"Moulting" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... individual in neglecting the future, because he will not personally enjoy the fruits of his labor, must in some degree fetter the enterprise of a five years' governor. He is little better than the Lord Mayor, who flutters proudly for a year, and then drops his borrowed feathers in his moulting season. ...
— Eight Years' Wandering in Ceylon • Samuel White Baker
... may bear home between his fingers all that winged splendor, all that celestial melody, coiled in mystery within these tiny walls! Even the chrysalis is less amazing, for its form always preserves some trace, however fantastic, of the perfect insect, and it is but moulting a skin; but this egg appears to the eye like a separate unit from some other kingdom of Nature, claiming more kindred with the very stones than with feathery existence; and it is as if a pearl opened and ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 10, Number 59, September, 1862 • Various
... among the shyest of God's creatures. They fly so rapidly, unless when beating against the wind, that it requires a practised shot to hit them on the wing. Even when moulting their feathers, or when young, they can escape—fluttering over the surface of the water faster than a canoe can ...
— The Hunters' Feast - Conversations Around the Camp Fire • Mayne Reid
... nay, faith, 'tis hidden in mine armour! But verily, my shanks will soon be no thicker than my bowstave! Lastly I—I that loved company and good cheer do find therein abomination these days, so do I creep, like moulting fowl, brother, to corners dark and dismal and there make much ado—and such is love, ...
— Beltane The Smith • Jeffery Farnol
... there was abundant evidence of life. Skua gulls frequently flew about the hut, as well as Cape pigeons, Antarctic, snow, Wilson, giant and silver-grey petrels. Out on the sea-ice, there were Adelie and Emperor penguins; the latter moulting. Hundreds of seals were seen with glasses on the edge of the floe, ten miles to ...
— The Home of the Blizzard • Douglas Mawson
... their garments. Judge then, reader, if you can, the consternation with which these once graceful creatures discovered that their retreat had been found out by that inquisitive biped, man—that they were actually caught in the act of moulting! ...
— The Pioneers • R.M. Ballantyne
... where we had engaged lodgings was Hotel d'Orient, in the Rue Daunou. The situation was convenient, very near the Place Vendome and the Rue de la Paix. But the house was undergoing renovations which made it as unpresentable as a moulting fowl. Scrubbing, painting of blinds, and other perturbing processes did all they could to make it uncomfortable. The courtyard was always sloppy, and the whole condition of things reminded me forcibly ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... home-place,—and brings the menu of breakfast—luncheon—dinner, and we turn away our heads and say, "Nothing—nothing!" Our steward is a funny little man, very small and thin, with pale yellow hair; he reminds me of a moulting canary, and his voice cheeps and is rather canary-like too. He is really a very kind little steward and trots about most diligently on our errands, and tries to cheer us by tales of the people he has known who have died of sea-sickness: "Strained their 'earts, Miss, that's wot they done!" It ...
— Olivia in India • O. Douglas
... witness, that, if I would hie to the wars with you, you would place me under a leader who was second to none in all England for valor? Yet here you bring me to a shred of a man, peaky and ill-nourished, with eyes like a moulting owl, who must needs, forsooth, take counsel with his mother ere he ...
— The White Company • Arthur Conan Doyle
... the Church has held aloof from any doctrinal pronouncements. The Antichrist has been predicted for the past thousand years. I recall as a boy poring over the map of the world which a friend of my mother had left with her. This lady my father called 'the angel with the moulting wings,' because she was always in an ecstatic tremor over the second coming of the Messiah. She would go to the housetop at least once every six months, and there, with a band of pious deluded geese dressed in white flowing robes, would inspect the firmament for favourable signs. ...
— Visionaries • James Huneker
... turned and looked upon them, and he wept very sore As he saw the yawning gateway and the hasps wrenched off the door, And the pegs whereon no mantle nor coat of vair there hung. There perched no moulting goshawk, and there no falcon swung. My lord the Cid sighed deeply such grief was in his heart And he spake well and wisely: "Oh Thou, in Heaven that art Our Father and our Master, now I give thanks to Thee. Of their wickedness my foemen have done ...
— The Lay of the Cid • R. Selden Rose and Leonard Bacon |
