"Bird of paradise" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... nightgown; and stood joying herself at the old man's going away; and several of the gallants of Whitehall, of which there were many staying to see the Chancellor's return, did talk to her in her bird cage; amongst others Blancfort (the Marquis de Blanquefort), telling her she was the bird of Paradise."] ...
— The Life of Edward Earl of Clarendon V2 • Henry Craik
... from upper hoist-side corner; the upper triangle is red with a soaring yellow bird of paradise centered; the lower triangle is black with five white five-pointed stars of the Southern Cross ...
— The 1995 CIA World Factbook • United States Central Intelligence Agency
... all, though the Hindu occupied the position of honor in the social stage, Norris found it hard to keep his attention fixed on that bird of paradise, who, at best, was sure to be but a temporary interest in these western states of America, where facts, not theories, loom large. The new young man's eyes wandered to the audience, made up of people like himself. The unknown ...
— Jewel Weed • Alice Ames Winter
... Besides drawing he taught ornamental writing and engrossing. With a dozen curved and flowing strokes of an ordinary writing pen he could draw upon a calling card a conventionalized outline-picture of some kind of dove or bird of paradise, all curves and curlicues, flying very gracefully and carrying in its beak a half-open scroll upon which could be inscribed such sentiments as "From a Friend" or "With Fond Regards," or even ...
— Vandover and the Brute • Frank Norris
... pleasure, and was a happy child herself. Yes! even though the fillagree box had been shown off and admired. But what do children in general know about the value of things and how much they cost? Ah, much more just in their judgments than we elders are apt to be, a bird of Paradise such as adorned the top of Julia's cabinet, or a peacock's tail, such as she had in a drawer, is to their unprejudiced eyes more desirable than the gold of ...
— The Fairy Godmothers and Other Tales • Mrs. Alfred Gatty
... of a narrow-minded and conventional hen who has brought a strange, intrepid duckling into the world; but her situation was still more wonderful, for she could only compare her sensations to those of some quiet brown Dorking who has brooded an ordinary egg and hatched a bird of paradise. Such an idea had crossed her mind more than once during the past fortnight, and it flashed to and fro this mellow October morning when Rebecca came into the room with her arms full of ...
— Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... inasmuch as every spirit from head to foot is in quality such as his love is, and thence such as his life is, so that to transmute this life into the opposite is altogether to destroy the spirit. It were easier, says Swedenborg, to change a night bird into a dove, an owl into a bird of paradise, than to change a subject of hell into a subject of heaven after the line of death has been crossed. But why the crossing of that line should make such an infinite difference he does not explain; nor does he prove ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger
... then adorned with amber beads, and copiously anointed with vegetable butter, so that the points gleamed with fire in the setting sunlight, and made her look as if she had donned for a bewitching headdress a porcupine instead of a "bird of paradise." ...
— Captain Canot - or, Twenty Years of an African Slaver • Brantz Mayer
... island 4,500 parasangs from Suez and East of China. And we must remember that Basrah was the chief starting-place for the Celestial Empire during the rule of the Tang dynasty (seventh and ninth centuries). Colonel J. W. Watson of Bombay suggests New Guinea or the adjacent islands where the Bird of Paradise is said to cry "Wak Wak!" Mr. W. F. Kirby in the Preface (p. ix.) to his neat little book "The New Arabian Nights," says: "The Islands of Wak-Wak, seven years' journey from Bagdad, in the story of Hasan, ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 8 • Richard F. Burton
... merely of this hoped-for pleasure so brightened up the little bird that he looked positively lovely! Not even a bird of paradise could have appeared more glorious, dingy brown though our tiny hero's plumage was; but good deeds and kind words always bring a brightness ...
— Parables from Flowers • Gertrude P. Dyer
... scene it was. The girls, tripping through the dance, smiled at Ruth as they passed. They knew her very well, and had seen her so often that they no longer looked at her as plump brown partridges might look at an exquisite bird of paradise. And then, they felt that Ruth was unconscious of any difference between herself and them. There was a sweet, cordial friendliness about her, an innate warm-hearted, magnetic charm which won women as well as men. The hunters' daughters liked her because they knew that she liked them for, after ...
— Round Anvil Rock - A Romance • Nancy Huston Banks
... a private room; this ward is so full already, and there'll be more coming right along. A boy who wears velvet and feathers must belong to some rich family, who'll gladly pay for every attention. Poor, little, bedraggled bird of paradise!" ...
— Divided Skates • Evelyn Raymond
... business in these birds with the Chinese, have various methods for catching them that we couldn't use. Sometimes they set snares on the tops of the tall trees that the bird of paradise prefers to inhabit. At other times they capture it with a tenacious glue that paralyzes its movements. They will even go so far as to poison the springs where these fowl habitually drink. But in our case, all we could do was fire at them on the wing, ...
— 20000 Leagues Under the Seas • Jules Verne
... but slow; and so numerous were the meetings, the canvassings, the debates, the discussions, the harangues, and the variety of objections raised by the grandees of the country, that at the age of eighteen the beauteous bird of paradise, still unmated, warbled her virgin strain in the loneliness ...
— The Pacha of Many Tales • Frederick Marryat
... protection of the birds of attractive plumage, we must not forget those of the tropical jungles. Remote as many of these jungles are, the plumage hunter is devastating them already. The bird of paradise, found in the East India islands, will soon be ...
— Conservation Reader • Harold W. Fairbanks
... know why a man who possessed the most beautiful and noble Bird of Paradise—a bird of rare plumage and wonderful qualities—should suddenly see more beauty in an ordinary Cockatoo, whose only attraction was its yellow feathers—a Cockatoo that screamed monotonously as it swung backward and forward on its ...
— The Damsel and the Sage - A Woman's Whimsies • Elinor Glyn
... 2nd of December, in 15 deg., we observed the first bird of paradise—the most beautiful of equatorial sea-birds. On the 22nd we saw more of them, and on this day we passed the Tropic of Capricorn. Thus these observations agree with what is so elegantly said by Buffon on the limits of the climates in which these ...
— The History of Australian Exploration from 1788 to 1888 • Ernest Favenc
... plumage fluttered among the branches, and I had the good fortune to bring down a gorgeous bird of paradise with my rifle. Mac, like the ancient mariner, insisted on carrying this bird round his neck rather than leave it for the tigers and bisons, though he repented of his resolution before he had gone far. Of the wild animals encountered on this march I could write much. Fortunately the lordly tiger ...
— Adventures in Many Lands • Various
... of the Orang Utan and the Bird of Paradise. A Narrative of Travels with Studies of Man and Nature; By Alfred Russel Wallace. With Maps and Illustrations. Second Edition. ...
— MacMillan & Co.'s General Catalogue of Works in the Departments of History, Biography, Travels, and Belles Lettres, December, 1869 • Unknown
... act, however, the storm burst, as Frederick Lemaitre, who evidently felt qualms about the success of his part, had determined to make it comic, and appeared in the strange costume of a Mexican general, with a hat trimmed with white feathers, surmounted by a bird of paradise. Worse still, when he took off this hat he showed a wig in the form of a pyramid, a coiffure which was the special prerogative of Louis Philippe! The play was doomed. The Duke of Orleans, who was in one of the boxes, left the theatre hurriedly; and it was difficult to finish the ...
— Honore de Balzac, His Life and Writings • Mary F. Sandars
... are sufficient for Natural Selection to work with, could be sexually selected. We seem to require a series of bold and abrupt variations. How can we imagine that an inch in the tail of a peacock, or a quarter of an inch in that of the bird of paradise, would be noticed and preferred by ...
— Alfred Russel Wallace: Letters and Reminiscences, Vol. 1 (of 2) • James Marchant
... arrived. For an instant Vanno's eyes were fixed upon the glittering figure, and the bowed face shadowed by an eccentric hat, without recognizing it. But it was only for an instant. Then, with a shock of surprise which was almost horror, he realized that this lovely, low-necked bird of Paradise creature was the same gentle girl ...
— The Guests Of Hercules • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... pinnata. FEATHER GRASS.—We have few plants of more interest than this; its beautiful feathery bloom is but little inferior to the plumage of the celebrated Bird of Paradise. It is frequently worn in the ...
— The Botanist's Companion, Vol. II • William Salisbury
... order Lady Clifford, her sister-in-law, and Sir Charles himself. To the casual eye it would appear that the first of these three could have no possible connection with the other two, any more than a bird of paradise would have with a pair ...
— Juggernaut • Alice Campbell
... green of the wayside bank, with a bunch of blooming azaleas starring its verdure behind her bright head. He was not artist enough to appreciate the picture at its value; he simply had the sudden resentful feeling of one who has asked for a hen and been offered a bird of paradise. She was tall and lithe and strong; her thick, fair hair, without being actually curly, seemed to be so vehemently alive that it rippled a bit in its length, as a swift-flowing brook does over a stone. It rose up around ...
— The Power and the Glory • Grace MacGowan Cooke
... I yet rarely feel inclined to write? Pray write to me more often than you have done; tell me all about yourself and the Doctor and your children. They must be growing up fast, and Florry must be getting beyond the "Bird of Paradise" I promised her. Love and kisses to all of them, and kindest remembrances ...
— The Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley Volume 1 • Leonard Huxley
... seen. I immediately crossed the road to examine it. It was a triumph in lobster-color. In shape like a very large Gainsborough, it was made of shirred scarlet satin with large bows of satin ribbon of the same intense color and adorned with a bird of paradise. I can see it now and can recall the images it suggested to my mind at the time. These were of cardinals and kings, of sealing-wax and wafers, of tropic noons and tangled marshes, of hell and judgment and the conventional Zamiel. It looked fit to be worn by a Mrs. Zamiel, if ...
— Crowded Out! and Other Sketches • Susie F. Harrison
... found last autumn in the throstle springe. The manager kept it for me until now. And because it is so beautiful, and, one might really say, a kind of bird of paradise, therefore Mamma ...
— The Indian Lily and Other Stories • Hermann Sudermann
... without number, and finches, swallows, and starlings of lovely metallic hues; but the greatest prizes were the birds of paradise, of which several kinds were secured, from the grandly-plumaged great bird of paradise to the tiny king. Whenever one of these was shot in some great grove at daybreak, Jack hesitated to have it skinned for fear of injuring the lovely feathers, over which adornments Nature seemed to have done her best. Now it was one of the first-named, a largish bird, ...
— Jack at Sea - All Work and no Play made him a Dull Boy • George Manville Fenn
... lie in a dense jungle, with vegetation of truly tropical luxuriance. Cane stalks grow fifty and sixty feet high, the grass is fifteen feet deep, beautiful bamboo trees, whose foliage is as fine as feathers, and palms which have plumage like a peacock and a bird of paradise, lift their proud and haughty heads above an impenetrable growth which, the guides tell us, is the home of tigers, rhinoceroses, panthers, bears, wild hogs, buffaloes, deer and all sorts of beasts, and snakes as big around as a barrel. Fern trees are lovely, ...
— Modern India • William Eleroy Curtis
... the Flagship, the sun set exactly behind the purple island of Imbros, and as it disappeared sent out long flame-coloured streamers into the sky. The effect was that of a bird of Paradise bringing balm ...
— Gallipoli Diary, Volume I • Ian Hamilton
... evening's escort at eight. There wasn't a hat in a grill room from one end of the Crooked Cow-path to the other that was more wildly barbaric than Hattie's, even in these sane and simple days when the bird of paradise has become the national bird. The buyer of suits for a thriving department store in a hustling little Middle-Western town isn't to be neglected. Whenever a show came to River Falls Hattie would look bored, pass a weary hand ...
— Roast Beef, Medium • Edna Ferber
... Bird of Paradise in Mrs. Snitchey's turban, trembled as if the Bird of Paradise were alive again, when she said that doubtless Mr. Craggs knew. SHE ...
— The Battle of Life • Charles Dickens
... drive, and looked rather like a handsome bird of Paradise in her bright green veil and ...
— The Beggar Man • Ruby Mildred Ayres
... her and a deep sadness rested in her heart. The wood-people often saw her sitting in the evening where the sunlight fell along the pool, waving slowly its azure and amethyst, sparkling and flashing in crystal and gold, melting as if a phantom Bird of Paradise were fading away; her dark head was bowed in melancholy and all the great beauty flamed and died away unheeded. After a time she rose up and moved about, she spoke more frequently to the people who had not dared to question her, ...
— AE in the Irish Theosophist • George William Russell
... reason whispered me, this is so, until the resurrection; the seen material form is the last idea which each one hath given to the world, but the glorified body of each shall be as diverse from this, yet being the same, as the gorgeous tulip from its brown bulb, the bird of paradise from his spotted egg, or the spreading beech from the hard nut that had imprisoned it.—Then Imagination stood with me as an equal friend, and spake to me soothingly, saying, 'Knowest thou any of these?'—and ...
— My Life as an Author • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... the slightest movement of a fly on the earth. But the birds objected to him on account of his predatory habits, and then each in turn stated his own case as a claimant for the kingship—the ostrich could run the fastest, the bird of paradise and the peacock could look the prettiest, the parrot could talk the best, the canary could sing the sweetest, and every one of them, for some reason or other, was in his own opinion superior to his fellows. After several days of fruitless discussion it was finally decided that ...
— Peeps at Many Lands: Norway • A.F. Mockler-Ferryman
... good, for it is a charming illusion of the public that, comparatively speaking, any one can write prose. It is an earthly accomplishment, it is as walking is to flying—is it not stigmatised 'pedestrian'? Now, your true Bird of Paradise, which is the poet, must, metaphorically speaking, have no legs—as Adrian Harley said was the case with the women in Richard Feverel's poems. He must never be seen to walk in prose, for his part is, ...
— Prose Fancies • Richard Le Gallienne
... woman. Their woolly hair was frizzled or plaited, sometimes powdered white with chunam. A few palmetto leaves round the waist and descending to the knee, was their only attire; rings through the nose and ears, and feathers of birds, particularly the bird of paradise, were their ornaments: but their language was wholly unintelligble. Amine felt grateful for life; she sat under the shade of the trees, and watched the swift peroquas as they skimmed the blue sea which was expanded before her; but her thoughts were ...
— The Phantom Ship • Captain Frederick Marryat
... little grinning negro Lord Peterborow gave her, with a bird of Paradise in his turbant, and a collar with his mistress's name ...
— Henry Esmond; The English Humourists; The Four Georges • William Makepeace Thackeray
... my bird of Paradise," said I, as we sat alone in the apartment I had fitted up as the banqueting-room, and on which, though small in its proportions, I had lavished all the love of luxury and of show which made one of my most prevailing ...
— Devereux, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... river Tungabhadra, "the vicinity of the fortress of Adoni." Ala-ud-din died at the age of sixty-seven on Sunday, February 2, A.D. 1358,[39] and was succeeded by Muhammad Shah. The Raya of Vijayanagar had presented Ala-ud-din with a ruby of inestimable price, and this, set in a bird of paradise composed of precious stones, the Sultan placed in the canopy over his throne; but some say that this was done by Muhammad, and that the ruby was placed above ...
— A Forgotten Empire: Vijayanagar; A Contribution to the History of India • Robert Sewell
... representing their Majesties; on each side of which were six obelisks, painted with emblems, and illuminated; mottoes beneath in Latin and English: 1. For the Prince of Wales, a ship, Multorum spes. 2. For the Princess Dowager, a bird of paradise, and two little ones, Meos ad sidera tollo. People smiled. 3. Duke of York, a temple, Virtuti et honori. 4. Princess Augusta, a bird of paradise, Non habet parem—unluckily this was translated, I have no ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole - Volume I • Horace Walpole
... (for shrouding dishonesty under a fair pretext) he seems to preserve mud in crystal. Like a man of a kind nature, he is the first good to himself, in the next file to his French tailor, that gives him all his perfection; for indeed, like an estridge, or bird of paradise, his feathers are more worth than his body. If ever he do good deed (which is very seldom) his own mouth is the chronicle of it, lest it should die forgotten. His whole body goes all upon screws, and ...
— Character Writings of the 17th Century • Various
... bonnets, caps, and turbans, of every variety, are arranged with the utmost perfection, the materials being of the most superior description consistent with the season of the year, adorned with marabouts, bird of paradise feathers, aigrettes, flowers from the celebrated Constantin, all selected from those houses which have the most renown for the respective articles in which they deal, but which are introduced with so much taste and judgment, that besides her ingenuity, having obtained a patent, ...
— How to Enjoy Paris in 1842 • F. Herve
... dresses at luncheons has gone entirely out of fashion; and yet one does once in a while see an occasional lady—rarely a New Yorker—who outshines a bird of paradise and a jeweler's window; but New York women of distinction wear rather simple clothes—simple meaning untrimmed, not inexpensive. Very conspicuous clothes are chosen either by the new rich, to assure themselves of their own elegance—which ...
— Etiquette • Emily Post
... offer you a better variety for your breakfast. It is only the supper over again," he explained, after she had returned, and had perched like a fluffy bird of paradise on the log. Her cheeks were very pink from the cold water, and her eyes were very beautiful from the dregs of dreams, and her hair very glittering from the kissing of the early sun. And, wonderful to ...
— Blazed Trail Stories - and Stories of the Wild Life • Stewart Edward White
... magnificence that had been intended to grace her arrival at the court of Tunis. The princess was arrayed in bridal robes, woven in the most costly looms of the orient; her diadem sparkled with diamonds, and was decorated with the rarest plumes of the bird of paradise; and even the silken trappings of her palfrey, which swept the ground, were covered with pearls and precious stones. As this brilliant cavalcade crossed the bridge of the Tagus, all Toledo poured ...
— Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, March 1844 - Volume 23, Number 3 • Various
... time Blyth, who was a good shot, killed three or four pigeons, and I had shot a parrot and a bird of paradise, but I felt ashamed at having deprived so beautiful a creature of life, yet thousands were flying about unseen by human eye, which they are formed to delight. We went on a little further, when I again fired and brought down another parrot. ...
— The Mate of the Lily - Notes from Harry Musgrave's Log Book • W. H. G. Kingston
... genius it is the most expensive to succumb and conform to the ways of the world. Genius is the worst of lumber, if the poet would float upon the breeze of popularity. The bird of paradise is obliged constantly to fly against the wind, lest its gay trappings, pressing close to its body, impede ...
— A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers • Henry David Thoreau
... both wine and meat— Fall to, and welcome, without more ado— You see your fare—what shall I help you to? This dish the tongues of nightingales contains; This, eyes of peacocks; and that, linnets' brains; That next you is a Bird of Paradise— We fairies in our food are somewhat nice.— And pray, Sir, while your hunger is supplied, Do lean your Nose a little on one side; The shadow, which it casts upon the meat, Darkens my plate, I see ...
— Books for Children - The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Vol. 3 • Charles and Mary Lamb
... had learned the value of her opinion; on the other hand, she had a more thorough conviction of his talents now that he gained a good income, and instead of the threatened cage in Bride Street provided one all flowers and gilding, fit for the bird of paradise that she resembled. In brief, Lydgate was what is called a successful man. But he died prematurely of diphtheria, and Rosamond afterwards married an elderly and wealthy physician, who took kindly to her four children. She made a very pretty ...
— Middlemarch • George Eliot
... ambassador was brought up to me. He was a striking-looking man, tall, broad-shouldered, dignified, very gorgeously attired in light-blue satin, embroidered in bright-coloured flowers and gold and silver designs, and a splendid yellow bird of paradise in his cap. He didn't come quite up to me, made me a low bow from a certain distance, and then fell back into a group of smaller satellites, all very splendidly dressed. When dinner was announced the first couples filed off—the marshal with Mrs. Grant ...
— My First Years As A Frenchwoman, 1876-1879 • Mary King Waddington
... and Spanish known the map of New Guinea as we know it nowadays they would, no doubt, have described it as a Guinea fowl, Bird of Paradise or some such creature, as delineated above, in the same way as they described Java and ...
— The First Discovery of Australia and New Guinea • George Collingridge
... indulged in magnificent reveries of fame and glory and heroic action, of which career, indeed, his approaching departure was to be the commencement, the association of ideas led his recollection to those beings from whom he was about to depart. His fancy dropped like a bird of paradise in full wing, tumbling exhausted in the sky: he thought of his innocent and happy boyhood, of his father's thoughtful benevolence, his sweet mother's gentle assiduities, and Glastonbury's devotion; and he demanded aloud, in a voice of anguish, whether Fate could ...
— Henrietta Temple - A Love Story • Benjamin Disraeli
... window overlooking the garden. While the commonplaces of conversation were interchanged, he could not but notice the floral appearance of the room. The ample white lace curtains were surmounted by festoons of artificial roses, caught up by a bird of paradise. On the ceiling was an exquisitely painted garland, from the centre of which hung a tasteful basket of natural flowers, with delicate vine-tresses drooping over its edge. The walls were papered with bright arabesques of flowers, interspersed with birds and butterflies. In one corner a ...
— A Romance of the Republic • Lydia Maria Francis Child
... of the royal balcony descended directly to the pavement. The Infanta mounted them, gliding upward with the grace of a bird of paradise, followed by her train-bearers. Directly after she was seated, the balcony filled from a room beyond it, into which the royal party had assembled. Le Duc de Montpensier, his sister, Princess Clementina, and her husband, the Duke of Saxe Coburg, the cousin of Prince Albert ...
— Mabel's Mistake • Ann S. Stephens
... would have been unwritten, and the thrush would have been untaught in "the style of the Bird of Paradise." ...
— Letters to Dead Authors • Andrew Lang
... day; Ever brim full, and sometimes running o're To feede poore languid Witts that waite at doore, Who creep and creep, yet ne're above-ground stood, (For Creatures have most Feet which have least Blood) But thou art still that Bird of Paradise Which hath no feet and ever nobly flies: Rich, lusty Sence, such as the Poet ought, For Poems if not Excellent, are Naught; Low wit in Scenes? in state a Peasant goes; If meane and flat, let it foot Yeoman Prose, That such may spell as are not Readers grown, To whom He that ...
— The Works of Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher in Ten Volumes - Volume I. • Beaumont and Fletcher
... wandered by. Blessed pair, whose happy home was throughout all the earth! I looked at my shoulders, and thought them broad enough to sustain those pictured towns and mountains; mine, too, was an elastic foot, as tireless as the wing of the bird of paradise; mine was then an untroubled heart, that would have gone singing on its ...
— The Seven Vagabonds (From "Twice Told Tales") • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... creature of olive green with blue wavy stripes and spots (FISTULARIS SERRATUS) has the shape of a gar-fish, and to counterbalance a long tubular snout, a slender filament resembling the bare feather shaft of some bird of paradise extending from the tail. ...
— The Confessions of a Beachcomber • E J Banfield
... more frequently: he was seeing living people, anyway. His vanity was gratified by Emilie's continuing to call him Florestan, considering him exceptionally handsome and declaring that he had eyes like a bird of paradise, "wie die Augen ...
— Knock, Knock, Knock and Other Stories • Ivan Turgenev
... distinguished guests: the leading man of the "Bird of Paradise" company, playing this week at the Dodsworth Theater, and the mayor of Zenith, the Hon. ...
— Babbitt • Sinclair Lewis
... bird of paradise in her gay habiliments, leaning forward from the further steps of Baston's store where she had slipped up unnoticed, cupped her white hands to her scarlet mouth, and sent out a cry like ...
— Tharon of Lost Valley • Vingie E. Roe
... which makes its nest with sticks of cinnamon, the rhintacus that Parysatis used in the manufacture of his poisons, the manucodiatas which is the bird of paradise, and the semenda, which has a threefold beak, have been mistaken for the phoenix; but ...
— The Man Who Laughs • Victor Hugo
... you would readily find. But it meant that he became more and more unpunctual, did his work worse month by month, came home later at night, and was continually seen, when not in the shop, with a gang of low ruffians, whose head-quarters were in a den called the "Bird of Paradise," on the lake shore. When his father remonstrated with him, he met everything with sullen silence. If Saul lost his temper at this mute insolence and spoke sharply, the boy would retort with an evil grin that made ...
— The Bread-winners - A Social Study • John Hay
... dost thou not know him? The Bird of Paradise, the holy swan of song! On the car of Thespis he sat in the guise of a chattering raven, and flapped his black wings, smeared with the lees of wine; over the sounding harp of Iceland swept the swan's red beak; on Shakespeare's shoulder ...
— What the Moon Saw: and Other Tales • Hans Christian Andersen
... which probably is of the same species with the bird of Paradise, receives its name from the ideas the Indians have of its superior excellence; the Wakon-Bird being, in their language, the Bird of the ...
— The Complete Poems of Sir Thomas Moore • Thomas Moore et al
... ([Greek: amorphotoi]). The next innovator of moment was Johann Bayer, a German astronomer, who published a Uranometria in 1603, in which twelve constellations, all in the southern hemisphere, were added to Ptolemy's forty-eight, viz. Apis (or Musca) (Bee), Avis Indica (Bird of Paradise), Chameleon, Dorado (Sword-fish), Grus (Crane), Hydrus (Water-snake), Indus (Indian), Pavo (Peacock), Phoenix, Piscis volans (Flying fish), Toucan, Triangulum australe. According to W. Lynn (Observatory, 1886, p. 255), Bayer adapted this part of his catalogue from the observations of the ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 7, Slice 2 - "Constantine Pavlovich" to "Convention" • Various
... unlovely, forbidding aspect. Their office corresponds to that of Nature's sanitary commission for the removal of material nuisances. It is not the butterfly, but the beetle, which she employs for this duty. It is not the bird of paradise and the nightingale, but the fowl of dark plumage and unmelodious voice, to which is entrusted the sacred duty of eliminating the substances that infect the air. And the force of obvious analogy teaches us not to expect all the qualities which please the general taste in those whose instincts ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... the Moons, but with the higher branch, which she always spoke of as "my family." In fact she had worn her connection with the Quinceys as a feather in her cap so long that the feather had grown, as it were, into an entire bird of paradise. And once a bird of paradise, always a bird of paradise, though it had turned on the world ...
— Superseded • May Sinclair
... would you ever have thought it? The lovely and brilliant Bird of Paradise, I'm told, is "own first cousin" to the—Crows. And the Crows are not one bit ashamed to own the relationship! Very ...
— St. Nicholas, Vol. 5, No. 2, December, 1877 • Various
... was on his throne in the council chamber he suddenly heard the sweetest warblings, like unto those produced by a bird of paradise; these were answered by the songs of many nightingales. Wondering, he sent to find out what it was. The messenger returned saying that the queen and her twelve maids of honour had each been presented with a girl baby, and that the sweet warblings were but the crying of the ...
— Fairy Tales of the Slav Peasants and Herdsmen • Alexander Chodsko
... Bird of Paradise" is the most beautiful member of this interesting family. Including its long tail, often 10 inches in length and forked for about 6 inches, this Flycatcher reaches a length of about 15 inches. It is pale grayish above, fading into ...
— The Bird Book • Chester A. Reed
... land; and naturalists have yet to discover where it reposes, and where it hatches its young; unless we adopt the idea of the poets, that it builds its nest upon the turbulent bosom of the deep. It is a sort of nautical sister of the fabled bird of Paradise, which was footless, and never alighted out of the air. Hundreds of miles from shore, in sunshine and in tempest, you may see the Stormy Petrel. Among the unsolvable riddles which nature propounds to mankind, we may reckon the question, Who is ...
— Journal of an African Cruiser • Horatio Bridge
... from behind the tree, was heard the shrill, brief, sonorous note, which the bird of paradise titters when it takes its flight—a cry which resembles that of the pheasant. This note was soon repeated, but more faintly, as though the brilliant bird were already at a distance. Djalma, thinking he had ...
— The Wandering Jew, Complete • Eugene Sue
... admires nobility and intelligence in a woman; but in the concrete he always prefers a bird of Paradise to a wren, a decoration to an inspiration and ...
— A Guide to Men - Being Encore Reflections of a Bachelor Girl • Helen Rowland
... in the south, between Tuticorin and Madras, and here, as there, they were frequently adjacent to a cluster of low mud hovels. From the branches of the trees flitted birds of such fantastic shapes and plumage as to cause exclamations of surprise. Occasional specimens of the bird of paradise were seen, with its long and graceful tail-feathers glistening in the sun, presenting an array of bright colors never seen in confinement. The tall flamingos, in their bridal plumage, just touched with scarlet on either wing, like ...
— Due West - or Round the World in Ten Months • Maturin Murray Ballou
... been produced. This, however, is a question which may be settled by experiment. Let a pigeon be bred with a bill like a toucan's, and with the two middle tail-feathers lengthened like those of the king bird of paradise, or even let individuals be produced which exhibit any marked tendency of the kind, and indefinite variability shall be at ...
— On the Genesis of Species • St. George Mivart
... for success! No blame to beauty! Let's complain Of the heart, which can so ill sustain Delight. Our griefs declare our fall, But how much more our joys! They pall With plucking, and celestial mirth Can find no footing on the earth, More than the bird of paradise, Which only lives the while it flies. Think, also, how 'twould suit your pride To have this woman for a bride. Whate'er her faults, she's one of those To whom the world's last polish owes A novel grace, which all who aspire To courtliest custom must acquire. The world's the ...
— The Victories of Love - and Other Poems • Coventry Patmore
... itself be of little interest) is one of the epochs in our literature. Spenser had at least the originality to see clearly and to feel keenly that it was essential to bring poetry back again to some kind of understanding with nature. His immediate predecessors seem to have conceived of it as a kind of bird of paradise, born to float somewhere between heaven and earth, with no very well defined relation to either. It is true that the nearest approach they were able to make to this airy ideal was a shuttlecock, winged with a bright plume or so from ...
— Among My Books • James Russell Lowell
... little bird of paradise can fire up, I see! As to your being my bride, that remains to be seen. You promised to be ...
— The Midnight Queen • May Agnes Fleming
... ape than of one of the piscine tribe; while its tail is divided into two lobes or blades, one of which is small and insignificant, and the other larger than the body of the animal, curling up at the end like the tail- feather of a bird of paradise. ...
— The Wreck of the Nancy Bell - Cast Away on Kerguelen Land • J. C. Hutcheson
... the dusk, our blithe small bird Of Paradise, who has our hearts in keeping, Was heard or seen, but hardly seen or ...
— Studies in Song, A Century of Roundels, Sonnets on English Dramatic Poets, The Heptalogia, Etc - From Swinburne's Poems Volume V. • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... Had she seen him so bedizened—"Fop-Indian!" "Jack-Monkey!" would have been the first thoughts to pop into her judicious little head, and Sprigg might have chased her till he had worn his red moccasins slip-shod, and no more have caught her had he, indeed, been a monkey, chasing a dove or a bird of paradise. That he was spared such a humiliation was because he had become by strange chance an object of Manitou interest, and was not allowed to carry out the ridiculous programme he had proposed to himself. What ...
— The Red Moccasins - A Story • Morrison Heady
... fashion were going on. Then, having a particular end in view, this dexterous captain proceeded to describe Mrs. Major O'Dowd packing her own and her Major's wardrobe, and how his best epaulets had been stowed into a tea canister, whilst her own famous yellow turban, with the bird of paradise wrapped in brown paper, was locked up in the Major's tin cocked-hat case, and wondered what effect it would have at the French king's court at Ghent, or the great ...
— Vanity Fair • William Makepeace Thackeray
... colour, far surpassing in brilliancy and in variety of pattern the tail of the peacock, and often rivalling in length and delicacy, while exceeding in beauty of colouring, the splendid feathers which must have embarrassed the Bird of Paradise, even before they rendered him an object of pursuit by those who have learnt the vices and are eager to purchase the wares of civilised man. Immediately across our course, at a distance of some thirty miles, stretched a range of mountains. I inquired ...
— Across the Zodiac • Percy Greg
... should fear that the tendencies of temperament are only temporarily imprisoned, and not radically cured; after all, it fits in with the Darwinian theory. The bird of paradise, condemned to live in a country of marshes, cannot hope to become a heron. The most he can hope is that, by meditating on the advantages which a heron would enjoy, and by pressing the same consideration on his offspring, the time may come in the dim ...
— The Upton Letters • Arthur Christopher Benson
... of the porch and stood sunning herself in a stray shaft of light, like a very bird of paradise. The "tempestuous petticoat," sky-blue and laced with silver, swelled proudly outwards, the gleaming satin bodice slipped low over the snowy shoulders and the heaving bosom, and the sleeves, trimmed with magnificent lace and looped with pearls, showed the rounded arms to perfection. Around the ...
— Prisoners of Hope - A Tale of Colonial Virginia • Mary Johnston
... a "tasty" article, and the pride with which Mr. Kantwise glanced back at it was quite delightful. The top of the table was blue, with a red bird of paradise in the middle; and the edges of the table, to the breadth of a couple of inches, were yellow. The pillar also was yellow, as were the three legs. "It's the real Louey catorse," said Mr. Kantwise, stooping down to go on with table number two, which ...
— Orley Farm • Anthony Trollope
... ever grow "stale and rung-upon," however much the chilly hand of a pedantic psychology seeks to brush the bloom away from the wings of the bird of paradise? ...
— Suspended Judgments - Essays on Books and Sensations • John Cowper Powys
... lazy bird!" said the Lord sadly. "Have you nothing to do but show off your fine clothes and give yourself airs? You are no more beautiful than many of your brothers, yet they all obeyed me willingly. Look at the snow-white Dove, and the gorgeous Bird of Paradise, and the pretty Grosbeak. They have worked nobly, yet their plumage is not injured. I fear that you must be punished for your disobedience, little Woodpecker. Henceforth you shall wear stockings ...
— The Curious Book of Birds • Abbie Farwell Brown
... admiration extended far and wide, and she found what she wanted sometimes in unexpected places, in sombre Oxford libraries, in time-worn deaneries, in East-End settlements, through which she flashed now and then like a bird of Paradise, darting across the murk of a strange black country on its way to golden regions, as well as in Mayfair, in the Shires, in foreign capitals, and on ...
— December Love • Robert Hichens
... draw to you Where, amid radiant skies, Glimmered thy plumes of iris hue, My Bird of Paradise. ...
— By Still Waters - Lyrical Poems Old and New • George William Russell
... Chichikov's ear like the notes of a bird of paradise. From time to time he gulped, and his softened eyes expressed the pleasure which ...
— Dead Souls • Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol
... carry exceedingly heavy loads up these steep hills. Yesterday one woman had two large kits of taro, and a child of about two years on the top of all. Ruatoka shot eight blue pigeons and one bird of paradise to-day: the latter must be eaten with the best of all sauces—hunger. The natives pick up heads, legs, and entrails, turn them on ...
— Adventures in New Guinea • James Chalmers
... will have a time winning the Princess over to the Right Understanding; but in the fields of Love who ever repented him of his labor? When my Lord was a boy, he once amused himself training a raven and a bird of paradise to talk. The raven at length came to say, 'O Allah, Allah!' The other bird was beyond teaching, yet my Lord loved it the best, and excused his partiality: 'Oh, its feathers are ...
— The Prince of India - Or - Why Constantinople Fell - Volume 2 • Lew. Wallace
... but 'I ...' and 'very much'; gave Sitnikov a finger and a smile, though with his head already averted; even to Madame Kukshin, who made her appearance at the ball with dirty gloves, no crinoline, and a bird of Paradise in her hair, he said 'enchante.' There were crowds of people, and no lack of dancing men; the civilians were for the most part standing close along the walls, but the officers danced assiduously, especially one of ...
— Fathers and Children • Ivan Sergeevich Turgenev
... my dear," said Lord Henry, shutting the door behind her, as, looking like a bird of paradise that had been out all night in the rain, she flitted out of the room, leaving a faint odour of frangipanni. Then he lit a cigarette, and flung himself down on ...
— The Picture of Dorian Gray • Oscar Wilde
... those poor Hens about him, Raking in a Heap of Dung." "And," replied the Cock, "in Heaven Once I was; but by my Evil Lust am fallen down to raking With my wretched Hens about me On the Dunghill. Otherwise I were even now in Eden With the Bird of Paradise." ...
— Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam and Salaman and Absal • Omar Khayyam and Ralph Waldo Emerson
... course," said Oliver impatiently. "That's the cry of the great bird of Paradise. Come along quietly, we must have ...
— Fire Island - Being the Adventures of Uncertain Naturalists in an Unknown Track • G. Manville Fenn
... superior in MY judgment, and in that of SOME GOOD JUDGES likewise, to that humbug Clarence Bulbul's ballads,)—to hear her, I say, sing these, was to be in a sort of small Elysium. Dear, dear little Fanny Dixon! she was like a little chirping bird of Paradise. It was a shame that storms should ever ruffle ...
— The Christmas Books • William Makepeace Thackeray
... didn't suit you one quarter as well as the other ducky little tammy toque with the bird of paradise wing in it that I admired on you and you honestly looked just too fetching in it though it was a pity to kill it, you cruel naughty creature, little mite of a thing with a heart the size of ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce
... phoenix and that of the pelican fed upon the blood of its mother whose beak is tipped with red, or that of the barnacle goose, of which the name suggests the mollusc,[1] the barnacle, and which was said to proceed from the mollusc or that of the bird of paradise, the feet of which were cut off by the Malay traders who sold the skins, and which were commonly reported never to have had feet, but to float ...
— Essays on early ornithology and kindred subjects • James R. McClymont
... diamonds. As usual, the oldest women were the most decorated, and the ugliest the most conspicuous. If there was a beautiful lily, or a sweet rose, you had to search for it, concealed in some corner behind a mother with a turban, or an aunt with a bird of paradise. ...
— The Count of Monte Cristo • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... bird of paradise dipped down her hair over one shoulder, trailing its smoothness like fingers of lace. She defied with it ...
— The Vertical City • Fannie Hurst
... frankness with which she had said her life was his—his!—and in what way was HE fitted to be the guardian and possessor of this white lily from the garden of God? She was so utterly different to all women as he had known them—as different as a bird of paradise to a common house-sparrow. Meanwhile, as these thoughts flitted through his brain, she moved gently from his embrace and ...
— Thelma • Marie Corelli
... the world, I could tell tales of scores of queer doings there. All the high and low demireps of the town gathered there, from his Grace of Ancaster down to my countryman, poor Mr. Oliver Goldsmith the poet, and from the Duchess of Kingston down to the Bird of Paradise, or Kitty Fisher. Here I have met very queer characters, who came to queer ends too: poor Hackman, that afterwards was hanged for killing Miss Reay, and (on the sly) his Reverence Doctor Simony, whom my friend Sam Foote, of the 'Little Theatre,' bade to live ...
— Barry Lyndon • William Makepeace Thackeray
... inquisitorial air, after the girls had decided that the slides on the bows of Lilly's dress were too small, and that her 'Bird of Paradise' was lovely enough to fly away with them all, 'Fanny, are you the 'bright, particular ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. III, No IV, April 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... or, The Regions of the Bird of Paradise. A Tale for Boys. With One Hundred and Eleven Illustrations. Crown 8vo, cloth, richly gilt. ...
— The Cockatoo's Story • Mrs. George Cupples
... now on the Admiral! Now she's illuminating that, stuffy Congressman from Massachusetts—vulgar ungrammatcal shovel-maker—greasy knave of spades. I don't like this sort of thing. She doesn't appear to be much distressed about me—she hasn't looked this way once. All right, my bird of Paradise, if it suits you, go on. But I think I know your sex. I'll go to smiling around a little, too, and see what effect that ...
— The Gilded Age, Complete • Mark Twain and Charles Dudley Warner
... varieties of bird-life known in these latitudes, from the bird of paradise down to the tiny scarlet-beaked love-birds. There were always parrots and parrakeets screaming in ...
— The Ragged Edge • Harold MacGrath
... strange girl. "There is my flying station! See that precipice?" pointing to a cliff far out on the ledge of the hill over which they were walking. "Just over there is my station. I told you I was Bird of Paradise. I am not—I am Madam Fly-Fly, the ...
— Dorothy Dale's Camping Days • Margaret Penrose
... attention which has turned it eventually into a Belasco "offering." None of his collaborators will gainsay this genius of his. John Luther Long's novel was unerringly dramatized; Richard Walton Tully, when he left the Belasco fold, imitated the Belasco manner, in "The Bird of Paradise" and "Omar, the Tentmaker." And that same ability Belasco possesses to dissect the heart of a romantic piece was carried by him into war drama, and into parlour comedies, and plays of business condition. ...
— The Return of Peter Grimm • David Belasco
... should ask you what you have done at your bird-fancier's; I hope you have brought home some horned cock[5], or some monstrously beautiful creature for Marriott. If it has not a voice like the macaw I shall be satisfied; but even if it be the bird of paradise, I question whether Marriott will like it as ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. III - Belinda • Maria Edgeworth
... feathered clay—thou scum of birds!" Flirting the rustling plumage in her eyes— "Look here, thou vile predestined sinner, Doomed to be roasted for a dinner, Behold these lovely variegated dyes! These are the rainbow colors of the skies, That heaven has shed upon me con amore— A Bird of Paradise?—a pretty story! I am that Saintly Fowl, thou paltry chick! Look at my crown of glory! Thou dingy, dirty, dabbled, draggled jill!" And off goes Partlett, wriggling from a kick, With bleeding scalp laid open ...
— The Humourous Poetry of the English Language • James Parton
... sexes take part in the building of these abodes of love, which are used for the courting parades. But an even more delightful example of the rare sexual delicacy in courtship is recorded by M.O. Beccari of a bird of Paradise of New Guinea, the ...
— The Truth About Woman • C. Gasquoine Hartley
... known. A certain amount of license was usually given to him, both by Sir Magnus and Lady Mountjoy, and when he would become remarkable by the rapidity of his changes the only adverse criticism would come generally from Mr. Blow. "Another peerless Bird of Paradise," Mr. Blow would say. "If the birds were less numerous, Anderson might, perhaps, do something." But at the end of the week, on this occasion, even Sir Magnus perceived that Anderson was ...
— Mr. Scarborough's Family • Anthony Trollope
... Their voice is most extraordinary. At early morn, before the sun has risen, we hear a loud cry of 'Wawk—wawk—wawk, w k—w k—w k,' which resounds through the forest, changing its direction continually. This is the Great Bird of Paradise going to seek his breakfast. . . . . The birds had now commenced what the people here call 'sacaleli,' or dancing-parties, in certain trees in the forest, which are not fruit-trees as I at first imagined, but which have an immense head of spreading ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 10 • Richard F. Burton
... will remember your sad pale face, your humility and forgetfulness of self. The Achaemenidae, and even the Magi, will beg him to take a queen from his own family; and where in all Persia is there a woman who can boast of better birth than you? Who else can wear the royal purple but my bright bird of Paradise, my beautiful rose Phaedime? With such a prize in prospect we must no more fear a little humiliation than a man who is learning to ride fears ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... been deluded into believing herself a bird of paradise ... and has been content with her feathers, it doesn't precisely help to discover that—" her voice grew self-contemptuous—"that after all she has only lived the life of a Strassburg goose and has been fed to death until she is no earthly good for anything except to be some ...
— Destiny • Charles Neville Buck
... Market, at Lotta's Fountain, drinking in the glory of violets and daffodils, under the winter sun. Now and then they lunched uptown at some inexpensive restaurant that was still quiet and refined. The big hotels were far too costly but there were several pretty lunchrooms, "The Bird of Paradise," "The London Tearoom," and, most popular of ...
— Saturday's Child • Kathleen Norris
... eleven years, and in that time I have never known him to have an Easter hat or an Easter coat or an Easter pair of pants. I saw him at the Opera lately and his wife had on a seal skin sacque, and plain X. himself had on no gloves. Why should X. be compelled to carry through life a bird of paradise, while he appears in the sombre and often shiny costume of the more humble crow? And now that I have asked that audacious question, let me ask another: Why is it that as soon as the frost of age touches a man he commences to tone down his dress, and as soon as it touches ...
— Observations of a Retired Veteran • Henry C. Tinsley
... evidently formed the larder of various kinds of beautiful birds. We could have shot enough in that walk to have kept us busy making skins for days, but we kept to the determination my uncle had made, not to shoot any more that day, except once, when the curious hoarse cry of some bird of paradise, answered by others at a distance, tempted ...
— Nat the Naturalist - A Boy's Adventures in the Eastern Seas • G. Manville Fenn
... the plumage are more specially interesting. So extraordinary a variety of forms, so unique and fantastic in disposal, are without parallel in the animal world. Some species are adorned with long, drooping tufts of plumes light as air, as the Red Bird of Paradise, and others bear strange-shaped, movable shields; part of the family wear ruffs, and others display fans on shoulders or breast; a few sport extravagant length of tail, and one or two show bright-hued wattles; one species is bare-headed, and—other vagaries being exhausted—two have curls. The ...
— In Nesting Time • Olive Thorne Miller
... him was called "the Emerald Bird of Paradise," and was about as large as a jay. Its home is New Guinea and some other parts of the hot regions of Asia. Its body, breast, and lower parts are of a deep, rich brown; the front is covered thickly with black feathers, mixed with ...
— Charley's Museum - A Story for Young People • Unknown
... envied her for being so happy, and she wondered why she was so happy; and while asking herself these questions she noticed her dress. Mademoiselle Helbrun's plump figure was set off to full advantage in a black and white check silk dress, and she wore a wonderful arched hat with flowing plumes of the bird of paradise. She was a prima-donna every inch of her, standing on the steps of her hotel, whereas the operatic stage could hardly be distinguished at all in Evelyn's dress. With the black crepon skirt she wore a heliotrope blouse, and she stood, one foot showing beyond the skirt, ...
— Evelyn Innes • George Moore
... took her hand when she was dressed, hurried her downstairs, out of doors; and thus they sped through the fields, laughing as they went, and looking very much like a snow-white dove and gem-tinted bird of paradise ...
— Shirley • Charlotte Bronte
... outing with Robin, her visit to Robin's friend. It was one of the sweet things she was always doing, with an intention in her own mind to make up for some lack or other which certainly her lover had not felt. When she alighted in the busy street people stared as though they had seen a white bird of Paradise; and coming into Mary Gray's room with a basket of roses in her hand she looked ...
— Mary Gray • Katharine Tynan
... such despair that we turned round to see if it was the shellac man in person. It was little Bean, the pitcher of the Corners team, all dressed up in his baseball togs, scarlet breeches and blue shirt, quite the bird of paradise, and reading a yellow telegram, and his face black as thunder. He was an impressionist study, wasn't he, Fergy? We asked what was up, or rather down, for elevation had no part in him. It appeared that a match was on for this afternoon, between the ...
— The Merryweathers • Laura E. Richards
... cutting blocks with a razor is proverbially unprofitable, and a million-magnifying microscope does not help a bit to tell the time by the City Hall clock. And again: the beggar doth but make his mishaps the more conspicuous by climbing a tree, while the poor bird of paradise, when once fairly on the ground, must needs stay and die, being kept from rising into her more natural element by the very weight of her beauties. Like this last-named victim of misdirected ambition, poetical expressions, being once fairly reduced ...
— The Continental Monthly , Vol. 2 No. 5, November 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... women, but she had her way. The Bonnie Lassie always does. So the bare studio was from time to time irradiated with Bobbie Holland's youthful loveliness and laughter. For there was much laughter between those two. Shrewdly foreseeing that this bird of paradise would return to the bare cage only if it were made amusing for her, Julien exerted himself to the utmost to keep her mind at play, and, as I can vouch who helped train him, there are few men of his age who can ...
— From a Bench in Our Square • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... red-bird, or Virginia nightingale, orioles of several species, and doves of two distinct kinds. There were also several Carolina paroquets; and Frank had succeeded in capturing a bird of a very rare kind, which, I believe, is known to the Indians as the 'wakon.' It was the American bird of paradise; and, like those of the Eastern world, had several long feathers growing from its tail, and stretching away gracefully behind it. In the cage were also finches of different varieties, and beautiful bright plumage. Among others were the green bird, the redstart, and the cock of the woods; ...
— The Desert Home - The Adventures of a Lost Family in the Wilderness • Mayne Reid
... wondered how her wild, sparkling sister Kate dared to be so familiar with him. She had ventured the thought once when she watched Kate dressing to go out with some young people and preening herself like a bird of Paradise before the glass. It all came over her, the vanity and frivolousness of the life that Kate loved, and she spoke out ...
— Marcia Schuyler • Grace Livingston Hill Lutz
... life had struck a shaft of colored light, had come a note of strange music, had flown a bird of paradise. It was and it was not her dead child come again. She knew that her Lucy had never been thus, and the love that she gave Audrey was hardly mother love. It was more nearly an homage, which, had she tried, she could not have ...
— Audrey • Mary Johnston
... indulged in by turkeys, the blue bird of paradise, the greater and lesser birds of paradise, the sage grouse and pinnated grouse, ruffed grouse, golden pheasant ...
— The Minds and Manners of Wild Animals • William T. Hornaday
... upon his shoulders like a mist of the morning—and that his tout ensemble gave rise to the remarkable words of Benevenuta, the Improvisatrice of Florence, "that it was difficult to say whether Pierre Bon-Bon was indeed a bird of Paradise, or rather a very Paradise of perfection." I might, I say, expatiate upon all these points if I pleased,—but I forbear, merely personal details may be left to historical novelists,—they are beneath the moral dignity ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 5 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... intrigues, bosom friend of her Majesty: to the angering of Patriotism. Beautiful Unfortunate, why did she ever return from England? Her small silver-voice, what can it profit in that piping of the black World-tornado? Which will whirl her, poor fragile Bird of Paradise, against grim rocks. Lamballe and de Stael intrigue visibly, apart or together: but who shall reckon how many others, and in what infinite ways, invisibly! Is there not what one may call an 'Austrian Committee,' sitting invisible in the Tuileries; centre of an invisible Anti-National ...
— The French Revolution • Thomas Carlyle
... Pet-en-l'air, from Versailles; the Dreadnought, from Mount Etna, Sir W. Hamilton, commander; the Tympany, Montgolfier; and the Mine-A-in-a-bandbox, from the Cape of Good Hope. Foundered in a hurricane, the Bird of Paradise, from Mount Ararat. The Bubble, Sheldon, took fire, and was burnt to her gallery; and the Phoenix is to be ...
— The Bed-Book of Happiness • Harold Begbie
... my wishes were satisfied by the possession of the bird of paradise, the Canadian's were not yet. Happily, about two o'clock, Ned Land brought down a magnificent hog; from the brood of those the natives call "bari-outang." The animal came in time for us to procure real quadruped meat, and he was well received. Ned Land was very proud of his shot. The ...
— Twenty Thousand Leagues under the Sea • Jules Verne
... too much force for the subject. It is as if a railroad should be built and a locomotive started to transport skeletons, specimens, and one bird of Paradise." ...
— The Wit of Women - Fourth Edition • Kate Sanborn
... interesting, and many of them are beautiful, but the Scissor-tailed species of Texas is especially attractive. They are also known as the Swallow-tailed Flycatcher, and more frequently as the "Texan Bird of Paradise." It is a common summer resident throughout the greater portion of that state and the Indian Territory, and its breeding range extends northward into Southern Kansas. Occasionally it is found in southwestern Missouri, western Arkansas, and Illinois. It is ...
— Birds Illustrated by Color Photography [May, 1897] - A Monthly Serial designed to Promote Knowledge of Bird-Life • Various
... Weight, sweeping her front chamber, with an anxious eye on the house opposite, saw the door open and Mrs. Tree come out, followed by a tall young man. The old lady wore the huge black velvet bonnet, surmounted by a bird of paradise, which she had brought from Paris forty years before, and an India shawl which had pointed a moral to the pious of Elmerton for more than that length of time. "Adorning her perishing back with what would put food in the mouth ...
— Mrs. Tree • Laura E. Richards
... superficial circulation, we should still be without explanation of the structure of a feather. Nor should we have any clue to the specialities of feathers—the crests of various birds, the tails sometimes so enormous, the curiously placed plumes of the bird of paradise, &c., &c. Still more obviously impossible is it to explain as due to use or disuse the colours of animals. No direct adaptation to function could have produced the blue protuberances on a mandril's face, or the striped hide of a tiger, ...
— Essays: Scientific, Political, & Speculative, Vol. I • Herbert Spencer
... Plenty shall minister to the highest wish of Benevolence, and where the chill north wind of Prudence shall never blow over the flowery field of Enjoyment?" The design may be that of an Old Hawk, but the style is more suggestive of a Bird of Paradise. It is sometimes hard to fancy they are not gravely making fun of each other as they write. Religion, poetry, love, and charming sensibility, are the current topics. "I am delighted, charming Clarinda, with your honest enthusiasm for religion," writes Burns; and the pair entertained a fiction ...
— Familiar Studies of Men & Books • Robert Louis Stevenson
... traveler in New Guinea: "As we were drawing near a small grove of teak-trees, our eyes were dazzled with a sight more beautiful than any I had yet beheld. It was that of a Bird of Paradise moving through the bright light of the morning sun. I now saw that the birds must be seen alive in their native forests, in order to fully comprehend the poetic beauty of the words Birds of Paradise. They seem the inhabitants of a ...
— Birds Illustrated by Color Photograph [January, 1897] - A Monthly Serial designed to Promote Knowledge of Bird-Life • Various
... the last egret is shot and the last bird of paradise is snared to adorn a lady's dress, then—then I would not like to be a woman for all that earth ...
— Dickey Downy - The Autobiography of a Bird • Virginia Sharpe Patterson
... want," said he, "is a dish of bird of paradise eggs, served with the fat of a sucking deer, and a brawn of pickled salmon spawn. I never ...
— A Hungarian Nabob • Maurus Jokai
... joying herself at the old man's going away: and several of the gallants of White Hall, of which there were many staying to see the Chancellor return, did talk to her in her birdcage; among others, Blancford, telling her she was the bird of paradise. ...
— Diary of Samuel Pepys, Complete • Samuel Pepys
... be maintained that the theory affords us any adequate explanation of the specific colour-tints of the humming-birds, or the pheasants, or the Papilionidae among butterflies. If, as Mr. Wallace argues, the immense tufts of golden plumage in the bird of paradise owe their origin to the fact that they are attached just above the point where the arteries and nerves for the supply of the pectoral muscles leave the interior of the body—and the physiological rationale is not altogether obvious,—are there no other birds in which similar arteries and nerves ...
— Darwin, and After Darwin (Vol. 1 and 3, of 3) • George John Romanes |
