"Hyena" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... was dead, he had left two sons behind him, every whit as cunning and tricky as their father. The elder of the two was a fine handsome creature, who had a pleasant manner and made many friends. The animal he saw most of was a hyena; and one day, when they were taking a walk together, they picked up a beautiful green cloak, which had evidently been dropped by some one riding across the plain on a camel. Of course each wanted to have it, and they almost quarrelled over the matter; but at length ...
— The Orange Fairy Book • Andrew Lang
... It is not a fish. It does not seem to be in all respects a reptile. It has the body and features of a man, but scarcely any of the instincts that belong to such a structure.... I am sure that this singular little creature is the missing link between the man and the hyena. ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... go hunting in packs like wolves, and on those occasions do not hesitate to attack the largest wild animals. Sometimes they will assault even elephants, while they without hesitation encounter the leopard and hyena. The leopard, however, retaliates, and when he finds one alone springs on it, and seldom fails to come off ...
— In the Wilds of Africa • W.H.G. Kingston
... were smeared with an ointment made of charcoal and oil. His voice rose explosively, in a sort of childish defiance, persisted for a long while, then suddenly died away. One heard from the depths of the jungle the tittering of a hyena. ...
— Sacrifice • Stephen French Whitman
... completely governed the destinies of Europe for twenty years. Napoleon with his eagle eye and penetrating vision measured the man's character and capabilities at a glance. He said to his friends, "That man is malevolent; his eye is that of a hyena." Subsequent ...
— The Tragedy of St. Helena • Walter Runciman
... fires died out with the rising sun, and the silent life of the forest replaced the chatter and the hum of human kind. Giant beetles came from every quarter and carried away pieces of offal; small shy beasts stole out to gnaw the white bones upon which savage teeth had left but little; a gaunt hyena, with suspicious looks, snatched at a bone and dashed back into the jungle. Vultures settled down heavily, and with deliberate air sought out ...
— The Explorer • W. Somerset Maugham
... Mrs. Wadsworth had its serio-comic aspects. The Wadsworths had a great wolf-hound whom Roosevelt himself described as "a most ill-favored hybrid, whose mother was a Newfoundland and whose father was a large wolf," and which looked, it seemed, more like a hyena than like either of its parents. The dog both barked and howled, but it had a disconcerting habit of doing neither when it was on business bent. The first intimation Roosevelt had of its existence one day, as he was knocking at the door of the ...
— Roosevelt in the Bad Lands • Hermann Hagedorn
... real canine snarl, though it might express their feelings better than human language. Laughter, so far as we can judge, could not have been obtained by any mere mental exercise, nor would it have come from imitation, for it is only found in man, the yelping of a hyena being as different from it as the barking of a dog, or the cackling of a goose. We may, however, suppose that the first sounds uttered by man were demonstrative of pain or pleasure, marking a great primary distinction, which we make in common with all animals. ...
— History of English Humour, Vol. 1 (of 2) - With an Introduction upon Ancient Humour • Alfred Guy Kingan L'Estrange
... directly forward, and it is said by those who have observed this habit, that a single blow from its gigantic two-toed foot is sufficient to kill a panther, a jackal, or a hyena. ...
— New National Fourth Reader • Charles J. Barnes and J. Marshall Hawkes
... made any easier for the well-shod feet of the apostles of might, for Ypres never served as a military stronghold and could not possibly have so served; and had the Germans known how to beat the British Army in front of Ypres, they could have marched through the city as easily as a hyena through a rice-crop. The crime of Ypres was that it lay handy for the extreme irritation of an army which, with three times the men and three times the guns, and thirty times the vainglorious conceit, could not shift the trifling ...
— Over There • Arnold Bennett
... double-jawed hyena from the East. I'm the blazing, bloody blizzard of the States. I'm the celebrated slugger; I'm the Beast. I can snatch a man bald-headed ...
— Cowboy Songs - and Other Frontier Ballads • Various
... been watching that daring speculator as he went through his wonderful performance in the den of the hyena. ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 3 • Various
... has the bear's ethereal grace, The bland hyena's laugh, The footstep of the elephant, The neck of the giraffe; I love her still, believe me, Though my heart its passion hides; "She is all my fancy painted her," But oh! how ...
— The Life and Letters of Lewis Carroll • Stuart Dodgson Collingwood
... especially girl children, a longing came upon her to kill them as her own had been killed. This, indeed, she did often, for when the moon was full and her madness at its highest, she would travel far to find children, snatching them away from the kraals like a hyena. Still, none would touch her because of the spirit in her, not even those whose ...
— Nada the Lily • H. Rider Haggard
... both the hyenas and the wolves are cowards, each afraid of the other. And it was only when two wolves got at a hyena, or two hyenas got at a wolf that there was any real scrapping. But it came about that these two breeds destroyed ...
— The Grain Ship • Morgan Robertson
... Right is counted still; Bold laughs the strong hyena; Who rule not, servants' parts must fill; It goes quite tolerably ill Upon this world's arena; But how it would be, if the plan Of the universe now first began, In many a moral system All men ...
— Rampolli • George MacDonald
... with generosity, and they are always defeated. In the Marais and the country of Retz, where the leaders are ferocious, everything goes bravely forward. It is because Charette is fierce that he stands his ground against Parrein,—hyena pitted against hyena." ...
— Great Sea Stories • Various
... the hyena equal to his strength, it would be a most formidable animal," observed Swinton; "but the fact is, it seldom or never attacks mankind, although there may be twenty in a troop. At the same time, among the Caffres they very often do enter the huts of the ...
— The Mission • Frederick Marryat
... tears in the extremity of terror, and the hard-pressed hare cries like an ill-regulated child; but not one of them indicates any emotion analogous to the laughter of Man, excepting Dog. True it is, that we hear of a "horse-laugh." There is a beast, too, called the "laughing hyena," and a dismal beast he is. Among the feathered tribes there flourishes an individual named the "laughing falcon." From inanimate creation the poet has evoked for us "Minni Haha," or the "laughing water"; and the expression, "it would make a cat laugh," ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 25, November, 1859 • Various
... rushes, and the mother vole or water-rat nibbling a juicy bit of grass in the sunshine, or swimming to cover with her babies on her back; and now and again the peace of this little world is rudely broken by the distant roar of a real lion or the shriek of a hungry hyena, which frightens all the ...
— Chatterbox, 1905. • Various
... on his upturned suit-case and laughed and lit a cigarette. Doggott growled. The noise of the train died to silence in the distance, and a hyena came out of nowhere, exhibited himself upon the ridge of a dry desert swell, and mocked them sardonically. Then he, like the ticket-agent, went away, leaving an ...
— The Bronze Bell • Louis Joseph Vance
... from the common ape in the face being smooth and without hair. He also mentions an animal he calls crocetta, which is described as being between a wolf and a dog, and as imitating the human voice; these particulars seem to point it out as the hyena, though some suppose it to be the jackall. It deserves to be remarked, that the animals enumerated by Agatharcides as natives of Abyssinia, are all named in the same manner, as well as depicted on the ...
— Robert Kerr's General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 18 • William Stevenson
... as the harbinger of fortune. Has a cat insight into the future? Can it presage wealth or death? I am inclined to believe that certain cats can at all events foresee the advent of the latter; and that they do this in the same manner as the shark, crow, owl, jackal, hyena, etc., viz. by their abnormally developed sense of smell. My own and other people's experience has led me to believe that when a person is about to die, some kind of phantom, maybe, a spirit whose special ...
— Animal Ghosts - Or, Animal Hauntings and the Hereafter • Elliott O'Donnell
... husband of Madame. He is professor of rhetoric—a man of power as to mind, but very choleric and irritable as to temperament—a little, black, ugly being, with a face that varies in expression; sometimes he borrows the lineaments of an insane tom cat, sometimes those of a delirious hyena, occasionally—but very seldom—he discards these perilous attractions and assumes an air not a hundred times removed from what you would call mild and gentleman-like. He is very angry with me just at present, because I have written ...
— Emily Bront • A. Mary F. (Agnes Mary Frances) Robinson
... cried, with tears of indignation in his eyes. But Mahbracca jumped up and down on top of the sand, waving her arms, and laughing and screaming like a hyena. ...
— Ting-a-ling • Frank Richard Stockton
... such a gossip that he was often made angry. Neither remonstrances nor beating improved her, and finally he made up his mind to drive her into a wood amongst the hyenas. There she built herself a little hut into which a hyena came and boldly installed herself as mistress. The wife tried to protest but the hyena, not content with eating and drinking all that the wife was preparing, compelled her furthermore to look after her young. One day the hyena had ordered ...
— An African Adventure • Isaac F. Marcosson
... were pressing forward to the bar, anxious lest they should lose a single word of the colloquy. Angelo remained standing, looking eagerly at O'Brien, who returned his gaze with a grin like that of a hyena. ...
— Tutt and Mr. Tutt • Arthur Train
... come upon the huge bleached carcass of one of those all-important beasts of burden, which had fallen on one of its weary journeys and left its bones to whiten upon the sand. Or we would see in the distance a hyena or jackal prowling about in search of more ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 22, September, 1878 • Various
... the direction of the dead rhinoceros the air was hideous with the plaints of the waiting hyenas. Their peculiarly weird moans came in chorus; and every once in a while arose the shrill, prolonged titter that has earned them the name of "laughing hyena." ...
— The Leopard Woman • Stewart Edward White et al
... the caravan people were at the tavern, talking of their troubles in coming over the mountain,—the overturn of a cage containing two leopards and a hyena. They are a rough, ignorant set of men, apparently incapable of taking any particular enjoyment from the life of variety and adventure which they lead. There was the man who put his head into the lion's mouth, and, I suppose, the man about whom the ...
— Passages From The American Notebooks, Volume 1 • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... body of preconceived thought and action there wasn't a word, a possible movement, left for him. He was, simply, a hyena; that description, not innocent of humor, was still strikingly close to what he would generally hear if the state of his mind were known. It was paralyzing, but absolutely no provision had been made for men, decent enough, who had stopped loving decent wives. Lee was ...
— Cytherea • Joseph Hergesheimer
... and so merciless then, that despite himself, the selfish adventurer, the careless self-seeking intriguer, shuddered with a quick wave of unreasoning terror. He turned away from Heron's piercing gaze, the gaze of a hyena whose prey is being snatched from beneath its nails. For a moment he stared ...
— El Dorado • Baroness Orczy
... gore, and penetrates them with froth from the moon. She mixes whatever nature has engendered in its most fearful caprices, foam from the jaws of a mad dog, the entrails of the lynx, the backbone of the hyena, and the marrow of a stag that had dieted on serpents, the sinews of the remora, and the eyes of a dragon, the eggs of the eagle, the flying serpent of Arabia, the viper that guards the pearl in the Red Sea, the slough of the hooded snake, and the ashes that remain when the phoenix has been ...
— The Haunters & The Haunted - Ghost Stories And Tales Of The Supernatural • Various
... now upon the stage a red-haired, laughing-hyena faced, fustian-coated biped, exclaiming—'My name is Wall! I have a substantive amendment to move to the resolution now proposed—('Go off, off! ooh, ooh, ooh! turn him out, out, out!') We are met in a ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 1, October 30, 1841 • Various
... and glory? I recollect no time of my life anterior to my enthusiasm for anecdotes of glorious deeds, and to my projects of travelling over the world to acquire fame. At eight years of age, my heart beat when I heard of a hyena that had done some injury, and caused still more alarm, in our neighbourhood, and the hope of meeting it was the object of all my walks. When I arrived at college, nothing ever interrupted my studies, except my ardent wish of studying without restraint. I never deserved to be chastised; ...
— Memoirs, Correspondence and Manuscripts of General Lafayette • Lafayette
... life into the work, Shaping from her bitter thought Heart's-ease and forget-me-not, Satirizing her despair With the emblems woven there. Little doth the wearer heed Of the heart-break in the brede; 70 A hyena by her side Skulks, down-looking,—it is Pride. He digs for her in the earth, Where lie all her claims of birth, With his foul paws rooting o'er Some long-buried ancestor, Who perhaps a statue won By the ill deeds he had done, By the ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell • James Lowell
... arena," Vic replied, recalling how like a beast he had felt then. "I was a young hyena that day. Bug Buler came just in time to save both of us. There is a comfort in feeling we can learn something. I've needed books and college professors to ...
— A Master's Degree • Margaret Hill McCarter
... second glance on the rude trousers of spotted hyena skin or the big lean body of the castaway. Neither the wild whirling of the sun-blackened arms nor the bristly stubble of a six weeks' growth of beard could prevent him from instantly recognizing the face ...
— Out of the Primitive • Robert Ames Bennet
... Recorder, and the article she had been absorbed in the proceedings of an Ecclesiastical Council, which had discussed (she read aloud to Aunt Merce) the conduct of Brother Thaddeus Turner, pastor of the Congregational Church of Hyena. Brother Thaddeus had spoken lightly of the difference between Sprinkling and Immersion, and had even called Hyena's Baptist minister "Brother." He was contumacious at first, was Brother Thaddeus, but Brother Boanerges from Andover finally ...
— The Morgesons • Elizabeth Stoddard
... wild beasts which God has created hunt for their food in the forest, and eat it; but as soon as they see one black man standing, they do not stop and wait, but run away. Now the following beasts are dangerous in the forest: viz., the leopard, the lion, the wild cow, the wild dog and the hyena; but when they see a black man, they do not stop and wait. As for the dispute which the Lion and the Wild Dog had, the Wild Dog was right, and the Lion gave him his right; then they shook hands again, and each went and ran to his own home. This fable, which I heard, ...
— The Talking Beasts • Various
... being, on the other hand, a solitary animal, and in the habit of living for the most part in small families. To the inhabitants of hot countries, the jackal is of the same service as the vulture and the hyena. He does not scruple to feed upon putrid flesh. Wherever there is an animal in a state of putrefaction, he scents it out from a great distance, and soon devours it. In this way the air is often freed from substances in the highest degree unwholesome and deadly. Nor is this all. One of the ...
— Stories about Animals: with Pictures to Match • Francis C. Woodworth
... the hand and gazed deep into his eyes. "I see," I said, "a field of battle at night, and about it bodies stretched—among them is thy body, and a hyena tears its throat. Most noble Sir, thou shalt die by ...
— Cleopatra • H. Rider Haggard
... merely of a scanty cincture and an old buffalo robe, tattered and begrimed by use, which hung over his shoulders. His head was close shaven, except a ridge of hair reaching over the crown from the center of the forehead, very much like the long bristles on the back of a hyena, and he carried his bow and arrows in his hand, while his meager little horse was laden with dried buffalo meat, the produce of his hunting. Such were the first specimens that we met—and very indifferent ones they were—of the genuine savages of ...
— The Oregon Trail • Francis Parkman, Jr.
... They borrow language of dislike, And, instead of Dearest Miss, Jewel, Honey, Sweetheart, Bliss, And those forms of old admiring, Call her Cockatrice and Siren, Basilisk, and all that's evil, Witch, Hyena, Mermaid, Devil, Ethiop, Wench, and Blackamoor, Monkey, Ape, and twenty more; Friendly Trait'ress, Loving Foe,— Not that she is truly so, But no other way they know A contentment to express, Borders so upon excess, That they ...
— English Satires • Various
... tell you a story. There was once a frightful rain, and all the animals held a convention, to see whose fault it was, and the fox nominated the lion for chairman. The wolf seconded the motion, and the hyena said "that suits." When the convention was called to order the fox was called upon to confess his sins. He stated, however, that it would be much more appropriate for the lion to commence first. Thereupon the lion ...
— Lectures of Col. R. G. Ingersoll, Volume I • Robert Green Ingersoll
... bore in one hand an instrument composed of an assemblage of steel rings, and shook them vigorously as he ran. Scarcely had he disappeared in the mist before, panting after him, with open mouth and glaring eyes, there darted a huge beast. I could not be mistaken in its character. It was a hyena. ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 3 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... impracticable for general purposes as crude and unphilosophical in design. Ignorance was at the root of this. The authors did not understand the nature of the animal about which they professed to teach so much, and their rules were quite as applicable to the bear or the hyena. The agent employed by the old masters was force—severe bitting, hard whipping, and deep spurring. Some went so far as to recommend the use of fire, in extreme cases—thus establishing a kind of equine martyrdom, ...
— The International Monthly Magazine, Volume 5, No. 1, January, 1852 • Various
... not with the steady valor of a warrior determined to vanquish or die; but with the fury of despair, with the violence of a hyena, thirsting for the blood of his opponent. Drunk with rage, he made a desperate plunge at the heart of Wallace-a plunge, armed with execrations, and all his strength; but his sword missed its aim, and entered the side of a youth, who at that moment had thrown ...
— The Scottish Chiefs • Miss Jane Porter
... fortress, the hull of the Flying Fish, passed the night in peaceful slumber, undisturbed, in the confidence begotten of a sense of perfect security, by the weird cries of the night birds, the incessant howling of the jackals, the maniacal laugh of the prowling hyena, the occasional roar of the lion, the loud whirr of myriads of insects, the croaking of bull-frogs, and the other multitudinous nocturnal sounds which floated in through the open windows of their state-rooms. They were early astir in the ...
— The Log of the Flying Fish - A Story of Aerial and Submarine Peril and Adventure • Harry Collingwood
... inhabits the same portions of Asia and Africa as the marabou, and travellers give accounts of terrible contests between these two singular members of the animal kingdom. The hyena is called the vulture among beasts, as it prefers carrion for its food, and as long as it can find dead animals to devour, it leaves the flocks and herds in peace. Cowardly by nature, it rarely attacks man or beast unless ...
— Harper's Young People, May 11, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... changed, neither will I. Though the bloodthirsty hyena of the law has, in its wild revenge, despoiled me of the fourteen most precious blossoms in the garden of my life, yet I will, henceforth as heretofore, consecrate what days are left to me in the service of that grand ideal, the wonderful ...
— Mother Earth, Vol. 1 No. 4, June 1906 - Monthly Magazine Devoted to Social Science and Literature • Various
... miserable fugitives from savage justice, or, more often, remnants of clans scattered in war, often perished in veld conflagrations. They wandered, naked and weaponless, in the neutral areas lying between the territories of the different tribes, preferring the mercy of the lion and the hyena to that of man. The appliances of these people for kindling a fire, and thus sending the conflagration on for the purpose of creating a zone of safety, were often quite inadequate for dealing with ...
— Reminiscences of a South African Pioneer • W. C. Scully
... If you see a hyena in your dreams, you will meet much disappointment and much ill luck in your undertakings, and your companions will be very uncongenial. If lovers have this dream, they will often be ...
— 10,000 Dreams Interpreted • Gustavus Hindman Miller
... wherever you have the first, you invariably have the last. Beyond this there was a space covered with mud and sawdust, where two habitans were furiously quarrelling. One sprang upon the other like a hyena, knocked him down, and then attempted to bite and strangle him, amid the ...
— The Englishwoman in America • Isabella Lucy Bird
... by that mysterious disease of Southern Africa, the "horse-sickness;" while his sheep and goats were continually being attacked and diminished in numbers by the earth-wolf, the wild hound, and the hyena. A series of losses had he suffered until his horses, oxen, sheep, and goats, scarce counted altogether an hundred head. A very small stock for a ...
— The Bush Boys - History and Adventures of a Cape Farmer and his Family • Captain Mayne Reid
... worse than ever. Though obviously terrified of me, these two women dogged me incessantly. It was most inconvenient, for the excess of material kept me exceedingly busy; and to make things worse, I had received from Jamrach's (without an order—but I had to keep the thing) a dead hyena which had been affected with osteitis deformans. It was a fine specimen and was useful as serving to explain my great preoccupation; but it added to my labors and made me impatient ...
— The Uttermost Farthing - A Savant's Vendetta • R. Austin Freeman
... and there was no need. I was very much strung up, too; so that the exhaustion of sleeplessness, fatigue, or excitement was not felt or noticed. But he suffered. He was like a hyena caged, though he showed it only by involuntary movements and furtive glances. Finally, he could bear it no longer, and entreated me piteously, abjectly, to give him his freedom or blow out his brains. I told him he couldn't have his freedom just yet; but he knew how to get his ...
— The New Penelope and Other Stories and Poems • Frances Fuller Victor
... upon our ears, of a sudden, as we neared the wooded crest of the gulf, a weird and piercing scream—an unnatural and repellent yell, like a hyena's horrid hooting! It rose with terrible distinctness from the thicket close before us. As its echoes returned, we heard confused sounds of other ...
— In the Valley • Harold Frederic
... and every body, went to the same school with Mike Marble. Now Mike was as remarkable for his cheerful and amiable disposition, as Jacob was for his ill nature. In half of the cases where the latter would get angry, and storm, and rage, and fret, and foam, like a hyena, or a Bengal tiger, the other would remain as cool as a cucumber, or, perhaps, burst out into ...
— Mike Marble - His Crotchets and Oddities. • Uncle Frank
... while the hollow echoes rang, Out at the door a curst hyena sprang And fled! Said Azrael: "His soul's escaped," And closed the ...
— Black Beetles in Amber • Ambrose Bierce
... masses, misshapen and vast; Here clung and here bristled the fashionless forms; Here the dark-moving bulk of the hammer-fish pass'd; And, with teeth grinning white, and a menacing motion, Went the terrible shark,—the hyena of ocean. ...
— The Ontario Readers: The High School Reader, 1886 • Ministry of Education
... man a liar in an anonymous letter. To call that creature a cur who flings an insult which he fears to father, were a damning libel on every decent dog in Christendom. My correspondent is probably a mongrel cross between a male hyena and a gila monster, begotten in a nigger grave-yard, suckled by a sow and educated by an idiot. But, perhaps, being familiar with his own birth and breeding he will consider this a compliment. McKinley coralled more than 90 per ...
— Volume 10 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann
... is the boldest, and will have the best practical consequences for the liberal cause. Do you want to encourage to the attack of a brother liberal his, and your, and our implacable enemies, the Church and State Review or the Record,— the High Church rhinoceros and the Evangelical hyena? Be silent, therefore; or rather speak, speak as loud as ever you can! and go into ecstasies over the ...
— Selections from the Prose Works of Matthew Arnold • Matthew Arnold
... with Sharper. They're worse. Much. I was there this morning. Enquired at his business place. They said their Mr. Sharper had gone out. Took a cab to Halfpenny Hole. Halfway there spotted Sharper sitting on a bank by the roadside with his bicycle beside him. Face like a tortured hyena. I got out and asked him what he was ...
— If Winter Don't - A B C D E F Notsomuchinson • Barry Pain
... a word," said Bourignard, whose voice he recognized. The man was elegantly dressed; he wore the order of the Golden-Fleece, and a medal on his coat. "Monsieur," he continued, and his voice was sibilant like that of a hyena, "you increase my efforts against you by having recourse to the police. You will perish, monsieur; it has now become necessary. Do you love Madame Jules? Are you beloved by her? By what right do you trouble her peaceful ...
— The Thirteen • Honore de Balzac
... he'd not go to supper till he got us out of that shirt scrape. "Remember your oath, you young hyena," I said. ...
— Twenty Years of Hus'ling • J. P. Johnston
... walked a hundred leagues together from the hot plains of Syria, through the snow-swept passes of the Taurus mountains, and over the sun-scorched levels of the high plateau.[5] Their muscles were as tireless as whipcord. Their courage had not quailed before robber or blizzard, the night yells of the hyena or ...
— The Book of Missionary Heroes • Basil Mathews
... eye, [p 6] —With his coat spotted over—like stars in the sky— The Tiger his system of slaughter declin'd, At once, a good supper and pleasure to find. The bulky Rhinoceros, came with his bride; Well arm'd with his horn, and his coat of mail hide. Then came the Hyena, whose cries authors say, } Oft lead the fond traveller out of his way, } Whom quickly he seizes and renders his prey. } The Wolf hasten'd hither, that Ruffian so bold, Who kills the poor sheep, when ...
— The Elephant's Ball, and Grand Fete Champetre • W. B.
... that the arrows or bullets of the enemy have no effect, but that his own bullets will surely kill the enemy. And also before they lie down to sleep, they set these roots alight, and murmur, 'My grandfather's root, bring sleep on the eyes of the lion and leopard and the hyena. Make them blind, that they cannot find us, and cover their noses, that they cannot smell us out.' Also, if they have carried off large booty, or stolen cattle of the enemy, they light these roots and say: 'We thank thee, our grandfather's root, that ...
— Custom and Myth • Andrew Lang
... come. At two or three o'clock in the morning I stopped at Peterboro' again, and thought of you all disconsolately. The lady in the refreshment-room was very hard upon me, harder even than those fair enslavers usually are. She gave me a cup of tea, as if I were a hyena and she my cruel keeper with a strong dislike to me. I mingled my tears with it, and had a petrified bun of enormous antiquity ...
— The Letters of Charles Dickens - Vol. 1 (of 3), 1833-1856 • Charles Dickens
... it," promised Ferrers. "Putting it the way you've done, Mr. Reade, it doesn't seem like such a baby trick to use the sheriff instead of killing the hyena, myself. Yes; I'll sure leave it to the law. If Dolph Gage gets caught and sent to the 'pen' I'll sure go there on some visiting day and see how he looks in ...
— The Young Engineers in Nevada • H. Irving Hancock
... broken—crazed his brain; At once his eye grew wild; He struggled fiercely with his chain, Whispered, and wept, and smiled; Yet wore not long those fatal bands, And once, at shut of day, They drew him forth upon the sands, The foul hyena's prey. ...
— Poems Teachers Ask For, Book Two • Various
... aghast. You can utter a thousand sonorous words against souteneurs, but just such a Simeon you will never think up. So diverse and motley is life! Or else take Anna Markovna, the proprietress of this place. This blood-sucker, hyena, vixen and so on ... is the tenderest mother imaginable. She has one daughter—Bertha, she is now in the fifth grade of high school. If you could only see how much careful attention, how much tender care Anna Markovna expends that her daughter may not somehow, accidentally, ...
— Yama (The Pit) • Alexandra Kuprin
... went through the compound singing, and a hyena stood afar off and mocked them. A hyena would convince a Sadducee of the Resurrection of the Dead—the worst sort of Dead. Then came the ratub—a curious meal, half native and half English in composition—with the old khansamah babbling behind my chair about ...
— The Works of Rudyard Kipling One Volume Edition • Rudyard Kipling
... stop howling! What are you about,—wallowing here in the mud, ruining your clothes, and yelling like a hyena? Hush, ...
— Vashti - or, Until Death Us Do Part • Augusta J. Evans Wilson
... night the ghosts of the others gave him pause. At his age, Caracalla, Attila, Genghis, were dead. They had died hideous, monstrous—but young. Herod alone may have seemed a promising saint to swear by, though, in the obscurities of Syrian chronology, even of him he could not be sure. The one kindred hyena who, at fifty-five, had defied the world was Tsi An, the Chinese Empress, and he had helped to squelch her. Do you see it now? To burglarise the world, this thug had every advantage. The police were asleep. The coast was clear. The ...
— The Paliser case • Edgar Saltus
... insinuating snake gliding noiselessly toward the victim of its envenomed sting—the spider which spreads forth its beautiful and alluring net, sparkling with morning dew, while it lurks in a secret corner, ready to fall upon its luckless prey—the sneaking and repulsive hyena, too cowardly to attack the strong and vigorous, but waiting for the crippled, the helpless, the sick, and dying—if all these are in the school of preparation for that noble stage of manhood when truth and righteousness shall be its crown of ...
— Oriental Religions and Christianity • Frank F. Ellinwood
... was left to the mercies of the Barbarians. For twelve generations, murder, war, arson, plundering were the order of the day. One thing—and one thing alone—saved Europe from complete destruction, from a return to the days of cave-men and the hyena. ...
— The Story of Mankind • Hendrik van Loon
... that he came from "no whar in pu'tiklar," and the savage, furtive glance that shot from his hyena-like eyes seemed to plainly indicate why the land of his origin was so indefinitely located. A badly broken nose failed to soften the expression of his eyes, a long, prominent, dull-red scar divided one of his cheeks, his mustache was not heavy enough to hide a hideous hare-lip; while a ragged ...
— Romance of California Life • John Habberton
... watched them through the burning day, And driven the vulture and raven away; And the cormorant wheeled in circles round, Yet feared to alight on the guarded ground. And when the shadows of twilight came, I have seen the hyena's eyes of flame, And heard at my side his stealthy tread, But aye at my shout the savage fled: And I threw the lighted brand to fright The jackal and wolf that yelled in ...
— Poetical Works of William Cullen Bryant - Household Edition • William Cullen Bryant
... "the man is no good. He has the heart of a hyena and the friendliness of a scorpion. You heard how ...
— The Titan • Theodore Dreiser
... feet more, which you don't see, just like it. Another artist would have put in an oasis, or a stray hyena, or the bleached bones of an unfortunate traveller. I did not. Why? Another would have worked up a sunset, or a moonrise, or a thunder storm, to give variety to the sky. I did not. Why? The sky over my ...
— Round the Block • John Bell Bouton
... panther is a cowardly animal, and, like the hyena, flies from the face of man. The leopard also, though his low, half-smothered growl is frequently heard by night, as he prowls like an evil spirit around the cottage or the kraal, will seldom or never attack mankind, (children excepted,) unless ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 10, Issue 267, August 4, 1827 • Various
... belongs to the barbarous race of Israel, and if he goes out at night, it is no doubt to be present at the sacrifices of children which the Hebrews perform in desert places, where the owl hoots, the hyena howls, and the ...
— The Works of Theophile Gautier, Volume 5 - The Romance of a Mummy and Egypt • Theophile Gautier
... at his own humor, in despite of the hyena-glare shot forth from the eye of the savage he addressed. ...
— Guy Rivers: A Tale of Georgia • William Gilmore Simms
... we social workers," Kettleman said instantly. "The worth of a good job well done, that's enough for us." He smiled. The effect was a little unsettling, as if a hippopotamus had begun to laugh like a hyena. "But to continue, Mr. Malone," ...
— Out Like a Light • Gordon Randall Garrett
... features, the wonder is, not that more was not done, but that any thing was done, that the victims were not driven almost out of their senses. But time rolled on until nearly twenty-four hours had passed, and while reposing their fatigued and weary limbs in bed, just before day-break, hyena-like the slave-hunters pounced upon all three of them, and soon had them hand-cuffed and hurried off to a United States' Commissioner's office. Armed with the Fugitive Law, and a strong guard of officers ...
— The Underground Railroad • William Still
... warrants me in stating that that tenor's voice is not a voice at all, but only a shriek—the shriek of a hyena." ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... princess is tainted by the jealous outbursts of Herodias's page. Salome is the unspeakable; Herodias, though divested of her most pronounced historical attributes (she adjures her daughter not to dance, though she gloats over the revenge which it brings to her), is a human hyena; Herod, a neurasthenic voluptuary. A group of Jews who are shown disputing in the manner of Baxter Street, though conveyed by Wilde from Flaubert's pages, are used by Strauss to provide a comic interlude. Years ago a musical humorist in ...
— Chapters of Opera • Henry Edward Krehbiel
... sir, and when he ups and slips the finger of the skilligan into the neck of the bottle, I nips out and whacks the bracelet on him. But he was too quick for me, sir, so I only got one on; and then, the hound, he turns on me like a blessed hyena, sir, and begins a-chawin' of me windpipe. I say, Gov'nor, take off his silver wristlets, will you, sir, and lemme have jist ten minutes with him on my own? Five for me, sir, and five for ...
— Cleek: the Man of the Forty Faces • Thomas W. Hanshew
... surprised that I should think his presence at all necessary; and when he did make his entre, conceive my feelings at seeing him single out Lady Placid as his partner! I certainly would rather have seen him waltzing with a hyena! I don't believe he knew or cared whom he danced with—unless, perhaps, it had been Adelaide, but she was engaged; and, by-the-bye, there certainly is some sort of a liaison there; how it will end ...
— Marriage • Susan Edmonstone Ferrier
... hip-roofed white cottage Hulda had felt a sense of privacy pleasing to her growing life, and her ability to read often charmed Patty Cannon to a stillness that was like the hyena's sleep, and even ...
— The Entailed Hat - Or, Patty Cannon's Times • George Alfred Townsend
... upon her haunches and insulted both her admirers impartially. She hurled taunts at them for their cowardice, and called them vile names, such as Histah, the snake, and Dango, the hyena. She threatened to call Mumga to chastise them with a stick—Mumga, who was so old that she could no longer climb and so toothless that she was forced to confine her diet almost exclusively to ...
— Jungle Tales of Tarzan • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... lose the idea of the insignificance that number has in animal life compared to the idea of size. Most animals have a remarkable sense of size; they measure time and distance better than civilised man. A hyena, for example, knows just how near he dare ...
— The Human Side of Animals • Royal Dixon
... vulture follows, flapping, croaking, through the air, And the terrible hyena, plunderer of tombs, is there; Follows them the stealthy panther—Cape-town's folds have known him well; Them their monarch's dreadful pathway, blood and sweat ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VII. • Various
... look after the others," he said. "Do your chores by dark, morning and night, and stick close to cover all days and watch for him. I'll keep on looking. I started to get that old hyena, and I'll get him. ...
— The Rustler of Wind River • G. W. Ogden
... pounced upon him with a growl of a hyena, and bit a piece out of his ear. Yes, he did, reader. Just imagine a clergyman biting a boy in open daylight! Yet that happens in New York ...
— Nonsense Novels • Stephen Leacock
... That hyena in woman's form was the more exasperated against the pretty child, the lovely Jewess' son, because she herself could have no children in spite of efforts worthy of a locomotive engine. A diabolical impulse prompted her to plunge her young stepson, at twenty-one years of age, ...
— Cousin Pons • Honore de Balzac
... them out of the fog—seemingly from a great distance— the sound of a laugh, a low, deliberate, soulless laugh, which had no more of joy than that of a hyena night-prowling in the desert; a laugh that rose by slow gradation, louder and louder, clearer, more distinct and terrible, until it seemed barely outside the narrow circle of their vision; a laugh so unnatural, so unhuman, so devilish, that ...
— Can Such Things Be? • Ambrose Bierce
... recovered some of his jauntiness, looked at Alec with the crafty eye of a cowed hyena; but he said coolly, "There is nothing to be gained by publishing our blunders to ...
— A Son of the Immortals • Louis Tracy
... not? Hasn't he killed more men than any other white man in the States and Territories—I'll not say how, but is he not a hyena, sopped ...
— Wild Bill's Last Trail • Ned Buntline
... "The existence of the hoemorrhoues is quite as true as that of the odoriferous hyena, and of ...
— The Man Who Laughs • Victor Hugo
... thunder Had power o'er the laurel wreath, Than she, women's wonder, Such perjured thoughts should live to breathe. They all hyena-like will weep, When that they would deceive: Deceit in them doth lurk and sleep, Which makes me thus ...
— The Sources and Analogues of 'A Midsummer-night's Dream' • Compiled by Frank Sidgwick
... thought showed itself like a flash on the child's face. He resembled a young hyena scenting blood for the first time. He glanced at the pile of books Pierre was standing on, and compared it with the length of the cord between the branch and his neck. It was already nearly dark, the shadows were deepening in the wood, gleams of pale light ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... him India first, then Asia, then the world—even as I now offer them to you. The sirkar sent him to see me dance, and he stayed to hear me talk. When I saw at last that he has the head and heart of a hyena I told him lies. But he, being drunk, told me truths that I ...
— King—of the Khyber Rifles • Talbot Mundy
... gleam. It is stimulated by the desire to give pain, rather than the wish to communicate pleasure. Marston is not without sprightliness, but his sprightliness is never the sprightliness of the kid, though it is sometimes that of the hyena, and sometimes that of the polecat. In his Malcontent he probably drew a nattering likeness of his inner self: yet the most compassionate reader of the play would experience little pity in seeing the Malcontent hanged. So much, indeed, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 122, December, 1867 • Various
... man is a graveyard thief; a hyena; a ghoul—not worth consideration." And the rasp in his own voice ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... proverbial timidity attributed to geniuses, old Dick displayed a touch of the hyena whenever, at any of the negro festivals presided over by him, anything or anybody offended etiquette or the proprieties. As for Dick, he never forgot himself in the slightest degree, and whenever he was called ...
— Happy Days for Boys and Girls • Various
... my size and style tied over in one corner of the tent, behind a rope, with a sign in front of him which said, 'The Only Tame Hyena in the World,' He looked smiling and good-natured, and I went over ...
— How Mr. Rabbit Lost his Tail • Albert Bigelow Paine |
