"Toad" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... spectacles, and both animals were of the texture of uncut velvet. The former carried an excellent pack, which put mine to shame; the latter bore a boy's saddle, and the two were being fed with great bread crusts by a bewitching young woman of about twenty-six or -eight, wearing one of the toad-stool hats affected by the donkey-women of Mentone. She looked up at our approach, and having surveyed the pack and proportions of Finois with cold scorn, her interest in our procession incontestably focused ...
— The Princess Passes • Alice Muriel Williamson and Charles Norris Williamson
... mistake (a high authority informs me) in the explanation given in the dictionary. Toad-flax is certainly not a "mushroom," neither does it "stink." Is the Welsh word applied to both equivocally as distinct {468} objects? In Withering's Arrangement of British Plants, 7th edit., vol. iii., p. 734., 1830, the Welsh name of Antirrhinum Sinaria, or common ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 58, December 7, 1850 • Various
... pugnacious front and Weir's pompous air; and Ken realized that the same reason accounted for his own attitude toward them. He wanted very much to tell Raymond that he was a little grouch and Weir that he looked like a puffed-up toad. All the same Ken was not blind to Weir's handsome appearance. The sturdy youngster had an immense head, a great shock of bright brown hair, flashing gray eyes, ...
— The Young Pitcher • Zane Grey
... asking for such fellows' reasons? The soul of man," said Caleb, with the deep tone and grave shake of the head which always came when he used this phrase—"The soul of man, when it gets fairly rotten, will bear you all sorts of poisonous toad-stools, and no eye can see ...
— Middlemarch • George Eliot
... between the most helpless and enslaved females of the dark race and the most recklessly dominant males of the white. "He enters a world in which there was no place prepared for him." His father was about as sensible of his parental obligations towards him as a toad towards its spawn in the next ditch. To him he "was a broken wineglass from last night's feast." "Often without a family, always without a nation or race, without education or moral training, and despised by the society in which he was born," is it any wonder that the half-caste ...
— The Power of Womanhood, or Mothers and Sons - A Book For Parents, And Those In Loco Parentis • Ellice Hopkins
... ground of witchcraft and this must be taken into calculation when one considers what woman owes to religion. The Reformation reduced woman to the position of a mere breeder of children. During the sway of Puritanism woman was a poor, benighted being, a human toad under the harrow of ...
— The Necessity of Atheism • Dr. D.M. Brooks
... a little tree-toad that began it. In a careless moment he had come down to the bench that connects the big maple tree with the old locust stump, and when I went out at dusk to wait for Jonathan, there he sat, in plain sight. A few experimental pokes sent him back to the tree, ...
— More Jonathan Papers • Elisabeth Woodbridge
... beetle spreads her wings, The toad has the road, the cricket sings: The bat is the rover, No bee on the clover, The day is over, ...
— Graded Poetry: Seventh Year - Edited by Katherine D. Blake and Georgia Alexander • Various
... own this wondrous sabre, shape of toad is on the hilt, On the blade a toad is graven, and the ...
— Maha-bharata - The Epic of Ancient India Condensed into English Verse • Anonymous
... he came in sight of the sinister triangular building which crouches, toad-like, under the shadow of the great Cathedral, Vanderlyn's heart failed him for the first time. If Peggy were indeed lying there exposed to the careless, morbid glances of idle sightseers to whom the Morgue is one of the sights of Paris, he felt that ...
— The Uttermost Farthing • Marie Belloc Lowndes
... strange and horrible sickness. The people, in their predisposition to believe in all sorts of extraordinary and rare afflictions, were certain that they knew what this was. Visanteta had a toad in her stomach. She had drunk from a certain spot of the near-by river, and the wicked animal, small and almost unnoticeable, had gone down into her stomach, growing fast. The good neighbors, trembling with stupefaction, flocked to la Soberana's cabin ...
— Luna Benamor • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... his friends, and I held my peace. I had prayed for his death every night for three weeks after that, and though he was still alive the knowledge of my unconfessed and unrepented wickedness prevented me from being more than conveniently polite, he thought I was a cheeky little toad and I thought he was a bully, so we looked at each other and did not speak. We were both glad, therefore, when the train pulled up at the station that bore the name of my ...
— The Ghost Ship • Richard Middleton
... of old, unmarried, noted letchers, Stood leering up like satyrs; and you smile Most graciously, and fan your favours forth, To give your hot spectators satisfaction! What; was your mountebank their call? their whistle? Or were you enamour'd on his copper rings, His saffron jewel, with the toad-stone in't, Or his embroider'd suit, with the cope-stitch, Made of a herse-cloth? or his old tilt-feather? Or his starch'd beard? Well; you shall have him, yes! He shall come home, and minister unto you The fricace for the mother. Or, let me see, I think you'd rather mount; would you ...
— Volpone; Or, The Fox • Ben Jonson
... Thomas and Lady Vyell (the Protector's grand-daughter), they received instruction at the hands—often very literally at the hands—of the Rev. Isaac Toplady, Curate in Charge of Carwithiel, a dry scholar, a wet fly-fisher, and something of a toad-eater. They had for sole playmate and companion their Cousin Diana, or Di, the seven-year-old daughter of their eldest uncle, Thomas, heir to the ...
— Lady Good-for-Nothing • A. T. Quiller-Couch
... creature—he was brought up at Ardayre as though he were the heir, and poor John turned out of things. He came to Eton three years before I left, but even there they could not turn him into the outside semblance of a gentleman. I loathed the little toad, and he loathed me—and the sickening part of the thing is that if John does not have a son, by the English law of entail Ferdinand comes into Ardayre, and will be the head of the family. Old Sir James died ...
— The Price of Things • Elinor Glyn
... enter another in the wall, bounded by no grassy banks, brightened by no cheerful light, admired by no human eye, followed in its small course through the inner fissures in the brick by no living thing but a bloated toad, or a solitary lizard: yet wending as happily on its way through darkness and ruin, as its sisters who were basking in the sunlight of the meadows, or leaping in the fresh breezes of the ...
— Antonina • Wilkie Collins
... call him bad?" the woman cried. "Ah, no wonder the gods hate you! No doubt you were very wicked ages and ages ago, and so now you are made a widow. By and by you will be born a snake or a toad." And, gathering up her water-pots, she ...
— Stories Worth Rereading • Various
... got back to the picknic old Mrs. Bolton had had a spell and the minister and Decon Sawyer was lifting her into Miss Susan Parkinsons caryall to drive her home. sum feller had throwed a teeny little bull toad in her lap. huh i shood think that was a prety thing to have a spell for. i never see ennyone have a spell. i wish i had got there in time to see it. Beany sed it was grate fun and ...
— Brite and Fair • Henry A. Shute
... wasn't afraid none—ump-um, not me—I jest kept a-crawlin' and a-crawlin', hopin' to find some rocks or shelter, until she stacked up on top of me thirty foot deep. Thirty foot—and slumped down on top o' me until I felt like a horny-toad under a haystack. Well, I was gittin' powerful weak and puny, but jest as I was despairin' I come across a big rock, right out there in the middle of that great plain or perairie. I tried to crawl around that old rock but the snow was ...
— Hidden Water • Dane Coolidge
... brimstone idiot. You're a scorpion—a brimstone scorpion! You're a sweltering toad. You're a chattering clattering broomstick witch that ought to be burnt!" gasps the old man, prostrate in his chair. "My dear friend, will you ...
— Bleak House • Charles Dickens
... sentences and possibly your audience goes away without finding out what that valuable thing was that you were trying to confer upon it; but, dear me, you put the same jewel into a story and it becomes the keystone of that story, and you are bound to get it—it flashes, it flames, it is the jewel in the toad's head—you don't overlook that. ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... you!" he said, at length, in a half suffocated voice. "God bless you both! I have surely found one 'precious jewel' in the head of this 'toad'—the priceless ...
— Victor's Triumph - Sequel to A Beautiful Fiend • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth
... cold; Infernal paeons shake the busts Of idols planted in the light. And, ere immewed gyres froth black mists Unto all ghauts and splinter'd domes That cypher signs of dungeoned dell, A turgid dawn arrays this vale, Each dysodile scavenger sits On a tomb and fondles gray bones; An eyeless toad croaks from a well. Then cosmic force forsakes each dale: 'Mis Cyclopean pulse of hell Giant cauldrons vomit vapours green And skirr thro' bristling lanes and halls: Whilst beacons die and shrood each soul, Dank tears drop on a fatal bell, Wrought by a Titan's sombre queen, ...
— Betelguese - A Trip Through Hell • Jean Louis de Esque
... "I could eat a toad, or a potful of caterpillars," I answered; and having cut off a portion for Caesar, I slung the remainder over my shoulder. We hastened on until we came to some brushwood, where we could collect sufficient fuel to make a fire. The Indians, I knew, eat snakes of all descriptions. ...
— In the Wilds of Florida - A Tale of Warfare and Hunting • W.H.G. Kingston
... for a schoolboy. When I look at his wonderful face now and think of his appearance at the time of our marriage, I am reminded of the Hans Andersen toad with the jewel in its head, but the ...
— Margot Asquith, An Autobiography: Volumes I & II • Margot Asquith
... that problematical animal, the toad-in-a-hole (literal, not culinary) has been one of the most familiar and interesting personages of contemporary folk-lore and popular natural history. From time to time he turns up afresh, with his own wonted perennial vigour, on ...
— Falling in Love - With Other Essays on More Exact Branches of Science • Grant Allen
... brought them together at a certain moment in the hall of the New Cosmopolitan Club, Petro told himself that he would by and by reach Winifred Child. It was a hateful combination of circumstances; but finding her thus would be no worse than discovering a rare jewel in a toad's head. ...
— Winnie Childs - The Shop Girl • C. N. Williamson
... lecture the night before, to Toad Holler, a little place between Jonesville and Loontown. He and uncle Nate Burpy went up to hear a speech aginst wimmen's ...
— Sweet Cicely - Or Josiah Allen as a Politician • Josiah Allen's Wife (Marietta Holley)
... much by himself. I give him a punch to waken him up, for we'd made up our minds that that was the way to work this job. It wouldn't pay us to go around huntin' for Jerry's money. He was such a sharp old fellow, it was six to four we'd never find it. He sat up in bed with a jump like a hop-toad, and looked first at one and then at the other of us. We both had masks on, and it wasn't puzzlin' to guess what we was ...
— The Stories of the Three Burglars • Frank Richard Stockton
... like a toad under a harrow, and that without the slightest cause. I have money lying at Hunky's more than double enough for the bills. Why can't you trust a man? If you won't trust me in saying so, you can go to Mills Happerton and ask him. But, remember, I shall be very much annoyed if ...
— The Prime Minister • Anthony Trollope
... machination carefully to deprive those advantages of any opportunity of showing themselves and becoming known. Then out of his dark corner he will attack these qualities with censure, mockery, ridicule and calumny, like the toad which spurts its poison from a hole. No less will he enthusiastically praise unimportant people, or even indifferent or bad performances in the same sphere. In short, he will becomes a Proteas in stratagem, in order to wound ...
— The Essays Of Arthur Schopenhauer • Arthur Schopenhauer
... of the Revolution, and for some years after its termination. Gifford was deeply imbued with all the sentiments on public matters which prevailed in his time, and, as some people have a hatred of a cat, and others of a toad, so our friend felt uneasy when a Frenchman was named; and buckled on his armour of criticism whenever a Liberal or even a Whig was brought under his notice; and although in the present day there appears to be a greater indulgence to crime amongst judges and ...
— A Publisher and His Friends • Samuel Smiles
... valleys, where it set itself gaily to saw wood, and on into the plains, where it would soberly carry grain to town; yet the real strength of the fable is when it deals with the shut pool in which certain unfortunate raindrops are imprisoned among slugs and snails, and in the company of an old toad. The sodden contentment of the fallen acorn is strangely significant; and it is astonishing how unpleasantly we are startled by the appearance of her horrible ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. XXII (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... centipede was happy quite, Until the toad, for fun, Said, 'Pray which leg goes after which?' This stirred his mind to such a pitch, He lay distracted in a ditch, ...
— The Trained Memory • Warren Hilton
... would but say he loved me! If he would but save the suspense of my aching heart! But it must come; I know it will; and if that cantankerous toad of ...
— East Lynne • Mrs. Henry Wood
... has got some snakes in some bottles, and a frog and a toad. He has got some grasshoppers with a pin stuck through them, and a spider and some potato-bugs. It is the museum. He thinks ...
— St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, V. 5, April 1878 - Scribner's Illustrated • Various
... habits of wild animals, as frog, toad, squirrel, ground-hog; habits and structures, including adaptive features, of domestic animals, as dog, cat, horse, cow. ...
— Ontario Teachers' Manuals: Nature Study • Ontario Ministry of Education
... used against the Independents and the Sectaries. [Footnote: Richard Baxter, as he himself tells us, sent communications from the country to Edwards. His correspondents were legion, but he concealed their names.] Yet there was a kind of coarse business-like conscientiousness in the toad; and, though he was credulous and unscrupulous in his collections of scandal, I do not believe he invented documents or lied deliberately. I do not doubt, therefore, that Mrs. Attaway, whether she went ultimately to Jericho or to Jerusalem, ...
— The Life of John Milton Vol. 3 1643-1649 • David Masson
... of Harlem. Washington retreated to White Plains, where, on October 28th, the British, after a severe loss, took an outpost and won what is called the "Battle of White Plains." Henceforward Washington's movements resembled too painfully those of the proverbial toad under the harrow; and yet in spite of Lord Howe's efforts to crush him, he succeeded in escaping into New Jersey with a small remnant—some six thousand men—of his original army. The year 1776 thus closed ...
— George Washington • William Roscoe Thayer
... subserve a purpose. In local affairs the most vulgar nicknaming, the most savage irony, vituperation, scorn and contempt were poured out full measure on certain individuals unpopular with the papers. Such epithets as "lickspittle," "toad," "carcass blown with the putrefying gas of its own importance," were read in the body ...
— The Rules of the Game • Stewart Edward White
... rich magician rubs his double-eagles before me, woe is me, if I don't paint! When the magicians send their eagles on other errands, I am free from their drudgery. Meanwhile, I live on air, flattened out and packed away, like a Mexican horned-frog, or a dreaming toad, in a fissure ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, Issue 17, March, 1859 • Various
... as a toad's back, was as prideful and full of power as old King Nebuchadneisher; and how to exhibit all his purple and fine linen, he aye thought and better thought, till at last the happy determination came over ...
— The Life of Mansie Wauch - Tailor in Dalkeith, written by himself • David Macbeth Moir
... The toad beneath the harrow knows Exactly where each tooth-point goes. The butterfly upon the road Preaches contentment to ...
— My Brilliant Career • Miles Franklin
... other; but when he got around to the end of his circle he had to begin all over again to see if they didn't all taste better the second time. My, it was a feast that made his eyes open and his stomach swell like a toad's trying ...
— Bumper, The White Rabbit • George Ethelbert Walsh
... whip, until the latter is half dead. Wotan and Loge, hearing his complaints, promise to help him. Alberich, coming forth again, is greatly flattered by Wotan and dexterously led on to show his might. He first changes himself into an enormous snake and then into a toad. Wotan quickly puts his foot on it, while Loge seizes the Tarnhelm. Alberich becoming suddenly visible in his real shape, is bound and led away captive. The gods return to the mountain-heights of the second scene, where ...
— The Standard Operaglass - Detailed Plots of One Hundred and Fifty-one Celebrated Operas • Charles Annesley
... he spoke something crawled slowly on to the bag that was broken and sat on the red gold that was hidden no longer. There it stayed, staring at the torchlight—a great wizened toad, whose eyes were like the gold which it seemed to guard. And we stared at it, for not one of us dared touch it, nor could we ...
— King Olaf's Kinsman - A Story of the Last Saxon Struggle against the Danes in - the Days of Ironside and Cnut • Charles Whistler
... bent low before the monarch, and then crept back into its den. Charlemagne followed, anxious to learn the reason of its strange behaviour. He was surprised when, on looking into the dark hole, he saw an ugly toad sitting on the serpent's eggs, and filling nearly the whole ...
— Legends of the Rhine • Wilhelm Ruland
... griglans, heath; padzypaw (from padzar, four?), the small gray lizard; muryan, the ant; quilkan, the frog (which retains its English name when in the water); pul-cronach (literally pool-toad) is the name given to a small fish with a head much like that of a toad, which is often found in the pools (pulans) left by the receding tide among the rocks along shore; visnan, the sand-lance; bul-horn, the shell-snail; ...
— Chips From A German Workshop. Vol. III. • F. Max Mueller
... matters, after what you suffered with Mr. Bean. But what I was sayin', some do say Phrony Mellen's bound to have the minister for herself, and that's why she sent Rose Ellen off, traipsin' way down to Tupham, when her grandma'am don't need her no more'n a toad needs a tail." ...
— "Some Say" - Neighbours in Cyrus • Laura Elizabeth Howe Richards
... England! Past weald and down, past field and hedgerow, croft and orchard, cottage and mansion, now over the chalk with its spinneys of beech and fir, now over the clay with its forests of oak and elm. The friends of one's childhood, purple scabious and yellow toad-flax, seemed to nod their heads in welcome; and the hedgerows were festive with garlands of bryony and Old Man's Beard. The blanching willows rippled in the breeze, and the tall poplars whispered with every wind. I looked down the length ...
— Leaves from a Field Note-Book • J. H. Morgan
... Which when it bites and blows upon my body, Even till I shrink with cold, I smile and say, 'This is no flattery: these are counsellors That feelingly persuade me what I am.' Sweet are the uses of adversity; Which, like the toad, ugly and venomous, Wears yet a precious jewel in his head; And this our life, exempt from public haunt, Finds tongues in trees, books in the running brooks, Sermons in stones, and good in everything. I ...
— As You Like It • William Shakespeare [Collins edition]
... would go off along the white road that led to Garchester, and on to Crogate and so to Tunbridge Wells, where there was a Toad Rock he had heard of, but never seen. (It seemed to him this must needs be a marvel.) And so to other towns and cities. He would walk and loiter by the way, and sleep in inns at night, and get an odd job here and there and talk ...
— The History of Mr. Polly • H. G. Wells
... hold, he fell to the ground heavily. Finding his feet he rushed at the hut with an oath, and clutching the straw and the grass strings that bound it, struggled almost to the top, to be met by the point of Rachel's spear held in his face. There then he hung, looking like a toad on the slope of a rock, unable to advance because of that spear, and unwilling to go down, lest his labour ...
— The Ghost Kings • H. Rider Haggard
... "Guess I'll keep this toad-stabber," he observed. "That fellow won't come round for it in a hurry; goodsized blade, too." The group examined it with ...
— McTeague • Frank Norris
... but take out of her apron a wee bit of a toad, and drop it in Prudy's mouth! I can't see how she dared do such a thing; but she did it. She had found the toad in the street, and picked it up to ...
— Little Prudy • Sophie May
... with a very few exceptions, only attacked and devoured by snakes, by lizards, and by their own venomous relative, Ceratophrys ornata. Possibly the cold sluggish natures of all these creatures protects them against the toad's secretion, which would be poison to most warm-blooded animals, but I am not so sure that all fish enjoy a like immunity. I one day noticed a good-sized fish (bagras) floating, belly upmost, on the water. It had apparently ...
— The Naturalist in La Plata • W. H. Hudson
... this almost naked, white savage be? He had heard him speak but once—when he had cautioned him to silence—and then in excellent German and the well-modulated tones of culture. He watched him now as the fascinated toad watches the snake that is about to devour it. He saw the graceful limbs and symmetrical body motionless as a marble statue as the creature crouched in the concealment of the leafy foliage. Not a muscle, not a nerve moved. He saw the deer coming slowly along the trail, down wind and unsuspecting. ...
— Tarzan the Untamed • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... individual members. Each time a plan of treatment or a particular remedy comes up for trial, it is submitted to a sharper scrutiny. When Cullen wrote his Materia Medica, he had seriously to assail the practice of giving burnt toad, which was still countenanced by at least one medical authority of note. I have read recently in some medical journal, that an American practitioner, whose name is known to the country, is prescribing the hoof of a horse for epilepsy. ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... "That horned toad'll get a rush of blood to his head!" cried Leslie, as Alfaretta threw her recent "treasure" into ...
— Dorothy on a Ranch • Evelyn Raymond
... as I perceived the lady was out of tune, I was in haste to leave her. I should make a very bad, and, I am sure, a miserable toad eater. I had much rather, if I were obliged to choose, earn my own bread, than live as ...
— The Parent's Assistant • Maria Edgeworth
... peculiarity, we may excuse the savage if he regard it as another proof of a distinct personality in plant life. Thus, some years ago, a correspondent of the Botanical Register, describing the toad orchis (Megaclinium bufo), amusingly spoke as follows of its eccentric movements: "Let the reader imagine a green snake to be pressed flat like a dried flower, and then to have a road of toads, or some such speckled reptiles, drawn up along the middle in single ...
— The Folk-lore of Plants • T. F. Thiselton-Dyer
... your fortune yourself, will you? This comes of my bringing you up, and letting you eat the bread of idleness and charity, you toad of a thousand! Take that and be d—d to you!" and, suiting the action to the word, the tube which she had withdrawn from her mouth in order to utter her gentle rebuke whizzed through the air, grazed Paul's cheek, and finished its earthly career by coming ...
— Paul Clifford, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... koorpee, with which he investigates the root of each weed as a snipe feels in the mud for worms; then with his left hand he pulls it out, gently shakes the earth off it, and contributes it to a small heap beside him. When he has cleared a little space round him, he moves on like a toad, without lifting himself. He enlivens his toil by exchanging remarks upon the weather as affecting the price of grain, the infirmity of my temper and other topics of personal interest, with an assistant, ...
— Behind the Bungalow • EHA
... is called Adrune; the fox, Blue-foot, or the Racer of the Woods; the wolf, Gray-foot, or Gold-foot; the bear the Old Man, or Grandfather. The cap of a gnome confers invisibility, and causes one to behold invisible things. Every toad that is baptized must be clad in red or black velvet, a bell on its neck, a bell on its feet. The godfather holds its head, the godmother its hinder parts. 'Tis the demon Sidragasum who hath the power to make wenches ...
— Notre-Dame de Paris - The Hunchback of Notre Dame • Victor Hugo
... be anything, anything, I tell you,' the dwarf cries, getting still more angry; 'I will be as small as you like,' and in another second he has changed himself into a toad, not much bigger than your hand, as slimy as ever, looking still just as wicked as the dwarf himself, and ...
— The Wagner Story Book • Henry Frost
... and guns sufficient to penetrate armor plate could not be carried on air-craft. The big guns of battleships, which had for a time grown bigger and bigger, had now gone quite out of use, for the coming of the armored top had been followed by the toad-stool warship, which had a roof like an inverted saucer, and was provided with water chambers, the opening of the traps of which caused a sudden sinking of the vessel until the eave dipped beneath the ...
— In the Clutch of the War-God • Milo Hastings
... is one of those playful English names for dishes, like Pink Poodle, Scotch Woodcock (given below), Bubble and Squeak (Bubblum Squeakum), and Toad in ...
— The Complete Book of Cheese • Robert Carlton Brown
... man who bides his time to repay a wrong or fancied wrong, who keeps alive in his hardened nature the vile thing hatred, and would for centuries, did he live thus long,—as the toad is kept alive in the solid rock. Hugh Miller says he is 'disposed to regard the poison bag of the serpent as a mark of degradation;' this venomous spite is certainly a mark of degradation, and it is only creeping, crawling souls that have it, but the ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I., No. IV., April, 1862 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... imaginations banished, And but for me, be well assured, Thou from this sphere must soon have vanished. In rocky hollows and in caverns drear, Why like an owl sit moping here? Wherefore from dripping stones and moss with ooze embued, Dost suck, like any toad, thy food? A rare, sweet pastime. Verily! The doctor ...
— Faust Part 1 • Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe
... seemed long before with recovered calmness the Admiral spoke. "Take the truth, then, from my lips, and bear it highly. As we had plotted so we did, but that vile toad, that engrained traitor, learning, we know not how, each jot and tittle of our plan and escaping by some secret way, sold us to disaster such as has not been since Fayal in the Azores! For on land we fought to no avail, and by treachery the Spaniards seized ...
— Sir Mortimer • Mary Johnston
... obtained by the casual operations of party spirit. Lord Glenelg's case showed that colonial secretaries were punished when they got into bad messes, and his passion for messes was punished, in the language of the journals of the day, by the life of a toad under a harrow until he was worried out of office. There was, however, no force in public opinion to prevent the minister from going wrong if he liked; still less to prevent him from going right if he liked. Popular feeling was coloured ...
— The Life of William Ewart Gladstone, Vol. 1 (of 3) - 1809-1859 • John Morley
... in spite of his misfortune, as he abundantly proved—perhaps never more so than on this occasion—when again, with almost the action of a toad, he leaped right upon the smuggler, driving him back just as he was trying to rise, and covering his face with a broad chest and ...
— The Lost Middy - Being the Secret of the Smugglers' Gap • George Manville Fenn
... naturally disposed to love what gives us pleasure, and what more pleasing than a beautiful face—when we know no harm of the possessor at least? A little girl loves her bird—Why? Because it lives and feels; because it is helpless and harmless? A toad, likewise, lives and feels, and is equally helpless and harmless; but though she would not hurt a toad, she cannot love it like the bird, with its graceful form, soft feathers, and bright, speaking eyes. If a woman is fair and amiable, she is praised for both qualities, but especially ...
— Agnes Grey • Anne Bronte
... philology; Professor Kelly Miller in mathematics; Professor Du Bois, in history; Dr. Bowen, in theology; Professor Turner, in science; nor Mr. Tanner in art. There is no repugnance to the Negro buffoon, and the Negro scullion; but so soon as the Negro stands forth as an intellectual being, this toad of American prejudice, as at the touch of Ithuriel's spear, starts up ...
— Civilization the Primal Need of the Race - The American Negro Academy. Occasional Paper No. 3 • Alexander Crummell
... of night in the forest now came on apace—a night of silence. There was not even the call of a tree toad. The voice of the whippoorwill was stilled at that season of the year. If there were human beings awake, alert, at that time, they made no sound. Meriwether Lewis was alone—alone in the wilderness again. Its silences, ...
— The Magnificent Adventure - Being the Story of the World's Greatest Exploration and - the Romance of a Very Gallant Gentleman • Emerson Hough
... seem not to remember that though it must be granted them that they are crawling about before the break of day, it can seldom be said that they are perfectly awake; they exhaust no spirits, and require no repairs; but lie torpid as a toad in marble, or at least are known to live only by an inert and sluggish loco-motive faculty, and may be said, like a wounded snake, to ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson - Volume IV [The Rambler and The Adventurer] • Samuel Johnson
... am. I must not forget my horned toad, Diego, that I got in California. I keep him in the green-house, and he is very happy catching flies and holding his horny head to be scratched whenever ...
— Beautiful Joe • Marshall Saunders
... melts away. It is also said that the Basilisk inhabits wells, and that it is dangerous to look down a well, as to encounter the gaze of a Basilisk would be to turn the beholder to stone. There is also another variation of the legend. The egg when laid by the cock must be hatched by a toad; but when the Basilisk is hatched, if it be first seen by a human being, it at once dies, but if the contrary, the ...
— A Danish Parsonage • John Fulford Vicary
... toad-flax. 459 Sudden and frequent origin in the wild state. Origin in the experiment-garden. Law of repeated mutations. ...
— Species and Varieties, Their Origin by Mutation • Hugo DeVries
... learn it, your majesty," whispered the countess, "squat like a toad, close to the ear of Eve"—"the letter will ...
— Joseph II. and His Court • L. Muhlbach
... tramp like you to insult gentlemen like us," continued the lackey, in an imposing tone. "And did you not say that when I took Mademoiselle to mass I looked like a green toad upon the box, ..thus trying to dishonor my physique and my clothes? Did ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... maker of images!" Paulina had exclaimed, with as much horror as if she had seen a toad; then she had paced uneasily up and down and had added with her ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... cheerful turn to the conversation. "I took my aversion to frogs from the time when a naughty boy played me a trick, and threw a great big toad, as brown as a crust, at me. He said it was a bull-frog, and that if he struck it with a nettle it would roar like a bull. He did strike the poor thing, and then it began to moan piteously, so that I can never forget it, as if it would call for vengeance against our ...
— Timar's Two Worlds • Mr Jkai
... lease. taed, toad (used affectionately or otherwise of a person). tapsalteerie, head over heels, topsy-turvy. tastin', small quantity. tatties, potatoes. tauld, told. tel't, told. teuch, tough. thae, those. thee, thigh. thocht, thought, worry, care. thole, endure. ...
— The Auld Doctor and other Poems and Songs in Scots • David Rorie
... scene, and, passing on, was met by Monsieur Charlie, who, order-book in hand, with his dark-skinned, woolly—covered cranium and squat figure, resembled more a toad than a human being. "Anything, Senor Captain, you vant?—me got in my store, all so cheap and so excellent," he said, making an attempt to bow, his keen, twinkling eyes fixed on his visitors, while he waited eagerly to note ...
— The Three Commanders • W.H.G. Kingston
... sailors was shipping the Professor in the mummy case underneath, and well out of sight. Cockatoo had come down stream with The Firefly, and in this way had not been discovered. Throughout that long day the miserable Braddock had crouched like a toad in its hole, trembling at every sound of pursuit, as he knew that the whole of the village was looking for him. But Cockatoo had hidden him well in the case, in the lid of which holes had been bored. He had ...
— The Green Mummy • Fergus Hume
... limbs quivering with convulsions, but these only saw the devil. A whirlwind of madness seemed to be passing over the region. An old lady of Lourdes declared that Bernadette was simply a witch and that she had herself seen the toad's foot in her eye. But for the others, for the thousands of pilgrims who hastened to the spot, she was a saint, and they kissed her garments. Sobs burst forth and frenzy seemed to seize upon the souls of the beholders, when she fell upon her knees before the Grotto, ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola
... athletic, burly fellow of about fifty, dressed in a buff jerkin, and dark cloth pantaloons. His hair was black as a coal and exceedingly bushy, his face much marked from some disorder, and his skin as dark as that of a toad. A very tall woman stood by the dresser, much resembling him in feature, with the same hair and complexion, but with more intelligence in her eyes than the man, who looked heavy and dogged. A dark woman, whom I subsequently discovered to be lame, sat in a corner, and two or three swarthy girls, ...
— The Zincali - An Account of the Gypsies of Spain • George Borrow
... Reptilia Chile is singularly free, there being recorded only eleven species—five saurians, four ophidians, one frog and one toad—but a more thorough survey of the uninhabited territories of the south may increase this list. There are no alligators in the streams, and the tropical north has very few lizards. There are no poisonous snakes in the country, and, in a region so filled with lakes and rivers as the rainy ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 2 - "Chicago, University of" to "Chiton" • Various
... acquaintance of Prince Vanno, with the Princess-to-be. Everybody came, from a dowdy and perfectly charming German royalty down to poor old General Caradine, who had played roulette for twenty-five years, with the same live Mexican toad for a fetish; whose two great boasts were that he had learned the language of birds, and that he had fought a duel with a man for defaming Queen Mary of Scots. There were an English Foreign Secretary and ...
— The Guests Of Hercules • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... the old sinner, "it's hard to say what's best,—powder of toad's bone or the mixture of wormwood and adder's fat. The safest thing is to consult ...
— A Victor of Salamis • William Stearns Davis
... the following case, as it relates to a migratory bird belonging to the most wandering of all orders—viz. the woodcock. (381/2. "Origin," Edition VI., page 328.) The tarsus was firmly coated with mud, weighing when dry 9 grains, and from this the Juncus bufonius, or toad rush, germinated. By the way, the locust case verifies what I said in the "Origin," that many possible means of distribution would be hereafter discovered. I quite agree about the extreme difficulty of the distribution of land mollusca. You will have seen in the last edition of "Origin" ...
— More Letters of Charles Darwin Volume II - Volume II (of II) • Charles Darwin
... dank vegetation of the floor; yonder the blackness of fire had left its mark, and there remained but reddened and mouldering stone. Wild animals and doleful creatures had everywhere increased. The toad puffed out his freckled sides on hearths whose fires had been long extinguished, the fox rustled among its bushes, the masterless dog howled from the thicket, the hawk screamed shrill and sharp as it fluttered overhead. ...
— Leading Articles on Various Subjects • Hugh Miller
... untouched. "The west entrance," he says, "is barbarously adorned with a grotesque group, in high relief, which represents the Subjugation of the Evil Spirit." The power subjugated takes the shape of a creature, said to be a toad, with his head downwards. The work of subjugation is done by two men below pulling at his head ...
— Sketches of Travel in Normandy and Maine • Edward A. Freeman
... touch of the Ithuriel spear the old toad flashed up into the Romany devil, as with gleaming eyes and a witch-like grin she cried in a mixture of ...
— The Gypsies • Charles G. Leland
... symbols of palingenesis. Resurrection—in the sense of re-birth in general—was symbolised by the toad which then became the goddess Hiquet. This animal was chosen because it lives in air and in water,[113] because it can remain imprisoned a very great number of years without either air or food[114] and afterwards come ...
— Reincarnation - A Study in Human Evolution • Th. Pascal
... made me sick,' says Margery—'only it was kind of sting-y to the tongue and I swallowed smoke through my nose repeatedly. And first, this old one wouldn't give us the cigarettes at all, until I threatened to cast a spell on him and turn him into a toad forever. I never did that to any one, but I bet I could. And the fat one cried like anything and begged me not to turn the old one into a toad, and the old one said he didn't think I could in a thousand years, but he wouldn't ...
— Somewhere in Red Gap • Harry Leon Wilson
... behind each came a hound, Padding with gentle paws upon the road. Straight silent pines rose here and there around; A dull stream on the left side hardly flowed; A black snake through the sluggish waters wound. Hark, the night raven! see the crawling toad! She thinks how dark will be the moonless night, How feeblest ray is ...
— Poetical Works of George MacDonald, Vol. 2 • George MacDonald
... but even in that critical moment, justice insisted that Lark's arguments were sound. The professor had certainly asked the scholars to bring him "things to cut up." But a toad! A live one!—And the Ladies' Aid! ...
— Prudence of the Parsonage • Ethel Hueston
... Nightjar (Known also as the Goatsucker, because of the mistaken belief that the bird sucks the milk of Goats, and, in America, as the Whippoorwill.—Translator's Note.), the Chaoucho-grapaou, as he calls her, is an elderly Toad, who, becoming enamoured of milk-food, has grown feathers, so that she may enter the byres and milk the Goats. It is impossible to drive these fantastic ideas out of his head. Favier himself, as will be seen, is an evolutionist after his own fashion, an ...
— More Hunting Wasps • J. Henri Fabre
... that the Zapotec guache, translated by Seler "frog or toad," is more likely a variant of gurache or ...
— Day Symbols of the Maya Year • Cyrus Thomas
... remarkable establishment. The horses can cheerfully do their mile in fifteen or twenty minutes, but they make more row about it than a high-pressure Mississippi steamer; and the crazy little trap is noisier in proportion to its size than anything I have ever seen, except perhaps an Indiana tree-toad. If you make an excursion outside the walls, the omnibus, noise and all, is inevitable; let it come. But inside the city you must walk; the slower the better, for every door ...
— Castilian Days • John Hay
... closes. It is an eerie and mysterious position to be thus submerged in opaque blackness in an almost unknown town. The silence is terrifying in its possibilities. The touch of cold window-bars to the exploring hand startles the man like the touch of a toad; the inequalities of the pavement shake his heart into his mouth; a piece of denser darkness threatens an ambuscade or a chasm in the pathway; and where the air is brighter, the houses put on strange and bewildering appearances, as if to lead ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 4 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... can tell by the looks of a toad how far it will jump," laughed Donald. "But peaceable or warlike, I'd like mighty well to be on board ...
— The Broncho Rider Boys with Funston at Vera Cruz - Or, Upholding the Honor of the Stars and Stripes • Frank Fowler
... depicted the chase of the soul by Satan, on the columns and doors of the churches, under the symbol of a deer pursued by a hunter and hounds; and which has in later times produced in thousands the feeling thus terribly expressed by Bunyan, "I blessed the condition of the dog and toad because they had no soul to perish under ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger
... into the old way of playing chorus to his high tragedy. This will not do, and I must assert myself. He was much the better student of course, but I have knocked about and seen more of the world than he has, shut up in these woods like a toad in a tree. He is too good a sort to go to seed with his confounded whimseys; so I determined to take a different tone with him. And I wrote to my wife about it: Mabel is a competent woman, and sometimes has very good ideas where mine fail—though of course I seldom let her see that. That evening ...
— A Pessimist - In Theory and Practice • Robert Timsol
... circle, hands joined. One toad stands in the center holding a rope, at the end of which is tied a bean bag. The center toad swings the rope first in a small circle gradually enlarging the radius until it comes in direct line with the ...
— Games and Play for School Morale - A Course of Graded Games for School and Community Recreation • Various
... Well, the crows will soon have you! You Egyptians believe in a judgment of the dead; what defence can you make before the court of Osiris[99] for being privy to a foul murder? You'll come back to earth as a fly, or a toad, or a dung-beetle, to pay ...
— A Friend of Caesar - A Tale of the Fall of the Roman Republic. Time, 50-47 B.C. • William Stearns Davis
... concluded gallantly, In spite of Ate and her hern-like thigh, Who, sitting, saw Penthesilea ta'en, In her old age, for a cress-selling quean. Each one cried out, Thou filthy collier toad, Doth it become thee to be found abroad? Thou hast the Roman standard filch'd away, Which they in rags of ...
— Gargantua and Pantagruel, Complete. • Francois Rabelais
... unkindness and ingratitude. I find that howsoever men speak against adversity, yet some sweet uses are to be extracted from it; like the jewel, precious for medicine, which is taken from the head of the venomous and despised toad." ...
— Tales from Shakespeare • Charles and Mary Lamb
... Big L, who was sitting next to Long K, held out his hand to him, the lubber made a grimace as if he were about to touch a toad ...
— Good Blood • Ernst Von Wildenbruch
... take me for? Am I beaten so easily? No, monsieur! Mademoiselle de Sainfoy is the woman I mean to marry. I admire that white skin, that perfect distinction. You will not put me off with some ugly little brown toad out of ...
— Angelot - A Story of the First Empire • Eleanor Price
... dress Champignions in fricase, or Mushrooms, which is all one thing; they are called also Fungi, commonly in English Toad Stools. ...
— The accomplisht cook - or, The art & mystery of cookery • Robert May
... following day, but after I had eaten towards evening, Zikali crept into the hut, just as a great toad might do, and squatted ...
— Finished • H. Rider Haggard
... old-fashioned one—continued still to keep up their meetings, and carry on their affairs as steadily and gravely as Fox and his contemporaries did, if not so extensively and successfully. They had a meeting at Codnor Breach, at Monny-Ash in the Peak, at Pentridge, at Toad-hole Furnace, at Chesterfield, etc. Most of these places were thoroughly country places, some of them standing nearly alone in the distant fields; and the few members belonging to them might be seen on Sundays, mounted on strong horses, a man and his wife often on one, on saddle and ...
— Stories of Comedy • Various
... him, nevertheless, to a sort of confession of some weakness, that he could not analyze for the swirl of emotional thoughts in the way; and they had him to the ground. An eagle of the poetic becomes a mere squat toad through one of these pretty material strokes. Where then is Philosophy? But who can be philosopher and the fervent admirer of a glorious lady? Ask again, who in that frowzy garb can presume to think of her or stand within fifty miles ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... guts." It lies in ambush like a pigmy field octopus, with deadly suckers for draining the sap of its victims. These it mats together in its wiry, sinuous coils, and chokes relentlessly by the acre. Nevertheless, the petty garotter— like a toad, "ugly and venomous, wears yet a precious jewel in its head." "If boiled," says Hill, "with a little ginger, the dodder in decoction works briskly as a purge. Also, the thievish herb, when bruised and applied externally to scrofulous tumours, ...
— Herbal Simples Approved for Modern Uses of Cure • William Thomas Fernie
... other natives of the wood and hedgerow, such as the purple bugloss, the yellow iris, the star thistle, the common mallow; and, a convolvulus which was brilliantly pink, in contrast to his white brother before- mentioned. Besides these, Nellie had also gathered some sprays of the "toad flax" and "blue succory," a relative of the "endive" tribe, which produces the chicory-root so much consumed in England, as in France, as a "substitute" for coffee. A splendid sprig of yellow broom and dear little ...
— Bob Strong's Holidays - Adrift in the Channel • John Conroy Hutcheson
... the same epoch in the annals of gastronomy; and a large pudding was, for a vast length of time, no doubt, a prevailing piece de resistance in all frugal British households. It was the culinary forefather of toad-in-the-hole, hot-pot, Irish stew, and of that devil-dreaded Cornish pasty. The Elizabethan transmitters of these two Apician nuggets possibly antedated the popular institution of the bag-pudding; but the ancientest gastronomical records testify to the happy introduction of the frying-pan ...
— Old Cookery Books and Ancient Cuisine • William Carew Hazlitt
... the owner of that name positively. "A small puddle, but the inhabitant was an individual toad, at least. To keep one's individuality in New York isn't so ...
— Success - A Novel • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... friend! Let us keep to windward of the Diplomatic wizard's-caldron; let Hyndford, Valori and Company preside over it, throwing in their eye of newt and limb of toad, as occasion may be. Enough, if the reader can be brought to conceive it; and how the young King,—who perhaps alone had real business in this foul element, and did not volunteer into it like the others, ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XIII. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... hiding place. "And take that," she cried, "for a present, you father of a speckled toad!" And seizing the heavy quarto Bible from the table, she flung it with all her might full in his face. It happened to hit him on the bridge of his ...
— The Heavenly Twins • Madame Sarah Grand
... hearts of their fearful load. But, e'en as the moonlit air grew sweet, We heard the pad of stealthy feet Dogging us down the thin white road; And the song grew weary again and harsh, And the black trees dripped like the fringe of a marsh, And a laugh crept out like a shadowy toad; And we knew it was neither ghoul nor djinn: It was Creeping Sin! It ...
— Collected Poems - Volume One (of 2) • Alfred Noyes
... before him. For to be Crawley's chum was to gain a certain amount of consideration in the school, and Gould did not mind shining with a reflected light. He was not like Saurin in that respect, whose egotism saved him at least from being a toad-eater. Gould was vain enough, but his vanity was of a different kind. But hitherto all his efforts had been in vain, and Crawley had rather snubbed him. This had not prevented Gould from talking ...
— Dr. Jolliffe's Boys • Lewis Hough
... see no Cattle; he is very large. I believe, I have seen one with as much Meat on him, as a Pullet, if he had been dress'd. The small green Frogs get upon Trees, and make a Noise. There are several other colour'd small Frogs; but the Common Land-Frog is likest a Toad, only he leaps, and is not poisonous. He is a great Devourer of Ants, and the Snakes devour him. These Frogs baked and beat to Powder, and taken with ...
— A New Voyage to Carolina • John Lawson
... to nature! Look, his eye 's bloodshot, like a needle a surgeon stitcheth a wound with. Let me embrace thee, toad, and love thee, O thou abominable, loathsome gargarism, that will fetch up lungs, lights, ...
— The White Devil • John Webster
... said, "Now I will rid myself of a foe;" and he flew down upon the poor Tintabel, and being a more powerful fairy, he caught him, and pinned his wings together with magic thorns, and fastened him down with them among the fungus and toad-stools of the damp wood. Then he flew away exulting, and painted day and night. It was a magnificent picture, with stately figures, powerful and triumphant, and Orgolino's heart swelled with pride at his work, and he said to himself, "I might have left that ...
— Harper's Young People, February 17, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... "The cursed lady-witch had bid her lately go to the holy sacrament, and when she received the blessed wafer, to take the same out of her mouth privately, and bring it to her at Marienfliess, wherewith to feed her familiar, whom she kept in the form of a toad. At this blasphemy she (Pug-nose) remained silent, for she feared the hag and her anger; but on the Sunday she swallowed the bread, as other Christian people; whereupon Sidonia sends for her, pretending she had spinning to give her, but no sooner had she entered the room, than the terrible ...
— Sidonia The Sorceress V2 • William Mienhold
... world by a word, makes the Messiah take a great pair of compasses from the armoury of heaven to circumscribe His work? How can I have any esteem for a writer who has spoiled Tasso's hell and the devil, who transforms Lucifer sometimes into a toad and other times into a pigmy, who makes him repeat the same things a hundred times, who makes him dispute on theology, who, by a serious imitation of Ariosto's comic invention of firearms, represents the devils cannonading in heaven? Neither I nor any man in Italy ...
— Candide • Voltaire
... Because their promising young author and rising lawyer and large capitalist have been drained off to the neighboring big city,—their prettiest girl has been exported to the same market; all their ambition points there, and all their thin gilding of glory comes from there. I hate little toad-eating cities. ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... along the sandy road, reaching at intervals to grasp handfuls of sassafras leaves from the bushes beside the way. From the ditch on the left a brown toad hopped slowly into the dust of the road. On the worm-eaten rails of the fence, on the other side, a gray lizard glided swiftly like a stealthy shadow of the ...
— The Voice of the People • Ellen Glasgow
... to be held, and perhaps still is held, by what may be styled the toad-eating school of publicists, that this governing temper was an hereditary gift transmitted by a long line of ancestors, who in their successive generations had possessed it, and had used it on a large scale in the governance of England. "How natural," they exclaimed, "that Lord Nozoo, ...
— Prime Ministers and Some Others - A Book of Reminiscences • George W. E. Russell
... a toad, And live upon the vapour of a dungeon, Than keep a corner in the thing I love ...
— Anna St. Ives • Thomas Holcroft
... to cover up with blushes: a being so much sunk beneath the zones of sympathy that pity might seem harmless. And the judge had pursued him with a monstrous, relishing gaiety, horrible to be conceived, a trait for nightmares. It is one thing to spear a tiger, another to crush a toad; there are aesthetics even of the slaughter- house; and the loathsomeness of Duncan Jopp enveloped and infected ...
— Weir of Hermiston • Robert Louis Stevenson
... a polypier, and its particular name is the fungia being so called because it resembles a vegetable fungus. The animal lives inside of that circular shell, which is formed something like the under side of a toad-stool. Between the thin plates, or leaves, the polypier thrusts out its arms with little suckers at the ends. With these it seizes its food and conveys it to its mouth, which is situated at the centre of ...
— Round-about Rambles in Lands of Fact and Fancy • Frank Richard Stockton
... wind loves to hold His dreary revels, loud and cold, The nettle's bloom's his daily fare, The TOAD the ...
— The History of "Punch" • M. H. Spielmann
... the animal carvings, including a few of clay, which are figured in Squier and Davis's work, eleven are left unnamed by the authors as not being recognizable; nineteen are identified correctly, in a general way, as of a wolf, bear, heron, toad, &c.; sixteen are demonstrably wrongly identified, leaving but five of which the species is ...
— Animal Carvings from Mounds of the Mississippi Valley • Henry W. Henshaw |
