"Moth" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... little or nothing of the physiological action of the bath, they have neither the means of ascertaining, nor the power to detect, the genuine article from the harmful substitute. With the public the best bath will be the most elaborate and most flashily decorated, and the moth-and-candle principle comes into play with striking semblance ...
— The Turkish Bath - Its Design and Construction • Robert Owen Allsop
... ambition gets the better of discretion, but fortunately soon finds its natural level: the violent ultra-tory, and the violent ultra-demagogue sink alike, after a few years of excitement, into the moth-eaten receptacle of newspaper renown, alike unheeded, and alike forgotten, by a newer and more enlightened generation, who find that, to the cost of the real interest of the people, the mouthing orator, the agitator, the exciter, ...
— Canada and the Canadians, Vol. 2 • Richard Henry Bonnycastle
... supernatural light of their pseudo-divinity. From the extreme limit of the ages of credulity, every absolute monarchy has been a theocracy. In our democracies, however, it is impossible to believe in the divinity of humbugs, shaky and discredited, like some of our moth-eaten Ministers; we are too close to them, we know their dirty tricks, so they have invented the idea of concealing God behind their drop-curtain; God means the Republic, the Country, Justice, Civilisation; the names ...
— Clerambault - The Story Of An Independent Spirit During The War • Rolland, Romain
... who constituted the Massachusetts Company were not concerned respecting the pecuniary profits of the venture, inasmuch as they looked only for the treasures which moth nor rust can corrupt; their "plantation" was to the glory of God, not to the imbursement of man. Nor were they anxious to impose their will upon the emigrants, or solicitous lest the latter should act unseemly; for the men who were there were of ...
— The History of the United States from 1492 to 1910, Volume 1 • Julian Hawthorne
... leading to the second story of a big building invites us. Opening the door, we find ourselves in the midst of an old library, and moth and rust, too, here corrupt. We close the door softly behind us and try to realise what it meant to bring a library from England to Fort Simpson a generation ago. First, there arose the desire in the mind of some man for ...
— The New North • Agnes Deans Cameron
... If the brain or nervous system sensitively responds, there is headache, dizziness, disturbed sleep, depression of spirits, peevishness, capriciousness, lack of energy, irritability, and congestive symptoms. When the skin is involved the surface is dry, harsh, and scaly, displaying dark "moth-spots," blotches, or numerous little sores, and the countenance has a dull, tawny look. If the kidneys be disturbed by it, there may be pain and a sensation of weight in the back, while the urine may be scanty and high-colored, or abundant, pale, ...
— The People's Common Sense Medical Adviser in Plain English • R. V. Pierce
... frustrated by old Reinhardt, smitten with an admiration as unconcealed for the beautiful stranger. In the interval before the arrival of the later members of the quartet, he fluttered around her like an ungainly old moth, racking his scant English for complimentary speeches. These were received by Aunt Victoria with her best calm smile, and by Professor Saunders with open impatience. His equanimity was not restored by the fact that there chanced to be rather more ...
— The Bent Twig • Dorothy Canfield
... her tirades to stop him from coming after her and laying siege to her ladyship, than she can keep the sun from shining or the rain from falling. For that matter, I believe the poor fellow cannot help himself; it is the case of the moth and the candle." ...
— A Houseful of Girls • Sarah Tytler
... spent so much money on dress in her life, but Miss Perkins pointed out that the cadgers in Cardigan Street went out better dressed than she on Sunday, and Mrs Yabsley gave in. Miss Perkins refused to accept a fur necklet, slightly damaged by moth, reduced to twelve-and-six, but took a plain leather belt for eighteen pence. They were going out to-morrow for the first time to show the new clothes, and she had left Miss Perkins at home altering the waistband of the skirt and the hooks on the bodice, as there ...
— Jonah • Louis Stone
... For the moth shall eat them up like a garment, and the worm shall eat them like wool: but my righteousness shall be for ever, and my salvation ...
— Select Masterpieces of Biblical Literature • Various
... at the foot of the dais before the Duchess, who was exchanging moth-dull confidences with Madame de Stafforth. The crowd moved before the girl's eyes, and she felt bewildered, dizzy, in a dream, for she was unaccustomed to crowds. At length she saw Stafforth coming towards her. He looked very fine in his court dress: the long, blue ...
— A German Pompadour - Being the Extraordinary History of Wilhelmine van Graevenitz, - Landhofmeisterin of Wirtemberg • Marie Hay
... packed me up in his coach and hemmed me in with a folding and jingling barrier of steps, as if he were going to take me fifty miles. His getting on his box, which I remember to have been decorated with an old weather-stained pea-green hammercloth moth-eaten into rags, was quite a work of time. It was a wonderful equipage, with six great coronets outside, and ragged things behind for I don't know how many footmen to hold on by, and a harrow below them, to prevent amateur footmen from yielding to ...
— Great Expectations • Charles Dickens
... to that unsavory asylum. So I dived into a pawnbroker's shop, where I was a stranger only upon my present errand, and within the hour was airing a decent if antiquated suit, but little corrupted by the pawnbroker's moth, and a new straw hat, on the top ...
— Raffles - Further Adventures of the Amateur Cracksman • E. W. Hornung
... things were shadows, the earth and the forests he returned to, viewed at evening, seemed still more unreal, the mere dusky flutter of a moth's wings in space. Filmy and evanescent, if he had sunk down as through a transparency into the void, it would not have been wonderful. Parvati turned homeward, still half in trance: as he threaded the dim alleys he noticed not the flaming eyes ...
— AE in the Irish Theosophist • George William Russell
... alone of realm and wealthy dower, O'er which aye turns the restless wheel, I say: I speak of what it is not in the power Of Fortune to bestow, or take away. Much fame is here, whereon Time and the Hour, Like wasting moth, in this our planet prey. Here countless vows, here prayers unnumbered lie, Made by us sinful men ...
— Orlando Furioso • Lodovico Ariosto
... spiteful little cat, which is what she once called me, than to be moth-eaten on the inside, like that!" she commented. Then she went on: "With Miss Farnham out of it—and I knew she must be out of it, since Broffin didn't strike—there was still Mr. Galbraith. You didn't know why I was so anxious to have you get acquainted with him, but you know now. ...
— The Price • Francis Lynde
... was good, and that now she could compose music infinitely better. The sharpness of longing for her lost art cut through her. She half turned from the piano and then went back, as a moth to the flame. ...
— The Daughters of Danaus • Mona Caird
... force his way all at once through the palpable perfumes, but he returned to the light again and again, like the singed moth. At last he discovered that the various smells did not entirely mix, no fiend being there to stir them round. Odour of family predominated in two corners; stewed rustic reigned supreme in the centre; and garlic in the noisy group by the window. He found, too, by hasty analysis, ...
— The Cloister and the Hearth • Charles Reade
... rime be ragged Tattered and iagged Rudely rain-beaten Rusty and moth-eaten If ye talke well therewyth Yt hath in ...
— Animaduersions uppon the annotacions and corrections of some imperfections of impressiones of Chaucer's workes - 1865 edition • Francis Thynne
... interval for lunch, and then a drizzle Fell on the dreary field. Like some dead moth The thing remained. Chagrin commenced to sizzle, And certain people cried, "A thillingth loth." Others, "Hey, Mister Airman, it's a swizzle!" Then a stern man came out, and with a cloth Lightly, as one well used to such a feat, Swaddled the brute's ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 146., January 14, 1914 • Various
... piles his atomies, Incrusted gems, star-glances overborne With lids of sleep pulled from the moth's bright eyes, And forests of frail ferns, blanched and forlorn, Where Oberon of unimagined size Might in the ...
— Lundy's Lane and Other Poems • Duncan Campbell Scott
... years some marvellous 'finds' have been made at this wonderful fortress from time to time. It is intended to continue excavation work for a moth." ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, July 22, 1914 • Various
... heavy, sickly-sweet scents of closed jungle blossoms filled their nostrils. The reek of feverishly growing green things saturated the air. A steady wind blew down the Tube, and it bore innumerable unfamiliar odors into the laboratory. Once a gigantic moth bumped and blundered into the Tube, and finally crawled heavily out into the light. It was scaled, and terrible because of its monstrous size, but it had broken a wing and could not fly. So it crawled with feverish haste toward ...
— The Fifth-Dimension Tube • William Fitzgerald Jenkins
... swooped down upon the Robson household and gave vent to her pique. She had been divorced so long from these melancholy relations of hers that she had really forgotten their existence, and she displayed all the rancor of a woman who discovers suddenly a moth hole in the long undisturbed folds of a treasured cashmere shawl. Her precisely timed visits had not the slightest suspicion of attentiveness back of them, and Claire guessed almost at once that they were ...
— The Blood Red Dawn • Charles Caldwell Dobie
... in; but when the maire knew of our desire, he brought us the key that we might view it at our leisure. Its pews were thick with dust, the images were chipped and broken, some saints were minus nose or arm, the vestments in the open cupboard were moth-eaten and tawdry, dried flowers lay on tombs of the village great; but its atmosphere was one of peace, and it was not difficult to realize that many had carried therein their burden of grief and unrest and left it behind them, soothed on the bosom of Mother Church, ...
— "Over There" with the Australians • R. Hugh Knyvett
... particular. I seem to detect indications of a cold-blooded, relentless ferocity that would cause them to convert our bodies into pincushions for those spears of theirs with as little compunction as you would impale a rare moth upon a cork with a pin. But whatever may be their intentions with regard to us, we must rigidly adhere to our usual principle of showing no fear and offering no resistance. Probably if we follow this plan they will not kill us on the ...
— The Adventures of Dick Maitland - A Tale of Unknown Africa • Harry Collingwood
... a wet autumn evening the household of Mallett's Lodge was gathered round the death-bed of Ursula Mallow, the eldest of the three sisters who inhabited it. The dingy moth-eaten curtains of the old wooden bedstead were drawn apart, the light of a smoking oil- lamp falling upon the hopeless countenance of the dying woman as she turned her dull eyes upon her sisters. The room was in silence ...
— Night Watches • W.W. Jacobs
... one who sees a light That lures him, moth-like, to devouring flame. His heart is fixed, his mind ...
— Polyuecte • Pierre Corneille
... There are some good horses in it, though, White Moth and others. However, I'll back The Dutchman to win fifty thousand, and there'll be ten thousand in that for you, Langdon, if it comes off." The Trainer's mouth watered. Money was his god. Horses were all right as a means ...
— Thoroughbreds • W. A. Fraser
... followed us into the cavern, and last of all came the two hopping Jivros. The intense attraction of the statue drew me, but I remembered how I had avoided it before, and kept my eyes averted. Like light on a moth's eyes, the power of it seemed to strike into the will only when the eyes were ...
— Valley of the Croen • Lee Tarbell
... "I don't require the shave, thank goodness, but I certainly need a bath—and clothes. I wish I had the gray suit that's probably getting all moldy and moth-eaten at the Pine River cabin. I wonder if I can get anything fit to ...
— North of Fifty-Three • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... love compounded equally of youthful imagination, a liking for fantastic phrases and a disposition for caterwauling i' the moonlight. Ah, lad, lad!—if you but knew! That is not love; to love is to go mad like a star-struck moth, and afterward to strive in vain to forget, and to eat one's heart out in the loneliness, and to hunger—hunger—" The marquis spread his big hands helplessly, and then, with a quick, impatient gesture, swept back the mass of wheat-colored hair that fell about his face. "Ah, Master ...
— The Line of Love - Dizain des Mariages • James Branch Cabell
... applications, many of them no doubt quite misplaced, as I have seen in Islington Churchy'd (I think) an Epitaph to an Infant who died AEtatis 4 months, with this seasonable inscription appended, Honor thy Fath'r. and Moth'r. that thy days may be long in the Land &c.—Sincerely wishing your children better [words cut out ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Vol. 5 • Edited by E. V. Lucas
... clothes. As the summer was approaching he had changed his winter suit for a combination of brown linen bound with black—(second hand, of course, its former owner having gone out of mourning) and at the moment sported a moth-eaten, crape-encircled white beaver with a floppy, two-inch brim, a rusty black stock that grabbed him close under the chin, completely submerging his collar, and a pair of congress gaiters very much run down at the heel. He was evidently master of himself and the situation, ...
— Kennedy Square • F. Hopkinson Smith
... it looks absurd for a man at my years to be running after a moth. I used to think it was absurd, but I am wiser now. However, I cannot stop to talk; I shall lose the sunshine. The first time you are anywhere near me, come and have a look. You will ...
— The Autobiography of Mark Rutherford • Mark Rutherford
... warned to be on their guard against the wingless moth, for lime-washing the trees ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 153, October 31, 1917 • Various
... turbit acquired the characteristic frill after its third moult, or when purely-bred bantams partially assume the red plumage of their prototype, we cannot doubt that these qualities were from the first present, though latent, in the individual animal, like the characters of a moth in the caterpillar. Now, if these animals had produced offspring before they had acquired with advancing age their new characters, nothing is more probable than that they would have transmitted them ...
— The Variation of Animals and Plants Under Domestication, Volume II (of 2) • Charles Darwin
... last it was decided. A trunk was found, a moth-eaten bag. His cheap, ill-cut clothes were packed. On a day of late summer he stepped for the first time upon a train—beautiful to him because ...
— The Nest Builder • Beatrice Forbes-Robertson Hale
... his humour; he, alas! can be dirty like the rest, when necessary: but humour he has of the highest quality. 'The Ordinary' is full of it; and Moth, the Antiquary, though too much of a lay figure, and depending for his amusingness on his quaint antiquated language, is such a sketch as Mr. Dickens need not have ...
— Plays and Puritans - from "Plays and Puritans and Other Historical Essays" • Charles Kingsley
... vrom e'thly eyes To be a-kept in darksome sleep, Until the good ageaen do rise A-jay to souls they left to weep. The rwose wer doust that bound her brow; The moth did eat her Zunday ceaepe; Her frock wer out o' fashion now; Her shoes wer dried up out o' sheaepe— The shoes that woonce did glitter black Along ...
— Poems of Rural Life in the Dorset Dialect • William Barnes
... anything at the root of anything except Self? You moth, you butterfly, you thread of floating gossamer! How can you understand the incalculable value of Self—of that which is all to me and nothing to you, or which, being yours, is everything to you and to me nothing? You are so young—you still believe in things, and interests, and good and evil, and ...
— The Witch of Prague • F. Marion Crawford
... Whistler's butterfly was the moth of the silkworm borrowed from Hokusai. Otto H. Bacher thought the addition of a sting to the signature came from this incident at Venice: In 1880 he found a scorpion and impaled it on his etching needle. As the little creature writhed and struck, ...
— Whistler Stories • Don C. Seitz
... led her from the flat of the delicatessen merchant, through various shabby lairs, into the pension of a vaudeville favorite of prehistoric fame. The house was dilapidated, and the brownstone front had the moth-eaten look of the ...
— We Can't Have Everything • Rupert Hughes
... Pietro Moresco. I have-a da nice political posish, an' nice-a barber-shop on Mulberry-a Strit. Some-a day I getta on da force—da pollis-force. Sure t'ing. I been-a home to see ma moth. I go-a back to make-a da more mon." He pulled out from his corded bundle of red quilts and coats and rugs some bottles of cheap wine. "I getta place for all you men." He was beginning, thus early in the voyage of these would-be citizens, to prepare to use them ...
— The Old Flute-Player - A Romance of To-day • Edward Marshall and Charles T. Dazey
... that richer wealth, No earthly mines reveal, "Which moth and rust cannot corrupt, And ...
— The Poets and Poetry of Cecil County, Maryland • Various
... cogs' loud roll,— That makes stout joist and rafter groan and sway,— The harmless gossip of the passing day: Good country talk, that tells how so-and-so Has died or married; how curculio And codling-moth have ruined half the fruit, And blight plays mischief with the grapes to boot; Or what the news from town; next county fair; How well the crops are looking everywhere: Now this, now that, on which their interests ...
— Myth and Romance - Being a Book of Verses • Madison Cawein
... was of the simplest. The walls were covered with tapestry so faded that the pattern could hardly be detected. The hearth yawned dark and dull, and by it stood one chair with a moth-eaten cushion. A heavy oaken table and two forms were in the middle of the room, and there was the dreary, fusty smell of want of habitation. The Queen, whose instincts for fresh air were always a distress to her ladies, sprang to the mullioned window, but the ...
— Unknown to History - A Story of the Captivity of Mary of Scotland • Charlotte M. Yonge
... this wicked plan with horror. Nevertheless, after her sisters were gone, she brooded over what they had said, not seeing their evil intent; and she came to find some wisdom in their words. Little by little, suspicion ate, like a moth, into her lovely mind; and at nightfall, in shame and fear, she hid a lamp and a dagger in her chamber. Towards midnight, when her husband was fast asleep, up she rose, hardly daring to breathe; and coming softly to his side, she uncovered the lamp ...
— Good Stories For Great Holidays - Arranged for Story-Telling and Reading Aloud and for the - Children's Own Reading • Frances Jenkins Olcott
... I had agitating experiences with men because I half invited them. It seemed as if I could not help it. As I said to myself, I was a moth, I wanted to play ...
— Possessed • Cleveland Moffett
... is the inventor of new proiects, cosen, They say, and patents; one that lives like a moth Upon ...
— A Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. II • Various
... postulate that every detail of the apparatus must be equally essential for the purpose it had to serve, he made a series of experiments which demonstrated that some insect of Madagascar—doubtless a moth—must be equipped with a proboscis long enough to reach the nectar, and at the same time thick enough at the base to withdraw the pollinia—thus fertilizing the bloom. For, if the nectar had lain so close to the orifice ...
— About Orchids - A Chat • Frederick Boyle
... make the same of wicker, and cast them over with clay. We cherish none in trees, but set our hives somewhere on the warmest side of the house, providing that they may stand dry and without danger both of the mouse and the moth. This furthermore is to be noted, that whereas in vessels of oil that which is nearest the top is counted the finest and of wine that in the middest, so of honey the best which is heaviest and moistest is always next the bottom, and evermore casteth and driveth his dregs upward toward the very top, ...
— Chronicle and Romance (The Harvard Classics Series) • Jean Froissart, Thomas Malory, Raphael Holinshed
... propagating these pistache trees. We have five different species of stock on which to grow them, and we ought to learn all the best varieties in the world. But unfortunately some of the best varieties in Sicily are infested with a moth which lays its eggs in the twigs just below the leaf scar and it is impossible for the entomologist to detect these eggs without destroying the buds. That apparently trivial circumstance has made it impossible for us to get these cuttings in ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Report of the Proceedings at the Eleventh Annual Meeting - Washington, D. C. October 7 AND 8, 1920 • Various
... no less pleasure than he had in carving them, into wedged hexagons—reminiscences of the honeycomb of Venus Erycina. His ingenuity plays around the framework of all the noblest things; and yet the brightness of it has a lurid shadow. The spot of the fawn, of the bird, and the moth, may be harmless. But Daedalus reigns no less over the spot of the leopard and snake. That cruel and venomous power of his art is marked, in the legends of him, by his invention of the saw from the serpent's tooth; and ...
— Aratra Pentelici, Seven Lectures on the Elements of Sculpture - Given before the University of Oxford in Michaelmas Term, 1870 • John Ruskin
... soils that has been detrimental. I don't know what the situation would be if DDT was used to the same extent as arsenate of lead. It was not uncommon for some growers to put on anywhere from 6 to 15 lead sprays in a season in order to control codling moth, as they used to do in certain apple orchards, particularly ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Incorporated 39th Annual Report - at Norris, Tenn. September 13-15 1948 • Various
... my good neighbour, Alse, To see, be seen, to tell, and gather tales. Visits to every church we daily paid, And march'd in every holy masquerade; The stations duly, and the vigils kept; Not much we fasted, but scarce ever slept. At sermons, too, I shone in scarlet gay: The wasting moth ne'er spoil'd my best array; The cause was this, ...
— Poetical Works of Pope, Vol. II • Alexander Pope
... her large and luminous orbs. Yet not the more could I define that sentiment, or analyze, or even steadily view it. I recognized it, let me repeat, sometimes in the survey of a rapidly-growing vine—in the contemplation of a moth, a butterfly, a chrysalis, a stream of running water. I have felt it in the ocean; in the falling of a meteor. I have felt it in the glances of unusually aged people. And there are one or two stars in ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 3 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... Mr. Hardcap, "that you will heed the lesson God is a teachin' of you, and see how fearful a thing it is to have an unbeliev'n heart. God will not suffer us to rest in our sin of unbelief. If we lay up our treasures on earth where moth and rust doth corrupt, we must expect they will take to ...
— Laicus - The experiences of a Layman in a Country Parish • Lyman Abbott
... those of the old school, had placed her there. The Easter holidays accounted for Giselle's unexpected arrival. Wrapped in a large cloak which covered up her convent uniform, she looked, as compared with the gay girls around her, like a poor sombre night-moth, dazzled by the light, in company with other glittering creatures of the insect race, fluttering with graceful movements, transparent ...
— Jacqueline, Complete • (Mme. Blanc) Th. Bentzon
... and Bianca leave the ball-room, after the last dance, together with the crowd of most of those who had been joining in it, and had begun fluttering, poor moth, after the irresistible attraction, to follow them towards the supper-room. Missing sight of them in the throng for a minute, he had followed on to the principal supper-room, and not finding them there (for the reason the reader wots of) had returned on his steps, ...
— A Siren • Thomas Adolphus Trollope
... he lies coffined in his grave, is the left-off cocoon he has spun for himself during his earthly life, to burst open and soar from with all his memories about him, even his lost ones. Like the dragon-fly, the butterfly, the moth ... and when they die it is the same, and the same with a blade of grass. We are all, tous tant que nous sommes, little bags of remembrance that never dies; that's what we're for. But we can only bring with ...
— Peter Ibbetson • George du Marier et al
... furnished house, where the articles are not too expensive to be reasonably renewed as time and use wear them; but it is infinitely worse when a cataract of splendid furniture is heaped upon her care,—when splendid crystals cut into her conscience, and mirrors reflect her duties, and moth and rust stand ever ready to devour and sully in every ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 13, No. 76, February, 1864 • Various
... a year!" Feather breathed. From her delicate shoulders hung floating scarf-like sleeves of black transparency and she lifted one of them and held it out like a night moth's wing—"This cost forty pounds," she said, her voice quite faint and low. "A good nurse would cost forty! A cook—and a footman and a maid—and a coachman—and the brougham—I don't know how much they would ...
— The Head of the House of Coombe • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... of my grandmother's took place after dinner there was one thing which never failed to bring her back to the house: that was if (at one of those points when the revolutions of her course brought her, moth-like, in sight of the lamp in the little parlour where the liqueurs were set out on the card-table) my great-aunt called out to her: "Bathilde! Come in and stop your husband from drinking brandy!" For, simply to tease ...
— Swann's Way - (vol. 1 of Remembrance of Things Past) • Marcel Proust
... in his distraction till the table round was scattered with little broken leaves. He wanted to keep out of that atmosphere of emotion which surrounded Elinor at the piano. But it attracted him, all the same, as the light attracts a moth. To get away from that, to make the severance which so soon must be a perfect severance, was the only true policy he knew; for what was he to her, and what could she be to him? He had already said everything which a man in his position ought to say. He took out a book ...
— The Marriage of Elinor • Margaret Oliphant
... a worm is cloven in vain; That not a moth with vain desire Is shrivel'd in a fruitless fire, Or ...
— Elizabethan Demonology • Thomas Alfred Spalding
... I hope she will find me so quiet and my air so friendly that she will choose a niche on the hewn timber over my head. Just this moment I saw her snap up a flying "miller" in the orchard a few rods away. She was compelled to swoop four times before she intercepted that little moth in its unsteady, zigzagging flight. She is an expert at this sort of thing; it is her business to take her game on the wing; but the moths are experts in zigzag flying, and Ph[oe]be missed her mark ...
— The Wit of a Duck and Other Papers • John Burroughs
... yet let us at last see thy face, and receive the white stone from thy hand. That thus we may grow, give us day by day our daily bread. Fill us with the words that proceed out of thy mouth. Help us to lay up treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust doth corrupt. ...
— Unspoken Sermons - Series I., II., and II. • George MacDonald
... learned, dear knight of my heart,—submitting to a paternal edict does not change the course of nature, although true love often runs less smoothly on that account. You cannot make a wren out of a redbird, even if you are the God of both. And not all the prayers in heaven can save a little white moth from her candle, once she has felt it shining upon her wings. Just so, some charm of light in you, some clear illumination of things that reaches far beyond all the doctrines I know, draws me like a destiny. ...
— The Jessica Letters: An Editor's Romance • Paul Elmer More
... stopped breathing altogether. He wheeled about and suddenly brought his thumb and forefinger together on the candle flame, pinching it out as one might pinch the life out of a moth. ...
— Stories from Everybody's Magazine • 1910 issues of Everybody's Magazine
... with great emphasis; "he has been false to you." "No," said Mr. Low, who was a man thoroughly and thoughtfully just at all points; "he has not been false to me. He has always meant what he has said, when he was saying it. But he is weak and blind, and flies like a moth to the candle; one pities the poor moth, and would save him a stump of his wing ...
— Phineas Finn - The Irish Member • Anthony Trollope
... then the vision of a girl blurred across his thoughts uncertainly, like a bright moth hovering in the distance whose shadow fell across his dusty path. But it was far away and vague, and only a glance in her eyes belonged to him. She was not of ...
— The Search • Grace Livingston Hill
... carry her off like the torrent and give her no chance to resist. Yet, reckless as he was, he had still common sense enough to understand that, until he was fairly rid of one wife, he could not expect another to throw herself into his arms, and he awkwardly flitted about her, like a moth about a lantern, unable even to singe ...
— Esther • Henry Adams
... Selection,' 1871.) to the Duke's criticisms, making some specially good remarks on those which refer to orchids. He shows how, by a "beautiful self-acting adjustment," the nectary of the orchid Angraecum (from 10 to 14 inches in length), and the proboscis of a moth sufficiently long to reach the nectar, might be developed by natural selection. He goes on to point out that on any other theory we must suppose that the flower was created with an enormously long nectary, and that then by a special act, an insect was created ...
— The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin, Volume II • Francis Darwin
... used close to their roots, so use caution. An ingenious soul, rightly conceiving that the mole is highly sensitive to smells made a number of stiff pasteboard tubes and put in the center of each a stinking moth-ball. Buried in the runways there was a dearth of moles directly. I heartily approve of the mole's judgment in leaving moth-ball-scented premises. I have felt ...
— The Mayflower, January, 1905 • Various
... surrounded by a host of determined enemies in their own country? But many thought, and I thought so too, that it was special favour and mercy which Heaven showed to Spain in permitting the destruction of that source and hiding place of mischief, that devourer, sponge, and moth of countless money, fruitlessly wasted there to no other purpose save preserving the memory of its capture by the invincible Charles V; as if to make that eternal, as it is and will be, these stones were needed to support it. The fort also fell; but the Turks ...
— Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... procedure. Along with him, as was also the invariable custom, ponderous Aunt Timmie drove in her buggy—"her" buggy by adoption after it had been discarded by "de white folks." Whenever she climbed into this moth-eaten vehicle, whose wheels pointed outward and inward all at the same time, she never permitted the child to forget that it was her own sweet willingness thus to risk her life which made these excursions possible. ...
— Sunlight Patch • Credo Fitch Harris
... more interested in the next find, which was a complete court suit—silk stockings, buckled shoes, and all. Then came an old uniform, moth-eaten long before Dame Alison's careful hands had folded it away. Its gold lace was tarnished almost beyond recognition, and on it was a label written in the same delicate handwriting, "Worn by General James Hunter at the battle of Waterloo, ...
— Hunter's Marjory - A Story for Girls • Margaret Bruce Clarke
... filled with bitterness toward her, but could have no more kept away from her than the moth from the flame. My bitterness now gave me courage, and I sauntered up to her with what I flattered myself was quite as grand an air as the chevalier's might have been. Hand on the hilt of my sword, hat doffed, with its plume sweeping the ground, I ...
— The Rose of Old St. Louis • Mary Dillon
... exhibited in two double-faced frames attached to the top of this case. The more important insects included in this group were the following: Sugar maple borer, elm snout beetles, twig girdler or twig pruner, white marked tussock moth, gypsy moth, brown tail moth, bag worm, forest tent caterpillar, elm leaf beetle, oyster scale, scurfy bark louse, San Jose scale, elm bark louse, cottony maple scale. One plate was devoted to characteristic insects affecting oak, and another to those depredating ...
— New York at the Louisiana Purchase Exposition, St. Louis 1904 - Report of the New York State Commission • DeLancey M. Ellis
... female canker-worm moths and their eggs," writes a well-known entomologist. He calculates that as a chickadee destroys about 5,500 eggs in one day, it will eat 138,750 eggs in the twenty-five days it takes the canker-worm moth to crawl up the trees. The moral that it pays to attract chickadees about your home by feeding them in winter is obvious. Mrs. Mabel Osgood Wright, in her delightful and helpful book "Birdcraft," tells us how she makes a ...
— Bird Neighbors • Neltje Blanchan
... breezes. The house loomed inscrutable in the middle distance, but as Octavian conscientiously repeated the formula of his penance he felt certain that three pairs of solemn eyes were watching his moth-shared vigil. ...
— The Toys of Peace • Saki
... what his mind is, and Joe's mind was as completely changed as if he had been born into a different sphere. The moth comes out of the grub, the gay Hussar out ...
— The Humourous Story of Farmer Bumpkin's Lawsuit • Richard Harris
... ruler, this mature man—who or what is his wife, hated though she be, or what is she to him in any way, that she should prove the slightest obstacle in the path of one like him? He would meet her as her lord and master, and brush her away as he would a moth." ...
— The Cryptogram - A Novel • James De Mille
... so profoundly astonished, that his features remained contracted, his lips parted, and his eyes fixed. He did not move an inch, nor articulate a sound. Nothing could be heard in that large chamber but the wing-whisper of a little moth, which was fluttering to its death about the candles. Aramis, without even deigning to look at the man whom he had reduced to so miserable a condition, drew from his pocket a small case of black wax; he sealed the letter, and stamped it with ...
— The Man in the Iron Mask • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... old and shabby my clothes are," smiled Peter. "It does not make much difference what I wear to the tannery if I can just have some flannel shirts, overalls, and rubber boots. I've packed away my white tennis suits in moth-balls, you know, since I went into ...
— The Story of Leather • Sara Ware Bassett
... constitution. Her health is as uniform as her temper; and even if life and death were at stake, she would not leave her housekeeping in other hands. Neither would she close her doors and turn her locks, lest moth and rust should corrupt, and thieves break in and steal. But pardon me. I have given you no opportunity ...
— Ernest Linwood - or, The Inner Life of the Author • Caroline Lee Hentz
... seek for the healing of their misery, and the alleviation of their discomfort, in the repetition of the very acts which brought these about. The attempt to get relief in such a fashion, of course, fails; for as the verse before our text emphatically proclaims, it is God who has been 'as a moth unto Ephraim,' gnawing away his strength: and it is only He who can heal, since in reality it is He, and not the quarrelsome king of Assyria, who has ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ezekiel, Daniel, and the Minor Prophets. St Matthew Chapters I to VIII • Alexander Maclaren
... of heaven. What we give away for the love of God and our neighbor is all we take with us. I will be so delighted with a home that I can call mine, forever. I like nice wearing apparel but I will not be deceived by spending my time and means for that which will hinder me from having them where moth and rust doth not corrupt and where thieves do not break through and steal. So I wish to make to myself friends of the mammon of unrighteousness and not enemies, for the hoarded dollars are bitter foes that ...
— The Use and Need of the Life of Carry A. Nation • Carry A. Nation
... sunshine. Old Brownsmith used to have me over to spend Sundays with him, and his brother and Mrs Solomon were very kind. Ike sometimes went so far as to say "Good-morning" and "good-night," and Shock had become so friendly that he would talk, and bring me a good moth or ...
— Brownsmith's Boy - A Romance in a Garden • George Manville Fenn
... somehow that morning he was disconcertingly candid to himself. It may have been the sudden change from London air and London noise; something in the clear transparency of the April day, in the flute-like melody of the birds' song, in the dream-like beauty of the scene before him, that made all the moth and rust that had consumed the remembrances of the past more apparent. There was little of the treasure of heaven there,—it had mostly been nonsense or vanity or worse. He wanted, oh, how he wanted, to be able just for once to surrender himself ...
— Robinetta • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... yet she seemed to be pasted on a big, shiny star. The top point rose just above her head, making the peak of a crown. The two middle points stuck out beyond her shoulders like bright moth wings, and the two bottom points extended below her waist, and away from her, like the ends ...
— Half-Past Seven Stories • Robert Gordon Anderson
... Ch'ing Wen's ire was actually stirred up, and her beautiful moth-like eyebrows contracted, and her lovely phoenix eyes stared wide like two balls. So she immediately shouted out for ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book II • Cao Xueqin
... A very little reading will give a man such a knowledge of geology, for example, as will make every quarry and railway cutting an object of interest. A very little zoology will enable you to satisfy your curiosity as to what is the proper name and style of this buff-ermine moth which at the present instant is buzzing round the lamp. A very little botany will enable you to recognize every flower you are likely to meet in your walks abroad, and to give you a tiny thrill of interest ...
— Through the Magic Door • Arthur Conan Doyle
... bread, and mingled my drink with weeping. Because of thine indignation and thy wrath: for thou hast taken me up, and cast me away," Ps 102, 9-10. "I am consumed by the blow of thy hand. When thou with rebukes dost correct man for iniquity, thou makest his beauty to consume away like a moth," Ps 39, 10-11. ...
— Epistle Sermons, Vol. III - Trinity Sunday to Advent • Martin Luther
... making a tearful face, began to nod his head, bent to one side, as is done by little swarthy, dirty, oriental lads who roam over all Russia in long, old, soldiers' overcoats, with bared chest of a bronze colour, holding a coughing, moth-eaten little monkey in ...
— Yama (The Pit) • Alexandra Kuprin
... off, having fair hair parted in the middle and carefully curled on each side, and lively movements, especially of the hands. He had a dandified monocle slung round his neck by a broad black ribbon, and a big bow tie, as if a big American moth had alighted on him. His dress and gestures were bright enough for a boy's; it was only when you looked at the fish-bone face that you beheld something acrid and old. His manners were excellent, though hardly ...
— Manalive • G. K. Chesterton
... long shadow over the ruts and scattered grass-tufts of the track. Yet even the monotonous din of our carriage-wheels and collar-bells could not drown the joyous song of soaring larks, nor the combined odour of moth-eaten cloth, dust, and sourness peculiar to our britchka overpower the fresh scents of the morning. I felt in my heart that delightful impulse to be up and doing which is a sign ...
— Boyhood • Leo Tolstoy
... importation of goods from Holland was forbidden in order to catch the smuggler; but the smuggler ignored the agreement as readily as he signed it. Yet for a time the association was no burden to the fair trader, who in anticipation had doubled his orders, or sold "old, moth-eaten goods" at high prices. The merchants were "great patriots," Chandler told John Adams, "while their old rags lasted; but as soon as they were sold at enormous prices, they were for importing." And in truth the fair trader's monopoly could not outlast his stock, whereas the ...
— Beginnings of the American People • Carl Lotus Becker
... the simple moth doth blindly rush To reach the flame, its life oft pays the debt Of folly. Yet 'tis nobler thus to die Midst all the brightness of a waking life, Than from the world ooze out through darkened ways By beggarly instalments—none ...
— The Death of Saul and other Eisteddfod Prize Poems and Miscellaneous Verses • J. C. Manning
... this side of the gravel-walk She went while her robe's edge brushed the box; 10 And here she paused in her gracious talk To point me a moth on the milk-white phlox. Roses, ranged in valiant row, I will never think that she passed you by! She loves you, noble roses, I know; 15 But yonder, see, where the ...
— Selections from the Poems and Plays of Robert Browning • Robert Browning
... of the erroneous belief in the existence of a Christian consort of Akbar. Mr. Beveridge holds, and I think rightly, that Jodh Bai is not a proper name. It seems to mean merely 'princess of Jodhpur'. The only lady really known as Jodh Bai was the daughter of Udai Singh (Moth Raja) of Jaipur, who became a consort of Jahangir. Sleeman's notion that Jahangir's mother also was called Jodh Bai ...
— Rambles and Recollections of an Indian Official • William Sleeman
... a turn up and down the street on his horse, then started for the dam site. As he cantered up the road, Billy Underwood, mounted on a moth-eaten pony, saluted with dignity. ...
— Still Jim • Honore Willsie Morrow
... yes—it is 'paradise regained!'" He pinned a giant moth at the moment and gazed triumphant through ...
— Blown to Bits - The Lonely Man of Rakata, the Malay Archipelago • R.M. Ballantyne
... admired, has groped out his way, and made his most successful researches among the more obscure and intricate, though certainly not the least pithy or pleasant of our writers. He has raked among the dust and cobwebs of a remote period, has exhibited specimens of curious relics, and pored over moth-eaten, decayed manuscripts, for the benefit of the more inquisitive and discerning part of the public. Antiquity after a time has the grace of novelty, as old fashions revived are mistaken for new ones; and a ...
— Hazlitt on English Literature - An Introduction to the Appreciation of Literature • Jacob Zeitlin
... size. Take whatever you wish to protect—your furs, your flannel, or your clothes—and pack each article carefully in a newspaper, joining the edges with a double fold, well pinned. If this joining is properly done, the Moth will never get inside. Since my advice has been taken and this method employed in my household, the old damage ...
— The Wonders of Instinct • J. H. Fabre
... taken up to the box-room and made as comfortable as possible in a snug nook between an old nursery fender and the wreck of a big four-poster. They gave him a big rag-bag to sit on, and an old, moth-eaten fur coat off the nail on the door to keep him warm. And when they had had their own tea they took him some. He did not like the tea at all, but he liked the bread and butter, and cake that went with it. They took ...
— The Story of the Amulet • E. Nesbit
... at once to acquire merit which the moth cannot corrupt," I continued. "I am leaving to apologize to the man I fought with because he called you a cheat—and to my uncle for doubting ...
— The Unspeakable Gentleman • John P. Marquand
... compelled, to come and bow down before these alms-begging loblollies. To refuse to make obeisance was treason. The entire public thought of a vast section of the country has revolved around the figure of a worthless old grafter in a tattered gray shirt. Every question is settled when some moth-eaten ne'er-do-well lets out what is known as a 'rebel yell.' The most polished and profound speech conceivable is answered when a jackass mounts the platform and brays out something about the gallant boys in gray. The cry for progress, for material advancement, for moral and social ...
— Queed • Henry Sydnor Harrison
... me for taking it off his hands. Well, you see the dress I've made of it. The imperfections didn't hurt it the least in the world as I managed it,—and the faded breadth makes a good apron, so you see. And just so I got that red spotted flannel dress I wore last winter. It was moth-eaten in one or two places, and I made them let me have it at half-price;—made exactly as good a dress. But after all, Mara, I can't trim a bonnet as you can, and I can't come up to your embroidery, nor your lace-work, nor I can't draw and paint as you can, and I can't sing like you; and then as ...
— The Pearl of Orr's Island - A Story of the Coast of Maine • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... baseball, attention! When you're again on the job— When, in your rage for invention, You with the language play hob— Most of your dope we will pardon, Though of the moth ball it smack; But—cut out the "sinister garden," ...
— Tobogganing On Parnassus • Franklin P. Adams
... Dormouse attended, but cold and forlorn; And the Gnat slowly winded his shrill little horn; And the Moth, who was griev'd for the loss of a sister, Bent over the ...
— The Butterfly's Funeral - A Sequel to the Butterfly's Ball and Grasshopper's Feast • J. L. B.
... living God; let the axe once begin to boast itself against Him that hews therewith; and he will find out that there is one stronger than he, one who has been using him as a 'tool, and who will crush him like a moth the moment he rebels. His father destroyed Samaria and her idols, but he shall not destroy Jerusalem. He may ravage Ephraim, and punish the gluttony and drunkenness, and oppression of the great landlords of Bashan; he may bring misery and desolation through the length ...
— Sermons on National Subjects • Charles Kingsley
... Wilton quoth he, marie and shalt: bring vs a pint of syder of a fresh tap into the three cups here, wash the pot, so into a backe roome he lead mee, where after hee had spit on his finger, and pickt off two or three moats of his olde moth eaten veluet cap, and spunged and wrong all the rumatike driuell from his ill fauoured Goates beard, he badde me declare my minde, and there vpon he dranke to me on the same. I vp with a long circumstance, alias, a cunning shift of the seuenteenes, ...
— The Vnfortunate Traveller, or The Life Of Jack Wilton - With An Essay On The Life And Writings Of Thomas Nash By Edmund Gosse • Thomas Nash
... sunset lights fired the metallic lustre of his motley. Quite close to him a dead branch thrust upwards from the water, and the river swirled in oily play of wrinkles and dimples beyond it. Here, with some approach to his old skill, the angler presently cast a small brown moth. It fell lightly and neatly, cocked for a second, then turned helplessly over, wrecked in the sudden eddy as a natural insect had been. A fearless rise followed, and in less than half a minute a small trout was in the angler's ...
— Children of the Mist • Eden Phillpotts
... is completing the trust with reference to the material it already has on hand, the all-destroying march of Time still goes swiftly on, however. Manuscripts in foreign lands are fading and being lost, parchments are becoming moth-eaten or mildewed, whole archives without duplicate are at the mercy of a mob, or a revolution, or a conflagration, and a generation of men and women still alive are quickly passing away, carrying with them an "unsung Iliad" of the Sierras and the plains. In the presence of these ...
— California, Romantic and Resourceful • John F. Davis
... re-curled with a blunt knife, dipped in very hot water. Furs and feathers not in constant use should be wrapped up in linen washed in lye. From May to September they are subject to being made the depository of moth-eggs. ...
— Practical Suggestions for Mother and Housewife • Marion Mills Miller
... ready they crowded up the straight starlit stairs. At the top they crawled out through the sky door, one by one, into the branches. Eric followed Ivra, and saw a great black moth-like thing poised in air by the tree's top. But it was hollowed like a boat and a shadowy woman was standing upright in it. A dark cloak covered her, but the hood had fallen back, and her face in the starlight was very beautiful and very young, younger even than Helma's, whose face Eric ...
— The Little House in the Fairy Wood • Ethel Cook Eliot
... shall pay you both for that time and this,' she said, with perhaps more tact than could have been expected of her. 'And if you want to live long, Mr. Saintou, don't feel. If I should feel I should die off, quick, sharp, like a moth that flies into the candle.' She made a little gesture with her hand, as if to indicate the ease and suddenness with which the supposed catastrophe was to take place, and hobbled down the street. Saintou stood in the doorway looking after her, and ...
— A Dozen Ways Of Love • Lily Dougall
... its dimensions. If the attention has become 'riveted to the object of its practical interest' to the extent that this is the only good the creature knows, then is its thought-form one-dimensional even though its bodily movements are three-spaced. The great Peacock Moth wings a sure course mateward to the mystification of the scientist; the dog finds the direct road home - his master cannot tell how; Mary Antin climbs to an education over difficulties apparently insurmountable; Rockefeller ...
— The Fourth Dimensional Reaches of the Panama-Pacific International Exposition • Cora Lenore Williams
... a disembodied spirit, and no longer subject to the petty annoyances that belong to the flesh?" cried he, fretfully. "My knowledge, too, is a moth,—only vexing me by a sense of the limitations of my condition. If I could grasp Nature,—if I could handle the stars,—if I could wake the thunder,—if I could summon the cloud! That would be worth something,—to send the comets ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 3, No. 18, April, 1859 - [Date last updated: August 7, 2005] • Various
... tyrants never invented the like torment. It crucifies their souls, withers their bodies, makes them hollow-eyed, [1691]pale, lean, and ghastly to behold, Cyprian, ser. 2. de zelo et livore. [1692]"As a moth gnaws a garment, so," saith Chrysostom, "doth envy consume a man;" to be a living anatomy: a "skeleton, to be a lean and [1693]pale carcass, quickened with a [1694]fiend", Hall in Charact. for so often as an envious wretch sees another man prosper, to be enriched, to thrive, and be fortunate ...
— The Anatomy of Melancholy • Democritus Junior
... found herself inside a cupboard full of old lumber. The dust was thick, and surely had not been disturbed for years. Some broken chairs with moth-eaten seats were piled together, and some ancient boxes lay full of rubbish. Straw, old books, hanks of rope, and other miscellaneous things occupied the corner. There was a door opposite, without either latch ...
— The Madcap of the School • Angela Brazil
... Lord has again most kindly helped us. It came to my mind that there were some new blankets in the Orphan-Houses, which had been given some time since, but which are not needed, and might therefore be sold. I was confirmed in this by finding that the moth had got into one pair. I therefore sold ten pairs, having a good opportunity to do so. Thus the Lord not only supplied again our present need for the three houses, but I was also able to put by the rent for this week and the next, acting ...
— A Narrative of some of the Lord's Dealings with George Mueller - Written by Himself. Second Part • George Mueller
... much of herself she spends her whole time helping others. She represents the composite beauty, sweetness, and nobility of all those who scorn self for the sake of love and her handmaiden duty—of all those who seek the brightness of truth not as the moth to be destroyed thereby, but as the lark who soars and sings to the great sun. She is of those who have so much to give they want no time to take, and their name is legion. She is as full of beautiful possibilities as a perfect harp, ...
— Pulpit and Press • Mary Baker Eddy
... moment a moth extinguished the lamp. Chopin would not have it relighted, and played in the dark. When he had finished his delighted auditors overwhelmed him with compliments, and ...
— Frederick Chopin as a Man and Musician - Volume 1-2, Complete • Frederick Niecks
... no adventures at all, but sat in a balcony and listened to pretty good music, and noted the few drowsy figures in the side streets, the glow of lamp or brazier on their heavy draperies, contrasting with the starlight and the deep velvety shadows—moth-like colouring, and intense repose, after the ...
— From Edinburgh to India & Burmah • William G. Burn Murdoch
... very easily learned with felt mats and slats. One-half a yard of felt two yards wide will make thirty-six mats six inches square. These are very durable, and can be used year after year, if protected from moth during the summer. Some prefer leather or oil-cloth mats, backed with heavy unbleached muslin, but they are more expensive, and not so pleasant to work with as the soft wool. The slats, which should be at least one-half ...
— Hand-Loom Weaving - A Manual for School and Home • Mattie Phipps Todd |
