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Living thing   /lˈɪvɪŋ θɪŋ/   Listen
Living thing

noun
1.
A living (or once living) entity.  Synonym: animate thing.






WordNet 3.0 © 2010 Princeton University








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"Living thing" Quotes from Famous Books



... hand on the parish of St. Saviour's, and it did so on the beautiful sentient living thing, as on the thing material and man- made; but there was no change in the sheltering friendship of Mont Violet or the flow of the illustrious Beau Cheval. The autumns also changed not at all. They cast their pensive canopies over the home-scene which Jean ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker

... the prayer, it has direct or indirect relation to the accomplishment of a wish. David prays to the Lord as the one who "satisfies the desire of every living thing," who "will fulfil the desire of them that fear him," and it is with the like faith that the heart of every votary is stirred when he approaches in ...
— The Religious Sentiment - Its Source and Aim: A Contribution to the Science and - Philosophy of Religion • Daniel G. Brinton

... himself sat for three hours under the tree without experiencing any bad effects whatever. All the legends of the upas tree are based on an account of it by a Dr. Foersch in 1783. This mendacious medico declared that no living thing could exist within fifteen miles of the tree. The Peradeniya curator pointed out that Java was a volcanic island, and one valley where the upas flourishes is certainly fatal to all animal life owing to the emanations of carbonic acid gas escaping ...
— Here, There And Everywhere • Lord Frederic Hamilton

... Beauvoir asked me to ride in to tell you that we find the farmhouses completely deserted, and the whole of the cattle and horses have disappeared, as well as the inhabitants. Save for some pigs and poultry, we have not seen a living thing." ...
— Saint Bartholomew's Eve - A Tale of the Huguenot WarS • G. A. Henty

... hauling strange things up from the deep, suppose we take something that is not exactly a fish, but which is alive and lives in the water. What do you think of a living thing like this? ...
— Round-about Rambles in Lands of Fact and Fancy • Frank Richard Stockton

... of white woolly Feathers, the Hen-Eagle lays again, which Eggs are hatch'd by the Warmth of the young ones in the Nest, so that the Flight of one Brood makes Room for the next, that are but just hatch'd. They prey on any living thing they can catch. They are heavy of Flight, and cannot get their Food by Swiftness, to help which there is a Fishawk that catches Fishes, and suffers the Eagle to take them from her, although she is long-wing'd and a swift Flyer, and can ...
— A New Voyage to Carolina • John Lawson

... life of those creatures that make up an essential feature of that "nature" that is beloved by the sportsman. It is, indeed, the most noticeable effect of the sportsman's activity to keep nature in a state of chronic desolation by killing off all living thing whose ...
— The Theory of the Leisure Class • Thorstein Veblen

... intense craving to see myself arrayed in their rich, mysterious dress. "This being so," I continued, "may I ask you if it is in your power to provide me with the necessary garments, so that I may cease to be an object of aversion and offense to every living thing and person, ...
— A Crystal Age • W. H. Hudson

... asleep, he was never known to be still for a moment. One glance at his fiery head, at his comical face, would show plainly that he was a very imp of mischief. He was kind-hearted—he would not willingly injure the smallest living thing—but his wild, ungovernable spirit, his sense of the ludicrous in all and every circumstance, made him sometimes do unintentional harm, and his mother had some difficulty in getting him out of the scrapes into which he was always putting himself. No work he had ever done had ...
— Sue, A Little Heroine • L. T. Meade

... start took place, but it was not until the end of the month that he reached the limit of the cattle stations, and then he was at the point where Oxley had left the river and turned south to avoid the flooded marshes. Oxley wrote of a country that no living thing would stop in if it could possibly get away; twenty years afterwards, Mitchell writes ...
— The History of Australian Exploration from 1788 to 1888 • Ernest Favenc

... this test I am anxious to bring the subject at issue between us. Let us then begin with Adam and examine the charter of privileges which was given to him. "Have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over every living thing that moveth upon the earth." In the eighth Psalm we have a still fuller description of this charter which through Adam was given to all mankind. "Thou madest him to have dominion over the works of thy hands; thou hast put all things under his feet. All sheep and oxen, yea, and the beasts ...
— An Appeal to the Christian Women of the South • Angelina Emily Grimke

... greeted me, the first living thing in the great woods, as I ran my canoe ashore on a wilderness river. Meeko heard me coming. His bark sounded loudly, in a big spruce, above the dip of the paddles. As we turned shoreward, he ran down the tree in which he was, ...
— Secret of the Woods • William J. Long

... the stars swam into sight, until the square of sky above us was thickly studded. There was no sound, and no living thing could have entered that thicket without noise. For what seemed an eternity, we waited; then we rose and broke our way through the bushes to the sycamores, to find that they indeed shadowed a ...
— To Have and To Hold • Mary Johnston

... thus to drive the anthropoids in a westerly and southerly direction, right away from Cliff Island. As Apes' Island was everywhere densely covered with forest and undergrowth it was exceedingly probable that, unless something unforeseen occurred to extinguish the fire, every living thing upon it would be destroyed, except such creatures as might essay to swim the Middle Channel and take refuge upon ...
— The Strange Adventures of Eric Blackburn • Harry Collingwood

... miss her and come after her? When she dared she looked timidly behind, and then again more lingeringly, but there was nothing to be seen but the same awful stretch of distance with mountains of bright colour in the boundaries everywhere; not a living thing but herself and the pony to be seen. It was awful. Somewhere between herself and the mountains behind was the place she had started from, but the bright sun shone steadily, hotly down and shimmered back again from the bright earth, and nothing broke the awful ...
— The Man of the Desert • Grace Livingston Hill

... is not to lay his throat open, he must think of something. So we plant seeds in rows on our dam-wall, and pull one up daily to see how it goes with them. Alladeen buried her wonderful stone, and a golden palace sprung up at her feet. We do far more. We put a brown seed in the earth, and a living thing starts out—starts upward—why, no more than Alladeen can we say—starts upward, and does not desist till it is higher than our heads, sparkling with dew in the early morning, glittering with yellow blossoms, shaking brown seeds with little embryo ...
— The Story of an African Farm • (AKA Ralph Iron) Olive Schreiner

... was in the house. No child was in the house, that was clear—and nobody else it would seem. Well, I must wait. I should know all in good time. I dressed and went down to the parlor. Mary still hovered over the fire, looking, in her white wrapper and whiter face, more like a ghost than any living thing. I had intended to be calmly cheerful, to talk to Mary about old times, and by degrees to lead her to speak of so much of her present life as would give me an insight into the mysterious sorrow that reigned like a ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXIII No. 5 November 1848 • Various

... disconnected—accept the conclusion which plainly flows from it; that no teacher of English can pardonably neglect what is at once the most majestic thing in our literature and by all odds the most spiritually living thing we inherit; in our courts at once superb monument and superabundant fountain of life; and yet you may discount beforehand what he ...
— On The Art of Reading • Arthur Quiller-Couch

... at all but the most miserable mimics and imitators— highly trained monkeys, you know. Nellie is an artist. She can understand dumb animals and hear music in the wind and the waves, and all sorts of things. And to her the world is one living thing, and she can enjoy its joys and worry over its sorrows, and she understands more than most why people act as they do because she feels enough to put herself in their place. She is such an artist that she not only feels herself but impels those she meets ...
— The Workingman's Paradise - An Australian Labour Novel • John Miller

... most extravagant accelerator of waste the world has ever endured. His withering blight has fallen upon every living thing within his reach, himself not excepted; and his besom of destruction in the uncontrolled hands of a generation has swept into the sea soil fertility which only centuries of life could accumulate, and yet this fertility is the substratum of all that ...
— Farmers of Forty Centuries - or, Permanent Agriculture in China, Korea and Japan • F. H. King

... Gluck, was as completely opposed, in both appearance and character, to his seniors as could possibly be imagined or desired. He was not above twelve years old, fair, blue-eyed, and kind in temper to every living thing. He did not, of course, agree particularly well with his brothers, or rather, they did not agree with him. He was usually appointed to the honorable office of turnspit, when there was anything to roast, which was not often; for, to do ...
— Types of Children's Literature • Edited by Walter Barnes

... very lonely; but Davy had three friends, and was as happy as the day was long. One of Davy's friends was the great lamp, which was lighted at sunset, and burnt all night, to guide the ships into the harbor. To Dan it was only a lamp; but to the boy it seemed a living thing, and he loved and tended it faithfully. Every day he helped Dan clear the big wick, polish the brass work, and wash the glass lantern which protected the flame. Every evening he went up to see it lighted, and always fell asleep, thinking, "No matter how dark ...
— Aunt Jo's Scrap-Bag VI - An Old-Fashioned Thanksgiving, Etc. • Louisa M. Alcott

... recognition and success are liars and that only. What I have created is no longer my property: it longs to reach the world; it is a part of the world; and I must give it to the world, provided, do you hear? provided it is a living thing." ...
— The Goose Man • Jacob Wassermann

... words she wrote were these: "The eyes of all wait upon Thee; and Thou givest them their meat in due season. Thou openest Thine hand and satisfiest the desire of every living thing. How excellent is Thy loving-kindness, O God! therefore the children of men put their trust under the shadow of Thy wings. Thou hast put gladness in my heart, more than in the time that their corn and their ...
— Good Stories For Great Holidays - Arranged for Story-Telling and Reading Aloud and for the - Children's Own Reading • Frances Jenkins Olcott

... the perfect stillness of the cove. The gulls were all asleep upon the ledges. Over all was a true autumn silence; a silence which may be heard. She stood awed, and listened in hope of a sound which might tell her that any living thing beside herself existed. ...
— Westward Ho! • Charles Kingsley

... to pry him loose! You have got the grip of the devil himself. The police surgeon told me they would have to put a whole new set of plumbing in his throat. Said he wouldn't have believed that any living thing, short of a gorilla, could have clamped down that hard with ...
— The Promise - A Tale of the Great Northwest • James B. Hendryx

... said Miss Laura, throwing her arm over her uncle's shoulder. "I love you, dear Uncle John, because you are so kind to every living thing." ...
— Beautiful Joe • Marshall Saunders

... touched my face, and with a bound I had the lantern going. No living thing moved in the circle of its rays. My flesh crawled on my bones, and sitting upright on my mat I chanted aloud from the Bible in French with Tahitian parallels. The glow of a pipe and the solace of tobacco aided the rhythm of the prophets in dispelling ...
— White Shadows in the South Seas • Frederick O'Brien

... dressing-gown with a very vivid scarlet lining. A scrap of rope seemed caught about his leg, entangled presumably in a struggle. There was a smear or so of blood, though very little; but the body was bent or broken into a posture impossible to any living thing. It was Sir Aaron Armstrong. A few more bewildered moments brought out a big fair-bearded man, whom some travellers could salute as the dead man's secretary, Patrick Royce, once well known in Bohemian society and ...
— The Innocence of Father Brown • G. K. Chesterton

... Stoics, seem to have considered the whole universe as one animated system, made up of one material substance and one spirit, of which every living thing was an emanation, and to which, when separated by death from the material part it had animated, every living thing again returned. In a word, their conceptions of the Deity might be summed up in those two beautiful and ...
— Travels in China, Containing Descriptions, Observations, and Comparisons, Made and Collected in the Course of a Short Residence at the Imperial Palace of Yuen-Min-Yuen, and on a Subsequent Journey thr • John Barrow

... light clung about the trees of the square, as though Night, like a great downy moth, had brushed them with her wings. The lamps were still alight, all pale, but not a soul stirred—no living thing in sight. ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy

... Japanese artist, said that he hoped to live to be very old that he might have time to learn to draw in such a way that every stroke of his pencil would be the expression of some living thing. That is exactly what Rembrandt has attained here, and, in this portrait, he realised at the age of twenty-four the ideal of the old Japanese; it is one ...
— Rembrandt • Josef Israels

... camp lay, a rain-lashed wilderness of windy levels and bleak, sandy hills, range upon range, far as the eye could see, with never a living thing to break the monotony. But presently, as our car lurched and splashed upon its way, there rose a sound that grew and grew, the awesome ...
— Great Britain at War • Jeffery Farnol

... his sack, proceeded upon his journey, and travelling for many days he at last reached a country so barren and rocky that not a single living thing grew upon it—everywhere reigned grim desolation. And in the midst of this dead region he ...
— The Orange Fairy Book • Andrew Lang

... followed her—for had she not been my nurse? Yes, I went away alone into the mountains, and for three days, wrapped in a cloak, I slept in their misty solitudes. I had no food to eat, and to drink I had only the water of the mountain streams. By day no living thing was near to me, and I heard nothing but the noise of the wind, and the mountain streams roaring. But for three nights I heard all round me on the mountain the sounds of a great city: I saw the lights of tall cathedral windows flash momentarily ...
— A Dreamer's Tales • Lord Dunsany [Edward J. M. D. Plunkett]

... Desert stretched red and barren on all sides of the plodding couple, the sands unbroken by the form of plant or stone or any living thing, all the way to the tight horizon of Mars. Above them, the small, glittering sun slid down the copper-hued sky ...
— Rebels of the Red Planet • Charles Louis Fontenay

... bushmaster, largest and deadliest of all the poisonous snakes heard—and heeded. Not one muscle in all his nine feet of tightly coiled, scale-covered body quivered. Ordinarily, Picici feared not one living thing. In the jungle he was supposed to reign supreme, save only for Muzurama, the black snake who could successfully engage him in combat if he chose; but this enemy was so rare as to be almost negligible. The other animals instinctively knew and feared his lightning thrust and death-dealing fangs. ...
— The Black Phantom • Leo Edward Miller

... hundred feet below sea level; this and the shelter of the hills makes the country very hot in this valley. The Dead Sea water contains five times as much salt as the ocean. Six and a half million tons of water flow into it from the Jordan daily, which amount is evaporated, as the sea has no outlet. No living thing can exist in it, and the bathers who try to swim rise ...
— A Fantasy of Mediterranean Travel • S. G. Bayne

... first place, I ask, what living thing upon one's farm will cause less labor than a forest tree? I know of none. This fulfills the first requirement. A forest tree calls for a minimum of attention as compared with other crops. This is especially ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Report of the Proceedings at the 44th Annual Meeting • Various

... riverside the western mail has gone, Across the great Blue Mountain Range to take that letter on. A moment on the topmost grade while open fire doors glare, She pauses like a living thing to breathe the mountain air, Then launches down the other side across the plains away To bear that note to "Conroy's sheep ...
— An Anthology of Australian Verse • Bertram Stevens

... and the silence seemed awful, for the report of the great gun had driven every living thing near ...
— Middy and Ensign • G. Manville Fenn

... whose effigy in the calm of contemplation is the noblest work of Indian art, fondly believed that all mankind would seek deliverance along the path he pointed out, and that so, within a few generations, the human race, together, perhaps, with every living thing that breathes beneath the law of Karma, would pass from sorrow into nothingness. Mankind has not fulfilled his expectation. The task of expiation is not yet completed, and, in the midst of anguish, corruption, and the flux of all material things, the human race goes swarming on. I suppose it is ...
— Essays in Rebellion • Henry W. Nevinson

... still sinking, slowly but surely, as though some subterranean monster were leisurely dragging me down! This very thought caused me a fresh thrill of horror, and I called aloud for help. To whom? There was no one within miles of me—no living thing. Yes! the neigh of my horse answered me from the ...
— The Scalp Hunters • Mayne Reid

... utterly inaccessible from the sea. Then the ponderous rollers of the deep Pacific thunder amid its caverns and cliffs with the foam and uproar of a thousand Yosemite waterfalls. The bones of many a noble ship lie there, and many a sailor. It would seem unlikely that any living thing should seek rest in such a place, or find it. Nevertheless, frail and delicate flowers bloom there, flowers of both the land and the sea; heavy, ungainly seals disport in the swelling waves, and find grateful retreats back in the inmost bores of its storm-lashed caverns; while ...
— Steep Trails • John Muir

... at last the lid was opened, and a lock of soft brown hair fell out, clinging to Katy's hand as if it had been a living thing, and making her shudder with fear as she shook off the silken tress and remembered that the head it once adorned was lying in St. Mary's churchyard, where the English ...
— Family Pride - Or, Purified by Suffering • Mary J. Holmes

... obliged to," said the Bacteriologist. "Here, for instance—" He walked across the room and took up one of several sealed tubes. "Here is the living thing. This is a cultivation of the actual living disease bacteria." He hesitated, "Bottled cholera, ...
— The Stolen Bacillus and Other Incidents • H. G. (Herbert George) Wells

... demanded of religion; they "furnish this domestick Scene of theirs with any kind of matter which the history of religion affords them"—only, however they "cunningly fashion out their religion by Book-skill," they cannot get "the true and living thing," which creates a new spirit and produces a new inward joy: "True Religion is no piece of artifice; it is no boiling up of our Imaginative powers nor the glowing heats of Passion; though these are too often mistaken ...
— Spiritual Reformers in the 16th & 17th Centuries • Rufus M. Jones

... voice now that quavered over the heads of the camels and drove them on; it was his eye which watched the horizon. The hours went by, and no living thing appeared in the desert, save a small cloud of vultures, heavy from feasting on a camel dead in the waste, and a dark- brown snake flitting across their path. Nothing all day save these, and nothing all the sleepless night save a desert wolf stealing down the sands. Macnamara's eyes burned in his ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker

... beseeching smile about his mouth. His skin, between the freckles, was as white as a leper's, and his teeth long and yellow. He appeared like one who had witnessed the destruction about him, and was the only living thing spared, to make death ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern — Volume 11 • Various

... King, the heavens and earth are Thine, Thine are the seas and every living thing. Thy hand upholds creation's vast design, ...
— Hebrew Literature

... times, as I have felt In happy childhood: trees and flowers and brooks, Which do remember me of where I dwelt Ere my young mind was sacrificed to books; Come as of yore upon me, and can melt My heart with recognition of their looks; And even, at moments, I could think I see Some living thing to love, but none ...
— The Friendships of Women • William Rounseville Alger

... work, however, with Florence Nightingale, always went hand in hand with that love for every living thing in God's world which was born with her and which was never crowded out by all this education. As she grew up she more and more felt that helpfulness was the first law of her being; but her reason and intellect having been so carefully trained, she was thoroughly persuaded ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 6 of 8 • Various

... thumb under the shoulder-strap of his basket, pulled it to a more comfortable position, waved his hand in a farewell, which included every living thing within sight of him, and went away up the narrow, winding trail through the sagebrush to the stable, humming something under his breath with the same impulse of satisfaction with life which sets ...
— Good Indian • B. M. Bower

... The old bells of the tower, in chiming the hour, echoed the words; and the swallows flying out from their nests mutely expressed a similar opinion. Like Mr Slope! Why no, it was not very probable that any Barchester-bred living thing ...
— Barchester Towers • Anthony Trollope

... said again, and seizing a bag of ballast he emptied it. The balloon swiftly rose, and the aneroid marked 2,500 feet. The villages seemed mere spots, the pattern of the carpet grew blurred. Nothing was distinguishable—nor horse, nor sheep, nor any living thing. ...
— Tales from Many Sources - Vol. V • Various

... different side; their laterals and tap-roots have been severed; they meet different conditions of soil than they were trained for. Much water helps, but they must breathe, and sometimes mulch keeps them too cold. Then they have their enemies like every other living thing—and low in health from moving, they cannot withstand these foes without help. The temporality of all things—even of the great imperturbable trees—is a thought of endless visitation in Nature. She seems to say morning and evening, "Do not ...
— Child and Country - A Book of the Younger Generation • Will Levington Comfort

... intently, in the effort to witness some indication of living thing on board, when, to my mingled consternation and horror, I witnessed an arm projecting through the window of the deck-house and frantically waving what resembled a white handkerchief. As none of the men called out, I judged the signal was not perceptible ...
— Great Sea Stories • Various

... followed this simple, majestic appearance. It was full of music, irregular, wild, yearning, trembling. His violin lay upon his arm tenderly as a living thing; and such rich, mellow, silver, shining tones followed his motion that one seemed to catch echoes of that eternal melody whereof music itself is but the shadow and presentment. The adagios reminded me of Beethoven, not as they were imitated, but ...
— Early Letters of George Wm. Curtis • G. W. Curtis, ed. George Willis Cooke

... most earnest and fascinating stories she would rush from one end of the field to the other, or turn a somersault, or climb a tree and look down at Rosamund with her laughing, mocking face from the midst of the branches. But then again she would be good, and come back and say that the wicked little living thing inside her was quiet for ...
— A Modern Tomboy - A Story for Girls • L. T. Meade

... bundle of time-worn, storm-tried muscles and sinews. The knots on his bare arms were like knobs of oak; and his great brawny hand that lay there on the white paper, looked like a powerful living thing, having almost an identity and will ...
— The Boy Patriot • Edward Sylvester Ellis

... were almost falling upon me. Never before have I had so strongly the sense which makes people pessimists in politics, the sense of the hopeless height of the high places of the earth. That pile of wealth and power, whatever was its name, went up above and beyond me like a cliff that no living thing could climb. I had an irrational sense that this thing had to be fought, that I had to fight it; and that I could offer nothing to the occasion but an indolent ...
— Tremendous Trifles • G. K. Chesterton

... the plain gold background he substituted the landscape, thus breaking down, as it were, a great wall, and seeing beyond it. Nor was this innovation merely a technical one—it was the man's nature that effected it and made his art a living thing. ...
— Six Centuries of Painting • Randall Davies

... and slid down on deck. He was speechless for some time after reaching the deck. At last he jerkingly articulated that there was nothing wrong with the sail, but that which was believed to be sail was really some ferocious living thing. Whereupon great consternation spread; and volunteers were asked for to go aloft, and ascertain precisely what it was. It turned out to be an eagle, and after considerable difficulty a rope was got round it, and it was safely landed on deck. It so happened ...
— Windjammers and Sea Tramps • Walter Runciman

... the unutterable utterness of his dejection he would make himself such evil cheer that he sickened with envy at the mere sight of any living thing that could see out of two eyes—a homeless irresponsible dog, a hunchback beggar, a crippled organ-grinder and his monkey—till he met some acquaintance; even but a rolling fisherman with a brown face and honest blue eyes—a ...
— The Martian • George Du Maurier

... shadow is the only living thing one sees over there," said the learned man. "See! how nicely it sits between the flowers. The door stands half-open: now the shadow should be cunning, and go into the room, look about, and then come and tell me what it had seen. Come, now! be useful, and do ...
— A Christmas Greeting • Hans Christian Andersen

... such tremendous hardships, the survival of which without a wound seemed incredible. He looked back at the vast peak of the White Dome, solemn and majestic, piercing the sky, and it seemed to him at times that it had been a living thing and that it had watched over them in ...
— The Great Sioux Trail - A Story of Mountain and Plain • Joseph Altsheler

... I seemed the only living thing in the cold, illimitable night. A thick horror brooded over me. The sky was a mighty pall, sweeping down with heavy cloud-fringes, the earth a wide grave. I did not fear, that is, I feared not man, or beast or ghost, but an unspeakable awe and dread was upon me. I dreaded the great God, whose presence ...
— Ernest Linwood - or, The Inner Life of the Author • Caroline Lee Hentz

... established himself in the little hamlet which stretches along the base of the abandoned donjon. He learned what a living thing the legend of Bluebeard was in this isolated part of La Vendee ...
— La-bas • J. K. Huysmans

... breathing is going on in the soil even after you have picked out every living thing that you can see. First of all you must do a little experiment with your own breathing so that you may know how to start. Shake up a little fresh lime with water and leave it to stand for 24 hours. Pour a little of the clear liquid ...
— Lessons on Soil • E. J. Russell

... loneliness swept over him; a loneliness peopled with shadows, in which he was the only living thing, but the shadows were infinitely more real than he himself. He had the brute instinct to hide, and the human instinct to share his fear. He poured himself a drink. Evelyn watched him with compressed lips as he ...
— The Just and the Unjust • Vaughan Kester

... laugh of irony was within Lee as he thought of it. No one had ever held out the offer of more than perfection to these people. But Franklin evidently had done it—playing upon the evil which must lie within every living thing, no matter how latent it may be. Awakening in those guards the passion of cupidity—desire for something better ...
— The World Beyond • Raymond King Cummings

... as its Regent, had to call in the miracle of creation. The modern seeker finds that although life has the appearance of the miraculous, yet all its manifestations can be studied and measured, and that there is a machinery at work in every living thing which shapes, evolves, and creates. His inquiries have led him to replace the miracle of creation ...
— The Necessity of Atheism • Dr. D.M. Brooks

... tread, and armour's clang, The sullen march was dumb. There breathed no wind their crests to shake, Or wave their flags abroad; Scarce the frail aspen seem'd to quake, That shadow'd o'er their road. Their vanward scouts no tidings bring, Can rouse no lurking foe, Nor spy a trace of living thing Save when they stirr'd the roe; The host moves like a deep-sea wave, Where rise no rocks its power to brave, High-swelling, dark, and slow. The lake is pass'd, and now they gain A narrow and a broken plain, Before ...
— Sir Walter Scott - (English Men of Letters Series) • Richard H. Hutton

... stirred by an emotion too deep for any spoken attempt at sympathy. She scarcely seemed to see them: she seemed to recognize no presence but that of the unresponsive figure upon its lowly couch. She spoke to it as if it had been a living thing, her voice broken and tender, stroking the hair now and then with a touch all womanly and loving. "Yo' were nigher to me than most foak, Jinny," she said; "an' tha' trusted me, ...
— "Seth" • Frances Hodgson Burnett

... passing fair! As if a breath of spring Had permeated all the air, And touched each living thing With thankfulness for such a boon— Discounting with a scoff The almanac's report that "June Is yet ...
— Poems - Vol. IV • Hattie Howard

... not look as attractive as they had appeared when swimming and diving so gracefully in the lake. Souwanas was quick to notice their depression of spirits, and he there and then resolved that he would never again shoot any living thing in their presence, and he faithfully kept ...
— Algonquin Indian Tales • Egerton R. Young

... each inhalation, think of yourself as drawing in to yourself the strength and power of the Universal Mind. When exhaling think of yourself as passing out to others that same power, at the same time being filled with love for every living thing, and desiring that it be a partaker of the same blessings which you are now receiving. Let the Universal ...
— The Hindu-Yogi Science Of Breath • Yogi Ramacharaka

... meaning of 'the word that proceedeth out of the mouth of God,'—in whatever fashion they get their food. The gift of it is from Him; its power to nourish is from Him. It is as true to-day as ever it was: 'Thou openest Thine hand, and satisfiest the desire of every living thing.' The manna ceased when the people came near cornfields and settled homes. Miracles end when means are possible. But the God of the miracle is the ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus and Numbers • Alexander Maclaren

... Sierra eruption is also preserved in the traditions of the Pitt River Indians. They tell of a fearful time of darkness, when the sky was black with ashes and smoke that threatened every living thing with death, and that when at length the sun appeared once more it was red ...
— The Mountains of California • John Muir

... the wild Winds clash and clang, and broken boughs are piled At feet of writhing trees. The violets raise Their heads without affright, without amaze, And sleep through all the din, as sleeps a child. And he who watches well may well discern Sweet expectation in each living thing. Like pregnant mother the sweet earth doth yearn; In secret joy makes ready for the spring; And hidden, sacred, in her breast doth bear Annunciation lilies ...
— A Calendar of Sonnets • Helen Hunt Jackson

... battle was raging. I went by the house where the C.O. of the 16th Battalion had had his headquarters as I passed that afternoon. It was now quite deserted and the windows in it and in the houses round the square were all shattered. Not a living thing could I see. I walked across to my billet and found the shutters of the house closed. On the table where my letters were, a smoky oil lamp was burning. Not a human being was there. I never felt so lonely in my life, and those words, "The Germans are on our heels", still kept ringing in my ears. ...
— The Great War As I Saw It • Frederick George Scott

... that was passed, however, tended, by its restrictive character, to augment the evil. The golden tide, which, permitted a free vent, would have fertilized the region through which it poured, now buried the land under a deluge which blighted every green and living thing. Agriculture, commerce, manufactures, every branch of national industry and improvement, languished and fell to decay; and the nation, like the Phrygian monarch, who turned all that he touched to gold, cursed by the very consummation of ...
— The History of the Reign of Ferdinand and Isabella The Catholic, V3 • William H. Prescott

... "No living thing," said Leroux, monotonously, "left this flat from the time that the three of us, Exel, Cumberly, and I, entered, up to the time that Miss Cumberly came, and, with the doctor, went ...
— The Yellow Claw • Sax Rohmer

... told her how they had shelled the baby-peas. She taught them how each plant was a living thing, and had a tiny plant inside of it, all ready to come out at the right ...
— Chambers's Elementary Science Readers - Book I • Various

... on the wing Seems the only living thing, Or the loon, that laughs and flies Down to ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

... the statue of the great goddess with head thrown back. The flame of the torch like a serpent of fire coiled and uncoiled like a living thing, and lit up the band of gold which circled her head, and shone on her mantle ...
— Saronia - A Romance of Ancient Ephesus • Richard Short

... back under a canopy of foam and see the head of a great black rock. Fortunately we safely cleared everything, and in probably less than a minute we were at the bottom, lying to in an eddy, bailing fast and watching for the other boat. No sign of any living thing could be discovered as we peered up the rapid, which from below had the appearance of an almost vertical fall. Presently at the top of the foam a white speck moved, clearly seen against the dark background. It was the Canonita on the edge of the fall. I can see her yet, pausing for an instant, ...
— The Romance of the Colorado River • Frederick S. Dellenbaugh

... to vessels whether they are to be wrecked or not. I remember falling in with an abandoned ship, the only living thing on board being a cat; we took her off, and the vessel soon ...
— Peter Biddulph - The Story of an Australian Settler • W.H.G. Kingston

... time Jesus had discovered an aged scholar who dwelt outside the gate of Thebes, in a vaulted cave at the foot of the Pyramid. He would have nothing to do with any living thing except a goat of the desert which furnished him with milk. And as he kept always within the darkness of the vault, bending over endless hieroglyphics on half-decomposed slabs of stone, on excavated household vessels, and papyrus rolls, the goat likewise ...
— I.N.R.I. - A prisoner's Story of the Cross • Peter Rosegger

... things remain as they are. Every living thing feels the winds of the world blowing over it, beating and buffeting it, marking and bleaching it. Change is a characteristic of life, and we must reckon on it! Progress is Life's first law! In order to be as good as we were yesterday, we have to be better. ...
— The Next of Kin - Those who Wait and Wonder • Nellie L. McClung

... lessons haphazard dashes at the nearest living thing; on the contrary, they are virtually fundamental, whether with respect to their relation to some of the classified sciences, or with reference to the development of thought and power of ...
— The Great Round World and What Is Going On In It, Vol. 1, No. 18, March 11, 1897 - A Weekly Magazine for Boys and Girls • Various

... detective Burton saw, far ahead along the road, two figures scale a fence and disappear behind the fringing blackberry bushes which grew in tangled profusion on either side. When they came abreast of the spot he ordered the driver to stop; but though he scanned the open field carefully he saw no sign of living thing. ...
— The Oakdale Affair • Edgar Rice Burroughs

... that," he told her gently. "It isn't what you think at all. I'd rather cut off that right hand than have it raised unfairly against a single living thing. They call me a gunman, girlie, an' I reckon I am. But I'm not a killer. There's a difference between the two, an' sometimes I think it's that difference that's makin' all the trouble. I'm still tryin' to steer by that thing you call ...
— The Coyote - A Western Story • James Roberts

... the bed with an oath and looked out of the window. Darkness everywhere. The beating rain on the window pane ran down in blinding rivulets. A vivid flash of lightning illuminated the garden and the house. Not a living thing was stirring. He turned toward the bed. The terrible picture had gone. With a muttered curse upon his weak, disordered nerves, he crept into ...
— The Galaxy, Volume 23, No. 2, February, 1877 • Various

... army of players had descended on the region like a flood of seventeen-year locusts. An hour or two before and there had apparently not been a living thing in the neighborhood of the mansion, and now it was the centre of a swarming horde of earnest workers, each trying to earn his salary as best he knew how, both by shouting, and also fighting in ...
— The Boy Scouts with the Motion Picture Players • Robert Shaler

... which the individuality is less well marked, and in which, although there is doubtless an ageing somewhere, one cannot say exactly what it is that grows old. Once more, there is no universal biological law which applies precisely and automatically to every living thing. There are only directions in which life throws out species in general. Each particular species, in the very act by which it is constituted, affirms its independence, follows its caprice, deviates more or less from the straight line, sometimes even remounts the slope ...
— Creative Evolution • Henri Bergson

... was as puzzled as Santos. Why supply fighting equipment for a crew on an asteroid that couldn't possibly have any living thing on it? ...
— Rip Foster in Ride the Gray Planet • Harold Leland Goodwin

... shore was heard one cry of terrible defiance, and the different classes and orders of this manifold and mighty England were as one? Have we not heard how the mighty winds hold together, as if one, the various atoms of the desert, so that they rush like a living thing, across the wilderness? And this, brethren, is the unity of the Church of Christ, the subjection to the one uniting ...
— Sermons Preached at Brighton - Third Series • Frederick W. Robertson

... poor creature's head instantly," she said, with dignified command. "I will permit no such usage of living thing on ...
— The Marquis of Lossie • George MacDonald

... certain destruction, there was no living thing except a white cat, which sat on the red-painted shingle roof ...
— Timar's Two Worlds • Mr Jkai

... with delight. He loved the imaginative nature of the girl, who treated her violin as if it were a living thing, and whispered her secrets into the ear of her riding horse, and told love stories to ...
— Betty at Fort Blizzard • Molly Elliot Seawell

... fauna, judging from the narrative, the ants occupy the most prominent position. Both indoors and out they are ever in evidence. Belt describes the foraging ants, which do not make regular nests of their own, but attack those of other species and prey upon every killable living thing that comes in their way; the leaf-cutting ants, whose attacks upon his garden were repelled with so much difficulty; standing armies of ants maintained by certain trees for their protection, and many other kinds, some of which kept his attention constantly on ...
— The Naturalist in Nicaragua • Thomas Belt

... blooming late where the shade was deepest, fell crushed near my hand, I reached out. As luck would have it I was too conscious, too much ashamed at my own folly to act decisively. I did not grasp, I reached out—and touched a living thing. ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 10 • Various

... were killed. The path of the flames, as was discovered by the caravans that passed over the Trail a few days afterward, was marked with the crisp and blackened carcasses of wolves, coyotes, turkeys, grouse, and every variety of small birds indigenous to the region. Indeed, it seemed as if no living thing it had met escaped its fury. The fire assumed such gigantic proportions, and moved with such rapidity before the wind, that even the Arkansas River did not check its path for a moment; it was carried as readily across as if the stream had not ...
— The Old Santa Fe Trail - The Story of a Great Highway • Henry Inman

... water that I shall give him shall be in him a springing fountain'; it shall not lie there stagnant, but leap like a living thing, up into the sunshine, and flash there, turned into diamonds, when the bright rays ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. John Chapters I to XIV • Alexander Maclaren

... in a spiritless whisper. Neither of us had lunched that day. His curly head was propped upon his arm, his near-sighted eyes close to the book. He never stirred. He was too faint to sway his body or to gesticulate. I was musing wearily, and it seemed as though my hunger was a living thing and was taking part ...
— The Rise of David Levinsky • Abraham Cahan

... young man in quitting it. The glass had been brought outside as a preliminary step, and Deerslayer next took a careful survey of the entire shore of the lake, as far as his own position would allow. Not a living thing was visible, a few birds excepted, and even the last fluttered about in the shades of the trees, as if unwilling to encounter the heat of a sultry afternoon. All the nearest points, in particular, were subjected to severe scrutiny, in order to make certain that ...
— The Deerslayer • James Fenimore Cooper

... his followers to make no image of any living thing, to show mercy to the weak and orphaned, and kindness to brutes; to abstain from gambling, and the ...
— Men, Women, and Gods - And Other Lectures • Helen H. Gardener

... Grasmere fells, and the long Westmorland after-glow would linger for nearly a couple of hours yet. After much rain the skies were clear, and all the omens fair. But the rain had left its laughing message behind; in the full river, in the streams leaping down the fells, in the freshness of every living thing—the new-leafed trees, the grass with its flowers, the rushes spreading their light armies through the flooded margins of the lake, and bending to the light wind, which had just, as though in mischief, blotted out the dream-world in the water, and set it rippling eastwards in one sheet of living ...
— Missing • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... to wait. A hundred yards off was a cane-brake. I could perceive a motion among the tall reeds. Their tops swayed to and fro, and their hollow culms rattled against each other, as they were jerked about, and borne downward. Some living thing ...
— The Quadroon - Adventures in the Far West • Mayne Reid

... seems still and silent during the long wintry season, as if death had spread a white pall over the earth and hushed every living thing into silence. Few sounds are heard through the winter days to break the deathlike silence that reigns around, excepting the sudden rending and cracking of the trees in the frosty air, the fall of a decayed branch, the ...
— In The Forest • Catharine Parr Traill

... melancholy abode, its few rustic chattels still standing there, left since the death of its tenant, Winifred toiled up by a steep, wild, but well-known track, but found not father, mother, or living thing, except one, so much in unison with the wild melancholy of the scene, as to exalt it almost to horror. This was a wretched idiot man, dressed in female attire, perfectly harmless, and kept, as a parish pauper, at an adjacent farm. He was noted for fidelity to any one who ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Vol 58, No. 357, July 1845 • Various

... the warriors. "A long time ago," said old Smoky Day, "the Unkpapa and the Cut-Head bands of Sioux united their camps upon a vast prairie east of the Minne Wakan (now called Devil's Lake). It was midsummer, and the people shared in the happiness of every living thing. We had food in abundance, for bison in countless numbers overspread ...
— Old Indian Days • [AKA Ohiyesa], Charles A. Eastman

... have been destroyed for ever, like the names of many, not only of false prophets and deceivers, but even of good men and of wise, have not perished, but have brought forth fruit more abundantly, from the very cause that was intended to put them out. Christ's gospel, assuredly, is a living thing, full of vigour and full of power; it has worked mightily for good, and is working; it is so full of blessing, it tends so largely towards the happiness that is enjoyed upon earth, that we are quite sure it is not lying still buried in ...
— The Christian Life - Its Course, Its Hindrances, And Its Helps • Thomas Arnold

... emotion, always deep and true in Browning, finds lovely utterance in the lines where Pauline's lover speaks of the blood in her lips pulsing like a living thing, while her neck is as "marble misted o'er with ...
— Life of Robert Browning • William Sharp

... extinct for hundreds of thousands of years. I have seen its skeleton in the museum in London and a figure of one restored. I always thought that the scientists who did such work depended principally upon an overwrought imagination, but I see that I was wrong. This living thing is not an exact counterpart of the restoration that I saw; but it is so similar as to be easily recognizable, and then, too, we must remember that during the ages that have elapsed since the paleontologist's specimen lived many changes might have been wrought by evolution in the living line that ...
— Tarzan the Terrible • Edgar Rice Burroughs

... Wan; for I see no head, as of any one swimming. The vessel lay so near that island next to it, that a poor swimmer would have no difficulty in reaching the place; but there is no living thing to be seen. But man the boat, men; we will go to the spot, ...
— Jack Tier or The Florida Reef • James Fenimore Cooper

... The women, with children in their arms, pleaded in vain to the Boers to leave them something or they would starve, but the latter only jeered at them. What these poor people will do God only knows, for the Boers stripped them of every living thing they possessed, and with the proceeds of this robbery the Boer Government intend ...
— Cetywayo and his White Neighbours - Remarks on Recent Events in Zululand, Natal, and the Transvaal • H. Rider Haggard

... shut the door with a little shiver. She blew out the candle, for it was not yet dark enough to justify artificial light to her thrifty mind. She thought the big, empty house, in which she was the only living thing, was very lonely. It was so still, except for the slow tick of the "grandfather's clock" and the soft purr and crackle of the wood in the stove. Josephine sat ...
— Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1909 to 1922 • Lucy Maud Montgomery

... course—a slanting downward stroke, aimed at the neck where it joined the body, and he would be forever satisfied. It would be ridiculously simple. He practiced in the gloom of evening as he felled spruce trees for firewood; he guarded the ax religiously; it became a living thing which urged him on to violence. He saw it standing by the tent fly when he closed his eyes to sleep; he dreamed of it; he sought it out with his eyes when he first awoke. He slid it loosely under the sled lashings ...
— The Boy Scouts Book of Campfire Stories • Various

... her face had changed as if from careworn, pallid middle age, back to fresh, sunny youth. She fell on her knees in fervent, unspoken thanksgiving. She kissed the letter—the dear, beautiful letter, as if it were a living thing! ...
— Four Ghost Stories • Mrs. Molesworth



Words linked to "Living thing" :   cell, young, immature, unit, life, organism, whole, being, viability, biont



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