"Owl" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... hidden in the darkness, formed, as it were, islands of floating shadows on an immovable sea of light. Near all was silence and repose, except the falling of the leaves, the rough passing of a sudden wind, the rare and interrupted whooping of the gray owl; but in the distance at intervals one heard the solemn rolling of the cataract of Niagara, which in the calm of the night echoed from desert to desert and ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. VII (of X)—Continental Europe I • Various
... around, to yelp over the faint smell of roasted meat that floated out to them from the camp-fires. Once during the night the cry of a wandering cougar came wailing through the silence and was followed by that of a horned owl who had noiselessly flapped near enough to blink his great eyes at the blaze. For all that, it was the loneliest kind of a place, and the hours went by until sunrise without the smallest real disturbance or ...
— Two Arrows - A Story of Red and White • William O. Stoddard
... at an "Owl" lunch-cart, totally unaware that, across the street, a couple of Cosmos men were waiting for him to come out. And, after this, buying a Socialist paper, he strolled into Evans Park to sit and read, a while, by the red light of the ...
— The Air Trust • George Allan England
... merest bumpkin must have known would have resulted to him individually, if not to the world at large, from the discovery? It seems to me quite incredible that any man of common understanding could have discovered what Mr. Kissam says he did, and yet have subsequently acted so like a baby—so like an owl—as Mr. Kissam admits that he did. By-the-way, who is Mr. Kissam? and is not the whole paragraph in the 'Courier and Enquirer' a fabrication got up to 'make a talk'? It must be confessed that it has an amazingly moon-hoaxy-air. Very little dependence is to be placed upon it, in my humble ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 2 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... yourself look like an owl! I thought it was nothing less than a stuffed owl coming in. Why can't you wear your hat? That would hide your crown ...
— The Channings • Mrs. Henry Wood
... preternatural powers, brought them together in the garden of an inn in the South of France, and while they talked together the thought came to them that alchemy was the gradual distillation of the contents of the soul, until they were ready to put off the mortal and put on the immortal. An owl passed, rustling among the vine-leaves overhead, and then an old woman came, leaning upon a stick, and, sitting close to them, took up the thought where they had dropped it. Having expounded the whole principle of spiritual ...
— Rosa Alchemica • W. B. Yeats
... old forest tree, and seats himself among the lowest of its great limbs. Listen to the almost human halloo, the "hoo! hohoo, hoo!" that comes out from the clustering foliage of an ancient hemlock. It is the solemn call of the owl, as he sits among the limbs, looking out from between the branches with his great round grey eyes. Listen again and you will hear the voice of the catbird, the brown thrush, the chervink, the little chickadee, the wood robin, the ...
— Wild Northern Scenes - Sporting Adventures with the Rifle and the Rod • S. H. Hammond
... for sleep. The many noises of the night, which had seemed to cease while that mysterious rumbling was going on in the heart of the lofty mountain, had again resumed sway. The hum of insects; the melancholy hooting of the lonely owl, in some willow or cottonwood tree near the base of the mountain; the far-off howl of the prairie wolf; or the more discordant voice of the skulking coyote—all these things were as familiar music in the ears of the boy whose cradle had been the rich black ...
— The Saddle Boys of the Rockies - Lost on Thunder Mountain • James Carson
... "There is so much that happens," says Bolz in his editorial capacity, "and so tremendously much that does not happen, that an honest reporter should never be at a loss for novelties." Playing dominoes with polar bears, teaching seals the rudiments of journalism, waking up as an owl with tufts of feathers for ears and a mouse in one's beak, are essentially Freytagian conceptions; and no one else could so well have expressed Bolz's indifference to further surprises—they may tell him if they will that ...
— The German Classics Of The Nineteenth And Twentieth Centuries, Volume 12 • Various
... at both ends—was owl and early bird, both, in his pursuit of the pence of the people, and got 'em coming ...
— When Egypt Went Broke • Holman Day
... these early boyhood days which nearly cost me my life, and which Uncle John (as I called Mr. Sherman) converted into a religious warning. One Sunday there was a freshet in Owl Creek, on the south side of the town, and many people went to see it, I among the rest. I was reckless, and, against the advice of others, went out on a temporary foot-bridge which fell and I dropped into the raging waters. How I escaped I hardly know, but it was by the assistance of others. Uncle ...
— Recollections of Forty Years in the House, Senate and Cabinet - An Autobiography. • John Sherman
... waxed musical; each star Sang on its course, each breeze sang on its car, All harmonies sang to senses wide-awake. All things in tune, myself not out of tune, Those nightingales were nightingales indeed: Yet truly an owl had satisfied my need, And wrought a rapture underneath that moon, Or simple sparrow chirping from a reed; For June that night ...
— Poems • Christina G. Rossetti
... origin, appeared in the heavens. Also, a short time before, a thunderbolt fell at Sirmium, accompanied with a terrific clap of thunder, and set fire to a portion of the palace and senate-house: and much about the same time an owl settled on the top of the royal baths at Sabaria, and pouring forth a funeral strain, withstood all the attempts to slay it with arrows or stones, however truly aimed, and though numbers of people shot ...
— The Roman History of Ammianus Marcellinus • Ammianus Marcellinus
... Constantine, but which in a few hours had been stripped of the pomp of royalty. A melancholy reflection on the vicissitudes of human greatness forced itself on his mind; and he repeated an elegant distich of Persian poetry: "The spider has wove his web in the Imperial palace; and the owl hath sung her watch-song on the towers of ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 6 • Edward Gibbon
... solemnity, now glorious in resplendent autumn color of pearly beauty. Here — thrilling sound to huntsman — echoes the wild melody of the hound, awakening the solitude with deep-mouthed bay as he pursues the swift career of deer. The quavering note of the loon on the lake, the mournful hoot of the owl at night, with rarer forest voices have also to the lover of nature their peculiar charm, and form the wild language ...
— Voyage of The Paper Canoe • N. H. Bishop
... a wild Florida forest, and all was still save for the hooting of a distant owl and the occasional plaintive call of a whip-poor-will. In a little clearing by the side of a faint bridle-path a huge fire of fat pine knots roared and crackled, lighting up the small cleared space ...
— The Boy Chums in the Forest - or Hunting for Plume Birds in the Florida Everglades • Wilmer M. Ely
... you will make a solitary bachelor of yourself, but at least give up your useless toiling at the wine- office. To what end do you plod there every day,—you who are wifeless and childless, and have no need of money for yourself? Give me up this great house in which you live all alone, like an owl in an oak-tree, and let me find you a cottage somewhere in the neighborhood, where I can often come and see you, and where you may spend your days in happiness and comfort." And the little old man shook his head and answered, ...
— Dreams and Dream Stories • Anna (Bonus) Kingsford
... union in large bands that Crows have so little to fear from diurnal birds of prey; if one approaches, they do not hesitate to throw themselves on him altogether. The Great Horn Owl, however, causes many ravages among them; for when asleep at night the Crow is without defence against the ravisher, for whom, on the contrary, obscurity is propitious. Thus they recognise him as a hereditary enemy, and never allow an opportunity of revenge to pass without profiting ...
— The Industries of Animals • Frederic Houssay
... every fruit, of every joyful desire. It intoxicated him and rendered him unconscious.—When Siddhartha woke up, the pale river shimmered through the door of the hut, and in the forest, a dark call of an owl resounded ...
— Siddhartha • Herman Hesse
... to quarrel with me?" he asked thickly, with a sort of amazement. He blinked like an owl. He was funny. Freya, like all women, had a keen sense of the ...
— 'Twixt Land & Sea • Joseph Conrad
... away without end, With a burrowing owl, his old neighbour and friend, Who, being a bird in whom marmot confided, Had hired his cottage, in which he resided. The landlord just hinted, that when he lived there, He had kept the old hovel in charming repair; The walls neatly mended, the parlour swept clean, ...
— The Quadrupeds' Pic-Nic • F. B. C.
... come when she hears it crying, In the shape of an owl or bat, And she'll bring us our darling Anna In ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 16, No. 93, July, 1865 • Various
... the wall And Dick the shepherd blows his nail, And Tom bears logs into the hall, And milk comes frozen home in pail; When blood is nipt, and ways be foul, Then nightly sings the staring owl Tuwhoo! Tuwhit! Tuwhoo! A merry note! While greasy Joan ...
— The Golden Treasury - Of the Best Songs and Lyrical Poems in the English Language • Various
... God's omnipotence, not limited to the few writers claimed by the Jews, Christians and Mohammedans, but as extensive as the race;"[121] or perhaps as extensive as all creation, and leading us to regard even "the solemn notes of the screech owl" as inspired.[122] What manner of use could the Bible be to an ignorant soul groping its way to truth and holiness, or to a dying sinner hastening to the judgment seat of God, if it were true, that "the Bible's own teaching on the subject is that everything good ...
— Fables of Infidelity and Facts of Faith - Being an Examination of the Evidences of Infidelity • Robert Patterson
... shaft of a chimney is the place of which they usually make choice for this purpose, they sometimes vary their plan. In Sir Ashton Lever's Museum, was the nest of a swallow built on the wings and body of an owl, which happened, by accident, to hang dead and dry from the rafter of a barn; and another in a large shell, which was, the following year, suspended in the same place. You have, no doubt, my dear children, all observed vast flocks of swallows assemble together on the roofs of houses; they ...
— Domestic pleasures - or, the happy fire-side • F. B. Vaux
... what is the matter?" said Percy; "you look as if this world was a howling wilderness, and you wanted to howl too. What, crying over that bird? Poh! I can buy you a screech-owl any time, that will make twice the noise he could in his best days. Come, hurry, and ...
— Little Prudy's Sister Susy • Sophie May
... and eight years ago it used to fetch thirty-five. Now I have reduced it and reduced it to fifteen, just in order to keep the tenant. And what is the end of it? Janter—he's the tenant—gave notice last Michaelmas; but that stupid owl, George, said it was all nothing, and that he would continue at fifteen shillings when the time came. And now to-night he comes to me with a face as long as a yard-arm, and says that Janter won't keep it at any price, and that he does not know where he is to find another ...
— Colonel Quaritch, V.C. - A Tale of Country Life • H. Rider Haggard
... is man, that thou art mindful of him? How can I, when I see Him mindful of the brood that sleep in their rocking nest, of the moth that flits by my face on muffled wing, of the fox that howls on the hill, of the owl that hoots to the pale moon from ivy tower or hollow tree? Are you not of more value than many sparrows? said our Lord. Fashioned originally after the divine image, with a soul outweighing in value the rude matter of a thousand worlds, able to rise on the wings of contemplation ...
— The Angels' Song • Thomas Guthrie
... hurrying away, though she would fain have patted him.—Success to your search, Fidelity!—And there sits a great yellow cat upon a window-sill, a very corpulent and comfortable cat, gazing at this transitory world with owl's eyes, and making pithy comments, doubtless, or what appear such, to the silly beast.—Oh, sage puss, make room for me beside you, and we will ...
— Twice Told Tales • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... (r) (44) (5) (6) He told (5) him that the owls were arranging a treaty of marriage between their children, and that one of them, after agreeing to settle five hundred villages upon the female owl, had prayed (6) that God would grant a long life to Sultan Mahmoud, because as long as he reigned over them they would never want ruined villages. The story says (s) that (t) (5) he was touched with the fable, ...
— How to Write Clearly - Rules and Exercises on English Composition • Edwin A. Abbott
... was that of the owl, at which he was greatly terrified, and, quickly descending the tree he had climbed, he ran with alarm to the lodge. "Noko! noko! grandmother!" he cried. "I have heard ...
— The Junior Classics, Volume 1 • Willam Patten
... squaw's meager anatomy was wonderfully strong. She pitched the lodge, packed the horses, and did the hardest labor of the camp. From morning till night she bustled about the lodge, screaming like a screech-owl when anything displeased her. Then there was her brother, a "medicine-man," or magician, equally gaunt and sinewy with herself. His mouth spread from ear to ear, and his appetite, as we had full occasion to learn, ...
— The Oregon Trail • Francis Parkman, Jr.
... the farmhouse where he happened to be quartered, every sound of nature, at that witching hour, fluttered his excited imagination—the moan of the whip-poor-will from the hillside, the boding cry of the tree toad, that harbinger of storm, the dreary hooting of the screech owl, to the sudden rustling in the thicket of birds frightened from their roost. The fireflies, too, which sparkled most vividly in the darkest places, now and then startled him, as one of uncommon brightness ...
— Legends That Every Child Should Know • Hamilton Wright Mabie
... the other hand, Billy, I'm not surprised. William says that Bertram has been completely out of fix over something, and as gloomy as an owl, for weeks past; and of course, under those circumstances, the poor boy could not be expected to do good work. Now William, being a man, is not supposed to understand what the trouble is. But I, being a woman, can ...
— Miss Billy's Decision • Eleanor H. Porter
... neighbouring pot-boy on his morning errand for the pewters. Now and then a crazy jarvey passed slowly by, while a hurrying mail, with a drowsy driver and sleeping guard, rattled by to deliver their cargo at the post office. Here and there appeared one of those beings, who like the owl hide themselves by day, and are visible only in the dusk. Many of them appeared to belong to the other world. Poor, puny, ragged, sickly-looking creatures, that seemed as though they had been suckled and reared with gin. "How different," thought the Yorkshireman to himself, "to the fine, ...
— Jorrocks' Jaunts and Jollities • Robert Smith Surtees
... on their way, and after a time they came to a number of crows holding a meeting and in the midst was an owl with its head nodding drowsily; it was seeing dreams for them; every now and then a crow would give it a shove and ask what it had dreamt, but the owl only murmured that it had not finished and went off to sleep again. At last it said "I have seen a gander and a goose go down into ...
— Folklore of the Santal Parganas • Cecil Henry Bompas
... Thy streets and broad places which once rang with the tramp of mighty hosts and echoed with the songs of jubilant multitudes welcoming them home from victory are buried under the drifting desert sands; in the ruins of thy holy temples the statues of the gods lie prone in the dust, and the owl rears her brood on thy crumbling altars, and hoots to the moon where once rose the solemn chant of priests and the sweet hymns of the Sacred Virgins; the jackal barks where once the mightiest monarchs of earth ...
— The Mummy and Miss Nitocris - A Phantasy of the Fourth Dimension • George Griffith
... and Snake Creek, below it, empty into the river about three miles apart, the landing being nearer the mouth of Snake Creek. Lick Creek, rising in a swamp, flows eleven miles nearly northeast to the river. Snake Creek flows nearly east to the river. Owl Creek flows nearly parallel to Lick Creek, at a distance from it varying from three to five miles, and empties into Snake Creek something more than a mile from its mouth. The land enclosed between these creeks and the river is a rolling plateau from eighty to a hundred feet above the river-level. ...
— From Fort Henry to Corinth • Manning Ferguson Force
... and the scents of the fragrant night floated in upon us, and the sounds of the men at their meat or making merry about the township; and whiles we heard the gibber of an owl from the trees westward of the church, and the sharp cry of a blackbird made fearful by the prowling stoat, or the far-off lowing of a cow from the upland pastures; or the hoofs of a horse trotting on the pilgrimage road (and one of ...
— A Dream of John Ball, A King's Lesson • William Morris
... seems waiting at my feet to swallow me up with everything that I cherish. It is no use saying to this demon of the darkness that I know he is a humbug, a mere Dismal Jemmy of the brain, who sits there croaking like a night owl or a tenth-rate journalist. My Dismal Jemmy is not to be exorcised by argument. He can only be driven out by ...
— Pebbles on the Shore • Alpha of the Plough (Alfred George Gardiner)
... impassively with a little fan of gold-embroidered strawwork. Two aides-de-camp and an engineer of the railway company were standing beside him. Opposite, on another divan, in a respectful attitude, but favoured evidently, as they were the only ones seated in the Bey's presence, were two owl-like men, their long whiskers falling on their white ties, one fat and the other thin. They were the Hemerlingues, father and son, who had won over his Highness and were bearing him off in triumph ...
— The Nabob • Alphonse Daudet
... birds was still; the breeze, which had refreshed them during the day, died away, as if its office were now completed; and none of the dark sounds and sights of hideous Night yet dared to triumph over the death of Day. Unseen were the circling wings of the fell bat; unheard the screech of the waking owl; silent the drowsy hum of the shade-born beetle! What heart has not acknowledged the influence of this hour, the sweet and soothing hour of twilight! the hour of love, the hour of adoration, the hour of rest! when we ...
— Vivian Grey • The Earl of Beaconsfield
... Hefflefinger to do is to arrest Hade with the warrant he has for the burglar," explained Gallegher; "and to take him on to New York on the owl train that passes Torresdale at one. It don't get to Jersey City until four o'clock, one hour after the morning papers go to press. Of course, we must fix Hefflefinger so's he'll keep quiet and not tell who ...
— Gallegher and Other Stories • Richard Harding Davis
... coons, the music of the winds in the high trees,—all these impressions unite in my mind like parts of a woodland symphony. I soon learned to distinguish the raccoon's mournful call from the quavering cry of the owl, and I joined the hired man in hunting rabbits from under the piles of brush in the clearing. Once or twice some ferocious, larger animal, possibly a panther, hungrily yowled in the impenetrable thickets to the north, but this only lent a still more ...
— A Son of the Middle Border • Hamlin Garland
... risk, as one against whom the elements could nourish no vengeance. No, Edie, it is not, and cannot be trueit is a fiction of the idle jade Rumour, whom I wish hanged with her trumpet about her neck, that serves only with its screech-owl tones to fright honest folks out of their senses.Let me know how you got into ...
— The Antiquary, Complete • Sir Walter Scott
... lady also had a word to say. Her eyes were like brown beads, and her nose very long, which gave her indeed a hawk-like appearance, somewhat unusual in a woman; but her gravity was rather that of the owl. ...
— The Shadow of the Rope • E. W. Hornung
... to the Crumpetty Tree Came the Stork, the Duck, and the Owl; The Snail and the Bumblebee, The Frog and the Fimble Fowl (The Fimble Fowl, with a corkscrew leg); And all of them said, "We humbly beg We may build our homes on your lovely Hat,— Mr. Quangle Wangle, grant us that! Mr. ...
— Required Poems for Reading and Memorizing - Third and Fourth Grades, Prescribed by State Courses of Study • Anonymous
... with its tantalizing undercurrent of mystery, was reenacted before his inner vision. He seemed to hear Nicol Brinn, startled from his reverie, exclaim: "I think it was an owl.... We sometimes get them over from the ...
— Fire-Tongue • Sax Rohmer
... going on, just like that, ever since he had pronounced this doom upon his vanquished adversary, and as if it would go on like that forever. In vain by coaxing word, by sharp, sudden whistle, by imitations of owl, loon, and deer calls, which brought all the boys in the place admiringly about him, did he strive to catch again the attention of the captive. But not once more, even for the fleeting fraction of a second, would the Gray Master ...
— Kings in Exile • Sir Charles George Douglas Roberts
... "For 'Eving's sake don't get bit and go mad by any measly pi-dog. But you can look after yourself, old man. You don't get drunk an' run about 'ittin' your friends. You takes your bones an' you eats your biscuit, an' you kills your enemy like a gentleman. I'm goin' away—don't 'owl—I'm goin' off to Kasauli, where I won't see you ...
— Actions and Reactions • Rudyard Kipling
... he sharply. "I won't." And he added after a moment, "You'd better go to bed. You're sleepy and as stupid as an owl." ...
— The Branding Iron • Katharine Newlin Burt
... lie still, his teeth chattering, his hair standing up on his head. "Who's that?" exclaimed the terrible voice once more, and then he saw a big black shape drop down from the tree above and settle on a dead branch a few feet above his hiding-place. It was a bird—a great owl, for now he could see it, sharply outlined against the clear starry sky; and the bird had seen and was peering curiously at him. And now all his fear was gone, for he could not be afraid of an owl; he had been accustomed ...
— A Little Boy Lost • Hudson, W. H.
... a trial, Auntie," and Win looked like a wise owl, as she aired her new and suddenly acquired knowledge. "Can't I ...
— Vicky Van • Carolyn Wells
... subject this morning, and shall choose my own psalm, of which I will give out the first line, and you will proceed and repeat the next as usual." When the time for psalmody arrived Wesley gave out, "Like to an owl in ivy bush," and the clerk immediately responded, "That rueful thing am I." The members of the congregation looked up and saw his small head half-buried in his large wig, and could not restrain their smiles. The clerk was mortified and the rector ...
— The Parish Clerk (1907) • Peter Hampson Ditchfield
... said: 'Then from the wide meadow come we into a close of corn, and then into an orchard-close beyond it. There in the ancient walnut-tree the owl sitteth breathing hard in the night-time; but thou shalt not hear him for the joy of the nightingales singing from the apple-trees of the close. Then from out of the shadowed orchard shall we come into the open ...
— The Roots of the Mountains • William Morris
... their tribes no mix'd polluted flame, No monster-breed to mark the groves with shame; But the chaste blackbird, to its partner true, Thinks black alone is beauty's favourite hue. 10 The nightingale, with mutual passion blest, Sings to its mate, and nightly charms the nest; While the dark owl to court its partner flies, And owns its ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Oliver Goldsmith • Oliver Goldsmith
... through the air from the tower of the village church, but to her it was not the bells, but the cry of the frogs in the marshes. Then they ceased, and all around became still; not a bird could be heard, they were all at rest, even the owl had not left her hiding place; deep silence reigned on the margin of the wood by the sea-shore. As Anne Lisbeth walked on she could hear her own footsteps in the sands; even the waves of the sea were at rest, and all in the deep waters had sunk into silence. There was quiet among ...
— Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen • Hans Christian Andersen
... recognized mine after 'just the first little minute,'" she said, with a coaxing touch of mimicry. "You haven't quite parted company with the baby I remember so well, even yet. I used to call you my downy owl, with solemn saucer eyes and fierce little beak. You were extraordinarily, really perplexingly like your father then. A miniature edition, but so faithful to the original it used, sometimes, to give ...
— Deadham Hard • Lucas Malet
... few moments the fugitives had lost all sight of the men without the city; they were swallowed up in the maze of narrow lanes and by-ways which had once been thronged by busy crowds of city folk, and were now given up to the snake, the owl, and the wolf. ...
— Jack Haydon's Quest • John Finnemore
... "W'en de screech-owl light on de gable en' En holler, Whoo-oo! oh-oh! Den you bettah keep yo' eyeball peel, Kase dey bring bad luck t' ...
— The Pony Rider Boys in Alaska - The Gold Diggers of Taku Pass • Frank Gee Patchin
... friends whom he can trust, but he always has a bright twinkling eye open for Reddy Fox and Billy Mink and Shadow the Weasel and old Whitetail the Marsh Hawk, and several more, especially Hooty the Owl at night. ...
— The Adventures of Danny Meadow Mouse • Thornton W. Burgess
... Brave lady! She is content! Ah, we sisters shall be merry. Hearken: if I aid thee thus I may do no more. Thrice has the night-owl come at thy call—now it must wing away. Yet things will be as I have said; thine own wisdom shall guide the rest. Ere morn Brighteyes shall stand in Atli's hall, ere spring he will be thy love, and ere autumn Gudruda shall sit on the high seat in the hall ...
— Eric Brighteyes • H. Rider Haggard
... seems to reverse this order. Alting supposes the Chauci had their name from Kauken, signifying persons eminent for valor and fidelity, which agrees with the character Tacitus gives them. Others derive it from Kauk, an owl, with a reference to the enmity of that animal to cats (Catti). Others, from Kaiten, daws, of which there are great numbers on their coast. Pliny has admirably described the country and manners of the maritime Chauci, in his account of people ...
— The Germany and the Agricola of Tacitus • Tacitus
... day of August, 1873, he was accidentally shot and killed by a neighbor, who was attempting to shoot an owl. ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 3 (of 3) of Volume 8: Grover Cleveland, First Term. • Grover Cleveland
... she turned the conversation by pointing to a snow-white cat of great size, who stepped daintily out of the tent. "I should think, as a witch, your cat ought to be black," said Miss Greeby. Mother Cockleshell screeched like a night-owl and hastily pattered some gypsy spell to avert evil. "Why, the old devil is black," she cried. "And why should I have him in my house to work evil? This is my white ghost." Her words were accompanied by a gentle stroking of the cat. "And good is what ...
— Red Money • Fergus Hume
... the Montreal Museum of Natural History; it was, however, banished from public view, to a room where were all manner of skins, plants, snakes, insects, &c., and in the middle of these, an old man, stuffing an owl. The dialogue—perhaps true, perhaps imaginary, perhaps a little of one and a little of the other—between the writer and this old man gave rise to the ...
— Selections from Previous Works - and Remarks on Romanes' Mental Evolution in Animals • Samuel Butler
... Men who steal gal leave him to watch. He stay. You know owl hoot. When you come back make owl hoot so Ben no think it somebody else an' shoot um. Must know what Merriwell him say. Must ...
— Frank Merriwell's Pursuit - How to Win • Burt L. Standish
... with a blind wife, so I should leave you where you are. But you, little one, have hearing as sharp as a bird's? And what bird—pretty little things—did you ever see with ears, unless it were a bat or a nasty owl?—That is all nonsense. Besides, who can see what you have lost now that Pulcheria has brought your hair down so prettily? And do not you remember the head-dress our women wear? You might have ears as long as a hare's, and what good would it do you?—no one could see them. ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... sick-bed; the day is only a long evening, a waiting for the utter dark. The doctor's little square satchel of instruments, vials, and bandages lay open on the table; he had changed the apartment as utterly as he had changed his face by putting on great, horn-rimmed spectacles. They gave an owl-like look to him, an air of omniscience. It seemed as if no mortal ailment could persist in the face ...
— Trailin'! • Max Brand
... held to be as respectably kept an establishment as there was in the whole forest. Even Miss Jenny Wren, the greatest gossip of the neighbourhood, never found anything to criticise in its arrangements; and old Parson Too-whit, a venerable owl who inhabited a branch somewhat more exalted, as became his profession, was in the habit of saving himself much trouble in his parochial exhortations by telling his parishioners in short to "look at the Nutcrackers" if they wanted ...
— Queer Little Folks • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... inside of it." When the witch-girl heard this her fright increased, so that, to make matters worse, she pulled her gown in under the bed, upon which Clara kneeled down, lifted the coverlet, and found the owl in its nest. Now she had to creep out weeping and howling, and promised ...
— Sidonia The Sorceress V1 • William Mienhold
... we inhabit; what were our consolations on this side of the grave—and what were our aspirations beyond it, if poetry did not ascend to bring light and fire from those eternal regions where the owl-winged faculty of calculation dare not ever soar? Poetry is not like reasoning, a power to be exerted according to the determination of the will. A man cannot say, 'I will compose poetry.' The greatest poet even cannot say it; for the mind in creation is ...
— English Critical Essays - Nineteenth Century • Various
... bar, he had really found himself. He had taken the line prescribed by his idiosyncrasy. His father's injudicious forcing had increased his shyness at the bar, and he was like an owl in daylight. But no one, as we shall see, was less diffident in speculation. Self-confidence in a philosopher is often the private credit which he opens with his imagination to compensate for his incapacity in the rough struggles of active life. Bentham shrank ...
— The English Utilitarians, Volume I. • Leslie Stephen
... the safety-lamp, Simon had known this fierce man, whose business it was to go daily, at the risk of his life, to produce partial explosions of fire-damp in the passages. He used to see this strange solitary being, prowling about the mine, always accompanied by a monstrous owl, which he called Harfang, who assisted him in his perilous occupation, by soaring with a lighted match to places Silfax ...
— The Underground City • Jules Verne
... Place, was accustomed—rather cruelly, it may be thought—to take off his host's very characteristic way of telling a story; and it is, moreover, affirmed by Mr. Percy Fitzgerald[36] that, in the famous Readings, "the strangely obtuse and owl-like expression, and the slow, husky croak" of Mr. Justice Stareleigh in the "Trial from Pickwick" were carefully copied from the author of the Pleasures of Memory, That Dickens used thus to amuse his friends is confirmed by the autobiography of the late Frederick Locker,[37] ...
— De Libris: Prose and Verse • Austin Dobson
... under Hugh's foot and the boys stopped short, their breath coming fast. The hoot of an owl directly overhead startled them violently and unconsciously they clutched each other's arm. The giant trees loomed black and forbidding in the darkness, and it was easy to imagine all kinds of things lurking behind to ...
— Bob Cook and the German Spy • Tomlinson, Paul Greene
... sown and gathered in, and the voice of the green summer will chant among the red and the yellow roses, and the serenades of the bees will make musical the scented air. By the ruined, moss-clothed barn the owl will build her nest, and the twilight will tread a measure with the night. And the rustic maidens will gather the shell-pink honeysuckle with their lovers, and the amorous clouds will slumber above the exquisite plough-boy with his primrose locks, as he wanders, whistling, on his way. Nature, ...
— The Green Carnation • Robert Smythe Hichens
... Miss Ptarmigan had been making trouble for herself. Silly old Mrs. White Owl had been telling her all winter how very well white suited her complexion. And now summer had come, and Mother Ptarmigan had forbidden her to go outdoors at all till her new brown summer suit was finished. Miss Ptarmigan hated indoors, and she couldn't understand what difference ...
— Little White Fox and his Arctic Friends • Roy J. Snell
... back from Plymouth to-night, along the short road, Caspian patched up but sulky as an owl. Luckily I ...
— The Lightning Conductor Discovers America • C. N. (Charles Norris) Williamson and A. M. (Alice Muriel)
... should have seen that frog boy jump, for he thought it was a savage wolf or fox about to grab him. But, instead he saw Johnnie Bushytail, the squirrel, and right in front of Johnnie was a great big horned owl, with large ...
— Bully and Bawly No-Tail • Howard R. Garis
... how you little babes in the wilderness could never go anywhere? If you heard wild turkeys gobbling just inside the forest, or an owl hooting, or a paroquet screaming, or a fawn bleating, you were warned never to go there; it was the trick of the Indians. You could never go near a clump of high weeds, or a patch of cane, or a stump, or a fallen tree. You must not go to the sugar camp, to get a good drink, ...
— The Choir Invisible • James Lane Allen
... is in the meat. A bent stick is surging and might all might is mental. A grand clothes is searching out a candle not that wheatly not that by more than an owl and a path. A ham is proud ...
— Tender Buttons - Objects—Food—Rooms • Gertrude Stein
... once an old castle in the middle of a vast thick wood; in it lived an old woman quite alone, and she was a witch. By day she made herself into a cat or a screech-owl, but regularly at night she became a ...
— The Book of Hallowe'en • Ruth Edna Kelley
... give vent to his complaints; but his tongue cleaved to the roof of his mouth: his spirits sunk within him. No sound now reached his ears but the baying of the shepherds dogs, and the drowsy tinklings of the distant folds. The owl, the solemn bird of night, sat buried among the branches of the aged oak, and with her melancholy hootings gave an additional serenity to the scene. At a small distance, on his right hand, he perceived a contiguous object that reflected the rays of the moon, through the willows ...
— Imogen - A Pastoral Romance • William Godwin
... family lived here in cages and hutches of all kinds, generally made out of old packing-cases. There was a large colony of white rats, two dormice named Paul and Silas, a jackdaw, rabbits, and a little yellow owl, not to mention the pigeons who fluttered in and out through the open door at will. They came whirling round Bridget now as she entered and settled on her shoulders and head, and pecked boldly at her shoes expecting to be fed. All the different little creatures in cages roused themselves ...
— Our Frank - and other stories • Amy Walton
... glory! I must hasten with my story Of the little room's true features, Seldom seen by mortal creatures; Lest my prophet-vision fading Leave me in the darkness wading. What are those upon the wall, Ranged in rows symmetrical? They are books, an owl would say; But the owl's night is the day: Of these too, if you have patience, I can give you revelations: Through the walls of Time and Sight, Doors they are to the Infinite; Through the limits that embrace us, Openings to the eternal spaces, Round us all the noisy ...
— A Hidden Life and Other Poems • George MacDonald
... holding a blue flag upon a field of ermine. Behind him came Robert Knolles and Nigel Loring, with an attendant at their side, who carried the pennon of the black raven. Then rode Sir Thomas Percy with his blue lion flaunting above him, and Sir Hugh Calverly, whose banner bore a silver owl, followed by the massive Belford who carried a huge iron club, weighing sixty pounds, upon his saddlebow, and Sir Thomas Walton the knight of Surrey. Behind them were four brave Anglo-Bretons, Perrot de Commelain, Le Gaillart, d'Aspremont and d'Ardaine, who fought against their own countrymen ...
— Sir Nigel • Arthur Conan Doyle
... 'Huh! Owl!' was Kim's retort on the lama's behalf. 'Sit under that gun if it please thee. When didst thou steal the ...
— Kim • Rudyard Kipling
... return with every spring, but lost happiness never returns. I wonder who taught me that? I think it was Nicholas himself. [Listens] The owl is hooting again. ...
— Ivanoff - A Play • Anton Checkov
... children of the Dusk are we, in spite of our Statistics, Unshackled Presses, and Torches of Knowledge;—not eagles soaring sunward, not brothers of the lightnings and the radiances we; a dim horn-eyed, owl-population, intent mainly on the catching of mice! Alas, the supreme scoundrel, alike with the supreme hero, is very far from being known. Nor have we the smallest apparatus for dealing with either of them, if he were known. Our supreme scoundrel sits, I conjecture, ...
— Latter-Day Pamphlets • Thomas Carlyle
... ears were so filled with sleep that I could not understand anything he said. When we reached the office, where as yet it was hardly light, the Bailiff, behind a huge inkstand and piles of books and papers, looked at me from out of his huge wig like an owl from out its nest, and began: "What's your name? Where do you come from? Can you read, write, and cipher?" And when I assented, he went on, "Well, her Grace, in consideration of your good manners and extraordinary ...
— The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries: - Masterpieces of German Literature Translated into English, Volume 5. • Various
... sky; all the panorama of Nature strung out in a wild, sweet forest song. Jinnie had backed against the wall as she played, and when out of her soul came the twitter of the morning birds, the babbling of the brook on its way to the sea, the scream of the owl in a high woodland tree, Lafe turned to watch her, and from that moment until she dropped exhausted into a chair, he did not take his eyes ...
— Rose O'Paradise • Grace Miller White
... for Evening Fishing.—The Brown—from the feathers of a brown Owl, dubbed with light mohair, dark grey Cock's hackle for legs, and red head. White Moth—strands from an Ostrich, wings from a white Pigeon, a white hackle for legs, and a black head.—Hooks No. 2 or 3. Good killers at ...
— The Teesdale Angler • R Lakeland
... his battle wisely, conquers the unwary foe; As the Owl, awaiting night-time, slew ...
— Hindu Literature • Epiphanius Wilson
... that cot, these two handsome, happy young people, and at myself, my disordered hair and clothes, my boots covered with mud, gloomy thoughts in my mind, and I felt like an owl in a nest ...
— The History of a Crime - The Testimony of an Eye-Witness • Victor Hugo
... my sight is clear; yet, Elfonzo, return to thy worldly occupation—take again in thy hand that chord of sweet sounds—struggle with the civilized world and with your own heart; fly swiftly to the enchanted ground—let the night-OWL send forth its screams from the stubborn oak—let the sea sport upon the beach, and the stars sing together; but learn of these, Elfonzo, thy doom, and thy hiding-place. Our most innocent as well as our most lawful DESIRES must often be denied us, that we may learn to sacrifice them ...
— The $30,000 Bequest and Other Stories • Mark Twain
... must have holidays, and I have flown hither. But the wind has changed, and the owl, for all his feathers, is a-cold, as the poet observes. I shall return to the Metropolis—templa quam dilecta—as Plautus might have said in his Owlowlaria, if he had liked. I never thought much of these Latin dramatists, and indeed I never would read any of their works. ...
— English Caricaturists and Graphic Humourists of the Nineteenth Century. - How they Illustrated and Interpreted their Times. • Graham Everitt
... Agrippa stood in his bonds before the royal palace, and leaned on a certain tree for grief, with many others, who were in bonds also; and as a certain bird sat upon the tree on which Agrippa leaned, [the Romans call this bird bubo,] [an owl,] one of those that were bound, a German by nation, saw him, and asked a soldier who that man in purple was; and when he was informed that his name was Agrippa, and that he was by nation a Jew, and one of the principal men of that ...
— The Antiquities of the Jews • Flavius Josephus
... Youth, that once wast mine! O high Ideal! all in vain Ye enter at this ruined shrine Whence worship ne'er shall rise again; The bat and owl inhabit here, The snake nests in the altar-stone, The sacred vessels moulder near, The image of the ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell • James Lowell
... among other things the market recurring every ninth day was held on the very first of January. This seemed to the Romans to have taken place not by accident, and being considered in the light of a portent it caused trepidation. The same feeling was increased when an owl was both seen and caught in the city, a statue exuded perspiration for three days, a flash darted from the south to the east, and many thunderbolts, many clods, stones, tiles and blood descended through the air. It seems to me that that decree passed the previous ...
— Dio's Rome • Cassius Dio
... the voice, and his eyes to the light, the promise in the text is that he "shall live." Jesus says: "I am the light of the world. He that followeth me shall have the light of LIFE. In him is light, and the light is the LIFE of men." But if the sinner, like the owl, closes his eyes to the light of truth, and his ears to the voice of the Lord, he will abide in death, and, like the owl, love darkness rather ...
— Life and Labors of Elder John Kline, the Martyr Missionary - Collated from his Diary by Benjamin Funk • John Kline
... and compounded, might go a great way in this invention." The dose, we confess, is pretty potent, and skilfully enough prepared. But what shall we say to the ass of Silenus, who, if we may trust to classic lore, by his own proper sounds, without thanks to cat or screech-owl, dismayed and put to rout a whole army of giants? Here was anti-music with a vengeance,—a whole Pan-Dis-Harmonicon in a single lungs ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 85, November, 1864 • Various
... from me! Pocahontas was a gay little hanger-on of the camps,—not like this silent owl! Her mind seems older than her years, and just notice her care of him, will you? I reckon he'd have wandered away and died but for her grip ...
— The Treasure Trail - A Romance of the Land of Gold and Sunshine • Marah Ellis Ryan
... the bell of Tarpaulin Cove reassured him, and after a time he heard the unmistakable blast of the great reed horn of Nobska uttering its triple hoot like a giant owl perched ...
— Blow The Man Down - A Romance Of The Coast - 1916 • Holman Day
... falling stars, slanting athwart the heavens in the direction of the cottage, and increasing in size and brilliancy as it neared the earth, until the wooded ridge and the shore could be seen as distinctly from the ship-deck as by day. A dog howled piteously from one of the out-houses,—an owl whooped from the wood. The meteor descended until it almost touched the roof, when a cock crew from within; its progress seemed instantly arrested; it stood still, rose about the height of a ship's mast, and then began again ...
— The Cruise of the Betsey • Hugh Miller
... really seen Uncle Jim leave the camp, he was still there, and his bones would yet be found in one of the ditches; while a still more credulous miner averred that what he had thought was the cry of a screech-owl the night previous to Uncle Jim's disappearance, might have been the agonized utterance of that murdered man. It was highly characteristic of that camp—and, indeed, of others in California—that ...
— Stories in Light and Shadow • Bret Harte
... the earth that we possess, just as Brown Robyn's Confession is the only one of the miracles of the Virgin. One may guess, however, that others have descended rapidly into nursery rhymes, as in the case of one, noted in J. O. Halliwell's collection, which, in its absence, may be called The Owl, or the Baker's Daughter. For Ophelia knew that they said the owl was the baker's daughter. And the story of her metamorphosis is exactly paralleled by the Norse story of Gertrude's Bird, translated ...
— Ballads of Mystery and Miracle and Fyttes of Mirth - Popular Ballads of the Olden Times - Second Series • Frank Sidgwick
... the owl, resolved to cease Their war, embraced in pledge of peace. On faith of king, on faith of owl, they swore That they would eat each other's chicks no more. 'But know you mine?' said Wisdom's bird.[22] 'Not I, indeed,' the eagle cried. ...
— The Fables of La Fontaine - A New Edition, With Notes • Jean de La Fontaine
... and uselessness, accompanied by sick headache and attacks of "nerves." Caroline Perthes carefully warned her married daughter Louisa to beware of giving way to such listlessness. "I myself," she said, "when the children are gone out for a half-holiday, sometimes feel as stupid and dull as an owl by daylight; but one must not yield to this, which happens more or less to all young wives. The best relief is WORK, engaged in with interest and diligence. Work, then, constantly and diligently, at something or other; for idleness is the devil's snare for small and great, as your grandfather ...
— Character • Samuel Smiles
... grow with the stones inside; but here in Australia we have cherries with the stones on the outside. We have birds of beautiful plumage and very little song; the owls are quiet at night, and screech and hoot in the daytime, which certainly is not a characteristic of the English or American owl. The geological formation of the country is also peculiar, and the scientific men who have come here from England and America are a good deal puzzled at the state of affairs they find in Australia. ...
— The Land of the Kangaroo - Adventures of Two Youths in a Journey through the Great Island Continent • Thomas Wallace Knox
... mounts to the Tribune! The biliary face seems clouded with new gloom; judge whether your Talliens, Bourdons listened with interest. It is a voice bodeful of death or of life. Long-winded, unmelodious as the screech-owl's, sounds that prophetic voice: Degenerate condition of Republican spirit; corrupt moderatism; Surete, Salut Committees themselves infected; back-sliding on this hand and on that; I, Maximilien, alone left incorruptible, ready ...
— The French Revolution • Thomas Carlyle
... were from you," she went on; "and the owl got broke that was in the box. It was too ...
— Nancy Stair - A Novel • Elinor Macartney Lane
... brake of gorse. Many a time on market days Flora had gone singing through these woods, plucking a posy of wild flowers and finding a mirror in every pool, as young girls will; but now she trembled and was afraid. The rustling of the trees in the darkness, the hooting of an owl, the awful purity of the moonlight in the glades, the cold sheen of the water, were to her troubled conscience omens of judgment. Had it not been for the kindness of Peter Bruce, which was a pledge of human forgiveness, there would ...
— Beside the Bonnie Brier Bush • Ian Maclaren
... a certain liking, a regret at our opposition, a quality of friendliness. His broad face, which the common impression and the caricaturist make so powerful and eagle-like, is really not a brutal or heavy face at all. It is no doubt aquiline, after the fashion of an eagle-owl, the mouth and chin broad and the eyes very far apart, but there is a minute puckering of the brows which combines with that queer streak of brown discoloration that runs across his cheek and into the ...
— The Passionate Friends • Herbert George Wells
... on that occasion bring himself to call her Cecilia. He might have done so had not her husband been present, but he was ashamed to do it before him. "He is a night bird, Harry," said she, speaking of her brother, "and flies away at nine o'clock that he may go and hoot like an owl in some dark city haunt that he has. Then, when he is himself asleep at breakfast time, his hootings are ...
— The Claverings • Anthony Trollope
... in a body, but slip away, flock by flock, to reappear about the end of April in their old breeding-place in the North Country, with, perhaps, the loss of a few members—the one that was old and died in the season of scarcity; and one that was taken at the roost by a brown owl, and one that had its feet frozen to the perch; and was killed by a jackdaw when struggling to free itself; and one that was struck down by a sparrow-hawk ...
— Birds in Town and Village • W. H. Hudson
... the owl, — is it thou That out of the leaves of the low-hanging bough, As I pass to the beach, art stirred? Dumb woods, have ...
— Select Poems of Sidney Lanier • Sidney Lanier
... had anything but a merry sound. None of the boys had a truly jovial look, nor was it to be expected of them. Tom was solemn as an owl, Harry fussy; Dan was grinning in a sickly sort of way, as was Dave Darrin. Greg Holmes, utterly silent, stood with his fists clenched, thinking how he would like to be able at this moment to pounce ...
— The Grammar School Boys in Summer Athletics • H. Irving Hancock
... music. There are few other sounds, for it is winter, and the tree-frog and cicada are silent. I hear the crackling knots in the fire, the rustling of dry leaves swirled up by a stray gust, the "coo-whoo-a" of the white owl, the bark of the raccoon, and, at intervals, the dismal howling of wolves. These are the nocturnal voices of the winter forest. They are savage sounds; yet there is a chord in my bosom that vibrates under their influence, and my spirit is tinged with romance ...
— The Scalp Hunters • Mayne Reid
... Owl Eyes, the Wisest Medicine-man, invited two of his cronies to sit with him on the bluff overlooking the salt-marsh and watch the children playing ...
— IT and Other Stories • Gouverneur Morris
... him Mr. Pope was the greatest enemy the Government had, and another bought his image in clay to execute him in effigy, with which sad sort of satisfaction the gentlemen were a little comforted. Some false editions of the book, having an owl in their frontispiece, the true one, to distinguish it, fixed in his stead an ass laden with authors. Then another surreptitious one being printed with the same ass, the new edition in octavo returned for distinction to the owl again. Hence ...
— Lives of the English Poets: Prior, Congreve, Blackmore, Pope • Samuel Johnson
... individual who had joined them sat down before Stuart and Jules and treated the two of them to an amiable grin, made all the more amiable and owl-like ...
— With Joffre at Verdun - A Story of the Western Front • F. S. Brereton
... employ themselves while she slept. "Some of you," said her majesty, "must kill cankers in the musk-rose-buds, and some wage war with the bats for their leathern wings, to make my small elves coats; and some of you keep watch that the clamorous owl, that nightly hoots, come not near me: but first sing me to sleep." Then they began ...
— Books for Children - The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Vol. 3 • Charles and Mary Lamb
... acknowledges it!" roared the magician. "Wretch, dotard, owl, mole, miserable buzzard! I have no reason to tell thee now that thy form is monstrous, that children cry, that cowards turn pale, that teeming matrons shudder to behold it. It is not thy fault that thou ...
— The Paris Sketch Book Of Mr. M. A. Titmarsh • William Makepeace Thackeray
... owl flapped lazily past, hooting weirdly as it went; then all nature became still again, save the dull sound of the tumbling flood. Ambler Jevons, had he been with me, would, no doubt, have acted differently. But it must be remembered that ...
— The Seven Secrets • William Le Queux
... of this wretched animal have been the great drawback on this journey. I have now bribed Kaluna with as much as the horse is worth to give him a month's rest, and long before that time I hope the owl-hawks ...
— The Hawaiian Archipelago • Isabella L. Bird
... he passed. At this stage he was of the jocular persuasion. "Still an unwelcome visitor, ma'am? No little tidbit of news for me to-day?" There he sat, twiddling his thumbs, reiterating his singsong: "Just so!" and looking wise as an owl. Mahony knew the air—had many a time seen it donned to cloak perplexity—and covert doubts of Rogers' ability began to assail him. But then he fell mentally foul of every one he came in touch with, at present: Ned, for the bare-faced fashion in which he left his cheerfulness on the door-mat; ...
— Australia Felix • Henry Handel Richardson
... de Noailles' grandfather was one of the ugliest men in the world. He had one glass eye, and his nose was like an owl's, his mouth large, his teeth ugly and decayed, his face and head very small, his body long and bent, and he was bitter and ill-tempered. His name was Gluinel. Madame de Cornuel one day was reading his grandson's ...
— The Memoirs of the Louis XIV. and The Regency, Complete • Elizabeth-Charlotte, Duchesse d'Orleans
... him. And there were more and more of them; at every fifty paces or so stood a fresh one, the whole forming a cordon, the meshes as it were of a huge net. The worst was that he must have been perceived, for a light cry, like the clear call of an owl, rang out, and was repeated farther and farther off. The hunters were at last on the right scent, prudence had become superfluous, and it was only by flight that the quarry might now hope to escape. Salvat understood this so well that he suddenly began to run, leaping over all obstacles and ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola
... says, "like the Star, and procure the light of the Sages, and hide yourself from the Stupid Profane and the Ambitious, and be like the Owl, which sees only by night, and hides itself ...
— Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry • Albert Pike
... light reappearing, nothing is yet settled; if you only reach ten, the moment approaches; if the light does not leave you time to count beyond five, your escape is fixed for the following night; if it reappears no more, it is fixed for the same evening; then the owl's cry, repeated thrice in the courtyard, will be the signal; let down the ladder ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - MARY STUART—1587 • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE
... heard, imitating the croaking of a frog or the cry of the owl so common there, and then a young girl would appear at the window, and pass her head through the opening between the bars, which were, however, too high for the man to reach. A low and tender conversation was then carried ...
— The Regent's Daughter • Alexandre Dumas (Pere)
... at about three in the morning; waked Heaven knew why!—for there was all the raw material of a good night's rest; the candidate for the sleepership; a prodigiously comfortable bed; dead silence, not so much as an owl in the still night she looked out into during an excursion warranted to promote sleep—but never sleep itself! She had been dragged reluctantly from a dreamless Nirvana into the presence of a waking nightmare—two great beautiful eyes that looked at her and saw nothing; ...
— When Ghost Meets Ghost • William Frend De Morgan
... to be heard at night but glasses' clink, boys, Fall of greasy cards and counters' chink, boys; If he won't "declare," Nordahl he will swear Bentzen is stupid as an owl, boys. Bentzen cool, boys, Is not a fool, boys; "You're another!" quickly he ...
— Farthest North - Being the Record of a Voyage of Exploration of the Ship 'Fram' 1893-1896 • Fridtjof Nansen
... could have squeezed myself into the little screech-owl perched in a corner of the arbor, I would gladly have crept into the hollow of an oak and closed my eyes. Still, how was I to foresee what I should do? A man's conversation may be his own; his conduct may vibrate with the ...
— Aftermath • James Lane Allen
... greatest intellects in this world to pull him down. Over our whole social system, complacent Imbecility rules supreme—snuffs out the searching light of Intelligence with total impunity—and hoots, owl-like, in answer to every form of protest, See how well we all do in the dark! One of these days that audacious assertion will be practically contradicted, and the whole rotten system of modern society will come down with ...
— No Name • Wilkie Collins
... his anointed head, With mystic words, the sacred opium shed. And, lo! her bird (a monster of a fowl, Something betwixt a Heidegger[282] and owl,) 290 Perch'd on his crown. 'All hail! and hail again, My son! the promised land expects thy reign. Know, Eusden thirsts no more for sack or praise; He sleeps among the dull of ancient days; Safe, where no critics damn, ...
— Poetical Works of Pope, Vol. II • Alexander Pope
... hand, and I followed him into the wood. We climbed again, and from the tinkle of the stream on my left I judged that we were ascending to a higher shelf in the glen. The Indian moved very carefully, as noiseless as the flight of an owl, and I marvelled at the gift. In after days I was to become something of a woodsman, and track as swiftly and silently as any man of my upbringing. But I never mastered the Indian art by which the foot descending in the darkness ...
— Salute to Adventurers • John Buchan
... they stand there, while in the moonlight pale Their rifle barrels and polished bayonets gleam; Nought is heard but the owl's low, plaintive wail, And the soft musical voice ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. III, No. V, May, 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... as if the whole sash would give way before the fiercer blasts, as though a giant had set his knee against it, and was striving to force an entrance. Now and again, when the wind lulled for a moment while it gathered strength for a fresh assault, the horrid shriek of an owl would be heard above the dashing of the rain that was ...
— Captain Fracasse • Theophile Gautier
... circumference of the world that is without the walls and privileges of this city, it shall be but like an old ruinous house, in which dwells nothing but cormorants, bitterns, owls, ravens, dragons, satyrs, the screech-owl, the great owl, the vulture, and the like most doleful birds. All their princes shall be nothing, saith the prophet, and when they call their nobles to the kingdom, none shall be there. In their very palaces shall be thorns, and ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... in the land of Nod When the rascal was alone Like an owl in an ivy tod Built a ...
— The History of the Devil - As Well Ancient as Modern: In Two Parts • Daniel Defoe
... shoulder, stubs in the back, a ridge on which it is impossible for the sleeper to balance, the non-elasticity of boughs, the hardness of the ground, the heat, the smoke, the chilly air. Subjects of remarks multiply. The whole camp is awake, and chattering like an aviary. The owl is also awake; but the guides who are asleep outside make more noise than the owls. Water is wanted, and is handed about in a dipper. Everybody is yawning; everybody is now determined to go to sleep in good earnest. A last good-night. There is an ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... chants her incantation to the Stygian Gods, in a voice compounded of all discords, and altogether alien to human organs. It resembles at once the barking of a dog and the howl of a wolf; it consists of the hooting of the screech-owl, the yelling of a ravenous wild beast, and the fearful hiss of a serpent. It borrows somewhat from the roar of tempestuous waves, the hollow rushing of the winds among the branches of the forest, and the tremendous crash of ...
— The Haunters & The Haunted - Ghost Stories And Tales Of The Supernatural • Various
... carrion vulture, condors collect in great numbers on the shore to prey on the stranded whales. Falcons seldom appear, except the small Sparrow Hawk (Falco sparverius, L.), which is very numerous in Peru. One of the most common birds is the little Earth Owl (Noctua urucurea, Less.), which is met with in nearly all the old ruins scattered along the coast. The Pearl Owl (Strix perlata, L.) is bred in several plantations, as it is found useful in catching mice. Swallows are ...
— Travels in Peru, on the Coast, in the Sierra, Across the Cordilleras and the Andes, into the Primeval Forests • J. J. von Tschudi
... a tiger or a crocodile, if by that means the occasional presence within the parish limits of either of these anthropophagous brutes could have been established. He brags of no fine society, but is plainly a little elated by "having considerable acquaintance with a tame brown owl." Most of us have known our share of owls, but few can boast of intimacy with a feathered one. The great events of Mr. White's life, too, have that disproportionate importance which is always humorous. To think of ...
— My Garden Acquaintance • James Russell Lowell
... in a hundred different directions. Not content with athletics and hunting, the boy will want to collect stamps or birds' eggs, to make a motor-boat and learn telegraphy; to take photographs and try his hand at the cornet; to experiment in chemistry and stuff an owl. Not content with dancing, sewing and cooking, the girl will want to master several poets and make attempts at painting; she will want to become more proficient at the piano and do some singing; she will want her share of photography and ...
— Your Child: Today and Tomorrow • Sidonie Matzner Gruenberg
... joyful advent of the spring came, also, Tommy's tame owl and "Happy Moses." Tommy's owl emerged from his winter-quarters, and took up his daily post of observation on the fence on the shady side of the school-house. He was blind in one eye, which eye was always open, the other was ...
— Cape Cod Folks • Sarah P. McLean Greene
... moon rises above the cotton fields, Romance touches even Grangerville itself, the baying of the yellow dog, darkey voices, the distant plunking of a banjo, the owl in the trees—all are the same as of old—and the houses are the same, nearly, and the people, and it is hard to believe that over there to the North the locomotives of the Atlantic Coast railway are whistling down the night, that ...
— The Ghost Girl • H. De Vere Stacpoole
... owl," said Jeff. "I want these pesky Poles and Syrians and all the rest of them to learn what they're up against when they come over here to run the government. I'm on the verge, Amabel, of hiring a hall and an interpreter, and teaching 'em something about ...
— The Prisoner • Alice Brown
... the storm and the clamour of the owl were not the cause of Rachel's wakefulness; but they tended to make it more feverish and irritable. Every now and then she would throw off the bed-clothes, and sit up with her hands round her knees, a white and rigid figure ...
— Harvest • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... crashed through the bushes in wild terror as the riders swept by them. Their plaintive calls were the only sounds which broke the silence of the night, save the occasional dismal hooting of the veldt owl. ...
— The Firm of Girdlestone • Arthur Conan Doyle
... midnight. The cottages were all dark. A single faint light gleamed out from the hallway of the house. There was no sound abroad except the hooting of an old owl in the top of a water-oak, and the everlasting voice of the sea, that was not uplifted at that soft hour. It broke like a mournful ...
— The Awakening and Selected Short Stories • Kate Chopin
... without any spiritual act of deprecation or supplication. In such a sense and such alone they worship the sun and moon (but not the stars), the forest, and the sea. The wolf, the black snake, the owl, and several other beasts and birds have the word kamoi, god, attached to them, as the wolf is the "howling god," the owl "the bird of the gods," a black snake the "raven god;" but none of these things are ...
— Unbeaten Tracks in Japan • Isabella L. Bird |
