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Nocturnal   Listen
noun
Nocturnal  n.  An instrument formerly used for taking the altitude of the stars, etc., at sea.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Nocturnal" Quotes from Famous Books



... having interwoven her hair and uncombed head with little vipers, orders wild fig-trees torn up from graves, orders funeral cypresses and eggs besmeared with the gore of a loathsome toad, and feathers of the nocturnal screech-owl, and those herbs, which lolchos, and Spain, fruitful in poisons, transmits, and bones snatched from the mouth of a hungry bitch, to be burned in Colchian flames. But Sagana, tucked up for expedition, ...
— The Works of Horace • Horace

... was worthy of a genuine attachment, her liaison with the Emperor lasted only a short while, and was only a passing fancy. I think that the difficulties surrounding his nocturnal visits cooled his Majesty's ardor greatly; for the Emperor was not enough in love to be willing to brave everything in order to see his beautiful mistress. His Majesty informed me of the fright which my fall had caused her, and how anxious this ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton

... stumbled upon after reaching the foot of the fells was Wythburn, at the head of Thirlmere Lake, quite near Amboth Hall, with its strange legends and associations. The mansion was said to be haunted by supernatural visitors, midnight illuminations, and a nocturnal marriage with a murdered bride. The most remarkable feature of the story, however, was that of the two skulls from Calgarth Hall, near Windermere, which came and joined in these orgies at Amboth Hall. These skulls formerly ...
— From John O'Groats to Land's End • Robert Naylor and John Naylor

... and down the area thereof. Though this last part of the dreadful scene might have been sufficient to intimidate persons possessed of no ordinary degree of courage; yet such was the bravery and resolution of the Reverend Doctor, that he even ventured to accost the nocturnal disturber of their repose: when, on lifting up the mort-cloth, to his inexpressible surprise, he discovered the terrible apparition to be only an unhappy young man belonging to the parish, who had for some time past been disordered in his senses, ...
— Apparitions; or, The Mystery of Ghosts, Hobgoblins, and Haunted Houses Developed • Joseph Taylor

... of a confinement case, in close attendance on which he would doubtless have to pass the night. He quitted the house at nine o'clock, walked down to the riverside, and paced along the deserted quays in the dense nocturnal darkness. A slight moist wind was blowing, and the swollen Seine rolled on in inky waves. As soon as eleven o'clock chimed, he walked up the slopes of the Trocadero, and began to prowl round the house, the huge ...
— A Love Episode • Emile Zola

... horsing, and in the trough all the missing bands will be found. Apologizing for the little interruption, it is satisfactory things are all arranged without damage, and hope all will go agreeably when the rough edge is worn off. Trusting these nocturnal visits will be ...
— Put Yourself in His Place • Charles Reade

... impossible that an early wolf-totem may have been associated, because of the animal's nocturnal wanderings in forests, with the underworld whence, according to Celtic belief, men sprang and whither they returned, and whence all vegetation came forth. The Gallo-Roman Silvanus, probably an underworld god, wears a wolf-skin, and may thus be a wolf-god. There were ...
— The Religion of the Ancient Celts • J. A. MacCulloch

... nearest home: bedridden invalid that he was supposed to be, his nightly terror was of running into Theobald's arms in the immediate neighborhood of the flat. But Raffles had characteristic methods of minimizing even that danger, of which something anon; meanwhile he recounted more than one of his nocturnal adventures, all, however, of a singularly innocent type; and one thing I noticed while he talked. His room was the first as you entered the flat. The long inner wall divided the room not merely from the passage but from ...
— Raffles - Further Adventures of the Amateur Cracksman • E. W. Hornung

... was a noise of opening windows, and the nocturnal head-dresses of Rockland flowered out of them like so many developments of the Nightblooming Cereus. White cotton caps and red bandanna handkerchiefs were the prevailing forms of efflorescence. The main point was that the village was waked up. The old Doctor always ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)

... which the European would prefer boarding, and, as a rule, it is clean—no fear of pythogenie from here! The pent-shaped roof of rafters and thatch is water-tight except when the host of rats disturb it by their nocturnal gambols. ...
— Two Trips to Gorilla Land and the Cataracts of the Congo Volume 1 • Richard F. Burton

... using his crutch once more to assist his locomotion. In his other hand he gripped a tremendous horse pistol, the very size of which must have sent a shiver through any nocturnal prowler. ...
— The Airplane Boys among the Clouds - or, Young Aviators in a Wreck • John Luther Langworthy

... roosting-place of the migratory pigeon, as one which shall supply them with an unbounded quantity of provisions, in the quality of which they are not particularly chary. Nor are these roosting-places attractive to the Indians only, for the settlers near them also pay them nocturnal visits. They come with guns, clubs, pots of suffocating materials, and every other means of destruction that can well be imagined to be within their command, and procure immense quantities of the birds in a very short time. These they stuff ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII. No. 3. March 1848 • Various

... am I a beast for? If you had happened, says Fra Lippo, to catch Cosimo in a frolic like this, of course you would have said nothing; but you think a monk is a beast if he indulges in these nocturnal pleasures. Yet why should the fact that I break monastic rules make you consider me a beast? Just let me tell you how I ...
— Selections from the Poems and Plays of Robert Browning • Robert Browning

... sleep? Night hath better sweets to prove; Venus now wakes, and wakens Love. Come, let us our rights begin; 'Tis only daylight that makes sin, Which these dun shades will ne'er report. Hail, goddess of nocturnal sport, Dark-veiled Cotytto, to whom the secret flame Of midnight torches burns! mysterious dame, 130 That ne'er art called but when the dragon womb Of Stygian darkness spets her thickest gloom, ...
— Milton's Comus • John Milton

... Tulasne Torrubia sphecocephala.[N] About twenty-five species of this genus of sphaeriaceous fungi have been described as parasitic on insects. Five species are recorded in South Carolina, one in Pennsylvania, found on the larvae of the May-bug, and one other North American species on Nocturnal Lepidoptera, one in Cayenne, one in Brazil, on the larva of a Cicada, and one on a species of ant, two in the West Indies, one in New Guinea on a species of Coccus, and one on a species of Vespa in Senegal. In Australia two species ...
— Fungi: Their Nature and Uses • Mordecai Cubitt Cooke

... boulevard des Italiens, formerly known as the boulevard de Gand, as he lounged past the long line of chairs before the Cafe de Paris, where, mingled with a few women of the Chaussee d'Antin accompanied by their husbands and children, may be seen toward evening a cordon of nocturnal beauties waiting only a gloved hand to gather them, la Peyrade's heart received a cruel shock. From afar, he thought he ...
— The Lesser Bourgeoisie • Honore de Balzac

... in his pants, rifling the pockets, or rummaging in the drawers of the bureau, he would lay still and let her burgle, as long as she would keep still and not wake up his wife. Were it a male burglar, he would jump up, regardless of his nocturnal costume, and tell him to get out of there, but he would hesitate to get up before a female burglar. He would not feel like accosting the female burglar without an introduction. If he spoke to her familiarly, she would be justified in being indignant, and saying, ...
— Peck's Sunshine - Being a Collection of Articles Written for Peck's Sun, - Milwaukee, Wis. - 1882 • George W. Peck

... especially in the early autumn. I have one Guernsey specimen, however, killed near St. Samson's on the 28th September, 1876.[39] As far as I can make out the Manx Shearwater does not breed in any part of the Channel Islands, but being rather of nocturnal habits at its breeding-stations, and remaining in the holes and under the rocks where its eggs are during the day, it may not have been seen during the breeding-season; but did it breed anywhere in the Islands more birds, both old and young, ...
— Birds of Guernsey (1879) • Cecil Smith

... rest of the day on business so urgent that I had not leisure to think much on the nocturnal adventure to which I had plighted my honor. I dined alone, and very late, and while dining, read, as is my habit. I selected one of the volumes of Macaulay's Essays. I thought to myself that I would take the book with me; there was so much of the healthfulness in the style, and practical ...
— The Best Ghost Stories • Various

... to Medora taking a neighboring cowboy named Pete Marlow along as witness, "for the Marquis is a hard man to deal with," remarked Merrifield. To Pete it was all the gayest sort of adventure. He confided the object of the nocturnal expedition to the first man ...
— Roosevelt in the Bad Lands • Hermann Hagedorn

... motor-car stop outside. No one, however, thought it worth while to discontinue his labours for long enough to look out and see who this nocturnal visitor might be. In a very short time, however, these labours were disturbed. From room to room, Julian, with Catherine and the Bishop, for whom they had called on the way, passed with a brief message. No one made any difficulty about ...
— The Devil's Paw • E. Phillips Oppenheim

... waited, the monotonous trench-life to accomplish the rapid nocturnal raids or the formidable exploits of the great days and weeks of offensive, required more than that brilliant quality of our fathers, the furia francese that was the synonym of overwhelming courage and the ardor ...
— World's War Events, Volume III • Various

... do not fully comprehend which makes sleep at night more restful than sleep during the daylight. Those who go to bed at midnight or thereafter use several hours of daylight in the early morning for sleeping. I realize that there are nocturnal animals and that the human race has developed nocturnal habits to a certain extent, but the human race and the animal life of the world generally have followed the habit through the ages of sleeping at night. Without doubt a revolutionary change in this ...
— Vitality Supreme • Bernarr Macfadden

... long winter evenings in Greenwich and Peckham. But playing a one-stringed violin at fairs and public-houses could not be more than a relaxation to a man of Peace's active temper, who had once tasted what many of those who have practised it, describe as the fascination of that particular form of nocturnal adventure known by the unsympathetic name of burglary. Among the exponents of the art Peace was at this time known as a "portico-thief," that is to say one who contrived to get himself on to the portico of a house and from that point of vantage make his entrance into the premises. During the year ...
— A Book of Remarkable Criminals • H. B. Irving

... sayd I, "here's Enough that she could affix no Meaning to, nor I neither, without your condescending to explayn it—Cycle, Epicycle, nocturnal Rhomb." ...
— Mary Powell & Deborah's Diary • Anne Manning

... reviewers, the overgrowth of meticulousness in their peerings for an opinion, as if it were a cultivated habit in them to scrutinize the tool-marks and be blind to the building, to hearken for the key-creaks and be deaf to the diapason, to judge the landscape by a nocturnal exploration with a flash-lantern. In other words, to carry on the old game of sampling the poem or drama by quoting the worst line or worst passage only, in ignorance or not of Coleridge's proof that a versification ...
— Late Lyrics and Earlier • Thomas Hardy

... were pretty serious obstacles, but even were they all successfully overcome it did not follow that they would have solved the problem. The faked props might be loaded up and forwarded to some other depot, and, if so, this other depot might be by no means easy to find. Further, if it were found, nocturnal observation of what went on ...
— The Pit Prop Syndicate • Freeman Wills Crofts

... into a sort of nocturnal illumination, and shuffling away, in the loose shoes, to the keeping of which on her feet the better half of the best energies of her life were directed, gave out that she ...
— Chanticleer - A Thanksgiving Story of the Peabody Family • Cornelius Mathews

... finest esculent lies buried—and the chattering little opossums stripped the peach-trees of their wealth, in which labour of love they were eagerly assisted by the flying-foxes during the night, whilst any that had escaped these nocturnal depredators became the spoil of two or three idle boys, who loafed about all day, seeking mischief, and, as always happens, succeeding in finding it, even in this sequestered region. From this it will be seen that my efforts ...
— Australian Search Party • Charles Henry Eden

... ministers of L'n. B————te's years would choose to dismiss unsatisfied. This is not the age of continence, and I am persuaded that any man who sees and converses with the amiable Madame Very, if he do not envy the Minister the nocturnal sacrifice, will, on contemplating the elegance of her arrangements, at least allow that this spot of ground has not been disposed ...
— Paris As It Was and As It Is • Francis W. Blagdon

... oft-times served him with a change, when rough The winter's blast and terrible arose. So was Ulysses bedded, and the youths Slept all beside him; but the master-swain Chose not his place of rest so far remote From his rude charge, but to the outer court With his nocturnal furniture, repair'd, Gladd'ning Ulysses' heart that one so true 640 In his own absence kept his rural stores. Athwart his sturdy shoulders, first, he flung His faulchion keen, then wrapp'd him in a cloak Thick-woven, winter-proof; he lifted, next, The ...
— The Odyssey of Homer • Homer

... being fortified and many Turks work every night on trenches, redoubts and entanglements. Not one single living soul has been seen, since the engagement of our Marines at the end of February, although each morning brings forth fresh evidences of nocturnal activity, in patches of freshly turned up soil. All landing places are now commanded by lines of trenches and are ranged by field guns and howitzers, which, thus far, cannot be located as our naval seaplanes are too heavy to rise out of rifle range. There has been a muddle ...
— Gallipoli Diary, Volume I • Ian Hamilton

... tormented with fear, which is vain if no danger comes; and if it does, only augments the pain! It was my happiness to be destitute of this afflicting passion, with which I had the greatest reason to be affected. The prowling wolves diverted my nocturnal hours with perpetual howlings, and the various species of animals in this vast forest, in the day-time were continually in my view. Thus I was surrounded with plenty in the midst of want. I was happy in the midst of dangers and inconveniences. ...
— Daniel Boone - The Pioneer of Kentucky • John S. C. Abbott

... be superstitious at all. This new departure intensified the strain and went far to make faint many a heart that had until then remained stout. The guns were fired with longer intervals between the shots; the shells did not follow on the top of one another as in the day; but one nocturnal projectile excited as much terror as did ten when the sun was shining. Far into the night—for hours after midnight—the war was waged, and sleep denied the pleasure of steeping our "senses in forgetfulness." To sleep was nearly impossible, and at the first peep of dawn to recline ...
— The Siege of Kimberley • T. Phelan

... are not half the evils with which you have to contend. You are pestered with nocturnal visitants far more disagreeable than even the mosquitoes, and must put up with annoyances more disgusting than the crowded, close room. And then, to appease the cravings of hunger, fat pork is served to you three times a day. No wonder that the Jews eschewed the vile animal; they were people ...
— Roughing it in the Bush • Susanna Moodie

... is flightless, its breast-muscles being so small as to be practically useless. Its habits are nocturnal, and it has a ring of feathers arranged round the eye, giving it a curious resemblance to an owl, whence the name owl-parrot ...
— A Dictionary of Austral English • Edward Morris

... in strengthening silver, and the sky showed in stripes of bright, nocturnal blue between the black stripes of the pines about the castle. Flowers of some wide and feathery sort—for he had never noticed such things before—were at once luminous and discoloured by the moonshine, and seemed indescribably fantastic as they clustered, as if crawling about the roots of the trees. ...
— The Wisdom of Father Brown • G. K. Chesterton

... squirrels are more or less active all winter, though very shy, and, I am inclined to think, partially nocturnal in their habits. Here a gray one has just passed,—came down that tree and went up this; there he dug for a beechnut, and left the burr on the snow. How did he know where to dig? During an unusually severe winter I have known him to make long ...
— Squirrels and Other Fur-Bearers • John Burroughs

... Sir St Vincent Cotton (the ex-driver of the Brighton coach) from Sir Stapleton Cotton (the Peninsular hero) will go for little in such matters; and as for Copley, Lord Lyndhurst (just then promoted from the Rolls to the Woolsack), why not say at once that he attended the nocturnal sittings at ...
— The Gaming Table: Its Votaries and Victims - Volume I (of II) • Andrew Steinmetz

... making my nocturnal preparations, complete enough to insure comfort, I remember lazily musing upon the horrified, scandalized countenances some good friends would present, could they know how easily I was discarding all previous ...
— Six Days on the Hurricane Deck of a Mule - An account of a journey made on mule back in Honduras, - C.A. in August, 1891 • Almira Stillwell Cole

... to become smeared with whitewash from a wall. Yet all this passed as unnoticed as though it had never been done. Finally, Chichikov sniffed into his superior's family and domestic life, and learnt that he possessed a grown-up daughter on whose face also there had taken place a nocturnal, diabolical grinding of peas. HERE was a quarter whence a fresh attack might be delivered! After ascertaining what church the daughter attended on Sundays, our hero took to contriving to meet her in a neat suit and a well-starched dickey: and soon ...
— Dead Souls • Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol

... bright within; the wine had coloured Gotthold's cheek; dim forms of forest trees, dwindling and spiring, scarves of the starry sky, now wide and now narrow, raced past the windows, through one that was left open the air of the woods came in with a nocturnal raciness; and the roll of wheels and the tune of the trotting horses sounded merrily on the ear. Toast followed toast; glass after glass was bowed across and emptied by the trio; and presently there began to fall upon them a ...
— Prince Otto • Robert Louis Stevenson

... they had been feasting together, when they were really asleep in their Beds, does a little puzzle them, so as that they are necessitated to take up with this Conclusion, [44]That by an extraordinary Permission of God, innocent Persons may be represented by Satan in the Nocturnal Conventicles of Witches: And if so, much more as afflicting bewitched Persons. Delrio giveth an account of an innocent Monk, whose Reputation was indangered by a Daemon's appearing in his shape. He writes more like a Divine than Jesuits use ...
— The Wonders of the Invisible World • Cotton Mather

... in its dark aureole of hair, her strange eyes and bitter-sweet lips—all dimmed, as it were, by drowsiness and smoke, and yet never more intelligently awake than at these nocturnal hours—remained with him as most typical of Helen's most significant and charming self. It was her aspect of mystery and that faint hint of bitterness that he found so charming; Helen herself he never thought of as mysterious. Mystery was a mere outward asset of her beauty, like ...
— Franklin Kane • Anne Douglas Sedgwick

... this river, and on the shores of the snow-brook, they found roots of decayed junipers, rock-willows, and moor-weed, which they collected together to a place outside the cave, where they kindled the nocturnal watch-fire. ...
— Strife and Peace • Fredrika Bremer

... feelings of a man of forty-five, who is loved for himself, under the most flattering and unexpected conditions, one can comprehend the object of this nocturnal walk and the long pause that Henri made beneath the windows of Zibeline's apartment. A small garden, protected by a light fence, was the only obstacle that separated them. But how much more insuperable was the barrier which his own principles had raised ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet

... worship represent goblins which appear to them in the darkness, leading them into foolish errors; for they make images, in the forms of seated figures, out of plaited cotton, tightly stuffed inside, to represent these nocturnal goblins and which resemble those our artists ...
— De Orbe Novo, Volume 1 (of 2) - The Eight Decades of Peter Martyr D'Anghera • Trans. by Francis Augustus MacNutt

... we are told the faculty in Madrid were about the middle of the last century, when the inhabitants were directed, by royal proclamation, to build proper places of retirement to their houses, instead of emptying their nocturnal machines out of the windows into the streets. The inhabitants took it into their heads to consider this order as a great affront, and a direct violation of the rights of man; but the doctors were the most strenuous opposers of the measure, having no doubt very cogent ...
— Travels in China, Containing Descriptions, Observations, and Comparisons, Made and Collected in the Course of a Short Residence at the Imperial Palace of Yuen-Min-Yuen, and on a Subsequent Journey thr • John Barrow

... adjoining closet; when he threw himself heavily upon his bed, it crashed in, and at the same instant the play of the string made the can of water do its effective work. The victim at the same time of a fall, and of a nocturnal shower-bath, Carrat cried out against his double misfortune. "This is horrible," he yelled at the top of his voice; while Hortense maliciously said aloud to her mother, Madame de Crigny (afterwards Madame Denon), Madame Charvet, and to several others in the room, "Oh, ...
— The Private Life of Napoleon Bonaparte, Complete • Constant

... was alarmed at the prospect. She did not mind in the least what the English might have to say about it afterward; but to have her little house the center of nocturnal feuds, with her husband using his six-shooters, and heaven only knew what bloodshed resulting, was more of a prospect than ...
— Guns of the Gods • Talbot Mundy

... lavatory, and then if any one comes he'll make clang enough to wake the dead; and while he's amusing himself with this, there'll be lots of time to 'extinguish the superfluous abundance of the nocturnal illuminators.' Eh?" ...
— Eric, or Little by Little • Frederic W. Farrar

... of a narrow staircase—decidedly lacking in the white and gold of the other, the public one—I waited, for another age. The staircase was lighted by one sickly gas jet and the street outside was dark and dirty. I waited on the narrow sidewalk, listening to the roar of nocturnal Montmartre around the corner, to the beating of my own heart, and for her footstep on ...
— Kent Knowles: Quahaug • Joseph C. Lincoln

... from the pitfall the high grass was swaying gently; some creature was passing along toward the pitfall and a thing of no slight size. Every eye of the quartet was strained now to learn what might be the interloper upon the scene. It was nearly dark, but the eyes of the cave men, almost nocturnal in their adaptation as they were, distinguished a long, dark body emerging from the reeds and circling curiously and cautiously around the pitfall; nearer and nearer it approached the helpless prisoner until perhaps twenty ...
— The Story of Ab - A Tale of the Time of the Cave Man • Stanley Waterloo

... The nocturnal visitors seemed unacquainted with the building, for, after two or three steps had been taken, one lighted a match. It was evident to the detective that these visitors were reading the names on the doors as they progressed along the corridor, ...
— Philo Gubb Correspondence-School Detective • Ellis Parker Butler

... was all Tina could get out of him. She noticed, too, what her blind infatuation had prevented her observing before, that there was a fierce expression in his eyes when he set out on these nocturnal rambles, and that on his return the corners of his mouth and his long finger-nails were always smeared with blood. Furthermore, she noticed that although he was concerned about the appetites of herself and the children, he ate ...
— Werwolves • Elliott O'Donnell

... morning following Whitmore's strange nocturnal excursion, Collins's alarm clock set up an ear-splitting din at a most unwonted hour. On retiring the previous night Collins had set the alarm for seven-thirty, an hour at which he usually attained his ...
— The Substitute Prisoner • Max Marcin

... nightly visitors who have awakened the child to set it on the chamber so that it may not wet the bed, or have lifted the cover in order to see clearly how the child is holding its hands while sleeping. I have been able to induce an exact recollection of the nocturnal visitor in the analysis of some of these anxiety dreams. The robbers were always the father, the ghosts more probably corresponded to feminine persons with ...
— Dream Psychology - Psychoanalysis for Beginners • Sigmund Freud

... a military inquiry was improvised. By this tribunal, nineteen Wexford, and nine Kildare Yeomanry, were ordered to be shot, and the execution of the sentence followed immediately on its rending. At Blessington, the town was seized, but a nocturnal attack on Carlow was repulsed with great loss. In this last affair, the rebels had rendezvoused in the domain of Sir Edward Crosbie, within two miles of the town. Here arms were distributed and orders given by their leader, named Roche. Silently and quickly they ...
— A Popular History of Ireland - From the earliest period to the emancipation of the Catholics • Thomas D'Arcy McGee

... with the heavenly viaticum,* he prepared for the entrance into another life, and asked how near the time was when the brothers were to be awakened to sing the nocturnal praises of our Lord. ...
— English Literature For Boys And Girls • H.E. Marshall

... of a jungle which stretched up to our very camp. Troops of rollicking wa-was or gibbons frequented the forest; squirrels, tupaias, birds and insects in myriads were everywhere during the day. Great fruit-bats, flying lemurs, owls and other nocturnal creatures made the evenings and nights full ...
— Our Vanishing Wild Life - Its Extermination and Preservation • William T. Hornaday

... these, all stout, hulking young fellows nearly as old as Bog. They took a fancy to bill posting, and worked industriously and faithfully at it, because it was nocturnal, mysterious, romantic. The half dollar which they each received for a night's labor, enabled them to lounge about the streets all day in glorious indolence. Sometimes there was a prodigious rush of business, and then the firm were obliged to hire ...
— Round the Block • John Bell Bouton

... through twilit chambers and passages filled with sheeted objects, past miles of counters inhabited by thousands of chairs, through doors whose openings resounded strangely in the vast nocturnal silence of Hugo's, till they came to the Medical and Pharmaceutical Department. And the Medical and Pharmaceutical Department, in its night-garb, and illuminated by a single jet at either end of it, seemed to take on a kind of ghostly and scented ...
— Hugo - A Fantasia on Modern Themes • Arnold Bennett

... heathen superstitions, but theologic reasoning wrought into them an orthodox significance. As an example of this mixture of heathen with Christian magic, we may cite the following from a medieval medical book as a salve against "nocturnal goblin visitors": "Take hop plant, wormwood, bishopwort, lupine, ash-throat, henbane, harewort, viper's bugloss, heathberry plant, cropleek, garlic, grains of hedgerife, githrife, and fennel. Put these worts into a vessel, set them under the altar, sing ...
— History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom • Andrew Dickson White

... there was that rippling of the ropes through the blocks, as our mainsail rose up high against the moon and filled proudly with the steady northeast breeze we had been waiting for. The water began to talk along our sides, and the immense freshness of the nocturnal sea took us in its huge embrace. The spray began to fly over our bows as we nosed into the glassy rollers, one of which, on the starboard side, admonished us, by half swallowing us, that only the mighty-limbed immortals might dance with safety on the ...
— Pieces of Eight • Richard le Gallienne

... Mr. Creake's nocturnal habits was cut off, greatly to Mr. Carlyle's annoyance, by a cough of unmistakable significance from the foot of the stairs. They had heard a trade cart drive up to the gate, a knock at the door, and the heavy-footed woman tramp ...
— Four Max Carrados Detective Stories • Ernest Bramah

... be either General Resemblance to surrounding objects or Special Resemblance to definite objects. The plain sandy colour of desert animals, the snow white of the inhabitants of the arctic regions, the inconspicuous hues of nocturnal animals, the stripes of the tiger and the zebra, the spots of the leopard and the giraffe have all a cryptic effect which at a very short distance renders the creatures invisible amid their natural surroundings. Nor is it necessary in order to attain this ...
— The Naturalist in Nicaragua • Thomas Belt

... enthusiastical state, full of confidence, and accessible only to such a portion of fear as served rather to keep up a state of pleasurable emotion than to generate anguish and distress, during the whole of this nocturnal expedition. After a walk of three hours, I arrived, without accident, at the village from which I hoped to have taken my passage for the metropolis. At this early hour every thing was quiet; no sound of any thing human saluted my ear. It was with difficulty that ...
— Caleb Williams - Things As They Are • William Godwin

... the refractory shutter of No. 7—the best bedroom adjoining the sitting-room. The next room, No. 8, was vacant. Jeff entered it softly, as softly opened the window, and leaning far out in the tempest, essayed to secure the nocturnal disturber. But in vain. Cord or rope he had none, nor could he procure either without alarming his aunt—an extremity not to be considered. Jeff was a man of clumsy but forceful expedients. He hung far out of the window, and with one powerful hand lifted the shutter off its hinges and ...
— Jeff Briggs's Love Story • Bret Harte

... animal, with a furry tail by which he can suspend himself on the branches of trees, while it assists him to make rapid progress among them. He is fond of hiding himself in the holes of decayed trees, out of which it is no easy matter to smoke him. Being a nocturnal animal he is more generally captured during the day-time, for the bright light of the sun puzzles him and he knows not in what direction to make ...
— Adventures in Australia • W.H.G. Kingston

... glow-worm, to guide the lover, lights its beacon "like a spark fallen from the full moon"; but "presently the light grows feebler, and fades to a discreet nightlight, while all around the host of nocturnal creatures, delayed in their affairs, ...
— Fabre, Poet of Science • Dr. G.V. (C.V.) Legros

... irritated his nerves, and preyed upon his quiet. He thought to break through the spell by inviting a party of living guests. They came, to the number of thirty or forty; but not for their presence did the invisible revellers intermit their nocturnal visit. All heard the approach of the carriage, the steps ascending the staircase, the sounds of revelry in the hall. And all, when the opened door disclosed, as wont, but darkness and silence, turned ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 16, No. 97, November, 1865 • Various

... sorts of things that had come to him in that vast gulf of nocturnal thinking was some vivid self-examination. At last he got to that. He had been dragged down to very elemental things indeed by the manifest completeness of Lady Harman's return to her husband. He had had at last to look at himself starkly for the male he was, to go beneath ...
— The Wife of Sir Isaac Harman • H. G. (Herbert George) Wells

... usual concert of mosquitoes, all kinds of insects and frogs, in such innumerable quantities that the din made by them collectively was so loud as to resemble the sound of an iron foundry or a battle-ship in course of construction, the sounds produced by the millions of nocturnal singers being quite metallic and reproducing exactly the sound of hammers driving rivets into the steel plates of a ship. Whether it was done purposely or accidentally I do not know, but those little water creatures ...
— Across Unknown South America • Arnold Henry Savage Landor

... as the roar of a cannon will waken the vibrations of harp-strings. Around where they stood was the peace of the night and sleep. The perfume of violets and hyacinths, and of myriads of opening buds seemed shed by the moon with her silvery rays through the soft, dewy air; a few nocturnal insects droned hither and thither, and "drowsy tinklings lulled the ...
— The Red Acorn • John McElroy

... disturbed me most was the fearful hubbub which came from the camp below. Many of the tropical African tribes are really semi-nocturnal in their habits, I suppose because there the night is cooler than the day, and on any great ...
— Allan and the Holy Flower • H. Rider Haggard

... rang the chimes of the village clock, from the tall steeple-tower of the quaint old church of Wimbledon, while several ambitious chickens rose from their neighboring perches, piped a shrill answering salute, and sank to their nocturnal slumbers again. But nor clock nor chanticleer disturbed Wimbledon. Still she slept on beneath the blossoming stars; and by their soft, inspiring light, with your permission, gentle reader, we'll ...
— Eventide - A Series of Tales and Poems • Effie Afton

... their manliness! they have slain the enemies of the celestials—those Rakshasas capable of assuming any form at will, such as were headed by Hidimva and Kirmira! When those high-souled ones went from hence that Rakshasa of fierce soul obstructed their nocturnal path even like an immoveable hill. And even as a tiger slayeth a little deer, Bhima, that foremost of all endued with strength, and ever delighted in fight, slew that monster. Consider also, O king, how while ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 1 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli

... take a stroll along some favourite path or road. One night as I was wandering slowly along the path leading through the groves of Pen y Coed I was startled by an unearthly cry—it was the shout of the dylluan or owl, as it flitted over the tops of the trees on its nocturnal business. ...
— Wild Wales - Its People, Language and Scenery • George Borrow

... "that they speak evil of your nocturnal excursions. Are you sure that they are wrong? Has nothing happened in those romantic grottoes and by-paths in the forest? Have you never accepted the arm of an unknown as you accepted mine? Was it merely charity that served as your divinity in that beautiful temple of verdure ...
— The Confession of a Child of The Century • Alfred de Musset

... the power to veto Bills of every mosquito; Then I'd pass a peaceful summer, With no small nocturnal hummer Feasting on my circulation, For his ...
— The Wit of Women - Fourth Edition • Kate Sanborn

... resonant here, and it is reasonable to surmise that owls hooted in the cedar-trees that hung over the tawny sedges of the swamp. "Jack-o'-Lantern" was the only inhabitant who burned gas hereabouts in those times, and he manufactured his own. The nocturnal raccoon edged his way through the alders here, in the old summer nights, and the muskrat built his house among the reeds. Not a raccoon nor a muskrat is the wayfarer likely to meet with here to-night; but the gray rat of civilization ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 121, November, 1867 • Various

... moors it is not hard at midnight, through the roaring of the wind, or in the stillness of a calm night broken only by the weird cry of some nocturnal bird or the distant sound of a rushing stream, to imagine, far away, the ...
— Legend Land, Volume 2 • Various

... The place had never seemed to him more impressive. One-half of the gigantic circus was in deep shade, the other was sleeping in the luminous dusk. As he stood there he began to murmur Byron's famous lines, out of "Manfred," but before he had finished his quotation he remembered that if nocturnal meditations in the Colosseum are recommended by the poets, they are deprecated by the doctors. The historic atmosphere was there, certainly; but the historic atmosphere, scientifically considered, was no better than a villainous miasma. Winterbourne walked ...
— Daisy Miller • Henry James

... men took up their tea and returned to their chess. Vera Lvovna returned from the drawing-room; and, taking a seat on the sofa beside her husband, sat there without stirring, with the fixed, motionless eyes of a nocturnal bird. ...
— Tales of the Wilderness • Boris Pilniak

... attendant Spirit, the Lady and the Brothers were performed by Lord Bridgewater's youthful children, whose own nocturnal bewilderment in Haywood Forest, could we trust a tradition, doubted by the critics, but supported by the choice of the neighbourhood of Severn as the scene of the drama, had suggested his theme to Milton. He is ...
— Life of John Milton • Richard Garnett

... herself to be pulled onward, but remembering Molly's previous encounter upon the same spot, was curious enough to demand an explanation of Rupert's nocturnal rambles when they had reached the haven of Sophia's bedroom. It was very simple, but it struck her as exceedingly pathetic and confirmed her in her opinion of the unreasonableness of ...
— The Light of Scarthey • Egerton Castle

... of the roach when I visit my kitchen. His habits, to be sure, are nocturnal. But, then, so are mine. However, with a little arranging, it is simple to prevent awkward clashes. I do not like cockroaches on my table at supper, for instance. Very well, I merely get me a table with ...
— The Crow's Nest • Clarence Day, Jr.

... rarely seen at any other spot than this was the painted snipe, a prettily-marked species with a green curved bill. It has curiously sluggish habits, rising only when almost trodden upon, and going off in a wild sacred manner like a nocturnal species, then dropping again into hiding at a short distance. The natives call it dormilon—sleepy-head. On one side of the lagoon, where the ground was swampy and wet, there was always a breeding-colony of these quaint birds; at every few yards one would spring up close ...
— Far Away and Long Ago • W. H. Hudson

... give the breast to fairy babes, and handsome young men are spirited away to become bridegrooms to fairy brides. Again, folk suffering from falling sickness are supposed to be in that condition owing to the fatigue caused by nocturnal rides through the air with the fairies, whose steeds are bewitched rushes, blades of grass, straws, fern roots, and cabbage stalks. The latter, to be serviceable for the purpose, should be cut into the rude shapes of horses before ...
— The Glories of Ireland • Edited by Joseph Dunn and P.J. Lennox

... day, after an extra heavy nocturnal bombardment, we went out in search of a melon. A shell had shattered her impromptu showcase, dislocated a wall on one side of the archway, which menaced immediate collapse. In fact, ...
— With Those Who Wait • Frances Wilson Huard

... Venus," said Nern, as his eyes took on a worried expression, "are unable to leave their homes after nightfall due to some strange nocturnal beast which attacks them and vampirishly drains all blood from their veins, leaving the dead bodies ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science April 1930 • Various

... too, that women who were very poor sometimes let men do this thing to them for money: such were the women whom she saw in John Square, when she came back late from a meeting or a concert, leaning against the garden-railings, their backs to the lovely nocturnal mystery of groves and moonlit lawns, and their faces turned to the line of rich men's houses which mounted out of the night like a tall, impregnable fortress. Some were grey-haired. Such traffic was perilous as it was ugly, for somehow there were babies who were born blind because of it! ...
— The Judge • Rebecca West

... hour something unusual—prompted too by a presentiment of something wrong, and apprehensive on the score of Ralph's safety—a curiosity not, surely, under these circumstances, discreditable, to know what was going on, determined her to ascertain something more of the character of the nocturnal visitation. She felt secured from the strangeness of the occurrence, that evil was afoot, and solicitous for its prevention, she was persuaded to the measure solely ...
— Guy Rivers: A Tale of Georgia • William Gilmore Simms

... in these Popish Countrys, that a man cannot have liberty to steal to a Wench without danger; not that I need fear who sees me except Galliard, who suspecting my business, will go near to think I am wickedly inclin'd. Sir Signal I have left hard at his Study, and Sir Henry is no nocturnal Inamorato, unless like me he dissemble it.—Well, certo, 'tis a wonderful pleasure to deceive the World: And as a learned Man well observ'd, that the Sin of Wenching lay in the Habit only; I having laid that aside, Timothy Tickletext, principal Holder-forth ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn, Vol. II • Aphra Behn

... culinary matters, which Mrs. Dods deemed a heresy; and then the very house rang with their disputes. Again, his bed must necessarily be made at a certain angle from the pillow to the footposts; and the slightest deviation from this disturbed, he said, his nocturnal rest, and did certainly ruffle his temper. He was equally whimsical about the brushing of his clothes, the arrangement of the furniture in his apartment, and a thousand minutiae, which, in conversation, ...
— St. Ronan's Well • Sir Walter Scott

... legitimate coupes, in which couples can quarrel without caring for the eyes of pedestrians, because the civil code gives a right to provoke, or beat, or kiss, a wife in a carriage or elsewhere, anywhere, everywhere! How many secrets must be revealed in this way to nocturnal pedestrians,—to those young fellows who have gone to a ball in a carriage, but are obliged, for whatever cause it may be, to return on foot. It was the first time that Jules and Clemence had been together thus,—each ...
— Ferragus • Honore de Balzac

... out with great difficulty, except in such cases as the nocturnal animals, which simply become one with their surroundings. Mice, rats, moles, and bats wear overcoats that are very inconspicuous, and when suddenly approached they appear almost invisible. Some of the North American Indians claimed that buffaloes made their calves wallow in the red ...
— The Human Side of Animals • Royal Dixon

... now at my watch, I found that I had been longer a witness of these trials of skill and fortune, than I had been aware; and on leaving the booth, perceived that the sun had sunk behind the western mountains, and that the earth began to beam with her nocturnal splendour. Those who had come from a distance, were already hurrying back with their carts; and here and there light cars, of various forms and colours, and drawn by dogs, were conveying those away whose object had been amusement. ...
— A Voyage to the Moon • George Tucker

... Thee;— But the ages their impotence show, We stand still, while no way we can see. If in sickness for succor we thirst, Is there balm in the dreams that have burst? Stars of hope and of longing eternal, That we saw o'er life's sorrows arisen, Shall they sink in death's terrors nocturnal, Only turn ...
— Poems and Songs • Bjornstjerne Bjornson

... at Exeter Hall on some instances of the "power of God as manifested in His animal creation"—for a very nice notice of this curious quadruped. In one of the French journals, there was an excellent account given of the peculiar habits of the little nocturnal creature. In those tropical countries the trees are tenanted by countless varieties of created things. Their wood affords rich feeding to the large, fat, pulpy grubs of beetles of the families Buprestidae, Dynastidae, Passalidae, and, above all, ...
— Heads and Tales • Various

... damp upon their joyful congratulations when they learned from Martin the mode in which he had obtained this treasure, to which their own experience of the nocturnal vision induced them to give full credit. But they were unable to resist the temptation of sharing in their brother's wealth. Taking now upon him as head of the house, Martin Waldeck bought lands and forests, built a castle, obtained a patent ...
— The Antiquary, Complete • Sir Walter Scott

... of the nerves Has ever yet been found, For him who like a menial serves Dull lesson's daily round; But gnawing friction, stern and gaunt, Tears flesh and brain away, While ghosts nocturnal ever haunt A soul with fell dismay, Whose mercenary greed has led Itself into a snare That counts by scores its strangled ...
— Our Profession and Other Poems • Jared Barhite

... I know not I perceive that the night itself is irrevocably overthrown. It is suddenly revealed to me by the weary pallor of the street lamps that the streets are silent and nocturnal still, not because there is any strength in night, but because men have not yet arisen from sleep to defy him. So have I seen dejected and untidy guards still bearing antique muskets in palatial gateways, although the realms of the monarch that they guard have shrunk to a single province which no ...
— A Dreamer's Tales • Lord Dunsany [Edward J. M. D. Plunkett]

... hind-quarters, is coarse and somewhat rough; the colour being generally rufous brown. The molar teeth have cylindrical crowns, with several islands and a single lateral fold of enamel when worn. In habits agoutis are nocturnal, dwelling in forests, where they conceal themselves during the day in hollow tree-trunks, or in burrows among roots. Active and graceful in their movements, their pace is either a kind of trot or a series of springs following ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia

... idea which she had taken into her head of going up to the attic at once and fetching down the case with the letters seemed to her to be almost venturesome. She was afraid that some one in the house might observe her on her nocturnal pilgrimage, and might take her for mad. She could, of course, go up the next morning quite conveniently and without causing any stir; and so she fell asleep, feeling like a child who has been promised an outing into the country ...
— Bertha Garlan • Arthur Schnitzler

... "The invitation is a godsend, I have not viewed the inside of a restaurant for a week. While our pal Pitou is banqueting with his progenitors in Chartres, I have even exhausted my influence with the fishmonger—I did not so much as see my way to a nocturnal herring in the garret. Mind you are not late. I shall come prepared to do justice to your hospitality, ...
— A Chair on The Boulevard • Leonard Merrick

... their vigilance. Notwithstanding this care it was not an infrequent thing for the watch to be caught napping. On one occasion a collier brig had been windbound for several days in the Yarmouth roads. The mate was accustomed to pay nocturnal visits on deck, and had suspected that a great deal of napping was done before the galley fire, and he had his suspicion confirmed when coming up one night unexpectedly, and, stealthily making his way to the galley, he found both doors closed; no one was to be seen anywhere; he looked ...
— The Shellback's Progress - In the Nineteenth Century • Walter Runciman

... this theory all the more probable, images and symbols of the cat were dedicated to the moon, the moon being universally regarded as the quintessence of everything supernatural, the very cockpit, in fact, of mystery and spookism. The nocturnal habits of the cat, its love of prowling about during moonlight hours, and the spectacle of its two round, gleaming eyes, may, of course, as Plutarch seems to have thought, have suggested to the Egyptians human influence and analogy, ...
— Animal Ghosts - Or, Animal Hauntings and the Hereafter • Elliott O'Donnell

... recesses and vast cellars where cargoes were stored on their way to London. In many cases, in the old days, these houses were "haunted," to put forth the legend of a ghost being the simplest way not only of accounting for such nocturnal noises as might be occasioned by the arrival or departure of smugglers and tubs, but also of keeping inquisitive folks at bay. Only a little while ago, during alterations to an old cottage high on the hills near my home in Kent, corroboration was given to a legend crediting the place ...
— Highways & Byways in Sussex • E.V. Lucas

... stretched out; it was all covered with springtime and shade. Its sides were of incomparable softness. It was fragrant with solitude. The odor of nocturnal lilacs mingled with that which came from the heart of dark roses whence the hot ...
— Romance of the Rabbit • Francis Jammes

... were very diverting and naturally pleasing, but others involved so many dangers and such hardships that it is indeed surprising that the Caliph should ever again have ventured on these nocturnal ramblings. ...
— Tales of the Caliph • H. N. Crellin

... close by the escape, stood a small sentry-box, and the moment Frank came in sight of it he remembered that it was the nocturnal habitation of his friend Conductor Samuel Forest. Sam himself was leaning his arms on the lower half of his divided door, and gazing contemplatively along ...
— Fighting the Flames • R.M. Ballantyne

... seemed to him well taken. The Ambassador kept a desk also in his bedroom, and here his most important correspondence was attended to. Page's all-night self-communings before his wood fire have already been described, and he had another nocturnal occupation that was similarly absorbing. Many a night, after returning late from his office or from dinner, he would put on his dressing gown, sit at his bedroom desk, and start pouring forth his inmost thoughts in letters to the President, Colonel House, ...
— The Life and Letters of Walter H. Page, Volume II • Burton J. Hendrick

... superstitious feeling arose at this point, to usurp the office of reason, and she accounted for the strangeness of Miss Halliday's illness as she might have done had she lived in the sixteenth century, and been liable to the suspicion of nocturnal ...
— Charlotte's Inheritance • M. E. Braddon

... lantern, and had found the sleepy-looking "all night" bar-keeper on the point of withdrawing for the day on a mattress under the bar. An Indian half-breed, porter of the Mansion House, was washing out the stains of recent nocturnal dissipation from the bar-room and veranda; a few birds were twittering on the cotton-woods beside the river; a bolder few had alighted upon the veranda, and were trying to reconcile the existence of so much lemon-peel and cigar-stumps with their ideas of ...
— The Twins of Table Mountain and Other Stories • Bret Harte

... these three disappear, owing to the dulness of their senses, especially that of sight, and to the diurnal habit, which was an advantage to them, and enabled them to survive when rapacious animals, which are mostly nocturnal, were their only enemies. The fourth, and most important, is the hairy armadillo, with habits which are in strange contrast to those of its perishing congeners, and which seem to mock many hard-and-fast rules concerning animal life. It is omnivorous, and ...
— The Naturalist in La Plata • W. H. Hudson

... had or had not access to air and food, the ordinary conditions of toad life are exactly those under which the delusive appearance of venerable antiquity would be almost certain frequently to arise. The toad is a nocturnal animal; it lives through the daytime in dark and damp places; it shows a decided liking for crannies and crevices; it is wonderfully tenacious of life; it possesses the power of hibernation; it can live on extremely small quantities ...
— Falling in Love - With Other Essays on More Exact Branches of Science • Grant Allen

... a very exact representation of what were then the nocturnal amusements of a brothel;—so different are the manners of former and present times, that I much question whether a similar exhibition is now to be seen in any tavern of the metropolis. That we are less ...
— The Works of William Hogarth: In a Series of Engravings - With Descriptions, and a Comment on Their Moral Tendency • John Trusler

... the significance of which has often been emphasized by Freud and his school. The channels of urination and defecation are so close to the sexual centers that the intimate connection between the two groups is easily understood. There is undoubtedly a connection between nocturnal enuresis and sexual activities, sometimes masturbation. Children not infrequently believe that the sexual acts of their elders have some connection with urination and defecation, and the mystery with which the excretory acts are surrounded, helps ...
— Studies in Forensic Psychiatry • Bernard Glueck

... was a river-ghost just by the bridge which led to the cottage of the mad secretary of legation, Goethe, and which howled in the moonlight.[Footnote: This tradition of the ghost of the Ilm has been preserved in Weimar, since Goethe's nocturnal bath, until our time.—See Lewes, ...
— Old Fritz and the New Era • Louise Muhlbach

... the last. President Lincoln, in his first message, discussed, ably enough, the right of secession as a mere constitutional or legal right. Others have done the same before and since. The opinion of the lawyer is all very well, but it has no special potency to restrain the nocturnal activities of the burglar. All such discussions are, for the present behalf, utterly puerile. Secession, revolution, the bloody destruction and extinction of the whole nation, were for years before the war foregone determinations in the Southern ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol IV, Issue VI, December 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy. • Various

... up in bed, and stared steadily at the shine. An appearance of this sort, sufficient to excite attention anywhere, was no less than a marvel in Hintock, as Grace had known the hamlet. Almost every diurnal and nocturnal effect in that woodland place had hitherto been the direct result of the regular terrestrial roll which produced the season's changes; but here was something dissociated from these normal sequences, and foreign ...
— The Woodlanders • Thomas Hardy

... plantations in Manjarabad. As we left the falls, we passed, and close to the river pool above them, a tree covered with fruit which was being eaten by green pigeons and other birds, and on looking up into it I was surprised, as it is an animal of nocturnal habits, to see a large and beautiful flying squirrel peering at me with a quiet but by no means apprehensive eye. I was strongly tempted to shoot it for the sake of its skin, but my companion, who had been much affected by the beauties of ...
— Gold, Sport, And Coffee Planting In Mysore • Robert H. Elliot

... night was beautiful, the setting sun, the noise of frogs, the nocturnal insects beginning to pipe—all in some way called her girlhood back to her, though there was little in her girlhood to give her pleasure. Her large gray eyes (her only interesting feature) grew round, deep, and wistful as she saw ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 20, July, 1891 • Various

... It was rather and simply because she felt that this bronzed young stranger, seeming to her woman's instinct a sort of breezy incarnation of the outdoors, partook of none of the characteristics of the footpad, sneak thief or nocturnal gentleman of the road. An essential attribute of the boldest and most picturesque of that gentry was the quality of deceit and subterfuge and hypocrisy. Consecutive logical thought being, after all, ...
— Six Feet Four • Jackson Gregory

... out to Aberdeen Gully after breakfast. Here one feels comparatively safe, and we are enjoying the peace after our nocturnal shellings, and the thought of a good night's sleep braces one up wonderfully. Fiddes and I walked over to the Artillery Observation Post to see the extent of our advance, the other day, and I was surprised to find our front trenches so far forward. Some of these front ...
— The Incomparable 29th and the "River Clyde" • George Davidson

... on their perches as if not to be disturbed by such nonsense. The calf resting at the end of his pegged rope arose, looked about him and lay down again as if he would not be a party to poor Peter's absurd nocturnal enterprise. The darkness and the vastness of the wooded country seemed to chill Peter's hopes. Now that the gripping spell was over he ...
— Pee-wee Harris on the Trail • Percy Keese Fitzhugh

... mortality! Here lies an empire, here a town, here a people, here a hero! God alone is great, and the thought which seeks and adores him alone is imperishable upon earth. I feel no desire to make a nearer approach in daylight to the doubtful remains of the ruins of Troy. I prefer that nocturnal apparition, which allows the thought to re-people those deserts, and sheds over them only the distant light of the moon and of the poetry of Homer. And what concerns me Troy, its heroes, and its gods! That leaf of the heroic world is turned ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 349, November, 1844 • Various

... closeted with Goldmark, Old Man Curry was entertaining another nocturnal visitor. It was the Bald-faced Kid, breathless, his brow beaded ...
— Old Man Curry - Race Track Stories • Charles E. (Charles Emmett) Van Loan

... nocturnal conversation was that Mr. Hersebom resolved to call upon the doctor, and ask him what they could do to make amends for the error of which they ...
— The Waif of the "Cynthia" • Andre Laurie and Jules Verne

... lie closer to my heart! That I may feel thee near, As one who for his weapon feels In some nocturnal fear. ...
— The World's Best Poetry Volume IV. • Bliss Carman

... at night, I was again seated in my window. The house next door had been lighted since ten, and I was in momentary expectation of its nocturnal visitor. He came promptly at the hour set, alighted from the carriage with a bound, shut the carriage-door with a slam, and crossed the pavement with cheerful celerity. His figure was not so positively like, nor yet so positively unlike, that of the supposed murderer ...
— That Affair Next Door • Anna Katharine Green

... now busied himself with putting in order the stools and benches which the intruders, upon their entrance, had unceremoniously knocked over, and this he did with as cool and sturdy an air as if his nocturnal visitors had been friends and neighbours, instead of a troop of savages on their return from some bloody foray, and who might, as likely as not, add his scalp and those of his family to the other trophies of their expedition. When he had put the last stool in its ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 367, May 1846 • Various

... me state the eleventh point," exclaimed Joseph Speckbacher, with flashing eyes. "I intend to take part in carrying out this point of the programme. It is, to take the fortress of Kufstein on the frontier by a nocturnal coup de main. Field-Marshal Jellachich will move several companies of riflemen as close up to the fortress as possible, and Jacob Sieberer and Joseph Speckbacher, who will beforehand enlist assistants in the town and spy out every thing, will join them. The capture of ...
— Andreas Hofer • Lousia Muhlbach

... glad to be eased of this nocturnal attendance, and the abbess drew near, as softly as she could, to the arbour; and standing behind the covert of the greens of which it was composed, heard the consent Elgidia gave to accompany Natura, and saw her quit him, with a promise ...
— Life's Progress Through The Passions - Or, The Adventures of Natura • Eliza Fowler Haywood

... the people who frightened you so much, must surely have belonged to the band; that they had forced the trap-door, after a nocturnal expedition, on which they had been pursued as far as a subterranean entrance, which without doubt led to ...
— The House of the Combrays • G. le Notre

... neighbors, and a happy noisy evening with the children. But with what message, then, did he appear charged that the woman's mouth grew so stark? Her hands had jerked up as if they had been pulled with frantic wires; she seemed for the instant like a horrible puppet. Her scream was a thing from the nocturnal Sabbath. ...
— The Hill of Dreams • Arthur Machen

... to her feet and threw a gorgeous robe about her. "Come along, Sally! Let's go down and make some chocolate! I've come to crave nocturnal nourishment, and much as I adore talking about myself I've really had enough of the topic for to-night. How many pupils have you now? And how near is ...
— Jane Journeys On • Ruth Comfort Mitchell

... selected from time to time for his defiance of authority, yet it is not improbable that Shelley's avowed opinions may even then have won for him a title which he proudly claimed in after-life. To allude to his boyish incantations and nocturnal commerce with fiends and phantoms would scarcely be needful, were it not that they seem to have deeply tinged his imagination. While describing the growth of his own genius in the "Hymn to Intellectual Beauty," he makes ...
— Percy Bysshe Shelley • John Addington Symonds

... was still, after all, his stiffer self who gloomed out of the glare of the terrace—in solemn silence; and there was indeed a great deal of critical silence, every way, between the companions, even till they gained the Place de l'Opera, as to the character of their nocturnal progress. ...
— The Ambassadors • Henry James

... to be allowed in this field at night," declared Miss Gibbs. "I shall speak to Mr. Cox, and ask to have him put in another pasture. We can't close our tent doors, or we should be suffocated. I hope we shan't have any other nocturnal visitors! It's a good thing we have no valuables with us. I ...
— The Madcap of the School • Angela Brazil

... had advanced to the usual hour for retiring to rest, it was deemed necessary to make Helen acquainted with the meditated outrage, in order to prevent the consequences of a nocturnal alarm for which she might be altogether unprepared. This was accordingly done, and her natural terrors were soothed and combated by Reilly and her father, who succeeded in reviving her courage, and in enabling her to contemplate what was to ...
— Willy Reilly - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton

... of death. And hence, again, darkness, like death, is the symbol of initiation. It was for this reason that all the ancient initiations were performed at night. The celebration of the Mysteries was always nocturnal. The same custom prevails in Freemasonry, and the explanation is the same. Death and the resurrection were taught in the Mysteries, as they are in Freemasonry. The initiation was the lesson of death. The full fruition or autopsy, the reception of light, was ...
— The Symbolism of Freemasonry • Albert G. Mackey

... household, and kept a hospitable table in Lincoln's Inn Fields; but the conveyancer was almost the last of his species. The householding legal resident of the Fields, like the domestic resident of the Temple, has become a feature of the past. Among the ordinary nocturnal population of the square called Lincoln's Inn Fields, may be found a few solicitors who sleep by night where they work by day, and a sprinkling of young barristers and law students who have residential chambers ...
— A Book About Lawyers • John Cordy Jeaffreson

... accompaniment of the fifes swelled up the hill-died away—resumed its thunder—and was at length hushed. The trumpets and kettledrums of the cavalry were next heard to perform the beautiful and wild point of war appropriated as a signal for that piece of nocturnal duty, and then finally sank upon the wind with a shrill ...
— Waverley • Sir Walter Scott

... army was at once put in motion, but no one knew what the Gen. meant to do. Some thought that we were going to attack the enemy in the rear; some that we were going to Princeton; the latter proved to be right. We went by a bye road on the right hand which made it about 16 miles. During this nocturnal march I with the Dover Company and the Red Feather Company of Philadelphia Light Infantry led the van of the army and Capt. Henry with the other three companies of Philadelphia Light Infantry brought up the rear. The van moved on all night in ...
— The Campaign of 1776 around New York and Brooklyn • Henry P. Johnston

... city ward established a guard, Diurnal and nocturnal: Militia volunteers, light dragoons, and bombardiers, With an alderman ...
— Ballads • William Makepeace Thackeray

... chickens," and their presence is dreaded, because with them generally come storms and bad weather. They revel in storms, and the fiercer the gale and the higher the waves, the more merry are they. This preference of the petrel is explained by the fact that he is more than half nocturnal in his habits, and greatly dislikes the glare of sunshine. But when black clouds and gloomy mists hang low over the ocean, the semi-darkness just suits him, and through it may he be seen skimming the angry billows many ...
— Harper's Young People, October 12, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various

... Do you think I look the kind of person for nocturnal adventures?—a cripple—on a stick? Yes, I know you have been talking to Marion Andrews. She ...
— Delia Blanchflower • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... insect needs. The truncate, cone-shaped breach has often been of great use to me. Its wide base made it possible for me, without being present at the work, to judge which of the two neighbouring Osmiae had pierced the partition; it told me the direction of a nocturnal migration which I had been unable ...
— Bramble-bees and Others • J. Henri Fabre

... the leaf; autumnal equinox; Indian summer, St. Luke's summer, St. Martin's summer. midnight; dead of night, witching hour, witching hour of night, witching time of night; winter; killing time. Adj. vespertine, autumnal, nocturnal. Phr. "midnight, the outpost of advancing day" [Longfellow]; "sable- vested Night" [Milton]; "this gorgeous arch with ...
— Roget's Thesaurus • Peter Mark Roget

... minute, each minute an hour—it crept slowly on to one; but still no Judge appeared! Why did he not come? The reason was obvious. The mules were "quartered six miles out of town," because he had to see Mr. Davis before letting us go. And Davis had heard of my nocturnal rambling, and concluded we had come as spies. Or he had, from my cross-questioning the night before, detected my main object in coming to Dixie. Either way my doom was sealed. If we were taken as spies, it was hanging. ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 86, December, 1864 • Various

... all become fairly accustomed to seeing numerous air-ships moving in all directions across the sky in the daytime, but it still seems strange to us to see the lights of the air-ships flitting about the nocturnal sky. ...
— To Mars via The Moon - An Astronomical Story • Mark Wicks

... possible to dismiss from her thoughts the fellow creature who had destroyed her joy of life and worked evil so far reaching. She could leave him now to his destiny and feel under no compulsion to relate the incidents of her nocturnal search. Had he been there, she would have risked the meeting, urged him to surrender and then left him if he allowed her to do so. She would never have given him up, or broken her ...
— The Spinners • Eden Phillpotts

... one week after his nocturnal visit to Fourteenth Street, hurried out of the train at the Pennsylvania Station, almost tore the newspapers from the news stand, glanced through them one by one and threw them back. The attendant, open-mouthed, ventured upon a mild protest. Fischer threw him a dollar bill, caught up ...
— The Pawns Count • E. Phillips Oppenheim

... matter for an elaborate study in mythology and mysticism, and might yet lead to no result. Diana is Luna in the heavens; Lucina (the goddess of child-birth) and the Huntress on earth; and Hecate in the underworld, goddess of enchantments and nocturnal incantations, often also identified with Proserpina. Titania is a votaress of the moon; we have seen that fairies are intimately concerned with mortal babies, and that there is a fairy-hunt (see the quotation from James I's Demonology, ...
— The Sources and Analogues of 'A Midsummer-night's Dream' • Compiled by Frank Sidgwick

... when he and Billy awakened in the morning, fully shared the boys' apprehensions over the nocturnal visitor. ...
— The Boy Aviators' Polar Dash - Or - Facing Death in the Antarctic • Captain Wilbur Lawton

... the midst of the populace which he had given every reason to desire to wreak vengeance upon him. It was audacity of the supremest sort. Sulla afterwards withdrew to his estate at Puteoli, where he spent the brief remainder of his life in the most remarkable alternation of nocturnal orgies and cultured enjoyment, sharing his time with male and female debauchees and learned students of Greek literature, and concluding the memoirs of his life and times, in which, through twenty-two books, he recorded the story of his deeds, colored ...
— The Story of Rome From the Earliest Times to the End of the Republic • Arthur Gilman

... through the heat haze and vapours from the Thames. The air was very windless, and the river lay like a sheet of grey steel at her feet, save where a little spreading feather of black ripple showed the course of some water-rat. Bats wheeled and dipped like some company of nocturnal swallows, pursuing their minute prey, and uttering their little staccato cries so high in the scale that none but the ...
— Daisy's Aunt • E. F. (Edward Frederic) Benson

... dread to the weary anxiety already felt by the girls. The progress down the Ohio had been tedious; how much more so the interminable windings on the Mississippi, and the long, lonesome nights, made sleepless by the cries of birds that flit in darkness, and by the howls of wild beasts. Evaleen's nocturnal fears, when the barge lay moored, were not so well founded as were the apprehensions which daylight renewed, of disaster on the treacherous flood. The more she learned of the river, the more she realized the ...
— A Dream of Empire - Or, The House of Blennerhassett • William Henry Venable

... nocturnal battle-sounds rose in a swift crescendo of bursting shells and rattling staccato of machine-gun fire, which echoed in weird music from cliff to cliff and across ...
— The Tale of a Trooper • Clutha N. Mackenzie



Words linked to "Nocturnal" :   biological science, night



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