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More "Duckling" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Gillian drove home together, the former laughed quietly. There was an element of pride and triumph in the laughter. Probably the hen who has reared a duckling and sees it sail off into the water experiences, alongside her natural apprehension and astonishment, a somewhat similar pride in the startling proclivities evinced by ...
— The Lamp of Fate • Margaret Pedler
... ate their breakfast at their leisure and prepared to drive their ugly duckling into the battle line again and finish the work of destroying ...
— The Victim - A romance of the Real Jefferson Davis • Thomas Dixon
... top and one on each side. The cots are arranged one above the other, showing clean, white linen, while the attendants are spotlessly uniformed in white. In the middle of each train is a car which might be called the "ugly duckling," for it is a decidedly clumsy looking affair, full of steam boilers with safety valves and tubes sticking out at the top, and is, I fancy, ...
— Lige on the Line of March - An American Girl's Experiences When the Germans Came Through Belgium • Glenna Lindsley Bigelow
... one of his old stories, of a jack which had been eating up young ducklings on a certain pond; how he had baited for this fellow with a live duckling, the hook through the tips of its wings, got him in twenty minutes, and he turned the scale at four-and-twenty pounds. Roach and perch were afterwards discussed. In Mr. Sparkes' opinion the best bait for these fish was a bit of dough kneaded ...
— The Town Traveller • George Gissing
... the explanation of inherited instincts; that is why the duckling which has been hatched by a hen takes to the water instantly without needing to be shown how to swim; why the chicken just out of its shell will cower at the shadow of a hawk; why a bird which has been artificially hatched, and has never seen a nest, nevertheless knows how to make one, and makes ...
— A Textbook of Theosophy • C.W. Leadbeater
... Just as I was going to put my hand on it, it hid itself in a rat-hole, from which there was no escape. I could not rescue it, neither could its mother. The next morning, when I went to look at the ducks, and give them their breakfast, there lay the poor duckling, close by the fatal hole. The rat had brought it ...
— The Nest in the Honeysuckles, and other Stories • Various
... plan of proceedings, and Mr. Marten produced his account-book, and proved that young Ferret owed him for the following goods sold and delivered, viz. one young rabbit; item, one wood-pigeon; item, one brace of partridges; item, one cock-pheasant; item, one duckling; item, one fat gosling. ...
— The Comical Creatures from Wurtemberg - Second Edition • Unknown
... duckling, but let's hope Peter can be mentioned in the same terms in the near future," said Sam, as he drove the fleet Byrd and me before him with the switch, in a scamper ...
— Over Paradise Ridge - A Romance • Maria Thompson Daviess
... to the health of the birds and animals which the chef presents so artistically in his celebrated plats du jour, and one need not take the journaux comiques too seriously, as once did a gouty milord, who insisted that his duckling Rouennais should, while alive, first be certificated as to the health of its bronches and poumons. All the same one likes to know that due regard is given to the proprieties and necessities of his ...
— The Automobilist Abroad • M. F. (Milburg Francisco) Mansfield
... to buy an interesting book, the sort that a boy would like, to cost about six or seven shillings, and have it sent to this address; you can put in my card and say I hope the boy will like it. Are they poor, did you say? No, not very, but this boy is the 'ugly duckling' of the family, and everybody snubs him, they say he is so dull and stupid, and I think a little kindness will help him to assert himself. Then go to the poulterer's, and have a turkey or goose sent ...
— The Girl's Own Paper, Vol. VIII. No. 358, November 6, 1886. • Various
... quite besotted, Lies the drunkard, sadly spotted. People pass with unmoved faces— Why remark such commonplaces? Just another Volstead duckling, Rolling in ...
— Nonsenseorship • G. G. Putnam
... enraptured at the profundity of my thoughts. After years of unquestioning humility I enjoyed a prolonged debauch of intellectual pride, and I marvelled at the little boy of yesterday who had wept because he could not be an imbecile. It was the apotheosis of the ugly duckling, and I saw my swan's plumage reflected in the placid faces of the boys around me, as in the vacant waters of a pool. As yet I did not dream of a moulting season, still less that a day would come when ...
— The Ghost Ship • Richard Middleton
... were such fine strapping fellows! so tall and stout! But as for the youngest one, Ivan, he was like a half-grown lad or a half-fledged duckling, terribly inferior to the others. Well, their old father died. At that very time there came tidings from the King, that his daughter, the Princess Helena the Fair, had ordered a shrine to be built for her with twelve columns, with twelve rows of beams. In that shrine she was sitting upon a high ...
— Russian Fairy Tales - A Choice Collection of Muscovite Folk-lore • W. R. S. Ralston
... presenting the finger and then withdrawing it, till at last she leaped a considerable height above the water, and caught her by the said finger, which made it bleed profusely: by this leap she threw herself completely out of the water into the court. At one time a young duckling got into the well, to solace himself in his favourite element, when she immediately seized him by the leg, and took him under water; but the timely interference of Mr Dormer prevented any further mischief than making a cripple of the young duck. At another time a full-grown drake approached ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine—Vol. 54, No. 333, July 1843 • Various
... and shows us Wilhelmine, an unattractive maid of ten, the Cinderella of her family, for whom there seemed no better prospect than a soldier-husband, if indeed she were lucky enough to capture him. She was, in fact, the "ugly duckling" of a good-looking family, removed by a whole world from her beautiful eldest sister Charlotte, who counted among her many admirers no less exalted a wooer than Prince Frederick William, the King's nephew and heir to ...
— Love affairs of the Courts of Europe • Thornton Hall
... to M. Ribot. He writes (p. 14):- "The duckling hatched by the hen makes straight for water." In what conceivable way can we account for this, except on the supposition that the duckling knows perfectly well what it can, and what it cannot do with water, owing to its recollection of what it did when ...
— Life and Habit • Samuel Butler
... to see the child, his heart yearned after her. He took her home to Dorothy, and she had grown up such as we have seen her, a wild, roguish, sweet, forgetful, but not disobedient child—very dear to both the Drakes, who called her their duckling. ...
— Paul Faber, Surgeon • George MacDonald
... just think of the unfettered life he must have led before he came here! Yes, I'm sure New York will stimulate him. A dose of New York is a very good tonic. It regulates one's mental liver. Don't look so worried, Armand—you remind me of those hens who hatch ducklings. I should think a duckling of John Flint's size could be trusted to swim by himself, at his time ...
— Slippy McGee, Sometimes Known as the Butterfly Man • Marie Conway Oemler
... poor little duckling did take that, and scampered off to its mother, crying out in such a pitiful voice, "Wheedle-wheedle-wheedle," that the heron forgot his ill-humour and burst out laughing, and felt quite sorry that he had given poor little Yellow-down such a cruel ...
— Featherland - How the Birds lived at Greenlawn • George Manville Fenn
... not be a good woman and remain on the stage, that's what it comes to." In spite of the gravity of the scene, a smile trickled round Evelyn's lips, for she could not help seeing her father like a hen that has hatched out a duckling. He stood looking at her sadly. She had come back—but what new pond would she plunge into? "I am a very unsatisfactory person, I know that. I can't make people happy; but there it is, it can't be otherwise. ...
— Evelyn Innes • George Moore
... Cocktail Celery Olives Roast Squab Duckling, Currant Jelly Creamed Mashed Potatoes Peas Lettuce Pimento Dressing Mince Turnover Coffee Cheese and Crackers ...
— Mrs. Wilson's Cook Book - Numerous New Recipes Based on Present Economic Conditions • Mary A. Wilson
... the General, who, though he was obliged to wear whalebone braces in his shoes on account of youth and a waddling and undeveloped gait, scattered over the ground with the elusive clumsiness of a young duckling. Brother blushed, but scorned ...
— While Caroline Was Growing • Josephine Daskam Bacon
... myself as nonplussed," he said more seriously, "and I am. I was never more so; but I see no occasion for anxiety. Since when has it been thought necessary to call priest or physician because of a young lady's growing charm? Confronted by an ugly duckling, we must congratulate ...
— The Bacillus of Beauty - A Romance of To-day • Harriet Stark
... Mary to realize that this Aunt Sara could be a sister of the handsome, dark-faced man with burning eyes whose features had remained cameo-clear in her memory since childhood. But Mrs. Home-Davis was the ugly duckling of a handsome and brilliant family, an accident of fate which had embittered her youth, and ...
— The Guests Of Hercules • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... 10. One duckling used to scramble upon the dog's head and sit down upon his eye; but the old dog never moved, though the pressure upon the eye must have hurt him. He seemed to think more of his little friends ...
— Friends in Feathers and Fur, and Other Neighbors - For Young Folks • James Johonnot
... of mass-singing, store of obits, and that sempiternally, on the anniversary day of his decease, every one of them all be furnished with a quintuple allowance, and that the great borachio replenished with the best liquor trudge apace along the tables, as well of the young duckling monkitoes, lay brothers, and lowermost degree of the abbey lubbards, as of the learned priests and reverend clerks,—the very meanest of the novices and mitiants unto the order being equally admitted to the benefit ...
— Gargantua and Pantagruel, Complete. • Francois Rabelais
... peas, innocent young potatoes, a cool salad, sliced cucumber, a tender duckling, and a tart—all there. They all came at the right time. Where they came from, didn't appear; but the oblong box was constantly going and coming, and making its arrival known to the man in the white waistcoat by bumping modestly against the outside of the door; for, after its first appearance, ...
— Life And Adventures Of Martin Chuzzlewit • Charles Dickens
... off my glass of wine, and waited until the waiter, who had been carving a Rouen duckling on a stand by the side of the table, had stepped back into ...
— The Great Secret • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... your mind quite easy; it is impossible that there should be another man foolish enough in all England to want to make love to such an 'ugly duckling' ...
— Vera Nevill - Poor Wisdom's Chance • Mrs. H. Lovett Cameron
... sprung A Frog quite pert, for one so young; Said he, "I vote for emigration, 'Twill save us all this botheration!" Our proud Drake turned, in great surprise, While grave rebuke flashed from his eyes. Said he, "it makes my blood run cold, To see young folks so smart and bold. There's not a Duckling of my brood, That would presume to be thus rude; Young sir, I will a lesson give, That may be useful while you live: Wait till your counsel others seek, And then think twice before you speak! For you, the elders of this tribe, I hope you here will still reside. In every pleasant brook and marsh, ...
— The Ducks and Frogs, - A Tale of the Bogs. • Fanny Fire-Fly
... how pretty she and Blanche would look in sky-blue merino, trimmed with swan's- down. Meta was charmed with the idea, and though Ethel stuck out her shoulder-blades and poked out her head, and said she should look like the ugly duckling, she was clamorously reminded that the ugly duckling ended by being a swan, and promised that she should be allowed a bonnet of a reasonable size, trimmed with white, for Mr. Rivers's good taste could endure, as little as Dr. May's sense ...
— The Daisy Chain, or Aspirations • Charlotte Yonge
... but she was not omniscient, and she never could have understood the boy. I daresay he was not enough of an ugly duckling to attract special attention, and with many other chicks in the brood he could not have more than the rest, and yet he required it. He ought to have been an only child. If he had been mine, I should have known what his dreaminess meant, why he loved to wander away and be alone; what was the ...
— Ideala • Sarah Grand
... dogs also refused to play when she went to them; for they had to watch the house and bark at strangers. Then they also told her to go and play with little Niebla down by the river. Then Alma ran out and caught a little duckling, a soft little thing that looked like a ball of yellow cotton, ...
— The Purple Land • W. H. Hudson
... anything in the woods, but as there was never sufficient school money to keep the village seat of learning open more than half the year the boy educated himself at the fountain head of wisdom, and knowledge of the other half. His mother, who owned him for a duckling hatched from a hen's egg, and was never quite sure he would not turn out a black sheep and a crooked stick to boot, was obliged to confess that Tony had more useless information than any boy in the village. He knew just where to find the first Mayflowers, and would bring home the waxen ...
— The Village Watch-Tower • (AKA Kate Douglas Riggs) Kate Douglas Wiggin
... stoat, weasel, cat, dog, and man. The ferret's powers of destruction are estimated very lightly; the polecats are very rare, prefer game when it can be had, and do little against the rat; the weasel also prefers a chicken or a duckling "to fighting with a rat for a meal." Hence the farmers destroy them, and they do little against the rats. Cats, as a rule, prefer hearth-rugs; and traps, unless quite new, and consequently sweet and free from the smell of rats, are useless. ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Vol. 2, No. 8, January, 1851 • Various
... little boy found in his arms, and each little girl in her pinafore, a fine fat duckling. And there being eight of them, the two elder children had each a couple. They were rather cold and damp, and slightly uncomfortable to cuddle, ducks not being used to cuddling. Poor things! they struggled hard to get away. But the children hugged them tight, and ran ...
— The Adventures of A Brownie - As Told to My Child by Miss Mulock • Miss Mulock
... with each other in adoring the ugly duckling, and in happy Irish fashion regarded her shortcomings as a joke rather than a misfortune. "Seen that youngster of mine?" the Major would cry genially to his friends. "She's worth a visit, I tell you! Ugliest child in Galway, though ...
— Pixie O'Shaughnessy • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... minutes to row out there," Jerry said, "and then we'll have seen it at last. It couldn't be a better time. Why, a newly hatched duckling could ...
— Us and the Bottleman • Edith Ballinger Price
... the form of diminutives; but these are not many. They are formed by adding the terminations kin, ling, ing, ock, el, and the like; as, "Lamb, lambkin; goose, gosling; duck, duckling; ...
— English Grammar in Familiar Lectures • Samuel Kirkham
... firmly to the side of my Uncle James Addams, in the hope that I should be mistaken for his child, or at least that I should not remain so conspicuously unattached that troublesome questions might identify an Ugly Duckling with her imposing parent. My uncle, who had many children of his own, must have been mildly surprised at this unwonted attention, but he would look down kindly at me, and say, "So you are going to walk with me to-day?" "Yes, please, Uncle James," would ...
— Twenty Years At Hull House • Jane Addams
... disregard of him. She watched the set boyish mouth, the pucker of his forehead—her baby. Terry had always had that pucker for perplexity or disappointment. Why, he had had it when the first down was on his baby head, as soft as a duckling's. ...
— Love of Brothers • Katharine Tynan
... to make the 'homo' a creature whose legs are of no account, poor shrivelled vestiges of once noble calves and thighs; and whose entire significance will be a noseless, hairless head, in shape and size like an idiot's, which the scientist, gloating over the ugly duckling of his distorted imagination, describes as a 'beautiful, glittering, hairless dome!' A sad period one fears for Gaiety burlesque. In that day a beautifully shaped leg and a fine head of hair will be rather a disgrace than a distinction. They will be survivals of a barbarous age. Indeed that ...
— Prose Fancies • Richard Le Gallienne
... children; but she has never understood their spirit, never looked on them as anything but strangers to her family. They have been to her stray robber wasps, to be driven from the hive; while to the others they have seemed cygnets among her duckling brood. It is very wonderful that the University alone has been able to resist the glamour of Ireland's past, and has failed to admire the persistency of her nationality. There has surely been enough in every century that ...
— Hyacinth - 1906 • George A. Birmingham
... quietly in the house or garden as good as possible, when the insinuating tempter would find him, whisper a few words in his ear, and off they went together. It was plainly an invitation, and later a dead duckling or chicken would show where they had spent their time. Trump became as bad as Chips and had to be given away. Chips was very sensitive to discordant sounds, he must have had a musical ear; his chief aversion was the sound of a ...
— Grain and Chaff from an English Manor • Arthur H. Savory
... with wings half raised from the eggs. Then, one night, she heard faint tappings and peepings beneath her. Sturdy young bills began chipping at the inside of the shells, speedily breaking them. Each duckling, as he chipped the shell just before the tip of his beak, would turn a little way around in his narrow quarters; till presently the shell would fall apart, neatly divided into halves; and the wet duckling, tumbling forth, ...
— The Backwoodsmen • Charles G. D. Roberts
... peaceful commercial country. There would be no peace for Ireland either. The factions of the Irish party are yearly becoming more and more numerous. In all except hatred to England they are bitterly opposed. All very well to set up Ulster as being the ugly duckling, as being the one dissentient particle of a united Ireland. If every Protestant left the country Ireland would still be divided, and hopelessly divided. Personal reviling, riot, and blackguardism are already common between the factions, united though ...
— Ireland as It Is - And as It Would be Under Home Rule • Robert John Buckley (AKA R.J.B.)
... want a pretty girl to stay with me and go about selling my things. I love pretty girls; I never was pretty myself. Will you stay with me if I take you up to my room and take care of you? I'll be good to you, little duckling, everybody about here will tell you that; everybody but the children, they don't like me.' I moaned, but it was from happiness. It seemed too good to hear that cooing voice in my ear. I thought of my mother—a dream—and my arms went up as they had in the street below. 'I will stay,' ...
— The Chief Legatee • Anna Katharine Green
... average educated person were asked—Which seemed to him more wonderful, that a hen's egg should always produce a chicken, or that it should now and then produce a sparrow or a duckling?—can it be doubted what answer he would give? or that it would be the wrong answer? What answer, again, would he make to the question—Which is more wonderful, that dwarfs and giants (i.e. people under four feet six or over six ...
— At Last • Charles Kingsley
... Girard, a mariner. When eight years old he became blind in one eye, a loss and deformity which subjected his sensibilities to severe trials and which had the effect of rendering him morose and sour. It was his lament in later life that while his brothers had been sent to college, he was the ugly duckling of the family and came in for his father's neglect and a shrewish step-mother's waspishness. At about fourteen years of age he relieved himself of these home troubles and ran away to sea. During the nine years that he sailed between ...
— History of the Great American Fortunes, Vol. I - Conditions in Settlement and Colonial Times • Myers Gustavus
... her knitted hands Beneath a tiny suckling, As one by one of the doleful bands Dived like a fairy duckling. ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... consciousness that he was observed, and met the half-defiant, half-terrified, and wholly curious gaze of a girl. Hardly more than a child she seemed, not over fourteen at the outside, and with a figure that was all flatness and unlovely angles. Certainly an exceedingly ugly duckling, yet there was promise of future swanship in the clean curves of her neck and in the firm poise of the small head. Moreover, her coloring was good, a clear brown through which a scarlet flush, born of the excitement of the ...
— The Doomsman • Van Tassel Sutphen
... "with eyes as big as coach wheels." Linnet, who had a practical mind, preferred such as dealt with rolling-pins, flat-irons, and shirt-collars, because these were familiar objects, and their histories usually ended cheerfully—(she liked "The Ugly Duckling" because he was a duckling, but objected to much of the tale as being too sad). Annet declared for "The Little Mermaid," which is perhaps the saddest of all; and this was the one she chose to-day, though half-penitently, because she felt ...
— Major Vigoureux • A. T. Quiller-Couch
... upon the days when he thus approached me as a neophyte with some amusement. No doubt I was already, in his eyes, one of the old fogeys of the Press, and it must be admitted that there was something of the ugly duckling about his first appearance in my ...
— Memoirs of Sir Wemyss Reid 1842-1885 • Stuart J. Reid, ed.
... nutriment! Parisian, said I. Not the low hybrid dishes of the bevy of British-American hotels that surround the Place Vendome and march up the Rue de Castiglione or of such nondescripts as the Tavernes Royale and Anglaise—but Parisian. For instance, my good man, caneton a la bigarade, or duckling garnished with the oozy, saliva-provoking sauce of the peel of bitter oranges. There is a dish for you, a philter wherewith to woo the appetite! For example, my good fellow, sole Mornay (no, no, not the "sole Mornay" ...
— Europe After 8:15 • H. L. Mencken, George Jean Nathan and Willard Huntington Wright
... ugly duckling. She's a wicked little leprechaun, born under a mushroom, on a black night, but she swims like a fish, and dances like a pixie. I tell ye she's not human at ...
— The Cricket • Marjorie Cooke
... he come in?" questioned Abe, waving back a greeting as well as he could with the treasured cup in one of his hands and the saucer in the other; whereupon Sarah Jane, that ugly duckling, explained that the fellow, being a confirmed woman-hater, cooked all his own meals in the smokehouse, and insisted upon all his orders being left on a slate outside the tool-house door. Abe sniffed disdainfully, contemplating ...
— Old Lady Number 31 • Louise Forsslund
... Scarborough, Louth, and Shoreham, it has also been captured or shot, and has been 'found' building nests in Sutherland: and, on the whole, it seems that here is a sort of petrel-partridge, and duckling-dove, and diving-lark, with every possible grace and faculty that bird can have, in body and soul; ready, at least in summer, to swim on our village ponds, or, wait at our railway stations, and make the wild north-eastern coasts of Scotland ...
— Love's Meinie - Three Lectures on Greek and English Birds • John Ruskin
... fundamental concepts that are brought into connection with each other in a number of ways. These three concepts are "farmer" (the subject of discourse), "kill" (defining the nature of the activity which the sentence informs us about), and "duckling" (another subject[53] of discourse that takes an important though somewhat passive part in this activity). We can visualize the farmer and the duckling and we have also no difficulty in constructing an image of the killing. In other words, the ...
— Language - An Introduction to the Study of Speech • Edward Sapir
... daddy long-legs which had flown down on to the surface of the water, and had opened its little flat beak to seize it, when there was a whirl in the water, a rush and splash, and two great jaws armed with sharp teeth closed over the duckling, which was visible one moment, gone the next, and Robin drew an arrow out to ...
— Young Robin Hood • G. Manville Fenn
... "The Ugly Duckling turned out a swan, you remember. I've always been fond of the boy because he's so genuine and original. Crude as a green apple now, but sound at the core, and only needs time to ripen. I'm sure he'll turn out a capital specimen ...
— Rose in Bloom - A Sequel to "Eight Cousins" • Louisa May Alcott
... dining together at Pierre's. This day he is born again—or, at least, prospectively born. Life for him really begins to-day—the sixth of March. It is my treat! I shall be the host on this memorable occasion. Pierre shall give to us the best duckling in his larder ...
— Mr. Bingle • George Barr McCutcheon
... and making an angry clucking, she flew towards the unlucky duckling, took him by the back of his neck in her beak, and threw him as far as possible into the water. As she walked back to her weeds again; it seemed almost as if I could hear ...
— The Nursery, March 1877, Vol. XXI. No. 3 - A Monthly Magazine for Youngest Readers • Various
... A young duckling may be carved in the same manner as a fowl, the legs and wings being taken off first on either side. When the duck is full size, carve it like a goose; first cutting it in slices from the breast, beginning close to ...
— The Whitehouse Cookbook (1887) - The Whole Comprising A Comprehensive Cyclopedia Of Information For - The Home • Mrs. F.L. Gillette
... beginning of their acquaintance her interest in Markham had not been unlike that of the motherly hen in the doings of the newly hatched duckling with which she differed as to the practical utility of duckponds. She had been intensely interested in his work and in his career which during the winter in Paris had been definitely shaped as a painter of successful portraits. She had liked the man from the first, liked him ...
— Madcap • George Gibbs
... Aunt Charlotte is not the least ashamed of the fact. She told me once that no one had ever fallen in love with her, 'I could not expect them to do so,' she remarked candidly. 'As a girl I was plain featured, and so shy and awkward that your Uncle Joe used to tell me that I was the only ugly duckling that would never turn into ...
— Our Bessie • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... which we have to thank for giving us hospitality on two occasions, consists mainly of a bay. Viewed by the norma verticalis, it is shaped like an ugly duckling, with an oval (Wellsted says a circular) body of high ground disposed north-east to south-west; and with head and neck drooping westward so as to form a mighty pier or breakwater. The watery plain within is out of all proportion to the amount of terra firma. The body-profile shows straight-backed ...
— The Land of Midian, Vol. 1 • Richard Burton
... never forget how Mr. Dodgson and I sat once under a dear old tree in the Botanical Gardens, and how he told me, for the first time, Hans Andersen's story of the "Ugly Duckling." I cannot explain the charm of Mr. Dodgson's way of telling stories; as he spoke, the characters seemed to be real flesh and blood. This particular story made a great impression upon me, and interested me greatly, as I was very sensitive about ...
— The Life and Letters of Lewis Carroll • Stuart Dodgson Collingwood
... well as I that it does make a difference with nearly everyone, so don't ruffle up like a dear, motherly hen, when your chickens get pecked by smarter birds. The ugly duckling turned out a swan, you know." and Amy smiled without bitterness, for she possessed a happy temper ...
— Little Women • Louisa May Alcott
... the world are but one story in reality—the story of an escape. It is the only thing which interests us all and at all times—how to escape. The stories of Joseph, of Odysseus, of the prodigal son, of the Pilgrim's Progress, of the "Ugly Duckling," of Sintram, to name only a few out of a great number, they are all stories of escapes. It is the same with all love- stories. "The course of true love never can run smooth," says the old proverb, and love-stories are but tales of a man or ...
— Escape and Other Essays • Arthur Christopher Benson
... which families and orders are marked out. Why two ova, similarly exposed in the same pool, should become the one a fish, and the other a reptile, it cannot tell us. That from two different eggs placed under the same hen, should respectively come forth a duckling and a chicken, is a fact not to be accounted for on the hypothesis above developed. Here we are obliged to fall back upon the unexplained principle of hereditary transmission. The capacity possessed by an unorganized germ of unfolding into ...
— Essays: Scientific, Political, & Speculative, Vol. I • Herbert Spencer
... been another story of his infant precocity generally circulated, and generally believed, the truth of which I am to refute upon his own authority. It is told[127], that, when a child of three years old, he chanced to tread upon a duckling, the eleventh of a brood, and killed it; upon which, it is said, he dictated to his mother the ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 1 • Boswell, Edited by Birkbeck Hill
... I think you cannot but love me a little when you know how entirely I am devoted to you. I can bear to have you near me now and think of you only as the hen thinks of her duckling. For a moment you are out of the pond, and I have gathered you under my ...
— Phineas Redux • Anthony Trollope
... think so?" and Miss Templeton looked relieved; for the moment her serenity had seemed slightly clouded with what her sister always called her "hen and duckling look." ...
— Herb of Grace • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... girl had strolled away and was standing in the gathering darkness a few yards distant, gazing at the boat. The clumsy looking hull, in which the boys had taken refuge, seemed trim and graceful now, and Roy was reminded of the fairy story of the ugly duckling, who was really a swan, but whose wondrous beauty was unappreciated until it found ...
— Tom Slade at Temple Camp • Percy K. Fitzhugh
... am the ugly duckling,' she would say, with tears in her eyes; 'but I shall never turn into a swan like Sara and Lesbia,—not that I want to be like them!'—with a little scorn in her voice. 'Lesbia is too tame, too namby-pamby, for my taste; and Sara is stupid. She laughs ...
— Uncle Max • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... six children five were just the ordinary commonplace little ones such as one would expect to meet in a tailor's household, but the sixth was like the ugly duckling in the fairy tale—a little, strange bird, unlike all the rest, who learned to swim far away and soon left the old ...
— Knights of Art - Stories of the Italian Painters • Amy Steedman
... coast was clear, and then gave a peculiar call. Instantly the young shot out of the cavity that held them, as if the tree had taken an emetic, and came softly down to the water beside their mother. Another observer assures me that he once found a newly hatched duckling hung by the neck in the fork of a bush under a tree in which a brood of Wood ...
— Ways of Nature • John Burroughs
... from the Morbihan, and, on our right, passed the little rocky island of Teigneuse, with its lighthouse; and, on the left, those of Houat and Haedik (the duck and the duckling); the former famous as the retreat of St. Gildas, who leaped from here with one bound, a distance of ten miles, to the peninsula of Rhuys, where he built his monastery. From Auray to Belle Isle is in all forty-eight miles—ten miles of ...
— Brittany & Its Byways • Fanny Bury Palliser
... with her red-gold hair and her viking-coloured eyes, and that touch of the Berserker in her spirit. It was very different with Holly, soft and quiet, shy and affectionate, with a playful imp in her somewhere. He watched this younger daughter of his through the duckling stage with extraordinary interest. Would she come out a swan? With her sallow oval face and her grey wistful eyes and those long dark lashes, she might, or she might not. Only this last year had he been able to guess. Yes, she would be a swan—rather a dark one, always a shy one, ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... their ability to show a brilliant burst of speed when called upon. The fable teaches better than an essay can that the dullness which perseveres will arrive at success sooner than brilliancy of mind which wastes its time in doing nothing to the purpose. Andersen's "Ugly Duckling," Ruskin's "King of the Golden River," and Lowell's "Sir Launfal" stand for deep spiritual ideas, which we understand better for this method of presentation. In an allegory like "Pilgrim's Progress," the passions and emotions, ...
— English: Composition and Literature • W. F. (William Franklin) Webster
... scared had he not been last summer, when he was still a little yellow-down duckling, every time it had sounded over the reed-stems: "Caesar is coming! Caesar is coming!" When he had seen the brown and white spotted dog with the teeth-filled jowls come wading through the reeds, he had ...
— The Wonderful Adventures of Nils • Selma Lagerlof
... spring, when the first brood of duckling's goes toddling to the waterside, no doubt all the younger or feebler broods, just hatched out of similar eggs, think these innovators dreadfully mistaken. "You are out of place," they feebly pipe. "See how happy we are in our safe nests. Perhaps, by and by, when properly ...
— Women and the Alphabet • Thomas Wentworth Higginson
... so busy playing the ugly duckling,' cried Ursula, with mocking laughter. 'And I don't feel a bit like a humble and pathetic ugly duckling. I do feel like a swan among geese—I can't help it. They make one feel so. And I don't care what THEY think of ...
— Women in Love • D. H. Lawrence
... had brought a great tipsy-cake for the children, and they were all sitting under a table, eating it. It was a pretty picture. I thought I saw in it myself and all my sisters and brothers as we were once. Just such little gypsies and duckling Romanys! And now! And then! What a comedy some lives are,—yea, such lives as mine! And now it is you who are behind the scenes; anon, I shall change with you. Va Pierre, vient Pierette. Then I surprised ...
— The Gypsies • Charles G. Leland
... there appeared to Commander Raffleton the vision of "Cousin Christopher" as a plump, rubicund angel in a panama hat and a pepper-and-salt tweed suit holding out a lifebelt. Cousin Christopher would take to Malvina as some motherly hen to an orphaned duckling. A fairy discovered asleep beside one of the ancient menhirs of Brittany. His only fear would be that you might want to take her away before he had written a paper about her. He would be down from Oxford at his cottage. ...
— Malvina of Brittany • Jerome K. Jerome
... the wasp, which is fed solely by the parent, may be compared to the human infant, while the lusty young grasshopper, which immediately on hatching takes to the grass or clover field with all the enthusiasm of a duckling to its native pond, may be likened to that young feathered mariner. The lowest animals, as a rule, are at birth most like the adult. So with the earliest known crustacea. The king crabs, and in all probability the ...
— Our Common Insects - A Popular Account of the Insects of Our Fields, Forests, - Gardens and Houses • Alpheus Spring Packard
... new," said the duckling. "O ho!" said the wise old owl, While the guinea-hen cluttered off chuckling To tell all the rest of ...
— It Can Be Done - Poems of Inspiration • Joseph Morris
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