"Ant" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... guess. He points down the room to where me and Toledo was settin', and he hollers, 'Go to the ant, you slugger! Consider her game and get hep ...
— Overland Red - A Romance of the Moonstone Canon Trail • Henry Herbert Knibbs
... nature is the suit you follow; Yet in such rule that the Venetian law Cannot impugn you, as you do proceed.— You stand within his danger, do you not? [To ANT. ...
— The Canadian Elocutionist • Anna Kelsey Howard
... cecht "I swear to God what my people swears, I deemed it no bigger than a fly, or a gnat, or an ant." ...
— The Harvard Classics, Volume 49, Epic and Saga - With Introductions And Notes • Various
... inspected, Oh-Oh conducted us to an arbor, to show us the famous telescope, by help of which, he said he had discovered an ant-hill in the moon. It rested in the crotch of a Bread-fruit tree; and was a prodigiously long and hollow trunk of a Palm; a scale from ...
— Mardi: and A Voyage Thither, Vol. II (of 2) • Herman Melville
... selfish hobby of the private collector who gives the world only a very little share of the pleasure he tastes. I would make my collection a museum and a laboratory. Instead of reading about the wise ant and the busy bee people should come and see them in the life. It was the difference between reading about animals in a book and seeing ...
— The Patient Observer - And His Friends • Simeon Strunsky
... His sense out, like an ant-eater's long tongue, Soft, innocent, warm, moist, impassible, And when 'twas crusted o'er with creatures—slick, Their juice enriched ...
— Robert Browning • Edward Dowden
... either with an octagonal lantern or with diminishing stages, and sometimes with a spire. Of the latter class the best example is that of S.Biagio, at Montepulciano,—one of the two designed to flank the faade of Ant. da S.Gallo's beautiful church of that name. One or two good late examples are to be found at Naples. Of the more massive square type there are examples in the towers of S.Michele, Venice; of the cathedral at Ferrara, Sta. Chiara at Naples, and Sta. Maria ...
— A Text-Book of the History of Architecture - Seventh Edition, revised • Alfred D. F. Hamlin
... no difference between derivative and compound words. The terminations or added syllables, such as ed, es, ess, est, an, ant, en, ence, ent, dom, hood, ly, ous, ful, ness, and the like, were, originally, distinct and separate words, which, by long use, have been contracted, and made ...
— English Grammar in Familiar Lectures • Samuel Kirkham
... of wood-ants, let us say, inhabiting an old and exceedingly populous nest have been transformed into men, but in form only; mentally they are still ants, all silently, everlastingly hurrying by, absorbed in their ant-business. You can almost smell the formic acid. Walking in the street, one of the swarming multitude, you are in but not of it. You are only one with the others in appearance; in mind you are as unlike them as a man is ...
— A Traveller in Little Things • W. H. Hudson
... negation, or defiance. From the first to the last he torments himself with inventions to outwit or subdue Nature, and in the end dies, utterly defeated. His civilizations, his dynasties, his laws, his manners, his customs, are all doomed to destruction and oblivion as completely as an ant-hill which exists one night and is trodden down the next. Forever and forever he works and plans in vain; forever and forever Nature, the visible and active Spirit of God, rises up and crushes her ...
— Temporal Power • Marie Corelli
... your machines are the best yet offered to the farmers of this State. I have mowed about four hundred acres, a great portion of which was wild prairie, very frequently running against stones and ant heaps with sufficient force to throw both driver and raker off the machine, without injury to the machine. Why your machine is preferable to any other, is, after you have cut your different kinds of grain, fully as well as can be done with ...
— Obed Hussey - Who, of All Inventors, Made Bread Cheap • Various
... caught an ant, never one of the fifth-story mosquitos that live and bite till Christmas, how greatly still my sky would need him! His flight is song enough. His cry and eery thunder are the very voice of the summer twilight to me. And as I watch him coasting in the evening dusk, ...
— Roof and Meadow • Dallas Lore Sharp
... of themselves, but they do not only wrong their inferiors, but despise them being injured, seem to take a very unfit course for their own safety, and far unfitter for their rest. For as ESOP teacheth, even the fly hath her spleen, and the emmet [ant] is not without her choler; and both together many times find means whereby, though the eagle lays her eggs in JUPITER'S lap, yet by one way or other, she escapeth not requital of her wrong ...
— Sir Francis Drake Revived • Philip Nichols
... a place at which the rocky walls were low and sloped gradually, he led the horses out, and before it grew dark they built a barricade for the night. Nell's tent stood on a high and dry spot close to a big white-ant hillock, which barred the access from one side and for that reason lessened the ...
— In Desert and Wilderness • Henryk Sienkiewicz
... have sheered away from as a horse shies from an obstacle intruding on a pleasant road. But time had taught him [Note: last word, 'far-righted' must be a typo] many things—the picaroon was becoming far-sighted; the grasshopper had learned of the ant. The spring of his youth was gone; the renewal of the old struggle too horrible to contemplate. And he would have to contemplate it or decide on something to forestall it. That was what he had been thinking about for the past week, shut up in his hotel room, his ...
— Treasure and Trouble Therewith - A Tale of California • Geraldine Bonner
... village; she might have listened to the advances of young Breen the gardener, or of Matt's colleague in the grocery-store. But she had never presented such possibilities for her own consideration. She was like an ant, that sees but one object to the errand on which it has set out, ...
— The Side Of The Angels - A Novel • Basil King
... part of the acts of the English votaries. Britaine inhabitied before the floud. Genesis 6. Berosus ant. lib. 1.] First therefore Iohn Bale our countrieman, who in his time greatlie trauelled in the search of such antiquities, dooth probablie coniecture, that this land was inhabited and replenished with people long before the floud, ...
— Chronicles (1 of 6): The Historie of England (1 of 8) • Raphael Holinshed
... wakened to wonder and admiration at the ceaseless productivity, inventiveness, and fertility of Nature. We find in the revelations of science again the same examples of delicacy and fineness of structure that we admire so much in the fine arts. The brain of an ant, as Darwin said, is perhaps the most marvelous speck of matter in the universe. Again "the physicists tell us that the behaviour of hydrogen gas makes it necessary to suppose that an atom of it must have a constitution ...
— Human Traits and their Social Significance • Irwin Edman
... crowded with drafts for the Front. Big ocean liners, flying the Red Cross, lie at their moorings, and lofty electric cranes gyrate noiselessly over supply ships unloading their stores, while animated swarms of dockers in khaki pile up a great ant-heap of sacks in the sheds with a passionless concentration that seems like the workings of blind instinct. And here are warehouses whose potentialities of wealth are like Mr. Thrale's brewery—wheat, beef, fodder, and the four spices dear to the delicate palates ...
— Leaves from a Field Note-Book • J. H. Morgan
... the woods I seldom met with a hut, but at the mouth of it was found an ant's nest, the dwelling of a tribe of insects about an inch in length, armed with a pair of forceps and a sting, which they applied, as many found to their cost, with a severity equal to a wound made by a knife. We conjectured, ...
— An Account of the English Colony in New South Wales, Vol. 1 • David Collins
... comically expressive phrase, and has many meanings. Fields was asking the price of a quarter-cask of sherry the other day. 'Wa'al Mussr Fields,' the merchant replies, 'that varies according to quality, as is but nay'tral. If yer wa'ant a sherry just to slop round with it, I can fix you some at a ...
— The Life of Charles Dickens, Vol. I-III, Complete • John Forster
... the most whimsical companion in the world. It is like a sheep-dog, always running backwards and forwards, poking into the most out-of-the-way corners, now climbing at a run some steep hummock of the down, and now leisurely going miles about to escape an ant-hill; and all the time (here, by the way, ends the sheep-dog) it is stopping to gossip with rillets vagabond as itself, or loitering to bedeck itself with flowers. It seems as innocent of a destination as a boy on an errand; but, after taking at ...
— The Quest of the Golden Girl • Richard le Gallienne
... Natural history, is a study particularly suited to children: it cultivates their talents for observation, applies to objects within their reach, and to objects which are every day interesting to them. The histories of the bee, the ant, the caterpillar, the butterfly, the silk-worm, are the first things that please the taste of children, and these are ...
— Practical Education, Volume I • Maria Edgeworth
... through the consciousness of all. They wheel in mid-air, they migrate, they obey the deep intelligence called instinct—all as one. The life of any one lion is the life of all—the lion group-soul that manifests itself in the entire genus. An ant-heap is a single Ant; through the bees spreads the consciousness of ...
— Four Weird Tales • Algernon Blackwood
... From the ant-hill which he was idly spearing with grass-blades, Rolf looked up to smile. "Then your feelings are not to be trusted, comrade," he said; "for there are few spots on the river which our men have more frequented. Even ...
— The Thrall of Leif the Lucky • Ottilie A. Liljencrantz
... the private apartments, and murder him in his morning bath or in his bed! What a surprising and unexplained apparition it would have been! But now, and for the future, he would know that daily about this time a large ant-like colony was running about under him, very strong of arm, very active of leg; and what protection, he wondered, from peril of sudden inroad was that search under his bed on the ninth day of every November? Did that really ...
— King John of Jingalo - The Story of a Monarch in Difficulties • Laurence Housman
... stands the hermit, horridly austere, Whom clinging vines are choking, tough and sore; Half-buried in an ant-hill that has grown About him, standing post-like and alone; Sun-staring with dim eyes that know no rest, The dead skin of a serpent on his breast: So long he stood unmoved, insensate there That birds build nests within ...
— Translations of Shakuntala and Other Works • Kaalidaasa
... ant-hill I behold a monster crouching: This is the ant-lion Death, He thrusteth forth his tongue and ...
— Songs Out of Doors • Henry Van Dyke
... Fly one day disputed as to their respective merits. "Vile creeping insect!" said the Fly to the Ant, "can you for a moment compare yourself with me? I soar on the wing like a bird. I enter the palaces of kings, and alight on the heads of princes, nay, of emperors, and only quit them to adorn the yet more attractive ...
— The Talking Beasts • Various
... son of Revel; Planted in the ground when little, With a plough they ploughed the region, Like an ant, away they cast him Close to Kaleva's great well-spring, There where Osmo's field is sloping; There the tender plant sprang upward, And the green shoot mounted quickly. 150 Up a little tree it mounted, ...
— Kalevala, Volume I (of 2) - The Land of the Heroes • Anonymous
... and began to chop the block under his feet. He screeched and she chopped; he screeched and she chopped; until he became an old man again and made the enigmatical confession: "I have transformed myself not once nor twice only. I was first a fish, then I became a bird, an ant, and a quadruped, and now I have once more made trial of being a human being. It isn't better thus than being among the ants; but among human beings—it isn't worse!" Here the chopping was evidently a threat ...
— The Science of Fairy Tales - An Inquiry into Fairy Mythology • Edwin Sidney Hartland
... various ways into acquiescence. Among other of his tricks, he put about four hundred foxes, old and young, into Rose's park. It may be imagined what disorder this company made there, and the surprise of Rose and his servants at an inexhaustible ant-hill of foxes ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... preserve a skeleton, they bury an animal in an ant-hill and dig him up after many days with all the perishable matter fairly eaten away. That is the process which great men have to undergo. A vast multitude of insignificant, unknown, and unconscious critics destroy what has no genuine power of resistance, and leave the remainder ...
— Hours in a Library, Volume I. (of III.) • Leslie Stephen
... position; indeed they might have wiped us out but for their stupid habit of firing on the run, as they charged. Wilson ordered us to retire down the vlei; some hundred yards further on we came to an ant-heap and took our second position on that, and held it for some time. Wilson jumped on the top of the ant-heap and shouted—"Every man pick his nigger." There was no random firing, I would be covering ...
— The Red True Story Book • Various
... Gulf, with the Zambales Mountains in full view running south and bordering the plain, while still farther to the south Mount Arayat [11] rose abruptly from its surrounding levels. Now Arayat is plainly visible from Manila. Here and there solitary rocky hills, looking for all the world like ant-heaps, but in reality hundreds of feet high, broke the uniformity of the plains. Flooded as the whole landscape was with brilliant sunshine, the view was exquisite in respect both of form and of color. But as we moved ...
— The Head Hunters of Northern Luzon From Ifugao to Kalinga • Cornelis De Witt Willcox
... told of him aptly illustrates his habit of mind. He was late in coming to a fashionable dinner, and his excuse was this: "I hope you will pardon me," he said. "I was detained at the funeral of an ant, and I could not come until the ceremony ...
— Fables in Rhyme for Little Folks - From the French of La Fontaine • Jean de La Fontaine
... way, he could only return to it by repentance and by purification, accompanied by pious deeds: to exterminate noxious animals, the creatures of Angro-mainyus and the abode of his demons, such as the frog, the scorpion, the serpent or the ant, to clear the sterile tracts, to restore impoverished land, to construct bridges over running water, to distribute implements of husbandry to pions men, or to build them a house, to give a pure and healthy maiden in marriage to a just man,—these were so many means of expiation appointed ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 9 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... to the small insects on which it feeds. The other, Tricondyla aptera, is one of the most curious forms in the family of the Cicindelidae, and is almost exclusively confined to the Malay islands. In shape it resembles a very large ant, more than an inch long, and of a purple black colour. Like an ant also it is wingless, and is generally found ascending trees, passing around the trunks in a spiral direction when approached, to avoid capture, ...
— The Malay Archipelago - Volume II. (of II.) • Alfred Russel Wallace
... are at 800 metres! Men resemble insects! See, I think it is from this height that we should always look at them, to judge correctly of their moral proportions! The Place de la Comedie is transformed to an immense ant-hill. Look at the crowd piled up on the quays. The Zeil diminishes. We are above the church of Dom. The Mein is now only a white line dividing the city, and this bridge, the Mein-Brucke, looks like a white thread thrown between the two ...
— A Voyage in a Balloon (1852) • Jules Verne
... the scene reveals many things: some comedies, many tragedies, a few plain narratives (thank God!) and now and then—only now and then—a romance. As to the dark alleys and tenements on the fringe of this glare and brilliant confusion, this Babel of sound and ant-bed of moving life, one can only surmise and pity and shudder; close one's eyes and ears to it a little, or one could never sleep for thinking of it, yet not too tightly lest one sleep too soundly, and forget altogether the seamy side of things. ...
— Penelope's English Experiences • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... solicitude for the necessary means of livelihood is by nature instilled into man, and this solicitude even other animals share with man: wherefore it is written (Prov. 6:6, 8): "Go to the ant, O sluggard, and consider her ways . . . she provideth her meat for herself in the summer, and gathereth her food in the harvest." But every command issued against the inclination of nature is an unjust command, forasmuch ...
— Summa Theologica, Part I-II (Pars Prima Secundae) - From the Complete American Edition • Saint Thomas Aquinas
... to 'Greenways'," he said, "to deliver a communication, and that ant business drove it out of my head. I'm really afraid I shall ...
— In the Mist of the Mountains • Ethel Turner
... I wish you'd jest let folks know who hosy's father is, cos my ant Kesiah used to say it's nater to be curus ses she, she aint livin though and he's a likely ...
— Four Famous American Writers: Washington Irving, Edgar Allan Poe, • Sherwin Cody
... robin-redbreast and the wren, Since o'er shady groves they hover, And with leaves and flowers do cover The friendless bodies of unburied men. Call unto his funeral dole The ant, the field-mouse, and the mole, To rear him hillocks that shall keep him warm, And (when gay tombs are robb'd) sustain no harm; But keep the wolf far thence, that's foe to men, For with his nails he'll dig them ...
— English Songs and Ballads • Various
... visible. It seemed plain that the person or the event he had awaited with such obvious nervousness had arrived and passed; one more of the problems, anxieties or crises that join and unravel moment by moment in the human ant-hill of London, had perhaps closed for good or ill within the past half-hour; perhaps it ...
— The Red Triangle - Being Some Further Chronicles of Martin Hewitt, Investigator • Arthur Morrison
... avec l'antique difice de la religion chrtienne, celui des moeurs, de la vertu, de la saine politique etc. rompre tous les canaux de communication entre la terre et le ciel, bannir, exterminer du monde le Dieu qui le tira du nant, y introduire l'impit la plus complte, la licence la plus consomne, l'anarchie la plus entire, la ...
— Baron d'Holbach - A Study of Eighteenth Century Radicalism in France • Max Pearson Cushing
... phrase and pregnant epithet. Such is the fine analogy between the worship of holy shrines and the lover's homage to the spot which his mistress's feet have trod; such France's tolerance of the Elysee brethren compared to the Arab laying his verminous burnous upon an ant-hill; the apt quotation from the Psalms to illustrate the on-coming of the Guards; the demeanour of horses in action; the course of a flying cannon-ball; the two ponderous troopers at the Horse Guards; Tom Tower and his Croats landing stores for our soldiers from the "Erminia." Or again, ...
— Biographical Study of A. W. Kinglake • Rev. W. Tuckwell
... elected to the Commune on the 26th of March and the 16th of April, only forty-seven now remain:—Amouroux, Ant. Arnaud, Assy, Babick, Billioray, Clement, Champy, Chardon, Chalain, Demay, Dupont, Decamp, Dereure, Durant, Delescluze, Eudes, Henry Fortune, Ferre, Gambon, Geresme, Paschal Grousset, Johannard, Ledroit, Langevin, Lonclas, Mortier, ...
— Paris under the Commune • John Leighton
... Names of clans and tribes derived from animals or plants are not uncommon: Hebrew Ra[h)]el (Rachel, ewe), perhaps Kaleb (dog) and Yael (Jael, mountain goat);[865] Greek Kunnadai (dog), and perhaps Myrmidon (ant); Roman Porcius (hog), Fabius (bean); Irish Coneely (seal); Teutonic clan-names like Wolfing and the like. Belief in a general kinship of men and animals existed among Semites, Greeks, and Romans. On the other hand, belief in the descent of a clan from an animal ...
— Introduction to the History of Religions - Handbooks on the History of Religions, Volume IV • Crawford Howell Toy
... towards the east and south-east is rocky on the top, covered with sandy soil growing grama and very few cedar bushes, studded with ant-hills, and devoid of all remains of human structures so far as I could see. Pottery and obsidian are ever present, but become perceptibly less and almost disappear further east. The rills which drain the eastern slope carry much of this broken stuff into a small arroyo that winds to ...
— Historical Introduction to Studies Among the Sedentary Indians of New Mexico; Report on the Ruins of the Pueblo of Pecos • Adolphus Bandelier
... Tyrant rather, not at all like a King. Here a Lizard fights with a Viper, and here lies the Dipsas Serpent upon the Catch, hid under the Shell of an Estridge Egg. Here you see the whole Policy of the Ant, which we are call'd upon to imitate by Solomon and Horace. Here are Indian Ants that carry Gold, and hoard ...
— Colloquies of Erasmus, Volume I. • Erasmus
... Lord God made the earth and the heavens. And who that watched their ways with an understanding heart could, as the vision evolved still advanced towards him, contemplate the filial and loyal bee, the home-building, wedded, and divorceless swallow, and, above all, the manifoldly intelligent ant tribes, with their commonwealths and confederacies, their warriors and miners, the husband folk that fold in their tiny flocks on the honey leaf, and the virgin sister with the holy instincts of maternal love detached and in selfless purity, and ...
— The Testimony of the Rocks - or, Geology in Its Bearings on the Two Theologies, Natural and Revealed • Hugh Miller
... the river below the junction last mentioned, remained to be ascertained. Parts of the surface in the scrub, which, before the rain, had been quite bare, now presented a crop of lichen, which bore some resemblance to the orchilla. It might have been gathered in any quantity. The ant-hills in this region, presented a different form from any to be seen in the south, consisting of slender cones of hard clay about the size and shape of sugar-loaves on an average, many being larger, or as much as 31/2 feet high, others ...
— Journal of an Expedition into the Interior of Tropical Australia • Thomas Mitchell
... an adobe wall and the tops of marble buildings, angels stretching out their wings with a trumpet at their lips, great crosses, torch-holders mounted on tripods, and a pure, blue sky which seemed to smile with superhuman indifference at the excitement of that ant, named Renovales. ...
— Woman Triumphant - (La Maja Desnuda) • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... orders. The earth broke—the wasp went down into his grave—and the ants soon covered him with loose earth, and resumed their domestic architecture. I concluded that though the monkey resembles man most in body, the ant comes nearer him in mind. As for dogs, I don't know where to rank them in nature, because they have been pupils of man for ...
— The Woman-Hater • Charles Reade
... circumstance in the parable, Farrar (p. 493, note) says: "A nobleman going into a far country to receive a kingdom would be utterly unintelligible, had we not fortunately known that this was done both by Archelaus and by Antipas (Jos. Ant. xvii, 9:4). And in the case of Archelaus the Jews had actually sent to Augustus a deputation of fifty, to recount his cruelties and oppose his claims, which, though it failed at the time, was subsequently successful (Josephus, Ant. xvii, 13:2). Philipus defended the property of Archelaus, ...
— Jesus the Christ - A Study of the Messiah and His Mission According to Holy - Scriptures Both Ancient and Modern • James Edward Talmage
... Singapore are free from malarial fevers, and probably no places on earth are better adapted to the wants of primitive man, for they produce spontaneously sufficient nutritious food to support life independent of personal exertion. The home of the Malay is not so clean as that of the ant or the birds; even the burrowing animals are neater. The native women are graceful and almost pretty, slight in figure, and passionately fond of ornaments, covering their arms and ankles with metallic ...
— Foot-prints of Travel - or, Journeyings in Many Lands • Maturin M. Ballou
... Liddell remark in v. The ancient Greeks, and probably the Romans likewise, were unacquainted with chimneys. (See Beckmann, Hist. of Inventions, art. "Chimneys," and Smith's Dict. of Greek and Rom. Ant., art. "House".) The meanings of the Latin word caminus are explained by Beckmann (Ib., vol. i. p. 301. ed. Bohn). The short poem of [Greek: kaminos e keramis], attributed to Homer (Epig. 14.), illustrates the meaning of the word [Greek: kaminos]. In ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 58, December 7, 1850 • Various
... three miles, the shore was torn by the terrific explosive shells. Clouds of sand, and yellow smoke mingled marked the scene of destruction, as battery after battery was spotted and promptly put out of action. Across the dunes could be seen swarms of ant-like figures—German troops flying for shelter from the devastating fire of the ...
— The Submarine Hunters - A Story of the Naval Patrol Work in the Great War • Percy F. Westerman
... the great ant-hills of Africa," said Mrs. Cliff, "but, of course, this was not built by ants I wonder if it is possible that it can be the abode ...
— The Adventures of Captain Horn • Frank Richard Stockton
... as well argue with an ant-heap. All of 'em too busy tryin' for commissions in the Volunteers to listen. They've got it all cut an' dried—somebody in the basement upset a lamp, according to them—nobody up-stairs—nobody to turn in the alarm until the fire had complete charge! ...
— Winds of the World • Talbot Mundy
... everlasting to all except those who embrace Islamism; for the latter, after suffering a number of years, in proportion to their demerits, will then, if they have had but so much faith as is equal to the weight of an ant, be released by the mercy of God, and, upon the intercession of Mahomet, admitted ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 4 • Various
... form of government as honesty in all that relates to the conduct of elections. I am of the opinion that the national laws governing the choice of members of the Congress should be extended to include appropriate representation of the respective parties at the ballot box ant equality of representation on the various registration ...
— State of the Union Addresses of Calvin Coolidge • Calvin Coolidge
... destructive are the red, and the large black ant, which attack, and frequently entirely destroy the roots before you can be aware of its approach; powdered turmeric should therefore be constantly kept ...
— Flowers and Flower-Gardens • David Lester Richardson
... perfection in this Art; and because we have so much time, and I have said so little of Roch and Dace, I will give you some directions concerning some several kinds of baits with which they be usually taken; they will bite almost at any flies, but especially at Ant-flies; concerning which, take this direction, ...
— The Compleat Angler - Facsimile of the First Edition • Izaak Walton
... a sweet, strong perfume; the leaves are white, but as the flower is withered, I am unable to describe it. The native orange-tree abounds here. Mount Stuart is composed of hard red sandstone, covered with spinifex, and a little scrub on the top. The white ant abounds in the scrubs, and we even found some of their habitations near the ...
— Explorations in Australia, The Journals of John McDouall Stuart • John McDouall Stuart
... marvel at thee much, O damsel, wearing this unsunny face To him who won thee glory!' And she said, 'Had ye not held your Lancelot in your bower, My Queen, he had not won.' Whereat the Queen, As one whose foot is bitten by an ant, Glanced down upon her, ...
— Idylls of the King • Alfred, Lord Tennyson
... here to the exuberance of his fancy, and we cannot but think that we detect one of those hints by which Mr. Darwin indicates the application of his system from the lower animals to man himself, when he dwells so pointedly upon the fact that it is always the black ant which is enslaved by his other coloured and more fortunate brethren. "The slaves are black!" We believe that, if we had Mr. Darwin in the witness-box, and could subject him to a moderate cross-examination, ...
— Famous Reviews • Editor: R. Brimley Johnson
... faults; it was, in fact, a sin of the first magnitude in his vocabulary.—Indolence, he always said was the harbinger of every vice, of every evil. And the Songs of Solomon and his Proverbs were on every occasion ready to support his opinion. He would say to the sluggard, "Go to the ant, thou sluggard, consider her ways and be wise." He would forgive many a fault in a servant, but at habitual lyer in bed, he would get rid of immediately, unless he could break him of ...
— Memoirs of Henry Hunt, Esq. Volume 1 • Henry Hunt
... differs in many important points from Mr. Motley, as might be expected from his creed and his life-long pursuits. This I shall refer to in connection with Motley's last work, "John of Barneveld." An historian among archivists and annalists reminds one of Sir John Lubbock in the midst of his ant-hills. Undoubtedly he disturbs the ants in their praiseworthy industry, much as his attentions may flatter them. Unquestionably the ants (if their means of expressing themselves were equal to their apparent intellectual ability) could teach him many things that he has overlooked and correct him ...
— Memoir of John Lothrop Motley, Complete • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... claustrum ingressi, cistulas, id est caroles, et armariola fregerunt, et libros et omnia in eis inventa similiter asportaverunt. I owe this quotation to Dr James, On the Abbey of S. Edmund at Bury, Camb. Ant. Soc. Octav. Publ. ...
— The Care of Books • John Willis Clark
... Little Red Hen stayed in the courtyard until Crom Duv left with his herd. Flann followed her. She went here and there between the house and the wall at the back, now picking a grain of sand and now an ant or spider or fly. And as she went about the Little Red Hen ...
— The King of Ireland's Son • Padraic Colum
... skylight. Through the glass, Gussie was staring down. His eyes were bulging and his mouth was open, giving him so striking a resemblance to some rare fish in an aquarium that one's primary impulse was to offer him an ant's egg. ...
— Right Ho, Jeeves • P. G. Wodehouse
... a huge structure, built in a complex, unusual style. A scaffolding of heavy pine logs surrounded the structure, which was fenced in by deal boards. It was as busy a scene as an ant hill. ...
— The Awakening - The Resurrection • Leo Nikoleyevich Tolstoy
... poem evidently alludes), that he was employed no less than four months in developing the mysteries of Joseph's coat, from Genesis, xxxvii. 3.: "And he made him a coat of many colours." In reply to the sarcasm on Mr. Bragge, Mr. Walter Wilson states (Hist. and Ant. of Diss. ch. i. p. 247.) that the following ...
— Notes and Queries, No. 28. Saturday, May 11, 1850 • Various
... he seemed a trivial being, a mere ant, scarcely five feet high. He was wearing garments of some leathery substance, so that no portion of his actual body appeared, but of this, of course, we were entirely ignorant. He presented himself, therefore, as a compact, bristling creature, having much of the quality of ...
— The First Men In The Moon • H. G. Wells
... that had fallen into the river struggled frantically to gain a footing on them. Water beetles shot over the surface in small shining parties, and schools of tiny minnows played along the banks. Once a black ant assassinated an enemy on Dannie's shoe, by creeping up behind ...
— At the Foot of the Rainbow • Gene Stratton-Porter
... gloomy thoughts, I did not notice that the sun had set, and night had come. It got so dark that I could not see my dog lying at my feet. Suddenly I felt something touch me and pass lightly over my hair. I thought it was an ant or a night moth, and I raised my hand to chase it away. Then it changed its place, and I felt it at the nape of my neck. I tried to catch the thing that was making my neck itch, and caught a hand, soft and ...
— In Those Days - The Story of an Old Man • Jehudah Steinberg
... no conception of man and doubted man's existence on any other star. There were plant-people on Venus, ant-people on Andromeda, six-legged and four-armed beings which were equal parts mineral and vegetable on Betelguese—but nothing resembling man. "You are evidently alone of your kind in the cosmos," said his ...
— McIlvaine's Star • August Derleth
... into castes, with intermediate gradations (which I imagine are rare) interest me much. See "Origin" on the driver-ant, page 241 (please look ...
— More Letters of Charles Darwin - Volume I (of II) • Charles Darwin
... a naturalist one trip," said Alex, "and he collected all sorts of little animals and snakes, and that sort of thing. When we wanted to clean the skeleton of a mouse or a snake, we used to put it in an ant-hill. There were many ants, and in a couple of weeks they'd picked the bones white and clean, as if they'd been sand-papered. I suppose we haven't time for that sort ...
— The Young Alaskans on the Trail • Emerson Hough
... not the worm, The noxious thing, beneath your heel? Ah! had you taught me to perform Due labor for the common weal! Then, sheltered from the adverse wind, The worm and ant had learned to grow; Ay,—then I might have loved my kind;— The aged ...
— The World's Best Poetry, Volume 3 - Sorrow and Consolation • Various
... various methods have been tried to keep them off. Human ordure laid round the boll of the tree will prevent their appearing so long as it retains moisture, but not longer; tar has been applied round both the trunk and branches, and only answered while moist; yet a cure, if the ant be really inimical, is certain to be found, with little trouble, and without expence, in common suds from a wash tub, in which ley has been used. This wash should be laid well about the roots in the evening, when the ants have left the tree, which will be mostly the case, and in wet weather ...
— Statistical, Historical and Political Description of the Colony of New South Wales and its Dependent Settlements in Van Diemen's Land • William Charles Wentworth
... and groaned, had drawn a charmed circle round about it. So near, yet kept at a distance; all-powerful, but in disgrace, the apparently devoted wife was lying in wait for death and opportunity; crouching like the ant-lion at the bottom of his spiral pit, ever on the watch for the prey that cannot escape, listening to the fall of every ...
— Gobseck • Honore de Balzac
... a good jumper," admitted the grasshopper, and he hid under a stone, for just then he saw a big bird looking hungrily at him. Well, Buddy and Brighteyes went on and on, and up and up, and pretty soon they met an ant. ...
— Buddy And Brighteyes Pigg - Bed Time Stories • Howard R. Garis
... broken out in the piazza, resembling the stir of a troubled ant-hill, on either side of the broad green way down which the Pope would come; and already into the head of the street up which the priests looked figures were emerging. Simultaneously a crash of brazen music had filled the air. A movement ...
— Dawn of All • Robert Hugh Benson
... was a seething mass of humanity and mules. Few of the men spoke, beyond a welcoming "How do, cobber," or a "Glad you've come, mate." They appeared out of the darkness and passed into it again with an air of steady practical purpose. Ant-like, they passed in continual streams from barges to stacks of boxes, whose ...
— The Tale of a Trooper • Clutha N. Mackenzie
... but their style of flight is quite different, the locust alighting every few yards to have a look at you. Ants, great and small, are everywhere in the morning, but when the sand gets too hot most of them disappear. One big ant has a huge head, a fairly broad tail piece and small body. Lizards are very common on the chalk mounds, and yesterday I watched four huge specimens basking in the sun half-way ...
— The Incomparable 29th and the "River Clyde" • George Davidson
... Ornit'optera a day-flying moss," said Verkimier as he cautiously rose, "vich mimics zee Trepsichrois mulciber. Ant zis very morning I caught von Leptocircus virescens, vich derives protection from mimicking zee habits ant ...
— Blown to Bits - The Lonely Man of Rakata, the Malay Archipelago • R.M. Ballantyne
... at a signal to protect the others. Miss Priscilla Graves, an eater of meat, was ridiculous in her ant'alcoholic exclusiveness and scorn: Mr. Pempton, a drinker of wine, would laud extravagantly the more transparent purity of vegetarianism. Dr. Peter Yatt jeered at globules: Dr. John Cormyn mourned over human creatures treated as cattle by big doses. The Rev. Septimus Barmby satisfactorily ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... life set out in well-marked fashion. We have a military clique headed by a personal and sadly irresponsible ruler; we have a vulgar and much swollen commercial class; and then, besides these two, we have a huge ant's nest of professors and students, a large population of intelligent and well-trained factory workers, and a vast residuum of peasants. Thus we have at least five distinct classes, but of these the last three have—till thirty or forty years ago—paid ...
— The Healing of Nations and the Hidden Sources of Their Strife • Edward Carpenter
... fashion that the foundation stones are carried to the apex, and the swiftness of this transfer is increasing in a sort of geometrical ratio. I see that the result of this is something like that which would take place in an ant-heap if the community of ants were to lose their sense of the common law, if some ants were to begin to draw the products of labor from the bottom to the top of the heap, and should constantly contract the foundations and broaden the apex, and should thereby ...
— What To Do? - thoughts evoked by the census of Moscow • Count Lyof N. Tolstoi
... the lower animals do not differ in kind, although immensely in degree. A difference in degree, however great, does not justify us in placing man in a distinct kingdom, as will perhaps be best illustrated by comparing the mental powers of two insects, namely, a coccus or scale-insect and an ant, which undoubtedly belong to the same class. The difference is here greater than, though of a somewhat different kind from, that between man and the highest mammal. The female coccus, whilst young, attaches itself by its proboscis to ...
— The Descent of Man and Selection in Relation to Sex • Charles Darwin
... the glasses as he trained them off in the direction the five men had gone. Twice he saw them cross over ridges. Then a tiny, swift-moving speck came into his field of view, traveling up the slope of a distant divide. The ant-like rider dipped over the crest of it and ...
— The Settling of the Sage • Hal G. Evarts
... down upon the assailants. Animated by her words and gestures, the townspeople set to work, and all vied with each other, from the oldest to the youngest, in carrying up stores of missiles to the walls. Never did Hennebon present such a scene of life and bustle. It seemed like an ant-hill which a passer-by ...
— Saint George for England • G. A. Henty
... I saw an ant-hill With no ants about; So I said, "Dear little ants, Won't you please come out?" Then as if the little ants Had heard my call— One! two! three! four! five came out! ...
— Finger plays for nursery and kindergarten • Emilie Poulsson
... Figure, and did not know but some time or other I might be reduced to a Mite if I did not mend my Manners. I therefore applied my self with great diligence to the Offices that were allotted me, and was generally look'd upon as the notablest Ant in the whole Molehill. I was at last picked up, as I was groaning under a Burden, by an unlucky Cock-Sparrow that lived in the Neighbourhood, and had before made great depredations ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... a doorway, and thought she would wait till the people had passed, but she waited and waited, and still they kept on coming backwards and forwards, just for all the world like a number of busy ants swarming about an ant-hill. There was no end to them. They hustled and jostled, and ran and pushed, and talked till Phyllis was utterly bewildered, and said to herself she had ...
— Little Folks (November 1884) - A Magazine for the Young • Various
... he said. "And I'm not going to listen any more. An ant can't eat an elephant in half an hour and leave no scraps." And he rolled over and ...
— Mary Cary - "Frequently Martha" • Kate Langley Bosher
... thousands of years ago. Said Seneca, nineteen hundred years ago: "Men trust rather to their eyes than to their ears; the effect of precepts, is, therefore, slow and tedious, while that of example is summary and effectual." Says Franklin: "None teaches better than the ant, and she says nothing." "Not the cry" say the Chinese, "but the flight of the wild duck, leads the ...
— The Golden Censer - The duties of to-day, the hopes of the future • John McGovern
... dragon-fly had awakened every spider in the neighbourhood out of her sleep, and when they saw the brilliant light, they had set to work spinning so industriously that their web hung down like a curtain before the mouth of the cave. But as the Child saw the ant peeping up at him, he entreated the fire-flies not to deprive themselves any longer of their merry games in the wood on his account. And the dragon-fly and her sisters raised the curtain till the Child had laid him down to rest, and then let it fall again, that the ...
— Peter Schlemihl etc. • Chamisso et. al.
... such heat as I felt here. Besides the inconvenience which we suffered from the weather, we were incessantly tormented by the flies in the day, and by the musquitos in the night. The island also swarms with centipedes and scorpions, and a large black ant, scarcely inferior to either in the malignity of its bite. Besides these, there were venomous insects without number, altogether unknown to us, by which many of us suffered so severely, that we were afraid to lie down in our beds; nor were those on board in a much ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 12 • Robert Kerr
... the humbling influence of love on the haughty harvest-mouse, we are touched by the sensibility of the tender-hearted ant, and may profit by the moral of 'the disobedient maggot.' The drawings ...
— Tales of Daring and Danger • George Alfred Henty
... And suddenly he was laughing—a madness, half hysteria. "Why, this, all this—why look, Glora, it's funny! This little world all excited, an ant-hill, outraged! Look! There's our ...
— Astounding Stories, March, 1931 • Various
... to nearly half a mile; water being procured in them by digging a few inches in the sand. The country passed over during the day was an open plain of light sandy loam, interspersed with bare granite rocks, cropping out at intervals of a few miles. Giant ant-hills of from ten to sixteen feet in height, and thirty to forty feet in circumference (a few of which had already been met with on our first trip), were here remarkably conspicuous, on account of their size and bright brick-red colour. ...
— Journals of Australian Explorations • A C and F T Gregory
... in a house there are a pair of ne'er-do-weels. Often I've sat and looked at your ways, and wondered where ye came from: ye don't take after your father, and ye are no more like me than a wasp is to an ant; sure ye were changed in the cradle, or the cuckoo dropped ye on my floor: for ye have not our hands, nor our hearts: of all my blood, none but you ever jeered them that God afflicted; but often when my back was turned I've ...
— The Cloister and the Hearth • Charles Reade
... on the table. "It proves that Ferguson's a better man than either of us. I can think straight, but he had the sand to act straight. You haven't even the sand to think straight. You and your reactionary rot! The world's moving, Chantry. Ferguson was ahead of it, beckoning. You're an ant that got caught in the ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1917 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... kick like an army mule— Run like a kangaroo! Hard to get by as a lawyer-plant, Tackles his man like a bull-dog ant— Fetches him over too! Didn't the public cheer and shout Watchin' him chuckin' big blokes ...
— Saltbush Bill, J.P., and Other Verses • A. B. Paterson
... edentate mammals, have a tubular mouth with a small aperture, and a long tongue covered with a viscid secretion, which they thrust into the ant-hills and then ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... of a demijohn into a pint-pot, his tongue became loosened, and he expressed an opinion that geology was all bosh, and said if he had half his employer's money he'd be dashed if he would go rooting round in the mud like a blessed old ant-eater; he also irreverently referred to his learned boss as "Old Rocks" over there. He had a pretty easy billet of it though, he said, taking it all round, when the weather was fine; he got a couple of notes a week and all expenses paid, and the money ...
— While the Billy Boils • Henry Lawson
... belle Madame de Lavretski became well known from the Chausee d' Antin to the Rue de Lille. At that time—it was in 1836—the race of feuilletonists and journalists, which now swarms everywhere, numerous as the ants one sees when a hole is made in an ant-hill, had not yet succeeded in multiplying in numbers. Still, there used to appear in Varvara Pavlovna's drawing-room a certain M. Jules, a gentleman who bore a very bad character, whose appearance was unprepossessing, and whose manner was at once insolent ...
— Liza - "A nest of nobles" • Ivan Sergeevich Turgenev
... PLUCK, and will turn and face you. Nay, more, should you RETREAT, they will run after you with all the impudence imaginable. Often when my organ of destructiveness has tempted me slightly to disturb with the end of my parasol one of the many ant-hills on the way from Melbourne to Richmond, I have been obliged, as soon as they discovered the perpetrator of the attack, to take to my heels and run away as if for ...
— A Lady's Visit to the Gold Diggings of Australia in 1852-53. • Mrs. Charles (Ellen) Clacey
... her head, and having caught an ant on the end of a severed blade of grass, she amused herself by making it go from one end to the other of the sprig, which she tipped up whenever the insect reached one of the ends. She listened with mute and contented attention to all the wonderful details of the life ...
— Yvette • Henri Rene Guy de Maupassant
... are you?" asked the Mayor. "Was your husband killed in the riots?—resisting arrest, I suppose." "This is ther widder of Dan Wright," answered the policeman; "an' ef Wilmin'ton had er had a hundred niggers like that, we uns would er had er diff'ant tale ter tell. He was ded game." "Dan Wright," repeated the Mayor slowly. "He's ther darkey that drawed er bead on an' defied we uns ter the las'," said the policeman pushing the woman away, and pushing another up to the desk. But the ...
— Hanover; Or The Persecution of the Lowly - A Story of the Wilmington Massacre. • David Bryant Fulton
... The ant and the moth have cells for each of their young, but our little ones lie in festering heaps in homes that consume them like graves; and night by night, from the corners of our streets, rises up the cry of the homeless,—"I was a stranger and ye took ...
— The Master-Knot of Human Fate • Ellis Meredith
... neither Boer, Englishman, nor Kafir upon it; nothing, indeed, except a few herds of game grazing on the ridges. About two o'clock, however, just as they had started after a short outspan, a little incident occurred. Suddenly the Vilderbeeste's horse put his foot into an ant-bear hole and fell heavily, throwing his rider on to his head. He was up in a minute, but his forehead had struck against the jawbone of a dead buck, and the blood was pouring from it down his hairy ...
— Jess • H. Rider Haggard
... and in order that my recorder could put down the readings so that I might identify them later I was obliged to give him titles for these. They had no names in our language, and I did not know the native ones, so, remembering that at the foot of one I had found some ant-hills covered with beautiful diamond-like quartz crystals, I called it Diamond Butte, and the other, having a dark, weird, forbidding look, I named on the spur of the moment Solitaire Butte. These names being used by the other members of the corps, they became fixtures ...
— The Romance of the Colorado River • Frederick S. Dellenbaugh
... not sleep, he dreamed. One day dinner was kept waiting for him. "I have just come," said he, as he entered, "from the funeral of an ant; I followed the procession to the cemetery, and I escorted the family home." It has been said that La Fontaine knew nothing of natural history; he knew and loved animals; up to his time, fable-writers had been, merely philosophers or satirists; he was the ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume V. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... artists, of merchants, of bookbinders, of carpenters, of masons, of plasterers, of shipwrights, of plumbers. Do you cry out against it? Then you cry out against a tendency divinely implanted. Your tirades will accomplish no more than if you should preach to a busy ant-hill or bee-hive a ...
— The Abominations of Modern Society • Rev. T. De Witt Talmage
... regimented her people like an ant-hill or a beehive. The people themselves, including many who belong to the upper class, are often simple villagers in temper, full of kindness and anger, much subject to envy and jealousy, not magnanimous, docile and obedient to a fault. ...
— England and the War • Walter Raleigh
... not written by either Ezra or Nehemiah is plain from Nehemiah xii:9, where the descendants of the high priest, Joshua are traced down to Jaddua, the sixth high priest, who went to meet Alexander the Great, when the Persian empire was almost subdued (Josephus, "Ant." ii. 108), or who, according to Philo-Judaeus, was the sixth and last high priest under the Persians. (57) In the same chapter of Nehemiah, verse 22, this point is clearly brought out: "The Levites in ...
— A Theologico-Political Treatise [Part II] • Benedict de Spinoza
... proverb which runs: "When God wishes to destroy an ant he gives it wings." The Kaiser was to be given power for his own destruction. But what has happened? Absolutely nothing of these evil prophecies. In 1884 Bismarck was saying to Gerhard Rohlfs, the African explorer: ...
— Germany and the Germans - From an American Point of View (1913) • Price Collier
... Look upon Mr. Booth's map of East London, with its coloured lines showing the swarms of human beings who live ignobly and die obscurely, and realise for yourself of what import the cult of beautiful form is to these human ant-heaps. Walk down the populous Whitechapel Road of a Saturday night, or traverse the long slimy alleys of Rotherhithe among the timber wharves, and discover how many of your countrymen and contemporaries are living neither in your country nor in your century. ...
— Without Prejudice • Israel Zangwill
... 12 oClock we rose the hill Some time before we got to the hill we obsevd. great numbers of Birds hovering about the top of this Mound when I got on the top those Birds flw off. I discovered that they wer Cetechig a kind of flying ant which were in great numbers abought the top of this hill, those insects lit on our hats & necks, Several of them bit me verry Shart on the neck, near the top of this nole I observed three holes which I Supposed to be Prarie Wolves ...
— The Journals of Lewis and Clark • Meriwether Lewis et al
... done? Break what must be broken, once for all, that's all, and take the suffering on oneself. What, you don't understand? You'll understand later.... Freedom and power, and above all, power! Over all trembling creation and all the ant-heap!... That's the goal, remember that! That's my farewell message. Perhaps it's the last time I shall speak to you. If I don't come to-morrow, you'll hear of it all, and then remember these words. And some day later on, in years to come, you'll understand perhaps ...
— Crime and Punishment • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... escape, could not cover them, and something from the dead entered their hearts. To Peter—so queerly were his thoughts running—the memorable incident of their last night together had to do with an ant colony. ...
— Red Fleece • Will Levington Comfort
... naked Turkish dog, though here no doubt homology comes into play? With respect to this latter case of correlation, I think it can hardly be accidental that the two orders of mammals which are most abnormal in their dermal covering, viz., Cetacea (whales) and Edentata (armadilloes, scaly ant-eaters, etc.), are likewise on the whole the most abnormal in their teeth, but there are so many exceptions to this rule, as Mr. Mivart has remarked, that it has ...
— On the Origin of Species - 6th Edition • Charles Darwin
... they had learned of the fate of Leatherhead. Two days after I was imprisoned it had been destroyed, with every soul in it, by a Martian. He had swept it out of existence, as it seemed, without any provocation, as a boy might crush an ant hill, in ...
— The War of the Worlds • H. G. Wells
... himself and his horse in the tank, and then sat down under a tree. "Now," he said to himself, "I will eat some of the sweetmeats my mother gave me, and I will drink some water, and then I will continue my journey." He opened his handkerchief, and took out a sweetmeat. He found an ant in it. He took out another. There was an ant in that one too. So he laid the two sweetmeats on the ground, and he took out another, and another, and another, until he had taken them all out; but in each he found an ant. "Never mind," he said, "I won't eat the sweetmeats; the ants shall eat them." ...
— Indian Fairy Tales • Anonymous
... buildings, with their long rows of windows and doors all of the same pattern; the smooth, beaten yards, all just alike; the swarms of children making it seem anything but Sunday-like with their noise; the teeming population, which made the tenements resemble ant-hills, and seemed to forbid any idea of privacy, looked very ...
— Katie Robertson - A Girls Story of Factory Life • Margaret E. Winslow
... an ant running away with a piece of cheese eight or ten times larger than itself. I could not help thinking of it, when I found the chubby, smoky-nosed tug-boat towing the Typhoon out ...
— The Story of a Bad Boy • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... that Neptunus made A thousand wynter theretofore, They have anon to-broke and tore." From the Gower MS. Soc. Ant. ...
— Notes & Queries, No. 25. Saturday, April 20, 1850 • Various
... her eyes were level with the late-blossoming grass that stirred a little in an unfelt breath of air; two frosted stalks of goldenrod, nodded and swung back and nodded again, between her and the sky. With absent intentness, she watched an ant creeping carefully to the top of a head of timothy, then jolting off at some jar she could not feel. The sun poured full upon her face; there was not a cloud anywhere in the unfathomable blue stillness. ...
— The Awakening of Helena Richie • Margaret Deland
... also, the way in which the various nations conducted the business of transport. From his office in Glasgow he could see the whole vast labours of industrious and mercantile man, that Brobdingnagian ant of this revolving globe, merely by closing his eyes. The map of the world's commerce was cinematographed upon ...
— The Mirrors of Downing Street - Some Political Reflections by a Gentleman with a Duster • Harold Begbie
... civilized men ever made for themselves,—constructed of rough boards, with the protruding ends. Against some of them the earth is heaped up to the roof, or nearly so; and when the grass has had time to sprout upon them, they will look like small natural hillocks, or a species of ant-hills,—something in which Nature has a larger share than man. These huts are placed beneath the trees, oaks, walnuts, and white-pines, wherever the trunks give them space to stand; and by thus adapting themselves ...
— Passages From The American Notebooks, Volume 2. • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... lightly, Mr. Meredith, of a calamity which destroys an ant-hill and half its inhabitants. Does the Power that runs the universe think us of more ...
— Rilla of Ingleside • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... -ant (our ing) forming active participles necessarily drops t and prefixes h in Dak, and in this form, han, is used as active participial suffix ...
— The Dakotan Languages, and Their Relations to Other Languages • Andrew Woods Williamson
... and pretended to be interested in a black ant that was crawling rapidly up the wall below him; he was a truthful pussy and preferred to change the subject. The stranger was comfortable and sat lazily waiting for ...
— The Book of the Cat • Mabel Humphrey and Elizabeth Fearne Bonsall
... boys came with torches of fire to my rescue. They are the largest and the most ferocious ant we know anything about. In an incredibly short space of time they can kill any goat, chicken, duck, hog or dog on the place. In a few hours there is not a rat, mouse, snake, centipede, spider, or scorpion in your house, as they are chased, killed and carried away. We built ...
— The Upward Path - A Reader For Colored Children • Various
... during the night. Three days afterwards they reached a secure anchorage, which he named the Bay of Rest, as the crew had been long fatigued when the found it. Here a landing was effected, and Allan Cunningham took occasion to measure one of the gigantic ant-hills of that coast. He found it to be eight feet in height and twenty-six in girth, which after all is not so large as some to be seen in that region. All examinations of the country tending to give King and his companion a very poor opinion of the place; they left the inlet ...
— The History of Australian Exploration from 1788 to 1888 • Ernest Favenc
... by were boring him into the very ground with their eyes. His feet and his hands had grown to enormous proportions and seemed suddenly to belong to somebody else. He felt like an ant in a grain-hopper, or as though he were deep under water in a long dive and must in a moment actually gasp for breath. And, remembering St. Hilda, he did manage to get his hat off, but he was speechless. Marjorie paused, the smile did not leave her eyes, but it turned serious, and ...
— The Heart Of The Hills • John Fox, Jr.
... gale. Here too all forms of social union find, And hence let reason, late, instruct mankind: Here subterranean works and cities see; There towns aerial on the waving tree. Learn each small people's genius, policies, The ant's republic, and the realm of bees; How those in common all their wealth bestow, And anarchy without confusion know; And these for ever, though a monarch reign, Their separate cells and properties maintain. Mark what ...
— Essay on Man - Moral Essays and Satires • Alexander Pope
... into the fruit; and, after making several unsuccessful experiments to destroy them, it occurred to me that I had seen the toad feed on them. I accordingly put about half a dozen toads into the pit, and, in the course of a few days, scarcely an ant was to be found.—Corresp. ...
— The Mirror, 1828.07.05, Issue No. 321 - The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction • Various
... said Crofter—silly ass, how could he tell? Then Coxhead said to me, 'Where's Sarah got to?' That made me look round, and I can tell you I was pretty sick when I couldn't see you. Just fancy a chap sleeping away through it all! Why, the ant and the sluggard," said Langrish, getting a little mixed in his proverbs, "weren't in it with you. So I yelled 'Sarah!' with all my might. You should have seen the chaps sit up when they heard your name. Then old Tempest, with his mouth shut and looking middling ...
— Tom, Dick and Harry • Talbot Baines Reed
... the same old bunch. The same lily-livered crowd that I've seen in the streets since I laid the first paving stone under 'em myself in '91. Afraid of them? Hell! I'd walk through an ant hill as scared as I would through that mob. Thanks for telling me, Dan, but Jim Cargan won't be in the mollycoddle class for a century ...
— Seven Keys to Baldpate • Earl Derr Biggers
... of names. All had died: all had been judged. What did it profit a man to gain the whole world if he lost his soul? At last he had understood: and human life lay around him, a plain of peace whereon ant-like men laboured in brotherhood, their dead sleeping under quiet mounds. The elbow of his companion touched him and his heart was touched: and when he spoke to answer a question of his master he heard his own voice full of the quietude of ...
— A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man • James Joyce
... daybreak the deck of the Dolphin presented a scene of ant-like industry. Gangs of negroes were hurrying backwards and forwards with coils of rope and spars and sails; others were rolling down kegs of water, and others casks of beef and pork and biscuit, and packages of other ...
— Hurricane Hurry • W.H.G. Kingston
... so you puts a tog into mein stone-heap, and you steps onto mein grass, ant you knock ober all mein beautiful mullein-stalks and mein ...
— The Junior Classics Volume 8 - Animal and Nature Stories • Selected and arranged by William Patten
... places Clay, and in many Parts very Rocky and Stoney, as well as the Hills, but in general the Land is pretty well Cloathed with long grass, wood, Shrubs, etc. The whole Country abounds with an immense number of Ant Hills, some of which are 6 or 8 feet high, and more than twice that in Circuit. Here are but few sorts of Trees besides the Gum tree, which is the most numerous, and is the same that we found on the Southern Part of the Coast, only here they do not grow near so large. On each ...
— Captain Cook's Journal During the First Voyage Round the World • James Cook
... One discovered in tropical America by Mr. W.L. Sclater would have much delighted Belt had he come across it. In that region of the world the leaf-cutting ants present a very characteristic appearance as the column proceeds homewards, each ant carrying a piece of leaf held vertically in its jaws; and a homopterous insect has been found that faithfully resembles an ant bearing its burden. The latter is suggested by the thin compressed green body of the insect, and its profile is precisely like that of the jagged edge ...
— The Naturalist in Nicaragua • Thomas Belt
... mail. Towards evening he burrows deep holes in the earth, and searches for the larvae of insects, or he ventures out of the forest, and visits the yucca fields, where he digs up the well-flavored roots. The ant-eater rakes up with his long curved claws the crowded resorts of ants, stretches out his long, spiral, and adhesive tongue, into the midst of the moving swarm, and draws it back covered with a multitude ...
— Travels in Peru, on the Coast, in the Sierra, Across the Cordilleras and the Andes, into the Primeval Forests • J. J. von Tschudi
... attracted my attention is one of a nest in my cabin, whose labours I often superintend: and I defy any ant, in any part of the four continents, or wherever land may be, to show an equal knowledge of mechanical power. I do not mean to assert that there is originally a disproportion of intellect between one animal and another of the same species; but I consider that the instinct of animals is capable ...
— The King's Own • Captain Frederick Marryat
... All things mingle with and extend his own 'ego;' and that can be so widened as to embrace the interests of the whole world, until man can be in as much sympathy with a grain of sand, or the most distant star, and take as much share in the ant, and in the dwellers on Saturn, as in his own stomach and toes. In this way the whole universe becomes a constituent part of his 'ego;' thus his desires cease individually to exist, and are assimilated with ...
— The Malady of the Century • Max Nordau
... all ran about as fast as ants in an ant-hill, and the busiest of all was sixteen-year-old Hannah Sherwin. Since she was my grandmother's grand mother's mother, at last ...
— Hillsboro People • Dorothy Canfield
... cannon fire had ceased, and from what Leonard could see, he thought the English ships had quit firing at her. She still fled southward, however. Smoke began to roll out of her turrets, and her crew came swarming out on her deck like a disturbed ant's nest. Through his glasses, Madden saw them hunched against the fire, working to launch a boat, when of a sudden there was a blinding flare; a huge cloud of smoke leaped from the sea, and after four ...
— The Cruise of the Dry Dock • T. S. Stribling
... down from the headland into V Beach Bay, and, in doing so, passed the limit of the British zone and trespassed upon French territory. The slope, from the beach upward, was as alive with French and Senegalese as a cloven ant-hill is alive with ants. The stores of the whole French army seemed accumulated in the neighbourhood. There was an atmosphere of French excitability, very different from the stillness of the British Zone. Stepping from ...
— Tell England - A Study in a Generation • Ernest Raymond
... can jump two hundred times its length; therefore a horse, were its strength proportioned to its weight, could leap the Rocky Mountains, and a whale could spring two hundred leagues in height. An Amazon ant walks about eight feet per minute, but if the progress of a human Amazon were proportioned to her larger size, she could stride over eight leagues in an hour; and if proportioned to her greater weight, she would make the circuit of ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 430, March 29, 1884 • Various
... arranges itself in two rows of drops along the edges of the blades. From the day when the first leaf appears upon the hardy woodbine, in the early year, to the time when the partridge finds the eggs in the ant-hill, and on again till the last harebell dies, there is always something beautiful or interesting in these great hedgerows. Indeed, it is impossible to exhaust them. I have omitted the wild geranium with its tiny red petals scarce seen in the mass of ...
— Round About a Great Estate • Richard Jefferies
... directions by an intricate confusion of cracks which stand for streets. Tall, slim minarets and beflagged temple-spires rise out of it and give it picturesqueness, viewed from the river. The city is as busy as an ant-hill, and the hurly-burly of human life swarming along the web of narrow streets reminds one of the ants. The sacred cow swarms along, too, and goes whither she pleases, and takes toll of the grain-shops, and is very much in the way, ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain |
