Sullenly outstretched asleep it lay beneath us, coloured with the tints of fluor-spar, or with the changeful green and azure of a peacock's breast. The depth appeared immeasurable. San Salvadore had receded into insignificance: the houses and churches and villas of Lugano bordered the lake-shore with an uneven line of whiteness. And over all there rested ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece • John Addington Symonds
... distance. At about half-past four we reached Boston, (which name has been shortened, in the course of ages, by the quick and slovenly English pronunciation, from Botolph's town,) and were taken by a cab to the Peacock, in the market-place. It was the best hotel in town, though a poor one enough; and we were shown into a small, stilled parlor, dingy, musty, and scented with stale tobacco-smoke,—tobacco-smoke two days old, for the waiter assured us that the room had not more recently been fumigated. ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 09, No. 51, January, 1862 • Various
... significant change in DISRAELI's attire. "The motley coloured garments he wore at the close of the previous Session were exchanged for a suit of black unapproachably perfect." Also "he appeared to have doffed the vanity of the coxcomb with the plumage of the peacock." Evidently he felt that his carefully-designed sartorial extravagances had played their appointed part in attracting notice. In manner of speech as in fashion of clothing he assumed ways more compatible with the position ...
— Punch or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, December 9, 1914 • Various
... out differently," he said. "Like that story of the peacock. A man had one presented to him, and as this is such rare diet he went to the Reb to ask if it was kosher. The Rabbi said 'no' and confiscated the peacock. Later on the man heard that the Rabbi had given a banquet at which his peacock was the crowning ...
— Children of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... Henry Vaughan A Superscription Dante Gabriel Rossetti The Child in the Garden Henry Van Dyke Castles in the Air Thomas Love Peacock Sometimes Thomas S. Jones, Jr The Little Ghosts Thomas S. Jones, Jr My Other Me Grace Denio Litchfield A Shadow Boat Arlo Bates A Lad That is Gone Robert Louis Stevenson Carcassonne John R. Thompson Childhood John Banister Tabb The Wastrel Reginald Wright Kauffman Troia Fuit Reginald Wright Kauffman ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 1 (of 4) • Various
... themselves if properly planted in the first instance. The tuberous or bulbous rooted kinds do not require a rich soil; a sandy loam suits them, and they thrive in peat. Such beautiful species as Reticulata, the Chalcedonian, and the Peacock are worth growing in pots placed in frames or in a cool greenhouse. The English, Dutch, and Spanish varieties should be planted in clumps in front of a shrubbery border, where they may be seen to advantage. ...
— The Culture of Vegetables and Flowers From Seeds and Roots, 16th Edition • Sutton and Sons
... midnight when he saw the lights of town, panelled in gold against a peacock sky. Acres and acres of blue darkness lay close-pressing upon the gaudy grids of light. Here one might really look at this great miracle of shadow and see its texture. The dulcet air drifted lazily in deep, silent crosstown ...
— Where the Blue Begins • Christopher Morley
... at his best now that he is dead," continued Louis, who had read up the animal life he expected to find in Borneo. "Like a peacock, though to a less extent, he can spread out his pretty feathers, but not in the same manner; for they open out in the form of a circle, making a sort of round disk on his back and concealing his head. If you could see the bird alive with his wings spread out you would ...
— Four Young Explorers - Sight-Seeing in the Tropics • Oliver Optic
... him if I ever came athwart his hawser), I booked a seat in the new diligence that ran between Bristowe and Worcester, and there indulged myself in the luxury of a postchaise for the journey to the Hall. And I warrant you I was as proud as a peacock when the chaise swung in at the gate, and rattled up ...
— Humphrey Bold - A Story of the Times of Benbow • Herbert Strang
... But efter a', Cosmo, I wad be some oot o' my place—wadna I noo? The hen-birds nae doobt are aye the soberer to luik at, an' haena the gran' colours nor the gran' w'ys wi' them 'at the cocks hae; but still there's a measur in a' thing: it wad ill set a common hen to hae a peacock for her man. My sowl, I ken, wad gang han' in han', in a heumble w'y, wi' yours, for I un'erstan' ye, Cosmo; an' the day may come whan I'll luik fitter for yer company nor I can the noo; but wha like me could help a sense o' unfitness, gien ...
— Warlock o' Glenwarlock • George MacDonald
... screen the old man from the hot rays of the sun. As noon approached, all eyes were turned up to this window. In due time, the chair was seen approaching to the front, with the gigantic fans of peacock's feathers, close behind. The doll within it (for the balcony is very high) then rose up, and stretched out its tiny arms, while all the male spectators in the square uncovered, and some, but not by any means the greater part, kneeled ...
— Pictures from Italy • Charles Dickens
... Koosee derahs; he had had a long and unsuccessful beat for tiger, and had given up all hope of bagging one that day; he thought therefore that he might as well turn his attention to more ignoble game. Extracting his bullets, he replaced them with No. 4 shot. In a few minutes a peacock got up in front of him, and he fired. The report roused a very fine tiger right in front of his elephant; to make the best of a bad bargain, he gave the retreating animal the full benefit of his remaining charge of shot, and peppered it well. About a year after, ...
— Sport and Work on the Nepaul Frontier - Twelve Years Sporting Reminiscences of an Indigo Planter • James Inglis
... the Red Square that swung in the rain. He was thinking about the eight roubles.... He pulled up with a jerk outside the "France" hotel. Here he tried, I am sure, to recover his dignity, but he was met by a large, stout, eastern-looking gentleman with peacock feathers in his round cap who smiled gently when he heard about the eight roubles, and ushered Henry into the dark hall with a kindly patronage ...
— The Secret City • Hugh Walpole
... In return he sent on board the ships enough food to have lasted both crews for a week, if it had only been possible to keep it good for that length of time. The royal family dined on board the Resolution; and after dinner Cook and Omai called on Oparee, taking with them a peacock and peahen sent to the island by Lord Bessborough, a turkey cock and hen, a gander and three geese, a drake and four ducks to make a start in stocking the island. A gander was seen, which the natives said had been ...
— The Life of Captain James Cook • Arthur Kitson
... had always held his uncle in slight esteem—foreboded something from his smiling insincerity. He never mentions him without an expression of contempt, hardly acknowledges him as king; he is a thing—of nothing—a farcical monarch—"a peacock"—and, in this particular act, no dread usurper, but a "cut-purse of the realm." Whether he designed to wait or was prepared to strike, his future was still intact, his energy unimpaired. His mother remained to him, ...
— The Contemporary Review, January 1883 - Vol 43, No. 1 • Various
... sooner, mother dear, for admiring myself in my new travelling-clothes. Oh, I'm such a fine peacock in all my fine feathers!" she said, pausing to give her father a quick hug before she took her place at the table. "Do tell me that I look like a ...
— Cicely and Other Stories • Annie Fellows Johnston
... of the past rise before me—of dewy mornings ere the sun was up; the fresh breeze at daybreak, and the waking cry of the koel and peacock, or the call of the painted partridge; then, as we move cautiously through the jungle that skirts the foot of the rocky range of hills, how the heart bounds when, stepping behind a sheltering bush, we watch the noble stag coming leisurely up the slope! How grand he looks!—with ...
— Natural History of the Mammalia of India and Ceylon • Robert A. Sterndale
... "The peacock has a scrannel voice," said the priest, "as has been laid down always in our books. How cheering!" he cried, in a voice like one ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson, Volume XXI • Robert Louis Stevenson
... inquired Alice, eagerly, for the child had unbounded belief in Corrie's ability to do almost anything he chose to attempt, and Corrie knew this, and was proud as a peacock in consequence. ...
— Gascoyne, the Sandal-Wood Trader • R.M. Ballantyne
... in its metropolis; and their acknowledged head, in strict accordance with the fitness of things, is a woman. She is a very old woman, too, her age symbolizing, perhaps, the longevity to which her crazy superstition is destined. Elizabeth Peacock is the name of this relic of the past. For many years she itinerated as a preacher, and at the great age of one hundred and three her health is still vigorous. Modern priestesses, however, not unlike the prophets of antiquity, are subject to be scanted of due honor, or, ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 15, - No. 86, February, 1875 • Various
... said he, "a pretty jest of Dan Aesopus about a jackdaw who thought himself a peacock because he had a monstrous long feather to his tail. Prithee, thou silly son of Neptune, knowest thou not that if I did bid thee carry me my box from the fore-deck there to the poop, thou must crawl with it like my jack-porter? And, by my ...
— Sir Ludar - A Story of the Days of the Great Queen Bess • Talbot Baines Reed
... and animals would (so far as we know) be impossible, if the changes (however caused) that adapt some individuals better than others to the conditions of life were not inherited by, and accumulated in, their posterity. The eyes in the peacock's tail are supposed to have reached their present perfection gradually, through various stages that may be illustrated by the ocelli in the wings of the Argus pheasant and other genera of Phasianidae. Similarly the progress of societies ...
— Logic - Deductive and Inductive • Carveth Read
... a verra real hell, Alton Locke, laddie—a warse ane than ony fiends' kitchen, or subterranean Smithfield that ye'll hear o' in the pulpits—the hell on earth o' being a flunkey, and a humbug, and a useless peacock, wasting God's gifts on your ain lusts and pleasures—and kenning it—and not being able to get oot o' it, for the chains o' vanity and self-indulgence. I've warned ye. Now ...
— Alton Locke, Tailor And Poet • Rev. Charles Kingsley et al
... and adorning every part of my person with deft and cunning hand, I made ready to go to the August festival, appareled like unto the goddesses seen by Paris in the vale of Ida. And, while I was lost in admiration of myself, just as the peacock is of his plumage, imagining that the delight which I took in my own appearance would surely be shared by all who saw me, a flower from my wreath fell on the ground near the curtain of my bed, I know not wherefore—perhaps plucked from my head by a celestial ...
— La Fiammetta • Giovanni Boccaccio
... do but give the world a fair challenge, and tell it, 'There—you know the worst of me: come on and try a fall, for either you or I must down.' Slander? Ask Leigh here, who has but known me a fortnight, whether I am not as vain as a peacock, as selfish as a fox, as imperious as a bona roba, and ready to make a cat's paw of him or any man, if there be a chestnut in the fire: and yet the poor fool cannot help loving me, and running of my errands, and taking all my schemes and my dreams for gospel; and verily ...
— Westward Ho! • Charles Kingsley
... peacock[25] to the queen of heaven Complain'd in some such words:— 'Great goddess, you have given To me, the laughing-stock of birds, A voice which fills, by taste quite just, All nature with disgust; Whereas that little paltry thing, The nightingale, pours from her throat So sweet and ravishing ...
— The Fables of La Fontaine - A New Edition, With Notes • Jean de La Fontaine
... poem, the first and the last, reminded me, as did the lines on "Constancy," of something I had read before. In a moment I had placed the first as the opening lines of Longfellow's "Children," and a search through my books showed that the concluding verse was taken bodily from Peacock's exquisite little poem "Castles in ...
— The Water Ghost and Others • John Kendrick Bangs
... of love and hate, Grim battles where no death is. Tournaments, Tall castles fair and garden terraces, Where the stiff peacock mocks the sunset light, And man and maiden whisper tenderly A shadowy love where no heart ever breaks,— Love whose ...
— Doctor and Patient • S. Weir Mitchell
... congratulations, invitations, and warnings. The Governor invited Philip to dinner. He excused himself, saying he had promised to dine with his aunt at Ballure. The ladies warned him to spare himself, and recommended a holiday; and then the Clerk of the Rolls, proud as a peacock, strutting here and there and everywhere, and assuming the airs of a guardian, cried, "Can't yet, though, for he holds his first court in Ramsey tomorrow morning.... Put on the cloak, Christian. It will be cold ...
— The Manxman - A Novel - 1895 • Hall Caine
... women. Then there would have been one family exquisitely happy, instead of two struggling against misery. I would have made the rose-stem downy, and put all the thorns on the thistles. I would have gouged out the jewel from the toad's head, and given the peacock the nightingale's voice, and not set everything so at half ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 10, Number 59, September, 1862 • Various
... as proud as a peacock, that she is," she avowed candidly. "And, if you noticed, Mrs. Hamilton, I didn't so much as say how do you do to the man at the door, as I always have before, nor even so much as look at him.... For such is the high-society way of it, they're after ...
— Making People Happy • Thompson Buchanan
... 'sabil' or charity-fountain in one corner of his verandah or on a site somewhat removed from the fairway of traffic; while a continuous stream of people afflicted by the evil-eye flows into the courtyard of the Bara Imam Chilla near the Nal Bazaar to receive absolution from the peacock-feather brush and sword there preserved. Meanwhile in almost every street where a 'tabut' is being prepared elegiac discourses ('waaz') are nightly delivered up to the tenth of the month by a maulvi, who draws from Rs. 30 to Rs. 100 for his five ...
— By-Ways of Bombay • S. M. Edwardes, C.V.O.
... naked Cooly, the clean-robed and lighter-skinned native Baboo, the Oriental nobleman with his jewelled turban and kincob vest, and costly necklace and twisted cummerbund, on a horse fantastically caparisoned, and followed in barbaric state by a train of attendants with long, golden-handled punkahs, peacock feather chowries, and golden chattahs and silver sticks,—present altogether a scene that is calculated to at once delight and bewilder the traveller, to whom all the strange objects before him have something of the enchantment and confusion of an Arabian Night's dream. When he recovers ...
— Flowers and Flower-Gardens • David Lester Richardson
... The Greater Peacock moths cross hills and valleys in the darkness, with a heavy flight of wings spotted with inexplicable hieroglyphics. They hasten from the remotest depths of the horizon to find their "sleeping beauties," drawn thereto ...
— Fabre, Poet of Science • Dr. G.V. (C.V.) Legros
... The peacock waves streamed out over the waters, cleaving the seeming darkness, a rainbow path of glory. And the Veil flashed as though all the rainbows that had ever shone were burning within it. ...
— The Moon Pool • A. Merritt
... "The Peacock's plumes in pride may swell, The Parrot prate eternally, But yet no bird man loves so well, As thou with ...
— Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 475 - Vol. XVII, No. 475. Saturday, February 5, 1831 • Various
... stairs; and with a last swift glance at her image, she caught up a fan of ostrich plumes and a wrap of peacock-blue velvet. She had never looked more brilliant in her life, not even on that June morning twenty-five years ago, when, coloured like a rose, she had been married to Kent Page beneath a bower of roses. She had lost much since then, freshness, innocence, the trusting heart and ...
— One Man in His Time • Ellen Glasgow
... if they could, nor once said by your leave; therefore he had no credit, and his temper must pass as not proven. But if you had taken from the mother her piece of work—she was busy embroidering a lady's pinafore in a design for which she had taken colors and arrangement from a peacock's feather, but was disposing them in the form of a sun which with its rays covered the stomacher, the deeper tints making the shadow between the golden arrows—had you taken from her this piece of work, I say, ...
— Weighed and Wanting • George MacDonald
... scratched with their busy broods about them, or sat and scolded in the coops because the chicks would gad abroad. Doves cooed on the sunny roof, and smoothed their gleaming feathers. Daisy's donkey nibbled a thistle by the wall, and a stately peacock marched before the door with all his plumage spread. It made Daisy laugh to see the airs the fowls put on as she scattered corn, and threw meal and water to the chicks. Some pushed and gobbled; some stood meekly outside the crowd, and ...
— Aunt Jo's Scrap-Bag VI - An Old-Fashioned Thanksgiving, Etc. • Louisa M. Alcott
... trimmed here and there—apparently by his own hands—with gaudy lace; brightest where the cloth was most worn and soiled, and poorest where it was at the best. A pair of tawdry ruffles dangled at his wrists, while his throat was nearly bare. He had ornamented his hat with a cluster of peacock's feathers, but they were limp and broken, and now trailed negligently down his back. Girt to his side was the steel hilt of an old sword without blade or scabbard; and some particoloured ends of ribands and ...
— Barnaby Rudge • Charles Dickens
... composition is, that it makes you insensible to the mere mechanical labour of writing,—but the intellectual saving would be tremendous. I say nothing of the moral deterioration. I say nothing as to what a mean, contemptible pickpocket, what a jackdaw in peacock's feathers, you will feel yourself. There is no kind of dishonesty which ought to be exposed more unsparingly. Whenever I hear a sermon preached which has been stolen, I shall make a point of informing every one who knows the delinquent. Let him get the credit which is his due. I have ...
— The Recreations of A Country Parson • A. K. H. Boyd
... to another part of the garden where there were tame deer, and a "golden bear" in a cage, and peafowl in an aviary, and an ape. The people fed the deer and the bear with cakes, and tried to coax the peacock to open its tail, and grievously tormented the ape. I sat down to rest on the veranda of a pleasure-house near, the aviary, and the Japanese folk who had been looking at the picture of whale-fishing ...
— Kokoro - Japanese Inner Life Hints • Lafcadio Hearn
... as I have elsewhere admitted, very clumsy with my hands, counting five thumbs to the hand. Knitting and embroidery, at which my sister was so clever, I could never do with any degree of skill. The blue peacock with the red tail that I achieved in cross-stitch was not a performance of any grace. Neither was I very much downcast at my failures in this field; I was not an ambitious needlewoman. But when the fad for "Russian lace" was introduced into Polotzk by ...
— The Promised Land • Mary Antin
... banquet we had! Fried chicken, nice hot biscuits, butter, butter-milk, honey, (think of that!) preserved peaches, fresh cucumber pickles,—and so forth. And a colored house-girl moved back and forth behind us, keeping off the flies with a big peacock-feather brush. Aleck Cope sat opposite me, and when the girl was performing that office for him, the situation looked so intensely ludicrous that I wanted to scream. Supper over, we paid the bill, which was quite reasonable, and went on our way rejoicing, and reached Bolivar soon ...
— The Story of a Common Soldier of Army Life in the Civil War, 1861-1865 • Leander Stillwell
... single critic fit to judge it. Whether a dancing-girl kick high enough— On this they can pronounce: this is their trade. With verse upon the stage they cannot cope. Too well they dine, too heavily, and bear The undigested peacock to the stalls. ...
— Nero • Stephen Phillips
... castle, she often was not hungry and asked for food that was not good for her, roasted peacock, and almond cakes, and plum pudding. But here, in her own little house, she found that nothing was quite so good as bread and butter, and her milk tasted as sweet ...
— Tell Me Another Story - The Book of Story Programs • Carolyn Sherwin Bailey
... Dr Thorpe, "was my Lady of Somerset sent also to the Tower, for the great crime, I take it, of being wife unto her husband. And with her a fair throng of gentlemen—what they have done I wis not. Maybe one of them sent the Duke a peacock, and another doffed his bonnet to ...
— Robin Tremain - A Story of the Marian Persecution • Emily Sarah Holt
... holds up her head as if we did not know her.' If God preserves me in my seven or five senses, or as many as they be, I shall never bring myself into such a quandary. As for your part, spouse, you may go to your governments and islands, and be as proud as a peacock; but as for my daughter and me, by the life of my father! we will not stir one step from the village; for, the wife that deserves a good name, stays at home as if she were lame; and the maid must be still a-doing, that hopes to ...
— Wit and Wisdom of Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... court and the magnificent structures he erected. He rebuilt the ancient City of Delhi upon a new site, adorned it with public buildings of unparalleled cost and beauty, and received his subjects seated upon the celebrated peacock throne, a massive bench of solid gold covered with mosaic figures of diamonds, rubies, pearls and other precious stones. It cost L6,500,000, which is $32,500,000 of our money, even in those times, when jewels were cheap compared with the prices of today. In 1729 Nadir ...
— Modern India • William Eleroy Curtis
... whose mistress one is, to wait on his pleasure. This sort always considers every pretty woman 'shallow,' a sort of peacock ...
— The Beautiful and Damned • F. Scott Fitzgerald
... said nothing but "gobble gobble!" and did not even show that he was sorry. The peacock was not too proud to come walking in among the rest, in a dainty way, holding up ...
— Dick and His Cat and Other Tales • Various
... The Peacock Tavern was built in 1765, and stood at the south-westerly corner of Centre and Allandale streets, near the famous mineral springs. It was kept by Capt. Samuel Childs, who led the minutemen company of the third parish in the Lexington battle. It was purchased in 1794, with forty ...
— The Bay State Monthly, Volume II. No. 2, November, 1884 • Various
... gold clasps upon their insteps. In the hand of each of them was an ivory bow, strung with the sinews of the stag, and their arrows and their shafts were of the bone of the whale, and were winged with peacock's feathers. The shafts also had golden heads. They had daggers with blades of gold, with hilts of the bone of the whale, and they were shooting ...
— The Junior Classics, V4 • Willam Patten (Editor)
... Clarkson, and sketched him with 'an expression of indignant humanity.' In less than a week fifty heads were dashed in, the picture, when finished, containing no fewer than a hundred and thirty-eight; in fact, as the artist remarked, with a curious disregard of natural history, it was all heads, like a peacock's tail. Haydon took a malicious pleasure in suggesting to his sitters that he should place them beside the negro delegate; this being his test of their sincerity. Thus he notes on June 30: 'Scobell called. ...
— Little Memoirs of the Nineteenth Century • George Paston
... Pythagorean theory of metempsychosis, and considered that his soul had animated the body of a peacock. ...
— The Student's Companion to Latin Authors • George Middleton
... she should worship the God Kama." Ladies will be interested to learn that there are twenty-seven artifices by which a woman can get money out of a man. One is "Praising his intelligence to his face." Then there are useful directions for the personal adornment of both sexes. "If the bone of a peacock or of a hyena be covered with gold and tied to the right hand, it makes a man lovely in ...
— The Life of Sir Richard Burton • Thomas Wright
... storm-tossed billows round these caves, behold I spun these daintily. 'Twere hard to find Such twisted weft or woven strand." "Oh, kind," She said, "is Eblis, unto whom I fain Would give due thanks. His gorgeous train But yesterday I saw the peacock spread; Bright in the sun gleamed his small crested head; His haughty neck wrinkled to green and blue, And since I needs must truly speak, I knew Not color rich as his: and I have seen The curious nest among the branches green, The busy weaver-bird plaits of thick leaves, And in and ...
— Lilith - The Legend of the First Woman • Ada Langworthy Collier
... died young—I cannot remember her—dreamed a strange dream of me. She dreamed that I stood a shepherd beneath a laurel-tree, and strove to gather the leaves thereof, and failed in my strivings and fell, and rose again, and lo! no longer a man, but a peacock, a glory ...
— The God of Love • Justin Huntly McCarthy
... white gown one alighted,—a little grey thing wearing a pair of peacock-tinted diamonds on its forewings; and as it sat there, quivering, the iridescent incrustations changed from ...
— Athalie • Robert W. Chambers
... and mechanical science to the highest perfection. Professors Ivory and de Morgan afterwards adopted the "Calculus"; but several years elapsed before Mr. Herschel and Mr. Babbage were joint-editors with Professor Peacock in publishing an abridged translation of La Croix's "Treatise on the Differential and Integral Calculus." I became acquainted with Mr. Wallace, who was, if I am not mistaken, mathematical teacher of the Military ...
— Personal Recollections, from Early Life to Old Age, of Mary Somerville • Mary Somerville
... of Cactuses formed many years ago in England, that at Kew is the only one that still exists. This collection has always been rich in the number of species it contained; at the present time the number of kinds cultivated there is about 500. Mr. Peacock, of Hammersmith, also has a large collection of Cactuses, many of which he has at various times exhibited in public places, such as the Crystal Palace, and the large conservatory attached to the Royal Horticultural Society's Gardens ...
— Cactus Culture For Amateurs • W. Watson
... dragoons in Lorraine; so much so that he got into three quarrels at Nancy in one month, and at Metz, over a game of checkers, he killed the poor Vicomte de Megrigny, who was worth a hundred of him and danced so well! Some one described Bergenheim as being 'proud as a peacock, as stubborn as a mule, and as furious as a lion!' Ugly race! ugly race! What I say to you now, Clemence, is to excuse your husband's faults, for it would be time lost to try to correct them. However, all men are alike; and since ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... as a peacock. Stubby ought to marry a nice sensible girl who'd mother him," Nelly observed with astonishing conviction; "like Betty, ...
— Poor Man's Rock • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... Correspondents, on this sublime intercourse he has got into with a Crowned Head, the cynosure of mankind:—-Perhaps even you, my best friend, did not quite know me, and what merits I had! Plumes himself a little; but studies to be modest withal; has not much of the peacock, and of the turkey has nothing, to his old friends. All which is very naive and transparent; natural and even pretty, on the part of M. de Voltaire as the weaker vessel.—For the rest, it is certain Maupertuis ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XI. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... I seen such sure, well-dressed women as in the lobby of the St. Francis. And I am no greenhorn at lobbies. I have reviewed in my day some of the best peacock alleys in the country. There is the New Willard. Now when I think of the New Willard, I see frumpily dressed dowagers talking through their lorgnettes to moth-eaten senators. The Selbach in Louisville, the St. Charles in New Orleans are famed for their handsome women, but none are ...
— Vignettes of San Francisco • Almira Bailey
... of life rubs off the angles from the human mind. It is obvious that under such influences my mind became that of a civilized being, that can make due allowance for other people's opinions; I do not utter peacock cries when I hear of anything opposed to my views or something utterly new. It may be that such leniency and tolerance of all opinions leads finally to indifferentism and weakens the active principle in the human mind, but I ...
— Without Dogma • Henryk Sienkiewicz
... shift. He's been up and down for two years now—the Hogans live neighbors to Laura's school and I've been watching him. Well," and here the Doctor thumped on the floor with his cane, "this Judge—this vain, strutting peacock of a Judge, this cat-chasing Judge that was once my son-in-law, has gone and knocked the law galley west so far as it affects the slag dump. I've just been reading his decision, ...
— In the Heart of a Fool • William Allen White
... support than the idle poor? You are much surer that you are doing good when you pay money to those who work, as the recompence of their labour, than when you give money merely in charity. Suppose the ancient luxury of a dish of peacock's brains were to be revived, how many carcases would be left to the poor at a cheap rate: and as to the rout that is made about people who are ruined by extravagance, it is no matter to the nation that some individuals suffer. When so much general productive exertion ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 3 • Boswell, Edited by Birkbeck Hill
... It matters not the name, the land; my joy in all the gods abides: Even in the cricket in the grass some dimness of me smiles and hides. For joy of me the day star glows, and in delight and wild desire The peacock twilight rays aloft its plumes and blooms of shadowy fire, Where in the vastness too I burn through summer nights and ages long, And with the fiery footed Watchers shake in myriad ...
— The Nuts of Knowledge - Lyrical Poems New and Old • George William Russell
... lady who had brought the book had said the lines and figures in the margin were the dates of the days on which the Queen herself had been accustomed to read the Psalms, and that the marker, with the little peacock on it, was worked by the Princess's own hand. The sick girl cried, and asked if ...
— Life of Her Most Gracious Majesty the Queen V.1. • Sarah Tytler
... says from her chamber, and forth she come pavisandin' like a peacock—stuff, ruff, stomacher and all. She ...
— Rewards and Fairies • Rudyard Kipling
... young swell-fish comes a young sea-robin, a very interesting fish. He can make a musical grunting noise when he feels good, and will spread his beautiful wings, and sail through the water as proud as a peacock. When he is tired, he likes to bury himself up to his eyes in sand, for which he uses his two curious hooked fingers. He also uses these to dig out the sand-shrimps. Some years ago great numbers of very large sea-robins ...
— Harper's Young People, August 17, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... fine birds to-night," she rejoined, faintly. "No wonder they think Iris Vincent looks well to-night. She's rigged out like a real peacock; and her face is painted, too. I can see it clear across the room; and I am quite sure that Mr. Kendal has noticed it; and I've heard him say that if there's anything which he detests, it's girls who whiten their ...
— Pretty Madcap Dorothy - How She Won a Lover • Laura Jean Libbey
... not hear it said That Love is dead: His death-bed, peacock's folly: His winding-sheet is shame; His will, false-seeming holy, His sole executor, blame. From so ungrateful fancy; From such a female frenzy; From them that use men thus, Good Lord, ...
— A Defence of Poesie and Poems • Philip Sidney
... immediately agree that it was beautiful, tho some might have thought that it fell short of their expectation, or that other things were still finer. I believe no man thinks a goose to be more beautiful than a swan, or imagines that what they call a Friesland hen excels a peacock. It must be observed, too, that the pleasures of the sight are not nearly so complicated and confused and altered by unnatural habits and associations as the pleasures of the taste are; because the pleasures of the sight more ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. IV (of X)—Great Britain and Ireland II • Various
... a song to sing, O! [HE] Sing me your song, O! [SHE] It is sung with a sigh And a tear in the eye, For it tells of a righted wrong, O! It's a song of a merrymaid, once so gay, Who turned on her heel and tripped away From the peacock popinjay, bravely born, Who turned up his noble nose with scorn At the humble heart that he did not prize; And it tells how she begged, with downcast eyes, For the love of a merryman, moping mum, Whose soul was sad, whose glance was glum, Who sipped no sup, and who craved ...
— Songs of a Savoyard • W. S. Gilbert
... seen the tapestry-chamber, and the room where Morris, who so frankly relished the healthy savour of meat and drink, ate his joyful meals, and the peacock yew-tree that he found in his days of failing strength too hard a task to clip. I should like to have seen all this, I say; and yet I am not sure that tables and chairs, upholsteries and pictures, would not have come in between me and the sacred ...
— At Large • Arthur Christopher Benson
... and goslings, and the bull-pup sound asleep by the side of the tortoise-shell cat. Probably he will think of some particular milking-time when the calm, contented serenity of the barn-yard was suddenly disturbed by the unexpected descent in its midst of a neighboring peacock, who, apparently unconscious of the consternation produced by his entry, proceeded proudly to spread his dazzling plumage to convince every one, from Uncle Cy, on the milking-stool, and mild-eyed Bess, down to the white ...
— Frenzied Finance - Vol. 1: The Crime of Amalgamated • Thomas W. Lawson
... being brought into a shape fitting it for more serious uses. In the controversy between the Church and the Lollards Latin was still mainly employed, but Wiclif had written some of his tracts in English, and, in 1449, Reginald Peacock, Bishop of {48} St. Asaph, contributed, in English, to the same controversy, The Represser of Overmuch Blaming of the Clergy. Sir John Fortescue, who was chief-justice of the king's bench from 1442-1460, wrote during the reign ...
— Brief History of English and American Literature • Henry A. Beers
... into the garden, she was delighted with all she saw, and ran about like a child to gather flowers and fruit, followed by her little dog Fretillon, who was as green as a parrot, and had long ears, but who danced most admirably. But when the princess caught sight of a peacock, she thought it the most beautiful creature in the world, and asked her brothers what it was. On being told that it was a bird that was occasionally eaten, she replied that it was a sin and a shame ...
— Bo-Peep Story Books • Anonymous
... survey of the whole in a pier glass. She prevailed on her mamma to let her send cards of invitation to all her acquaintances, in order to enjoy the inexpressible pleasure of being gazed at. As soon as they were met, she would walk backwards and forwards before them, like a peacock, and seemed to consider herself as the empress of the world, and they as ...
— The Looking-Glass for the Mind - or Intellectual Mirror • M. Berquin
... First fiddle is the 'gallo Ingles,' or English rooster. Then come the double-bass pigs, who have free access to the balcony and parlour. A chorus of hens, chickens, and guinea-fowls, varies the entertainment; while the majestic 'perjuil,' or peacock, perched on his regal box, the guano roof, applauds the performance below in plaintive and heart-rending tones. Before I am up and stirring, a dark domestic brings me a tiny cup of boiling coffee and a paper cigarette, and waits for further orders. Don Severiano proposes a stroll (he tells me) ...
— The Pearl of the Antilles, or An Artist in Cuba • Walter Goodman
... of Jupiter, and queen of the gods. Iris, the goddess of the rainbow, was her attendant and messenger. The peacock was ...
— Bulfinch's Mythology • Thomas Bulfinch
... bore the turkey company. Seeing himself and his barnyard acquaintances the center of so many eyes, Mr. Peacock was properly vain. He spread his beautiful fan-shaped tail, and would not be driven from ...
— The Automobile Girls in the Berkshires - The Ghost of Lost Man's Trail • Laura Dent Crane
... from the sky, and clipped away from it forever; and guinea-hens, speckled and spheral; and, most magnificent of all, a pea cock, who stands in a corner and unfolds the magnificence of his tail. Watching his movements, I could not but reflect upon the superior advantages which a peacock has over a woman. The gorgeousness of his apparel is such that even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed in the like; yet so admirable is the contrivance for its management that no suspicion of mud or moisture stains its brilliancy. ...
— Gala-days • Gail Hamilton
... peacock twixt my leggs right blythe, And doeth my tickling swage with manie a sighe. For, by saint Runnion! he'le refresh me well; And neuer make ...
— The Choise of Valentines - Or the Merie Ballad of Nash His Dildo • Thomas Nash
... glistening object on a black bar of water. The lake was still, with blackness in its depths. The American flag on the fort rippled, a thing of living light, the stripes transparent. High pink clouds were riding down from the north, their flush dying as they piled aloft. There were shadings of peacock colors in the shoal water. Jenieve enjoyed this sunset beauty of the island, as she ran over the rolling pebbles, carrying some leather shoes by their leather strings. Her face was eager. She lifted the shoes to show them to three little boys playing ...
— The Chase Of Saint-Castin And Other Stories Of The French In The New World • Mary Hartwell Catherwood
... the brilliant yellow canyon wall which thrust Lost Chief Range back from the valley, nor the peacock blue sides of the Indian Range, clothed in wonder by the Forest Reserve. And finally, it does not tell of the infinite silence that lay this prismatic Sunday ...
— Judith of the Godless Valley • Honore Willsie
... October sunshine fell full on the spotless linen and quaint old plate, and the fresh balmy air filled the room with the scent of sweet herbs. Louis served us with the mien of a major-domo, and set on each dish as though it had been a peacock or a mess of ortolans. The woods provided the larger portion of our meal; the garden did its part; the confections Mademoiselle had cooked with ...
— Under the Red Robe • Stanley Weyman
... handles to his little name, if you should ever require it); who, finding matters so backward at Frankfurt, and nothing to do there, has been out, in the interim, touring to while away the tedium; and is here only as sequel and corroboration of Belleisle,—say as bottle-holder, or as high-wrought peacock's-tail, to Belleisle:—of the eminent Montijos I have to record next to nothing in the shape of negotiation ("Treaty" with the Termagant was once proposed by him here, which Friedrich in his politest way declined); and shall ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XIII. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... peacocks, birds sacred to her; for which reason, in her temple at Euboea, the emperor Adrian made her a most magnificent offering of a golden crown, a purple mantle, with an embroidery of silver, describing the marriage of Hercules and Hebe, and a large peacock, whose body was of gold, and his train of most valuable jewels. There never was a wife more jealous than Juno; and few who have had so much reason: on which account we find from Homer that the most absolute exertions of Jupiter were barely sufficient ...
— Roman Antiquities, and Ancient Mythology - For Classical Schools (2nd ed) • Charles K. Dillaway
... near Leghorn (Villa Valsovano), May-August 5, 1819; published 1820 (spring) by C. & J. Ollier, London. This edition of two hundred and fifty copies was printed in Italy 'because,' writes Shelley to Peacock, September 21, 1819, 'it costs, with all duties and freightage, about half what it would cost in London.' A Table of Errata in Mrs. Shelley's handwriting is printed by Forman in "The Shelley Library", page 91. A second ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley Volume I • Percy Bysshe Shelley
... Miss 'Viny trained, instead of eradicating; so that 'Tenty emerged from district-school into the "'Cademy's" higher honors as healthy and happy an individual as ever arrived at the goodly age of fourteen without a silk dress or a French shoe to peacock herself withal. Every morning, rain or shine, she carried her tin pail to Doctor Parker's for milk, hung on the tea-kettle, set the table, wiped the dishes, weeded a bit of the prolific onion-bed, then washed her hands and brushed her hair, put on the green sun-bonnet ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 6, No. 37, November, 1860 • Various
... a river bright, Of balmy liquor, crystalline of hue, Against the heavenly azure skyis light, Where did upon the other side pursue A Nightingale, with sugar'd notes new, Whose angel feathers as the peacock shone; This was her song, and of a sentence true, 'All love is ...
— Specimens with Memoirs of the Less-known British Poets, Complete • George Gilfillan
... by spending nothing except their breath in fighting hopeless boroughs, and occasionally publishing a pamphlet, which really produced less effect than chalking the walls. Light as air, and proud as a young peacock, tripped on his toes a young Tory, who had contrived to keep his seat in a Parliament where he had done nothing, but who thought an Under- Secretaryship was now secure, particularly as he was the son ...
— Coningsby • Benjamin Disraeli
... or Peacock, also called Esrar or Mohur, according to the language of the tribe which uses it, is met with chiefly in Upper India, and is a favourite instrument ...
— Chatterbox, 1906 • Various
... colonnade are masses of people leaning over, beside the colossal statues. Through all the heat is heard the constant plash of the two superb fountains, that wave to and fro their veils of white spray. At last the clock strikes. In the far balcony are seen the two great snowy peacock fans, and between them a figure clad in white, that rises from a golden chair, and spreads his great sleeves like wings as he raises his arms in benediction. That is the Pope, Pius the Ninth. All ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 4, No. 24, Oct. 1859 • Various
... George and Oscar on the west terrace, shaded by blue and white-striped awnings, with a macaw, red and blue on a perch—a peacock glimmering at the foot of the steps—and the ...
— The Trumpeter Swan • Temple Bailey
... a fellow! Look! there's a fellow!" cried the young sparrows, as the old one approached the nest. "That, for certain, is a young peacock; all sorts of colors are playing in his feathers: it quite hurts one's eyes to look at him, just as our mother told us. Chirp! chirp! That is the beautiful!" And now they began pecking at the bird with their little beaks, ...
— A Christmas Greeting • Hans Christian Andersen
... intensely, are not of one, but of every conceivable green, or rather of hues ranging from pale yellow through all greens into cobalt blue; and as the wind stirs the leaves, and sweeps the lights and shadows over hill and glen, all is ever-changing, iridescent, like a peacock's neck; till the whole island, from peak to shore, seems some glorious jewel—an emerald with tints of sapphire and topaz, hanging between blue sea and white surf below, and blue ...
— At Last • Charles Kingsley
... rather ignominious in his detection at Osborne's Hotel. He is a very colourless being. As to his being a Poet, it would seem to be that he merely gave himself out for one and persuaded his friends that he was such. His remarks at the "Peacock" are truly sapient: "Show me the man that says anything against women, as women, and I boldly declare he is not a man!" Which is matched by Mr. Winkle's answer to the charge of his being "a serpent": "Prove it," ...
— Pickwickian Studies • Percy Fitzgerald
... of the heavenly in the air. Less disciplined are these than zion—towns, but nearer the happiness of insensibility—the white—marbled and jeweled Taj Mahal, Agra on the Jumna, and Delhi, making immortal Jehan the builder, with his pearl mosque and palace housing the thirty-million-dollar peacock throne; Benares, on the Ganges, a series of terraces and long stone steps extending upward from the holy water, while rising yet higher in the background are temples, towers, mosques, and palaces, all in oriental splendor. Algiers, likewise, an amphitheatre in form, might give San Francisco lessons ...
— Some Cities and San Francisco and Resurgam • Hubert Howe Bancroft
... emeralds. Lord, how they got to me! I wanted to run off with them. The history of murder and loot they could tell! Some Delhi mogul owned them first. Then Nadir Shah carried them off to Persia, along with the famous peacock throne. I saw them in a palace on the Caspian in 1912. Russia was very strong in Persia at one time. Perhaps they were gifts; perhaps they were stolen—these emeralds. Anyhow, I'd never heard of them until ...
— The Drums Of Jeopardy • Harold MacGrath
... [Measure for Measure]; rich with the spoils of time [Gray]; tempus edax rerum [Lat.] [Horace]; the long hours come and go [C.G. Rossetti]; the time is out of joint [Hamlet]; Time rolls his ceaseless course [Scott]; Time the foe of man's dominion [Peacock]; time wasted is existence, used is life [Young]; truditur dies die [Lat.] [Horace]; volat hora per orbem ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... Thomas Love Peacock says (The Misfortunes of Elphin, chap. xii.), 'Tegau Eurvron, or Tegau of the Golden Bosom, was the wife of Caradoc [Craddocke], and one of the Three Chaste Wives of the island of Britain.' A similar statement is recorded by Percy at the end of his 'revised and altered' ballad, ...
— Ballads of Romance and Chivalry - Popular Ballads of the Olden Times - First Series • Frank Sidgwick
... of fish scales, and shone like mother-of-pearl; her waist was clasped by a blue zone, which allowed her breasts to be seen through two crescent-shaped slashings; the nipples were hidden by carbuncle pendants. She had a headdress made of peacock's feathers studded with gems; an ample cloak, as white as snow, fell behind her,—and with her elbows at her sides, her knees pressed together, and circles of diamonds on the upper part of her arms, she remained perfectly upright in ...
— Salammbo • Gustave Flaubert
... the straightening rod, some with the feathers already attached, and some hardly shaped from the elder or aspen log. A heap of skins filled the third corner, and beside them were numerous stag's horns, and two of the white cow, but none yet of the much dreaded and much desired white bull. A few peacock's feathers were there also, rare and difficult to get, and intended for Aurora. Round one footpost of the bed was a long coil of thin hide, a lasso, and on another was suspended an iron ...
— After London - Wild England • Richard Jefferies
... submersible breaks water suddenly. Another and another follow with a swash and a suck and a savage bubbling of relieved pressures. The deep-sea freighters are rising to lung up after the long night, and the leisurely ocean is all patterned with peacock's eyes of foam. ...
— With The Night Mail - A Story of 2000 A.D. (Together with extracts from the - comtemporary magazine in which it appeared) • Rudyard Kipling
... ruefully, but broke in, with sudden inspiration: "O dear! You're as proud as a peacock, Nan Cutler. Louie will be dreadfully disappointed, for she told me to tell you she counted on you to take her out. She's never skated much, you know, and she's wobbly on her ankles. She's afraid of the ...
— The Governess • Julie M. Lippmann
... skill and courage; and I confessed to myself that I preferred a small party, say, a dozen elephants and three howdahs, to this tremendous and expensive battue. I had a shot-gun with me, and consoled myself by shooting a peacock or two as we rolled and swayed homewards. We had determined to keep to the same camp for a day or two, as we could enter the forest from another point on the morrow, and might even beat some of the same ...
— Mr. Isaacs • F. Marion Crawford
... where her father was trying to sleep. She stood on tiptoe to turn out the gas-light in the hall; but for a time the key resisted the insufficient pressure of her finger-tips: the little orange flame, with its black-green crescent over the armature, so maliciously like the "eye" of a peacock feather, limned the exquisite planes of the upturned face; modelled them with soft and regular shadows; painted a sullen loveliness. The key turned a little, but not enough; and she whispered to herself a monosyllable ...
— The Flirt • Booth Tarkington
... pine imported. Hardwood and fancy cabinet wood trees fill the forests, and await the woodman's ax. Among these are some specimens of unexampled beauty, notably a tree, the wood of which, when polished, resembles veined marble, and another, rivaling in beauty the feathers in a peacock's tail. Precious metals abound, although systematic effort has never been directed to the locating of paying veins. Rivers and rivulets are plenty, and water-power is abundant; and the regime should see the installation of ...
— The Story of the Philippines and Our New Possessions, • Murat Halstead
... neat joints. With this bottom the water always looks clean when it is clean, and shows contamination when it exists. Marble-mosaic floorings should be chiefly of white tesserae, any simple patterns being executed in light tints. Delicate tints, such as strawberry, pea green, and peacock blue, look well through the water. The floor of the plunge bath may thus be made very pretty. The sides are best of glazed brickwork, neatly executed, and coping and treads of steps of so-called ...
— The Turkish Bath - Its Design and Construction • Robert Owen Allsop
... of structure. When we find a man or a woman who is absolutely faultless in form and features, we usually find a fool. I do not remember that I ever met a very handsome man or woman, who was not as vain and shallow as a peacock. I recently met a magnificent woman of middle age at a railroad station. She was surrounded by all those indescribable somethings and nothings which mark the rich and well-bred traveller, and her face was queenly—not sweet and pretty like a doll's face—but handsome and stylish, ...
— Lessons in Life - A Series of Familiar Essays • Timothy Titcomb
... ordered Washington, her coachman, to drive home. She was disappointed and chagrined, but not discouraged. She was vain as a peacock or Queen Elizabeth. Like another Dorcasina, she fancied every man to be her inamorata. She had never abandoned the idea that Duncan Lisle had been once in love with her. She had been encouraged in this delusion by the ...
— Hubert's Wife - A Story for You • Minnie Mary Lee
... us abuse vanity, therefore. Rather let us use it. Honor itself is but the highest form of vanity. The instinct is not confined solely to Beau Brummels and Dolly Vardens. There is the vanity of the peacock and the vanity of the eagle. Snobs are vain. But so, too, are heroes. Come, oh! my young brother bucks, let us be vain together. Let us join hands and help each other to increase our vanity. Let us be vain, not of our trousers and hair, but of brave hearts ...
— Idle Thoughts of an Idle Fellow • Jerome K. Jerome
... born a slave of John Peacock, of Williams County, Tennessee, who owned one of the largest plantations in the south. When he was eight years old, Sam accompanied his master to England for a three-year stay. Sam was in the Confederate Army and also served in the Spanish-American War. He came to Fort Worth in ...
— Slave Narratives: a Folk History of Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves. - Texas Narratives, Part 2 • Works Projects Administration
... orange coloured butterflies, which do not belong, however, to the same genus as our English species. In weedy places a beautiful butterfly, with eye-like spots on its wings was common, the Junonia Lavinia, the only Amazonian species which is at all nearly related to our Vanessas, the Admiral and Peacock Butterflies. One day, we made our first acquaintance with two of the most beautiful productions of nature in this department— namely, the Helicopis Cupido and Endymion. A little beyond our house, one of ...
— The Naturalist on the River Amazons • Henry Walter Bates
... transposition of my work, which, prior to the commencement, would have lent it the highest splendour and completeness, could not fail now, when the piece is planned and finished, to change it into a defective quodlibet, a crow with peacock's feathers. ...
— The Life of Friedrich Schiller - Comprehending an Examination of His Works • Thomas Carlyle
... sultana was seated upon a throne. The throne stood upon four steps, and was of pure gold, inlaid with amethysts. The four most illustrious emirs held a canopy of crimson silk over the head of their mistress; and the sheik of Medina cooled her with a fan of peacock feathers. Thus awaited the sultana her husband and son; the latter she had never looked on since his birth, but significant dreams had so plainly shown her the object of her longings, that she would ...
— The Oriental Story Book - A Collection of Tales • Wilhelm Hauff
... a civilized race 'began to divide up the heavens into constellations, to which they gave the names of the Great and Little Bear, the Wolf, the Serpent, the Dragon, the Eagle, the Swan, the Crane, the Peacock, the Toucan, the Crow, etc.; some of which names they retain among ourselves to ...
— Ragnarok: The Age of Fire and Gravel • Ignatius Donnelly
... went into the Paris garden, clad in camlet coat and linsey surcoat without sleeves, a mantle of black taffety round his neck, hair right well combed and without coif, and on his head a hat with white peacock's plumes. And he had carpets laid for us to sit round about him. And all the people who had business before him set themselves standing around him; and then he had their business despatched in the manner I told you ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume II. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... flares up within them, and doubly denied them should that flame burn low behind the bars of matrimony? Surely it must be some cunning wile of old Dame Nature's—whose chief concern is, after all, the continuation of the species. She it is who knows how to deck the peacock in fine feathers to the undoing of the plain little peahen, to crown the stag with the antlers of magnificence so that the doe's velvet eyes melt in adoration. And shall not the same wise old Dame know how to add a glamour to the sons ...
— The Moon out of Reach • Margaret Pedler
... geniuses; Leigh Hunt with his Bohemian impecuniosity; Landor with his tempestuous temper, throwing plates on the floor; Hazlitt with his bitterness and his low love affair; even that healthier and happier Bohemian, Peacock. With these, in one sense at least, goes De Quincey. He was, unlike most of these embers of the revolutionary age in letters, a Tory; and was attached to the political army which is best represented in letters by the virile laughter and leisure ...
— The Victorian Age in Literature • G. K. Chesterton
... subtle critics, these refined geniuses, these learned lawyers, these wise statesmen, are so fond of showing their parts and powers as to make their consultations very tedious. Young Ned Rutledge is a perfect bob-o-lincoln,—a swallow, a sparrow, a peacock; excessively vain, excessively weak, and excessively variable and unsteady, jejune, inane, and puerile." Sharp words these! This session of Congress resulted in little else than the interchange of opinions between Northern ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume XI • John Lord
... pendent wings, and naked legs and feet. It has the power of erecting its tail in the manner of a turkey-cock; during which action, especially when paying court to it's mate, it trembles or shakes, like the peacock when moving about with his train expanded and in full display. This power of erecting and spreading the tail is not confined to the male bird alone: the female possesses the same power to an equal extent, and otherwise resembles the male ...
— The Book of Household Management • Mrs. Isabella Beeton
... not elsewhere. I have often seen 'D'Arcy' in the company of several of the other characters introduced into Aylwin; for instance, 'De Castro' and 'Symonds' (the late F. R. Leyland, at that time the owner of the Leyland line of steamers, living at Prince's Gate, where was the famous Peacock Room painted by Mr. Whistler). I did not myself know that quaint character Mrs. Titwing, but I have been told by people who knew her well that she is true to the life. With regard to 'De Castro,' it is a matter of regret to those who knew him that, after ...
— Aylwin • Theodore Watts-Dunton
... will admit that they were. Presumably the possessors of Messrs. Dent's pretty edition, or of any edition for that matter, will be glad to set this small volume beside the others and thus become owners of the complete prose works of an English classic. For Peacock is a classic; otherwise they might well have been allowed to acquire that portentous dignity which grows like moss on ancient and unprinted MSS. in the British Museum. Here and there, in the farces, one may discover examples of truly ...
— Pot-Boilers • Clive Bell
... of yours. We have made such advances in the art, that we have been venturing to invite, more than once, your friends Verrius and Camillus (what elegant and fastidious gentlemen they are!). But see how audacious we are getting! I have even given Hirtius a dinner—but without a peacock. My cook could imitate nothing in his entertainments except the ...
— Cicero - Ancient Classics for English Readers • Rev. W. Lucas Collins
... actually heard people say that blue and green were discordant; the two colors which Nature seems to intend never to be separated, and never to be felt, either of them, in its full beauty without the other!—a peacock's neck, or a blue sky through green leaves, or a blue wave with green lights through it, being precisely the loveliest things, next to clouds at sunrise, in this colored world of ours. If you have a good eye for colors, you will soon find out how constantly Nature puts purple and green together, ...
— The Elements of Drawing - In Three Letters to Beginners • John Ruskin
... clacking guinea; Hear the cattle moo; Hear the horses whinny, Looking out at you! On the hitching-block, boys, Grandly satisfied, See the old peacock, ...
— Riley Child-Rhymes • James Whitcomb Riley
... there be such a thing. Races of dogs and oxen: but certainly very general; indeed a gradation of sterility most perfect{67} very general. Some nearest species will not cross (crocus, some heath ), some genera cross readily (fowls{68} and grouse, peacock &c.). Hybrids no ways monstrous quite perfect except secretions{69} hence even the mule has bred,—character of sterility, especially a few years ago thought very much more universal than it now is, has been thought the distinguishing character; ...
— The Foundations of the Origin of Species - Two Essays written in 1842 and 1844 • Charles Darwin
... idealised Pompeian figures exquisitely composed, set in a lacy fancy of airy architectural detail, in which he idealised all the gods of Olympus. Each fair young goddess, each strong and perfect god, stood in its particular niche and indicated its penchant by a tripod, a peacock, an apple or a caduceus, as clue to the proper name. Such airy beauty, such dainty conception, makes of the gods rulers of aesthetics, if not of fate. This series of Mantegna was the inspiration two centuries ...
— The Tapestry Book • Helen Churchill Candee
... individual of the species may be satisfactorily described. This is manifest, even in the ordinary language of conversation, when, in summing up, for example, the qualities of an accomplished courtier, we say he has the vanity of a peacock, the cunning of a fox, the treachery of an hyaena, the cold-heartedness of a cat, and the servility of a jackal. That this is perfectly consentaneous to scientific truth, will appear in the ...
— Headlong Hall • Thomas Love Peacock
... could see on the nether surface of the sandstone slab at the entrance the initials of herself and Iver that had been cut by the latter many years ago, with a true-lover's knot uniting them. And there on that knot, lost in dream, was a peacock butterfly that had retired to hibernate. The light from the fire glowed in its purple and gold eyes, and the warm ascending air fluttered the wings, but did not restore animation to the drowsy insect. In corners were snails at the limit of their glazed ...
— The Broom-Squire • S. (Sabine) Baring-Gould
... a giant, with broad shoulders, and a long, fair-like beard, which hung like a cloth on his chest. His whole, solemn person suggested the idea of a military peacock, a peacock who was carrying his tail spread out on to his breast. He had cold, gentle, blue eyes, and the scar from a sword-cut, which he had received in the war with Austria; he was said to be an honorable man, as well as a ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume II (of 8) • Guy de Maupassant
... Luters that play on lutes, I mean. And the Princess Delight would sniff attar of rose, and fan herself with waving peacock feathers." ...
— Marjorie's New Friend • Carolyn Wells
... disappeared, evidently finding its way out underground. Climbing the cross wall, from the top Smoke saw the lake beneath him. Unlike any mountain lake he had ever seen, it was not blue. Instead, its intense peacock-green tokened its shallowness. It was this shallowness that made its draining feasible. All about arose jumbled mountains, with ice-scarred peaks and crags, grotesquely shaped and grouped. All was topsyturvy and unsystematic—a ...
— Smoke Bellew • Jack London
... me and see," responded Liza, with a laugh. "That's nothing to what Nabob Johnny said to me once, and I gave him a slap over the lug for it, the strutting and smirking old peacock. Why, he's all lace—lace at his neck and at ...
— The Shadow of a Crime - A Cumbrian Romance • Hall Caine |
