"Chameleon" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... such as Marie Boyer and Gabrielle Fenayrou, who may be described as passively criminal, chameleon-like, taking colour from their surroundings. By the force of a man's influence they commit a dreadful crime, in the one instance it is matricide, in the other the murder of a former lover, but neither of the women is profoundly vicious or criminal in her instincts. In prison they become ...
— A Book of Remarkable Criminals • H. B. Irving
... discrimination in the Territories? I say, yes, I would discriminate in the Territories wherever it is needful to assert the right of citizens.... I have heard many a siren's song on this doctrine of non-intervention; a thing shadowy and fleeting, changing its color as often as the chameleon."[785] ...
— Stephen A. Douglas - A Study in American Politics • Allen Johnson
... barter the holy slipper for a hundred of the smiles that hover round thy vermillion lips? Laughing lassie, if thou wouldst remain always fresh and young, weep no more; think of riding the brideless fleas, of bridling with the golden clouds thy chameleon chimeras, of metamorphosing the realities of life into figures clothed with the rainbow, caparisoned with roseate dreams, and mantled with wings blue as the eyes of the partridge. By the Body and the Blood, by the Censer and the Seal, ...
— Droll Stories, Complete - Collected From The Abbeys Of Touraine • Honore de Balzac
... of the soul of man? As she hath the virtue of the chameleon to change her hue at every new approach, to be gay with the merry and mournful with the downcast, so too is her age changeable as her mood. No longer is Leopold, as he sits there, ruminating, chewing the cud of reminiscence, that staid ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce
... great force to remove them. At other times they darted tail first, with the rapidity of an arrow, from one side of the pool to the other, at the same instant discolouring the water with a dark chestnut-brown ink. These animals also escape detection by a very extraordinary, chameleon-like power of changing their colour. They appear to vary their tints according to the nature of the ground over which they pass: when in deep water, their general shade was brownish purple, but when placed on the land, or in shallow water, this dark tint changed into one of a yellowish ...
— The Voyage of the Beagle • Charles Darwin
... mean it!" said Allen, catching up the dog and holding him to the lamp, while Janet observed that he was a sort of chameleon, for his body, which had been black, was now yellow, and his chops which had been tan, ...
— Magnum Bonum • Charlotte M. Yonge
... fashion then to imitate. So that, whether in the hotel of a capital, the Kursaal of a Spa, or the humbler pension of a Swiss village, he was always characteristic. Less so was his wife, who, with the chameleon quality of her transplanted countrywomen, was already Parisian in dress; still less so his daughter, who had by this time absorbed the peculiarities of her French, German, and Italian governesses. ...
— Tales of Trail and Town • Bret Harte
... Post, it may be gathered that, although their daily lot was a hard one, it was sufficiently full of incident to banish monotony. Without such incident existence would have been intolerable. Nature herself seemed to be almost somnolent in these parts, for, besides a few chameleon-like lizards, a stray jackal or hawk, and a plentiful supply of small black beetles which stood on their heads when interfered with, all other forms of life were absent. Even vegetation was reduced to a few rushes and ...
— The 28th: A Record of War Service in the Australian Imperial Force, 1915-19, Vol. I • Herbert Brayley Collett
... the damned chameleon,' said Archie, with his hands in his eyes. 'Want father to take me ...
— Tenterhooks • Ada Leverson
... stared his eyes out in trying to see it for himself. But when he took to preaching, he was dwelling in the midst of a Hard-shell community; and, perhaps, like the overwhelming majority of mankind, from enlightened to savage, from Christian to fetich, Burlman Reynolds was but chameleon to his surroundings. Yet, notwithstanding the somber complexion of his new vocation, and the more than somber complexion of his creed, outside of the pulpit his reverence was as genial, jolly, and joky as the cheeriest, ...
— Burl • Morrison Heady
... a figure familiar enough to the company, and known in Simpson's Bar as "The Old Man." A man of perhaps fifty years; grizzled and scant of hair, but still fresh and youthful of complexion. A face full of ready, but not very powerful sympathy, with a chameleon-like aptitude for taking on the shade and color of contiguous moods and feelings. He had evidently just left some hilarious companions, and did not at first notice the gravity of the group, but clapped the shoulder of the nearest man jocularly, and threw ...
— Mrs. Skaggs's Husbands and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... himself into all shapes like a chameleon, or as Proteus, omnia transformans sese in miracula rerum, to act twenty parts and persons at once, for his advantage, to temporise and vary like Mercury the planet, good with good; bad with bad; having a several face, garb, and character for every one he meets; ...
— The Anatomy of Melancholy • Democritus Junior
... this same is she. [POINTING TO CELIA.] Out, thou chameleon harlot! now thine eyes Vie tears with the hyaena. Dar'st thou look Upon my wronged face?—I cry your pardons, I fear I have forgettingly transgrest Against the ...
— Volpone; Or, The Fox • Ben Jonson
... but there appears to be some difficulty in developing muscles at the thin end of a long tail, for the animals that have turned it into a grasping organ are few and are widely scattered. Examples are the chameleon among lizards, our own little harvest mouse, and, pre-eminent above all, the American monkeys. To a howler, or spider-monkey, its long tail is a swing and a trapeze in its forest gymnasium. Humboldt saw (he says it) a cluster of them all hanging from a tree by ...
— Concerning Animals and Other Matters • E.H. Aitken, (AKA Edward Hamilton)
... on their journey to be engaged in a warm dispute about the colour of the Chameleon. One of them affirmed that it was blue and that he had seen it with his own eyes upon the naked branch of a tree, feeding in the air on ...
— The Talking Beasts • Various
... the type of chameleon-like girl whose vagaries and "sweet uncertainties" form the theme of many short stories, in most of which she is pictured as ...
— How to Analyze People on Sight - Through the Science of Human Analysis: The Five Human Types • Elsie Lincoln Benedict and Ralph Paine Benedict
... have won by my trouble," she whispered bitterly. "Why did I try to recall you? Damon, a strange warring takes place in my mind occasionally. I think when I become calm after your woundings, 'Do I embrace a cloud of common fog after all?' You are a chameleon, and now you are at your worst colour. Go home, or I shall ...
— The Return of the Native • Thomas Hardy
... ****! He only grows dull, because he is sickly; age has not yet begun to impair him; nor is he such a chameleon as to take immediately the colour of his company. When you see him again you will find him reanimated. Most men have their bright and their cloudy days; at least they have days when they put their powers into action, and days when they ...
— Dr. Johnson's Works: Life, Poems, and Tales, Volume 1 - The Works Of Samuel Johnson, Ll.D., In Nine Volumes • Samuel Johnson
... bishop in his gilded cope or before the monk, the converted German "emaciated, clad in skins," wan, "dirtier and more spotted than a chameleon,"[1101] stood fear-stricken as before a sorcerer. In his calm moments, after the chase or inebriety, the vague divination of a mysterious and grandiose future, the dim conception of an unknown tribunal, the rudiment of conscience which he already ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 1 (of 6) - The Ancient Regime • Hippolyte A. Taine
... against me. He was too simple and honest to have conceived unaided such thoughts as he now harboured. Moreover, he was, like many good-hearted people, at the mercy of every wind that blows, and, like the chameleon, took his ...
— Dross • Henry Seton Merriman
... For Alkibiades, among his other extraordinary qualities, had this especial art of captivating men by assimilating his own manners and habits to theirs, being able to change, more quickly than the chameleon, from one mode of life to another. The chameleon, indeed, cannot turn itself white; but Alkibiades never found anything, good or bad, which he could not imitate to the life. Thus at Sparta he was fond of exercise, frugal and severe; in Ionia, luxurious, ...
— Plutarch's Lives, Volume I (of 4) • Plutarch
... wry face. "No, she isn't grateful. People never are grateful for that sort of thing. And she doesn't even know she's different! I've had to train her without her own knowledge! But she's chameleon-like, in some ways, and she picks up a lot just ...
— Patty and Azalea • Carolyn Wells
... shuffling into the cabin, looking like gleaming ghosts in their chameleon-suits, which repeated the color of the walls. "Someday," growled Johnny, "there'll be a type suit where you ...
— Breaking Point • James E. Gunn
... living creatures. The fact that individual animals have no voluntary control over their own colour is eloquent testimony as to the existence of mysterious life forces and racial evolutions which are still far beyond the grasp of man's understanding. To see a tiny chameleon adapt his colouring to his environment, be it red, green, or yellow, in the twinkling of an eye, is to have seen an ...
— The Human Side of Animals • Royal Dixon
... the State Constitution, March 8, 1879, and coming up to the time of his death, in which I find fifty-five newspaper articles written by him, of from one to three columns in length, presenting, in his own terse, humorous, glowing, vigorous, convincing way, all sides of this chameleon-hued question; now analyzing the amendment and the laws to enforce it, turning aside here to answer the cavil of some carping critic, then to demolish and bury some blatant political defender of the whisky element; arraigning the Governor, Senate and ...
— Personal Recollections of Pardee Butler • Pardee Butler
... cxagreno. Chain cxeno. Chain of mountains montaro. Chair segxo. Chairman prezidanto. Chaise veturileto. Chalice kaliko. Chalk kreto. Chalky kreteca. Challenge, to ekciti, al. Chamber cxambro. Chambermaid cxambristino. Chamberlain cxambelano. Chameleon kameleono. Chamois cxamo. Chamois-leather sxamo. Champagne cxampano. Champion probatalanto. Chance hazardo. Chance (to happen) okazi. Chancel hxorejo. Chancellor kanceliero. Chandelier ...
— English-Esperanto Dictionary • John Charles O'Connor and Charles Frederic Hayes
... and feed his family. In course of time, however, he succeeded in accumulating a considerable sum of money, but as he had tasted the bitter poison of destitution, and had for a very long time earned the heavy load of poverty upon his back, and fearing to lose his property by the chameleon-like changes of fortune, he took up his money on a certain night, carried it out of the city, and buried it under a tree. After some time had passed be began sorely to miss the presence of his treasure, ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 2 • Richard F. Burton
... oh Criticaster, but a chameleon! who had been months out of the atmosphere of vice and in an atmosphere ...
— It Is Never Too Late to Mend • Charles Reade
... rumor's many tongues when rumor talked of Harby. So it came to be that he rode sooner than he had proposed, and far harder than he had proposed, through green, level Cambridgeshire, through green, hilly Oxfordshire, with Harby for his goal. Chameleon-like, he changed hues on the way, shifting, with the help of his wallet, back into a gaudier garb less likely to be frowned on in regions ...
— The Lady of Loyalty House - A Novel • Justin Huntly McCarthy
... about the bungalow, some with such gaudy spread of wing as to tempt pursuit—but without a proper net they are difficult to secure. Large brown, bronze, and yellow beetles walked through the short grass with the coolness and gait of young poultry. Occasionally a chameleon turned up its singularly bright eye, as though to take cognizance of our presence. The redundancy of insect and reptile life is wonderful in southern India. The railroad stations and the road itself, admirably constructed and very fairly equipped, are the only ...
— Due West - or Round the World in Ten Months • Maturin Murray Ballou
... put on his finger as she spoke a massive gold ring of a peculiar make, with a chameleon and a vessel under full sail ...
— John Deane of Nottingham - Historic Adventures by Land and Sea • W.H.G. Kingston
... considerable literary talents, by which he was distinguished at Oxford; but he was so dreadfully afraid of passing for a pedant, that when he came into the company of the idle and the ignorant, he pretended to disdain every species of knowledge. His chameleon character seemed to vary in different lights, and according to the different situations in which he happened to be placed. He could be all things to all men—and to all women. He was supposed to be a favourite with the fair sex; and of all his various excellencies and defects, there ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. III - Belinda • Maria Edgeworth
... each side, by which I lifted it; its tail was armed with spines to the point, and was of proportional length to its body. The lizard was about eight inches in length. Naturalists have christened this harmless little chameleon the Moloch horridus. I put the little creature in a pouch, and intended to preserve it, but it managed to crawl out of its receptacle, and dropped again to its native sand. I had one of these lizards, as a pet, for months in Melbourne. It was ...
— Australia Twice Traversed, The Romance of Exploration • Ernest Giles
... you see Bernhardt?" were the remarks on all sides. Her head, which bore itself as if quite unaware that a suit for three hundred and fifty thousand francs damages was suspended over it like the sword of Damocles, was covered with a mass of rich auburn-colored hair. She is as changeable as a chameleon in the matter of her hair: I never see her twice with the ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 26, September 1880 • Various
... but since her lady-in-waiting, too, was, I might, after all, fare no better than Berri, if Henry was a toad, "his skin spotted like a serpent's, oily like a negro's, changeable like a chameleon, with a turned up nose and disproportionate mouth." Yet I hardly believe that, like my cousin, I would say anent a rival: "Whoever would not be satisfied with him, would be hard ...
— Secret Memoirs: The Story of Louise, Crown Princess • Henry W. Fischer
... was twenty-six—an age which has something in common with almost every one of the seven celebrated by Shakespeare. Like most men in their twenties, he had the character of a chameleon, and adapted himself to his surroundings with almost uncanny facility. At college he had been an ardent member of a dozen cliques, even falling under the egotism of the men who dabbled in Spiritualism, but a clarity of thought ...
— The Parts Men Play • Arthur Beverley Baxter
... thinks that Byron's character was obliterated by his versatility, his mobility, that he was carried away by his imagination, and became the thing he wished to be, or conceived himself as becoming. But his nature was not chameleon-like. Self-will was the very pulse of the machine. Pride ruled his years. All through his life, as child and youth and man, his one aim and endeavour was the subjection of other people's wishes to, his own. He would subject even fate if he could. He has two main objects in view, glory, in ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 4 - "Bulgaria" to "Calgary" • Various
... leaders, provinciall townes, rivers, ports, creekes, with other fitting materials to furnish his imaginary building. Whisperings, muttrings, and bare suppositions, are sufficient grounds for the authoritie of his relations. It is strange to see with what greedinesse this ayrie Chameleon, being all lungs and winde, will swallow a receite of newes, as if it were physicall: yea, with what frontlesse insinuation he will scrue himselfe into the acquaintance of some knowing Intelligencers, who, trying the cask by his hollow sound, do familiarly gull him. I am of opinion, were all ...
— Microcosmography - or, a Piece of the World Discovered; in Essays and Characters • John Earle
... landlady of the Inn, a Mrs. Nature, if I understood him aright. This person was still comely, though of uncertain age, wore cherry ribbons, smiled rather vacantly from vague, wonderful, indescribable eyes that seemed to change colour, like the chameleon, according to ...
— Henry Brocken - His Travels and Adventures in the Rich, Strange, Scarce-Imaginable Regions of Romance • Walter J. de la Mare
... sauntered up to the group! Why should I not be as graceful, as easy? I would make a desperate effort to "assume a virtue if I had it not." I, too, sauntered elegantly, lifted my hat killingly, and approached my charmer just as if I didn't realize that I was turning all the colors of the chameleon. ...
— The Blunders of a Bashful Man • Metta Victoria Fuller Victor
... it for some time without being sure that it is moving at all; though its eyes, which can move in different directions at the same moment, and its long thin tongue, so clever at catching the insects on which it feeds, are constantly in motion; but for its eyes and tongue, the Chameleon looks as if it were as dead as the withered branch to ...
— Twilight And Dawn • Caroline Pridham
... and seemingly-spiritual Forms" without the inward Life and Power which are always the mark of true religion. These "mimical Christians" reform their looks, instruct their tongues, take up the fitting set of duties and system of opinions, underprop their religion with sacred performances; "chameleon-like, they even turn their insides to whatever hue and colour" is demanded of religion; they "furnish this domestick Scene of theirs with any kind of matter which the history of religion affords them"—only, ...
— Spiritual Reformers in the 16th & 17th Centuries • Rufus M. Jones
... were these long intervals, which you assume, between the periods of pregnancy, can a woman suddenly change her way of life without danger? Can she be a nursing mother to-day and a soldier to-morrow? Will she change her tastes and her feelings as a chameleon changes his colour? Will she pass at once from the privacy of household duties and indoor occupations to the buffeting of the winds, the toils, the labours, the perils of war? Will she be now timid, [Footnote: Women's ...
— Emile • Jean-Jacques Rousseau
... frivolous character put such a life out of the question for herself. She made her point without over-emphasis. On the other hand, Honora had read Mrs. Kame. No very careful perusal was needed to convince her that the lady was unmoral, and that in characteristics she resembled the chameleon. But she read deeper. She perceived that Mrs. Kame was convinced that she, Honora, would adjust herself to the new conditions after a struggle; and that while she had a certain sympathy in the struggle, Mrs. Kame was of opinion that the sooner it was over with the better. All women were ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... communicated by Lucien to his brothers in a whisper, while they were observing the creature on the liana. Basil and Francois had often seen the species before, and were familiar with it under the names of "green lizard" and "chameleon,"—both of which names are applied to it in common phraseology. The animal was not over six inches in length; and its long coffin-shaped head, and slender, whip-like tail, were at least two-thirds of this extent. When first noticed, it was passing ...
— The Boy Hunters • Captain Mayne Reid
... it, and they would not charge him anything for the job!" They had also invented an original mode of settling a bargain; having ascertained the market price of provisions, they paid that, but no more. If the traders refused to leave the ship till the price was increased, a chameleon, of which the natives have a mortal dread, was brought out of the cabin; and the moment the natives saw the creature, they at once sprang overboard. The chameleon settled every ...
— A Popular Account of Dr. Livingstone's Expedition to the Zambesi and Its Tributaries • David Livingstone
... exquisite tact in appreciating the characters of those far above him in rank and beneath him in intellect. He could accommodate himself with great readiness to the idiosyncrasies of sovereigns. He was a chameleon to the hand which fed him. In his intercourse with the King, he colored himself, as it were, with the King's character. He was not himself, but Philip; not the sullen, hesitating, confused Philip, however, but Philip endowed with ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... heard him speak the substance of every note many times in different contexts. In seeking for the most characteristic context, I have shifted and shifted the notes and considered and re-considered them under different aspects, taking hints from the delicate chameleon changes of significance that came over them as they harmonised or discorded with their new surroundings. Presently I caught myself restoring notes to positions they had previously occupied instead of finding new ...
— The Note-Books of Samuel Butler • Samuel Butler
... an automobile, and motored out to Potsdam. Then when we were outside the old Palace we heard that the Kaiser's "strong-for-peace" policy had been of no avail, that the Czar had insulted his messenger, and that now war was inevitable. We ourselves, chameleon-like, assumed the German colour. We believed what we were told, and felt sorry for the man who was called upon unwillingly to shed his nation's blood. On our way back to the hotel Kitty and I went to see Mr. Schermerhorn's cousin, Miss Barber, and then we realized the immediate ...
— An Account of Our Arresting Experiences • Conway Evans
... brief. The Yogis have discovered the reason of the wondrous capacity of the chameleon to assume the appearance of plumpness or of leanness. This animal looks enormous when his lungs are filled with air, but in his normal condition he is quite insignificant. Many other reptiles as well acquire ...
— From the Caves and Jungles of Hindostan • Helena Pretrovna Blavatsky
... his "Symbolical Painting of the Four Elements," represents the sea by fishes, the earth by moles, fire by a salamander, and air by a camel! Evidently he mistook the chameleon (which traditionally lives on air) ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama, Vol 1 - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook • The Rev. E. Cobham Brewer, LL.D.
... frightfully if each time he looked up he found a new subject sitting placidly for his portrait. Gilbert was fond of asking in the New Witness of people who expressed admiration for Lloyd George: "Which George do you mean?" for, chameleon-like, the politician has worn many colours and the portrait painted in 1906 would have had to be torn up in 1916. But gather the Chesterton portraits: read the files when he first grew into fame: talk to Mr. Titterton who worked with him on the Daily News in 1906 ...
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton • Maisie Ward
... and Sons of Belial,—which latter indeed are second-oldest, but yet a very unvenerable order. This, truly, seems the likeliest hypothesis of all. Names and appearances alter so strangely, in some half-score centuries; and all fluctuates chameleon-like, taking now this hue, now that. Thus much is very plain, and does not change hue: Landlord Edmund was seen and felt by all men to have done verily a man's part in this life-pilgrimage of his; and benedictions, and out-flowing love and admiration from the universal heart, were ...
— Past and Present - Thomas Carlyle's Collected Works, Vol. XIII. • Thomas Carlyle
... amended. But herein they rather disgrace than adorn their persons, as by their niceness in apparel, for which I say most nations do not unjustly deride us, as also for that we do seem to imitate all nations round about us, wherein we be like to the polypus or chameleon; and thereunto bestow most cost upon our arses, and much more than upon all the rest of our bodies, as women do likewise upon their heads and shoulders. In women also, it is most to be lamented, that they do now far exceed ...
— Chronicle and Romance (The Harvard Classics Series) • Jean Froissart, Thomas Malory, Raphael Holinshed
... excited any attention being the continual renewal of the blood-stain on the library floor. This certainly was very strange, as the door was always locked at night by Mr. Otis, and the windows kept closely barred. The chameleon-like colour, also, of the stain excited a good deal of comment. Some mornings it was a dull (almost Indian) red, then it would be vermilion, then a rich purple, and once when they came down for family prayers, according to the simple rites of the Free ...
— Lord Arthur Savile's Crime and Other Stories • Oscar Wilde
... magic city—there were days of mists, silvery and gray, when life took on the indistinctness and indecision of a dream; as there were days less lucent, when sea and sky melted in an indistinguishable line and the chameleon tints of the marshes mellowed into a monotonous gray surface—when the wonted brilliancy of the sunset clouds, and the glittering domes and campaniles were only faint gray shadows on the gray whiteness of the waters. And gondoliers came suddenly into vision, parting the ...
— A Golden Book of Venice • Mrs. Lawrence Turnbull
... the artist, "what else should I call what has so often filled me with the deepest rapture? The Greek language has no more fitting expression for the grand and lofty things that hovered before me, and which I called by that chameleon of a word. Yet I have a different meaning from what appears before you at its sound. Were I to call it truth, you would scarcely understand me, but when I conjure before my soul the image of Alexandria, with all that springs from it, all that is moving, creating, and thriving ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... had not measured half its course before the increasing crowds, the space given his doings by the correspondents whose good graces he seduously [Transcriber's note: sedulously?] cultivated, the deference of his Excellency and his chameleon staff, all told him that the glory of what the party organs courteously styled the "governor's brilliant dash" was his and ...
— The Henchman • Mark Lee Luther
... innocent beams, shows an expression difficult as ever to interpret. The most skilled physiognomist could not read it. More than one emotion seem struggling within his breast, mingling together, or succeeding each other, quick as the changing hues of the chameleon. Now, as if cupidity, now remorse, anon the dark ...
— The Flag of Distress - A Story of the South Sea • Mayne Reid
... that he might be permitted so to do. Whereunto Pantagruel would not give consent, but commanded him to depart thence speedily and begone as he had told him, and to that effect gave him a boxful of euphorbium, together with some grains of the black chameleon thistle, steeped into aqua vitae, and made up into the condiment of a wet sucket, commanding him to carry it to his king, and to say unto him, that if he were able to eat one ounce of that without drinking after ...
— Gargantua and Pantagruel, Complete. • Francois Rabelais
... a new syntax, all being anomalous. With the Indians the argument does not conclude by induction, since no one is like to himself; for, in the short circuit of a day, he changes into more colors than a chameleon, takes more shapes than a Proteus, and has more movements than a Euripus. [332] He who has most to do with them, knows them least. In short, they are an aggregate of contrarieties, and the best logician cannot reconcile them. They are an obscure and confused chaos, in which no species can be ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898 - Volume 40 of 55 • Francisco Colin
... reflection from the upper atmosphere; the vast variety of tints with which the greens and the reds, the purples and the fiery crimsons of the western sky tincture the receptive surface of the neutral-hued granites; and the chameleon-shiftings of the dying day, as it sinks into the arms of night. Nor less admirable are the feats of the fairy Refraction. The mighty curtain seems to rise and fall as if by magic: it imitates, as it were, the framework of man. ...
— The Land of Midian, Vol. 2 • Richard Burton
... and therefore he tries to frighten us all? When we were going to be married, should we have wished to ride away at once to visit some stinking savage? Ach! I am glad I thought of that just as I was beginning to turn his gloomy colour, like a chameleon on a black hat, for it explains everything," and he struck his thigh with his big hand and burst into a roar ...
— Marie - An Episode in The Life of the late Allan Quatermain • H. Rider Haggard
... criminal—a robber, perhaps-a murderer it may be! I will tell you what I am: I am a son of Fortune, an adventurer; I live by my wits—so do poets and lawyers, and all the charlatans of the world; I am a charlatan—a chameleon. 'Each man in his time plays many parts:' I play any part in which Money, the Arch-Manager, promises me a livelihood. ...
— Night and Morning, Volume 2 • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... to compass twenty crowns. Tut, I can smile, and murder when I smile; I cry content to that which grieves me most; I can add colours to the chameleon; And for a need change shapes with Proteus, And set the aspiring Cataline to school. Can I do this, and cannot get the crown? Tush, were it ten times higher, I'll ...
— The Critics Versus Shakspere - A Brief for the Defendant • Francis A. Smith
... according to the interest which had been last exerted over his flexible mind, the King would change from an indulgent to a strict and even cruel father, from a confiding to a jealous brother, or from a benignant and bountiful to a grasping and encroaching sovereign. Like the chameleon, his feeble mind reflected the colour of that firmer character upon which at the time he reposed for counsel and assistance. And when he disused the advice of one of his family, and employed the counsel of another, it was ...
— The Fair Maid of Perth • Sir Walter Scott
... performers, and demands their wider recognition. He ventures to hold that as much talent is necessary to constitute a tolerable figurant as to make a good actor. He describes the figurant as a multiform actor, a dramatic chameleon, compelled by the special nature of his occupation, or rather by its lack of special nature, to appear young or old, crooked or straight, noble or base-born, savage or civilised, according to the good pleasure of the dramatist. "Thus, when Tancred declaims, 'Toi, superbe Orbassan, ...
— A Book of the Play - Studies and Illustrations of Histrionic Story, Life, and Character • Dutton Cook
... a little and, once more quite self-possessed, she rejoined, lightly, "I have a chameleon mind; it chimes ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... splendid services and illustrious names. His feelings toward the brave men who had served with him are shown by a note in his diary, which was probably not intended for any other eye than his own: "Nov. 7. I had the comfort of making an old AGAMEMNON, George Jones, a gunner into the CHAMELEON brig." ...
— The Life of Horatio Lord Nelson • Robert Southey
... polyhedric Peter, or a Peter with many sides. He changes colours like a chameleon, and his coat like a snake. He is a Proteus of a Peter. He was at first sublime, pathetic, impressive, profound; then dull; then prosy and dull; and now dull—oh so very dull! it ...
— Peter Bell the Third • Percy Bysshe Shelley |
