"Centipede" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... follows, therefore, that at least during the period through which the insect continues to grow, the cuticle must be periodically shed. Thus in the life-story of an insect or other arthropod, such as a lobster, a spider, or a centipede, there must be a succession of cuticle-castings—'moults' or ecdyses as they are ...
— The Life-Story of Insects • Geo. H. Carpenter
... often she woke suddenly with a little feeble wail sounding in the ears that fingers cannot stop, or to confess that it cried out against a double injustice, that of life and that of death: she had crossed the border of the region of horror, and went about with a worm coiled in her heart, like a centipede in the stone ...
— The Marquis of Lossie • George MacDonald
... I? Ort Hippisley can dance better with one foot than Tawm Kinch could dance if he was a centipede." ...
— In a Little Town • Rupert Hughes
... laughing again heartily. "'Twas not in my country's service that I lost my leg—'twas but a runaway accident with two fiery little ponies in Philadelphia! But, indeed," he goes on, still laughing, "I do not miss it greatly, and can get around as easily as though I were a centipede and had a hundred good legs at ...
— Calvert of Strathore • Carter Goodloe
... that the centipede has a hundred feet. It may have; and it does seem that superstition, or the belief in supernatural things of a trivial nature has quite as many; and, like the fabled animal of ancient times, ...
— Life and Labors of Elder John Kline, the Martyr Missionary - Collated from his Diary by Benjamin Funk • John Kline
... three thousand yards of sand in heavy surf at Cape Nome. It will take out twenty-four thousand dollars in a day. You can make more money with us than by taking flyers in wild-cat oil schemes, etc." The poster was illustrated by a huge machine gotten up on the centipede plan; at least, it resembled that hated insect from having attached to its frame two sets of wheels of different sizes along the sides like the legs of a centipede, but with a steam boiler for a head, and a big pipe ...
— A Woman who went to Alaska • May Kellogg Sullivan
... bird or quadruped as a sacred thing, which under no circumstances may be utilized by man. We are not fanatical Hindus of the castes which religiously avoid the "taking of life" of any kind, and gently push aside the flea, the centipede and the scorpion. The reasoning powers of such people are strictly limited, the same as those of people who are opposed to the removal by death of the bandits and murderers of ...
— The Minds and Manners of Wild Animals • William T. Hornaday
... a long, dislocated trunk of a wild Banian; like a huge centipede crawling on its hundred branches, sawn of even lengths for legs. This table was set out with wry-necked gourds; deformities of calabashes; and shapeless trenchers, ...
— Mardi: and A Voyage Thither, Vol. II (of 2) • Herman Melville
... armed bandits. They were dressed in sheepskins and warm materials, had sheepskin caps on their heads; there was he with his bare arms, in well-worn grey trousers, his shirt fastened together at the neck with a piece of wood. Sitting among them, defenceless as a centipede, without anyone belonging to him, puffing clouds of smoke, he inwardly blessed this adventure, in which everything had turned out so well. The Cossacks looked at the fire, and they too said: 'This ...
— Selected Polish Tales • Various
... such a smile of self-satisfaction upon her face as would have been quite startling to her, if she had ever been startled at any thing; for through that smile she could see lying at the root of it the worm that made it. For some smiles are like the ruddiness of certain apples, which is owing to a centipede, or other creeping thing, coiled up at the heart of them. Only her worm had a face and shape the very image of her own; and she looked so simpering, and mawkish, and self-conscious, and silly, that she made the ...
— A Double Story • George MacDonald
... Connie dramatically. "Before Myrtella came I never knew what it was to sleep in my own bed, and I had to eat the legs of chickens until I felt like a centipede. There! You are all right; come along. Don't forget to ...
— A Romance of Billy-Goat Hill • Alice Hegan Rice
... parts of the country and apiculture has met with much success. Of poisonous insects there are few. Those sometimes met with are the species of tarantula known as the hairy spider, the spider known as guava, and the blue spider, also the scorpion and the centipede. Their sting produces intense pain, inflammation and fever. They are found in crevices, under stones, in caves, and in rotten wood. The last two are often seen in old houses, but daily use of the ...
— Santo Domingo - A Country With A Future • Otto Schoenrich
... out the centipede he had killed, and then looked among the waste paper for more, standing with his bare foot raised, and with ready slipper, for the bite of this insect, which grows to a large size in Porto Rico, is anything but pleasant, though it is said never to cause death, except ...
— The Motor Girls on Waters Blue - Or The Strange Cruise of The Tartar • Margaret Penrose
... a worm which Barbara promptly threw at his face. Jimmy looked at her reproachfully and proceeded to Aunt Evangeline. Aunt Evangeline's gift was a centipede—a live centipede that ran gaily off the tablecloth on to Aunt Evangeline's lap before anyone could stop it. With a yell that sent William's father to the library with his hands to his ears, Aunt Evangeline leapt to her chair and stood ...
— More William • Richmal Crompton
... had been the first floor of the structure had been weighted down heavily with railroad iron and concrete to form the roof of the commander's dugout. The sides of the decrepit structure bulged outward and were prevented from bursting by timber props radiating on all sides like the legs of a centipede. A mule team stood in front of ...
— "And they thought we wouldn't fight" • Floyd Gibbons
... climate in the higher condition. Gran went up with Lillie and took photographs. "Birdie" Bowers and Wright were employed collecting insects, and, with those added by the rest of us, the day's collection included all kinds of ants, cockroaches, grasshoppers, mayflies, a centipede, fifteen different species of spider, locusts, a cricket, woodlice, a parasite fly, a beetle, and a moth. We failed to get any of the dragonflies seen, and, to the great sorrow of the crews who landed with us, missed capturing a most beautiful chestnut-coloured mouse with a fur tail. Land crabs, ...
— South with Scott • Edward R. G. R. Evans
... reserved for Hiram Hill, the tow-headed, cross-eyed chap who was destined to cause all the commotion. While Hill stood on the walk, telling himself that the gaudily painted dragon looked very much like an overgrown centipede, he suddenly caught sight of a man in ...
— Owen Clancy's Happy Trail - or, The Motor Wizard in California • Burt L. Standish
... U-boats are named after him. This wonderful animal used to have eight feet, for swiftness. That was when Woden rode him, but, in course of time, four of his legs dropped off, so that the horse of Santa Klaas looks less like a centipede and more like other horses. Whenever Santa Klaas walks, Pete has to go on foot also, even though the chests full of presents for the children are very heavy and Pete has ...
— Dutch Fairy Tales for Young Folks • William Elliot Griffis
... lightening Billy went for his clothes. A centipede could have been no more active. He jerked up his suspenders; he jerked on a shirt; he jerked on a coat; he was wiping his face as he darted through the halls and down the stairs. No lift had speed enough for ...
— The Palace of Darkened Windows • Mary Hastings Bradley
... dead horse seems to have more legs than a centipede when you try to drag it through a narrow space, and they all stick out in different directions. Of course, this one stuck and then there was more trouble, for when I took an axe to dismember it, a cop threatened to arrest me for cutting ...
— Side Show Studies • Francis Metcalfe
... any- and everywhere; Ballbody kept rolling up them and over them, confining his attentions to no one in particular; the scorpion kept grabbing at their legs with his huge pincers; a three-foot centipede kept screwing up their bodies, nipping as he went; varied as numerous were their woes. Nor was it long before the last of them had fled from the ...
— The Princess and the Curdie • George MacDonald
... centipede was happy, quite, Until the toad for fun Said, 'Pray which leg comes after which?' This worked her mind to such a pitch She lay distracted in a ...
— The Nature of Goodness • George Herbert Palmer
... long centipede just crawled in my bunk, This tropical service is certainly punk, Not a chance in the world to go over the hill, And half my time is spent in the mill. But why should I worry, I'll soon be free. A "G. C. M." does the trick ...
— Rhymes of the Rookies • W. E. Christian
... previously the centipede-like procession of girls of all ages, in charge of nuns and pupil-teachers, in passing over the Gueldersdorp Recreation-Ground, had sustained an experience with which every maiden bosom would have been still vibrating had not an event even more exciting ...
— The Dop Doctor • Clotilde Inez Mary Graves
... the model of beings in distant worlds? Be the man in the moon a biped or quadruped; see he through two eyes as we do, or a hundred like Argus; hold he with two hands as we do, or a hundred like Briarius; walk he with two feet as we do, or a hundred like the centipede, "the mind's the standard of the man" everywhere. If he have but a wise head and a warm heart; if he be not shut up, Diogenes—like, within his own little tub of a world, but take an interest in the inhabitants of kindred spheres; and if he be a worshipper ...
— Moon Lore • Timothy Harley
... both is about as sensible as asking a man whether he prefers chrysanthemums or billiards. Christ did not love humanity; He never said He loved humanity: He loved men. Neither He nor anyone else can love humanity; it is like loving a gigantic centipede. And the reason that the Tolstoians can even endure to think of an equally distributed affection is that their love of humanity is a logical love, a love into which they are coerced by their own theories, a love which would be an insult ...
— Twelve Types • G.K. Chesterton
... cat's-eye pins, etchings of all the missions in India ink, wild-flower, fern, and moss work, and, perhaps most popular of all, the pictures on orange wood of the burro, the poppy, and pepper and oranges. Or, if interested in natural history, you can secure a horned toad, a centipede, or a tarantula, alive or ...
— A Truthful Woman in Southern California • Kate Sanborn
... birds are not night birds, it is evident that they are evil spirits abroad in bird form, hence the precautions. As soon as a baby begins to crawl, the mother finds a centipede, half cooks it, takes it from the fire, and catching hold of her child's hands beats them with it, crooning as she ...
— The Euahlayi Tribe - A Study of Aboriginal Life in Australia • K. Langloh Parker
... hope I may now count you as one of my child-friends. I am fond of children (except boys), and have more child-friends than I could possibly count on my fingers, even if I were a centipede (by the way, have they fingers? I'm afraid they're only feet, but, of course, they use them for the same purpose, and that is why no other insects, except centipedes, ever succeed in doing Long Multiplication), ...
— The Life and Letters of Lewis Carroll • Stuart Dodgson Collingwood
... idiots had had your way," she observed, "I should have been knitting so many socks for Charlie Sands that he'd have had to be a centipede to wear 'em all, ...
— More Tish • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... Benson's father, "so much better than the dray-horse, that knew enough to lift his feet until he lifted the right one. I believe if that horse had the feet of a centipede, he would have gone on lifting them until the dog was released. I tell you, boys, if I could get anyone to help me, I'd start an Animal ...
— The Shagganappi • E. Pauline Johnson
... the difficulties of which were much enhanced by their being usually misspelt, but which, nevertheless, formed a very appropriate vehicle for what the world calls "flirtation." I can always find out other people's words much quicker than my own, and whilst I was puzzling over "centipede," and teasing Mrs. Lumley, who had given it me, for the initial letter, I peeped over the shoulder of my next neighbour, Miss Molasses, and made out clearly enough the word she had just received from ...
— Kate Coventry - An Autobiography • G. J. Whyte-Melville
... down glass mountains, eatin' prickly pear, drinking rarely, and cullin' a rattlesnake here and there to twine in our locks. It will seem like old times, dropping a rock in your boots in the mornin' to quell the quivering centipede and ...
— Red Saunders' Pets and Other Critters • Henry Wallace Phillips
... of us found Tilly up to that time; but when Elsie said that (about being able to move all her legs and arms), I heard a little faint voice say 'You talk as if you were a centipede, ...
— The Sunbridge Girls at Six Star Ranch • Eleanor H. (Eleanor Hodgman) Porter
... was introduced to Europe from Mexico—partridges, quail, and wild pigeons. The armadillo, beaver, martin, otter, and others are among the Mexican fauna. Of noxious reptiles and insects the rattlesnake is much in evidence, as well as the tarantula, centipede, alacran, or scorpion, and varieties of ants. Of birds of beautiful plumage the Mexican tropics abound with life, and they are famed for their fine feathers, and as songsters. They are an example of ...
— Mexico • Charles Reginald Enock
... of the lost centipede that once held undisputed sway of the Lost Property Office at Scotland Yard before it came to an untimely end. It arrived with a cab-driver, housed in a little tin box, comfortably lined and pierced with air-holes. ...
— Scotland Yard - The methods and organisation of the Metropolitan Police • George Dilnot
... has a bewildering iridescence of aspect. Each present impulse is reformatory. Correction, like a centipede, shows a hundred legs and wants to run upon them all. Much of the so-called philanthropy is not well balanced and is run by cranks. Cranks attach themselves to any social movement, as a shaggy ...
— The Warriors • Lindsay, Anna Robertson Brown
... moss we could not have had Mary; without an ape we could not have had Abraham; and—shocking blasphemy—without a centipede we could not have had Christ! Praise God, we may turn from this to the words of God; "For it is written, I will destroy the wisdom of the wise, and the discernment of the discerning I will ...
— The Church, the Schools and Evolution • J. E. (Judson Eber) Conant
... around in the woods near the Park, and we visited them quite often. An Indian has as many angles in his makeup as a centipede has legs. Just about the time you think you have one characteristically placed, you put your finger down and he isn't there. Charge one with dishonesty, and the next week he will ride a hundred miles to deliver a bracelet you paid for months before. Decide he is cruel and inhuman, and ...
— I Married a Ranger • Dama Margaret Smith
... those, he can put up with lizards, which he usually prefers manufactured, and of a length not less than from sixty to one hundred feet. This reminds us that a saurian of a hundred feet should not be confounded with a centipede. ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 2, No. 36, December 3, 1870 • Various
... found "Paris eating a General a day" (Chapter LXXVIII). Early in June, 1871 there appeared in the same journal "The International Centipede," "John Bull and the Blanche Albion." The Queen of England, clad in white, holding in her hands a model of the Palace of Westminster, and sundry docks, resists the approach of an interminable centipede, on which she stamps, vainly endeavouring to impede the progress of the coil of fire and ...
— Paris under the Commune • John Leighton
... face formed to conceal, And without feeling mock at all who feel; With a vile mask the Gorgon would disown,— A cheek of parchment and an eye of stone. Mark how the channels of her yellow blood Ooze to her skin and stagnate there to mud, Cased like the centipede in saffron mail, Or darker greenness of the scorpion's scale,— (For drawn from reptiles only may we trace Congenial colours in that soul or face,) Look on her features! and behold her mind As in a mirror of itself defined: Look on the picture! deem it not o'ercharged There ...
— Lady Byron Vindicated • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... his foes, of whom he had a few; while as to "bronco busting," the virtue par excellence of western cattle-men, even Bronco Bill was heard to acknowledge that "he wasn't in it with the Dook, for it was his opinion that he could ride anythin' that had legs in under it, even if it was a blanked centipede." And this, coming from one who made a profession of "bronco busting," was unquestionably high praise. The Duke lived alone, except when he deigned to pay a visit to some lonely rancher who, for the marvellous charm of his talk, was delighted ...
— The Sky Pilot • Ralph Connor
... the Chancellor. "Ah—but what do you know about it? That's the question. How do you know what might have been on the next page—a snake or a worm, or a centipede or a revolutionist, or something ...
— The Book of Dragons • Edith Nesbit
... having forty-four feet," he cried, "if the centipede can not get on faster than a carabus, which ...
— Adventures of a Young Naturalist • Lucien Biart
... originated. Where did this young Jesse James, with his gory record and his dauntless eye, come from? Was he born in a buffalo wallow at the foot of some rock-ribbed mountain, or did he first breathe the thin air along the brink of an alkali pond, where the horned toad and the centipede sang him to sleep, and the tarantula tickled him under the ...
— Remarks • Bill Nye
... young men, and after him came the aged morris dancers, only upheld from collapse in the mire by mutual upholdings, until they seemed like some monstrous animal moving with uncouth sprawls of legs as multifold as a centipede, and wavering drunkenly from one side of the road to the other, lurching into the dewy bushes, then recovering by the joint effort ...
— The Heart's Highway - A Romance of Virginia in the Seventeeth Century • Mary E. Wilkins
... Syrtis. However, we have forgotten all about the sea thoroughly enough since that time. I well remember my first astonishment at the side of a galley in Alexandria, and the roar of laughter with which my fellow-students greeted my not unreasonable remark, that it looked very like a centipede.' ...
— Hypatia - or, New Foes with an Old Face • Charles Kingsley
... feet between a biped, a quadruped, and a centipede, and say whether the foot of Mr. Joseph Hume, being just as broad as it is long, may not be considered ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 1, October 23, 1841 • Various
... in the nose while the patient was asleep. Tomlinson gives a case in which maggots traversed the Eustachian tube, some being picked out of the nostrils, while others were coughed up. Packard records the accidental entrance of a centipede into the nostril. There is an account of a native who was admitted to the Madras General Hospital, saying that a small lizard had crawled up his nose. The urine of these animals is very irritating, blistering any surface it touches. ...
— Anomalies and Curiosities of Medicine • George M. Gould
... candles there, as well as at the crucifix of St. Augustin; for I would not fail to do either, even though it were to snow all day and blow a hurricane. What I came here for is to tell you, that last night the Renegade and Centipede brought to my house a basket somewhat larger than that now before us; it was as full as it could hold of fine linen, and, on my life and soul, it was still wet and covered with soap, just as they had taken it from under the nose of the washerwoman, so that the poor fellows were ...
— The Exemplary Novels of Cervantes • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... Centipede went out to take a walk; The Centipede said frankly, "I will listen while you talk, But I may appear distracted, or assume a vacant stare, Because to keep my feet in ...
— The Jingle Book • Carolyn Wells
... for an elderly lady. For a gentleman it is more difficult to find souvenirs. We must acknowledge that it is always difficult to select a present for a gentleman. Unless he has as many feet as Briareus had hands, or unless he is a centipede, he cannot wear all the slippers given to him; and the shirt-studs and sleeve-buttons are equally burdensome. Rings are now fortunately in fashion, and can be as expensive as one pleases. But one ...
— Manners and Social Usages • Mrs. John M. E. W. Sherwood
... place and people, particularly those of the coloured servant, Chunga, astonished her immensely. The white lady had a great horror of creeping things of all kinds; she could hardly bear to get into her bath, for she sometimes found a centipede, as long as ...
— Little Folks (October 1884) - A Magazine for the Young • Various
... nothing for skin disease, a form of herpes, with which a great many are afflicted. They probably do not regard it as a disease. (See Pls. LVI et seq.) In case of centipede bites, if on a finger, the affected member is thrust in the anus of a chicken, where, the Negrito affirms, the poison is absorbed, resulting in the ...
— Negritos of Zambales • William Allan Reed
... rolled. Fool! I am the Fates' lieutenant; I act under orders. Look thou, underling! that thou obeyest mine.—Stand round me, men. Ye see an old man cut down to the stump; leaning on a shivered lance; propped up on a lonely foot. 'Tis Ahab—his body's part; but Ahab's soul's a centipede, that moves upon a hundred legs. I feel strained, half stranded, as ropes that tow dismasted frigates in a gale; and I may look so. But ere I break, yell hear me crack; and till ye hear THAT, know that Ahab's hawser tows his purpose yet. Believe ye, men, in the things called omens? Then laugh ...
— Moby Dick; or The Whale • Herman Melville
... The centipede runs across my head, The vinegaroon crawls in my bed, Tarantulas jump and scorpions play, The broncs are grazing far away, The rattlesnake gives his warning cry, And the coyotes sing their lullaby, While I ...
— Songs of the Cattle Trail and Cow Camp • Various
... epitome of the truth about constipation, indigestion, insomnia, and the other functional disturbances common to nervous folk, you can do, no better than to commit to memory and store away for future reference that choice limerick of the centipede, which so admirably sums up the whole ...
— Outwitting Our Nerves - A Primer of Psychotherapy • Josephine A. Jackson and Helen M. Salisbury
... piece he'ps maik de ban', But dey all mus' be led, Sum one mus' be de head: No doubt, de centipede Has all de laigs he need, But take erway de head, Po' centipede am ...
— The Book of American Negro Poetry • Edited by James Weldon Johnson |
