"Carrion" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... nest I saw several small perch, a frog, and a meadow-mouse, all recently brought, though the place had a suspicious odor of carrion. ...
— Happy Days for Boys and Girls • Various
... he did, the cowardly thief. If it were not for mixing the Princess's name with such carrion as he, I would—" ...
— Jennie Baxter, Journalist • Robert Barr
... not. I can take no chances, Rrisa. The land, here and to the eastward, might all arise against us. The tribes might come against us like the rakham, the carrion-vultures. No, we must kill and kill, so that no man remaineth here—none save old Abd el Rahman, if Allah ...
— The Flying Legion • George Allan England
... but sought to soften her, and said beseechingly, "Don't beat the boy quite to pieces, or he won't be able to look for the lost cow. We shall get more profit out of him if you don't quite kill him." "True enough," said the woman, "his carrion won't be worth as much as the good beef." Then she gave him a few more good whacks, and packed him off to look for the cow, saying, "If you come back without the cow, I'll beat you to death." The boy ran from the door sobbing and crying, and went back to the forest ...
— The Hero of Esthonia and Other Studies in the Romantic Literature of That Country • William Forsell Kirby
... in your jacket to the first fool you meet with, and buy some we'pon with the money, if it be only the barrel of a horseman's pistol. By industry and care, you might thus come to some prefarment; for by this time, I should think, your eyes would plainly tell you that a carrion crow is a better bird than a mocking-thresher. The one will, at least, remove foul sights from before the face of man, while the other is only good to brew disturbances in the woods, by cheating the ears of all ...
— The Last of the Mohicans • James Fenimore Cooper
... this book, which here you may peruse, Abroad they fly, resolved to try the same Adventure in their flight; and thee, sweet dame, Both she and I for our protection choose; I by my vow, and she by farther right Under your phoenix (wing) presume to fly; That from all carrion beaks in safety might By one same wing be shrouded, she and I. O happy, if I might but flitter there Where you and she and I should be ...
— Elizabethan Sonnet-Cycles - Delia - Diana • Samuel Daniel and Henry Constable
... great variety are found in Australia, the chief being one incorrectly called an iguana, which colloquial slang has changed to 'goanna. The 'goanna is an altogether repulsive creature. It feasts on carrion, on the eggs of birds, on birds themselves, on the young of any creature. Growing to a great size—I have seen one 9 feet long and as thick in the body as a small dog—the 'goanna looks very dangerous, and it will bite a man when cornered. ...
— Peeps At Many Lands: Australia • Frank Fox
... a couple of ravens who, after assuring themselves, with that infernal cunning of theirs, that I carried no gun, became as friendly as could be expected of such solemn fowls. They are always in pairs—incurably monogamous; whereas the carrion crow, for reasons of its own, has a fondness for living in trios. This menage a trois may have subtle advantages and seems to be a step in the direction of the truly social habits of the rook; it enables them ...
— Alone • Norman Douglas
... sexcinctus. It is a burrowing animal, and so rapidly can it dig a hole, that when chased it has often its way made under ground before the hunter can reach it. Its food consists of roots, fruits, and every variety of soft vegetable substances; but it also devours carrion and flesh of all sorts, as well as worms, lizards, ants, and birds which build their nests on the ground. In some parts of the continent the natives cook it in its shell, and esteem it a ...
— On the Banks of the Amazon • W.H.G. Kingston
... eye to detect them. Not so the voracious and impertinent mollies—the Procellaria of naturalists. Their very ugliness appeared to give them security, and they are, in the North, what the vulture and carrion crow are ...
— Stray Leaves from an Arctic Journal; • Sherard Osborn
... we see the river in which we are involved; see and judge, and condemn, and are swept away. That we can condemn is our greatness; by that we are children of the sun. But our vision is never fruitful. The sun cannot breed out of matter; no, not even maggots by kissing carrion. Between Force and Light, Matter and Good, there is no interchange. Good is not a cause, it ...
— Appearances - Being Notes of Travel • Goldsworthy Lowes Dickinson
... carrion," said Cleopatra, "and fling it to the kites. Stay, draw that dagger from his traitor breast." The men bowed low, and the knife, rusted red with blood, was dragged from the heart of Paulus and laid upon the table. Then they seized him by ...
— Cleopatra • H. Rider Haggard
... and jagged teeth, while she fixed her cold, sinister gaze on the door of the jail, which was covered with indecent drawings. She had succeeded in persuading her husband, whose victory had made him amiable, to let her witness the inquiry and perhaps the accompanying tortures. The hyena smelt the carrion and licked herself, wearied ...
— The Social Cancer - A Complete English Version of Noli Me Tangere • Jose Rizal
... reflection of its own repose, And every new alternation of the light Shedding new beauties on the scene below. Thus far in fashion, kin to Earth as Time Beareth the impress of Eternity, But differing henceforth as the gentle dove Doth from the vulture on its carrion: The dwellers on this paradisal sphere Methinks, must be of glorious lineament, Clad with the brightness of eternal youth, And buoyant with internal blessedness. Spirits that shining with untarnished light, Radiate, and make matter ...
— Eidolon - The Course of a Soul and Other Poems • Walter R. Cassels
... be sufficient to last us to our deposits of that article on the Missouri. we there directed a party of six men to go with Fields in the morning in order to bring the salt and kettles to the fort. Shannon brought me one of the large carrion Crow or Buzzads of the Columbia which they had wounded and taken alive. I bleive this to be the largest bird of North America. it was not in good order and yet it weighed 25 lbs. had it have been so ...
— The Journals of Lewis and Clark • Meriwether Lewis et al
... age, and age also dies and determines all. Nor do all these, youth out of infancy, or age out of youth, arise so as a Phoenix out of the ashes of another Phoenix formerly dead, but as a wasp or a serpent out of a carrion or as a snake out of dung." We can comprehend how an audience composed of men and women whose ne'er-do-weel relatives went to the theatre to be stirred by such tragedies as those of Marston and Cyril Tourneur would themselves snatch a sacred pleasure ...
— Gossip in a Library • Edmund Gosse
... under the banner of complete solidarity, we will march forward, a solid phalanx against which no force can stand. Now that our own house is swept clean of vermin—rid forever of carrion like Lenster ...
— The Clean and Wholesome Land • Ralph Sholto
... resistance; submit at once to the rope, in hope to secure grace." The yakunin roughly broke down the doors of the priest's house. They found Jinnai on foot. Growled he—"You are not the kind to face Jinnai. A rush—to freedom; with such of you as stand for carrion." He boasted overmuch. His fit was too strong even for such iron resolution. The crisis of the fever was at hand, and his legs bent under him. A shove from behind sent him weakly sprawling in a heap. Then they all fell on him, bound him hand and foot, and carried ...
— Bakemono Yashiki (The Haunted House) - Tales of the Tokugawa, Volume 2 (of 2) • James S. De Benneville
... hands of a Catholic priest, should they recover, they were punished with confiscation of property and consignment to the galleys for life. If they did not recover, their bodies were refused respectful burial, and were dragged on a hurdle and thrown into a ditch, to be devoured by carrion crows. ...
— Louis XIV., Makers of History Series • John S. C. Abbott
... wielding of the bow, is pierced with difficulty by vultures desirous of feeding upon it. His helpless young wife, O Madhava, is continually endeavouring, without success, to drive away those vultures desirous of feeding on carrion. The youthful and brave and handsome Vikarna, O bull among men, brought up in luxury and deserving of every kind of weal, now sleepeth amid the dust, O Madhava! Though all his vital parts have been ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 3 - Books 8, 9, 10, 11 and 12 • Unknown
... through whom Dead men may keep inviolate not their tomb, But all its depths these ravenous grave-worms choke And yet what waste of wrath were this, to invoke Shame on the shameless? Even their twin-born doom, Their native air of life, a carrion fume, Their natural breath of love, a noisome smoke, The bread they break, the cup whereof they drink, The record whose remembrance damns their name, Smells, tastes, and sounds of nothing but of shame. If thankfulness nor pity bids them think What work ...
— A Midsummer Holiday and Other Poems • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... rending and scattering abroad, and dismal conflagrations, and the blood of heroes falling like rain, and I hear the croaking of Byves. [Footnote: Badb, pronounced Byve, was primarily the scald-crow or carrion-crow, secondarily a Battle-Fury.] Truly I have proved a brittle prop to the Ultonians, but some power beyond my ...
— The Coming of Cuculain • Standish O'Grady
... many elegant and active forms of the Harpalidae reappearing on the temperate plains of La Plata. Do the very numerous spiders and rapacious Hymenoptera supply the place of the carnivorous beetles? The carrion-feeders and Brachelytra are very uncommon; on the other hand, the Rhyncophora and Chrysomelidae, all of which depend on the vegetable world for subsistence, are present in astonishing numbers. I do not here refer to the number of different species, but to that of ...
— A Naturalist's Voyage Round the World - The Voyage Of The Beagle • Charles Darwin
... were drawn out of the water, and then, turning to his neighbor, he said to her: 'Why were you called Fly?' But before she could reply, the voice of Only-One-Eye, who was sitting in the bows, said dryly: 'Because she settles on all the carrion.' ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume II (of 8) • Guy de Maupassant
... times lost her way, a thing that had never been in her youth. Owing to the weakness of her health she no longer hunted calves and big sheep as she had in old days, and kept her distance now from mares with colts; she fed on nothing but carrion; fresh meat she tasted very rarely, only in the spring when she would come upon a hare and take away her young, or make her way into a peasant's stall where ...
— The Cook's Wedding and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... the attack of these "impudent" birds upon an "unfortunate" hawk.—"He heard one day a most unusual noise, as though all the small birds of the country had joined in one grand quarrel. Looking up, he saw a large hawk (C. gouldi— a carrion feeder) being buffeted by a flock of sparrows. They kept dashing at him in scores, and from all points at once. The unfortunate hawk was quite powerless. At last, approaching some scrub, the hawk dashed into it and remained there, while the ...
— Mutual Aid • P. Kropotkin
... those which were dead; and (as a marchant reported vnto me who sawe it with his owne eyes) that the liuing men deuoured and tore with their teeth, the raw flesh of the dead, as dogges would knawe vpon carrion. Towards the border of the sayd prouince there be many great lakes: vpon the bankes whereof are salt pits or fountaines, the water of which so soon as it entereth into the lake, becommeth hard salte like vnto ice. And out of those salte pittes Baatu and Sartach haue great reuenues: for they ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques, and Discoveries - Vol. II • Richard Hakluyt
... know we were looking at them with greedy eyes. George told us that their flesh had saved many an Indian from starvation, and that the Indians looked upon them with a certain veneration and would kill them only in case of the direst need. Our compunctions against eating carrion birds had entirely disappeared, and the course of the whiskey jacks in holding aloof from camp when they were most needed ...
— The Lure of the Labrador Wild • Dillon Wallace
... the western sky Andy Lanning saw a black dot that moved in wide circles and came up across the heavens slowly, and he knew it was a buzzard that scented carrion and was coming up the wind toward that scent. He had seen them many a time before on their gruesome trails, and the picture which he carried was not ...
— Way of the Lawless • Max Brand
... gay, and beautiful; who must weep alone and in silence, in silence, with never a sympathetic shoulder to weep upon after they sold her from her mother's side. Tied in a bag, going she knew not whither, thrown in a carriage like so much carrion, in these indignities she only wept in silence, for her lord, the man, must not be discomposed. Like the timorous, helpless wild things of the woods whose joys and sorrows must ever be voiceless lest the bloody tyrants of their ...
— The Strange Adventures of Mr. Middleton • Wardon Allan Curtis
... connected them with sunshine, flowers, and fruits, and thought of them as the most exquisite of creations; then one day he found some clustering thickly over carrion." ...
— A Girl Of The Limberlost • Gene Stratton Porter
... that suits him, the terms which rightly characterise his talent. They say he is like Fielding: they talk of his wit, humour, comic powers. He resembles Fielding as an eagle does a vulture: Fielding could stoop on carrion, but Thackeray never does. His wit is bright, his humour attractive, but both bear the same relation to his serious genius that the mere lambent sheet-lightning playing under the edge of the summer- cloud does to the electric death-spark hid in its womb. Finally, I have alluded to Mr. ...
— Jane Eyre - an Autobiography • Charlotte Bronte
... great kettle; endless mists rising from it, out of which appeared here and there the crown of some mighty tree towering above the banks of vapour. To the left, cliffs and crags were to be seen which had the appearance of being baseless, and of swimming on the top of the mist. The vultures and carrion-birds circled screaming above the huge caldron, or perched on the tops of the tall palms, which looked like enormous umbrellas, or like the roofs of Chinese summer-houses. Out of the swamp itself ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXLII. Vol. LV. April, 1844 • Various
... their friends who have just rejoined them. But it is only in the descriptions by Pausanias and others of certain old wall-paintings that we hear of the torments of the wicked, of the demons that torture them and, above all, of the great chief fiend, coloured like a carrion fly. To judge from Lucretius, although so little remains to us of this creed, yet it had a very strong hold of the minds of people, in the century before Christ. Perhaps the belief was reinforced by the teaching of Socrates, who, in the vision of Er, in the "Republic," brings back, ...
— Letters on Literature • Andrew Lang
... with it. He's a bad lot and have done time, and he's here for no good whatsoever to Oakshotts. But he's worse than hot stuff, William. He's a dangerous criminal, and he's going to put you out of his path pretty soon as if you was no more than a carrion crow, unless you climb down ...
— The Torch and Other Tales • Eden Phillpotts
... puts forth and hisseth and gapeth, but doth not bite nor sting, tho the appearance of him would scare those that knew not what he was. He is not afraid of people, but will ly gaping and hissing at them in the way, and will scarce stir out of it. He will come and eat Carrion with the Dogs and Jackals, and will not be feared away by them, but if they come near to bark or snap at him, with his tayl, which is about an Ell long like a whip, he will so slash them, that they will run away and howl. This Creature is ...
— An Historical Relation Of The Island Ceylon In The East Indies • Robert Knox
... Hagged Carrion of a Wolf, and a Jolly Sort of a Gentile Dog, with Good Flesh upon's Back, that fell into Company together upon the King's High-Way. The Wolf was wonderfully pleas'd with his Companion, and as Inquisitive to Learn how be brought himself to That Blessed State ...
— Wanted, a Young Woman to Do Housework • C. Helene Barker
... thence went on, picking a few heads of handsome buffalo clover, the first I had ever seen, and some sprays of penstemon, till I came again to the six-barred gate and the Quincy road. At that point, as I now remember, the air was full of vultures (carrion crows), a hundred or more, soaring over the fields in some fit of gregariousness. Along the road were white-crowned and white-throated sparrows (it was the 12th of April), orchard orioles, thrashers, summer tanagers, myrtle and paim warblers, cardinal grosbeaks, ...
— A Florida Sketch-Book • Bradford Torrey
... two Indians, in a small canoe, to examine the course of this river, a certain distance up. On entering the stream, they saw a great number of birds, which they took at first for turkeys, so much they resembled them, but which were only a kind of carrion eagles, vulgarly called turkey-buzzards. We were not a little astonished to see Mr. de Montigny return on foot and alone; he soon informed us of the reason: having ascended the Kowlitzk about a mile and a half, on rounding ...
— Narrative of a Voyage to the Northwest Coast of America in the years 1811, 1812, 1813, and 1814 or the First American Settlement on the Pacific • Gabriel Franchere
... features of the Priestly narrative, in the ship grounded on a rock, and in the bow set in the cloud; we have also two characteristic features of the Jehovistic narrative, in the smoking altar of sacrifice, and in the carrion bird. There is therefore manifest connection between the constellation grouping and both the narratives ...
— The Astronomy of the Bible - An Elementary Commentary on the Astronomical References - of Holy Scripture • E. Walter Maunder
... were a hyena, prove an ugly customer should it take us unawares. Otherwise, we had no reason to dread it. Such creatures, indeed, seldom attack human beings unless first assailed, as they five on carrion, and act a ...
— Saved from the Sea - The Loss of the Viper, and her Crew's Saharan Adventures • W.H.G. Kingston
... first Marvel took it for granted that he was one of Sir Plantagenet's people, and he was riding past him, when he heard the stranger say, in a friendly tone, "Your horse gallops well, sir: but have a care; there's a carrion a little way farther ...
— Tales & Novels, Vol. 2 • Maria Edgeworth
... pointing it at the breast of the fallen wretch, who lay groaning at his feet—"We must secure him," said the Colonel; "and, at the same time, be on our guard against his cowardly associate. If he could walk, I would know how to act with him; but I am not going to carry the base carrion. Indeed, my arm bleeds, and is getting stiff; otherwise I would dispatch him where he lies, and save the ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland Volume 17 • Alexander Leighton
... is erected of dry wood, on which the body of the dead is laid, and in course of time after igniting the faggots the corpse is consumed. While this cineration is going on vultures and carrion fowl not infrequently pounce down upon the body, and tear away pieces of flesh from the ghastly, smoking corpse. These charred parts of the body they carry away to their nests to feast upon at leisure. But oftentimes dire results follow; the home of sun-dried ...
— A History of Nursery Rhymes • Percy B. Green
... a thousand lawless raids, in a few minutes you will be but a great load of carrion. It cannot be otherwise." Then I swung my lasso and sent it whistling over his head. But not so fast; he was yet far from being subdued, and, before the supple coils had fallen on his neck he seized the noose and, with one fierce chop, cut through its hard thick strands, and dropped ...
— Lobo, Rag and Vixen - Being The Personal Histories Of Lobo, Redruff, Raggylug & Vixen • Ernest Seton-Thompson
... was part of me, part of my body, which nourished him day by day. He was mine when the birth-pang tore me, mine when he lay on my heart, When the sweet mouth mumbled my bosom and the milk-teeth made it smart, Babyhood, boyhood, and manhood, and a glad mother proud of her son— See the carrion birds, too gorged to fly! Ah! Brothers, what ...
— The New York Times Current History of the European War, Vol. 1, January 9, 1915 - What Americans Say to Europe • Various
... inured to all hardship. They were men who had committed themselves to a war against the elements, a war against all that opposed them in their hunger for the wage they were determined to tear from the frigid bosom of an earth which they regarded as the vulture regards carrion. ...
— The Triumph of John Kars - A Story of the Yukon • Ridgwell Cullum
... carrion birds had gathered in incredible numbers. The sky was full of them circling; an encompassing ring of them sat a scant fifty yards distant, their wings held half out from their bodies, as though they felt overheated. And in the low bushes could be discerned ...
— The Leopard Woman • Stewart Edward White et al
... at the Palace Grand. The place is packed with rowdy men and ribald women. I am at the zenith of my shame. Right and left I am buying wine. Like vultures at a feast they bunch into the box. Like carrion flies they buzz around me. That is what I feel ...
— The Trail of '98 - A Northland Romance • Robert W. Service
... him." "It is well," said she; "take you the child, while I carry its mats." "I cannot carry the child," said the spirit; "I am too cold from the sea." When they were got on board the canoe the wife smelt carrion. "How is this?" she said. "What have you in the canoe that I should smell carrion?" "It is nothing in the canoe," said the spirit. "It is the land-wind blowing down the mountains, where some beast lies dead." It appears it was still night when they reached Manu'a—the swiftest passage on record—and ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 18 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... after the Amalgamated flotation. The same feeling prevailed generally on Saturday, though I was obliged to buy a few blocks of the stock at 110 from Wall Street men whose sharp noses had sniffed a carrion scent in the air. Sunday was uncomfortable, for I realized that I might have to face bad conditions on the morrow. On Monday an ominous feeling began to rise and pervade "the Street" like a miasma mist ...
— Frenzied Finance - Vol. 1: The Crime of Amalgamated • Thomas W. Lawson
... and seeks its own nook of refuge from the Reform Broom of Molly the housemaid. And then, the tiny insect, the ant—that living, silent monitor to unregarding men—doth it not make its own galleries, build with toilsome art its own abiding place? Does not the mole scratch its own chamber—the carrion kite build its own nest! Shall cuckoos and Members of Parliament alone ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 1, October 16, 1841 • Various
... ivory neck,—twist it, I say! Give her a swift despatch after her leper! But stay,—if he still lives he'll follow her, And so we may ensnare him. Harm her not! Bind her! Away with her to Rimmon's House! Is all this carrion dead? There's one that moves,— A spear,—fasten him down! All quiet now? Then back to our Damascus! Rimmon's face Shall ...
— The Poems of Henry Van Dyke • Henry Van Dyke
... the night in drinking himself to death deliberately! We broke in this morning, for we heard him sporting like a horse; and there he was, laid over the settle: flaying and scalping would not have wakened him. I sent for Kenneth, and he came; but not till the beast had changed into carrion: he was both dead and cold, and stark; and so you'll allow it was useless making more ...
— Wuthering Heights • Emily Bronte
... "Bear away this carrion and cast it to the dogs!" he cried, for thus he could speak of her whom he would have taken to wife, when once he deemed her dead. "Take it away, and thou, Slaughterer, tell me how it came about that the maid was slain. It will be well for thee if thou hast ...
— Nada the Lily • H. Rider Haggard
... come back for; and even if there had been, one short day's time in the hot, steaming jungle atmosphere sufficed to cause the flesh to decay. Suma had ideas of her own about spending the days away from her proper rendezvous; and as for carrion, she never failed to give ...
— The Black Phantom • Leo Edward Miller
... "Ah! you carrion meat," shouted Phormio, shaking his fists under the helpless creature's nose. "Honest men have their day at last. There's a gay hour coming before Zeus claps the ...
— A Victor of Salamis • William Stearns Davis
... I give you my word of honour as a gentleman and an old man, that when my book of travels shall appear it shall not contain so much as the name of Grunewald. And yet it was a racy chapter! But had your Highness only read about the other courts! I am a carrion crow; but it is not my fault, after all, that the world ...
— Prince Otto • Robert Louis Stevenson
... above; therefore, to what end should he that is of such a temper sell his jewels (had there been any that would have bought them) to fill his mind with empty things? Will a man give a penny to fill his belly with hay; or can you persuade the turtle-dove to live upon carrion like the crow? Though faithless ones can, for carnal lusts, pawn, or mortgage, or sell what they have, and themselves outright to boot; yet they that have faith, saving faith, though but a little of it, cannot do so. Here, therefore, my ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... shells is the Bearded Vulture or Lammergeyer (Gypaeetos barbatus). This rapacious bird is very common in Greece, where he does not usually live on large prey. If he sometimes carries away a fowl, it is exceptional; he prefers to live on carrion or bones, the remains of the feasts of man or of the true vulture. He rises very high carrying these bones in his talons and allows them to fall on a stone, swallowing the fragments after having sucked out the marrow. He is also ...
— The Industries of Animals • Frederic Houssay
... Greece to decrease with frightful rapidity, after the time of the Achaean league. The facts are well known; and foul enough they are. When the Romans destroyed Greece, God was just and merciful. The eagles were gathered together only because the carrion needed to be removed from the face of God's earth. And at the time of which I now speak, the signs of approaching death were fearfully apparent. Hapless and hopeless enough were the clique of men out of whom the first two Ptolemies hoped to form a ...
— Alexandria and her Schools • Charles Kingsley
... scandals as nice for the reader to nose As any old garbage of carrion crows; Our mystery-mongers are full of resource; There's a bigamy boom and a vogue of divorce; To the licence of flappers we freely allude, And we do what we can with the cult ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 158, January 21st, 1920 • Various
... a perfectly unprintable speech. It was delivered in unshod American—a language he had not spoken for years. It took in each individual of the whole gang, it told them they were dogs and sons of dogs, killers of men, unmentionable carrion, cayotes, kites, and that he would have hanged them each and individually with his own hands (and I believe by some legerdemain of strength he would), but that they were without hearts, souls or intellect, not responsible ...
— The Pools of Silence • H. de Vere Stacpoole
... too tight—but silent and patient all, offering no attack until the last tremor runs through the stiffening carcass and the eyes glaze over. To humans the buzzard pays a deeper meed of respect—he hangs aloft longer; but in the end he comes. No scavenger shark, no carrion crab, ever chambered more grisly secrets in his digestive processes than this big charnel bird. Such is ...
— The Escape of Mr. Trimm - His Plight and other Plights • Irvin S. Cobb
... as each appears, are poor bitter things when prosecuted for themselves as an end."—"I say to you plainly there is no end to which your practical faculty can aim so sacred or so large, that if pursued for itself, will not at last become carrion and an offence to the nostril. The imaginative faculty of the soul must be fed with objects immense and eternal. Your end should be one inapprehensible to the senses; then it will be a god, always ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... carried by their fanatical prophets. Two hundred and fifty scalps were carried away on poles, and when troops arrived they found nothing but heaps of ashes, mutilated bodies, and buzzards feeding on the carrion. ...
— The Fight for a Free Sea: A Chronicle of the War of 1812 - The Chronicles of America Series, Volume 17 • Ralph D. Paine
... immediately to the viroco commanded by Alonso Pimentel. There the said Pimentel, Juan Ortuno de Onate, and Diego Carrion appeared to be sick, and such was evident from their appearance. Eleven Indian rowers are sick in this vessel. To this were witnesses, Diego Nunez ...
— The Philippine Islands 1493-1898, Vol. 4 of 55 - 1576-1582 • Edited by E. H. Blair and J. A. Robertson
... were looked upon as exquisite food, fit even for royalty, and were reckoned as thorough French delicacies. There were at that time heronries, as at a later period there were pheasantries. People also ate birds of prey, and only rejected those which fed on carrion. ...
— Manners, Custom and Dress During the Middle Ages and During the Renaissance Period • Paul Lacroix
... was amusing to notice the familiarity of the carrion hawks, hundreds of which were collected about, perched upon the little hillocks all round, watching every movement of ours, or hovering overhead within the distance of a few yards. They are the Milvago australis, a bird of which the sexes differ so much in appearance, that they were pointed ...
— Voyage Of H.M.S. Rattlesnake, Vol. 2 (of 2) • John MacGillivray
... the doors if he dallies any longer," said a third, "and down with the carrion monks who would bar us of our privilege!" A general shout followed. "Ay, ay, our privilege! our privilege! down with the doors, and with the lurdane monks, if they ...
— The Abbot • Sir Walter Scott
... what becomes of these tenements of clay. The Parsee feeds the vultures with his dead, the devout Hindoo burns the body, and the professed Christian gives his to the worms and to the sharks. Still as we came down Malabar Hill that morning, and saw the hideous carrion birds, gorged and sleepy, roosting upon the walls of the cemetery, a sense of nausea came over ...
— Due West - or Round the World in Ten Months • Maturin Murray Ballou
... these black abodes of wretchedness and woe, the grief worn prisoner lay, without a bed to rest his weary limbs, without a pillow to support his aching head—the tattered garment torn from his meager frame, and vermin preying on his flesh—his food was carrion, and his drink foul as the bilge water—there was no balm for his wounds, no cordial to revive his fainting spirits, no friend to comfort his heart, nor the soft hand of affection to close his dying eyes—heaped amongst ...
— American Prisoners of the Revolution • Danske Dandridge
... flower amongst them. Trees there were yet, but the most of them stark dead, and the best dying fast. No beasts she saw, nor fowl; nothing but lizards and beetles, and now and again a dry grey adder coiled up about a sun-burned stone. But of great carrion flies, green and blue, were there a many, and whiles they buzzed about her head till she sickened with loathing of them. All this she found on her way as she went up toward the place where erst was the great perron. But when she came to the top there was no sign either of the stairs or the house, ...
— The Water of the Wondrous Isles • William Morris
... have been known to beg the carcass of a hog which they themselves have poisoned, it has been asserted that they prefer carrion which has perished of sickness to the meat of the shambles; and because they have been seen to make a ragout of boror (snails), and to roast a hotchiwitchu or hedgehog, it has been supposed that reptiles of every description form a part of their cuisine. It ...
— The Pocket George Borrow • George Borrow
... panthers not one whit more ferocious or cruel than the denizens of these pretty villages, these dewy lawns, and these charming shores. After lauding in funeral celebrations the good, the great, the immortal Marat, whose body, thank God! they cast into the common sewer like carrion that he was, and always had been; after performing these funeral rites, to which each man brought an urn into which he shed his tears, behold! our good Bressans, our gentle Bressans, these poultry-fatteners, ...
— The Companions of Jehu • Alexandre Dumas, pere
... five weary months, during which these hunger-driven men roamed the wretched island rocks both night and day, searching for shell-fish for food—men who were even thankful at the times when they were able to kill and eat the carrion crows that fed upon the flesh of their drowned comrades cast up by the tide. Some Indians surprised them by a visit, and stayed for several days, and with them they were able to barter cloth and beads for some dogs, and these ...
— The Red True Story Book • Various
... accordingly, but missed the superb monarch of the feathered tribes, who, without noticing the attempt to annoy him, continued his majestic flight to the southward. A thousand birds of prey, hawks, kites, carrion-crows, and ravens, disturbed from the lodgings which they had just taken up for the evening, rose at the report of the gun, and mingled their hoarse and discordant notes with the echoes which replied to it, and with the roar of the mountain cataracts. Evan, ...
— Waverley • Sir Walter Scott
... heard, or have reason to know, that wolves are in the vicinity, your best way is to bait with pieces of carrion of any description. This must be done at some distance from the clearing, or you will be sure to lose your own dogs, or kill those of your neighbours, when you come to lay your poison, which you need not do till you see some of your bait taken, ...
— Twenty-Seven Years in Canada West - The Experience of an Early Settler (Volume I) • Samuel Strickland
... boss the little mob stopped. Then the Irishman spoke in a voice that rumbled and shook with menacing rage. "Ye, Manuel an' Pedro—drag that carrion off the right-av-way, an' tell him when he wakes up av he values his life to shtay out av rache av me two hands. The rest av ye hombres git the hell ...
— The Winning of Barbara Worth • Harold B Wright
... kill a man after dark, unless he yielded up his property without resistance. The great number of vultures that continually hovered over Masindi were proofs of Umbogo's story, as these birds generally denote the presence of carrion. My men had, on several occasions, found bodies lying in the high grass, neatly picked to the bone, which had only ...
— Ismailia • Samuel W. Baker
... These "Jack-o'-th'-Lantern," "Will-o'-th'-Wisp," "Boo-peep," "Moonshine Vagrants," "Ditchbank Sculks," "Hedgerow Rodneys," of whom there are not a few, are black spots upon our horizon, and are ever and anon flitting before our eyes. A motley crowd of half-naked savages, carrion eaters, dressed in rags, tatters, and shreds, usually called men, women, and children, some running, walking, loitering, traipsing, shouting, gaping, and staring; the women with children on their backs, ...
— Gipsy Life - being an account of our Gipsies and their children • George Smith
... evaporation notion to account for the clouds of steam, which rise from the wooded valleys after rain. Again, I am so obstinate that I should require very good evidence to make me believe that there are two species of Polyborus (317/2. Polyborus Novae Zelandiae, a carrion hawk mentioned as very common in the Falklands.) in the Falkland Islands. Do the Gauchos there admit it? Much as I talked to them, they never alluded to such a fact. In the Zoology I have discussed the sexual and ...
— More Letters of Charles Darwin - Volume I (of II) • Charles Darwin
... by his degradation; but chiefly the crowd howled and reviled, and the men spat in the Jew's face and covered him with a load of horse-dung and foul ordure. They hung him finally after unspeakable tortures. Then his body was left to rot in Stuttgart's market-place in the sight of all. A hideous carrion dangling in a silver cage, which his judges had caused to be constructed as a terrible warning to those who would profit ...
— A German Pompadour - Being the Extraordinary History of Wilhelmine van Graevenitz, - Landhofmeisterin of Wirtemberg • Marie Hay
... child! Haven't you read your Bible? and don't you know the ravens fed the old gentleman in the desert, an' that folks now say they were Arabs, because the ravens are dirty birds an' live on carrion, an' it stands to reason Elija couldn't touch that if he hed an ordinary stumach. As if the Lord couldn't hev made 'em bring food from the king's table if he hed chosen to do it! It's all of a piece with ...
— A Beautiful Possibility • Edith Ferguson Black
... gold as buzzards scent carrion, began early to discover the growing wealth of this new city, and soon a party of a dozen Franciscans, in sackcloth with downcast visages, approached the city. They came, not as religious teachers, but ...
— Mexico and its Religion • Robert A. Wilson
... called, received the rich deposit brought down by the river in the spring, and, when the river retired into its banks, became a series of mud flats, described as "mere quagmires of black dirt, stretching along for miles, unvaried except by the limbs of half-buried carrion, tree trunks, or by occasional yellow pools of what the children called frog's spawn; all together steaming up vapors redolent of the savor of death." In the previous year—not an unusually bad one—one-ninth of the Indian population on these flats had died ...
— The Story of the Mormons: • William Alexander Linn
... of window," cried the furious king; "let the fishes have the carrion. Never shall he find a grave, the vile regicide; and that he should think I would reward his guilt! Nay, I have served him as David ...
— Alfgar the Dane or the Second Chronicle of Aescendune • A. D. Crake
... strike, or pinch, or tickle—or bite, or cut his nails, or hawk, or spit, or snift, or drum with his feet or fingers in company;—nor (according to Erasmus) shall he speak to any one in making water,—nor shall he point to carrion or excrement.—Now this is all nonsense again, quoth my uncle ...
— The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman • Laurence Sterne
... that he married another lady and took her to South America, where she died. This was a dozen years ago or more. He brought down with him to our haunted house a little cask of salt beef; for, he is always convinced that all salt beef not of his own pickling, is mere carrion, and invariably, when he goes to London, packs a piece in his portmanteau. He had also volunteered to bring with him one "Nat Beaver," an old comrade of his, captain of a merchantman. Mr. Beaver, with a thick-set wooden face and figure, and apparently as ...
— The Signal-Man #33 • Charles Dickens
... abundance of chains and instruments of torture. The author of the Neustria Pia, who attests many of her miracles of this description, relates, that her sanctity extended even to the horse which she rode, insomuch, that, when the body of the beast was thrown, after its death, as carrion to the dogs, they all refused to touch it; and the monks, in commemoration of the miracle, employed the skin for a covering to the church door, where it remained till the ...
— Architectural Antiquities of Normandy • John Sell Cotman
... rather blase. I shook my finger playfully in the face of one of the seated lions ... to have a sensation of a thousand prickles running sharp through each pore, when the lion responded with an open, crimson-mouthed, yellow-fanged snarl; I smelt the carrion fetor of his breath. I stepped back rather quickly. All the animals grew restless and furtive. Little greenish-amber gleams lit and flickered in ...
— Tramping on Life - An Autobiographical Narrative • Harry Kemp
... sand-beds and some over the grassy plains. As he searched about the fires he saw the wolves seated on the distant hills waiting for his departure. Having looked in vain for his knife, he mounted again and left the wolves and the vultures to banquet freely upon the carrion of ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 7 • Charles H. Sylvester
... kinsmen's blood, Or drag them captive at his chariot wheels— For Polyneices 'tis ordained that none Shall give him burial or make mourn for him, But leave his corpse unburied, to be meat For dogs and carrion crows, a ghastly sight. So am I purposed; never by my will Shall miscreants take precedence of true men, But all good patriots, alive or dead, Shall be ...
— The Oedipus Trilogy • Sophocles
... both, in their own conceit, as that swarm of worn-out lobbymen and contractors who, having thoroughly exploited "the old concern," now gathered to gorge upon the new. And by the hundred flocked hither those unclean birds, blinking bleared eyes at any chance bit, whetting foul bills to peck at carrion from the departmental sewer. Busy and active at all hours, the lobby of the Exchange, when the crowd and the noise rose to the flood at night, smacked no little of pandemonium. Every knot of men had ...
— Four Years in Rebel Capitals - An Inside View of Life in the Southern Confederacy from Birth to Death • T. C. DeLeon
... thee when living; and, when dead, Dwells on thy yet devoted head, Rends honor's 'scutcheon from thy hearse, Stills o'er thy bier the holy verse, And spurns thy corpse from hallowed ground Flung like vile carrion to the hound; Such is the dire and desperate doom For sacrilege, decreed by Rome; And such the well-deserved meed Of thine ...
— Ten Great Events in History • James Johonnot
... till the evening, and passed other skeletons of moose and carribboo deer, picked clean by the carrion-birds. They saw the marks of many fires, and the remains of a large encampment, deserted perhaps three weeks before. Some of the older hunters said that, from the prints of the snow-shoes, they knew the Mic-Mac Indians of New Brunswick were those who had swept the hunting grounds before ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, Number 385. November, 1847. • Various
... he was, he endured a period of mental agony which took all the heart out of him. He understood the methods of the prairie so well that he feared the very worst. A tree—a lariat—and he saw, in fancy, a crowd of carrion swarming round his swinging body. He could conceive no other object, and his nerves became racked ...
— The Story of the Foss River Ranch • Ridgwell Cullum
... "in another way, we are not skilled in." See the author of "Representative Men," Festus, page 48. "Evil" was held by some of the old heathen philosophers to be "good in the making." They argued that it was the carrion in the sunshine, converting into grass and flower. And then, to apply their figure, man in the brothel, jail, or on gibbets, is in the way to all that is lovely and true. Such reminds us of the ravings of lunatics. It is ...
— The Christian Foundation, Or, Scientific and Religious Journal, Volume I, No. 7, July, 1880 • Various
... doubtless, many a wistful look was turned in the direction of lovely France. Much had the poor inmates to endure, and much to complain of, to the disgrace of England be it said—of England, in general so kind and bountiful. Rations of carrion meat, and bread from which I have seen the very hounds occasionally turn away, were unworthy entertainment even for the most ruffian enemy, when helpless and a captive; and such, alas! was the fare in those ...
— Lavengro - The Scholar, The Gypsy, The Priest • George Borrow
... would have been hanged before I would have done so, after having reaped the profit of it; that is, I think so now, seated comfortably in my inn, with my bottle of champagne before me. He, however, did not show himself carrion; he would not betray his companions, who had behaved very handsomely to him, having given the son of a lord, a great barrister, not a hundred-pound forged bill, but a hundred hard guineas, to plead his cause, and another ten, to induce him, after ...
— The Romany Rye - A Sequel to 'Lavengro' • George Borrow
... those multitudinous and admiring eyes, brave, ready for battle, his attitude a challenge. He sees his enemy: horsemen sitting motionless, with long spears in rest, upon blindfolded broken-down nags, lean and starved, fit only for sport and sacrifice, then the carrion-heap. ...
— A Horse's Tale • Mark Twain
... might; But if a knave's advice assist, 'Gainst fraud and force what can exist? An Eagle on a Tortoise fell, And mounting bore him by the shell: She with her house her body screens, Nor can be hurt by any means. A Carrion Crow came by that way, "You've got," says she, "a luscious prey; But soon its weight will make you rue, Unless I show you what to do." The captor promising a share, She bids her from the upper air To dash the shell against ...
— The Fables of Phdrus - Literally translated into English prose with notes • Phaedrus
... throat to let blood while there was still life in the animal, muttering the short Mussulman creed as he did so. For his religion enjoins this hygienic practice—borrowed by the Prophet from the Mosaic law—to guard against long-dead carrion being eaten. At the touch of the Colonel's hand Badshah sank to its knees; and Wargrave, very annoyed with himself for his slowness in detecting the deer, forced his way through the undergrowth to examine it. The stag was a fine ...
— The Jungle Girl • Gordon Casserly
... members of the Audiencia inform the king of the instructions they have given to Legazpi, and their orders that he should direct his course straight to the Philippines, which they regard as belonging to Spain rather than Portugal. In this same year, Juan de la Carrion, recently appointed admiral of the fleet, writes to the king, dissenting (as does the Audiencia) from Urdaneta's project for first exploring New Guinea, and urging that the expedition ought to sail directly to the Philippines. He says that ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1803, Volume II, 1521-1569 • Emma Helen Blair
... thought, from the appearance of the motley collection, that the whole people had 'come up to worship the Lord in their tents,' after the manner of the Israelites. The rich planter, the small farmer, the 'white trash'—all classes, had gathered to the negro sale, like crows to a feast of carrion. ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. III, No. V, May, 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... enough; the banquet of birds and beasts who feed on the skin of Pharsalia is even worse. [66] The details are too loathsome to quote. Suffice it to say that the list includes every carrion-feeder among flesh and fowl who ...
— A History of Roman Literature - From the Earliest Period to the Death of Marcus Aurelius • Charles Thomas Cruttwell
... head of a steep gorge. Several low wickiups had been fashioned by binding the tops of bushes together and throwing skins or tattered blankets over the arched stems. Offal and carrion were strewn all about the place; it swarmed with flies. Nesting vultures would have built more carefully and been fully as fastidious. When the warrior reached the spot the rocks became alive with naked forms; they appeared ...
— When the West Was Young • Frederick R. Bechdolt
... crush'd beneath you, The menacing arrogant one that strode and advanced with his senseless scorn, bearing the murderous knife, The wide-swelling one, the braggart that would yesterday do so much, To-day a carrion dead and damn'd, the despised of all the earth, An offal rank, to the dunghill ...
— Leaves of Grass • Walt Whitman
... the Faith of Al-Islam?" "The professing that there is no god but the God and that Mohammed is the apostle of God." Q "What is thy first and thy last?" "My first is man's seed in the shape of foul water and my last filthy carrion: the first of me is dust and the last of me is dust. ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 5 • Richard F. Burton
... up to the tower of the Castle, from which a beam protruded, laden at that moment with a ghastly burden just discernible in the thickening gloom. He named it well when he called it his "flagstaff," and the miserable banner of carrion that hung from it was a fitting pennon for the ruthless Governor of Cesena. Worthy was he to have worn the silver hauberk of Werner von Urslingen with its motto, "The enemy of God, of ...
— The Shame of Motley • Raphael Sabatini
... "'Storm is a word that an old salt reserves for one of those hurricanes that blow a field of turnips flat, and teeth down your throat. You can turn round and lean your back against it like a post; and a carrion-crow making for the next parish gets fanned into another county. ...
— Love Me Little, Love Me Long • Charles Reade
... more freely, there will be no good end without that," he said; "the blood of all aristocrats, no matter what they promise, what they pretend. From the beginning they were liars. France has no use for them save to make carrion of." ...
— The Light That Lures • Percy Brebner
... they call vestal, and the rabble, shouted in mockery, deeming it rare sport, forsooth, to see Rome's fiercest gladiator turn pale, and tremble like a very child, before that piece of bleeding clay; but the praetor drew back as if I were pollution, and sternly said, 'Let the carrion rot! There are no noble men but Romans!' And he, deprived of funeral rites, must wander, a hapless ghost, beside the waters of that sluggish river, and look—and look—and look in vain to the bright Elysian Fields where dwell his ancestors and noble kindred. ...
— Elson Grammer School Literature, Book Four. • William H. Elson and Christine Keck
... disposition be considered, he would be a more fit emblem for a band of robbers—for a more absolute robber and tyrant does not exist among the feathered races. He robs the osprey of his fish, and the vulture of his carrion; in short, lords it over every creature weaker than himself. Now this is not the character of the nation he represents—far from it. It is true they have shown a desire to extend their territory, and have made conquests to this ...
— The Boy Hunters • Captain Mayne Reid
... as at first, and groped among the waving tangle. All that met my touch was cold and soft and gluey. The thicket was alive with crabs and lobsters, trundling to and fro lopsidedly, and I had to harden my heart against the horror of their carrion neighbourhood. On all sides I could feel the grain and the clefts of hard, living stone; no planks, no iron, not a sign of any wreck; the Espirito Santo was not there. I remember I had almost a sense of relief ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson, Volume XXI • Robert Louis Stevenson
... belike puts melancholy men to inhabit just under the Pole. The worst of the three is a [1526]thick, cloudy, misty, foggy air, or such as come from fens, moorish grounds, lakes, muck-hills, draughts, sinks, where any carcasses, or carrion lies, or from whence any stinking fulsome smell comes: Galen, Avicenna, Mercurialis, new and old physicians, hold that such air is unwholesome, and engenders melancholy, plagues, and what not? [1527]Alexandretta, an haven-town in the Mediterranean Sea, Saint John de Ulloa, an haven ...
— The Anatomy of Melancholy • Democritus Junior
... is no trace of eggs in the purse of the Arum. They came convoked by the odour of a decaying body, their supreme delight; an intoxication seized them, and they rushed into the eddying swarm to take part in a festival of carrion-eaters. ...
— Social Life in the Insect World • J. H. Fabre
... Tonquin's sails flapped idly in the wind. Next morning the Indians paddled {112} out to plunder what seemed to be a deserted ship. A wounded white man appeared above the hatches and waved them to come on board and trade. They came in hosts, in hordes, in flocks, like carrion-birds or ants overrunning a half-dead thing. Suddenly earth and air at Clayoquot harbour were rent with a terrific explosion, and the sea was drenched with the blood of the slaughtered savages. The only remaining white man, the wounded Lewis, had ...
— Pioneers of the Pacific Coast - A Chronicle of Sea Rovers and Fur Hunters • Agnes C. Laut
... the resident manager of the great Ames mills. On over the high iron fence, like hungry dock rats. On through the battered gate. On up the broad drive, shouting, shooting, moaning, raving. On over the veranda, and in through broken windows and shattered doors, swarming like flies over reeking carrion, until the flames which burst through the peaked roof of the mansion drove them forth, and made them draw sullenly, protestingly away, leaving the tattered bodies of Pillette and his wife and daughters to be consumed in the ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking
... his teeth, the guard peered through the grating, and seeing what he was doing, entered, and put handcuffs upon him, after first removing the raw flesh to a point where he could see, but not touch it. And there it lay, torturing him while he starved. And there it lay until it became carrion, and tortured him again. And then they had dragged him out again, out under the blue sky, where the trees—the old sweet-smelling pines—were waving their purple plumes upon the distant mountains, and the wild grape filled the air with perfume, and the wild ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 23, October, 1891 • Various
... these dreadful things about my fellows!" cried Miss Du Prel, flinging up her fine head defiantly; "one is likely to find in them more or less what one expects. It's the same everywhere. If you go seeking mole-hills and worms, and put nose to ground on the scent for carrion, you will find them all, with the range of snow-capped Alps in full view, and the infinite of ...
— The Daughters of Danaus • Mona Caird
... reveal in the matter of moral degeneration; but gradually, as the curious devil mastered me, I grew into such harmony with it that I could shut my eyes no longer to the true purpose of its insistence. It was the closed cell about which my thoughts hovered like crows circling round carrion. ...
— At a Winter's Fire • Bernard Edward J. Capes
... manhood? Do we meet here, like paid gladiators of old, to cut each other's throats in earnest while attacking and defending a sham fortress, raised in the arena for the diversion of those who set us on to the butchery and promise to pay the survivors? Are we to provide a feast of carrion for a flock of vultures and unclean beasts of prey, when we need only stand together, and be true to ourselves and to each other, to accomplish one of the greatest acts in history? The vultures will leave us alone unless we destroy each other; we need not ...
— An American Politician • F. Marion Crawford
... committed such depredations on the corn fields, that an act of parliament has been passed for their destruction. The most successful method is to prepare a kind of table between the branches of a large tree, with some carrion and other meat, till the crows are accustomed to resort to the place for food. Afterwards the meat may be poisoned; and the birds still feeding on it, will be destroyed. The drug called nux vomica is best adapted to ...
— The Cook and Housekeeper's Complete and Universal Dictionary; Including a System of Modern Cookery, in all Its Various Branches, • Mary Eaton
... the delicate ciliae which clothe every tentacle. The fact is, that the Madrepore, like those glorious sea-anemones whose living flowers stud every pool, is by profession a scavenger and a feeder on carrion; and being as useful as he is beautiful, really comes under the rule which he seems at first to break, that ...
— Glaucus; or The Wonders of the Shore • Charles Kingsley
... first taste of animal food I had had for about ten months. So keen was my appetite that I could have relished any cooked carrion even, if it had come in my way. I also got potatoes, the very skins of which I devoured with great gusto. It was very curious that at this time I preferred salt to sugar, or anything that was sweet, and I used ...
— Six Years in the Prisons of England • A Merchant - Anonymous
... It was probably with a similar leaning towards the more liberal religion that the Lalbegis, though themselves Hindus, adopted a Muhammadan for their tutelary saint. In the Punjab Muhammadan sweepers who have given up eating carrion and refuse to remove night-soil rank higher than the others, and are known as Musalli. [241] And in Saugor the Muhammadans allow the sweepers to come into a mosque and to stand at the back, whereas, of course, they cannot approach a Hindu temple. Again in Bengal it is stated, "The Dom is regarded ...
— The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India - Volume IV of IV - Kumhar-Yemkala • R.V. Russell
... conqueror is meant. At best, it will appear to such wavering persons, (if such there are,) whom we mean to fix with us, a choice whether they are to continue a prey to domestic banditti, or to be fought for as a carrion carcass and picked to the bone by all the crows and vultures of the sky. They may take protection, (and they would, I doubt not,) but they can have neither alacrity nor zeal in such a cause. When they see nothing but bands of English, Spaniards, ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. IV. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... neay carrion can kill a craw." "It's a good horse that duz never stumble, And a good wife that duz never grumble." "Neare is my sarke, but nearer is my skin." "It's an ill-made bargain whore beath parties rue." "A curst cow hes short horns." "Wilfull ...
— Yorkshire Dialect Poems • F.W. Moorman
... shalt not be left for the carrion crow, Or the wolf to batten o'er thee: Or the coward insult the gallant dead, Who in life had trembled ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 10, No. - 288, Supplementary Number • Various
... chorus): The vulture her carrion swallows, Returns to his vomit the dog. In the slough of uncleanliness wallows The he-goat, and revels the hog. Men are wise with their schools and their teachers, Men are just with their creeds and their priests; Yet, ...
— Poems • Adam Lindsay Gordon
... no odor so bad as that which arises from goodness tainted. It is human, it is divine, carrion. If I knew for a certainty that a man was coming to my house with the conscious design of doing me good, I should run for my life, as from that dry and parching wind of the African deserts called the simoom, which fills the mouth and nose and ears and eyes with dust ...
— Walden, and On The Duty Of Civil Disobedience • Henry David Thoreau
... resembled, however, in the dry season when I ate it, the lean and stringy sirloins of Old England in Hogarth's days. A hundred and twenty chickens, or sixty-six full-grown fowls, may be purchased for a dollar, and the citizens do not, like the Somal, consider them carrion. Goat's flesh is good, and the black-faced Berberah sheep, after the rains, is, here as elsewhere, delicious. The staff of life is holcus. Fruit grows almost wild, but it is not prized as an article of food; the plantains ...
— First footsteps in East Africa • Richard F. Burton
... word to the whites. I am an old, old man. The last winter was bitter hard and I may never see another July sun. I have lived too long. I have seen my race change from young men strong and daring as eagles, as thrifty and fat as brown bears, to feeble yellow wolves fit only to lap the carrion thrown them by the whites, and to lie in the sun ...
— Lydia of the Pines • Honore Willsie Morrow
... them. For as everyone in the world has been delighted with his own evil, so after death he is delighted with the stench to which his evil corresponds. In this respect the evil may be likened to rapacious birds and beasts, like ravens, wolves, and swine, which fly or run to carrion or dunghills when they scent their stench. I heard a certain spirit crying out loudly as if from inward torture when struck by a breath flowing forth from heaven; but he became tranquil and glad as soon as a breath flowing forth ...
— Heaven and its Wonders and Hell • Emanuel Swedenborg
... "Unshackle me this carrion, and heave it overboard," was the harsh order. "Let that serve as an example to the others. Let them learn thus the price of mutiny in their lousy ...
— The Sea-Hawk • Raphael Sabatini
... surprising that the fact should be remarked upon, though here the species differs somewhat from those referred to, being known as the Jack-crow or turkey-buzzard. In the far East, like the vulture, the crow is considered a natural scavenger or remover of carrion, and the same excuse is made for him in Cuba and Florida. But is he not more of a freebooter and feathered bandit,—in short, a prowling thief generally? Nature has few birds or animals upon her varied list with which we would find fault, but the crow,—well, having nothing to say in its favor, ...
— Due South or Cuba Past and Present • Maturin M. Ballou
... passed on, and the Cid's two fair daughters grew to womanhood and were married, at the command of the king, to the two counts of Carrion. The Cid liked not his sons-in-law, and good reason he had, for they were a pair of base hounds despite their lordly title. The brides were shamefully treated by them, being stripped and beaten nearly to death ...
— Historical Tales - The Romance of Reality - Volume VII • Charles Morris
... when he comes like a woman, With lovely, smiling eyes, Black dreams float over his golden head Like a swarm of carrion flies. ...
— Main Street and Other Poems • Alfred Joyce Kilmer
... sickened many a soul; Stout hearts were sad and cowards cried for peace. The vulture, perched hard by the eagle's crag, Loud cawed his fellows from afar to feast. Ill-omened bird—his carrion-cries were vain! Again our veteran eagles plumed their wings, And forth he fled from Montezuma's shores— A dastard flight—betraying unto death Him whom he dazzled with a bauble crown. Just retribution followed swift and sure— Germania's ...
— The Feast of the Virgins and Other Poems • H. L. Gordon
... skeletons. Intense radiation has killed their bacteria and preserved them indefinitely from decay, just like the packaged meat in the last advertisements. In fact such bodies are one of the signs of a really hot drift—you avoid them. The vultures pass up such poisonously hot carrion too—they've ...
— The Night of the Long Knives • Fritz Reuter Leiber
... are a species of crow. But they differ from the carrion crow and raven, in not feeding upon dead flesh, but upon corn and other seeds and grass, though, indeed, they pick up beetles and other insects and worms. See what a number of them have alighted on ...
— The Illustrated London Reading Book • Various
... kind that thrives and grows fat on the frontiers. The bulky frame, the cropped black hair, the predatory eyes that looked like two blaster muzzles. They were all familiar to Pop. Kane was all steel and meanness. The kind of carrion bird that took what others had worked for. Not big time, you understand. In another age he'd have been a torpedo—a hireling killer. But out among the stars he was working ...
— Turnover Point • Alfred Coppel
... as they walked on: "Barney's on his rounds getting hold of the new members. He scents a corruptible man as the buzzard does carrion. Every session young fellows like you come down here with high and beautiful ideas of office, and start in to reform everything, and end by becoming meat for Barney and his like. There is something destructive in the ...
— A Spoil of Office - A Story of the Modern West • Hamlin Garland
... "There's neay carrion can kill a craw." "It's a good horse that duz never stumble, And a good wife that duz never grumble." "Neare is my sarke, but nearer is my skin." "It's an ill-made bargain whore beath parties rue." "A curst cow hes short horns." "Wilfull fowkes ...
— Yorkshire Dialect Poems • F.W. Moorman
... cleaner deeds for nobler aims. The gold he hated, the race for it he despised, the poison of it he loathed, but he had neither loathing nor contempt nor hatred for the men themselves. He looked upon them and he loved to think that the carrion vulture might once again be purified and lifted on strong wings and become, as in old days, ...
— The Witch of Prague • F. Marion Crawford
... realistically, if a shade too methodically at times, the racking torments of hunger and thirst, the dreary importunity of the rain, the loathsomeness of the all-invading mud, the sickening horror of the carrion smells, the pathetically ...
— The Jervaise Comedy • J. D. Beresford
... sometimes steps between our earnest intentions and their fulfilment—this man, so august, shall he have expiated by a bloody death one fleeting moment of forgetfulness? and yet, on the other hand, under our Indian government, the lowest of our servants, a mass of carrion from a brotherhood of Thugs, shall have had free license to insult the leaders of the army which finds bread for him and his kindred? That the reader may understand what it is that we are talking of—not very long ago, in one of the courts-martial occasioned by some explosions of tentative insubordination ...
— The Uncollected Writings of Thomas de Quincey—Vol. 1 - With a Preface and Annotations by James Hogg • Thomas de Quincey
... carrion, if you want to. But I think you can do no more than order it to be flung into a ditch and ...
— The Trampling of the Lilies • Rafael Sabatini
... it raw and quivering, yet that only numbs when its fury is spent, and will not kill? That time after time, when its throes are on me, I have turned craven and begged Claudius for a potion to end it all?" He laughed shortly, with no sound of merriment. "I marry again—a rotten hulk fit only for carrion!" ...
— Nicanor - Teller of Tales - A Story of Roman Britain • C. Bryson Taylor
... of booty, that he was able to send a hundred fully equipped horses to King Alfonso, as well as the tent which he had captured from the Moorish monarch. These gifts not only pleased Alfonso, but awed and silenced the courtiers, among whom were the Infantes of Carrion, who deemed it might be well to sue for the Cid's daughters, since the father was able to bestow such rich gifts. Having reached this decision, these scheming youths approached the king, who, counting upon ...
— The Book of the Epic • Helene A. Guerber |
